Reunited in Danger

by Joya Fields

  “Lots of people overcome horrible upbringings. Logan carries his around like a suitcase. Or maybe a shield that keeps him from taking a chance on love,” Nevaeh said thoughtfully.

  “You’re right. Maybe there is a chance our relationship could work, if only he could get over himself.”

  “Damn straight,” Nevaeh said.

  Tingles shimmied up her arms. She just had to make Logan see he wasn’t like his father. In fact, he was the opposite. Everyone else saw that. Why couldn’t he see it, too?

  “What about the job in Texas?” she reminded her friend. “It’s a great opportunity.”

  “There are social worker jobs in Texas, too.”

  Ben was Keely’s reason to stay in Baltimore. She’d stuck by her adoptive father, had cared for him for as long as she could remember.

  And yet he’d encourage her to follow her heart. If things worked out with Logan, she could visualize herself in Texas. His new job wouldn’t be a reason to keep them apart.

  Talking things out had helped her see the possibilities. Now one question remained: how could she show them to Logan?

  …

  Logan eased his SUV into the police department parking lot. Quinn flagged him down with a wave, then opened the door and slid in. Time to follow up on Jacko’s tip and pray it panned out.

  “Got your Kevlar on?”

  Logan pulled open his jacket to flash his vest as he pulled out into the late-evening traffic.

  “Jacko’s information better be good.” Quinn yanked the seatbelt over his ample stomach and snapped it.

  “This tip is specific.”

  “You better hope it is. If SWAT shows up for nothing, they’re gonna have our asses.”

  “It’s time for one of his tips to pay off. What about Ben’s case, though? Did you hear if Dunnigan got patrol to check out the alibis for the church members who have briefcases?” Logan asked.

  “Craig Bittinger’s got a record. Nothing on his rap sheet in ten years, though.”

  Logan nodded. “Yeah, I saw that on Maryland Case Search. How about alibis for the day of Ben’s attack?” Quinn was working on the case off-the-clock, too. After their conversation at the diner, he’d asked to be involved. Said it helped keep his mind off his family problems. Dunnigan didn’t seem to mind the extra help.

  Quinn shrugged, pulled out a pack of gum and folded a piece before putting it in his mouth. He offered the pack to Logan. “Strange bird, that Bittinger woman. I stopped by to talk, but she had us stay outside on the stoop. Claimed her kids were napping.”

  “Huh. I had to talk to her on the stoop because her damned dog didn’t like strangers.”

  “Odd. But she did say her husband was with her when Ben was attacked.”

  “Not at work?” Logan asked. “The attack had happened in the middle of the afternoon. Wouldn’t he need to prepare for the dinner rush?”

  Quinn dropped his hands to his lap “Said something about helping her interview nannies.”

  “Damn.” Every lead they got brought them to a brick wall. “Who would gain the most if something bad happened to Ben? Because if Margaret Beyer hadn’t called the police and gone into Ben’s house, Ben could have been killed.”

  “I’ve been wracking my brain over that one.”

  “Yeah. Me, too.” Logan couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing something right in front of him.

  “So what time’s this yacht supposedly showing up?” Quinn asked as Logan pulled the SUV into a spot at the edge of the parking lot.

  “Some time after nine.” Logan shifted into park and stared through the windshield at the piers and the lights of the city reflected on the surface of the water. He scanned the deserted repair yard. The lot was dotted with various sized boats resting on trailers and wooden cradles that tossed long shadows over the gravel. Two piers jutted out into the Inner Harbor. A mobile boat lift hung over the water, waiting for its next job.

  “Gotta say, this is as good a spot as any to do something illegal,” Quinn said. Shifting in his seat, he jiggled his leg, making the SUV shake.

  “Christ. This bust better go down soon,” Logan said. He looked back out over the harbor, still sparkling with colored lights—hues of blue, green, yellow, and red—reflecting off the various waterfront businesses. SWAT blended in so well with the buildings and the cars around the parking lot that even their shadows weren’t visible. The uniforms sat waiting in vans by the street, ready to rush the scene.

