Safe Mode: Deep Six Security Series Book 4

by Becky McGraw

  It’s not your fault—she left Callie and came here on her own. But Grace came here and riled the beast who had her, otherwise she might be home by now. No—it’s been a month.

  “You’re the only one who knows if it’s her, Gracie,” Brennan said gently. “I would never ask you to do it if I had any other option, baby.” He squeezed her into his side and more hot tears streaked down her face. He had been so good to her during this whole ordeal. She had no idea what she’d have done without him.

  You’d have probably been in the same place as Marcy. Fear and panic merged to form a vise on her chest. No probably about it, she would have been there if not for Brennan.

  Thinking she could just single-handedly get in there and find Marcy to drag her back home had been stupid. For a smart woman, she’d been so dumb. But she couldn’t compound her error in judgment by inaction, if her sister wasn’t dead.

  “I’m so thankful for your help, but I can’t wait,” Grace said, pushing up to stand. “I can’t just sit here and let her die…” Her eyes burned fiercely, but she sucked in a deep breath to staunch the tears. Now wasn’t the time for crying. “And I can’t look at that photo. I’m sorry.”

  “Do you have a photo of her in your things?” Brennan asked, standing. “I’ll look at it for you, because you’re right. You don’t need to be seeing this photo right now.”

  “I think I have one of her and Callie in my wallet,” she replied, a tremor moving through her, leaving behind a feeling of doom as she turned to walk to the dresser.

  Grace’s hand shook violently as she pulled out her wallet and opened it. It shook so badly she couldn’t slide the photo from the slot, so she just turned to hand the wallet to Brennan, who stood right behind her. He slid the photo out with his thumb and studied it, then shoved it back into the slot.

  “Don’t tell me, because I’ll fall apart. I need to keep it together until this is over, because, regardless, I want that bastard to pay,” she said, her voice trembling, because even though he didn’t speak the words, again, her answer was right there in his beautiful eyes.

  “Good, because it isn’t her, thank God,” he replied, his breath coming out in a rush as handed her wallet back.

  Relief so profound it made her knees buckle washed through her. Dex propped her up by her elbows until she recovered.

  “Now, let’s get busy rescuing her,” he said, pulling her to him for a tight hug. “Logan wants us to talk about a mission plan, and I need to call Gray to see what he’s come up with.”

  “Who’s Gray?” she asked, pushing away from him.

  “Another of Deep Six Security’s secret weapons, and one of my best friends.” With a tight smile, he took her hand in his and walked her toward the door.

  His strength passed through their joined hands to her as he led her out into the living room and pulled out a chair for her at the table. Susan and Logan were already seated and wore somber, but determined, expressions.

  “I think I should get Gray on speakerphone, so he can tell us what he found on the investors and financials,” Dex said, as he sat down in the chair beside Grace. “Susan, I believe we have enough evidence to get the police and FBI involved, but I think you’d be better passing that along.”

  “I’ll call Carlos and find out who I need to contact in the Nevada office,” she replied, pushing back her chair to stand. “From what Logan has told me, this is federal, so I think we should probably get the agency involved before we go to the locals.”

  “Just let me know who to send what I have, and I’ll send it,” he said, and she nodded, then strode toward the bedroom.

  Dex pulled an aux cord from his pocket and plugged it into his phone, then inserted it into the speaker base in the middle of the table. He dialed a phone number, then laid his phone down in front of him while it rang.

  “Deep Six, this is Grayson,” a voice answered in a well-modulated, professional tone, which produced an eye roll from Logan.

  “Gray, this is Dex. I have you on speaker with Logan and Grace Wentworth. What have you found on Liquid Silver?”

  “More than I ever wanted to know,” Gray replied, with a huffed breath. “I’ve been up all night following gopher trails. Do you have any idea how fuc—um, freaking much money they turn? I guess sex really does sell, and it makes sense that the mob would want in on a piece of that action. Because they are involved, however, some of that money could be from laundering too. I found a lot of credit card transactions from some unexpected names too—politicians, military brass. I know buying porn isn’t a crime, but I was a little surprised.”

