by Susan Stoker
Thoughts about the police and her ordeal made her remember, for the first time, the flash drive in her pocket.
Things had been so intense since her escape from that small bedroom on the sinking boat that she’d forgotten all about it. She peeled off her damp shirt and retrieved the small electronic device she’d grabbed from the boat what seemed like a lifetime ago.
She remembered the escort guy on the boat clicking through a spreadsheet on the laptop as he mumbled about all the slaves he had to train, escort, or move. She’d been surprised he was talking about that kind of thing in front of her, but then again, he’d thought she was about to be picked up by whoever had bought her—until something had gone wrong, and then the man had been prepared to kill her.
She’d taken a guess that the spreadsheet was saved on the flash drive. Her plan had been to give it to Gray if he proved himself trustworthy, but she’d simply forgotten.
In fact, they hadn’t even exchanged phone numbers. Gray had said she could call him if something happened, but because of the way he’d had to leave so abruptly, they’d both forgotten to get each other’s contact information. She could probably find him on Google or something, but their time together already seemed like a dream of sorts. She would feel weird calling him out of the blue, even though he’d said she could.
Walking into her living room, Allye went straight to her computer and pulled up a search engine. She had no idea if the flash drive would even still work after being immersed in the ocean water for as long as it had been.
What she read buoyed her spirits. She went into her bathroom and got out the bottle of isopropyl alcohol in her cabinet. The people on the forums online said that it would help dry out the components of the flash drive. When that was done, she went into the kitchen and opened a box of rice. Thinking it couldn’t hurt, she poured a small amount into a bowl, put the flash drive in the middle, then covered it up with more rice.
Knowing she’d done all she could at that moment, Allye’s shoulders sagged, her mind back on Gray.
Leave it to her to be attracted to a man she could never have. Not only did he live in a different state but she’d only met him because he was on some supersecret mission to take down a sex trafficker, and he was obviously really far out of her league. She’d barely finished high school, and he was a former Navy SEAL, an accountant, and some sort of real-life badass.
Yeah, even if they lived in the same place, she wouldn’t measure up.
She sighed and rubbed her eyes tiredly. Time for that shower and some sleep. Then she’d get on with gettin’ on with her life.
The next morning, Allye was ready for things to get back to normal. It seemed unreal that just last night, she’d been in the middle of the ocean, wondering if she’d live to see another day.
She’d called the owner of the dance company the previous evening, before she’d crashed, and let her know she was alive and well and would be in today. Robin McNeely was in her fifties, and still one of the best dancers Allye had ever seen. She didn’t dance much anymore, but she came to every rehearsal. When someone was having difficulty with some of the choreography, she’d come up to the stage and demonstrate.
It had been Robin who had called the cops when Allye had gone missing. The police hadn’t done much with the information, since she was an adult. Apparently, adults wandered off without telling anyone where they were going all the time—and ultimately showed up after a couple of days or weeks.
Allye had no idea how Gray, or Rex, had gotten involved in her disappearance, but she thanked her lucky stars they had. If not, she knew she’d be wishing she was dead right about now.
Before leaving for the theatre, Allye fished the flash drive out of the bowl of rice she’d put it in. It felt dry, but she didn’t know much about electronics. Holding her breath, she put her laptop on the kitchen counter and inserted the device into the appropriate slot.
Amazingly, the icon popped up on the desktop, letting her know there was a new drive detected. Not quite sure what she was going to find, Allye clicked it open.
An Excel spreadsheet opened, but instead of showing her data, like she’d hoped, a password box popped up.
“Fuck,” she muttered, staring at it. She didn’t know the first thing about hacking into spreadsheets. She was barely able to get her own laptop to work.
For a second there, she’d had visions of turning the flash drive over to the police and seeing on the news that they were able to find hundreds of missing girls as a result of her taking a risk and grabbing it before the boat sank.
“Stupid,” she mumbled to herself, pulling the flash drive out of her computer. She held it in her palm for a long moment, wrestling with herself and trying to decide what to do. She should’ve given it to Gray before he’d left, but she’d forgotten. Just like she’d forgotten to get his phone number. Shaking her head, she opened her junk drawer and threw the small device in with all the other crap she’d accumulated over the years.
She’d think about it later. She had shit to do, and the new girl in the dance company had probably been doing everything in her power to take the lead away from Allye during her brief absence. Jessie had been a pain in the ass ever since she’d been hired, and Allye refused to let her take all the good dance parts. She’d worked too hard to get where she was.
Deciding she’d take a taxi to work today rather than the cable car, as she usually did, Allye called one of the dancers who lived nearby. Since she offered to pay, he was more than happy to get a taxi and come pick her up. Allye scooped up her bag with her dance clothes and left, making sure to double-check that her door was locked before heading out.
“Fuck!” Gray exclaimed late the next morning.
He’d passed out on the private plane he and Black had taken back to Colorado Springs, the long swim getting the better of him. Then he’d spent a couple of hours with the rest of the team, going over the mission and what had happened. He’d listened as the others debriefed their own mission, and ended up not getting back to his house until late.
