It had his fingerprints all over it.
Someone was buying her more things.
“Let me guess. We’re going to be staying in a home owned by my husband, Jackson James?”
He nodded.
“Congrats. Deputy Director Blackhawk wanted me to tell you. He swore you were going to flip out.”
She snorted.
“Oh, he knows me well. Callen had to have this plan in the works for a while.”
Gamble shrugged.
“That’s above my pay grade, ma’am. You’ll have to take that up with your husband.”
Oh, she would.
Since lives were on the line, she’d accept this gift—gladly.
“Well, we’ll split up, and hopefully, we can stay one step ahead of Marchenko,” she stated.
Greyson was praying that was the case.
There was light at the end of the tunnel and he could finally breathe again.
“We’ll get ready for transport,” Wilcox said as Heath handed Sadie back to Katerina.
“Family, let’s pack. It’s time to escape and regroup.”
They didn’t hesitate.
It was time.
The family had to relocate.
* * * G R E Y S O N C R O F T * * *
Mountains
Tuesday
When she rushed into the clearing and toward the area that was now riddled with bullets, she didn’t see him. Heading toward the makeshift tent, she pointed her gun inside.
Again, nothing.
Then she heard the snap of a twig behind her. Before she could move, there was a gun pointed at the back of her skull.
Then there was the click of a safety.
Well, this was going just about as well as she figured it would. The shit was about to hit the fan.
No.
Her brains were about to hit the tree.
“Who are you?” Dimitri asked from behind the pretty woman. He knew better than to overlook gorgeous women. The KGB used them all the time.
“I’m Detective Poppy Wayne. You’ve seen me before, Mr. Gideon. I’ve been trying to talk to you.”
“Why did you follow me here?” Dimitri asked. “Why are you up here on the mountain?”
Because she was an idiot.
Clearly.
Poppy went with the truth.
“I’m working on your sister’s case, and I needed to speak to you. I tried to talk to you in town. You bolted.”
“Were the trackers yours?” he asked. “Did you put them on my gear and ride?”
“Yes.”
Well, that was the ONLY good news at the moment. There weren’t two killers in the woods after him. There was only one. The bad news was she was now stuck there with him.
On his death mission.
It sucked to be her.
“Do you know first aid?” he asked.
She didn’t understand why he was asking that question. It was odd.
“Yes, I do. Why?”
He lowered his gun and there was the click of the safety going back on.
“Good. I need some.”
When she turned, there was blood all over his jacket, and it was spreading out—the size of a dinner platter. He’d been shot in the shoulder.
Oh, that was really bad.
It was life or death for him, and she knew it.
“I’ve been shot,” Dimitri said, dropping to his knees, his gun falling from his fingers.
As he wavered, Poppy caught and lowered him to the ground.
“Who shot you?” she asked, gently placing him on his back so she could check out his injury.
“It was my brother. Viktor Marchenko is a killer. He’s on the mountain, and he’s coming. You have to get out of here after you patch me up,” he said before he passed out.
“Mr. Gideon?”
Nothing.
He was out cold.
“Well, holy shit,” she muttered, pulling open his shirt. As soon as she saw his wound, she took off her own jacket to remove her sweater to use to pack his wound. She had to stop it from bleeding. With his jacket wet, he was going to freeze to death right before he bled to death.
Oh, and she had really bad news for the man. She would be there when he woke up. There was no freaking way she could leave him.
Even if a killer was coming.
There was no way he’d done this to himself. That meant he wasn’t likely lying. He was being hunted, and now so was she.
This was bad.
This man needed medical help, there was a killer taking shots at him, and they were trapped.
On the mountain.
This couldn’t possibly be worse.
Chapter Three
Sky Villa
Tuesday
Afternoon
T here was no easy way to sneak a whole family out of Terrace Glen and into Sky Villa. That was a whole bunch of people to make invisible as they headed out on their journey to being safe.
The only thing that had made it easier was that Elizabeth had them leave their vehicles there at the house. They were going to have to get them new rides—ones that were less conspicuous.
Their old rides were very noticeable.
For now, they were safe, tucked away in the back of the FBI rented vehicles.
Once away from Terrace Glen, the family split off.
Curtis, Dante, and their spouses headed for the hotel to bed down in the penthouse with Sam. They were on babysitting duty for now. The boy was worried about his father, and they didn’t know what to tell him.
Hopefully, they would be safe there. Getting them far enough away from himself and Emma might just save their lives. At this point, they had to do what they could.
They’d revamped the penthouse, ensuring that they would have a little more security. Thanks to the new layout, getting into the living area meant going through a shit load of work.
That might be a big enough deterrent for anyone wishing to do them harm.
They hoped.
In the back of a vehicle driven by Ivan and co-piloted by Heath, Elizabeth sat with Greyson and Emma.
