“Looking for this?” The screen on my phone was lit up allowing me to make out the face of the man holding it. It took everything in me not to give him the pleasure of hearing me scream as I took in the face of a monster grinning down at me. He had a tooth missing near the front and scars all over his skin. One side of his face looked like it had been melted and had shifted down the way so that only about a third of his eye was showing from behind it. “Ahhh sweet Piper, it’s okay. We are old friends. At least we will be.”
The smile dropped from his face suddenly as his free hand reared back and he swung forward, hitting me hard enough for the world to instantly go black.
We’d all put the ear pieces in and had done up the throat mic’s ready to go.
“On my signal, Kai take two. Hunter, proceed to the West, we’ll take the East. Jagger hit North and Duke will hit South,” Preacher’s voice spoke in my ear. Pressing the mic around my voice box, I made the double click that was my signal of acknowledgement and heard the others do theirs too.
Preacher had surprised me with his plan and it had surprised me even further when we’d all agreed that it was the best way to go. I guess with fuck knows what as his history though, he would know what he was doing.
The low-pitched noise sounded and we all started forward, keeping to the shadows as we covered the ground. Kai was high up on a tree branch and had the task of taking out two at the front of the compound and any others that came upon us without us knowing. Mace was on my team and Coleman was assisting Jagger while a couple of others that they’d brought with them were spread out throughout the other groups. There had been an equal division of experience across them and we were strong. What we didn’t know though was what we were up against inside.
We got to the door and I signaled Blake to make the move to open it. Cracking it open slightly, we stood behind the heavy metal door as Blake thrust the decoy forward. No sooner had it cleared the crack than shots were fired at it, hitting the foam soccer ball. This was a trick we’d picked up during a mission when we had nothing else to use and it became a fool proof technique. Each one of the teams were carrying the same decoy and over the ear pieces we heard whistles and people muttering as the bullets ripped their own decoy apart.
While they were focused on it, Noah and I got down on our stomachs, grateful for the thickness and protection of the door. In a move we’d used repeatedly, I lay down as Noah lay on top of me and we slowly moved forward with our guns ready. Using the shadows at the base of the door, we aimed around it and opened fire. We’d already put a fiber optic camera under the door to determine if Perry was being held inside and so we knew what direction to shoot in. The screen was being held beside us and we watched as we hit targets and where the others scattered to.
“Two,” I said lowly after I’d pressed the mic against my throat, Noah continue to fire above me. The sound was loud, especially so close to my head, but again it wasn’t something that I hadn’t experienced before. “There are six heading toward you. Armed with automatics.” Waiting for the acknowledgement back, I held off until I heard the sound of shots coming from that direction before getting to my feet now that Noah’s weight was off my back. “West clear.” I radioed.
“Hooeee, that one almost puckered up my ass, man,” Noah said giving himself a shake.
“You need to work out,” I grumbled as we kept low and entered the building. “You’ve put on weight.”
“Fuck off,” he whispered behind me, our eyes not once moving from in front of us. The sound of a baby crying could be heard from a room off to the left and I signaled for my team to head in that direction.
Crouching down low, Blake fed the fiber optic under the gap in the door again and we looked at the night vision picture now on the screen in front of us. There were a couple of bodies huddled together in the corner, but whether they were friendly or hostile we wouldn’t know. Giving Noah the nod, I okay’d the opening of the door, the rest of the team remaining vigilant and watching his six.
Creeping in and making sure to keep noise to a minimum so that we could hear if anyone was coming around behind us, we made our way to the bodies where the crying was coming from. As we got closer, I made out three little kids who were huddled around something that I assumed was Perry. As we reached them, they pulled away with tears streaming down their faces.
“Don’t be scared,” I said the most stupid and useless words in the history of mankind, but ones that came to all of us at least once in our existences even when we knew they were bullshit. “We’re here to help.”
The kids started to whimper and back away from us, and that’s when I saw the doll on the floor with a recorder strapped to its stomach.
“What the fuck?” someone barked as I stared at in shock. The kids started to cry harder and I knew that if there were any hostiles still around that we’d be fucked at this rate if we didn’t get control of them.
“Your parents sent us,” I bluffed, hoping that it would calm them. It worked and the volume of their cries started to settle.
“Really?” A little voice sniffed.
Nodding, I held my arms open for one of them to come into so that we could get them the fuck out of there. A couple others did the same and one by one we got the kids out and ran, crouched over them the whole time, back to where we were meeting.
“We have a negative on the mark,” I growled into my throat mic. “There was a decoy.”
One by one, the word that I’d dreaded hearing when we’d arrived came over the airwaves.
“Negative.”
