by Julia Bright
“So the pain wasn’t too much?”
His question woke her up a little. Her ribs ached, and she was exhausted, but she didn’t want to focus on the pain. Making love with him had been too good.
“It’s okay. I wanted some sort of connection. It quieted the rage inside.”
He laid back, and she moved so he could hold her. Sheets covered their body, and she knew she would fall asleep like this, it was too comfortable, and she felt safe.
“Tomorrow, we’ll make sure you find a doctor and a psychologist.”
It would be hard going to a doctor to talk about everything, but she knew she needed to talk to someone. Jackson kissed the top of her head before his breaths evened out. It took her a while to fall asleep. Memories of that place in Morocco where they’d beat her filtered through her mind. Having sex with Jackson had helped, but she could tell it would take a long time before she actually felt normal, or close to normal.
The next day she woke after the sun was up. She hadn’t remembered having any nightmares, which was a first. The bad dreams had haunted her hard. She didn’t like thinking about those days locked in that room, her body beaten and abused, her mind tortured with their threats.
Kelsey had a computer open when Marissa stepped into the kitchen. Kelsey glanced up, guilt filling her face. She wondered what that was about. Then Adam came in, his eyes wide.
“Oh, I didn’t know you were awake.”
His gaze shot to the computer Kelsey was closing. She had a bad feeling, maybe like they didn’t want her to know what they were looking at. No way could she live like that.
Jackson stepped in, his head down as he stared at a table. “I have an address for—” he glanced up and froze, a frown clouding his face before he covered it with a smile. “I didn’t know you were awake.”
She looked from Kelsey’s guilty fact to Adam and then Jackson. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Marissa said.
“She’s going to find out if she stays here,” Jackson said.
“We can’t put ourselves at risk. I have more than just me to think about,” Adam growled.
She stared at the three, her mind working overtime. This wasn’t about her, this was something else. Jackson’s eyes narrowed, and he blew out a breath. Adam shot him an angry glance, and Marissa stood up, almost dropping her computer.
“What is going on?”
“Nothing.”
“Bull shit. Just tell me.”
Jackson opened his mouth, but Adam put his hand on Jackson’s shoulder.
“No,” Adam barked, his face going red.
“Wait, does this have something to do with how you figured out where to go in Italy? You didn’t happen upon the information on how to rescue me in Morocco. This goes deeper,” Marissa said. Silence and guilty stares greeted her. She shifted from one foot to the other. “I don’t care what you’ve done in the past.”
“This isn’t about the past, it’s about now.” Jackson’s lips thinned, and he glanced at Adam then shrugged. “We can’t keep it hidden.”
She drew in a deep breath and met their gazes one by one. “As long as you aren’t trying to assassinate anyone in our government, I wouldn’t have a problem.”
Jackson cleared his throat. “We’re not planning on killing anyone, but someone might die.”
She took a step closer to Jackson. “Not one of you, right?”
Jackson reached out and took her hand. “Well, hopefully not, but it might be dangerous.”
“Just tell me.”
Kelsey opened the computer and typed in a password before she turned the screen so Marissa could look at it. “Here’s the deal. This guy has a child in his house he’s making movies with.”
Marissa narrowed her gaze as she stared at the screen. “Why don’t you call the FBI?”
“They’d have to investigate. The guy is a repeat offender and has been in and out of jail so many times I think they have a towel with his name on it waiting for his next trip in. He has money, and his lawyer gets him off with a few months max. If we go in, we can rescue this kid and maybe do some damage that would hurt him, put him out of commission.”
Marissa’s stomach turned. “This goes against everything I know, everything I believe in.”
Kelsey stood and moved closer. Marissa straightened and faced her seeing the grit and determination in her eyes. Her beliefs were being challenged. This wasn’t her way, wasn’t how a by the book FBI agent would operate.
“Before my dad and brother died in that terrorist attack, the last thing I thought I would ever do was hunt down the filth who planned the attack. But when I did, when I knew he was dead, it was freeing. I knew he’d never plan another terrorist attack.”
Marissa closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on what Kelsey was saying. When she’d heard from Jackson how he’d killed the two men who had beaten her, she’d been thrilled to know they couldn’t hurt another. Though she hadn’t worked in the FBI unit that fought human trafficking, she’d seen the case studies. Then there was the boy who that bastard in Morocco had liked. She’d remembered his screams late at night. The boy had been hurt, and if she could stop that type of abuse from happening, shouldn’t she try?
Marissa opened her eyes and stared at Jackson. “Okay, so how does this happen?”
“We do a lot of research first. Before coming here, I wasn’t computer savvy, but Kelsey has taught us a lot. We make sure our research can’t be tied back to us. Once we’re sure, like we have actual evidence, we go in.”
She looked from Adam to Kelsey then back to Jackson. After being ingrained in the FBI, working to maintain law and order for so long, hearing what they were doing was hard to accept. “I’m trying to get past what I know as an FBI agent and what I know in the world. That guy, he was overseas and bad, really bad.”
“This guy is bad too,” Adam said.
