Second Nature (When Seconds Count)

by D. L. Roan

  She let out an exasperated sigh of relief when he opened his eyes and looked at her. His mouth moved but she couldn’t hear his words any more than she could her own. She was fluent in eight languages. Unfortunately, sign language wasn’t one of them. Her ears suddenly popped, one after the other, and the roar of the blaze filled her head. It sounded so close she flinched away from Daniel and shielded her ears from the thunderous sounds.

  “Natalie!” Daniel called out, his hands cupping his head. That’s when she noticed a trickle of blood running from one of his ears.

  “Daniel, you’re bleeding!”

  “Natalie!” Daniel pushed to his feet and ran toward the burning building, screaming his daughter’s name. She peeled herself from the pavement and ran after him, grasping his shirt in her fists and pulling him away from the flames.

  “Daniel she’s not there!”

  “Natalie, no!”

  “Daniel!” Rebecca stood in front of the big burly man she’d known since the day she took over Natalie’s investigation. She had never seen a stronger, more determined man. He never gave up, literally tearing the world apart with desperate hope that he would hold his baby girl again. Her heart crumbled as she looked at the broken man before her. He had aged a lifetime in mere moments, the last flicker of hope draining from his tearful eyes.

  “Daniel!” She cupped his face in her bleeding hands. She had to get through to him. “Daniel, look at me!” His eyes slowly trailed from the burning building to hers. Emptiness was all she saw, the towering flames reflecting in his hopeless tears. “It’s okay!” She shook her head to tell him no. “She was not there!”

  “What?”

  Rebecca’s brows furrowed as she focused on his confused expressions. “Can you hear me?”

  “Did you say she wasn’t in the building?”

  “Yes! Remember in the van?” Every word was shouted over the roar of the fire, but at least he could hear her. “It was a trap! She wasn’t there!”

  Daniel’s shoulders fell, his head lulled back and more tears fell from his eyes leaving a reflective trail down his weathered cheeks. “We’re too late.”

  “No!” Rebecca grabbed his arms and shook him. “Keller is in Navi! That’s where she has to be. Daniel, we have to go! You can’t give up now!”

  “Grant.” His head shook in disbelief, his voice laden with grief.

  Rebecca released her hold and let her forehead fall against Daniel’s chest. “I don’t think he had time to get out.”

  “No.” Daniel turned her around to see a dark figure stumbling through the rubble on the far side of the street. “Grant.”

  “Grant!”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “You may not remember our last time together,” Jauhar purred as he wiped something cold and wet over the exposed skin on her elevated thigh. The way he moved around her felt strangely reverent. There was a creepy gentleness to his touch that conflicted with the hard indifference in his eyes. “But I assure you, pet, you will never forget or doubt who owns you after this day.”

  Thalia tried to close her eyes, to escape back into the dark and painless place he had forced her from, but he wouldn’t let her. Every time she began to feel the pain fall away, Jauhar would make her scream.

  A part of her wanted to die. She welcomed the pain and hoped she was close enough to death she could somehow force them to push her over the razor thin line that existed between her life and her nightmares. No matter how much that part of her begged to be heard, she could not deny the rage. It gnawed at her insides, eating a hole in her soul which quickly filled with a dark need for blood. Jauhar’s blood. She wanted to live. For no other reason than to kill the monster who had ended her life so long ago; to see him suffer, see them all suffer in such a way they would feel their pain long after their death.

  Jauhar leaned in and whispered in her ear, “We are not usually so barbaric these days, pet, but a simple tattoo for you does not please me. I want you to always remember who your master is.” He nipped her ear, intending for it to sting, before he rose and turned away. “Senator, you may do the honors.” Jauhar nodded to the man who had joined him and Don Lalia in her continued humiliation and torture. He was American from what little she could tell by the few words he spoke. Salty streaks of gray streamed through his darker, wavy hair. Thick lines appeared at the corners of his mouth and eyes when he smiled at her like a boy who had just discovered a new toy or fun game. His eyes. When she looked into his eyes she couldn’t help but notice the darkness residing in his soul. They held the same potential for the merciless evil Jauhar had inflicted upon her.

  She could see the long, metal rod in his hands as he approached the side of the table, a glowing-hot crest the size of her fist attached at the end. His perfect, white teeth appeared from behind his evil smile as he raised the brand to her thigh and the first wave of searing heat kissed her skin.

  Nooooooo! Her body thrashed against her restraints, every thought and fear burned from her mind. Only the raw, visceral instinct to survive was left behind. She felt nothing, heard nothing , saw nothing but a blind frenzy of light and darkness as every cell in her body waged war against her restraints. When the stench of burning flesh wafted strong in the air she managed to suck in through her tormented screams, she fought harder, struggling against the hands that held her, beating them off with a savage rage she no longer controlled.

  ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

  “Go! Go! Go!” Dax Keller gave the order and his men stormed the club. Sounds of gunshots blasted through the building, but he ignored the threat and pushed his way through the chaos. The team’s breacher kicked in the door to the basement and he rushed the Senator, taking out the two guards standing in his way. Dodging the hot branding iron Collins wielded like a knife, he caught the man’s wrist and held him at bay as he struggled against him. He fought the urge to shoot him. He was under strict orders not to kill the sick fuck or he would have. He was a spry old man, but one punch to the throat and it was game over as he dropped to the floor, the hot end of the iron tumbling across his face and searing Jauhar’s mark into his skin as he gasped for air.

