by Kaylea Cross
“Put me down,” she whispered to Gabe, pushing harder on his chest. As good as it felt to have him hold her, she didn’t want him to see her as weak. And God, he and the others must all hate her guts for what her father had done to Brock.
He set her on her feet gently. “Sit down, then,” he ordered softly. Someone must have brought him a water bottle because he unscrewed the cap and handed it to her.
She took it, rinsed her mouth out several times, spitting into the bushes that lined the concrete sidewalk that led to the main building’s entrance. How had she been fathered by a man who could do such a thing to another human being? How had she lived for so many years without ever seeing the true monster inside the man?
“Here,” Gabe said, holding out a silver wrapper. A stick of gum.
She unwrapped it and stuck it in her mouth, her stomach quivering. Victoria knelt down next to her, set a comforting arm around her shoulders, her dark eyes worried.
Oceane shook her head, tears clogging her throat. “I’m sorry. So, so sorry,” she whispered, her chest hitching.
“No.” Victoria dragged her into a hug and Oceane’s control nearly broke. She didn’t deserve Victoria’s concern. Not when Manny Nieto’s blood ran through her veins. “You have nothing to be sorry about. This isn’t your fault.”
“Yes, it is. My father did this to get me back.” She shuddered, unable to grasp the depths of his depravity. The level of cruelty he could have inflicted on someone.
A big, gentle hand settled on the top of her head. “This is on him. Not you. He’s the monster and he makes his own choices.” Gabe.
She didn’t deserve his understanding or support either. This entire situation was because of her and her father. Her jaw trembled, shock finally hitting her. “Brock was still alive on the video?” she made herself ask.
“Yes,” Victoria answered.
But might not be now. “When was it taken?”
“We’re not sure. Maybe a few minutes ago,” Gabe said.
As the shock and anguish began to recede, something stronger began to form in their place.
Anger. A deep, burning resolve to do something about this.
For vengeance. To make sure her father could never hurt anyone ever again.
She stood, locked her knees and wiped at her face impatiently with the heels of her hands. The peppermint gum helped freshen her mouth, the queasiness subsiding a little. “Do they know where he is?”
“Somewhere near Cancún, we think,” Victoria said.
Cancún? Her attention sharpened on her friend. “What makes you think that?”
“One of Ruiz’s sicarios called in a tip, thinking he was being anonymous. They traced the call to there. And he sent a picture of a house where he claimed Brock was being held.”
“Show me.”
Gabe curled a hand around her waist as he guided her back inside to a desk where a folder was laid out. The moment she saw the photo of the house, her heart stuttered. My God…
“I’ve been there,” she said, her heartbeat quickening.
“When?” Gabe asked, turning to wave Taggart and the others over before looking down at her again.
“When I was young. We used to stay there on vacation sometimes. My fath—” No. She wouldn’t call him that any longer. Not one damn time more. “Nieto would come and meet us. He would stay for a few days at a time, sometimes longer.” And he and her mother always told her he couldn’t stay long because he needed to travel so often for business.
God, she’d been such a fool. A brainwashed, idiotic ostrich that would rather stick its head in the sand than see the truth that had been right there in front of her for her entire life.
“Are you certain?”
She glanced up into Taggart’s stern face. The rest of the team was gathered around them, watching her, their expressions hard. She felt like they blamed her partly for this. And rightly so. “Yes. Nieto told me it belonged to a friend, but I’m betting if we dig a little, it will be owned by one of his companies.”
“Do you remember the address?”
“No. But I remember the neighborhood.” She glanced around. “I need a map.”
Someone shoved a laptop in front of her seconds later, a map on screen. She didn’t know the street names or even what the neighboring properties looked like. But she remembered the name of the beach her parents had taken her to play on. It was within easy walking distance of the house. Maybe a few minutes on foot.
She located it on the map, tried to remember which direction they’d walked in to get to and from it. “Somewhere in here,” she said, circling a neighborhood of waterfront homes with her finger. “We had an unobstructed ocean view from the back of the house. The lots were big. There was a big garden out back with a tall fountain in the middle. It had trimmed hedges around it. And a sculpture of a dolphin.”
Gabe leaned forward and tapped a few buttons to enlarge the satellite map, zooming in on the area she’d indicated. Making it larger. Larger still, until the rooflines and yards became distinct.
Her anxious gaze landed on a familiar landmark in one of them. “There.”
Gabe zoomed in closer still and Oceane’s heart began to pound. A knot-formation of trimmed hedges came into view in the backyard, a fountain in the center. And the dolphin off in the corner. “This is it.”
“Get eyes on this address,” Taggart commanded to the room.
People began rushing everywhere.
“How long has it been since you were there?” he asked her.
“I was twelve or so the last time.”
“Do you remember the layout?”
“Yes. Though it could be changed now.”
Taggart thrust a pen at her and slid a piece of paper in front of her. “Show me what you remember.”
She began sketching out the basic floor plan, wanting to do whatever she could to help. Hoping it would be enough to find Brock in time. “How do we even know Brock is really there? The caller could have been lying, just trying to get money.”
