Her limbs were beginning to feel heavy, and lethargy made her struggle to keep her eyelids open. Her last thought as she slipped off to sleep was that she knew she was going to wake up someplace awful.
YATES SAT BACK in his chair and watched the café traffic around him. These people were so insanely normal. Did they never wonder how their lives could remain so easy? Did they ever realize that there were men and women dying out there just so these American citizens could enjoy a ridiculous amount of personal freedom as well as the independence to do idiotic things, make bad decisions, and in all other ways ruin their pathetic lives?
Lifting his coffee mug, Yates took a long drink and tried to calm down. The scalding coffee sliding down his throat helped ground him. Sometimes it bugged the hell out of him to realize that so many Americans didn’t give a shit what he and his brother SEALs did on foreign soil just to preserve American freedoms. It was disheartening. Not that his mother hadn’t warned him.
He slid back into that memory, picking at a brownie on his plate and recalling the woman who had so inspired him as a child. She hadn’t even been spec ops. She was just an able-bodied seamen. A petty officer with almost no desire to climb the tower of military hierarchy, she had been happy to go out on a submarine or a destroyer and just do her job. Sometimes Yates wondered how she and his father had ever met, much less tolerated each other long enough to marry and produce a child.
His father had wanted the political clout of having a wife who was active duty. Yates could remember his father’s speeches at political functions, fundraisers, and other events. Speeches in which the good ambassador would remind people that his wife was fighting for their country. That he knew so very much about their lives and their worries, and insert bullshit statement here. Even back then Yates had known that his father didn’t really give a shit about him or his mother. They were props in his never-ending search for more power and position.
So where did that leave him and Tasha? Was that their fate as well? Yates didn’t want to imagine the two of them using each other in such a way. She was an amazing woman, and he respected the hell out of her brain and her gumption. Tasha was incredible, and if he had the chance, he’d change his life for her. Romero was right. It was time.
The front door of the café opened, interrupting Yates’s thoughts. “Speak of the devil,” he murmured with a smile. Then he noticed two things. Romero looked as grim as Yates had ever seen him, and Tasha was noticeably missing from the group. “Where’s Tasha?” Yates had gained his feet without even realizing it.
Romero pursed his lips. There was an unholy light in his eyes. “They arrested her as a suspect in the murder of Johnny Dean.”
TASHA CAME TO slowly. She was lying on a cold, hard floor, and it was dark. She struggled to sit up, but she couldn’t get her body to respond to her brain’s commands. It was sort of like the communicators between the two were completely messed up. She felt heavy and stupid. It was sort of like plowing through a world made of glue.
She tried to take stock of her situation. Going through a mental checklist, she evaluated all of her senses, only to discover that other than the smell of old, stale fish, she had nothing to report. But this was most definitely not a jail cell. Gorman and the others had finally gotten what they wanted. Tasha was no longer their problem. And if things went the way Tasha was afraid they were going to, she was about to become part of the merchandise.
“Hello?”
Tasha almost didn’t believe that she’d actually heard the whisper. Then it came again.
“Hello? Is someone there?”
“I’m here,” Tasha said in a low voice. “Who are you?”
“My name is Rachel.”
It took a second for Tasha’s sluggish brain to put that together. “Wait. You’re Rachel? Like Rachel Trapp?”
There was a scrabbling noise, and Tasha felt the warmth of another human body moving in closer. “Yes. Rachel. Rachel Trapp. Do you know me?”
“Your brother and his friends are tearing up the East Coast looking for you,” Tasha told her fervently. “Where are we? Can we get out of here?”
“I don’t know.” Rachel’s voice seemed weak and confused. “They gave me another shot. They always give me shots. They hate me. They want to break me. This time, though, I woke up in another place.”
“This place?” Tasha tried to kick start her brain. She had to get out of here. She had to get Rachel out of here. This was huge! This could break the case wide open!
