JT stared at Hirsch’s dead body and felt nothing—not for Hirsch. But the panic was building inside. “She was here, Sean. She was here.”
“We’ll find her, JT. Zimmerman took her on the boat, he hasn’t killed her yet.”
“Drake said he’d call, that he was setting a trap.”
“We have the advantage here,” Sean said calmly.
“What advantage?” JT snapped. “A psychopath who tortured and raped my sister has her on a boat God knows where! What if it was Lucy? What would you do?”
Sean’s jaw tightened. JT shouldn’t have said that. “I didn’t mean—”
“If it was Lucy I would find her. And we will find Bella, JT.”
“We’re so close, but she’s not here.” JT looked around the house, but didn’t see much of anything. An ambulance shrilled in the distance. Hirsch was dead—no remorse there. But Damien Drake. He knew something. What the hell had he been talking about?
“Lucy just sent me a message. They found Hope.”
“Is Bella with her?”
“No. Hope’s on her way to the hospital, drugged, lethargic, malnourished, but alive. No sign of Bella or Tommy Z. That doesn’t mean anything, JT, and you know it.”
“Did someone tip him off?”
“Who? This op was tightly sealed. And neither Hirsch nor Drake was expecting us.”
“I know.” JT took a deep breath. He had to regain his edge. His training. He stepped outside, needing a clear head. Sean followed.
“JT?”
“I’m okay.” And he was. Bella wasn’t here, but she wasn’t dead. Drake had made that clear—she would be part of a trap. A decoy, perhaps, to give Zimmerman time to slip away. “We’re close.”
Chandler walked over. “Okay, Coast Guard is up and out and has a photo of the boat. They are aware of the situation, they know Bella Caruso is an FBI asset and that Tommy Zimmerman is armed and dangerous.”
“Thank you. I’m sorry I lost it in there.”
“You didn’t,” Chandler said. “The suspect, Drake, saved your life.”
“I don’t know why.”
“Seemed pretty happy that your sister didn’t lie to him, for what it’s worth. Maybe he had a change of heart at the end. Wouldn’t be the first time a bad guy wanted redemption.”
JT wasn’t certain that was the situation, but he couldn’t focus on Damien Drake right now.
“Sean, do you have any way—any way—to track that boat?”
“Maybe. I need my plane and some equipment.”
“Do it. Whatever it takes.”
Sean got on his phone and JT heard him say Jack. Interesting that he called Jack instead of Kane.
But JT forgot about Sean when his cell phone rang. He reached into his breast pocket, but no one was calling him.
The phone kept ringing. In his pocket. Sean’s extra phone, and Bella was the only one who had that number.
“Bella,” he answered.
“Bella can’t come to the phone right now, but you will obey my instructions and do exactly what I say or I will torture your sister until she begs me to kill her.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Bella was tied to the railing of the boat as the sun continued to crawl up the sky.
Today could be the day she died.
But so far, it had been a glorious day. If she did die today, she would die knowing that something she’d done had made a difference. Somehow, someway, the FBI had swooped in and destroyed Martin Hirsch’s entire operation.
She didn’t know the details. But before dawn, Tommy had received a call from someone in Los Angeles. She’d overhead the conversation—at least Tommy’s part of it. Multiple brothels had been raided and there were dozens of arrests.
Tommy started calling people, trying to find out more information, but few people could or would talk to him. It seemed that the raids were in multiple cities, not just in Los Angeles, and they’d all happened at roughly the same time.
She didn’t know how they did it, but damn was she happy about it. She closed her eyes and tilted her face to the sun.
Maybe there really was a God out there, commanding an army of good people who battled evil. Maybe Laura and Adam were right. Faith could move mountains.
If only she’d found Hope. Maybe that failure was her punishment for every evil act she’d turned her back on over the last year. That she would die without knowing what happened to Hope.
Maybe she deserved it.
Tommy slapped her. She shook it off, looked up at him. His nostrils were flaring, his face red with anger.
“What did you do?” he said through clenched teeth. Before she could answer, he hit her, knocking her to the side. Her binds tightened and she grimaced, but she couldn’t help but be pleased that Tommy had lost his entire business. And maybe she hadn’t been directly responsible, but she’d gotten the ball in motion, hadn’t she? She owed Declan a huge thanks—if she got out of this alive. He’d called the cavalry, and the cavalry was winning.
She spat blood onto the deck, the coppery taste reminding her that she was still alive. And Tommy was angry. Because she’d won.
If she died today, she’d die a winner.
“Get that fucking smirk off your face.”
She braced herself for another blow, but his phone rang and he walked away from her. He listened for a moment, then said, “What? Anton is in prison? When? And no one told me? No one fucking told me? That idiot knows too much. Fuck!”
She opened her eyes when he stopped talking. He was staring out at the coastline. She pegged them being in Louisiana waters now, they’d moved east quite a ways before Tommy dropped anchor.
He looked down at his phone again, just staring. Then he pocketed it and pulled out Bella’s burner phone.
Her heart skipped a beat as he pressed redial and waited.
Then he said, “Bella can’t come to the phone right now, but you will obey my instructions and do exactly what I say or I will torture your sister until she begs me to kill her. Then I’ll send you the video so you can enjoy it as much as me.”