  Dax lunged for Thalia. In her fight to survive she had broken through some of her restraints. She struggled against his hold, fighting him as if he were her tormentors as one of his team members freed her legs from the harnesses. “It’s okay. I won’t hurt you. You’re safe.” He tried to console her, to break through the madness that consumed her. She fought him as if he were the devil himself, kicking and biting, screaming at the top of her lungs until suddenly the fight drained away and some of his words finally began to filter through her rage. “That’s it. It’s over, Thalia. You’re okay. Shhh, we stopped them. You’re safe now.”

  It had taken him nearly an hour to console her enough to move her without a fight. Dax sat on the floor with Thalia cradled in his lap, a thin blanket covering her naked and beaten body. He would never forget her animalistic cry of fury that filled the dark basement he and his team had just secured. Above all else, every case he’d ever worked, every soldier he’d ever watched die on the battlefield, he knew that sound would haunt him for the rest of his life.

  He held back his team for as long as he could, waiting for any verbal confirmation from Collins that he knew about or was part of Jauhar’s trafficking ring. Intel or no intel, there was simply no way he could sit back and watch as this innocent girl was mutilated by these wicked bastards. Contrary to some of his superiors’ beliefs, there was no piece of information worth her life.

  They had the Senator on a Christmas list of other charges, but kidnapping and assault with intent was a far cry from international human trafficking and murder. The bureau wanted all of them alive, so putting a bullet in his head was out of the question no matter how badly he still wanted to do just that.

  He stared at Jauhar across the room sitting smugly in a velvet covered armchair, his cuffed hands crossed arrogantly in his lap as he watched him rocking Thalia in his arms. The
only consoling thought he could conjure was that he would never see the light of day once they got him extradited to stand trial on American soil. He wished the coward had put up more of a fight. The only thing that would have satisfied him more than a bullet would have been to beat the life out of him then and there.

  Collins had given him a bit of surprising fight, but it had ended much too quickly for his liking. Seeing his face meet the hot end of the branding iron he’d been all too eager to use on Thalia didn’t come close to satisfying Dax. Thankfully they had gotten there in time to stop him from inflicting more than a superficial wound to Thalia’s thigh. He smirked as they dragged Collins from the club, stripped off his prestigious suit and tie, and paraded him naked through the gathering press to a medevac van waiting to take him to the hospital. Old sagging balls weren’t pretty in prison. He’d be lucky to last a week before his asshole became nothing but a cum dumpster. That was a very satisfying thought.

  “Keller!” His team’s intel supervisor jogged up, a stack of photographs a half inch thick in his hand. “You’re not going to believe this, sir.”

  Dax carefully slid his arm from beneath Thalia’s trembling body and took the pictures from his hand. “Can you find me an extra blanket to wrap around her? I think she may be going into shock.” The supervisor turned, but Dax couldn’t wait any longer. He had to know. “Have you heard from Reb—Ms. Danes yet?”

  He had no choice but to ignore the panic injected into his bloodstream when the man shook his head. He had a scene to process and miles of red tape to unravel before dawn. Don Lalia had managed to escape through the chaos of the initial firefight, but they still had his henchman, Hamisi. He was sure to give them hours, if not days, of pleasurable interrogation. And then there was Thalia. He couldn’t leave her with just anyone. She needed Rebecca. Dammit, he needed her. And for many more reasons than he should be allowing himself to consider.

  They found the surveillance van, or what was left of it, on the side of the road across from the explosion. Emergency response teams weren’t as quick or plentiful in India like they were in the States, apparent by the fact Thalia still hadn’t received more than a cursory inspection of her wounds. The fire was still raging at the supposed secondary location with no firemen in sight. They had yet to determine if there were any casualties. Dax couldn’t bring himself to think of the word bodies. They would find her alive. And then he would fire her for disobeying his orders right before he kissed her senseless and spanked her bratty ass until it was as red as her hair.

  “This was all I could find, sir.” Dax sat the pictures on the floor and grabbed the thick cotton sheet, scolding himself for letting his mind travel down a road he had no business going down. “Everything else is locked down for evidence processing.”

  “This is fine.” He carefully draped it over Thalia’s frail shoulders, tucking it in around her shivering frame to hold in what little body heat he was able to give her. “Just rest, Thalia. This will all be over soon.”

  “Water.” It was the first raspy sound she’d made since he had pried her out of those god-awful restraints and battled to reach her through the fog of war she was waging to survive. He had seen men on the battlefield die with less of a fight in them than she had displayed. If he were still a soldier he would fight next to her any day.

  His intel supervisor returned with a glass of water and he held it to her bleeding lips. The water turned pink as rivulets of blood drained from the corners of her mouth and into the cup. She didn’t seem to care. She gulped the water down in a handful of swallows before her head fell against his chest, that small effort depleting her energy.

  “Did you look at the pictures, sir?”