They were going through the papers that Ethan had gotten before shitcanning his director. It was time to work while they had the opportunity.
Emma whistled as soon as she saw it.
“This can’t be right,” she said.
Elizabeth glanced over.
“What?”
“Lee has it tagged that there is definitely someone on the inside of the sex trafficking ring.”
Elizabeth was aware.
“We lost a mole. Greyson knows about this. She was taken on his watch.”
“Yeah, and I couldn’t find her. Storm St. Clair went MIA the second they figured out she was viable. When they took her, they didn’t leave a trace. It’s my one regret from being director. I couldn’t save her.”
Emma shook her head.
She was aware of that mole.
This was different.
“No, babe, look,” she said, pointing at a note that Robert Lee had scribbled in the margin of a paper report.
‘We have infiltrated the ring. We have a person on the inside.’
It was dated more recently than when Greyson was in office.
Well, that couldn’t have possibly meant their mole. That had to mean that someone else had gone under after Storm St. Clair, and during Robert Lee’s duration as director. If that were the case, why were they not reporting back as to what was going on?
“If they got someone on the inside, and they aren’t reporting back…”
Elizabeth thought about it.
“That can’t be good,” Greyson stated.
Elizabeth pulled out her phone. She dialed her husband. If anyone knew what the hell was going on, it would be him. Her sexy Native had his fingers in just about everything as of late.
Luckily, Ethan answered on the second ring.
“Hell, this is the Devil.”
He totally caught her off guard with that, and she couldn’t
help but laugh at it.
“Well, Devil, this is the handmaiden. Want to hook up and make some wicked minions together?”
Ivan snorted.
“Too late. We’ve seen your offspring.”
She slapped him in the back of the head.
“HEY!”
“What do you need, baby? I hope this isn’t a social call because I don’t have time. It’s a shit mess here. I’ve got a widespread panic that I’m here to clean house.”
“Um…you are.”
He laughed.
“Yeah, I know. That makes it all kinds of ironic.”
She figured she’d get down to business since he was so damn busy.
“We found a note in one of the files you procured for us. It’s pretty relevant.”
“What?”
She told him.
He thought about it.
“That might mean one of two things. Lee was able to get a second mole in the operation, and he didn’t mention it because he feared there may be a leak.”
“Or?” she asked.
“A Fed not only got in but is playing some really dangerous Vegas games.”
Well, that didn’t sound good.
If someone playing bad guy was actually a good guy, they’d be reporting in—unless they were a bad guy all around. It wouldn’t be a coincidence.
They likely had someone involved.
“This could be why we’ve never been able to tag it,” Greyson stated. “When I was working as the director, I couldn’t pinpoint who was leaking our information to the traffickers. Every angle I went at it, I hit one hell of a wall. Storm St. Clair was really good at her job. No one should have been able to make her. Yet, they did.”
“Oh, that sounds about right for Vegas.”
He agreed.
And it sucked.
“Is there any way you could have missed something when you were working the original abduction case for Marissa Pierce?” he asked. “You found Rosemary Harrington, but what if you missed a person tied to it? She couldn’t possibly be running this on her own, and we have intel out of the ME’s office for the city that there are still Jane Does coming in with Marchenko’s marks all over them.”
Greyson didn’t know.
He wished he could answer that, but he’d never had any success with that situation while he was a director, and with Julie Pierce, they didn’t have the tech and equipment the FBI had.
Of course they could have missed something.
Anything was possible.
“We found the pimps, and we found the owners of the ring. Who else could be involved?” he asked.
Elizabeth patted that file.
“It looks like we’re going to find out,” she stated. “We’re en route to the condo.”
Ethan was aware.
Ivan had checked in.
“Don’t get attached to it. Callen already said he’s going to sell it once this is over. He said he’s acquiring too much.”
She laughed.
Somehow, she didn’t think that would stop her husband. Since he’d become Jackson James, all his previous rules had flown out the window.
Elizabeth knew the place would be classy. Callen wouldn’t dump his wife’s ass in a shithole. He loved her too much.
Then it hit her what he’d said.
“I still can’t believe he bought it.”
Blackhawk had just talked to his brother a little while ago before he passed the information on to Gamble. His brother was adamant that Elizabeth is safe.
He was worried she’d not make it to the wedding—and then the honeymoon.
He had a lot riding on this.
“Yeah, me either. Like I said, he thinks he owns too much. This was more about your safety than anything else.”
She wasn’t shocked.
“We only own the house in DC, a few cabins on the rez, and the house in New Orleans. That’s Miss Kitty’s favorite.”
Ivan groaned.
“Here they go,” he muttered. He’d only heard it mentioned a few times, but from the response from both husbands, he could only imagine it was about sex.
Thinking about that made him ill. That was like picturing your sister having sex—with two men.
He couldn’t do it.
“Yes, it is, baby,” Ethan stated.
