“Oh my God, Ian. And you think Paolo is behind it?” I asked, matching his hushed tone.
“Remember, Paolo’s just an errand boy. I want his boss,” Ian answered.
“Okay. I’ll grab the journal, and you open your database of bad guys. This is it, Ian. Gil found Paolo’s boss. All we have to do is connect the dots.” I started back up the stairs, but Ian grabbed my arm to stop me.
“You can’t tell anyone about this,” he warned.
“Why not? This is big and we need the whole team involved,” I argued, confused.
“I’ve been tracking this on my own.”
“Okay,” I said, unsure of what that meant.
“I’ve been tracking it on my own because I’ve been forbidden to deal with cases involving children.”
“Why on earth would you be forbidden to do something like that?” It was a strange rule for someone who was charged with keeping the world safe.
“It’s a long story, and I promise to tell you. I just need you to trust me.” He took my hand in his and brought it to his chest. “Can you do that?”
I looked into Ian’s eyes and saw pain. Pain that made him so willing to fight for those who couldn’t fight for themselves. How could I not trust a man who’s willing to risk his career for such a noble cause?
“Of course,” I answered.
I looked at the door and saw shadows moving across the crack in the bottom. Someone was definitely standing on the other side, listening. I had an idea of who it might be.
I gestured with my head. “Feet,” I whispered to Ian.
Ian nodded, then unlocked the door with his cell phone and let us in.
I charged through, ready to put on an act. “Geez, Ian! I just wanted some fresh air!” I said.
There he was. Carter. Standing just to the side. He gave me the evil eye, which I happily returned.
“You don’t leave this place without my permission,” Ian countered, walking in behind me. “Do you understand me? Someone is trying to kill us, so I’d prefer not to risk my neck running after your impetuous ass because you need some air!”
“Fine!” I returned. “Then let’s just get through the rest of the journal. Hopefully we’ll be closer to finding Gil and then I’ll be out of your hair!”
I stormed into the back bedroom and waited behind the open door, listening for any comments from the others.
“Don’t be so hard on her, Ian,” said Adam. “She may be a badass and pick it up quick, but she’s not a real agent.”
“He’s right,” I heard Claudia say. “She’s overwhelmed. Give her some room to breathe.”
I smiled. I was right about being able to trust Adam and Claudia.
“Cut her loose,” Carter said harshly. “She’s unpredictable and she’s going to get someone killed.”
That guy, I didn’t trust.
“Are you hiding?” Damon appeared from the bathroom.
I was so startled I jumped. “No! Not hiding. Just waiting for Ian,” I told him.
“Ah, I see. You two, you should play nice. Ian, he’s a nice guy,” Damon said sweetly.
“Right.” I said with a nod.
Ian came through the door. “I need the room,” he said to Damon. He still had his pissed-off face on.
Damon winked at me and I gave him a small smile as he left. I liked Damon. He seemed to always know how to put me at ease.
“Well done with the theatrics. You get an A-plus on your acting skills.”
“Who said I was acting?” I smirked.
In a flash, Ian had pulled the journal from his backpack and flipped to the last few pages. He read it over twice before handing it back to me. I scanned the words again, seeing a part of the story I hadn’t noticed the first time I read it. According to the girl’s parents, a family friend had offered to let her stay with him, but she declined, saying that she didn’t trust him. I wonder who that could be?
“Okay. Now tell me what you know about their relationship before Maria was supposedly deported,” Ian instructed.
“Okay.” I didn’t know where to start so I went back as far as I could remember. “Gil and Maria met in school, at University of Miami. Gil was a senior and Maria was a junior. They struck up a conversation in the library one day, and after that they were always together.”
“How well did you know her?”
“I knew her okay, I guess. He brought her around some, but I wasn’t very social back then. I was still pretty reclusive after my parents’ deaths. Anyway, what I knew of her was good. She cooked for us sometimes.”
“Did anything strange or unusual happen while they were dating, before she was supposedly deported?”
“If there was, Gil never told me. Everything always seemed pretty normal,” I told him.
“How long after she supposedly left the country did you find out she was dead?” Ian asked, getting straight to the point.
“I guess it was about three or four months after she left when we saw the report about the brothel being busted in the worst part of Miami. The reporter said that an unidentified girl had been found dead in the building and then they flashed an artist’s drawing of her on the screen asking if anyone recognized her. We knew immediately that it was Maria. Gil went down to the morgue hoping to see her family; he figured if she was still in Miami, her parents might be, too. But no one came. He had to identify the body. The worst part was that the medical examiner said she had been dead for almost two days before they found her. They just left her in some room while they went on with their business.” I fought back tears as I remembered the night I held my brother while he mourned Maria. He was broken inside. Another person he loved had died, and all I could do was be there for him and let him cry.
“I’m sorry, Victoria. I know this is difficult for you to talk about,” Ian said softly.
