by Katie Reus
“We’re going through everything from his files now. He’s into some shady stuff, but we haven’t found anything to indicate he’s into either the skin trade or selling babies on the black market.”
That was good and bad. They needed to nail whoever was behind this. “How’s Amelia?”
“Good. She held up well, stayed at Mercado’s for a couple hours. Then he took her to the hospital to see her employee who was injured in the attack this morning. She’s home now, alone. I’ve got one of my guys watching her place just as a precaution.”
Relief flooded his veins like a tidal wave. Knowing she was home safe smoothed out most of his edges. Even if he was pissed she hadn’t contacted him about what had happened.
He wondered if that bastard Mercado had kissed Amelia again. The thought of another man’s lips on hers had all the muscles in his body tightening. It took a moment for him to find his voice. “What happened?”
“Guy she fired about a month ago ambushed her behind her restaurant. Tased one of her employees, so she pepper-sprayed him until he went down. Dax restrained the guy and the locals have him in custody.”
Nathan wanted to know the bastard’s name but reined in his anger. Burkhart didn’t need to know the scope of his rage. Nathan would just read the report as soon as they disconnected. “Are they going to be able to hold him?”
“Think so. Nieto’s personally involved in this case now.”
Good. If the former employee was let go from police custody, Nathan didn’t want to think about what he’d do. The thought of someone hurting Amelia made something dark twist inside him. He wanted to head directly to where she was and take care of her. Didn’t matter that it was impossible right now; his heart was telling him to get over to her place.
“You two headed back to base?” Burkhart asked.
“On our way.”
“Is your friend okay?” Selene asked as soon as he and Burkhart had disconnected.
“She’s good.” He didn’t say more, but Selene didn’t seem to mind, thankfully. Right now he just wanted to get through the rest of the day and go see Amelia.
He needed to see with his own eyes that she was truly fine.
Leaning back in his office chair, Wesley speed-dialed Karen as soon as he ended his call with Ortiz. “You find anything?”
“I was just about to call you.” She sounded smug, a sure sign she’d most definitely discovered something to help their case. Right now he had her digging up everything she could to find out who’d hurt Amelia. “I did a run scanning CCTVs for license plates or vehicles that showed up around the same time Amelia was attacked the night of the auction, then yesterday. One license plate showed in the exact same vicinities.”
“Gray?” The truck Neal Gray had been driving that morning hadn’t been damaged, so if he’d attacked Amelia the day before, he’d done it in a different vehicle. They needed evidence to link him to the previous attack to show a steady escalation of violence toward her. Then they’d be able to get him on multiple offenses.
“No, but I found something very interesting. The plate of the truck used belongs to a Lorna Torres. According to the DMV she’s eighty-two years old. From what I’ve gathered through her insurance records, the truck belonged to her deceased husband and she just keeps it in storage in her garage.”
“The point, Karen.”
“I’m getting there. You need to appreciate my brilliance first. Guess who Torres lives next door to? Gray’s mother—and Gray had to move back in with her when he lost his job at Amelia’s restaurant. That’s not a coincidence.”
So Neal had stolen his elderly neighbor’s truck for the attacks. Stupid to steal so close to home. “Good work. Send all the info to Nieto. I’m going to call and give him a heads-up.”
“Already done. I blind-copied you.”
Of course she had. He swore Karen could read his mind some days. “Thanks.” Once he disconnected he pulled up his e-mail and scanned the info before calling Nieto.
“Yeah?” Nieto answered immediately.
“You checked your e-mail in the last five minutes?”
“No, I’m fucking busy over here.”
A smile tugged at Wesley’s mouth. “Well, check. One of my people just sent you a Christmas present. Has Sinclair gotten Gray to confess to the other attacks on Amelia yet?”
“No, he’s back in holding right now.”
“Well, get him out. With the new info you’ve got, Sinclair should be able to make this guy talk. Especially if you try to nail him for taking Tessa Hall.” Wesley didn’t think he was involved with that. According to Detective Sinclair, Neal Gray was pissed at Amelia for losing his job and giving him a bad evaluation when potential employers had called to check up on his references. Wesley couldn’t believe the guy had even listed her, considering why he’d been fired, but the stupidity of people never ceased to amaze him.
“You don’t really think he’s involved with Hall’s disappearance,” Nieto scoffed.
“No, I don’t.” But if they scared him enough into thinking he could be charged for the disappearance of Hall, hopefully he’d confess to everything else.
“Ah, gotcha. Thanks for the info. I’ll let you know what happens, but he’s in holding for now and he’s not going anywhere for the next forty-eight hours regardless.”
“Good.” At least that was one problem out of the way.
For now. It seemed clear that Gray had been the one to go after Amelia. And as long as he was in jail, she was safe. But Wesley figured that with Sinclair’s stellar record, he’d be able to break Gray soon. When that happened, it just depended on the right judge revoking Gray’s bail if he decided to take things to trial. But if he took a deal he’d skip a trial and go straight to prison.
That was what Wesley was hoping for. If not, he’d pull some strings and make sure that bastard got in front of the “right” judge.