Heath grinned like a lunatic.
“I love when people are in love. There’s nothing better in the world.”
Ethan laughed.
The big man was a romantic, even when he looked like some football player who could rip off your limbs. It was funny as hell.
“Just get in, start going through those files, and I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
She hoped so.
Elizabeth was worried about him.
“Please be safe, Ethan.”
His heart flipped.
“I will, my love. I’m safe. I have some backup here. I’ll meet you at Sky Villa. Oh, and Callen made sure it was furnished, stocked, and ready to go. You can gratuitously thank him later. I’m sure he’ll be expecting it.”
She laughed.
“Yay! Phone sex!”
Ivan gagged.
Okay, she was just doing that to freak the man out. She couldn’t help herself. It was her duty to bust Ivan’s ass. That was their thing.
“I love you, Cowboy. See you later.”
“Stay out of trouble, Elizabeth!”
“Well, you know me.”
“Exactly. Ivan, don’t let her get shot! My brother will scalp me if we ding her up.”
He laughed.
“Oh, well, easier said than done.”
“I’ll ignore that you just talked about me like I was an inanimate object, Ethan, ‘I have a sexy ass’, Blackhawk.”
He snorted.
“You made your point.”
She was glad.
Elizabeth hung up.
Greyson was amused by the whole thing. When working beneath Ethan Blackhawk, you got the impression he was balls to the wall, difficult, and didn’t have a softer side. When you saw him with his wife, or around people he loved, that came through.
It was the sign of a good leader.
He missed working for him.
Elizabeth patted the files on her lap. She knew they needed to hit them hard. It was all they really had.
“Okay, so we get inside Sky Villa, and we start pulling these files apart. What do you have from the last case you worked?” she asked Emma and Greyson.
They were going to have to get her up to speed and fast. She only knew very little.
“I have a zip drive. I downloaded all our information before we left,” Emma stated. “I had a feeling we’d need it.”
“It looks like your gut was right. We may have to go back before we can go forward,” she stated.
Greyson was aware.
It pissed him off.
“We let the head of the snake get away, and it looks like it had babies too,” Greyson stated.
Elizabeth figured as much.
Something this big, this ugly, and this nasty wasn’t going to be run by only one person. There had to be help along the way. In order to find the head of the snake, they had to catch the babies.
God.
She hated snakes.
“Well, we’ll go back over, we’ll backtrack, and we’ll change up the questioning. Where was Rosemary Harrington working out of?” she asked. “Give me what you can, and I’ll scan the zip drive later.”
Greyson and Emma broke it down for her.
“She owns a strip club called ‘The Titty Corral’,” she offered. “That was her front for having the women ‘trained’ and for potential customers to come in and try out the goods.”
That horrified Elizabeth.
Ivan, too, but for different reasons.
“Oh, Jesus,” muttered Ivan. “I already know where this is heading,” he stated.
“Security shouldn’t be seen or heard,” Elizabeth reminded him.
“Security who
just got engaged shouldn’t be in a strip club watching scantily clad women shaking their tits all over the place if they want to actually get married. I would be the one who wants to get Blue to the altar.”
Emma laughed.
That was the dilemma her husband faced all the damn time. It was the nature of the beast in Vegas.
Plus, Elizabeth’s security guy was pretty damn funny, and she could tell that he genuinely liked Elizabeth. He was hyper-focused on everything around them.
God!
They needed security like that. He reminded her of Dimitri—before he bailed on them.
“If I have to go, you have to go,” Elizabeth stated. “I’m the one all over the news. Think how that makes me look.”
Oh, he did.
He still looked worse, and Ivan didn’t want Blue to ever doubt his love for her.
Emma tried to help him out.
“Greyson made me go last time,” she stated. Then she realized who her partner had been. She realized that she’d been there with Chris, and he was gone.
It looked like that wouldn’t be happening again.
Greyson saw her get emotional. His wife was pregnant and battling hormones as it was, but with the loss of Chris, Dimitri, and Natasha’s death, she was struggling. He hoped this wouldn’t be too much for her.
So, Greyson gave her a kiss.
“I’ll be your partner on this one,” he said, knowing what was bothering her. Briefly, she’d been thinking about the case and she’d forgotten the issue they were having with their family dropping out of their life.
“Thank you.”
She wiped her eyes.
Elizabeth took it in and opted to change the subject.
“When are you due?” she asked.
“How did you know I’m pregnant?” she asked. “No one outside the family knows.”
“I’ve done it four times, and I know hormonal crying when I see it. Besides, you’ve got a bump.”
Emma lovingly placed her hand over it.
“I’m almost four months.”
“Your secret is safe with me,” she said, noticing that Greyson looked worried.
“Are you wearing?” Elizabeth asked.
“Yeah, Dimitri made sure I always had Kevlar,” she stated, tapping her chest.
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