Putting the kids down at the car, we waited as Kai used her scope to check for incoming and provide cover while we got the information that we needed. It was a miracle that we’d managed to save the ones we had, but where the fuck was Perry?
“Did you see a little blonde baby?” I asked the little girl in front of me. I didn’t know who she was or how long she’d been taken, but she was in torn clothes and was filthy. I couldn’t even tell what color her hair was in the little light that I had available. Pulling up the photo that we had of Perry on my phone screen, I showed her.
Nodding her head, she looked at me, still hunched over herself. “She was there, but the woman took her.”
“What did the woman look like?” I hated putting her on the spot, but we needed this information. How the fuck had they gotten the drop on us?
“She was tall and had hair like yours,” another one of the kids, a little boy, pointed at my dark hair. This might be a detail, but in the grand scheme of things it was useless.
“Was this the woman,” Kai asked as she joined us and showed the kid something on her phone screen this time.
“That’s her,” the kid nodded vigorously as he pointed at the screen.
Turning to look at us with a grim expression, Kai said, “We have a problem. A big fucking problem.”
I was about to ask what when Mace and Coleman joined us with their teams. I could feel the tension and anger coming off Mace and was about to ask what was going on when he swung toward me with a piece of paper in his hand. Looking down at it, I saw an attractive dark haired woman handcuffed to a bed. She had a bruised eye and blood coming from her nose, but the look of defiance in her eyes was clear. Beside her another woman with short hair was curled up asleep or unconscious, her hands handcuffed above her too. I could see strands of red hair beside her, but the focus of the photo was these two women. Underneath their photo was a messily scribbled message.
Sorry we missed you.
“Who’s that?”
Lunging toward me, Coleman just caught Mace before he could connect with me. “That’s my fucking world. My woman! And my goddamn baby sister.”
Preacher, who had been talking quietly with Duke to the side of us, walked forward. “We were set up. They knew.”
“How?” I asked. No one else knew apart from us.
“I think I have the answer to that,” Kai said, holding her screen up for us all to see. On it was the photo of a woman t
hat we all knew well, seeing as how we’d worked with her for years. She was holding a beautiful little blonde Perry fast asleep in her arms and talking to a heavily armed guy.
“Is that Bo?” Noah asked in disbelief. These two had history, everyone knew that. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, so fuck knows what he was thinking.
“It’s not what you think,” Duke interrupted. “She’s with me.”
I had a flash second of relief, before the anger took over. “And you didn’t fucking think to mention this? There wasn’t one point where you thought that this might be motherfucking vital information?” Blake held me back as I tried to reach the asshole.
No one thought to hold back Noah though, and they really should have. There was a flash as he went around us and then the sound of fist connecting with skin sounded, unfortunately scaring the kids who’d remained quiet the whole time. One by one, they started crying again. Nodding over at a couple of my men, I sent them back to deal with the kids while I dealt with the clusterfuck in front of me.
Lying on the floor, Duke slowly sat up, moving his jaw from side to side and spitting out a mouthful of blood. “She can’t be compromised. She’s finding locations for us.”
“But you knew she was in there. That she’d get the mark and retreat,” I growled, my fists clenching.
Shaking his head, his got up and dusted his ass off. “She’s not there to intercept and retrieve. She’s there to find and pass the locations back to us. If she was to intervene, her cover would be blown and she’d be in danger as would the innocents involved.”
His explanation made sense, but Noah was struggling to accept it. “She could be killed!” He roared.
Looking at him in disbelief, Duke said slowly, “You don’t believe that any more than I do. That woman could give my beautiful niece a run for her money,” he nodded in Kai’s direction. This was true, but apparently Noah’s feelings for Bo went deeper than any of us knew.
“If anything happens to her you son of a bitch, I will fucking end you myself,” he spat in Duke’s direction, before spinning around and storming over to our bikes.
During all of this, Mace and Coleman had been talking beside us with the rest of their men. I hadn’t forgotten that his woman and sister were caught up in all of this too.
“You don’t fucking know that,” Mace roared at Coleman suddenly. The kids had been moved into the back of the SUV that Kai had driven, and hopefully hadn’t heard the fierceness and pain in the man’s voice. “He could do anything to them. Gia can’t go through that again Coleman, she fucking can’t.”
Walking over to them with my remaining men and Kai beside me, I stood and waited for them to come up with a plan.
“We have Neil and the others nearer to them than we are right now, Mace. We also have the Montgomerys and Townsends. We get them looking and then we fucking get them back.” Coleman said in a tone that dared Mace to fly off the handle again. “But what we don’t fucking do is what you’re doing now. Keep your head on, your mind on the game and fucking hit a home run.” This was a piece of wisdom he’d used before when I’d been around and it made sense.
