Locke and Key (Titan Book 12)

by Cristin Harber

  Hell, Cassidy couldn’t lie in bed any longer and map out the screwed-up complications that sent people to work in this environment. She sat up, hesitantly glancing around, but no one stirred. “Psss.”

  No responses. Either they were out, or they didn’t want her kind of trouble. Cassidy peeled back her blanket and stood. Still, no one moved.

  Maybe she’d take a quick walk around, head to the bathroom, see where she could get before she hit a locked door. No big deal. If she got in trouble, she could claim she didn’t know the rules or something.

  Carefully, Cassidy crept out the doorless room and passed the bathroom. She tiptoed in the dark, down the winding halls, trying to remember her way. The maze behind the walls had to have been built secondarily, and the expansive shadow of rooms was so odd. But still, she wanted to make sure she had as much information as possible—if not to help Delta, then for future reporting.

  Footsteps walking down the hall pricked Cassidy’s ears. Shit! She hadn’t expected another person. They weren’t the heavy ones that she’d heard earlier when guards checked on their merchandise. She had not heard those footsteps in a few hours. Maybe it was the woman again.

  Who was she? If Cassidy was caught, she could simply look for a common ground. Was the woman once a captured girl herself? She didn’t look as if she’d seen the horrors that some of the women in these rooms had. Did any horrors happen here, under the woman’s watch?

  Where was Delta? Titan? Locke… she missed him. And man, Locke was going to give her hell for getting caught on the first night. Cassidy bit her lip, tucking against an alcove—

  A phone chirped and was quickly cut off.

  “You can’t just call me,” a woman’s voice whispered harshly. That was absolutely their house mom.

  Silence ticked by. Cassidy couldn’t tell which way the voice came from and if she should hurry back to her cot. Was this news of Delta’s rescue of the other girls? Oh no… that meant something had failed. The woman shouldn’t know about the rescue operation. Cassidy leaned into the hall, trying to listen, but the woman said nothing. Her heartbeat slammed in her ears.

  “No!” the woman whispered again loudly, her tone panicked. “Het! No!”

  Oh shit… Delta had failed. Bile burned the back of her throat, heartburn mixing with fear. How was that possible, and what kind of danger did that mean for Cassidy… and her oligarch? Cassidy’s mind raced.

  “Do not come here.”

  Wait… what? She leaned forward, trying to hear. That didn’t have to do with a failed rescue mission or Mikhailov girls.

  “He will kill you.” The woman’s accent became much thicker. “Leave. Get back on the plane and leave!”

  Then it struck Cassidy that she was speaking in English. Whispering in a corner, speaking about the danger, telling someone not to come. Something was going on. Cassidy inched out of the alcove, her ears straining to hear more, but there was nothing.

  “You can’t always use the excuse of our daughter,” the woman snapped.

  Daughter? Cassidy’s mind rushed back to the classified intelligence report from Titan Group. Fuck. Was this woman Ivan Mikhailov’s daughter? Did he have her working the trafficked women? And if so, was she talking to—

  “Alex. No!”

  Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit! Cassidy froze, replaying only one word in her head over and over and over. Alex. Did she just say Alex? This wasn’t a dream about insomnia and futzing her way down the hall, was it? She pinched herself—literally twisting the skin on her forearm—and it most certainly hurt. She was awake, and this was far more complicated than anyone knew.

  “He can’t make us both do these awful things.” A sniffle mixed with her words. “Go home! I love you, but leave.”

  Quick footfalls rushed away as the conversation trailed also. Titan and Delta were working on incomplete information, and no one knew Alex was in Russia. Cassidy knew he was working on something. Was the woman she’d seen from afar this lady? Cassidy closed her eyes and tried to picture the face from the ski resort before she and Alex were run off with gunfire. About the same size and hair color… but she’d been too far away.

  Oh boy. If they were both working for Ivan Mikhailov, what did that mean about the daughter? Parents would do anything for their daughter.

