by Nicole Helm
“It’ll never be over, Jamison,” Ace said, all but laughing as he spoke. “Not ever. Not until one of you has the guts to take me out. But you won’t. None of you have the courage. None of you have the survival instinct.”
Jamison watched Cody’s jaw work, but he didn’t have to say anything. Cody lowered the gun. “You sound like a man who wants to die, Ace. I don’t plan to be the one to give you what you want.”
Cody made a signal, and two of the men who’d swept in after the explosion pulled Ace to his feet and handcuffed him.
“Not a complaint,” Jamison said, watching his father being led away. “But since you all clearly aren’t licensed law enforcement, should you be handcuffing him?”
“We’ll take care of it,” Cody replied. He still held the gun with too tight a grip, and his gaze hadn’t left their father. “It’ll be legal by the time we’re done.”
Jamison didn’t know how to feel about that.
“The girls?” Liza asked.
Cody finally turned away from Ace and motioned Liza and Jamison to follow him out through the exploded back wall. There were a line of black cars waiting.
“They’ve been taken to a medical center. I didn’t want to get Social Services involved until you were both there. Some of the girls could tell us who their parents were and if they were involved in the Sons, but some are just too young. It’s going to take some doing, but we want to make sure we don’t return any of these girls to parents who might have sold them.”
“Sold them?” Liza said on a gasp.
“Unfortunately, it happens. And in the Sons? Anything is possible. But no matter who’s in charge now, we took down almost the entire trafficking ring. Tony is dead. Ace will be incarcerated. It’s not likely to happen again. Not here anyway.”
“You didn’t know the girls were there, though,” Jamison said as he followed Cody to the cars. “How did...”
“We were investigating the death of Carlee Bright. She has a connection to someone in our group. We hadn’t found any evidence of the trafficking. Which leads me to believe this may have been their first attempt. That you two stopped it before it got off the ground.”
“We didn’t stop anything,” Jamison said. The girls had already been captured. He had no idea how they’d been treated in those stables, or for how long. At best he’d kept them from a worse fate, but he certainly hadn’t kept them from fear or cruelty.
“Those girls would be dead if not for you two. We would have blown them up.” Cody said that flatly, but Jamison knew that kind of misplaced guilt well enough to recognize it.
He squeezed his brother’s shoulder. “But you didn’t.”
Cody nodded. “My men will take you to the girls. Where you can also be checked out. J, you can get those stitches. Liza can get her ankle looked at. The rest of us have a lot of work to do here and at the other explosion site.”
It was a strange thing to be told what to do by his baby brother. At Valiant County, Jamison was the ranking officer. To sit back and let Cody and “his men” take care of it was the antithesis to everything Jamison wanted to do.
But Cody had saved him. Not that he couldn’t offer his two cents. “There were badges. Pictures of badges—DSNs x-ed out and hung on the wall. It was clearly some kind of hit list. I don’t think the blast ruined too much of it. It could be used against Ace.”
“My associates will be taking pictures and any other evidence they can find to build a case against Ace. We might not be official, but we know how to get everything into the officials’ hands. Tony being dead makes him the perfect scapegoat for a lot of the stuff that carries the chance at a life sentence, and God knows Ace will use that all he can. Ace will get jail time, he’s too connected, but I don’t think we’re going to get him on murder.”
“If we put him away for a while, we can build a bigger case while he’s inside,” Jamison replied.
“I sure hope you’re right, because if you’re not, we’re all in danger. Serious danger. Worse than it was. Bad enough to escape him. Actually put him in jail? We’re targets now. I don’t think the kind he’ll wait on.”
“We’ll handle it. Whatever comes, we’ll handle it.”
Cody looked at where Ace was being shoved into a car. “We may have to kill him yet.”
Jamison knew it was possible, but it would also be his last resort. And he wouldn’t let his brothers be the ones to live with that weight. “We’re better than that. Better than him.”
Cody sighed, and he didn’t have to say the words for Jamison to know what that sigh meant.
I’m not so sure.
So, Jamison would have to be sure for the both of them—for all of them.
Despite forever and always working so hard to be good, Jamison wasn’t so sure he was, in fact, good. He’d worried for years that the evil inside his father might take hold of him.
But here they were. Alive. Having helped save some innocent lives. He’d take that as a win for today.
Cody opened the back door of a big, military-grade-looking SUV. Jamison paused, studying his baby brother. He shook his head in awe. “What are you involved in?”
Cody smiled wryly. “After this? Nothing.”
* * *
LIZA DOZED ON the drive to Cody’s “medical center,” which looked like any run-of-the-mill hunting cabin Liza had ever seen, but was a full-blown medical clinic inside. She practically punched a doctor who tried to check her out before she could see Gigi.
She finally let the doctor examine her while Gigi sat curled up on her lap, talking about the pretty unicorn the lady doctor had given her.
Liza tried not to cry and did a pretty good job of it. Gigi dozed on her lap and Liza let the female doctor—well, Liza assumed she was a doctor—fix her stitches and patch up all her other injuries. They gave her crutches to help stay off her sprained ankle.
“You’ll need to take it easy for a few weeks.”
