by Sheila Kell
Devon readily accepted the bottle and chugged it down.
“Do you need me to call someone? I’ve got a SAT phone here.”
That reminded him and he scanned the area until his eyes lit on his backpack. “Nope.” He pointed toward it by the bushes. “There’s mine and I have one.” Approaching Steven, he stuck out his hand. “Thanks, man. That was one hell of a thing you did for me.”
The man’s face reddened. “It’s no big deal. Anything else? ’Cause if not, I’m off to rejoin my group.”
Relieved he’d be alone in a moment, Devon didn’t balk at the sharp pain when he shook his head for his answer.
On his own, Devon pulled the SAT phone from his pack and dialed Jesse. While waiting for an answer, he slung his backpack over his shoulder and turned in the direction of the cabin. Half walking, half stumbling, he cursed Jesse for not answering.
Tripping over a protruding tree root, he plummeted to the ground with a resounding thud as he hadn’t reacted in time to catch himself. “Oomph.” Sucking wind into his burning lungs and swallowing down the raging throb throughout his body, he wanted to remain in that spot and rest. But, he knew he couldn’t. His stomach lurched at the thought that Chuck and company were probably gone, but he would still check.
“Where the fuck are you, Jesse? I can’t believe I was so stupid to think I could do this without the team,” Devon chided himself.
“By the looks of you, I’d have to agree.”
Devon groaned at his older brother. “How the hell do you do that? I didn’t even hear you.”
A cocky grin split Jesse’s face. “It’s a gift.” He squatted beside Devon. “Want to tell me how bad it is?”
“Does it matter? I fell off a cliff and they’ve got my wife. We need to hurry.” He made it to his knees before his brother put his hand on his shoulder in a staying motion.
“They’ve got Rylee,” Jesse spoke, but not to Devon. So, he had others with him. Thank God.
“Not that I’m not glad to see you, especially since I just called, but why are you here?”
He shrugged but waved a finger back and forth in front of Devon’s face. “You know the drill.”
And he did, but even if he had a concussion, there was no way in hell that he’d be sitting this out. In fact, they’d taken too long already.
Matt slipped silently through the tree line. He loved how this family converged to help whomever was in need.
“We have to check the ranch and see if she’s there,” Devon stated as if the thought hadn’t crossed anyone’s mind. With a nod from Jesse, which was as good a thumbs-up as he’d get, he struggled to his feet prepared to hike to the Carver place, bad ankle and all.
“When we didn’t hear from you”—Jesse answered a question miles away from Devon’s current train of thought—“we decided to visit. With no one at the cabin, Matt and I took to the trails, while AJ, Jake, and Ken went to the ranch you had mapped out on the kitchen table. I thought they might find out why you were interested in the place. Give them a bit more time.”
Grasping the men’s locations, Devon turned to Jesse. “Where’s Brad?”
A chuckle erupted from his brothers. “He’s with Rylee’s sister.”
He sighed in relief that HIS had thought to reach out to her, just in case. Another thought crossed his mind. “Is Kate here?” Fuck. Rylee was a good friend of hers, and she wouldn’t take the news of her abduction well.
“Yeah, she said she had to come because of a dog, but we found a gray ball of fur next to it.” Jesse wiggled his eyebrows. “We weren’t expecting you two to have children in such a short time.” His smile fell and his playfulness vanished. “She’s coordinating transport for them to Baltimore.”
“Thank you.” Devon closed his eyes for a moment, relieved to know their pets were safe. Worry that the cabin might’ve been invaded and the animals harmed or his equipment broken or stolen, had eaten at him. Looking at Jesse, he opened his mouth and stopped what he’d been about to say.
His brothers stood frozen with their hands on their weapons on their side. A twig snapped and Devon tensed with his heart thudding painfully against his chest. Funny, for a man who’d never wanted to carry a weapon, after being tossed off a cliff and having one’s wife kidnapped to be sold into sexual slavery, makes one redirect priorities, and one of his new priorities was a fucking weapon.