  He sat the cup on the floor and picked up the stack of pictures. “What am I looking at? Jesus!”

  “Yes, sir. I’d say he’s the only person who will be able to save Collins now, sir.”

  Dax flipped through the stack of what he could only call child pornography. Photo after photo of small boys. Some naked, some barely clothed. All of them undernourished with obvious signs of physical abuse. His stomach soured when he flipped to the last one and saw a small, naked, red haired child chained to a rusty dog crate. “These were taken at the Senator’s condo in D.C?”

  “At his estate in Maryland, sir. We’ve recovered five children from a hidden room in his basement. The D.C. Police and Federal Marshals are combing through his residence there as we speak.”

  How did this happen? How had an insect like Collins existed, thriving in the political spotlight, right under their fucking noses all this time? If it wasn’t for this Lieutenant character, they never would have known. When he was first contacted, he thought this guy was off his rocker. It had only taken one call to confirm him as a legitimate source. He still didn’t have a clue as to who this guy really was but, whoever he was, he had some damn influential friends and mighty powerful enemies.

  At the Lieutenant’s request, once he had confirmed the intel on the thumb drive was legit, he copied the contents and had it hand delivered to Collins with a note from the Lieutenant. The note detailed what the drive contained, which was nothing less than an itemized diary of every shipment of slaves Issa had trafficked for Jauhar and Don Lalia over the past fifteen years. They had never suspected Don Lalia of anything but local racketeering. If the Lieutenant’s suspicions were correct, as it turned out they were, the Senator would waste no time in contacting Jauhar with the news. He, in fact, had booked a flight to Mumbai the very next day.

  He didn’t know how this Lieutenant knew the things he did. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. It really didn’t matter until he had to appear in front of the investigation review board and give his statement. He would figure out a way to honor this guy’s only request, to be kept as a confidential source. No way in hell was he going to blow that deal. Not after seeing these photographs. If he’s even still alive.

  He hated leaving the guy out to dry, but it was impossible to scramble a second team to the Mumbai location in the short amount of time his friend Diver had requested. He sure as hell wasn’t sending Rebecca and a couple of techies in there blind. Not that his orders to stand down had done him a shitload of good.

  It shouldn’t matter, but he couldn’t tell her what they were expecting to go down. He had been sent with the strictest of orders to keep the Senator’s possible involvement confidential until they had confirmed it. That meant only essential SCI clearance personnel. In truth, it wasn’t just her lack of clearance. She would be subjected to the mother of all investigations. He knew it would make her a walking target, just like he and his team now were. These things rarely, if ever, stopped at just one individual. Once they got down to the dirty details, they would find others who either knew about or participated in this sick way of life that Collins lived. These were powerful people with dangerous connections. When you combine that with desperation, some of them could turn deadly. He didn’t want her anywhere near that. He’d gotten his wish, but at what cost?

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Blood soaked Grant’s shirt and pants. The sticky fabric clung to his skin, the copper stench matching the taste in his mouth. Daniel had given him his shirt to staunch the tide of blood gushing from his head wound, but the cuts to his chest and arms wouldn’t be helped by anything less than stitches.

  He ran balls to the wall the second Diver had said the word bomb. He’d manage to make it out of the second story room and down to the end of the hall before the blast catapulted him through the window at the end. He wasn’t sure how he survived the blast, flying through the glass and crashing to the ground in a pile of concrete and steel, but he wasn’t going to look into too deeply. He was alive. He only hoped the same fate was watching over Thalia.

  It was strange how being that close to death could bring such clarity to life. He had been a fool to leave her. He’d been a fool about a lot of things. He should have known better than to trust his own instincts when he knew he couldn’t count of them. He was too em
otionally involved to think straight.

  If Senator Collins had tipped off Jauhar, then he obviously believed he had already secured the data on that thumb drive. All that was left was killing the messenger. He should have known from the start it was all a set-up. Collins would know he had access to the resources to trace that call. He also knew the tradecraft protocol and that Grant would have no choice but to investigate the source. He only hoped he didn’t know about the tracer Rebecca had planted in Thalia’s clothes. It was the one ace they had left.

  He bit back a groan as the gash on his side was pulled taught by the hard left turn Daniel made. He didn’t dare ask him to slow down. If anything he wanted him to speed up. None of them had a cell phone to call Keller. Rebecca’s was probably melted to the inside of the charred surveillance van, and the one he’d lifted from Jauhar’s man was blown to pieces. He’d give anything for one damn phone call, but no one was voting to stop at a pay phone. The sooner they got to Navi the sooner he would know Thalia’s fate. Hang on, fossa. I’m coming.

  Twenty-five agonizing minutes later, an army of suits surrounded the car when Daniel nosed through the roadblock that had been set up not far from the men’s club in Navi. Agents shouted orders, but Daniel ignored them until he reached the front of the building. They spilled out of the car, gun to gun with the other men until Rebecca pushed her way through the crowd of agents and local police to the other side of the car and flashed her bureau identification.

  “I don’t care who you are, ma’am. You’re not cleared to go in.”

  “Please notify Deputy Director Keller that Rebecca Danes is waiting outside.”