“Not much. What I did find was enough for now. It’ll get the custody suit dropped on her end. Ever heard of a Sloan Lerng? That’s the name that keeps popping up every time you trace Anna’s calls on the days she has Janie. He’s got no history, and I mean none. He doesn’t exist. Which means it’s an alias.” Jack recapped to the group.
Well that much was obvious. I could’ve told you that before I even looked it up. Although, my guess was that it was a burner phone, not that it was actually registered to someone. Which begged me to wonder....why?
Let’s say that he did, indeed, use a burner. That would mean that the burner wouldn’t be registered to anyone in specific. That would mean, if Janie had told the truth, which she did, that it would be the word of a child’s against an adult’s word. And that adult, Anna, could pretty much say she didn’t know what on earth Janie was talking about.
However, by having the phone actually registered to someone meant that he wanted to be found. Which, even if we found out who it was an alias for, didn’t mean we could pin it on that individual.
Whoever it was thought he was smart. Too smart to be caught. What he didn’t know was that he’d already made a mistake. He’d messed with the wrong little girl. That little girl not only had a very protective father with an extensive military background, but also the love of five other men, who also had extensive military backgrounds. Not to mention the love of every single member of the SWAT team, who also had extensive military backgrounds.
Whoever this person was, had already signed his own death warrant. He was already standing with one foot in the grave. He just didn’t know it yet.
I watched Jack’s fingers as they typed away at the computer, never looking back at us while he spoke of what he’d found. I watched for the reaction I knew was coming as soon as the words fell from my mouth. I knew he wouldn’t want to do it, and hell, under any other circumstance, I would’ve never even thought to ask this of him. I knew how much they’d suffered, yet I couldn’t not do it. This was my baby. My Janie, and I would use ever resource I had at my exposal.
“Jack,” I started. “Can you ask Winter to help?”
Jack’s body froze, and the door behind me opened. I didn’t turn. I watched Jack as the muscles in his shoulders, forearms, and back flexed and then relaxed, as if he was fighting an inner demon.
“Oh, Jamie.” Winter’s voice said from behind me. “The man loves you. Of course, he would ask his beautiful, intelligent wife to help. He loves Janie, as do we all.”
Winter’s tone was light and breezy, but I could tell that she’d meant every word by the sincerity that was very much evident in her voice.
Turning, I found Winter standing just inside the office door, Cat cocooned in a soft-looking blanket in the crook of her arm. She smiled warmly as she walked up to me, went up to her tippy toes, and kissed my chin.
“Now, you take Cat,” she said gently placing the sleeping little girl into my arms. “While Jack shows me what he’s got.”
I looked down at the bundle in my arms and smiled. A little pang of sadness went through me as I stared at her sleeping face. Hair jet-black like her father, with the same porcelain skin as her mother, she looked like a sleeping doll. I’d never even contemplated having another child. Until recently.
I loved Janie with everything I had. When a man had a child, there was nothing to explain it. The entire focus of your life shifts. You live your life, but you live it for a different reason.
Where before, you worked a job so you could have nice things, after a child, you work a job so your child can have nice shoes. Or toys. Or My Little fucking Ponies.
The entire earth shifted the first time I laid eyes on my girl. No longer was I confident in the world around me. Which helped make the decision for me to pursue a career as an Army Ranger. To protect my child the best way I knew how. By making sure the country she lived in was safe and protected.
The only bad thing about that decision was not being able to see her. To smell her. To hear her whisper in my ear about pink spiders crawling over me as she tickled me with her little hand, and the invisible bug I needed to kill before she could go to sleep.
I was here now, though. Janie had me now. And what had caused me to be absent with Janie wouldn’t be an issue with any future children.
Anna and Shiloh couldn’t have been any more different from each other.
Where Shiloh was warm and caring, Anna was hard and indifferent. Where Anna didn’t have direction, Shiloh had become a social worker in three years instead of the usual four. Becoming a licensed professional at the young age of twenty-one.