Obviously, it struck a chord with Mace because the furiousness that was riding him, dropped away slightly and he took a deep breath. “Make the calls, and find them.” He turned around to talk to me, before adding, “Nothing happens to them, Coleman. Not one thing. And whoever we find who is attached to it is mine.”
Mace had enough ghosts like me, but this was his family, his call. Obviously, we were past the point of including the authorities now, and this would be dealt with by us. The government were already involved having given us the task of retrieving Perry and assisting with the traffickers, and I’m sure that it would get rid of some paperwork if we did it this way. Still, sometimes it was better to keep things quiet and not test theories.
Regrouping, we decided to ride the kids back to the drop off point with the authorities that we were working with, and then travel straight to Piersville to help with finding Ava and Gia. We already had friends moving in to help track them, but the more brains the better on this one. We knew who we were working with after all.
Pulling up to the building where our contacts were waiting, I walked over to the door of the SUV where the kids were now safe and sound. Opening it, I waited for them to all turn in my direction. One had dark hair and reminded me of Sam, making my heart twinge with missing him.
Crouching down slightly, I looked each one of them in the eye. “You did good kids. I’m proud of you, my team are proud of you and your parents will be proud of you,” I saw their chests puffing out at the praise. “In that building are police who are going to call your parents. They’ll ask you some questions and if I could, I’d stay around to help you out, but the people who took you took my friend’s sister and girlfriend so I have to go and help him. I need you to be brave a bit longer, okay?”
The little boy who looked like Sam took the other kids hands and scooted toward me. “I got them. You go and find her.” I ruffled his hair, wishing that it was my son’s while he sat in the safety of his mom’s living room playing with his toys.
Turning away, I went to walk back to my bike and was stopped by a little voice. “Mister?” Turning back, I saw the little girl that I’d carried out of the building holding tightly onto the boy’s hand. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Giving her a big grin back, I replied, “You’re very welcome. The men inside have my details and will give them to your parents. Ask them to give me a call when you’re all settled right?”
Nodding at me, she let go of the boy’s hand and ran up to wrap her arms around my legs, hugging me tightly. Leaning back to look up at me, she said five words that later would be the fuel that I needed to get me through one of the worst moments of my life.
“I’m proud of you, too.”
Replaying the words as we rode, I thought about finding a stop so that I could call Piper. I was just about to radio the suggestion through when Kai flashed her lights and gave one short press of the horn in her SUV. One by one, we all pulled off to the side of the road and waited for her to reach us as we got off our bikes.
She looked spooked to shit and back as she reached us. “Perry was found in the park that she was taken from thirty minutes ago. Some runners ran past the sand pit and heard her crying.”
“What the fuck?” Coleman muttered.
“Apparently, she was found with a note on her saying that whoever took her had had a moment of madness fueled by the death of her own baby and was sorry for scaring her and her parents.”
We all looked at each other frowning. “And the authorities?”
Shaking her head, she let out a growl. “Cover up. It wouldn’t look good for a majority of our abc’s to not have control over something like this. The Senator was pushing for harsher penalties and more man power to fight against trafficking. If it looked like the cause that he was pushing for was stronger than our authorities let on…” she trailed off. We’d come across this numerous times, it was no surprise. A fucking big bone of contention sure, a surprise – no.
I was about to ask her what her contacts wanted us to do now, when my phone started ringing with Dad’s ringtone. Suddenly I was beyond anxious to hear about my son and woman.
“Dad…”
“Piper’s gone,” his frantic voice shouted and I heard Griff yelling in the background as doors opened and were slammed shut. “There’s glass everywhere and she’s not fucking here.”
It felt like the ground had fallen away from under me, and I tilted to the side, saved from falling on my ass by whoever was unfortunate enough to be there for me to collide with. I never got the chance to say anything because my phone pinged in my ear with an incoming text message. Knowing already what I was going to see, I lowered the phone and opened it up, hearing the faint sound of my Dad’s voice shouting at me from it.
On the screen was a photo of Piper in a similar position to what Mace’s woman and sister had been in.
Underneath it, were the words: tick tock, tick tock.
My head was thumping and my arms hurt fiercely from being handcuffed over my head. I hadn’t been awake long, but wherever I was it stank.
When I’d opened my eyes, I’d been worried by the limited field of vision that I had on the left side, but as I remembered what had happened I realized that it was just swelling, not actual damage to my eye. At least I hoped not.
I’d had seconds where I’d wanted to scream hysterically, but then I’d thought of how calm Hunter always was. Then I’d thought of Sam and I knew that I needed to keep a level head and approach this smartly if I was going to get out of here.
Hearing footsteps approaching, I hung my head back down, hoping that they’d believe that I was still out cold.
Compass (Valiant MC Book 1) Page 12