“It’s the only thread we’ve got, so we’re pulling on it,” Taggart said, leaning one hand on the table to watch.
Searching her memory, she drew the ground floor. Kitchen, library, dining room. Family room. The upper floor had bedrooms and bathrooms. Her room had its own attached bath, just down the hall from her parents’ master suite.
“Is there any place that matches the look of that room?” he asked, jerking his head toward the computer she’d glimpsed on her way in.
Forcing herself to look over at it again, she focused on the horrific image of Brock strung up by those cruel chains. The room was horrible. Cold and sterile. All concrete. Like a bunker.
She sucked in a breath. “The basement. There was a wine cellar down there, and some other rooms I was never allowed in. My fa—” No. “Nieto said they were off limits and I was forbidden to go down there without an adult.” Because he hadn’t wanted her to see what he used that room for. God.
She swallowed, the memories washing over her, conflicting and difficult. He’d been such a kind, attentive father, especially when she was young. Even on the rare occasions when he had spent time with her as an adult. When she was little he had flown kites with her on the beach. Given her piggyback rides up and down the sand and through the lush grounds of the house. He had played hide and seek in its rooms. Read stories to her and tucked her in at night.
Had he been an evil monster even back then? Or had his lust for money and power warped him over time?
“Any tunnels down there or anything like that?” Taggart asked, bringing her back to the present.
She could feel everyone’s gazes burning her. Wished she held the power to fix this mess. “It’s possible. I heard him mention secret passageways once.”
She’d been outside his office while he’d been on the phone that morning. The moment she’d stepped into view his expression had frozen. He’d immediately ended the call and distracted her with an ice cream sundae in the kitchen,
and she’d forgotten all about the tunnel until just now.
“Might lead to the beach,” Taggart muttered to the others, and signaled to someone out of her line of sight.
She surfaced from her memories, her skin crawling. Was Brock being held and tortured in one of those basement rooms right now, in the place where she had vacationed with her parents all those years? It was too awful to contemplate. “I want to talk to him.”
Taggart looked at her sharply. “Who?”
Her heart was racing, her breaths coming faster as the anger hit. “Nieto.”
“Not a good idea. And we only have his contact as a go between right now anyway.”
“Then I want to talk to him.” She raised her chin, looked at Taggart defiantly, anger pulsing hotter with each heartbeat. “Put me on the phone to him. Right now.”
“Why?”
Because. Goosebumps broke out on her arms. “Because I’m going to end this.” Once and for all.
Taggart shared a loaded look with Gabe for a moment, then waved someone over. The man dialed the contact for her. The room went eerily silent as the phone rang, the sound of it echoing because she was on speaker.
“Yeah?” the male voice answered in Spanish.
She kept her gaze locked with Victoria’s as she spoke, drawing strength from her friend. “This is Oceane Nieto. I want to speak to my father.” She only used that term now because she had to.
The man snorted. “I’m supposed to believe you?”
“I don’t care if you do or not. Just put me in contact with him. Now.” The rage was building again. A deep, blinding supernova she couldn’t suppress.
“Say I play along and pretend to believe you’re his daughter. I’m not gonna give you his damn number, so why don’t you tell me what you want to say and I’ll think about passing it along to him?”
She hoped someone was tracing the call. They must be. “You tell him from me that I’ll come to him—”
Across the table Victoria gasped, shook her head and opened her mouth as if to protest, but Oceane wouldn’t stop.
“I’ll come to him, but only if he releases Agent Hamilton immediately. You tell him from me that if he hurts Hamilton any more, I’ll hate him forever and he’ll never get what he wants.” She drew a shallow breath. “Tell him right now and tell him he has ten minutes to answer at this number. And you’d better tell him, because if he finds out you didn’t pass on the message and he lost his chance to see me, he’ll kill you.” She hung up, her cheeks on fire, the righteous anger inside her burning out of control.
“Oceane, no,” Victoria blurted, but before Oceane could respond Gabe grasped her upper arm and whirled her to face him.
His expression was taut, his pale blue eyes full of rage. And something else.
Apprehension. He was afraid for her.
“What the hell did you just do?” he demanded.
He didn’t speak Spanish fluently, so he might not have understood everything. The only one on the team who did was Rodriguez, and he was staring at her in shock, and also maybe a little admiration mixed in. “I…”
Gabe’s jaw flexed, his face hard. “What did you say, Oceane?”
“She said she’ll meet Nieto if he lets Hamilton go,” Rodriguez said.
Murmurs and indrawn breaths filled the air as Oceane stared at Gabe.
“No,” Taggart said in an adamant tone, shaking his head. “You’re not doing that. It’s way too risky. We’re not handing you over to him. That’s not how we operate.”
“I know. That’s why I’m going to him voluntarily.”
“You can’t.”
“I can. Unless I’m under arrest and wasn’t aware of it?” She raised an eyebrow at him, not caring if she came off as a bitch. She was done with being victimized. With being used. Done with sitting back and watching her life crumble around her, with allowing others to be hurt or killed because of the man who had given her fifty percent of her DNA.
Taggart didn’t answer, but a muscle bunched in his jaw.
