“That was a low blow,” Mac scowled at him.
“Sorry, but you have to admit that I have a point. We need every uninjured person that we have out looking. We can’t afford to have Trey and Kenzie behind a computer screen and hope to find them before it’s too late. I can’t be the only one looking for them and you can’t possibly come with me.”
Mac huffed as he hobbled then sat down on the couch in the opulent living room. This is definitely one of Brock’s safe houses. The giant overstuffed couch in the center of the room was sitting in front of a sixty-inch flat screen smart TV. There were antique lamps on old tables and the whole thing had an eclectic feel to it. Where did he get his money? These houses were over the top expensive. One more thing I’d need to figure out after this shit-show was done and we had our family back.
“I get it. Fine. I will learn how to hack. If it gets my son back then I will do anything,” Mac finally replied.
Marcy came running down the stairs completely flustered a moment later and we all looked up in shock.
“Bob just called. My dad thinks he’s being watched. He can’t get the information to us for a little while longer.” She flopped on the couch next to Mac.
Griffin walked over to her, placing his hand on her shoulder and giving her a tight squeeze. “It’s all right, Pix. We don’t want to tip our hand before we get everyone back anyway.”
“If we have Barnes arrested before we find out where our family is, we may never get them back,” I said in agreement.
“So what do we do now?” Marcy asked in nearly a whisper, grabbing Mac’s hand in an obvious sign of the support she needed.
“We prepare,” I said with a glint in my eye. “Let me go grab my machine and I will teach you what you need to know.”
“About what?” Kenzie’s voice from behind startled me.
“I’m gonna teach Mac some hacking basics.” I turned around to face her and I saw the gleam in her clear blue eyes.
“Sounds good.”
“I love that idea,” Marcy said with a huge smile. “Thanks Trey.”
I knew she was worried. I think we all were a little worried about Mac and how he would feel about staying behind while the rest of us tried to get everyone back.
Getting our family back was the hardest problem we had faced yet. We had no idea where to start looking because they took a fucking plane. They could be anywhere in the world including Somalia, being held by damn pirates. I was trying my best to keep everything light, but the weight of the world was on all of our shoulders and I was praying to any God that would listen that we could get them all back before anyone broke, or worse, was broken.
After I grabbed my machine and the backup I always carried in case of emergency, I came into the living room and sat down next to Mac. I knew he was basically a newbie when it came to computers, but I was glad to know that he knew at least the basics, barely.
“Okay, so how much do you know?” I asked somewhat warily.
“I don’t know. I can turn the thing on. I can work with the surveillance program, and I can get on the internet.”
I hoped that he didn’t see the look of horror on my face. I took on a little more than I had planned for when offering to teach Mac about hacking. Hearing a snicker from behind me, I turned to glare at Kenzie.
“You want to teach him?” I asked agitated and she shook her head still smiling.
“You know I’m not a people person.” She shrugged and stood over her computer searching for something.
“Hey, I’m not people, and I’m sure you would be a much better teacher than this guy.” Mac nodded his head my way then winked at her. I picked up a throw pillow and smacked him in the face with it.
“Stop flirting or I’ll tell Tink, and she’ll cut your balls off.”
“No she won’t… she likes my balls,” Mac laughed out a little too confidently.
I looked over at him, shocked and so happy to hear the ogre laughing again. I was pretty sure I hadn’t heard him laugh since before the accident almost a month ago. Kenzie was smiling and I noticed for the first time she was dressed differently than she had been earlier. Her jeans were painted on and her black top showed off her generous cleavage. It took a minute for me to roll my tongue back into my mouth. Mac snickered from beside me which got him an elbow in the gut and his responding oof was music to my ears.
“Where are you off to?” I asked when I could finally form complete sentences.
“Going to check out Brock’s contact. You wanna come?” she asked with a sly smile spinning a set of car keys around her finger and picking up her leather jacket off the kitchen island. I jumped off the couch.
“Hell yeah I do.”
“Don’t mind me,” Mac called out as Kenzie and I headed to the door. “I’ll just teach myself how to hack.”
“Hey, good idea, bro. Do a search on YouTube, there are lots of beginning hacking videos on there. Be back in a couple hours.” I winked at him over my shoulder and left the room to the sound of his cursing.
“What are you doing?” I asked as Kenzie walked around to the driver’s side.
“Um… getting in the car?” she answered in a question, confusion written all over her pretty face.
“You,” I pointed, “are not driving.”
“What are you talking about?” She stomped her foot, which made her boobs bounce, so not an awful thing.
“Of course I’m driving. Your hand is still messed up, you’ve still got that soft cast on.”
“More like an ace-bandage and yeah, so not happening. I was recently in a horrific car accident. Your driving is the last thing I need right now.”
The glare she shot me would cause a weaker man to buckle. I held out my hand and she threw the keys at me. If I hadn’t had great reflexes, they would have hit me in the face. I chuckled at her childish display and sauntered over to the passenger door opening it for her and waiting for her to get in before I shut the door. Her look of confusion at my gentlemanly act was perfect. Throwing this girl off balance the only way I was going to get any sure-footing.
I hopped in the driver’s seat and threw her a wink. “Got an address?”