  “Was General Thom Sheridan among the brass?” Dex asked, shooting a wary glance at Logan, and Grace watched the blood drain from his face.

  Who was that man Brennan kept mentioning—that Tim mentioned?

  Whoever he was, he obviously frightened Brennan. There was a story there, but he wasn’t willing to share it with her. But after she thought about it, watched his reactions when he talked or heard about the man—he wasn’t a friend.

  That meant Brennan wasn’t involved in the resort. It had been stupid of her to ever think that anyway. He had done nothing but try to help her find Marcy, and that conclusion had only been a product of her fear.

  “He wasn’t on the buying end of things as far as the porn films, and I did a quick scan of the investors and didn’t find his name,” Gray informed, and Grace heard paper being shuffled. “I need to go back through the investors more thoroughly to nail down owners of a few shell corporations. If he’s in that mix, I’ll let you know.”

  Dex’s face tightened as he slid a sideways glance at Grace. “What about the connection to the, ah, funeral home?”

  Upon hearing the word funeral, Grace’s stomach lurched. There was no stopping it, so she slapped hand over her mouth, scraped back her chair and ran for the bathroom.

  “Grace!” Dex shouted, as he lunged to his feet to follow her, but he forced himself back down into the chair.

  Her reaction told him she knew that she suspected her sister was dead too, even though she wasn’t that woman in the body bag. Not knowing if her sister suffered the same fate as that woman had to be brutal on her nerves.

  Dex wanted to be with her to comfort her, prop her up with false hope, but he couldn’t do that to her. If Marcy was dead, that would be cruel in itself, and that would only make her devastation that much greater.

  He had to stay right where he was and focus on making sure the bastard paid for his crimes, regardless. Because even if Marcy Wentworth didn’t die at his hands, plenty of other women had, if the number of snuff videos in the Liquid Silver cache was any indication.

  “Everything okay?” Gray asked, and Dex swallowed hard.

  “Yeah, what about the funeral home” he repeated, cringing as he heard the faint sound of Grace retching in the other room.

  “I didn’t see an outright connection on a corporate level, so I dug deeper into the owners, and then the employees. I got a hit on the Desert Pines funeral director, Saul Evans. It almost looks like he was a Liquid Silver employee too, because they paid him through monthly ACH transfers from their payroll account.”

  “Interesting,” Dave said, his eyebrows pinching together. He slid his cell phone out of his pocket. “I’m calling in Hawk, so we’re on the move as soon as he gets here.”

  “I need all that information, including his home address, if you can send it to me. Susan is getting the feds involved, so they’ll need that for a warrant,” Dex said.

  “Is there anything else I can do to help?” Gray asked.

  “No, man—thanks for what you’ve done.” Dex disconnected the call, and sighed.

  “Carlos referred me to Paul Rader at the Las Vegas field office. I left a message for him to call me back. What’s the status?” Susan asked, sitting down to Dave’s right.

  “We need to go shopping, Bunny,” Logan said, and Susan groaned. “I think you’ll like this trip, sweet cheeks—we need to buy some weapons at that conve
ntion.”

  “Oh, yeah…now, that’s my kind of shopping trip,” she purred, her lips curling up into a big smile.

  “Don’t get too excited. This will be power shopping,” he warned, as he pushed his chair back to stand. “We don’t have time to waste.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Susan said, snapping off a salute, which earned a frown from her husband.

  “Buy two radio signal jammers while you’re there,” Dex said, and they both looked at him. “We need take them dark before we go inside, so they can’t call the Local Mobster Union 101, who I suspect employs the hitman who visited us. I don’t think they’d call the police, but you never know. They didn’t have a problem doing that when I stole the limo.”

  The door of the suite burst open, and Patton looked fierce as he stomped inside, then slammed it behind him. He zeroed in on Dex, and without a hello for anyone, he crowded Dex and slapped a clipboard down on the table in front of him.