  Cassidy ran back to her room, searching for her cot. There were too many variables, but none of them mattered. Two parents were trying to please a criminal to help their family. Recipe for disaster.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  “We have a serious problem.” Parker walked into the war room, interrupting Jared—that rarely happened. Jared put his coffee cup down. Something on Parker’s face made his gut twist.

  “You weren’t gone very long for everything to have gone to shit,” Jared mumbled as Thelma rolled over on his feet and chewed on her rawhide.

  “Yeah, well.” Parker shook his head. “Another of turn of events, and you know how I feel about those.”

  “You like them about as much as I do.” Which was not very much. He checked the flat screens and didn’t see any updates for the team. Neither Parker nor Rocco had posted to Locke, Jax, or Delta. “Is Cassidy okay?” If something had happened to the reporter, Jared could understand Parker bringing it to him before it was blasted to the rest of the team.

  “Alexander Gaev just cleared customs in Russia,” Parker said, rubbing his temples, and then dropped into a chair next to Jared. “And he made a phone call. Back channels intercepted it, and my contacts say it was to Taisia Mikhailov.”

  “We know she’s there somewhere. Not pleased with Gaev, though.” Jared cracked his knuckles. “What’s he doing with Ivan?”

  “Her location was pinpointed on top of Locke and Jax’s identical locale twelve hours ago.”

  Jared let that sink in. “She’s on-site with the girls?”

  Parker raised his eyebrows. “Seems like.”

  “Why is he calling her?” Jared gnawed on his lip.

  “Exactly.” Parker swiped his phone screen a few times and shrugged. “Alex is Alexander Gaev. We know the Gaev family has a loose history of connections with US-based Russian crime. It’s a reach, but there’s petty crime associated with a group called the Bratva outside Baltimore. There’s a note in a file on Ivan Mikhailov. He had a gopher at a local college who he elevated from the Bratva, paying for college so that the Mikhailov organization could have access to whatever they needed on campus, but they eventually dropped him.”

  “What does a Russian crime boss need from a college campus?”

  Parker shrugged. “Chem labs? Cheap labor? Distribution points?”

  “Hmmm. No details on the gopher?” Jared asked.

  “Not much here other than a note that he had access to the school. Teenage gophers were probably a dime a dozen.”

  He thought on that. “I bet. How long ago was that?”

  Parker’s eyebrows bobbed. “About… nine years ago.”

  “What am I missing?” he asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Alex and Taisia…” Parker tilted his head. “We have a visa on file with US Customs and Immigration from about ten years ago—where she lived and went to school in the US, and when she dropped out. I’m going with eight to nine years old.”

  “And?”

  “Ivan drops the gopher and pulls his daughter? Both go to the same school, both disappear about the same time. Now, they are back in contact after Ivan tried to kill Alex?”

  Jared whistled. “Fucking hell. They had a relationship—or, hell, Gaev knocked up the daughter. Bet that didn’t fit in with any of their plans.”

  “A pregnancy would be a reason to make moves like that,” Parker surmised.

  “What do we know about a kid?”

  “Nothing. It’s all assumptions, and since we don’t have access to Russian birth records—”

  Jared glared and growled.

  “Could a kid could be on-site?” Jared pinched the bridge of his nose. That was a total
game changer. “The mother’s on-site. Fucking hell.” People did that batshit-crazy stuff for their kids. Throw in a lover or a father—whatever Gaev was—and they went off the reservation.

  He would. He had before.

  If some former KGB-FSB asshole had Alex by the nuts and had kidnapped his kid or his woman, there was no telling what he would do. That was not the environment he wanted when he had a Delta team op, Cassidy, Locke, and Jax walking around.

  Thelma rolled over on the floor, groaning as though she understood the giant clusterfuck that was this international-family situation that very well might cause an incident of treason. “So why is Mikhailov meeting with Gaev? Or vice-versa? What’s the endgame?”

  Parker sucked his cheeks and shook his head. “No idea. Can you imagine a family with the commies’ criminal king for a father-in-law?”

  Jared couldn’t imagine what kind of sick world Ivan Mikhailov lived in that made it okay for his daughter to exist near his trafficking activities, much less the possibility of a grandchild. Then again, Jared couldn’t imagine trafficking. “Get word to our guys, and let’s hope like all fuck Alex doesn’t see Cassidy.”