She swallowed over the fear of operating outside the law. It was messing with everything she’d come to believe was right. But these people had saved her, and they were good people. She forced the uneasiness away. “Okay, show me.” She took a step closer to the computer, her heart speeding up as she realized she was really going to do this.
Adam held up his hand, stopping her in her tracks. “First, we need to know you won’t turn us in.”
This was where her convictions and training met with the reality of what Jackson and this crew were doing. She believed in the law or had when she’d become an agent. Did she actually believe in the law now or was another way more effective?
She stared at Adam then Kelsey and finally Jackson. These people were the good people. She not only saw it with her own eyes, she knew it in her heart.
“I swear by all that I am I will never turn on you unless you’re doing something like trying to kill the President. I wouldn’t be able to keep quiet. Also, if you hurt kids.”
Adam shook his head. “We’re here to fight for people who end up getting ignored by our legal system, or people who prove they are bad enough they can’t be trusted. Like that guy in Morocco.”
“It’s a good place to start, I think.”
“Our goal is right now is to take down this pervert who are currently abusing a child, I don’t think we’ll go after the president, ever, as long as he isn’t abusing people.”
Marissa chewed on her thumbnail, her mind tumbling over the information they’d given her. Could this really be happening? What the heck was she doing? This group was breaking the law, but the man they were going after was breaking the law too.
Kelsey sat down and opened the computer, pointing at the chair next to her. “Look at our evidence.”
“Okay, let me see what you have.”
She read over documents, saw the arrests and judgments against the man, saw how little time he served for raping children. He’d served two months for having sex with a seven year old. The judge believed the young child knew what she was doing.
“If you look here,” Marissa opened another
document, “You’ll see that the police were called a week ago. He had the child tied up in the basement, and the cops didn’t check even though his neighbor had said they’d seen him enter the house with a child.”
“So the cops won’t do anything about this guy. Is that what you’re saying?”
Jackson sat down next to her and took her hand. “I know this is hard to swallow. I was an Army Ranger, trained to uphold the constitution of the United States. Some lawyers would argue this man has more rights than that child he is raping. He is holding a child prisoner, but because the court doesn’t consider a child important enough to enact a punishment that fits the crime. The child is left to the mercy of people who just don’t care.”
His words sunk in and she realized he was right. She’d seen criminals get off because some lawyer made it impossible for the courts to do their job. Time and time again people who committed atrocities were let go. Those assholes would head home and do more shit they weren’t punished for.
She sighed, the truth of the situation taking over what she knew the law should do. These kids were being failed. Finally, she jumped up and paced around the room. Could she do this? Could she support Jackson breaking the law?
Marissa couldn’t take the pressure and left the room, heading outside. On the porch, she drew in the clear air, thinking about those days locked in that small room. Had Jackson and Adam not rescued her, she would have been sold to the highest bidder and made to do degrading stuff while they tortured her.
The door opened behind her, and she turned to see all three of them standing there. Adam’s lips were thinned, and he looked angry. Kelsey seemed reserved, untrusting. And Jackson looked hurt. She swallowed over the fear of stepping away from her background.
“I understand what you three are doing. Honestly, I can’t say I’m against it. I mean, I know my background says to let the courts decide, but these people are evil. I can’t turn my back on this child. I can’t condemn what you are trying to accomplish.”
“We won’t kill the guy. We’ll just do a few things to make him regret his life choices,” Jackson said.
She shook her head. “I don’t need to know what those things are.”
Jackson stepped close and reached out for her hand. He slid his lips over her knuckles and warmth filled her.
“If you really don’t like this, if you feel you have to turn us in, we can stop and send the information to the police. That doesn’t mean the child will be saved, it also doesn’t mean he’ll spend time in jail.”
Her stomach turned as she thought about the kid suffering. When she’d been threatened with rape, it had scared the hell out of her. This kid was living the horror she would have eventually faced. No way that kid wasn’t just a sex slave to fulfill a bastard’s sick fantasies.
She cleared her throat, pushing away the tears. “That bastard planned to sell me to someone who would have done to me what is being done to this kid. How can I tell you to not go rescue her?”
Jackson pulled her into a hug and kissed the top of her head before he leaned back and looked her in the eyes.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. You shouldn’t have had to question my loyalty to you.”
Jackson cupped her cheeks. “I never questioned that.”
His lips covered hers, and she leaned against him, letting him support her weight. After a moment she stood tall, and they headed into the house and found Adam and Kelsey who had come in earlier.
“I’m in.”
Adam moved to stand in front of her and held out his hand. “You can walk away, just please never reveal what happened here.”
“I won’t.”
“Thank you.”
Her lips curved into a smile. “Let’s see what I can help you with.”
“Sure.” Kelsey motioned for her to follow. “We have a room with multiple computers set up. It gets a little hot in there, so I have to use the fan, but we can all look at the information at the same time, and we don’t mess up our living quarters.”
They stepped into what must have been a bedroom at one point, and she froze. Computers sat on tables, on the walls were maps, printouts, lists, a whiteboard had key points they needed to look into. Their setup was similar to a strategy room she would use but smaller.