“Where did they keep you? Were there other women?” Tasha knew she was rapid firing questions, but she couldn’t help it. The sense of urgency she felt was profound.
“I don’t know. It was big. Maybe like a warehouse.” Rachel seemed confused. “No, wait. It was a ship. I remember the rocking. It never stopped. And sometimes we could hear the water. It smelled.” Rachel seemed to be slipping away. “It smelled so bad. Like death and horror. There was so much death.”
Tasha reached out and finally located Rachel’s hand. She gave the other woman’s fingers a squeeze. “You’re safe now. Don’t worry, Rachel.”
The other woman’s low laughter raised the hair on the back of Tasha’s neck. “You’re wrong, you know. There is no such thing as safe. Not anymore. They will come for us both, and we will probably die.”
The matter of fact way that Rachel spoke of her own death was chilling. Tasha thought of the hundreds of other women in this predicament. They were victims in some sick game played by men who thought they were God. It wasn’t fair. And dammit all to hell, Tasha was not letting them get away with it!
YATES FELT FROZEN. His brain was spinning around and around in circles. Tasha had a full alibi for the time of the murder. She’d been with Cassidy, locked in the basement of Johnny Dean’s building. Not that the cops were going to be willing to listen to that. They were already determined to hang her out to dry. Anything that didn’t further their goal of getting rid of Tasha wasn’t going to be welcome.
“We have to get down there,” Cassidy said urgently. “They can’t hold her. It’s illegal. But if nobody says anything, Tasha is going to disappear into their system and we’ll never see her again.”
“You know what their plan probably is,” Romero added.
Yates didn’t need to hear any of that. Yes. He had no doubt what the plan to get rid of Tasha involved. They were going to attempt to use her like merchandise. She would disappear along with the hundreds of other women taken from American soil and sold to foreign buyers.
“The Brazen Belle,” Cassidy said slowly. “Do you think they’d take her up to Baltimore?”
“We have to start at the police station.” Yates took a deep breath and tried to keep in mind what his father had shared with him. “Putting pressure on the locals is the only way to find out if she’s been sent to Baltimore or not. If we go running up there and tear that ship apart we stand a good chance of being wrong. Then we’ll have wasted our head start.”
“Local police,” Romero muttered. “I can’t wait.”
Cassidy was staring at Yates. He could feel the weight of her gaze and knew she was fully aware that he was keeping back more than he was saying. Finally she plopped down in a café chair and was obviously refusing to move. “Sit,” she told Yates and Romero. “And then you can tell us what you were able to learn from your father.”
Yates sighed. “Sometimes, Romero, your woman is like a pit bull.”
“I know.” His friend looked proud of that fact. “So you might as well spill.”
“Tasha was right. Law enforcement is up to its eyeballs in this thing, but it isn’t necessarily for the reasons you think.” Yates rubbed his head, wondering where to begin. “The Broker has diplomatic immunity.”
“Fuck.” Romero was looking a little green. “So what you’re saying is that the fucking State Department is protecting this guy.”
“In a manner of speaking,” Yates agreed. “They know about it, but until Homeland Security can come up with something
that allows them to take down the entire ring all at once, their hands are tied. Apparently they’ve tried taking pieces. Cities, clubs, individuals, but the guy just jumps to a new supply train, and that’s it.”
Cassidy frowned, looking deeply disturbed. “So who is he?”
“That was the oddest part,” Yates said helplessly. “They aren’t really sure.”
“Excuse me?”
“There are two men, brothers, who possess diplomatic immunity and have been questioned in conjunction with this operation.”
“There are two Brokers?” Cassidy squeaked. “Shit! We’re screwed.”
Romero put his arm around her. “Calm down, sweetheart. Tasha is a tough girl. So is Rachel. We have to have faith that they’re going to get us something tangible from the inside and break this thing wide open.”
“Oh yeah,” Yates mused. “And the government is watching us.”