CHAPTER SIX
KENZIE
Stupid Trey and his stupid ideas about my driving! He didn’t think about the fact that both times I drove we were kind of in the middle of a life or death situation. No, he only saw my erratic driving. Well okay, maybe I am a little erratic most days. They do like to call me terrorist Barbie, but as Trey sat there smirking over at me with his stupid green eyes that a girl could get lost in, I sulked.
“Well?” he asked sitting in the driver’s seat waiting, as I continued to watch the way his muscles bunched under his shirt. I needed to shut this down. Maybe if I just fucked him and got it over with I could get him out of my head and we could work on getting everyone back. I shook myself internally and banished that idea to the back of my head. That might be the worst idea I had ever had, and that was saying something.
“Well what?” I asked stupidly as I continued to try to rein in my hormones. I was sitting too close. His smell was all around me, suffocating me, intoxicating me.
“Do you have an address?” He repeated, laughing and I watched in fascination as his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.
Come on, Kenzie! Focus!
“Um, yeah,” I stuttered as I handed over the address. His fingers brushed my hand and I felt a jolt of electricity race up my arm and back down my spine.
I have no idea how I got there but the next thing I knew, I was straddling his wide hips, grabbing his hair and pulling his head hack. His eyes were wide but lust was shining back at me. My mouth came down on his, and my hand was still fisted in his hair and pulling it as I kissed him desperately. His hands were everywhere at once. I laced the fingers of my other hand in his hair as well and then bit down on his bottom lip forcing the sexiest growl from him. He put both hands on my hips and pushed me down onto his har
dened cock. My hips gyrated seemingly on their own and I moaned, tilting my head back feeling the sensations wash over me. He took that as an invitation to trail his lips down across my throat to the top of my breasts, pushing down my T-shirt, where he licked and sucked them into his mouth one by one. While his mouth played havoc on my chest, his good hand trailed down until it was stuck between us.
“What are you doing to me, Kenzie?”
He cupped me over my too tight jeans and I groaned. His fingers skillfully started undoing the button on my jeans, and his hand dove inside immediately finding my clit, circling it with just the right amount of pressure to make me grind down on him harder. He growled and bit my beaded nipple through the fabric of my top—it was too much. The sensations of his mouth and fingers had me spiraling over the edge and I came with a shout.
After a moment, I looked down into his too cocky face and watched as he pulled his fingers from my panties and brought his fingers to his lips and sucked them clean. “When we get back from this meeting, I’m going to show you exactly what I have been fantasizing about doing to this tight little body for the last two years.”
That made me pause. He had been fantasizing about me? Even before we met? It was too much and I jumped off of him quickly and sat back in my seat as far away as I could get from him. “No,” I said rapidly putting myself back to rights. “We can’t do that again. We need to focus on everyone else. Let’s get to the meeting before the contact thinks we bailed.”
Turning my head, and watching out the window, I hoped that he wouldn’t see the pain and confusion etched across my features. I definitely didn’t want to see the hurt in his eyes.
“Whatever you say, Kenzie,” he sneered and put the car in reverse. I was glad he didn’t argue, but the way he said my name hurt some deep unknown part of me, and for the first time one of the walls I built up around my heart cracked just a little. I couldn’t let him get close. My mother was murdered simply for wanting me. I couldn’t let anyone else die because of me, especially not Trey.
As the scenery flashed by out the window, I started to doze off remembering the day all those months ago when I finally found out the truth about what happened to my mother…
I’d been sitting in my bedroom at the safe house outside of D.C., shocked and a little hurt by all the horrible things that Trey had said when he found out who I was. When Kim, Tasha’s “dead” mother came walking through the door, my mouth dropped open, and I jumped up from my seat on the bed.
“How? What?”
“Hi Kenzie, how are you holding up?”
“Me? What about you? We all thought you were dead.”
She shuddered. “I was Roger’s captive for a very long time.”
“They found you in one of the other warehouses?” I asked quietly and she nodded, confirming what I’d assumed had happened.
“Brock says you have some questions for me?”
“Yeah, I found a grainy video from the night I was born. It shows Barnes beating my mother in an alley and you coming and helping her. What happened?”
“Wait?” she stopped me to question. “There’s video? Where did you find that?”
“They found old floppy disks buried in Dylan’s house. Trey sent the files to me and I was able to pull them up. Are you going to tell me what happened? I know you gave me to your parents so that I could have a better life, but I’m a part of this. It was me in her stomach when they beat her. Tell me.”