He’d fallen asleep immediately, and had woken up feeling as good as new. Glad that he was still as fit as he used to be when he was in the Navy, Gray had checked in with Rex.
His sudden expletive—shortly followed by an epiphany—came during their conversation.
“What?” Rex asked.
“I never gave Allye my number,” Gray told his handler. “I told her if she thought she was in danger that she could call me.”
“Why? It’s not like you could do anything about it,” Rex said.
Gray was irritated with his elusive friend and boss. “I get that, but at least she’d be able to talk to someone about it. Someone who might be able to do something if she disappeared again.”
He heard Rex sigh and knew he wasn’t going to like what his handler was about to say.
“The bottom line is that we have no control over what happens to her from here on out. I don’t have much of anything on Nightingale. It’s like he up and closed shop. None of my usual information channels are picking up any activity on him, or making any connections between him and recently missing women. Whatever happened on this last op seems to have shaken him.”
“What are you saying? That you think Allye is safe? That she’s no longer in danger?” Gray asked.
“I didn’t say that. What I’m saying is that the son of a bitch is in the wind. He’s a ghost. Without more information, I can’t continue to track him. I thought he was behind another recent kidnapping, but with no eyewitnesses and no information, I can’t be one hundred percent sure.”
“So, you’re saying that if Allye does get snatched again, we can use any eyewitness accounts to try to find out information on Nightingale? That you hope she does get taken?”
Rex was silent for so long, Gray wasn’t sure he was going to reply. When he did, his voice was low and modulated, and obviously extremely pissed off.
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say that,” Rex said evenly. �
�You know that’s not what I meant. I’d never want anyone—man, woman, or child—to be taken by that asshole. He doesn’t have one ounce of compassion in his entire body. He’ll do what he wants to whoever he wants, and won’t let anyone stand in his way. All I’m saying is that if he does decide to finish what he started for whatever rich client who wants her, there’s not a whole lot we can do. It’s up to Allye to keep herself safe until he screws up and we’re able to kill that son of a bitch.”
That didn’t sit well with Gray at all. “And if she does get snatched again?”
“Then we do our best to find her and get her home,” Rex replied.
It wasn’t exactly what Gray wanted to hear, but it was the best he could expect. Without him staking some sort of claim on her, Allye was ultimately just another woman. And he had no reason to think she would want anything to do with him on a personal level. Oh, he had a feeling she was attracted to him, and wouldn’t complain about spending a night or two in his bed, but the only way Rex would extend his protection to her was if she officially belonged to one of his mercenaries.
Their handler had made it very clear when they’d each started working for him that they were free to find a woman and start a relationship, but the only way they were allowed to tell her what they really did for a living was if the relationship was a permanent one. Gray had already told Allye more than he should’ve, but spending all that time together in the middle of the ocean had uncharacteristically loosened his tongue.
Rex had said more than once that when any of his mercenaries were in a permanent relationship, he’d do whatever was necessary to keep their women, and any children they had, safe.
They’d lost one of their operatives to a relationship just recently. He’d quit the group because he’d not only found the love of his life, he’d gained an entire family he hadn’t known about until his mother died.
Ryder Sinclair was now living up in Castle Rock, Colorado, and had a woman of his own, three half brothers, two baby nephews, and countless other friends and family members. He worked for Ace Security now, and Gray still spoke with him all the time, but it wasn’t the same. He wasn’t an official member of Mountain Mercenaries anymore. Gray knew Ryder was happy, but he still missed him.
He had thought Ryder was crazy for giving up the exciting missions of Mountain Mercenaries for a woman, but now he was having second thoughts.
And that was his epiphany. There was something about Allye that had snuck under the shields he’d put up, and that he couldn’t shake. If there was a woman out there whom he’d give up Mountain Mercenaries for, Gray had a feeling it would be Allye.
The thought should’ve freaked him out, but instead it simply felt right. The time they’d spent together in the ocean had stripped away the facade that he usually wore for other people, and he suspected the same had happened for her. He’d gotten to know the real Allye . . . and he liked her a hell of a lot.
Gray wanted to ask Rex if he would find her phone number for him, but refrained. He knew Meat could probably get ahold of it easily, as well, but he ultimately decided it was better that he didn’t talk to her. Gray had a feeling he’d find out that talking to her, but not being with her, would be more painful than making the break cold turkey.
He remembered the way she’d turned to him when they were still on the fishing boat and said, in a completely serious tone, that it was illegal to not have flotation devices on the boat. And the way she rolled her eyes all the time. She hadn’t complained or gotten hysterical, as many women in the same situation might’ve. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t been scared. She’d gripped his pocket so tightly, it communicated her uncertainty and fright loud and clear. She’d held on as if her life had depended on not letting go. And it had.
Gray had saved hundreds of lives over the years, but none had affected him like Allye.