“So getting recalled to active duty?” Romero raised an eyebrow.
Yates gave a hard nod. “Totally related.”
“Well, damn.” Romero looked thoughtful. “These fuckers are going to be sorry that they messed with our team. That’s all I have to say about that.”
Chapter Twenty
Tasha was freezing, but as her eyes began to adjust to the nearly complete lack of light inside the little prison she shared with Rachel, she realized that the other woman was wearing almost nothing. Rachel’s clothing appeared to be scraps. Her feet were bare. She moved in an almost animalistic way. It was as if she had been reduced to a primal version of herself. The thought was more than a little frightening. What had she gone through to affect such a change?
“Rachel?” Tasha asked quietly. “What do you remember?”
Rachel sat on the hard floor and curled into a little ball. She wrapped her arms around her knees and began to rock very slowly. “Not much.”
“Where are we? Do you know that?”
“This?” Rachel didn’t even bother to look around. “This is a shipping container. They always use shipping containers to hold us.”
“For what?”
In the dim light coming from some loose rivets in the old container, Tasha saw Rachel give a careless shrug. “It doesn’t matter, you know. There is no escape. If my brother comes, he’ll kill them all. I keep telling them that. But I think they already know.”
“They already know,” Tasha repeated softly. “Then they knew who your brother was when they took you?”
This idea seemed to surprise Rachel a little bit. “Yes? Maybe? It seems like they did. Sometimes the man tells me that he’s counting on my brother coming.”
“The man?” Tasha held her breath. “What man?”
“The one they call the Broker, I think.” Rachel shivered. “He’s a mean son of a bitch. I want Alex to kill him. I want him to kill them all.”
The dead tone of Rachel’s voice was chilling. Tasha realized that she could never possibly understand what this woman was going through, or what she had been through. Moreover, Tasha didn’t want to find out. She wasn’t certain she was strong enough. Was that how you really tested your mettle? If someone were to come and put Tasha in a cage in the belly of a huge cargo ship with dozens of other women, would Tasha keep her head on straight, or would she give up and lose hope?
Feeling determined, Tasha squeezed Rachel’s hand. “Don’t worry. Your brother is coming for you. I promise.”
YATES STOOD IN front of Sergeant Gorman’s desk and glowered down at the uniformed policeman. “I’m sorry, did you say that Ms. Campbell has been denied her due process?”
“We haven’t charged her,” the sergeant said defensively. “We can hold her for seventy-two hours without charging her.”
“Not if she demands a lawyer and a phone call,” Yates retorted.
“Not true!” The sergeant looked smug. “She hasn’t asked for a lawyer, and I told you. We haven’t charged her.”
It was all Yates could do to keep from launching himself over the countertop. “You’re full of shit. There is no way that Tasha wouldn’t ask for a phone call and a lawyer. She knows the legal system better than you do, I bet.” Yates glared at the sergeant. “That’s fine. I know some people. I’ll just call in a few favors and make sure things are above board.”
“Excuse me?” The smile seemed to freeze on the sergeant’s face.
“The prosecutor is an old acquaintance of mine,” Yates said with deliberate casualness. “Didn’t you know? He and I went to prep school together. My father is a US ambassador. You would have known that if you did your homework.”
It was almost amusing to see the sergeant’s jaw drop open. Yates pulled out his cell phone. He did know the prosecutor. He and Stokes had been buddies in high school. But Yates would have preferred not to stick his friend in the middle of something that was so obviously above this idiotic sergeant’s pay grade.
“Wait.” The sergeant fidgeted. “Let me go and—um—check with the captain.”
“You do that,” Yates suggested sarcastically. “I’ll just wait here with my friends for you to produce proof that Tasha is even still inside this police station.”
“Excuse me?” Now the man looked truly panicked.