“You’ve done a lot with the space.”
“It was a guest room that my grandfather turned into a storage room. When I started looking for… Um, I needed a place to work, and this is close to the kitchen. It gets hot when we’re all in here.”
She stepped into the room and went to the board where they’d tacked up information. “You guys have plans that are bigger than just doing one or two operations?” She turned to look at Jackson. “This isn’t just a onetime thing. You’re planning on doing a lot more missions, am I right?”
“We have a security company, and we’re focusing on high-end clients,” Adam said.
“That’s a good excuse. You all do know how to cover your tracks, right? The government has developed ways to search hard drives. When you think your stuff is erased, our people can recover it. You have to do multiple erases and right overs.”
Adam and Jackson didn’t look like they had a clue what she was talking about. She narrowed her gaze as frustration grew. They would get caught, and Jackson would be taken away from her.
“I got it covered,” Marissa said.
She spun around, staring at the woman. “What?”
“Before all this happened, I worked in the industry. If anything happens, I have a system in place for running a cryptographic erasure on everything.”
She blew out a huge breath and reached for Kelsey, grabbing her shoulder. “Thank God. I was freaking out. It’s just I come from the other side, the one where we work to shut down all illegal activity. I just want you three to be safe.”
Jackson put his arm around her shoulder and drew him near. “We know you care. Thank you.”
Her heart squeezed. These people were doing all they could to make a difference. If the FBI caught them, they’d go to jail.
Was she doing this? Marissa closed her eyes and drew in a slow breath. Was she really helping these people break the law?
“You okay?” Jackson asked.
She opened her eyes and met his gaze. This man had rescued her from a fate worse than death. The FBI hadn’t put any effort into finding her. Eventually, the army or Seals or someone may have been sent in, but it would have only been after they had a reason to go in and saving her wouldn’t have been reason enough. They’d written her off as dead. She would have lived years being abused if it hadn’t been for Jackson, Adam, and Marissa.
“I just realized how serious you three are and it’s scary.”
“Scary how?” Adam asked.
“That you even need to do this. Why isn’t the government taking care of this filth? I get how the government can’t do much about kidnappings like mine, but this. Why hasn’t this guy been put away forever? That girl is in the same position I was in.”
“We want to save her,” Kelsey said.
“But there are hundreds of other little girls and boys in danger. How the hell can we as a country even attempt to say we have any morals and allow this.” Fire licked at her thoughts, making everything seem that much more urgent.
“It’s why we’re doing this,” Jackson said.
“I have so many feelings, and yes, I’m conflicted, but I also don’t want this asshole to get away with this. So, let’s get down to business and see what we can find.”
Kelsey started up the computers and the fan. Marissa studied the maps they had printed out of the area while Kelsey worked on the computers. She moved to stand beside Kelsey then took a seat, diving into the information they’d gathered. The man lived alone, he’d been convicted multiple times, he was released only months later to do it again.
Disgust seeped through her. Why was this man out on the streets after the crimes he’d committed? It was like he’d made an art-form of hurting ot
hers and yet the judges gave him months for crimes that would scar a child forever.
“Have you hacked into traffic cameras in the area?” Marissa asked.
“I looked at where they were, but there’s nothing in the area. He’s in a remote location,” Adam said.
“Do you think he has a helper?” Marissa worried about the guys going in only to find the man in question had someone else he worked with.
Kelsey opened a window on the computer in front of Marissa. “These are his chat logs. He says he works alone.” Kelsey scrolled down the page then back up to the top. Her eyes went wide, and her mouth dropped open. “Well shit, he’s made another post. Looks like he wants to get rid of this girl. If we don’t go in soon, she’ll be dead.”
Marissa read through the comments on the post. A couple of members were saying they’d buy her and film their interactions with her to send to him. Revulsion welled up.
“Kill the bastard.” Marissa gasped, and her hand flew to her face as she realized what she’d said. “No, don’t kill him. I didn’t mean that.”
“We can maim him,” Jackson said.
“How?” She stared at Jackson, her mind tumbling over everything they knew about this sick fuck and how he deserved to die slowly and painfully.
“We’ll think of something,” Adam said.
“So when are we doing this?” Jackson asked.
Adam rubbed his jaw, and his eyes narrowed “He’s not too far from here. Let’s go tonight.”
“Okay, let’s get ready.”
“Marissa and I will keep looking for information. You two do what you need to do for the mission.” Kelsey was already opening another browser. “We need to see if we can find a satellite over the area.”
“Why?” Marissa had an idea why Kelsey wanted to hack into a satellite, but they’d be noticed. The government could come after them.
“I’d like to see who all is in his house,” Kelsey said.
Marissa kept her voice even though her heart was pounding. “If we hack a satellite, the government will know about it.”
Kelsey shook her head. “We can’t allow them to go in blind.”
Marissa nodded. “It’s scary. I get that. But the more we do, the bigger footprint we leave, and the worse it will be. Do the guys have an infrared camera?”