Liza laughed. “Yeah, you don’t have to tell me twice.” She looked down at Gigi, who was fast sleep in her lap. “These girls... Were they...” Liza couldn’t bring herself to say it.
“Aside from a few bumps and bruises and a little undernourishment, Gigi is fine. She’ll recover in no time.”
Liza knew what that meant. “But the others?”
“I can’t tell you about the others, Liza. I’m sorry. Patient confidentiality. I’ve taken good care of them, and they’re safe because of you.”
Liza managed a smile for the doctor, though she didn’t feel it. It turned out saving someone wasn’t the be-all and end-all she’d always assumed it was. She understood Jamison better now, because saving someone meant they’d been through something awful in the first place.
And that you couldn’t take it away simply by saving them. There was some guilt even in a happy ending. Maybe if she focused on the happy, the guilt wouldn’t be so bad.
Another woman popped her head in the door. “Cody’d like to talk to you, Liza. I can put Gigi to bed.”
Liza’s grip tightened on Gigi, and the woman smiled warmly. “You’re not going to be able to carry her with your ankle. I’ll carry her, and show you right where I’m going to put her. You can sit in bed with her until you’re satisfied. Cody can wait. Might be good for him.”
Liza smiled and nodded even though it was weird that all these strangers knew her name, and Gigi’s. The woman was kind and seemed to understand how much Liza wanted to stay with Gigi.
She didn’t know any of their names, but she trusted them. Trusted Cody. He’d saved their butts—all of them. She owed him just as much as she owed Jamison.
They wouldn’t think of it like that, though. Neither of them. She had to swallow against the wave of emotion. She was out of the Sons, and that meant she got to have some part of that goodness again. Grandma Pauline. The Knights. The Wyatt brothers. Jamison...
&nbs
p; They’d all be in her life again. In Gigi’s life.
The woman gathered up Gigi, and then waited for Liza to get to her feet and balance on the crutches. She led her into a dark room, but there was a night-light plugged into the wall. There were a variety of beds—some that had clearly been pushed in from other rooms. So the girls could be together.
The woman laid Gigi down on an empty bed, then stepped back so Liza could tuck her in.
Gigi didn’t so much as shift or whimper as Liza covered her. Liza sat there for a moment, looking at Gigi’s sleeping form, then looking around the room. The sisters slept cuddled together in the same bed, but most of the other girls were in beds of their own. All fast asleep.
They were safe. Maybe they’d seen horrors, but they’d survived them.
The woman nodded toward the door and Liza reluctantly followed her outside.
“We’ve got a monitor. If anyone wakes up scared, we’ll send in either you or one of our people they’ve been introduced to. We want to make this as easy on them as we can, I promise you.”
Liza nodded, afraid she’d start crying if she spoke. She was led to another room. She realized the front of the cabin was deceptive, or it had been in the low light of dawn. It seemed to keep going, farther and farther back. Exam rooms and bedrooms and now this room that reminded Liza of an interrogation room.
But Jamison was there—all sorts of bandages on his face, his arm in a sling. He looked up at her, exhaustion dug into every line on his face.
Love slammed into her so hard and painful, that no matter how well she’d held herself together up until this point, she lost it all here and now.
A sob escaped her mouth, and she was completely immobilized by all of it.
Not even a second went by before Jamison’s arms were around her. “Shh. It’s all right. We’re all right.”
She shook her head, feeling stupid and foolish and just wrung out. “Sit down. You’re hurt,” she croaked, even as she held on to him for dear life.
He rubbed his hand up and down her back and kissed her temple. “I’m fine. I’m fine. Come on, baby. You’re killing me. It’s all right now.”
She leaned into him, letting it all pour out. It was all right. No matter what they had to face in the future, they could. They would. Because they’d made this all right, and if they could do that—kill her father, put Ace in jail, stop a human trafficking ring—they could do anything.
She managed to pull herself together, let Jamison lead her to a chair at a table. He nudged her into it, leaned her crutches on the wall, then took the seat next to her. Cody sat on the opposite side of the table, a tablet in front of him.
“I wanted to brief you on the future for the girls,” Cody said, all business, as if she hadn’t sobbed her guts out in front of him. As if she hadn’t known him when he was a baby or a pudgy toddler. “We’re checking missing persons files first. But the ones we know for sure are Sons girls... We could find good families for them without going through the state.”
“How?” Jamison demanded. “They’ll need records and to go to school and—”
Cody smiled at Jamison before he interrupted, “By ways I shouldn’t explain in the presence of a by-the-book cop.”
Jamison winced at that, but he didn’t push Cody for specifics. Cody turned to Liza.
“In your case, Liza, the state would likely award you custody of Gigi through the normal channels. You’re the closest living relative that we know about, and Gigi knows you. If you wanted—”
“Of course that’s what I want,” Liza snapped.
“All right. We’ll get you in touch with the right people and make sure it goes as smoothly as possible.” Cody’s expression changed, though Liza couldn’t read it. “You haven’t asked about the horse.”
Liza winced and shook her head. “I don’t want to know. Really, I—”
“I got him out,” Jamison interrupted. “I didn’t know if he’d get out of the blast zone, but I got him out of the stables.”