“Gorman, right?” Yates kept his tone quiet and certain. “If you think that we don’t know exactly what’s going on, you’re even stupider than you appear. I know everything. I know about Broker. I know about the Brazen Belle. I know about Hanson Pharmaceuticals. I know it all.” It also occurred to Yates that telling this idiot what they knew was probably not the brightest idea, but if it helped to get Tasha back he was willing to take the chance. He could feel Romero behind him shifting from foot to foot. It was the only sign of agitation his fellow SEAL would ever show.
The sergeant retreated from the room, disappearing into an office and closing the door. Yates cocked his head, watching the sergeant and another man, with close-cropped gray hair, argue intensely for several minutes. There was a lot of hand waving, and the sounds of their voices seemed to resonate against the glass. Finally the sergeant came back out and slammed the door behind him.
He couldn’t meet Yates’s gaze. “Ms. Campbell is uh—she’s in processing right now. Once she’s processed, you can—uh—you can see her.”
“Yeah, I bet,” Yates growled.
RACHEL WAS THE first one to hear the noise outside the container. She stilled like a little statue. Tasha couldn’t even tell if the woman was still breathing. Then Tasha heard it. There were boots moving toward them over something that sounded like concrete. Tasha tried to still her own breathing, but her lungs were working like a blacksmith’s bellows. She thought she could hear two distinct sets of feet outside.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” one man said to his companion. “That bitch is trouble. We should put a bullet in both their heads and be done with it.”
A second male voice spoke. “The boss wants the first one alive.”
“Why?”
There was a derisive snort. “Because you have no idea what a pain in the ass her brother is going to be when he finally gets a clue.”
“This was not what I signed on for,” the first one said bitterly. “Money is one thing, but this is just wrong.”
“Shut up.” The second man apparently did not have the same level of conscience that his companion possessed. “Just open the damn container.”
“I still say we should just pop them and be done.” The first man actually sounded pouty about it.
Tasha gripped Rachel’s hand. She wished she had some kind of weapon, but there was nothing but them inside this container. Putting her lips beside Rachel’s ear, she whispered. “We need to fight. We’ve got to escape.”
“No.” Rachel’s answer was flat. “They’ve come to take you back for some reason. Don’t give that up. Go find my brother and tell him where I am. He’ll come for me and he’ll kill them all.”
Rachel kept saying that. Tasha didn’t know whether it was a gut response because of all the trauma, o
r something else altogether. Was Rachel sane anymore? It was difficult to tell.
“Rachel, come with me,” Tasha begged softly. “We can take these guys.”
“No, we can’t.” Rachel’s low laugh was eerie in the darkness.
The container’s doors abruptly swung wide open. The sudden light was blinding. Tasha swiped at her eyes as they watered and burned. Then she realized her captors had used the momentary distraction to their advantage. One man already had his arm around her waist and was attempting to drag her away from Rachel.
“No!” Tasha shouted, kicking out and trying to get free. “I won’t go without her!”
“See?” The first man snarled at his buddy. “Should’ve popped them!”
“Go!” Rachel shouted. “Go find my brother. Alex will kill them all. He will!” She was screaming now, her voice shrill and horrifying to hear. “He’s going to kill you! Do you hear me? He’s going to cut off your hands and your tongue, and then he’ll slit your throat when he’s done. And I will bathe in your blood!”
Tasha was stunned by the unexpected violence. Rachel dissolved into a maniacal sort of laugh while she continued to rock back and forth on her haunches with her arms wrapped around her knees.
That was the last sight of her that Tasha had before the men slammed the container door shut and smacked Tasha on the side of the head to knock her out. Her eyelids slipped closed, and there was nothing but black velvet darkness.
“WE’RE RELEASING HER into your custody,” Sergeant Gorman told a shocked Yates.
It took a full minute for Yates to recover his powers of speech. “Excuse me. Did you say that you’re releasing Tasha into my custody?”
“What are you? Deaf?” Gorman grunted. “She, uh—she fell down and bumped her head.”
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