“Thanks.” I took a breath and shoved down the lump that was forming in my throat. “After that, he threw himself into school. That’s when he started his journals. He’s just as intense about his research now as he was when he started. Maybe even more. He was convinced that Maria had been forced into working at that place. He believed her parents had been deported but that she was kept behind. Nothing could persuade him that she had been leading a double life.”
“And what about this person who supposedly offered her a place to stay?” Ian asked.
“That’s news to me—so it must be specific to whatever’s going on here. There’d be no way for Gil to have known if that happened to Maria.”
“Then it sounds like he’s trying to tell us that someone we know is untrustworthy.” Ian furrowed his brow as he thought. “Of course! It’s Bianca!”
“It’s a shame we didn’t realize that before we were ambushed—twice,” I said.
Ian closed his eyes as he processed everything. I could tell he was debating with himself about whether he was going to let me in on his inner monologue or not. Finally, he turned back to face me.
“What is it?” I pried.
“How was Maria murdered?” he asked slowly.
I would never forget the night Gil came home from identifying her body. It was so late when he got back that the sun was close to rising. I stayed on the couch all night waiting for him to walk through the door. He came in like a zombie, feet shuffling, dark rings under his eyes. I made us a whole pot of coffee, the good stuff we saved for Sunday mornings. We sat silently sipping at the kitchen table until Gil was ready to speak. That’s when he told me that Maria’s family never showed up and exactly how she died.
“Oh my God, Ian,” I began. My heart was pounding inside my chest and it became harder to breathe. “He said she had been shot. Two in the back of her head.”
“It’s okay, Victoria. It’s going to be okay.” Ian sat next to me on the bed and rubbed my back while I put my head between my knees and tried not to hyper
ventilate.
“I can’t believe this is what Gil got himself into.” I sat up and took a deep breath, tears streaming down my face.
“It’s obvious he went looking for the trafficking ring that killed Maria. And I think he found it but didn’t know what to do once he did. I think they wanted him to forge documents to get these kids out of the country.”
“No,” I said, not wanting to believe it. “As heartbroken as he was about Maria, I can’t believe he’d leave me on a quest for vengeance.”
Ian shrugged. “Vengeance is powerful. And dangerous. Maybe Gil believed he could do just enough, forge the documents just well enough that no one here would know the difference. But once the kid got to the other country, immigration would spot the forgery and step in.”
“Did you have any idea about this before now?” I wiped my tears and dried my palms on my pants.
“No. I thought he was an overzealous law student doing something really stupid in the name of education. Had I known he was specifically going after traffickers, I would have knocked him unconscious and sent him home.” Ian stood with an angry force. “I should have never told him about Paolo.”
“I thought you said Gil was the one who overheard the Cappolas mention him?”
Ian was pacing across the room. I could tell by the anguished look on his face that he was giving himself an internal beatdown.
“He did. But I had been trying to find something, anything that would serve as a solid lead to Paolo. The sooner I got to him, the sooner I would be able to take down his boss. When Gil told me what he had heard, I stressed how important it was to find everything he could about the Cappola connection to Paolo. All I told him to do was keep his ears open. Had I known his true intentions, I would have pulled him out.” Ian turned and dropped to his knees in front of me. “I swear, Victoria, I would have pulled him out and sent him home.”
“It’s not your fault, Ian. He lied to both of us.”
My heart broke. Gil had not only lied to me, but he left me. He left me and walked right into a situation where he could be killed at any moment and I would be alone forever. Maybe he was already dead.
I didn’t want to think about it. I wanted to believe that if avenging Maria had been Gil’s objective all along, then he had prepared himself. That he had learned the lay of the land and knew exactly how to stay alive with these kinds of people. But Ian was right. There was a good chance that Gil’s true character and integrity would keep him from putting children at risk. Normally, that wouldn’t be a bad thing, but in this case, it may have already gotten Gil two in the back of his head.
Chapter 15
“I have to go out,” Ian said as he moved around the room gathering essentials: gun, cell phone, and an envelope he filled with money that he pulled out from under a loose floorboard.
I watched him, overwhelmingly aware that I was now officially in way too deep. Part of me wished I had taken Ian up on one of his offers—instructions—to go home. The other part of me felt like I was so close to finding Gil that I could almost taste it. There was still the smallest chance that Gil had learned how to navigate the deadly crowd in which he had embedded himself. He had risen through the ranks quickly thanks to his skills, his useful skills.
“Where are you going?” I asked Ian.
“I’m going to see what I can find out from some locals. I won’t be long.”
“I thought Damon had already put some feelers out?”
“Not for what I’m looking for.” Ian took my hand in his. “Just sit tight, okay? Please don’t go anywhere.”
“I won’t, but what am I supposed to do?” I motioned to my puffy, tired eyes. “I mean, if I can’t tell the others what’s really going on.”
“We’ve just been through the journal again. You’re upset and overwhelmed. You miss Gil and are afraid for what may have happened to him. The best excuses are the most obvious.”