  SWAT would be taking the lead. Specifically, Hank Ferland, the Commanding Officer. Logan had worked with Hank on take-downs before. The man knew his stuff. Hank would have his SWAT team surround the boat from land and water to be sure none of the passengers or crew could flee.

  Logan grabbed a pair of infrared binoculars from his backseat. The binoculars enabled him to make out some of the boats more clearly. Including a thirty-footer with a dolphin on the side like Jacko had said. His heart raced. “Shit. There. It’s already docked.”

  Next to him, Quinn leaned forward and squinted through the windshield, glancing around the vacant lot. “If they’ve got twenty people aboard, who’s here to receive ’em?”

  “If that’s the boat and the girls are on it, somebody has to show up soon.” Logan turned to scan the area behind them. In spite of the lights from the harbor, the inky darkness hid everything except shadows. And none of the shadows were moving. He couldn’t break radio silence because a scanner could intercept their operation.

  Willing himself to be patient and hoping that Hank spotted the boat, too, he blew out a breath and his pulse returned to normal.

  Headlights arrowed into the parking lot. Tires crunched slowly across the lot. A long white van pulled next to the docked boat and three men got out and climbed onboard. Logan held his breath, waiting for SWAT to move. The only sound was the water lapping against the pier.

  Like ghosts from a mist, a stack of SWAT team members carrying rifles materialized out of the shadows, quietly swarming the boat. Logan’s pulse raced even faster and adrenaline coursed through his body.

  Hank raised his hand in a silent order, and the yacht repair yard was suddenly illuminated with thousand-watt spotlights. SWAT members aimed their rifles at the boat.

  Three men standing on the deck whipped around to stare at the lights.

  “Freeze! Baltimore City Police.” Hank’s voice came out loud, magnified by the loudspeaker.

  Two of the men scrambled to the lower cabin and the third one jumped overboard. A quiet thud and a hissing sound reverberated around the lot.

  “Tear gas,” Quinn said.

  Logan nodded and fisted one hand on his leg. In the other, he held his gas mask. Damn. He wanted to be part of the action but was under orders to wait.

  “Come out with your hands above your heads,” Hank shouted through the loudspeaker.

  A tall, burly man climbed out from below deck, raised one hand and staggered from the boat onto the dock, coughing and rubbing his eyes with his other hand. A smaller, dark-haired man followed behind him.

  “Freeze,” Hank bellowed. The men stood still with their hands in the air.

  “All units, go,” Hank said into the radio.

  Logan and Quinn’s cue. They bolted from the SUV, raced to the boat.

  When they arrived, the third man was standing handcuffed and dripping wet with a police diver next to him.

  “Anybody else onboard?” Hank asked the coughing man, who was now secured against a piling on the dock with a rifle pointing at his chest.

  The guy at the barrel-end of the gun glared at Hank through watery, tear-gassed eyes and didn’t answer. A split second later, he spit at Hank.

  Hank didn’t even blink. One of SWAT guys trained his gun on the men and the other read them their Miranda rights. The SWAT team leader whipped around to face Logan and Quinn. “Come on down, but put your gas masks on.”

  Logan shoved his gas mask on, made sure Quinn was behind him, ready to follow Hank into the lower cabin of the
yacht.

  He had a good idea of what they’d find. He’d been part of three other take-downs of human trafficking. Human beings pushed like cargo into an area no bigger than fifteen or twenty square feet. Looking into their eyes was the worst part. They had a haunted look Logan couldn’t quite describe.

  Not terror, not fear…something more. Worse.

  Something that reminded him of history class and photographs of POW camps.

  “Foster.” Hank’s muffled voice rang out. He pulled a young, fully outfitted SWAT member forward. “You go first. Keep your rifle ready. Calm them down.”

  Foster spoke several languages, Logan knew from working with him before.

  In spite of a cool night breeze on the water and the mask covering his face, thick air sweltered up at them from below deck.