  “Get on the web, Poindexter—you’ve got some research to do,” he said. “I went to a lot of trouble and risk to get this, so you better make it useful.”

  “What’s this?” Dex asked, lifting the clipboard to study the scrawling print on the top sheet, which held just names and dates. He thumbed the dark red, still wet stain at the bottom of the page. “Is this blood?”

  “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” Patton growled, as he shoved a shaky hand through his hair. “Just suffice it to say there will be one less tango to cause us trouble when we kick down the door at that shithole in the desert.”

  Of course, his brother would have no problem putting a bullet in anyone who got in his way—even Dex most likely, from the wild look in his eyes. But what had he killed or injured the unlucky owner of this ledger for?

  “Well, I’m a genius, not a fucking mind reader, Patton. At least tell me what these names and dates represent so I know what to research?”

  “It was hanging on the wall beside the cremation oven at that funeral home,” he informed with a growl. “I have no idea what it’s for, but there were enough blank lines with just dates on it for me to think it might have some importance. Especially since another Jane Doe was in a body bag beside the oven.”

  It was a crematory list. Payments to the funeral director. No bodies and no evidence pointing back to Liquid Silver. What a perfect setup to cover up their crimes.

  Dex grabbed his mouse, clicked on the folder of videos on his screen, but it didn’t open.

  “Fuck, I took their internet down,” he grumbled, quickly closing that screen to log into his dark web cloud server, which he hadn’t used since he left Sheridan six years ago.

  He scrolled through the gazillion files and folders that were on his cloud now, to find the folder of movie files. He looked at the upload dates for the movies, and found matching blank name cells on the crematory roster with only dates and times. After the first page, he didn’t need to see more.

  “I’m not a lawyer, but I think this is the final piece of the puzzle needed to nail them,” Dex said, grinning up at his brother. “Now we have proof that there were bodies, and what they did with them. They filmed those movies, then disposed of the women by cremating them. No evidence trail back to the studio other than this. Great work, Patton.”

  “I’m not a lawyer or a fucking genius, but I do have a few licks of sense now and again,” he replied, with a snort.

  “We’ll be back in two hours,” Logan said, walking back into the room with Susan at his side. They both wore black BDUs and combat boots looking very ready to do battle, but naked too, because he was used to never seeing them unarmed.

  Something occurred to Dex right then. “Patton, how’d you know we were planning on going out to that desert shithole to kick in the door?” he asked.

  “I didn’t know you were going there,” he replied, his eyes narrowing.

  “But you said when we go out—”

  “I said we, as in me and a few friends I rounded up are going there to do that. You’re not invited, because you’d be a liability. I don’t want to have to watch your back. I need a picture of the woman we need to extract and a schematic of the building if you can find one.”

  “Excuse me, Commander,” Susan said, walking up to him with her hands on her hips. “I don’t know who in the hell you think you are, but you do not command the Deep Six Security team, and this is our mission. You and your friends are welcome to accompany us, we’d appreciate the help, but you are not setting the ground rules. Do you understand?”

  Dex bit his tongue to hold back the bark of laughter that shot up to his lips as he watched Patton’s face turn bright red while he ground his teeth. Leaning back in his chair, he folded his arms over his chest to watch what promised to be a spectacular show.

  “Beg pardon, ma’am, for overstepping, but I am running on fumes here. I need to get this over with so I can get back to my real job.”

  “Well, excuse me, sailor, but this is my real job, and everyone else’s in this room, including your brother. Are your men on standby or at the facility?”

  “They’re there doing recon, waiting for me at the facility,” he replied gruffly, but with a little more respect in his tone.

  “Are they armed?” she asked.

  “To the teeth, ma’am. They um, provisioned, weapons and a vehicle from base.” He cleared his throat. “We’re Navy SEALs, so insertion and extraction are our specialty. I respectfully request that you stand down and allow us to do our job for the safety of all involved.”

  “Request denied,” Logan growled as he stepped up beside Susan to glare at Patton. “I’m a former Recon Marine, and she’s ex-FBI, so I’m sure we won’t need you watching our six.”