She sighed and sat on the bed before telling her story. “Marie Barnes was what happened. After I gave birth to Tasha, Marie, Roger’s wife, found out that I had Roger’s baby and she threatened him. Basically, she told him that if he ever got another woman pregnant that she didn’t care what her mother said, she would divorce him and out him for every dirty underhanded thing he ever did. Roger was furious, but it didn’t stop him from seeing Melissa, your mother. He hated his wife Marie and the only reason he ever even touched her was so she could conceive an heir to their fortune.” Her laugh was hollow and flat. “When Melissa realized she was pregnant, she was so excited about the prospect of a baby. She fell in love with you the moment she knew,” she said, placing her hand on mine. “But, Roger was furious, and at the same time he was terrified that Marie would find out and out him for everything he’d done. When he tried to force your mom to have an abortion, she ran. On a night of one of our missions, Brock found her in Seattle. He picked her up, recognizing her from the pictures he had taken when he’d been tracking Barnes. He tried to help her but she refused. I really don’t think she ever understood what Barnes was truly capable of. I had to rescue her once when she was about eight months pregnant. I have no idea how he caught her. But, I knew if I left her there much longer, you would suffer and most likely die. So, I got her out. It was a month later when I followed Barnes to the alley and watched in horror as he beat her. We had become friends.” As she continued her horrible tale, tears were trickling down her cheeks; it was obvious she felt deeply about what had happened to my mother.
“She had asked me to watch over you if anything happened to her. After she was beaten, her last words to me were to protect you and make sure you were safe. Her only thoughts at the moment were for your survival. I was desperate for the doctors to save you both, to the point that I was in hysterics and Brock had to hold me back from kicking the shit out of one of Barnes.” She chuckled softly through her tears, lost in memory. “In the end, they were only able to save you; her injuries were too severe. I took guardianship of you and left you with my parents where I knew you would be safe and have a happy life.”
I didn’t know what to do. The whole crying thing was uncomfortable, and I didn’t know how to handle it. She smiled a watery smile and looked at me as if I were her own child. “They told me what you have been up to, and I just have to say that Melissa would have been so proud of you.”
I jolted in my seat as Trey shook me a bit too roughly, bringing me back to the present. “Are you sure you got the address right?”
“Yeah, what’s the problem?”
“This doesn’t look like a place to meet a contact. It looks like an old restaurant that’s been abandoned for years.”
“This is where Brock said to meet.”
“Brock is the one who set up this meeting?” He growled.
“Yes.” I glared at him. “You didn’t have to come. I trust Brock. He would never betray us,” I said completely convinced. The guy had known me since before I was born and I was sure he would never do anything to hurt me. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that he couldn’t be the one to betray us.
“Fine. I trust you. But, if I find out that Brock is betraying us, and he is the one behind any of this, I won’t hesitate to kick his ass.”
I smiled at that. Brock was a black belt in three different forms of martial arts. There was no way Trey could kick his ass.
As Trey pulled up in front of the abandoned building, I patted his arm before stepping out of the car. There was a chill in the air that I could only associate with an early spring night in Louisiana. It was nothing compared to the cold winter nights in the East Coast, but I was glad that I remembered my leather jacket.
The door to the restaurant was open and Trey pulled a gun from the waist and of his jeans as we inched inside the dimly lit room. There was a shadow of a person at the back sitting in a booth casually as if Trey didn’t have a gun pointed.
“Mr. Thomas, no need to be rude. If I wanted you dead that wouldn’t save you,” a sophisticated voice reprimanded Trey.
“Who are you?” Trey asked as he eased in front of me. Really? I rolled my eyes and stepped around him but not quickly enough to miss the glare he shot my way before quickly returning his focus to the woman in the booth.
She replied cryptically, “Someone who wants the same thing you do.”
“Excuse us if we don’t trust random strangers. We were nearly run off the road… again.” Trey deadpanned.
&
nbsp; “I know where your friends are,” she hedged, and my entire body went tight, while Trey’s back went ramrod straight and we stared into the shadows.
“How? The fucking government can’t even find them,” Trey spat out angrily.
“I have my sources. If we are going to get them back we have to go now; the children are in the worst possible situation. If you want to rescue them before they are sold to the human trafficking ring, then I suggest you trust me.”
“Human trafficking?” Trey yelled. “So, the Somali pirates really do have them?”
“Yes. Roger sold the children to the pirates. I have the coordinates to where they are being held, and since the women are both pregnant, he couldn’t sell them.” She sighed with such heaviness, I didn’t really want to hear what she had to say next. “Dylan Spaulding may already be dead.”
I blanched. I couldn’t believe how casually she threw the words at us. “Who are you?”
She stood up and walked over to us. It must have been comical the way my eyes bugged out of my head. I looked at her and I stepped back reflexively. “Why would you want to help us?”
Trey was looking at me like I was stupid. Like he had no idea who the hell this woman was, which was normal because he wasn’t from Baltimore like so many of the rest of us in our little group.
“Because he needs to be brought down. He needs to go to jail. He has embarrassed himself and me for the last time. He has hurt too many people and he needs to be stopped.”
“After all this time. All the people he has killed and you sat idly by. Now you grow a conscience?”
“Who the hell is she?” Trey asked grabbing me by the arm.
“Meet Governor Barnes,” I said acidly.
CHAPTER SEVEN
TREY
What. The. Fuck.
At that moment one thought ran through my head. The second thought I had was how much I was going to enjoy killing Brock when this was all over. I couldn’t believe that Brock would set us up like that, but the proof was staring me in the face. My niece and nephews were about to be sold to human trafficking rings and the only reason Tasha and Kaylee were safe at the moment was because they were pregnant. Wait? What?
Beautiful Surrender (Pride and Honor Book 4) Page 4