  Ten or twelve SWAT members surrounded the deck, weapons drawn. No matter how many times Logan had walked in front of armed men itching to pull the trigger, he still felt like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. But a guy had to trust.

  Logan and Quinn pulled their guns at the same time. Kidnappers didn’t usually hide in the salon area—they wouldn’t lower themselves to mix with their captives—but it wouldn’t be the first time an armed attacker was flushed out of the lower deck. They might have all the perps out on the dock. But some might still be onboard.

  Foster’s voice, low and steady, added to the chatter from down below—women talking at once, crying, screaming. Begging. Logan’s gut stirred.

  “They’re zipcuffed to a pole along the floor. I need scissors. Don’t want to scare them with my knife,” Foster said.

  Hank barked an order. Seconds later, he passed the tool to Foster.

  Logan stepped to the side and holstered his gun as the two SWAT members moved the first group of women up the steps. He held out his hand to help each of them.

  “Christ, North,” Quinn muttered. “At least put latex gloves on.”

  Often these people had traveled hundreds of miles from home, lived in horrible conditions, all in hopes of a job. Survival.

  They deserved a human touch.

  He lost count of how many women stepped up from the ladder. At last count it’d been twenty-one, and still more rose from the belly of the small boat. Logan glanced at the parking lot where red and blue lights reflected off the white cinder-block building and the freed captives who sat huddled on the gravel parking lot. A uniformed police officer handed out water bottles.

  When Logan had helped the last woman out, he backed up a step and started a head count.

  “One more,” Foster said from down below. “Well, actually two more, but they’re connected.”

  Logan stepped forward and shined his flashlight into the lower cabin area. Foster tried to nudge an older woman into giving up the limp body of the younger woman she carried. The woman cried and kept saying the same phrase repeatedly.

  “She’s speaking Thai. Says she doesn’t want to let go of her,” Foster said.

  Logan threw down his flashlight and braced himself on the metal edge. “Take my hand,” he said to the woman. “Push her from behind when she starts climbing, Foster. No time for modesty. If she wants to carry the girl, she’s going to have her butt pushed to get her up here.”

  The woman frowned and shifted the younger woman so most of her slim weight was over her right shoulder. Foster said something in what Logan assumed was Thai, and she grunted and took a step up, grabbing Logan’s hand. Within seconds, she was on the deck, her words panicky and hurried.

  “What’d she say?” Logan asked Foster as he climbed to the deck, his face pinched and worried.

  “She said ‘watch out for the baby.’”

  Logan guided the woman to a padded seat on the boat deck and optimism rose within him. Did she mean the girl was her baby or did she mean something else?

  The woman laid the girl gently on the cushions.

  He froze. The young girl’s stomach protruded, round and pregnant. His goal of saving everyone aboard was crushed, because there was little chance this girl would survive.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Logan scrambled along the boat deck and knelt beside the girl. He hurled his gas mask aside. Sweat trickled down his spine. A cold wind whipped through the repair yard and he shivered. “Get a medic down here,” he yelled to Hank. He checked the girl’s wrist and neck for a pulse. Thready, but it was there.

  “Come on, come on.” He rubbed her hand, willed her to hang on.

  She didn’t respond. He needed to try harder.

  “Christ, Logan,” Quinn said, hustling beside him, shaking the vessel. “She’s covered in filth. Wait for the EMTs.”

  Logan focused on the girl and her struggled breathing. If only they’d known about the boat earlier. How long had it been docked here?

  The EMTs scrambled aboard and came at a quick jog, carrying a stretcher. “Weak pulse, shallow breathing,” Logan told them. He scrambled a few feet away to allow the medics to get closer.

  As they readied their equipment and started working on the girl, he wiped the back of his hand along his pants and looked at the line of battered, mistreated women who sat against the cinder block building. They’d likely been brought here to be turned into prostitutes. In spite of their awful journey, they held their chins high and drank from their water bottles, glancing around with wide eyes at the surroundings. If police and SWAT hadn’t intercepted this “delivery” tonight, that pride would have been beaten out of them as their pimps and “owners” trained them.