“Dammit, AJ. You have to learn to be quieter,” Jesse chastised as AJ appeared in their path.
“Fuck you. We’re here alone. It’s vacant. Looks as if they left in a hurry,” the youngest Hamilton brother said.
Devon would not allow even a sliver of defeat to wash into his mind. They’d find them if it was the last thing he ever did.
“Ken and Jake stayed back to see if they could find anything that would lead us to her.” AJ walked to Devon. “We’ll get her back.”
An overwhelming feeling of love from his brothers flooded him, causing mist to form over his eyes and choke him up. Not wanting to appear a pussy, he suffered through the pain of a brief jerk of his head in acknowledgment.
They trudged to the cabin with a brother on each side of Devon, in case he needed their support, and Matt in front in case of trouble. “So you saw my old boss is who we’re searching for?” They’d said they’d looked through his and Rylee’s notes at the cabin and had the foresight to search Carver’s home for them.
Jesse shook his head. “Didn’t realize he was your old boss.”
“He is and he’s into some fucked-up shit.”
“You can fill us in now.”
Devon relayed all he and Rylee had learned about Carver and what he might be into. They were certain but lacked proof. The man who’d taken Rylee never said he worked for Carver, so Devon prayed HIS wasn’t wasting their time chasing him because that was who they’d begin with in the search for his wife.
When they entered the rental, Kate clucked like a mother hen after hearing the news. After demanding she be part of the team to rescue Rylee, she insisted on doctoring his cuts even though he, just as stubbornly, insisted he needed to get on his computer. They compromised and he told AJ where he’d hidden it so he could have it ready for when Nurse Kate released him.
When Jake and Ken returned, they were empty-handed. “They may as well have burned the place,” Ken Patrick, the HIS field team leader had explained. “There is nothing personal there.”
AJ rushed into the large room with a bag of chips in one hand a laptop bag in the other, which he held up with a beaming smile, unaware of the devastating news that had just been delivered. “Got it!” He deposited the laptop on the table and whistled. “Man, this is a fucked-up way to spend your birthday.” Shaking his head, he ripped open the bag of chips and stood helplessly as they flew everywhere.
A light chuckle knocked around the room, a welcome levity, before the attention focused back on Devon.
“Yay. Happy fucking birthday to me,” Devon grumbled.
“Birthday or not, think you can stop letting your brother’s wife coddle you and get those magic fingers to working?” Matt asked with a bit of humor laced in his serious tone.
Jake crossed his arms across his chest. “Are we bringing Arthur in?”
“No,” Devon ground out with more anger than he’d expected. Like hell he’d involve the FBI in anything unless he absolutely had to. Their recent experiences with them hadn’t been great, and he wouldn’t risk their fucking up with Rylee’s life at stake. “At least, not now.”
The men nodded, apparently all in agreement.
“Why don’t you three grab some air while Dev works?” Jesse asked the men.
After they exited the cabin amidst jests at AJ for eating more food, the eldest Hamilton brother turned to him, but Kate piped up from the kitchen. “You can have your boy time, but I will wrap those ribs and that ankle, Devon, before the day is through.” She hummed and busied herself making a meal for the group.
Jesse turned back to him, smirking, but sobered his fa
ce quickly. “You up for this?”
“My memory is back.” His entire Vegas trip flashed fresh in his mind and his heart swelled with excitement at its return and the events that had occurred on that trip.
“So that jump off a cliff did you some good?”
“I love her, Jesse.”
A broad smile grew on his brother’s face. “I kind of figured that was the case if you’d married her—drunk or not.”
No, he hadn’t been drunk. He’d fallen hopelessly in love with her at first sight—something he thought was imagined for romantics. He hadn’t thought she’d been drunk either, but a stab of worry broke in without warning. She couldn’t remember. Had she been drunk and not meant to marry him? No. He wouldn’t believe that. She’d been just as in love with him as he’d been with her.
And, she needed him more than ever.
AFTER NEARLY HALF an hour of frustration at Robert’s cabin, Devon exclaimed, “I’m in!”
