“We’re headed into the field, remember? She’s Lois, you’re Jim, and I’m Perry.”
Graham rolls his eyes as he looks back at me. “Doing okay...Lois?”
“No. We still don’t have an actual plan, do we?”
Over comms, Dax mutters, “Working on it. Though the wisdom of having a blind man orchestrate your infil is definitely questionable.”
“Until West gets in touch, you’re the best we have,” Ryker says in my ear. He and Ronan are driving the streets around The Crypt while Wren creates a backdoor into each traffic camera they find. When they infiltrate the building tomorrow night, they don’t want anyone to see them coming. Austin, Graham, and I are going to Plaza Bolivar to find Leo.
“What happened to code names?” Graham says. “I want my own name back.”
“Comms are secure for now. Once we get out in the open, it’s codenames only,” Ryker replies.
“Found something.” This is a new voice.
“Who the hell is that?” I ask.
“Ripper, ma’am.” The voice with a hint of Texas to it is kind and a lot less gruff than Ryker and Dax’s tones. “I found a money trail.”
“How much?” Ry asks.
“Millions. Maybe close to a billion. Still tracing. I’ll upload it all to the share when I figure out where it ends. Going dark to focus.”
I lean forward and touch Austin’s shoulder. “Why is he looking for a money trail? A trail to...or from where? How is that going to help Trev?”
My brother checks the mirrors as he accelerates onto the poorly maintained highway. “We’re not doing this halfway, squirt. The Loma Collectivo is going to end here and now. The CIA has been trying to bring them down for ten years. It’s what Trev and I were working on when Gil captured me. We were close too.”
“He told me that much.”
“If we can prove the Farías government is as corrupt as we know they are, we can stop them.”
“Won’t getting Trev out of The Crypt do that? And Luis...if he’s still alive? If I publish the truth of what happens there...”
“That’s not enough. We have to cut off their funding and expose how much they’ve stolen from the Venezuelan people over the past decade. It’s the only way to get the people on our side.”
“And how exactly are you planning on telling the people how corrupt their government is? He controls all the broadcast television in this country. All the radio stations. The newspapers.” Sitting back, I stare out the window as the lights of Caracas grow brighter.
“Leave that to Ripper and Wren,” Graham says. “Trust us, Dani.”
I do. Despite Ronan and Graham looking like they’re fresh out of college, Ryker’s scars and tattoos, Wren’s easy smile, and the fact that Dax can’t see, there’s a serious undertone to every word, every movement, every thought this team has.
They’ll get Trevor out or die trying.
Plaza Bolivar is filled with people, and a part of me wishes Trevor had felt comfortable bringing me with him when he went to meet Leo the first time so I could have seen this under happier circumstances.
Graham links his arm with mine, and every few minutes, he leans in and tells me to smile or laugh or just look affectionately at him. Austin follows a few feet away, occasionally skipping ahead of us so we don’t look like a group.
“You’re doing great,” Graham whispers in my ear.
“Just keep your hands to yourself,” Austin says over comms.
“Dude, I’m gay. Back off.” The muscles in Graham’s arm tense, and I lean my head against his shoulder with a huff.
“Sorry. He’s always been overprotective.”
Austin’s voice in my ear is getting more strained by the minute. “You do realize I can hear you, right?”
“We can all hear you,” Ry says from wherever he and Ronan are. “Keep the chatter to a minimum.”
We spend another ten minutes milling about the square, and Graham and I even take a picture in front of the giant statue of Simon Bolivar riding a horse. It goes straight to Wren so she can put any faces she can identify into her facial recognition program. Austin’s wearing a bodycam, and that footage feeds directly to her too.
“Contact spotted,” Austin says. “Two o’clock.”
Graham steers us through the crowd and into a small restaurant at the far end of the plaza. As we pass the bar, I see Leo nursing a drink and leaning a hip on a stool. He nods towards the back of the dimly lit space.
“On your six,” Austin says, and Graham and I push through the rear door and emerge into a quiet alley. We can still hear the music from the plaza, but there’s no one else around, and Graham drops my arm to withdraw his pistol and drape his jacket over his right hand.
“I’m clean,” Leo says when he joins us. “Been watching the crowds for an hour. Where’s flyboy?”
“Right behind you,” Austin says. “Never thought I’d see you again, man. Give me some good news.”
“I found the third brother. But he won’t talk.”
“Wait, as in...Franco Rojas?” My gaze pings between Leo and Austin, and both nod. “Did you tell him who I am? I mean...to him?”
Leo’s lips pinch into a thin line as he shakes his head. “He hung up on me before I got a chance.”
“Give me his number.” I pull out my phone and unlock it as the other three men stare at me. “This is what I do, guys. Convince people to talk to me.”
“It can’t hurt.” Austin shrugs. “Do it.”
Annoyance flashes in Leo’s one good eye—probably over Austin’s tone. He’s very much in “JSOC Commander” mode, and it’s almost scary how forceful he can be compared to the guy he usually is with me. After a blink, Leo seems to get himself under control and rattles off Franco’s number.
“It’s okay to call from here?” I ask.
Leo nods. “I’ll keep watch.” He limps slowly to the mouth of the alley and leans against a wall, casually pulling a candy bar from his pocket and tearing off the wrapper.
My stomach growls, but I ignore it for now and take a deep breath. Focus.
“Who is this?” Franco asks in Spanish when the call connects.