Chapter 18
Shock and awe: a military doctrine meaning rapid dominance. A technique using an overwhelming display of force to paralyze your target’s perception of the battleground.
Nathan’s gut clenched as Amelia opened her front door and stepped back. He’d called ahead and told her he had good news and wanted to tell her in person.
But the divide between them was so thick it might as well be tangible.
“Did I wake you?” he asked as she shut the door behind him.
She was wearing lounge pants, a tank top—no bra, something he was trying hard not to pay attention to—and had bare feet. Her toes were painted a teal color today. “No, can’t sleep.” Her words were clipped, her gaze shuttered.
When she wrapped her arms around herself and didn’t invite him any farther than the foyer, he shoved his hands in his pockets. If he tried to reach for her, he knew she’d reject him. “I’m sorry about what happened this morning. How are you doing?”
Her shrug was jerky. “Good, I guess. Thank you for asking.”
Her response was ultra-polite, like something she’d say to a stranger. Which was what they felt like right now. It grated on his nerves. He wanted to pin her up against her front door and kiss her senseless. “Gray confessed to all the attacks on you. He’s going away for six to eight years.” He’d probably get out sooner thanks to their fucked-up system, but at least he was off the streets for now.
Amelia’s arms dropped, her bright eyes lighting up with hope. “For real?”
“Yeah, he confessed and took a deal. He was scared the cops would try to pin the disappearance of Tessa on him.” Not to mention he had a few priors so he knew how the system worked. If he hadn’t taken the deal and then had gone to trial with those priors on his record, he would have likely been found guilty. And a jury would have potentially, and probably, given him a harsher sentence than what he’d gotten. The guy was playing the odds that he’d get out of prison early.
“Thank God.” She raked a trembling hand through her hair.
He wanted to pull her close, to comfort her, but held back
. “I . . . found out after the fact that you went to Mercado’s.” And he was trying to get over being pissed about it. “The team got everything. He doesn’t appear to be involved. Not with the kidnappings anyway. He’s definitely into some illegal stuff, but it doesn’t look as if he’s into moving or selling people.” Or if he was, there was absolutely no evidence to indicate it.
“Thank God,” she murmured. “I thought my psycho-detecting radar was screwed up.” Her lips twitched a fraction, making him smile in return.
“You shouldn’t see him anymore, regardless.”
She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Is that an order?” He’d started to respond when she shook her head, cutting him off. “I don’t know why I said that. I’m not going to see him anymore.”
He nodded once, that awkwardness between them expanding again. He wished he knew how to fix it. “I don’t want to walk away from us,” he blurted.
It was clear he’d surprised her. She took a step toward him, her blue eyes filled with anguish. “I don’t either, Nathan.”
God, he loved when she said his name.
“But I feel like there’s this chasm between us and I don’t know how to fix it,” she continued. “And I’m not saying you will, but I have this fear that you’ll always resent me or hold it over my head that I didn’t tell you. I don’t want to live like that, feeling guilty all the time. It took me years—and a lot of counseling—to get to where I am, to a good place where I like myself again.”
Anger flared inside him even if he knew he deserved her reaction. He’d walked out, but only so he wouldn’t say something he’d regret. “I’m right here, telling you I want to try. You’re not even going to give me a chance?”
She started to reach for him, let her hands drop instead. “I didn’t say that. I just . . . I want to try a relationship with you. So much. Being with you again has reminded me how much I . . .” She cleared her throat. “How much I care for you. But it feels like we’re doomed to fail.”
Screw that. He wasn’t giving her up. He closed the distance between them and in a completely dominant move grabbed her hips and tugged her close. Her hands flew to his chest and slid over his pecs. “We can start fresh, be honest with each other about everything.”
Something flared in her eyes and she watched him for a long moment. “You mean like telling me who you really work for?” There was no anger in her words.
Shit. He didn’t respond. He did want complete and total honesty between them, but his cover was part of his job. He’d grown accustomed to it, but lying to Amelia twisted him up inside. Especially since he’d just talked about starting fresh. Who the hell had told her? Or maybe she’d just figured it out on her own.
“Are you going to say anything?” she asked quietly.
He wanted to tell her the truth. Desperately. “I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?” Her voice was flat.
“Can’t.” He absolutely couldn’t tell her who he worked for without authorization.
“Right.” Her lips pulled into a thin line. She took a small step back, forcing him to drop his hands from her hips. The step might as well have been as big as the Grand Canyon for how wide he could feel it stretching between them. “Is this like some sort of punishment? I don’t trust you, so you don’t tell me something?” Her question wasn’t bitter, just . . . full of anguish. Once again she wrapped her arms around herself in a clearly protective gesture.
He’d never do that, and it pissed him off she could think it. He physically ached to hold her. “No,” he gritted out. He started to say more, but his phone buzzed in his pocket. It was close to midnight, so this wouldn’t be good. Jaw clenched tight, he whipped his cell out, winced.
It was Burkhart. Infil in one hour. Get to base now.
No details because they weren’t necessary. They’d be infiltrating somewhere and he’d better be ready to gear up and go. “I’ve got to go.” Talk about perfect fucking timing.