Kate, who’d insisted they search the place again when he told the team they were breaking back in, hovered over him in the office while he searched the computer that housed the home’s security footage. Hoping against hope that Carver had left the program defaults in place so footage of Rylee would still be saved, Devon rewound until he found her. He had no idea what he was looking for in the footage, but he’d refused to leave until he saw that she’d been okay. The bugs they’d planted had been found, so there was no audio.
“Here we go.” Anger infused in him and he wanted to bellow at the top of his lungs as he watched Rylee being led down the hallway by Nick and the brute who’d taken her from him. Her red-rimmed eyes constantly scanned the area but never looked directly at the cameras she knew to be there. That caught his attention and he straightened. She would, of course, be seeking an escape, but he’d think she’d have given him a look or a sign through the camera since she had to have known he’d tap into it to find her.
He groaned inwardly and his heart bled for her. She didn’t expect him to check the tapes. Christ, she thought him fucking dead. Imagining how she felt was impossible.
Just losing her this short time made him feel like his heart had been ripped from his chest and shoved down his throat. So, she may not have been thinking fully about rescue. But, he had to believe she’d trust that HIS would look for her. Kate and Jesse wouldn’t forget her.
Even dealing with what she thought had occurred, and her fate sketchy, she appeared to be full of fire. He still didn’t understand it, but it didn’t matter as long as she liked to say it. As for her fire, he couldn’t decide what had lit her fuse the hottest, but whatever it had been, it’d been strong enough two big men had to bind her wrists. His anger notched up. Those sons of bitches would pay.
Kate pointed to the screen. “What’s she doing with her hands?”
He zoomed in the footage and focused on what he thought had been Rylee flexing her fists in anger or to keep the circulation moving from her the cable ties encircling her wrists. “Is that sign language?”
“Yes!” Kate answered. “It looks like she’s spelling something, but I’m not certain.”
It explained why she hadn’t looked at the cameras. She hadn’t wanted to draw attention to herself. “Matt,” he shouted with force, “get in here, ASAP.” Devon had memorized the alphabet in sign language when he was a child, but he wouldn’t leave that old, rusty knowledge to this important message when he had an ex-SEAL around. Hell, he didn’t know if they learned it as SEALs, he just knew Matt was nearly fluent in sign language.
Devon didn’t have to turn to know the remaining cabin’s occupants had crushed up behind him in the small room, peering over his shoulder. The sudden weight of their dominant presence and the warm air from their breaths reached him and he wanted to jump out of the way and send them all out to find Rylee.
“A… I…” Matt translated aloud. “R… P… O….”
“Airport.” Devon slapped the desktop with his pronouncement.
“R… T,” Matt finished. “Then it repeats.”
“But we knew she was going to—” Kate began.
“Son of a motherfucking bitch!” Devon shouted and surged from his chair, running a hand through his hair and barely avoiding the men in behind him. He wanted to lunge at the man on the screen. That Chuck bastard had injected her with something before they reached the front door and she’d collapsed not long after. Different types of drugs they could’ve used flashed across his memory, but sodium pentothal came to mind first. No matter what they used, he prayed it wasn’t something dangerous, or they didn’t overdose and kill her because sodium pentothal was also used in euthanasia.
Then, the man moved. Dammit. That bastard carried her like one would carry a lover to bed. Rage vented out every one of Devon’s pores and his pulse pounded at a merciless rhythm. No one handled his wife’s body like that except him.
They fucking thought they would sell her. Just wait until the goddamn HIS found the bastards. Every single one of them would regret selling or buying human beings.
“Get everyone ready to mobilize,” Jesse instructed and their brothers moved away, pulling sat phones from the pockets of their cargo pants. He turned to Devon. “We’re going home.”
“Jesse—”
As if sensing his question, he held up a hand to forestall Devon’s words. “We’re going to find her, but unless you know where to fly, we may as well be where all our support and equipment are located. Should you figure out where they went while we’re in flight, I promise to God that we’ll divert for her.” Slapping a hand on Devon’s shoulder, he grabbed and squeezed tight. “We’ll find those girls too. Maybe not at the same time, but we’ll find them.”