Liza looked at Jamison in complete awe. He’d somehow saved himself and George?
“The rescue team I called out to get the girls found him in the woods. Gigi told him he saved her. So, we got him out, too.”
Liza laughed. It was all she could seem to do. They were all safe and whole. Even George the horse.
Unfortunately, no matter how thrilled and relieved she was, there were still serious worries that hadn’t been addressed.
“What about Ace?” Liza asked, wishing she could doze on Jamison’s lap like Gigi had slept in hers.
“He’s currently being held at Pennington County Jail. We’re working with local law enforcement on state charges. I’ve also got one of the men in my group working on what we can get going on the federal level.”
Jamison nodded. “Now, most important, when can we go home?”
“When the girls wake up, we’ll move you. Grandma and Duke agreed to put up all the girls until we get them placed. We’re trying to move as fast on that as we can so they don’t feel like they’re being juggled, but we don’t want to overlook anything. Wherever we place them, it’ll be permanent. They’ll be taken care of well, and not just now, either. We’ll keep tabs. Keep them safe. It’s what we do.”
Liza rested her head against Jamison’s shoulder, beyond tired. “I just want to go home.”
Jamison rested his arm over her shoulders, holding her close. “Soon, Liza. Soon.”
Chapter Twenty
The ranch was chaos, but the kind that made Jamison smile.
Grandma had taken in four of the girls, including Gigi. Three were over at the Knight ranch, being looked after by Duke—and Sarah and Rachel, his two daughters who still lived on the ranch. And best of all, four of the girls had been placed back with the families they’d been kidnapped from.
Regardless of how many were still staying at the ranches, every night everyone descended on Grandma Pauline’s dining room for dinner as they were doing right now.
Four of the girls were being placed in their new homes tomorrow, and the parents who’d agreed to adopt them had come for dinner, too. The house was bursting at the seams, and Grandma ran her kitchen like the general she was.
When they sat down to eat, Duke told stories that had them all laughing. It felt like Christmas. A celebration.
In so many ways, it was. A celebration of survival and life and knowing they all had futures to build ahead of them.
Once dinner was done, all the girls moved to the stables. It was now a nightly routine for everyone to pet and coo over hero-horse George, whom Cody had managed to transport to the ranch.
He had the much-deserved life of a hero now.
Jamison and whichever brothers were home were relegated to cleanup—he and Cody were currently handling dishes while Dev wiped down the table and swept up the debris before sneaking out to feed the dogs some scraps.
Cody had spent most of the past three days at Grandma’s. As if he was planning on staying right here.
“So, when are you going to tell us about this group?” Jamison asked as Cody handed him a plate to dry.
“Never.” Cody grinned, but his smile dimmed some and he went back to the dishes he was washing. “Once this is officially over, I’m kicked out.”
“Why?”
“Too much connection. It’s a secret group, Jamison. I compromised the secret.”
“You helped people. You saved us.”
Cody paused in his scrubbing for a second, then shook his head. “It’s only ever temporary. We know any mission could expose us and we’ll have to move on. It’s part of the group.” Cody shrugged. “I did my time. I helped some people. Now I’ll have to figure out what’s next. Seems like Dev could use some help around here.”
“You hate ranch work.”
“Maybe I’ll find a new taste for it in my old age.”<
br />
“You won’t.” Jamison chuckled, because he realized that Cody might stick around the ranch for a while, but he’d find something else. He’d found this “group” on his own and done good things...whatever they all were. He’d find a way to do more good things, Jamison had no doubt. “You know, you’re not so old the police academy would reject you.”
“We’ll see.”
Jamison could have pushed Cody, but there was no need. It wouldn’t be a bad idea for his brother to stick around the ranch. They’d need to keep an eye on things these first few months and make sure the Sons didn’t band back together stronger without Ace than they’d been with him.
Jamison doubted it, but they still had to be careful.
They finished the dishes, joined the others until they slowly began to disperse. Grandma and Liza put the girls left with them to bed. Cody had disappeared to his room, and Dev and Sarah were out doing the last chores of the evening.
So, Jamison climbed the stairs. His body still wasn’t healed—not by a long shot. But he’d get there.
He walked down the hallway to the door to the room Gigi was sleeping in. The door was open, and Liza was curled up in bed with Gigi, telling her a story.
Jamison watched until Liza finished telling Gigi the story. With an elaborate happy ending that Gigi sighed over. Liza handed her the unicorn one of the doctors had given her, then pulled the blanket up to Gigi’s chin.
“Stay till I fall asleep, sissy?”
“Always, baby.”
Jamison waited. When Liza finally slid away from Gigi’s bed, she didn’t act surprised to see him in the doorway. She smiled.
She closed the door behind her and they stood in the hallway. The past few nights she’d spent in the same room with Gigi, not wanting to leave her. They hadn’t had a chance to really talk.
They had a lot to talk about.
“Where are your crutches?”
“They’re more of a pain than this sprain. I’m fine,” Liza replied irritably. She gave him an enigmatic sideways look. “How long until you have to go back?”