“He won’t come,” she said.
Tommy put a finger up, made it like a gun, and mock shot her. “We’re on a boat in the Gulf,” he told JT. “The Gulf is a big fucking place. Your dear little sister is tied up right now, and I don’t think she’ll get undone before the boat sinks to the bottom. One hour, give or take. I want one million in bitcoins deposited into my account immediately. And by immediately, I mean before the boat goes down. When I see the money there, I’ll tell you where she is. If I don’t, well, I’m not really sorry. You fucked with my business, and I’ll fuck with yours.”
He hung up.
“You’ll never tell him where I am,” Bella said.
“Of course I will. You both deserve to die.” He pulled out his gun and shot her in the calf. She screamed with the sudden, burning pain.
“What the hell!”
“In case you get free. There’s sharks in the gulf. Lots of them. You won’t get far in the water.” He leaned over her. “Just so you know? The boat isn’t rigged to slowly sink. It’s rigged to explode. As soon as your brother gets here.”
He slapped her again and left the boat for the small dingy strapped to its side.
They weren’t too far off the coast, she could just make out the shoreline, but he’d dropped anchor and they weren’t close enough for anyone to see her let alone for her to scream for help.
“JT, don’t do it,” she whispered. Prayed. She shifted, wincing at the throbbing pain in her leg.
Of course JT would come for her. He always did.
She didn’t want him to die.
She worked on getting out of her binds. Maybe, just maybe, she could find the bomb and disable it.
What are you thinking? You don’t know how to disable a bomb.
But maybe she could teach herself how to pull up anchor and get the boat closer to shore, then swim to safety.
One thing Tommy was right about was t
he sharks in the gulf. But the closer she got to shore, the better chance she had of swimming in before they smelled her blood.
She hoped. Because she was way out of her league right now.
First things first. She began working on the ropes that bound her.
* * *
“It’s done,” Sean said.
“How—don’t tell me.” JT didn’t want to know how many laws Sean broke to obtain a million in bitcoins and transfer them to Tommy Zimmerman.
“I just borrowed them. I’ll get them back,” Sean said. “Besides, the guy is an idiot—I’ve already traced his phone.”
“He called me from the phone you gave Bella—you said there was no GPS on that.”
“True. But before he called you, he was very active calling people. Kate Donovan has received multiple calls from local law that one phone number was calling phones that had been confiscated in the raid. My guess—someone called him about one of the raids, and he started calling around trying to figure out what was going on. He made those calls from a smart phone and, really, that’s just not smart.”
JT didn’t understand how Sean was so … humored … in the face of Bella’s captivity. He’d been smiling and cracking jokes as soon as JT got off the phone.
“Just knock it off, Sean. I’m not in the mood.”
“We’ll get her.”
“He’s going to kill her. He’s never going to tell me where she is. He’s never going to let her go. She’s probably already dead.”
“She’s not dead. You heard her on the other end of the phone.
“Please, don’t placate me.”
They were still at Hirsch’s house. Damien Drake had been transported to the hospital, but the prognosis was dire. Kane had called in with a report from Team Red: the trucking company raid had been a huge success. They’d found two hundred and thirty young women between the ages of sixteen and twenty from Chiapas and Campeche who had been promised jobs in the U.S. None of them spoke English, and all of them were scared. They’d been transported across the gulf in the middle of the night, arriving at three a.m. and locked into trucks.
Everyone had their hands full processing the dozens of arrests and hundreds of victims. And yet Bella was still out there, in danger.
“I’m not. Bella is off the coast of Louisiana, and I’m tracking Zimmerman’s phone. He’s moving from the boat Bella is on toward the coast.”
“How the hell do you know where Bella is?”
“I hacked into a satellite. Don’t be mad, I know I promised I wouldn’t, but at least it’s not a government satellite.”
Sometimes JT didn’t know whether to kiss Sean or hit him. “I don’t want to know how.”
“Good, because it would take too long to explain. We need to go—Kane and Jack are already on their way to Holly Beach.”
“Where?”
“It’s on the coast and highway 82, near the most direct way for him to get from the Gulf to shore.”
“I’ll drive.”
“We’re not going there. Kane and Jack are going to intercept Zimmerman. They’re bringing a couple SWAT guys with them. You, Lucy, and I are going to get Bella off the boat. I did tell you I was getting my helicopter license, right?”
“But you don’t have it.”
“Semantics. I’ve put in the hours, I just haven’t taken the test.” He glanced at his watch. “But we really need to go now. Lucy is on her way to the helipad.”
“You don’t need to bring her into this, Sean—it’s dangerous. I’m a SEAL, I can get Bella.”
“Yeah, but Lucy is trained in underwater search and rescue, and one thing Jack has been beating into my head is to always have backup.”
* * *
“I don’t see him,” Kane said as he peered through his binoculars. “Are we too late?”
Jack looked down at the phone app that Sean had installed. It showed a dot approaching the coast. “Look … five degrees east.”
Kane adjusted. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“Don’t tell him he nailed it, your brother’s ego is already big enough. A helicopter? Really?” Jack shook his head.