Amelia simply nodded, her expression one of complete remoteness.
Well, fuck that. He covered the distance between them and crushed his mouth to hers. Her palms flattened against his chest. He thought she was pushing him away and started to back up, but then her fingers curled into his shirt.
Consumed with the need to taste her, he invaded her mouth with his tongue, teasing his against hers. When she moaned and lifted a leg to wind around his waist, grinding her body against his, it took all the strength he possessed not to stay and finish this.
With effort, he pulled back. “I’ve gotta go.”
Breathing as hard as he was, she simply nodded and let her leg drop. She didn’t ask if he’d call, didn’t ask anything at all. Just nodded. And there was a hint of resignation in her gaze, as if she expected that to be their last kiss.
No fucking way. Whatever had happened between them, they could move past it. He refused to believe otherwise. “I’m not letting you go,” he growled before turning and shutting the door behind him.
After whatever this op was, he was talking to Burkhart. He needed to be honest with Amelia if they had a shot at moving forward. He couldn’t ask for pure honesty from her and give her less. But it went both ways. They needed to start their relationship with nothing between them. There was still the matter of the information from the file on her that Burkhart had given him. Nathan didn’t care about how she’d gotten her start in business, though, only that she came clean with him about that too.
If she trusted him enough to tell him, maybe they had a real shot.
“No more movement along the perimeter,” Nathan said quietly into his comm as he looked through his NVBs—night-vision binocs. From his position on top of the abandoned warehouse across the street, he had a good visual of their target’s exterior. “Everyone report.”
Bell, Freeman, Dax, and the other men in his twelve-man team reported that they were in place and all saw the same thing he did.
As of twenty minutes ago, there had been no movement along the gated perimeter of a warehouse the NSA suspected of holding kidnapped women and children. Burkhart wasn’t certain if this was related to the operation they were trying to bring down, but they weren’t going to turn a blind eye to it regardless. Lopez had given Selene a tip that some Russians had been running a small slave trade and using this warehouse as their base of operations.
Fuckers were about to go down.
“Ten-four, headed down. Elliott, what’s your visual?”
“Except for a few homeless people, you’re clear for three blocks surrounding the target.” Elliott, as usual, was in the command center, keeping watch via CCTVs and other cameras he’d hacked into.
“I’m on my way down to ground level. In fifteen seconds we move in. Everyone knows their positions.” They’d put this tactical team together quickly, gearing up at home base and moving out in company-owned SUVs. They’d studied the blueprints of the place and, since it was basically a giant warehouse, it wasn’t hard to decide where to infiltrate.
With twelve of them, they were working in tandem, each pair entering together in a hard entrance.
“Explosives are in place,” Dax said quietly. He was the only one who’d already breached the fenced perimeter, using the cover of darkness to evade detection—and thanks to Elliott, who’d fucked with the video capabilities coming from the warehouse, it was a lot easier.
“Our guys just got off the phone with their ‘security provider,’” Elliott said, laughter in his voice. “They think it’s a widespread malfunction across a grid in the city. You guys are good to go.”
Nathan smiled to himself as he stepped out onto street level across from the abandoned building. The Russian thugs they were about to infiltrate had called their security company when their system went haywire, but Elliott had intercepted the call.
Now it was up to Nathan and his guys to do the rest. “Freeman and I are going through first. The rest of you follow in ten-second increments.”
After disabling the alarm system, they’d crea
ted a breach in the ten-foot fence line. Now they’d go inside in twos, fanning out to their designated position.
They’d all done enough ops similar to this that it was standard operating procedure, but Nathan never let his guard down.
M4 in hand, he slipped through the cutout in the fence, Freeman right behind him. Their soft-soled boots barely made a sound over the pavement as they moved quickly across the open space surrounding the warehouse.
Moonlight and the natural illumination from the city gave them enough of a visual that they didn’t need their NVGs.
There was no outer movement that he could discern as he raced to the far west corner of the warehouse. High along the building were a few windows. Light streamed out from them. Once he and Freeman were in place, he mentally ticked off the time, waiting for his last guy to check in.
Barely two minutes later, Dax murmured, “In place.”
He was the last one Nathan was waiting for. Their intel told them that they should expect a dozen armed men inside. He knew his guys could take triple that and still come out on top, but he liked these odds. He pulled his custom-fit gas mask down over his face. They all had on full headgear, covering their heads and faces except for eyes, nose, and mouth, but the gas mask was necessary for their next move.
“Everyone ready?” he asked as he pulled a canister from his utility belt. He and Freeman plastered themselves back against the outer wall.
“Affirmative,” came the replies from everyone.
“Hit it, Delta.” Delta was Dax’s call sign for this op. He’d set the charges; now it was time to blow everything.
A second later multiple explosions ripped through the air. The ground rumbled slightly beneath them. Excluding the rolling door at the front, there were four regular doors on each side of the building. Or there had been.
They’d all been blown free.
Adrenaline pumping hard, Nathan tuned out the shouts from inside as he tossed in a canister of tear gas through the newly created hole. Freeman did the same.