by Em Petrova
He stood in front of the visitors, arms folded, waiting to see what they’d do next.
Realizing she couldn’t just stand there anymore, she rushed around the bar to greet the guys. “Hello. Welcome to Ruby’s Place. Will you be dining today?”
One man who appeared to lead the others eyed her. “Yes, we’re here to eat.”
“Of course. Take a seat anywhere. I’ll just…grab your menus. I’ll be right back.”
Aware that they followed her every move, she grabbed some laminated menus to carry back. Chairs scraped across the wood floors and creaked when the big men seated themselves around the largest table.
Surely so many large men belonged to some club or organization. Maybe the mafia had sent them here to ensure she was doing her duty? As she passed out menus, she covertly studied them. None seemed to have the appearance of the other Russian men she’d seen before. Then again, how could she place a person’s nationality by sight? She’d only heard one of them speak, and he didn’t carry an accent, but that didn’t mean anything.
She was too exhausted, and if she was honest, downright frightened, to analyze the situation. She’d feed them and send them on their way.
“What can I bring you to drink?” she asked, pulling a notepad from her apron pocket. She tried to control the shake in her hand that never seemed to fully go away.
Before the first man could answer, two of her girls walked downstairs and entered the space. They took note of the guys, whispered to each other and giggled. One girl made a show of pushing out her breasts, as if her skimpy top didn’t already reveal enough.
These girls came to America with hopes and dreams. But they also knew they’d have to earn their bread and butter—at least until they were “married off.”
That marriage came with an exchange of money, and whether or not the girls minded that, Ruby didn’t know and tried not to care.
She threw the girls a pointed look to shut their mouths and took their drink orders, moving around the table to each man. When she glanced up, a big man had his stare centered on her as if she was the only woman he’d ever laid eyes on.
Her insides tremored. That trash can was sounding mighty good to her right now.
No, this wasn’t her. She was tough.
She lifted her jaw and met his stare. “What can I bring for you?”
His very full, very sensual lips seemed to quirk in amusement as he said, “I’ll have a beer.”
“Draft?”
“Craft.”
“Lager or ale?”
He was definitely smiling at her, the corner of his mouth tugging upward until creases popped out around his vivid dark blue eyes. “Ale.”
“IPA?” She referred to an India pale ale.
“Actually, I’ve changed my mind. I’ll have an iced tea.”
She stared at him. After the banter, he totally changed his mind about having a beer. With a shrug, she moved to the next man at the table, who knew exactly what he wanted.
When she reached the kitchen, Anushka and Inessa had their heads popped out of the door, staring at the men. She shooed them inside and ordered Anushka to fetch the gallon of fresh-brewed iced tea from the refrigerator.
“Are they here for us?” Inessa asked.
Ruby wanted to drill some sense into that pretty head of hers. Didn’t they realize the hopes and dreams they had for themselves would end in a pile of ash and pain when they were purchased by some lowlife man, made to slave for him and bear his brats? They wouldn’t be showered with diamonds and vacations and luxury cars. The Bratva lied to them to reassure them so they boarded the ship quietly.
Her insides curdled for five heartbeats before she gave Inessa a curt, “No.”
After she had all the drinks loaded on a tray, she returned to the table. The guys took up so much space. Their muscular arms required so much elbow room. Their big frames swallowed the chairs.
She dispersed the drinks and then gathered her pad again to take their food orders.
“We’re trying to find lodging in the area. It looks like there are rooms upstairs,” the leader said.
“Oh. No. No rooms here.”
The man didn’t shift his attention from her face. Why did she feel as if she was being x-rayed right down to the marrow of her bones?
“Where can we find accommodations for a few nights?”
Panic swallowed her again. “Anchorage.”
All eyes lit on her. Across the room, Max shifted his stance, spreading his legs wide in that don’t-give-anything-away pose she knew so well.
The good-looking man with the dark blue eyes the color of a night sky offered a smile. “Nothing for us there, but this place seems interesting.”
More freaked out by the moment, she thwarted their question. “I’ll see what I can find out for you. Now what will you have from the menu?”
Unfortunately, her voice broke on the word menu, which only had Max stepping forward in warning.
Oh God, she was screwing up so badly. She needed to take their orders and retreat to the kitchen to collect her wits. As she worked, she noted the man with the beautiful eyes and hard, sensual mouth never looked away from her once. If they were here for women, it was possible he thought she was on offer. Wouldn’t be the first time the mistake had been made.
After she got all their orders scribbled on the notepad, she hurried past Max.
He stopped her with a hand on her forearm. She tipped her head to meet his stare.
“Be careful,” he said in a low tone.
She pulled free of his grasp and bustled to the front, where she removed the menus from the window.
“What the hell was that?” Gasper said under his breath. They all heard him, though.
“Something weird’s going on in this place,” Penn put in. “Just keep your eyes peeled for anything at all.”
“I’m keepin’ my attention on Big Ugly over there. What’s his role here? Bouncer?” Broshears asked.
Without glancing around at the big man with the shaved head and biceps like a cement worker’s, Gasper assessed him. “Maybe he’s the owner. He stopped that waitress by grabbing her arm.”