“Nieto won’t hurt me, because he wants me back.” For whatever reason. That was the only thing she was certain of anymore. “So if he agrees to free Brock, I’ll do a swap for him. You can track me and move in to arrest him once Brock is free.” This was the only way, and he had to know it. The best shot they had at arresting Nieto.
The only way to make things right and find justice for her mother, Brock and herself.
Gabe swore and stalked away a few paces, hands on hips as he faced away from her. She winced inside, hating that he’d turned away, but there was nothing she could do. She’d set the wheels in motion and couldn’t go back now.
Taggart dragged a hand over his face and sighed. “Shit. I can’t legally stop you. But if you go ahead with this, you need to understand that I can’t guarantee your protection. And neither can they,” he added, looking at the Mexican officials.
“Understood. And I’m going ahead with it.” She squelched the ripple of unease that moved under her skin at the thought of undertaking such a dangerous mission. Because dammit, she was the only one who might be able to end this in time.
She glanced at Gabe, flinched at the anger vibrating off him, his ice blue eyes searing her now. She couldn’t take his anger right now. She needed to be alone, come to terms with what she’d done and was about to do.
“Now I’d like some time to myself if you don’t mind,” she said, her voice quieter now, steady even though she was terrified. “Nieto’s only got nine minutes left to call me back.”
Phone in hand, she turned away from everyone and headed for a private office, scared as hell and sure she’d lost her damn mind.
Chapter Sixteen
Gabe wasn’t happy about this. At all. In fact, he was convinced this was a really bad fucking idea.
They might free Hamilton if they did this. Maybe. Though based on that video, it might already be too late.
They may even get Nieto out of the deal if they were real lucky. But the odds of something happening to Oceane through any part of this plan were way too fucking high. Just thinking about what she might walk into tonight made his blood pressure soar.
“We don’t have much time to pull this off,” Taggart said to the team in a private office they’d piled into for an emergency meeting. He could see Oceane through the window in another office down the hall, and someone had taken Victoria somewhere. Analysts now thought that the anonymous tip about the target house had been sent by someone working for either Montoya or El Escorpion, in the hopes of getting rid of Nieto.
“Nieto’s already gotta be suspicious,” he continued. “We can’t afford to give him a big enough window to move on us, so if we’re doing this we’re gonna have to go within the next twenty minutes. Our only advantage right now is that he doesn’t realize we know where Hamilton is yet.”
Shit.
Gabe ran a hand through his hair. He was used to high stress situations, but he’d never had so much at stake personally before on an op.
He struggled to focus, part of his attention on the group of Mexican feds talking to Oceane about the proposed meet up with one of her father’s men. What were they talking about? How in hell were they going to protect her if she went through with this?
They can’t.
It made him insane. God, he still couldn’t believe what she’d done. That she’d volunteered to offer herself up like a sacrificial lamb in the hopes of saving Hamilton.
Already Nieto had changed the damn rules, his contact calling back with an answer just under the ten-minute deadline Oceane had set, rather than calling himself. Not that Gabe or anyone else in this building had expected Nieto to call personally.
The bastard was now insisting she be brought to him first, and saying he would only release Hamilton once Oceane had arrived safely in his care. Gabe had followed on her heels into the office, had tried to talk her out of it. He’d told her flat out that it was too risky, too reckless. He hadn’t been gentle about it either.
&nbs
p; No, he’d been furious, because it scared the living shit out of him to think of her risking her life this way. She’d been through too much already. He didn’t want her facing this too.
Not that his opinion on the matter had done him any good. She’d refused to listen to reason and the Mexican officials were so desperate to get Nieto that they were falling all over themselves trying to help her set everything up.
This was a total shit show. The DEA had no jurisdiction down here beyond protecting themselves and whatever the Mexican government allowed them to do. FAST Bravo would be allowed to perform the rescue attempt to free Hamilton, but only on a joint op with Mexican SF members. They would have zero to do with providing security for Oceane while she walked literally into the lion’s den.
Gabe wouldn’t be able to protect her. Wouldn’t even be able to watch over her because he’d be part of the rescue op for Brock. It made him want to break something. She’d gotten to him over the last few months. Slowly working her way under his skin without seeming to realize it, though he’d been damn careful to hide it. He wished he could wrap her up and hide her somewhere, stop her from doing this. Keep her safe.
“One more problem,” Rodriguez pointed out to the group, bringing Gabe back to the conversation at hand. “Without Hamilton we’re down to an eight-man team.”
“It’s all right,” Freeman said. “We’ll just make certain adjustments in how we do this.”
Gabe rubbed the back of his neck, his gut screaming at him in warning. There were so many unknowns to deal with. So many things outside of normal procedure he couldn’t begin to count them. Technically they could operate with eight guys, though it would be against protocol. But hell, this entire scenario was against protocol, so it didn’t much matter.
“I’ll act as your ninth man,” Taggart said, making Gabe and the others look at him in surprise.
Taggart was well qualified, that wasn’t the issue. He’d served for years in an AFSOC special tactics squadron as a combat controller. He knew the team inside and out, knew their methods and their techniques. Their strengths and weaknesses.