Shiloh would be an exceptional mother. Hell, for all intents and purposes, she already was. To Janie.
“Deep thoughts?” Sam’s voice pulled me out of my Hallmark Moment.
My eyes raised to his. “Yeah, just thinking about having another kid.”
“You can borrow the girls. They’ll clear that up right quick.” Sam quipped.
I laughed, as he’d intended.
“Anagram.” Jack mumbled.
Sam and I turned to him to see Winter hunched over her keyboard, typing faster than a cyclone. Her curly red hair was in a curly mass falling over her shoulders, and obstructing her face from view. Jack was leaning over the back of her chair, watching over her shoulder as she typed.
“Goddammit. Why didn’t I think to do that?” Jack asked standing and running his rough hands through his hair, making it stick up on end.
“Because you’re hot shit wife is just that good.” Winter teased as she kept typing.
The phone in my pocket rang, so I walked towards Jack and handed the baby off. He took her gratefully, pulling the baby close to his chest before turning back to watch the computer monitor. Shoving my hand into my pocket, I finally got it loose just as the phone stopped ringing. It started ringing immediately after, making my heart start beating triple time when I saw it was Shiloh.
“Hello?” I answered urgently.
“Uhhh,” Shiloh hesitated. “You’ve gotten two calls from the dish company. Normally I wouldn’t pry, but they left a message. Twice. Anyway, they say you’ve been ordering, ugh, a lot of porn in the last hour, and they want to make sure the charges aren’t happening by accident. I’ve been here all morning, and Janie’s playing with Kayla outside on the trampoline. No one’s in the house to order porn.”
When you think of things people are calling to tell you, not even once had the thought of someone illegally ordering porn through my account registered. Hell, it hadn’t even been on the fucking radar.
“Uhhh,” I said, perplexed. “I haven’t been ordering porn either.”
Winter’s head snapped in my direction, and she stood quickly, walking over to me with her hand extended.
“Hey June Bug, Winter wants to talk to you. Hold on a minute, okay?” I asked.
When she affirmed, I handed the phone over to Winter, who’d immediately hit speaker phone and sat back down. “Alright, chicka. Tell me the details.”
Shiloh went over what she’d heard on the messages, and then waited while Winter went to work.
In the meantime, I pulled up my mobile banking and, sure enough, I’d had over nineteen charges for pay-per-view charged to my account. What the heck?
After a few minutes of speed clicking and typing, Winter hooted, jumped to her feet, and fist pumped her arm in the air. “Score one for Team Stoker!”
“Jesus, you’re mother’s a fucking nut. Poor girl. You’re going to have the nutty gene, too.” Jack murmured to his now awake daughter.
“Hey!” She said indignantly.
“What’d you find?” Sam asked to try to stem the fight he could see brewing.
“Well, this crazy girl finally figured it out.” She said sticking out her tongue towards Jack.
He chuckled. “Figured what out?”
The sound of a commotion coming from the phone stopped Winter before she could explain, and my bl
ood ran cold at the voice that I heard above the sound of breaking glass and furniture.
“Give me my fucking kid!” Anna screeched.
“Go fuck yourself.” Shiloh hissed.
Go to the safe room, Janie. Go to the goddamn safe room.
I hadn’t realized I’d been yelling it aloud until Shiloh repeated my plea, screaming it to the girls in the background. The girls’ cries faded, until I could hear nothing else, but the struggles of Shiloh, and the screams of Anna.
“Call Sebastian. Find out who he has on Shiloh, and get him fucking in there.” I shouted as I made my way out the door.
Sam was already on his feet, as was Jack, and they were following close on my heels. Winter stayed with my phone, and was on her phone with someone, too. I just hoped it wasn’t the police. I had shit to say to Anna, and that wasn’t conducive with her being in police custody.
As soon as I made it to the parking lot and on my bike, I started it, throttled it up so loud that my ears popped, and plunged out of the parking lot and onto the street.