“At least I won’t be lying,” I sighed, and collected my thoughts. “Be safe, okay?”
He snickered at my implication. “I’ll be fine.” The idea of Ian not being able to protect himself may have sounded absurd to him, but the image of him hanging by his wrists in the old factory would haunt me forever. “Damon has contacted Command. We haven’t heard anything back from them yet, but if there’s bad intel out there and they sent Bianca after us, I doubt we’ll hear anything soon.”
“Is that what you think is happening?”
“No. I think Bianca is a tainted agent, and she and her associates are trying to stop us before we can stop them,” Ian said. Ian put his hand on my neck and ran his thumb across my cheek. “I shouldn’t be long.”
He passed through the living room in a blur with a short declaration that he would be back soon. No one questioned him, not even Carter.
The door shut loudly behind him as I walked out of the bedroom. All eyes were on me. Claudia and Adam watched me with compassion while Eva raised a suspicious eyebrow. I knew what she was insinuating, but I wasn’t going to gratify her presumptions with any kind of defense. Damon was engrossed in his papers and something on his computer. Carter? Well, at least he was consistent: It was the stink eye all the time.
I just shook my head and walked into the kitchen for something cold to drink. The small refrigerator had two shelves, one stocked with bottled water and the other with beer, white wine, and containers of food. I grabbed a water and guzzled almost half of it.
I leaned against the counter and thought about the dots Ian and I had just connected. I didn’t know if I wanted to beat the crap out of Gil or give him a medal. I’d probably know when I saw him—if I saw him. I decided that the best thing to do was focus on Gil being alive and ready for my wrath. Maybe I could get Adam to help me sweeten my self-defense moves for a more thorough ass-kicking.
“What’s the word, newbie?”
I ignored Carter as he opened the refrigerator, grabbed a bottle of water, and then immediately pulled out two beers. “Have a drink, newbie. You’ll feel better.”
“Stop calling me newbie,” I said.
He chuckled. “Everyone needs a nickname.”
“In that case, which do you prefer? Jackass or douche bag?” I twisted the cap back on my water and walked out of the kitchen.
“Leave her alone, Carter,” Adam said. “Don’t pay any attention to him, Vic.”
“Yeah. He’s always got a stick up his ass about something,” Claudia added.
“I do not have a stick up my ass.” Carter said with a laugh. “Okay, okay. I’m sorry, newbie, I mean, Victoria. Tell you what. Since we don’t know how long boss man is going to be gone, let’s play a game to pass the time.”
“What kind of game?” I asked suspiciously. I didn’t believe for one second that Carter was actually trying to smooth things over with me.
“It’s not really a game,” Claudia interjected. “It’s something we do when new people join the team, so not very often.”
“Have you ever played ‘Never Have I Ever’?” Carter asked.
I rolled my eyes. “Seriously? A drinking game?”
“It’s a twist on that,” Adam began. “We all have a story, a reason why we’ve ended up on a Rogue team. We play ‘Never Have I Ever’ as a way of telling our story. Sometimes we find that we have more in common than we think.”
“Here’s how our version works,” Eva said. “I might say, ‘Never have I ever run away from home when I was sixteen.’ In the original version, the person whose turn it is says something they’ve never done. Those who have done it take a drink. In our version, you tell something you have done, then you and everyone who has also done it takes a drink.”
She crossed in front of Carter and took the second beer out of his hand.
“You do know that you’re all grown-ups, right?” I said. “I mean, I didn’t wander into a frat house, right?”
Adam
laughed. “Unlike at a frat party, the point isn’t to get wasted. The point is to share things about ourselves,” he said.
He, among everyone here, seemed the most out of place. With his fair skin and hair that looked reddish in the right light, to look at him, you’d think he was a dad from the suburbs, mowing his lawn and taking his kids to Little League practice on weekends. Instead, he was deceptively strong and had an inhuman ability to hit any target you put in front of him, regardless of the distance. Were he not a Rogue agent, it would be difficult to convince me Adam had done anything nefarious.
“There is only one rule,” Damon said. “Once we talk about it here, we do not tell another’s story without permission.”
In answer, I went into the kitchen and grabbed a beer. I popped the cap, took a fast swig, and gave the performance of a lifetime. No doubt about it, beer was nasty.
I cocked my head and locked eyes with Carter. “Game on.”
“Now this is a Victoria I could get on board with,” Carter said with a leer.
“You’re not getting on board anything of mine,” I retaliated.
Carter laughed and took a seat.
“You don’t have to do this, Vic,” Claudia whispered to me. I loved how she seemed to instinctively look out for me.
“I’m not going to let him push me around,” I told her.
“All right then.” She gave me a tight-lipped smile. “I’ll go first,” she said to the group. Claudia took a deep breath and continued. “Never have I ever moved to Hollywood and tried to be an actress.”
She took a swig of her beer. I took a minute to translate in my mind that, in this group’s version of the game, never actually meant that Claudia had moved to Hollywood and tried to be an actress.
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