  Quinn handed Logan a water bottle and he took a big gulp, letting the water drip down his chin, down his neck, like a long, quiet teardrop.

  “She’s in pretty bad shape, but baby’s heartbeat sounds strong,” one of the medics said. “We need to get them to the hospital.”

  Logan clenched his jaw and leaned against the boat railing as they moved the stretcher past him, focusing on the sight of police loading the twenty-four victims into a paddy wagon. The three monsters who’d come to transfer them into a van were now cuffed and being escorted into the back of separate patrol cars.

  A small victory for the good guys.

  But it still made him sick.

  Uniformed police brought a box up from below. Something in it caught Logan’s eye. “Wait,” he said, stopping the officer. A briefcase sat perched atop the box. Holy crap. A briefcase identical to Ben’s. And Dave’s, Craig’s, and Charlie’s. With the unique double-heart logo tooled into the front. He shined his flashlight on the case. No engraving, no further clue.

  He donned a pair of gloves and clicked the briefcase open. Empty.

  He swore softly. No way this was a coincidence. The girls in the back of Craig Bittinger’s car, the pregnant runaway whose family had originally been from Thailand… He smelled a connection.

  At the station, he filled out the required forms about the crime, took a shower, and changed into clean clothes. While still in the locker room, he got word that the baby had been delivered by C-section but the mother had died, never having regained consciousness.

  Shit.

  Logan knew exactly where he needed to be. He glanced at his cell phone. Three o’clock in the morning.

  He needed Keely.

  He didn’t deserve her, shouldn’t bother her. Selfish bastard that he was, he needed to be around someone clean and good, needed to wipe away the dirt he carried inside and out, from the cruel world he dealt with on a daily basis.

  Some men and women from the department turned to alcohol to deaden the pain of the injustice they witnessed every day. Logan’s vice was Keely. Even when he’d been stationed in Afghanistan, she’d never been far from his thoughts.

  Fifteen minutes later, he stood on her front stoop with his finger poised to ring the bell. He dropped his hand to his side. He shouldn’t be so selfish. And yet after years of keeping a quiet watch over her, making sure her life went well, forcing himself to keep a distance because he knew it was the right thing to do for her, he didn’t have the str
ength to stay away from her tonight. Even if it was for her own good.

  He’d phone her. Wouldn’t even tell her he was on her front steps. Make it easier for her to turn him away, if that’s what she wanted.

  Perched on the bottom step of her front stoop, he dialed her number and watched the late-night stars sparkle in the dark sky. A cool breeze whipped down between the rows of homes, rustling the few remaining leaves on the small trees planted near the curbs.

  After one ring, Keely picked up. “Logan?” she asked, her voice groggy.

  The image of her sleep-heavy eyelids and soft lips against the phone as she sat up in a halter top or T-shirt and not much else chased into his thoughts.

  “Do you feel like company?” He kept his voice low, part of him hoping she would say no so she could protect herself from him.

  “You okay?” Bed sheets rustled in the background and he pictured her sitting up, her sleep-tossed hair tangled around her face.

  “Yeah. I’m okay.”

  “Where are you?”

  He considered a lie. If he said he was at headquarters, she might tell him to go home, get a good night’s rest. “On your front stoop.”

  “I’ll be right there.” She hung up.

  Within thirty seconds, she unlatched the front door and held it open.

  He sucked in a breath when he realized the mental image he’d had of her had been correct. She stood in front of him with tousled brown hair, wearing only a loose purple T-shirt.

  He stepped inside and latched the door. Before he could change his mind, he turned and pulled her into his arms.

  If he could come home to a comfort like Keely every night, all would be well in his world.

  …

  One look in Logan’s dark eyes and Keely wanted to wrap her arms around him and hold him until his pain disappeared. The hope that had begun to build in her earlier grew stronger because he was here. Proof that they had a chance at a relationship. Being with Logan made her happy in ways no other man had made her feel.