  Parker pushed away from the table and stood. “I don’t think Locke will survive if that girl doesn’t.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Locke hadn’t seen Cassidy in more than twelve hours. His heart had been in his throat when he and Jax loaded into a chauffeured vehicle, off to a bullshit appointment. It took all his energy to focus on finding the oligarch who was coming in to purchase and pick up Cassidy.

  After they ditched the chauffeur, they found the new ride that Titan had prearranged. It was nothing more than a souped-up clunker sure to blend in with their surroundings. He and Jax had been so busy locating and enacting the first part of their plan, to throw the oligarch off schedule, that Locke almost had a reprieve from worry.

  But that morning, he had time on his hands to think about Cassidy’s night. The gray sky didn’t hide in the clouds dancing with the cold sun that crept overhead.

  Locke rubbed his hands together after he readjusted the piece-of-shit heater in their nondescript clunker that still seemed to zoom pretty fast. But he wasn’t driving, so what did he care?

  “This glorious morning in Russia just gets better and better.” Jax steered into a parking space, avoiding the pocked asphalt, and zipped his jacket. “If I weren’t enjoying the hell out of fucking with this asshole oligarch, this wouldn’t be nearly as much fun as blowing something up.”

  “Agree.” Locke took a pull from his coffee cup as they monitored Cassidy’s buyer from afar. All in all, they’d given this dude a bad morning. Their only responsibility was to make sure he couldn’t go and pick up his merchandise until they received the all clear from Brock and the Delta team.

  When Parker said he had provided spy toys for Locke and Jax to use, he wasn’t kidding.

  “Did I mention the heat in this rickety-ass car doesn’t do shit?” Jax said. “What’s next on our list to make this guy miserable?”

  After adjusting their schedule to the traveling caravan, Locke and Jax had taken great pride in making his drive unbearable. It turned out there weren’t a lot of travel options in Russia. An oligarch with a fear of helicopters—like this man from London—would have to fly into one of a small selection of airports within a few hours’ drive of the Mikhailov estate and prepare for a tranquil drive—ignoring the road infrastructure. Because, damn, the pothole problems.

  But no one had accounted for Locke and Jax, who thus far had blown out a tire, given a billionaire the shits, and disrupted his cell service. Locke and Jax had endless hours to crack fart jokes. How bad did their sedans fucking stink? Blown tires and needing to use the crapper? Locke still couldn’t stop laughing when he remembered one of the security guards jetting from a sedan after they veered off the road and dropping his pants on the side of the highway.

  “What’s that thing that Parker gave us, over there?” Locke tilted his head toward the backseat.

  Jax grabbed the duffel bag full of gear that they didn’t normally use on their blow-’em-up, take-’em-down jobs. He rifled as Locke continued to check their surroundings. The vehicles were older, as were the stores. The Russian economy had to be awful, and yet, the man they followed had bought a person and was worth billions.

  Locke couldn’t wrap his head around that concept. Millions was a lot to understand. Hundreds of millions was a farfetched concept, but billions? What did one do with billions? If Locke had billions, he’d probably drop a million or two along the way and help some of these people. Jesus Christ, he was sitting in a car with the crappy heat on and a parka, and walking up and down broken sidewalks were people wearing what would be scraps compared to his down coat. “Dude, life is not easy here.”

  “Life is not easy a lot of places,” Jax replied. “But I bet most of these people don’t go home and decide to take cash in exchange for another person. That sick fuck.” He extracted something like a radar gun. “This is some serious James Bond shit.”

  Locke smiled, knowing what that was. “Yep, that’s the next one on our list.”

  Parker had explained there was a device that, if pointed at a room—or in this case, a car—would emit some sort of frequency. It could deliver the world’s worst headache. Those targeted wouldn’t hear it, but they would feel it.

  “I wish we had eyes inside their car. To see them tugging at their ears, not saying anything.” Jax smirked.

  “I’m not one to relish in people’s pain. But… yeah.” The man driving to retrieve and fuck his woman? Locke would shoot a migraine his way.