By the time I was on Stone Road, I was doing over one hundred and thirty miles an hour and taking corners as if I was on rails. I didn’t have any doubt in my mind that Shiloh could handle herself. She showed me that the other day when I taught her self-defense. Or at least that’s what I thought I was doing. In reality, she was just worried about hurting me, and after making a bet, she’d upheld her end and proved me the fool.
So no, I wasn’t worried about Anna. Shiloh could handle Anna. I just hoped that Anna was alone.
The drive that normally took ten minutes took less than five, and I rolled up to the stop sign that connected my street to the main road, pulled over into the bushes, and hopped off. I ran through the neighbor’s yards, hopping fences as I went.
When I got to the fence that separated my yard from Mrs. Kowalsky’s yard, I paused and listened, straining my ears to hear everything I could. When I could hear nothing, I went to the back of the yard, and slipped in between the two loose boards that I used to use to sneak out when I was a teenager.
Although stiff, and definitely much cozier than it used to be, I managed it, and stepped into my own yard. Once through, I withdrew the Colt .45 from my ankle, and palmed it. The heavy weight was comforting in my hand, settling my nerves as I got down to my hands, and then to my knees in the grass. The large trampoline with the safety net hid me from view. I used it as cover as I made my way underneath of it to survey the scene before me.
And a scene, it was.
***
“Why don’t you tell us what’s going on, Ms. Stevens.” Max warned. “I’m not in to hurting women, but I’ll make an exception in this case.”
Max’s stone cold voice sent shivers down my own spine. I could only imagine what it was doing to a positively terrified Anna. Not that I gave a shit. The woman could rot in hell for all I cared. I just wanted to get some information out of her first. Which was why I’d called Max as soon as I’d made sure that there wasn’t any other people involved in the earlier altercation.
She shook her head, thinning her lips tightly, and clamping her teeth over them to keep them sealed. The look of apprehension on her face intensified when Max went down on one knee in front of her. Looking over his shoulder, he addressed me. “Close the door on your way out.”
Anna’s sharp inhalation followed me out of the room.
Twenty minutes later, Max stepped out of garage, and walked up to the gathering with purposeful steps. He didn’t waste any time with pleasantries, either.
“Sloan Lerng is an anagram for Glen Larson. Originally, Anna just wanted money. She got in a bind and needed some leverage to get it. That’s why she tried to get custody. Then another opportunity, in the form of Larson, came along and she needed custody for a different reason.” Max explained what he’d learned.
A commotion from the front door had Max, Sebastian, Sam and I turning to see Jack barrel through the door, car seat in hand, and Winter trailing behind him. Before I hadn’t been alarmed on who was entering the house. Gabe was in front watching, just in case, and he wouldn’t let anyone through without one hell of a battle. However, with one look at Jack’s face, and I my stomach sank.
He’d gone back to Free once he’d been sure that the scene was secure. Winter had been on the phone with Gabe when we’d left, not the police. Which I’d figured out when he showed not even ten minutes after we’d arrived, telling me that Winter had called him. Now, they were back and they didn’t look settled at all.
My stomach sank as I saw the haunted look in Jack’s eyes, and I braced myself, because I knew I wasn’t about to get good news.
“They want your daughter. They want to sell her. They’ve already got upwards to a million dollars on her head. The pictures that Anna’s been sending them have been posted to some...”Jack shook his head, searching for words. “auction site, I guess. They bid on pictures. Most of the site has the kids shown in some sort of cage. Janie’s pictures are the only ones that are ‘free,’ for lack of a better word.”
My eyes closed somewhere in between his explanation, but when I opened them again, a fury that I’ve never felt before, never knew could exist, flooded through my veins. It seeped into my blood like a raging wildfire, and there was nothing that was going to stop it from getting revenge.
“Show me,” I demanded.
“I can’t. I crashed the site. I have some screen shots though. Here.” She said, offering me her phone with her pictures already opened.