“I’ve never felt so fucking helpless in my life. I pulled all I could find on Carver.” He snapped his fingers. Now he was thinking straight. “Manhattan. He has a suite there. I doubt he’d chance taking her there, but we need to check it out.”
Jesse smiled with pride. “Now that’s more like it. We’ll do Manhattan. Do you think you can handle it?”
“Give me a weapon, but don’t stand in my way if they’ve hurt her.”
“That’s not—”
“Jesse,” Ken, an ex-army ranger who worked with Jesse, said as he stuck his head in the doorway, “company’s coming.”
Devon hurried toward the door, but Jesse put out an arm to stop him. “You”—he pointed with the other hand—“get everything together on Carver and be ready to brief the team when we hit the air. We’ll handle this.”
“What if it’s Carver?”
Jesse’s expression displayed his doubt. “Do you really think it is?”
His shoulders slumped. “No.”
“Good. Get it ready.” He turned and strode from the room.
Caught between wanting to be involved in this interrogation and getting the material together, he opted for the one where the team relied upon him. He counted on them to question whomever it was for Rylee’s sake. That was how the team worked.
Dipping into the FBI server longer than he should, Devon couldn’t get out. It was a goldmine on Carver. Why hadn’t he checked it before? The man had accumulated a small fortune that sat in US banks, and they had leads on several overseas accounts of his.
He’d been doing this for a while, but only made it big time when Keith Westbrook went to jail. By Devon’s guess, he picked up the other criminal’s buyers and tactics. But, what struck him was the property list. While there were several, the one in Belize is where his gut told him she’d been brought.
Jesse burst in the door.
“Belize,” they said simultaneously.
“Nick, the caretaker, was our company. We just had a nice chat with him.” Jesse smirked. Devon doubted nice had been in the cards. “According to him, Rylee was to be treated with care on her trip.”
Plopping an elbow on the desktop, Devon dropped his chin in his hand. “Yeah, but what about when she gets there?”
“She waits for us. The two girls are t
here as well. Plus another two or three. Nick was vague on those details.”
“I’d like to have a word with Nick,” he bit out angrily.
“No.” Jesse’s cell phone rang. “Hamilton.” His eyes narrowed on Devon and Devon’s insides crawled. What the fuck now? “I see. I’ll take care of it.” He ended the call but blasted at Devon, “Get the fuck off the FBI server. Christ, you’re already screwing up.”
Jumping at the rebuke and that he had, in fact, not logged out of the FBI’s database, he assumed an apologetic expression and executed the required keystrokes to clear him. “Arthur?” he asked quietly.
“Yeah. And, don’t give me any shit about him. Jason has us going to church since his birth parents used to take him. He insists I forgive, so I have.” He waved a hand as if shooing a fly. “No, I didn’t forget, but I will grant forgiveness. Now, pack up and let’s get the hell out of here.” Spinning on his heel, he bellowed, “Well, boys, looks like we’re headed to Belize,” as he exited the room.
A FEMALE VOICE reached Rylee through the thick fog swirling in her mind. Chuck had drugged her once more before they’d landed in Belize.
“Chandra, can you hear me?”
There was that voice again, but it was clearer this time. Who was Chandra? Maybe she’d found where the girls were. Something niggled at the back of her mind. What was it? Oh, she’d used Chandra when she’d been on her last op. The girls would know that name. Had she found them? She fought to open her eyes or speak to ask the question, but her attempt failed.
A hand shook her. Wanting to reach up and swat it away, her mind focused but her body didn’t react to her demand for movement. Her world became fuzzy again. She knew she was drifting away, but couldn’t fight it much longer. Yet, she had to because she needed to get them out of there.
“Wake up!” The voice was more insistent.
The hovering darkness ratcheted up its effort to drag her under its spell. Hearing that name again, one more attempt at pulling herself from the depths, but the fight to remain alert left her and she slipped into blessed darkness.