“We still have to get him. Do they have Bella yet?”
“Negative.” Kane spoke through his com to the two officers who were assisting them. “Plan B.”
“Roger.”
If Sean and JT had already grabbed Bella when Zimmerman reached shore, they would have arrested him as he docked. As it was, they needed to confirm that she was on the boat—Sean had tapped into a real-time satellite feed, though there was a one-minute delay to view the data. So far, the boat was where it was supposed to be.
They wanted to grab Zimmerman quietly without giving him the opportunity to do anything foolish, like blow the boat or take a hostage. Though it was early Sunday morning, there were joggers running along the beach, children building castles in the damp, rocky sand, young lovers walking hand in hand in the cool morning breeze.
Kane adjusted the binoculars. “Zimmerman is getting in a black Chevy four-by-four.”
“We have him in sight,” SWAT said.
“Don’t lose him. We’ll meet up with you.”
Kane and Jack left their hiding place and jogged over to the parking lot where they slipped into the back of the unmarked SUV. Zimmerman was just sitting in his truck. What was he doing?
“I don’t have a good feeling about this,” Jack said.
“Word from Sean?”
“Negative. But he’s flying a helicopter solo for the first time in his friggin’ life and a two-hundred-pound Navy SEAL is rappelling down a rope over a sinking boat and the Coast Guard is still ten minutes out. I’m going to cut him some slack.”
“Why?” Kane said with a smile. “Let’s take this bastard down, because I don’t have a good feeling about this, either.
* * *
Bella had broken free of the ropes. It had taken her a ridiculous amount of time, and her wrists and fingers were raw. Her leg throbbed, but she’d taken off her shirt and tied it around her calf to stop the blood. A helicopter was flying toward her. She had to hope and pray that it was a rescue helicopter—but what if they got too close? What if she couldn’t get off before the boat exploded? Was it timed or did Tommy have a detonator?
Too many what-ifs. She couldn’t count on anyone but herself.
She might have to jump in the water and take her chance against the sharks. At this point, they seemed less likely a threat than the freaking bomb on the boat. At least she had a chance to make it to shore before they smelled blood.
She hoped.
She’d already tried to turn on the boat, but it was dead in the water. She had many talents; mechanics was not one of them. She didn’t know how to hotwire or fix anything.
She searched the boat for anything she could use as a weapon, in case Tommy came back. Or a flare to signal for help. Nothing. No first aid kit, no flare gun, no phone, no working radio.
Well, shit.
But the helicopter could signal a lifeguard or something. She pulled herself up and balanced on her good leg and waved her arms.
The helicopter was descending. Were they in trouble? God, she hoped not.
A man climbed out of the chopper and balanced on the edge. What the hell was he doing? Rappelling down? The helicopter came closer to her—the man was only fifty feet away. Getting closer. And closer.
JT.
“Jimmy!” she screamed. She almost laughed. He hated to be called Jimmy. He’d been named James Terrence Caruso Jr. and he hated being named for their bastard of a father.
But Jimmy … that’s how she knew him when she was a little girl. Her Jimmy. Her brother.
Her savior.
He dropped to the deck of the boat and Bella hugged him.
“Isabella.”
She winced. “You know how much I hate that name.”
He smiled. “Don’t call me Jimmy.”
Then he hugged her tightly, again, and wrapped a harness around her waist. “This is
a makeshift rescue harness, we didn’t have a lot of time to prepare. But it doesn’t look like the boat is sinking.”
“It will. There’s a bomb.”
JT’s good humor faded. “Did you hear that, Rogan?”
“Kane’s up there?”
“Sean. He’s new at this. He heard, he wants to go now. Hold on.”
She wrapped her arms around JT, and he had one arm around her waist and the other on a handle that was attached to the pulley. Suddenly her feet were off the boat and they were being pulled toward the helicopter slowly. Very slowly.
The helicopter swooped past the boat and headed toward shore.
Not a minute later, an explosion pushed hot air toward them, making them rock in the wake of the blast.
But they didn’t fall, the helicopter didn’t crash, and Bella smiled.
She was alive.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
JT had his head in his hands, taking ten by himself. He’d almost lost his sister.
His sister and everyone else he cared about.
No one had hesitated to help when he called on them. He expected it from Kane—Kane had been there with him from the time his father first went to prison, when they were kids. Kane had never questioned him, never said no when JT wanted to act. And this time, when JT’s judgment was clouded by the threat to Bella, Kane had stood by him with sound advice and definitive action.
Kane was a rock, and JT realized so was everyone else. Jack, Sean, Lucy, Rick—no one backed down. They risked their lives and their careers to find Bella, and JT would never forget it.
His phone rang, and he almost ignored it. But he glanced at the number. Rick Stockton. He’d hoped he’d get a day before he had to deal with the fallout from this last week. Because even though they’d done a whole lotta good, they still had some things to answer for. Bella had things to answer for.
“Hey.”
“How are you?” Rick asked.
“Alive. Good.”
“Bella?”
“With the doctors. Zimmerman shot her in the leg. Not fatal, but they needed to go in and remove bullet fragments. She’s recovering now, then I can go see her.”
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