The silence on the phone had gone on way too long, but Gray knew Rex didn’t care. He’d hang out on the other end of the line forever if he felt it was necessary.
“If you find out any information on her, will you let me know?” Gray asked at last. “Like if she’s being targeted again?”
“Yeah, I can do that,” Rex told him.
It was as much as Gray was going to get right now, and he knew it. “Thanks. Appreciate it. I gotta go. I have a P&L sheet I need to do for one of my clients. It was due yesterday, but I’ll make something up on why it’s late.”
“You’re a good man,” Rex said in a low voice. “You did a great job out there. You got as much information as you could, and you saved a life in the process. I’m proud to have you on my team.” And with that, Rex hung up.
Gray could only shake his head. Rex was eccentric, that was for sure. As far as he knew, no one on the team had ever met the elusive man. He seemed to always know what they were doing and when, but would never confirm how he got his information.
He and the others had been recruited several years ago. Gray remembered it as if it were yesterday. He was getting out of the Navy and had gotten the call from Rex about a job. He hadn’t told him much, just that the interview was at a run-down pool hall in Colorado Springs called The Pit.
When he’d arrived, Meat, Arrow, Ball, Black, Ryder, and Ro had also been there for their supposed interviews. They’d gotten to talking while waiting for Rex to make an appearance, and three hours later—after they’d decided fuck the job and fuck Rex, and had been drunker than hell—they’d each received a phone call telling them they’d gotten the job.
Apparently, it had been a test. A test to see if the seven of them could get along. And they had. Extremely well. Gray knew the other men all had their own reasons for joining the Mountain Mercenaries, but they never talked about it except to say they were glad their unique skills were being used to rid the world of humans not fit to be walking around, and to save women and children from all walks of life.
As Gray pulled up the database needed to work on the profit-and-loss statement for his client, he tried to put the spunky yet vulnerable woman he’d just rescued out of his mind. They just weren’t meant to be.
A week and a half later, Allye shut her apartment door behind her—hard.
The week had started out pretty well. Everyone at work had been overjoyed to see her, especially after hearing what she’d gone through. At least the bare bones. Allye had left out most of the details. She’d called the police and filed a report about her kidnapping, although again, that report was lacking in a lot of specifics. She told the cops she was concerned that whoever had snatched her would try again, but without any description or any information at all about him, they didn’t have much to go on. They’d simply given her the same advice Gray had. Which wasn’t exactly comforting.
She’d fallen back into her normal routine fairly quickly over the rest of the week. She woke up early and ate breakfast. Watched the news for any hint of a story about her kidnapping or a sex-slave ring being taken down, to no avail. Then she headed off to the theatre for rehearsals.
Today was the day the photographer was scheduled to take program headshots for the upcoming show. Robin insisted on every dancer having new pictures for each performance. She didn’t want the audience to get bored with the programs, especially since the dancers were often the same, just shuffled around from part to part.
One month they might have a modern-dance routine, the next it might be jazz. Robin prided herself on the quality of her shows and her dancers. She spared no expense with the programs, producing them on high-quality, glossy pages that she hoped patrons would save as keepsakes.
The first time the current photographer had come to shoot the cast, she’d been surprised to see Allye’s different-colored eyes, and did her best to play them up in the headshot photos. Allye was honestly over it, but had learned not to complain. Between her eyes and the streak of white in her hair, she knew she was an oddity, and photographers loved to highlight both features.
After today’s pictures were taken, during which she’d gotten a lot
of attention from the photographer once again, the afternoon began to go downhill. Jessie, the teenager who wanted the lead in the show but didn’t get it because Allye had reappeared, had been sullen and uncooperative, going so far as to pout when Robin had to intervene and tell her to go home for the rest of the day.
After rehearsal, Allye had stopped to get a replacement cell phone, since hers had disappeared when she’d been snatched off the street. The phone cost way more than she’d been expecting, but not feeling like she had a choice, Allye paid it.
Then, while heading home, she’d started feeling . . . paranoid. Like someone was following her. But every time she’d looked behind her, no one was there.
The feeling persisted all the way home. Allye even detoured from her usual path, and it took an extra twenty minutes to get to her apartment complex.
The hair on the back of her neck was sticking straight up by the time Allye gratefully slammed her door and fastened all the locks, securing herself inside. She dropped her bag right at the front door and made her way to the couch, where she collapsed in a heap.
It had been two extremely weird weeks. Which she never wanted to experience again. She’d gone from normalcy, to extreme terror and being way out of her league, back to normalcy. Now paranoia. It was almost unreal.
How long she sat there, Allye had no idea. All she knew was that even though she was locked up tight inside her apartment, she still didn’t feel safe. It couldn’t be all that hard for someone to break down her door. And if they did, they could overpower her, just as the thug had when he’d snatched her from the street. Not one person had stepped up to help her, and she knew it would be the same here in her apartment complex. She didn’t know her neighbors, and like most people who lived in the city, she tended to ignore the various shouts and odd sounds that came from the apartments around her.