“That’s pretty weird, you gotta admit.” Lipton raised his water glass to his lips.
The Xtreme Ops team wasn’t wearing military cammies or even the black performance clothes they wore on some missions. Today, they were acting as tourists come to the small coastal town of White Fog for a spot of fishing, but seeing the team dressed down wasn’t something that happened often.
The girls who’d come downstairs sat at a table, folding napkins into an ever-growing pile.
“Am I crazy, or are those ladies folding far more napkins than will ever be used in this place?” Gasper’s question received several answering nods.
As they sipped their drinks and waited for their food, a girl went upstairs and returned with two others.
“That makes seven women working this shift, if you include the one that took our order and the two peeking out of the kitchen.” Penn set his drink aside.
“Seven women for how many customers? Seems suspicious,” Broshears added. “And why didn’t the waitress tell us to try the bed and breakfast up the street for a place to stay?”
Just then, the waitress appeared, bearing a big tray heavily laden with plates of food. She was thinner than most women, but she had a toughness to her, like she’d worked herself to the bone. Still, her luxurious red hair tumbled in waves down her spine to the dip of her waist, accentuating the curve of her ass.
She dressed all in black, and her pale skin didn’t appear to have seen the light of day in a long time. Also, the shadows of sleeplessness lay in crescents under each blue-gray eye.
Gasper followed her with his gaze as she moved to the table and balanced the tray on her palm while handing out the meals of pot roast and pasta. When she moved toward him, she avoided his stare, but he didn’t mind. That gave him a better opportunity to study her.
She was beautiful—and as ner
vous as a new recruit on a battlefield. As she set the plate before him, he noted five blue moons on her forearm.
Bruising from that thug who’d grabbed her arm before. Clearly, he made it a regular habit and bruised her in the process.
“What’s your name?”
His question made her jerk her head around. She pierced him with eyes the color of a stormy sea.
“Ruby. I own this place.”
“Great place you got here.” He wasn’t entirely lying—the place was nicely kept up and was welcoming enough. But the bad vibes pinging his radar warned of something darker beneath the homey atmosphere.
“Thanks.” She didn’t smile at him, only moved away quickly.
As soon as they were alone, he directed his stare to his captain. “Did you see the bruises on her arm? That asshole grabbed her before.”
Penn gave a nod under pretense of tucking into his pasta with marinara and meatballs. “Do a little investigating. See if you can check the kitchen on your way to the restroom, Jack.”
Gasper pushed his chair back. The girls folding napkins offered him smiles, which he returned as he veered around the room as if searching for the restroom. As he passed the kitchen, he paused to push the door inward. A hasty scan of the room showed him the two other women plus Ruby clustered near the stove, talking quietly.
“Toilet’s that way.” The rough voice brought Gasper around to face the bouncer.
He was big, but so was Gasper. They shared a glare before Gasper stepped around him and headed to the restroom.
He spent a few minutes pretending to use the facility before returning to the table. When he sat, Shadow threw him a grin. “You’re slackin’, Gasper. Getting caught by that dude for snoopin’.”
“I’m beginning to question who’s in charge here.” He picked up his fork. The food wasn’t half bad, and the team had a lot of digging to do in this town, but he got the feeling they’d walked in to grab a bite to eat and stumbled across something bigger.
Ruby checked on them once more, refilling glasses as needed and fetching an extra napkin. But try as he might, Gasper couldn’t catch her eye again. She avoided him most, steering clear even when she walked by.
Penn made it clear to the team they shouldn’t trust Big Ugly in the corner either. They didn’t speak about their reason for coming to White Fog. Instead, they talked about the weather and the possibility of chartering a fishing vessel for a few days.
The girls finished their task of folding napkins, and they went back upstairs. A minute later, two different women walked down. When they entered, both threw the Xtreme Ops team sideways glances.
Suddenly, Gasper stiffened.
Penn’s eyes slid to him.
“Did you just catch an accent from one of those ladies in the corner?” He feigned biting into a roll that had been left behind after they all pigged out.
Penn returned the question with his own. “Is my hearing going bad, or is there a lot of noise over at the bar?”
Gasper twisted to see Ruby at the bar, pulling down the same bottles she’d been polishing when they walked in. When she felt his stare on her, she sliced a look at him. Her brow cocked as if to say, “Do you have something you want to say?”
Oh, he did. He wanted to ask what was really going on in Ruby’s Place. Why so many girls were scheduled to work during a nonexistent lunch rush, and why that asshole in the corner grabbed her arm hard enough to bruise her.
Why she was thin and not sleeping well.
What he wouldn’t give to get her alone and make her talk, but judging by the shards of ice in her glare, that wouldn’t be easy.
After lingering at the table for as long as possible to scrape as much intel as they could from the place, they found they didn’t have much more to go on than before they stepped foot inside.
Penn paid the tab, and left Ruby a hefty tip. As they strolled out again, Gasper’s mind returned to how she’d torn the menu out of the window. Like the sheets meant something.
He was always attuned to people he helped save…but this was somehow different.
She kept an eye on him like she was protecting him right back.
He shook off the notion as fatigue. He had nothing to be afraid of.