I scrolled through them, one by one, something in me breaking to see all these pictures of my little girl, my baby, on a website that sold children to the highest bidder. Goddammit. Her sweet smiling face was, the one that was so fucking beautiful that it made my heart ache, was in a category that signaled her as ‘Virgin, Caucasian, female, six years old, and blonde.’
“How,” I swallowed thickly. Bile was creeping up my throat, and it wouldn’t stay down long. “How did they find her? How’d she get on her radar?”
“I can answer that.” Max said as he strolled back into the garage and slammed the door so hard it shuttered.
He came back not even thirty seconds later with a smile on his face.
“I won’t be needed. Your woman is taking care of that for me.” He smiled wide.
Something that felt like relief shuttled through me. I didn’t condone violence to women, but I knew that if they’d given me the chance, I would’ve killed Anna with my own bare hands. To know that Shiloh was doing it so I didn’t have to made me burn with love for her.
I looked over Sam’s shoulder as he opened the door, and a small smile graced my face as I saw Anna, still strapped to the chair, getting her face slapped repeatedly by Shiloh’s hand. I loved that woman, not only because she was everything to me, but that she treated my child like she was everything to her.
“Tell me. Now.” She emphasized the word ‘now’ with another slap to the face.
Anna reared back as if she was about to spit, but Shiloh stepped back and to the side, completely avoiding her attempt. “Now, now. That wasn’t very nice. Let’s see if we can come to an agreement.”
***
Shiloh
“Tell me what I want to know!” I yelled, slamming my fist into her face with the entire weight of my body.
The rocking chair rocked back, and then swung back into place where she’d been earlier.
***
An hour earlier
I’d been standing in the backyard earlier, watching Kayla and Janie play on the trampoline talking to James and Winter when I’d heard the sound of glass breaking. Going into the direction of the front door, I came to a standstill when I saw Anna’s face, and her arm trying to get through the broken pane on the door to unlock it.
I was glad I had the alarm off, because otherwise, the police would’ve been here, and I didn’t want them here. Not yet. That woman had some explaining to do, and I could seriously use her prese
nce to my advantage.
Grabbing ahold of her hand as she searched for the lock, I pulled her forward until her face rested against the door panel, and her arm was stretched down, so the sensitive part on the inside of her upper arm was forced into the jagged glass.
When she started to struggle, I causally started a conversation with her, as if she wasn’t hanging there by her fucking arm. “Did you know that you have a major artery that runs along the inside of your arm, right about where your arm is forced in through the glass right now?”
The struggling stopped, but the yelling started, which brought the attention of the girls, who immediately started screaming too. Well, shit.
“I want my freaking kid!” Anna shrieked.
I laughed sardonically. “Yeah, right. I’ll get right on that.”
“Go to the safe room. Go to the safe room.” James was yelling from my discarded iPhone.
Janie’s eyes snapped to my phone that was on the coffee table next to the couch, and then grabbed Kayla’s hand and shuffled her towards the hallway, and then back into her bedroom. I was grateful that James had said to go to the safe room. It hadn’t crossed my mind, although it should’ve.
He’d shown it to me the first day I’d stayed in his house. He’d told me that four years ago, Cheyenne and Janie had needed to hide, and she’d had to resort to the closet since there was nowhere else for her to go, and when he’d gotten home, he’d made a safe room in case the need to use it ever arose again.
“You’re such a fucking bitch. You ruined everything. Do you know how hard it was to get to where I was at, only for your haughty self to show up and ‘supervise?’ You better believe that that girl is leaving with me today. I’ve got my life riding on this.” She hissed, still not struggling.
The throaty roar of a motorcycle ran down from the main highway, and I knew that James was nearly there, although I became concerned when it didn’t stop in front of the house, but quite a bit further away.
“I’ve been waiting for half the damn night for you to be alone. You’re nothing, do you hear me? Nothing!” She shrieked.
Texas Tornado (Freebirds Book 5) Page 23