  “Fuck it, I am. They bought Cassidy. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about doing awful fucking shit to those people.” Jax turned the device in his hand, inspecting it from the top to the bottom and from side to side, and then offered it to Locke.

  It looked just like a radar gun. “True.” Locke turned it over. “These fuckers. I’d be okay if they suffered.”

  “So, you and her…?” Jax asked.

  “Me and her.” Locke shrugged, not committing to an answer. “Working together.”

  “Is that it?”

  “Is that important?”

  Jax had his hand out for the device, and Locke handed it back, immediately wishing that he had it still. Their Russian targets were regrouping enough to get back in the vehicles and hit the road. They had approximately three hours more if there were no more stops. Of course, there would be.

  “All right. I’ve played enough. Take the mind scrambler,” Jax said. “Blast the hell out of them. Make it hurt.”

  Locke didn’t know why Jax dropped the Cassidy questioning, but he didn’t care. He didn’t want to be a dick about a woman who Jax seemed to get on nicely with—a situation that probably didn’t happen often. “Good plan.”

  “There they go,” Jax mumbled.

  They gave the other vehicle a few car lengths’ lead, and as Locke waited for Jax to go, he began to worry. Was Cassidy doing okay? Were all the assumptions about other buyers and deliveries still in place? Did she handle the unexpected delay? Of course. She was a trooper—as long as no one touched her.

  Locke’s phone buzzed with a call from Titan as it sat in the center console, and he swiped the screen then pressed the speakerphone button.

  “Hey, it’s Rocco, and I have Parker with me.”

  Locke and Jax said their hellos.

  “We have new intel and a shift in what’s happening. It may change your plans.”

  Stellar… Locke rubbed his trigger finger along the side of the radar-like gun.

  “What’s up?” Jax asked.

  “Alex Gaev is there, likely making pace alongside you. That’s a total game changer.”

  Locke’s jaw fell. “Excuse me?”

  “What?” Jax snapped simultaneously.

  “We think he’s coming for his kid and woman. Not sure,” Rocco said.

  Damn. People did crazy shit when they were working for God an
d country. But throw in kids, and decisions weren’t rational.

  “The problem is,” Parker added, “we didn’t intercept the call. We’re working with third-party info. Alex will recognize Cassidy if he sees her. There’s a chance Ivan Mikhailov’s daughter is involved in the trafficking. No idea how this is set up or what the risks are to Cassidy.”

  Locke’s stomach bottomed out. That would be a death sentence for her. Assuming that Alex saw her or even knew about the sex trafficking ring. “Maybe he doesn’t know. They chased him out before.”

  “Maybe,” Rocco said.

  What they all left unsaid was that Cassidy’s survival now relied on a maybe. There were too many variables to account for. All of it was bad, and Cassidy was blind, having no idea what was about to happen.

  Jax’s head pivoted back and forth as he eased onto the street, following the Russian billionaire’s caravan, and silently mouthed. What the fuck?

  “Yeah, so shit got complicated,” Rocco said.

  “Yeah, you think?” Jax muttered. “You said this probably changes our plans. I’d say so. They’re going to slaughter her if Alex walks in and says, ‘Oh hey, hi, Cassidy. I know you.’ Locke won’t be able to get in there as a buyer, and all the intel that Delta team is working on will be for naught.”

  “Thanks for the summary, Jax,” Rocco said. “I got that too.”

  “There was no way we knew Alex was going to jump on a plane,” Parker said.

  Rocco grumbled, and his frustration was clear all the way from the United States. “We need to protect your cover and Cassidy’s life.”

  “I need to get back to her before Alex does,” Locke said.

  Jax, still following the billionaire at a safe distance, mumbled his agreement. “We’ll make sure that these assholes don’t make it to her, and then we’ll get back to Mikhailov’s ASAP. And where the fuck is Delta team?”

  “Waiting for the delivery, Jax. Chill your attitude,” Rocco snapped.

  “They will be ready for you very soon after you get back to the compound. Put a stop to these dickwads, and go.”