Next, they paid a visit to the bed and breakfast. The place was kept up nice, and the sign out front said vacancy. Penn went in to secure them rooms, but in seconds he came out again. After he did, an older man with stooped shoulders hustled to the sign and flipped it to NO VACANCY.
“Captain Penn Sullivan—pissing off old men in under sixty seconds.” Gasper’s comment was met with several chuckles from the guys.
Penn shook his head. “That may have been a record.”
“What happened?” Lipton asked.
“He said he doesn’t rent to men like us and we’re better off going to Ruby’s Place.”
Gasper’s brows shot up. “So we’re definitely not wrong that more is happening there.”
“And this guy doesn’t like it either. He’s probably our best bet for information, but he’s clearly resistant to seeing us.”
They walked from one end of White Fog to the other in minutes. Funny how there wasn’t a hotel in a town that boasted tourism as their high point. There must be cabins or camping facilities they weren’t seeing at the moment, but damn if Gasper could make out where.
“This is an odd place.” Shadow walked on Gasper’s three o’clock, keeping pace as always.
“It’s creepy. Reminds me of a movie. I keep waiting for a big creature to loom up out of the sea and swallow us.” He slanted a glance toward the sea, the choppy waves rolling with white tips from the wind.
“I want to go to Ruby’s Place and visit the upstairs.” Penn’s comment brought them all to attention.
“You think somethin’ else is going on? Like a brothel?”
He shrugged. “Dunno. I need eyes on the place.”
“Easy,” Gasper said in a light tone. “Since we can’t find anywhere to sleep, we’ll be on the sidewalk out front.”
Shadow chuckled. “There’s always the SUV, man.”
Gasper eyed him. “If you plan on taking off your boots, count me out. I prefer the sidewalk.”
The bruises on Ruby’s arm flooded into his mind. “We need to check into that woman who runs the place.”
“One step ahead of you, Jack,” Penn told him. “I already texted Cora to start digging around.”
“The woman didn’t want us there. In fact, she wanted us as far from there as possible. She said we could find lodging in Anchorage.”
Lipton, who always seemed to walk a pace in front of them, hung back. “Did any of you catch the names of any of those women employed there?”
They all shook their heads and remained silent. Gasper couldn’t help but believe there was an undercurrent in that bar. Something unspoken, unseen.
“We should talk to some other locals,” he suggested. “Maybe someone’s willing to spill.”
“Good thinking. Same groups as before. Split off and act like tourists.”
Gasper wanted to head straight to the restaurant. He gave Shadow a nudge. “What do you say about grabbing that beer we didn’t get before?”
“No drinking on the job.”
“One beer. It gives us an excuse to sit at the bar.”
Chapter Four
“So far, White Fog sucks.” Gasper stretched his aching spine beneath the spray of lukewarm water of the truck-stop shower.
Between watching Ruby’s Place, he and the guys had taken turns sleeping in three-hour shifts in cramped positions in the SUV and now their only shower was the terrible truck-stop facility that no amount of quarters dumped into the coin box would warm up.
A howl came from the shower next to his. “Shit. My money ran out and I still have soap in my eyes. Gasper, you got coins?”
“Fuck, hold on.” He reached blindly for his towel and scrubbed his own eyes clear of water in order to locate the roll of quarters in his pants pocket. Buc
k-ass naked, he stepped out to pump quarters into Shadow’s shower.
Seconds later, his buddy gave a sigh of relief. “Thanks, man. That shit burns. My eyes were already on fire from staying up most of the night watching men go in and out of Ruby’s Place.”
Gasper grunted. He hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, but his teammates told him at least half a dozen men visited the bar, which should have been closed.
Figuring he was cleaner than he’d been many days in the line of duty, and that the kinks in his muscles weren’t receiving any relief from the lukewarm shower, he toweled off and dressed.
Though they weren’t yet dodging bullets on this mission, they weren’t enjoying a relaxing vacation either. Sleeping in the SUV and taking a tepid truck-stop shower were on par for the job description. But sitting on a barstool for hours waiting for some tidbit of information that would help them stop the Russian mafia was altogether new territory, and the frustration for him was real.
Like waiting for days for a bomb to explode.
While he brushed his teeth, he considered everything he’d seen while sitting on that stool. First, the clock was ticking down—too fast. If they didn’t step in before the girls were sold, they’d have a hell of a time tracking them, and the likelihood of getting them back was slim.
Next, the Russians wanted them gone, and the bouncers would easily run anybody off—except the Xtreme Ops. To make their lives easier, the team needed to get the bouncers out of there immediately.
Last, Ruby was nervous as hell. The woman didn’t want them there, which only prompted them to stay right up until last call. He swore that Ruby had purposely given him warm beer, and she refused to meet his eyes, though he wanted to catch a glimpse of hers again to make out if they were really blue or gray. Irrelevant, but he’d been intrigued. By the end of the night, he decided that they were a combination of the two, a stormy flint color that drew him in.
That, along with her curves from behind, which he’d stared at most of the night. Judging by the woman’s body language, she didn’t want them in her bar. Which totally went against an owner’s creed. No customers meant her business would close.