  “And we’re wasting time here with this power struggle,” Grace said, inserting herself in between Patton and Dex. “My sister is in that studio, and I’m going, whether you like it or not, Patton. I’m a direct appointment, but Navy nonetheless, and I do know how to handle the pistol you loaned me.”

  “Well, if she’s going, I am too,” Dex said firmly, unfolding his arms to stand. “I don’t know how to handle a pistol, but I’m sure she’ll have my back.” And he could watch hers, because, after seeing that video, the thought of her going into that studio without him scared the crap out of him. He tapped his forehead and forced a smile. “I’ll just use this to provide support.”

  “Fine—get yourselves killed.” Patton sighed, and scrubbed his hand over his face.

  “Don’t worry big guy. If this mission turns into a goat fuck, that’s our specialty,” Susan said with a loud laugh. “Let’s go buy some weapons, Logan—and I want big guns—not those sissy-shit peashooters that Lou Ellen is always complaining about.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Dex didn’t know what his brother’s slightly scary SEAL friends were doing on the other side of the compound, but they insisted the Deep Six team wait for their sign. They couldn’t be cutting the fence, because Dex had that under control. He’d done an Alphabet Hack on the gate code, so all he had to do was send the signal and the back gate would open for them.

  If they’d just get a move on.

  He didn’t know if letting his brother and friends in on the operation with the Deep Six team was a good idea or not now. Even though Susan basically took control at the hotel, Patton had been calling the shots since they reached the studio.

  We need to wait until dark, he insisted, so they took positions behind a sandy berm that was covered in all kinds of itchy weeds and prickly brush. Tomorrow he’d probably have a rash all over his body, because, like latex, he was allergic to poison ivy too.

  Did poison ivy grow in the desert? Dex sure as hell hoped not. His face had just cleared up from the latex reaction.

  Well, it had been dark for almost two hours, it was getting damned cold, and now they couldn’t see shit staring into the blinding security lights mounted on the tall poles at each corner inside the fence.

  At least Patton had issued them night vision goggles, but that made
him even more concerned about his brother’s decision to wait. Three guards now patrolled the grounds inside the fence line, where there had been none before nightfall.

  “I wish they’d hurry up,” Grace muttered, turning to rest her back against the sandy dune.

  “Me too,” Dex replied, looking at his watch.

  That was odd, he thought, just then realizing that the guard rotation, which had happened every fifteen minutes since dusk, hadn’t happened in twenty. He clicked his laptop which was connected to his cell phone internet and opened the feed for the cameras inside the building.

  “Fuck,” he growled, when he saw a heavily armed ninja-like man dart across a hallway at the front of the building to quickly open a room and disappear inside.

  His brother and team were already inside the studio. They must’ve either cut a hole in the fence, or entered through the front gate. It all honestly, it was probably for the best, because he really didn’t want Grace going in there. But he knew she would be furious if he made that decision for her. Like he was furious at his brother right now.

  How dare Patton make that call without them.

  He knew why Patton did it too—because he had zero faith in Dex as a competent male, and obviously not much more for the rest of the Deep Six team.

  “What?!?” Grace hissed, twisting to look at his laptop.

  “They went in without us!” His fingers flew over the keyboard to open the gate, engage the cell phone jammers Logan had placed for him earlier. He turned on his headset. “Logan—move in!” he said.

  He ran the frequencies on his headset until he found the one the SEALs were using—not the one they agreed upon earlier. “Don’t fucking shoot us—we’re coming in the back gate, asshole,” he growled.

  “No—just wait!” Patton replied in a hot whisper, but Dex ignored him to switch back to notify Logan and Susan to change channels.

  Grace scrambled to her feet and he did too. He grabbed her hand and ran toward the end of the berm. After glancing across the opening and seeing no guards patrolling, he dragged her into the clearing toward where Susan and Logan were hiding. Before they reached the second dune, Susan and Logan ran out toward the back gate with their guns drawn, so he followed.