“I’m your niece. Luis’s daughter. Don’t hang up.”
“Luis does not have a—“
“He fell in love with Kate Monroe when she was Jorge Sosa’s prisoner, and they had a daughter. My name is Daniella, and I need your help.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Dani
The house makes odd settling noises throughout the night, and each one wakes me up from a dead sleep. The guys take turns on watch.
After ten minutes, I managed to convince Franco to help us, and before I stretched out in this sleeping bag in a back room, he spent two hours giving up everything he knows about the Loma Collectivo.
I check my phone. No new messages from Ochoa. Wren worked some magic and fabricated a photo of me on a commercial airplane that I’ll text to the general at 4:00 a.m. with the message, “I’m on my way. But before I get on my connecting flight, I want proof of life.”
My final flight will land at 2:00 p.m. local time. Wren will take care of the electronic customs records, and then Ryker expects the general’s soldiers to be waiting for me.
“You should get some sleep.” Ryker leans against the door jamb with a cup of coffee in his hand.
“I tried. Managed maybe three hours. I just…I don’t know how to do this.”
“Do what?” Ryker takes a sip of coffee and studies me.
“Exist knowing that Trevor’s…where he is because of me.” I sit up and wriggle out of the sleeping bag, then draw my knees up to my chest.
Ryker gestures out to the main room. “Get yourself a cup of coffee, and I’ll tell you how.”
I scramble up and follow him, grabbing a cup out of the metal French press. “You brought a French Press on a rescue mission? Who are you people?”
“I live in Seattle. And West—Cam’s husband—is a little militant about his coffee. No o
ne fucks with the SEAL. Not even me.” Ryker eases himself down in a chair next to the bank of laptops and taps a few keys. “Wren? Going dark for a few minutes, sweetheart. Doing a system restart. Nothing to worry about.”
“Roger that,” she says, obviously distracted by something on her own machine. She barely even looks up.
After another couple of taps, the camera light turns off and Wren’s image disappears, but Ryker doesn’t make a move to restart the system.
“She’s my everything,” he says. “And the day I realized that was the day she was captured by the head of the Nevsky Bratva—Russian mafia. He beat her, drugged her repeatedly, and would have killed her if she hadn’t found a way to escape.”
“She escaped?” I can’t hide my shock. She’s looks like she’s all of a hundred pounds after a good downpour.
“Yep.” Obvious pride relaxes his features, and it’s like he’s a different man when he talks about Wren. He rubs his hand over his scalp and gets a faraway look in his eyes. “When she was taken, I shut down. If it hadn’t been for West and Inara…” With a shake of his head, he focuses on me. “Keeping it together when the person you love is in danger is the hardest thing you’ll ever do. But you do it because they need you.”
He reopens the connection with Wren and she glances up at him with an impatient look on her face. “Took you long enough. Cam and I have been trying to crack the firewall on this Venezuelan contractor’s server for five hours.”
“And?” Ry leans forward, a gleam in his eye. “Tell me you found what I think you found.”
“Yep.” The screen splits in two, Wren giving Ry an exhausted but triumphant smile on the left, and on the right?
“Blueprints for The Crypt,” Ry says. “I love you, little bird. You just gave us the advantage that’ll let us take these fuckers down.”
“You know what to do,” Austin says as he wraps his arms around me in a maintenance closet at the Caracas airport and holds on tight. “We’ll be there at shift change. Not a single minute later than 5:00 p.m. Wherever you are in that place, we’ll find you.”
“Get Trevor out first.”
My brother’s body goes rigid. “No. If we do that, he’ll kill me. You first, then Trev. If you can find a way to get to him, do it, but be careful. I mean it, squirt.”
“Love you,” I whisper. Before he can stop me, I pull away and rush into the women’s bathroom. Once I throw the black floppy hat, sunglasses, and bright pink coat into the trash, I scrub my hands over my thighs. They’re suddenly damp and shaking.
I can do this. For Trevor. Whatever the general is planning on doing to me, he won’t kill me in the first twenty-four hours. Anything else, I can survive. As long as it gets Trevor out of there.
All I have in my small messenger bag is my wallet, phone, passport, and one of my tins of thinking putty. Or…what looks like a tin of thinking putty. The odds of me being able to keep it are slim to none, but Ry has so many contingencies built into this plan, I’d consider it ridiculous if my life weren’t on the line.
Before I open the stall door, I unlock my phone and stare at the video of Trevor the general sent me a few hours ago. My proof of life. He’s lying on the dirty floor of a cell, handcuffed, with his eyes closed. Until a booted foot jabs his hip and he tries to curl away from the assault. His eyes never open, and he never makes a sound. But he’s alive. Or was. According to Wren, the video was recorded twenty minutes before it was sent.
“I’m coming, Trevor. Hold on for me,” I whisper as I touch the screen. With a final deep breath, I push through the door and head for the sink to splash some water on my face.
There’s a tiny comms unit sewn into the lining of my bag at the seam. Graham did the sewing, and the bag had to pass inspection by Ry, Austin, Leo, and Ronan. None of them could find the unit.
“Here I go. Let’s hope the general got the memo about not killing me.”
Joining a line of people emerging from Customs, I breathe deeply. My heart’s pounding so hard I can hear it in my ears, and I feel like I just got off the treadmill after doing sprints.
That sensation ratchets up another hundred levels when two soldiers approach me, one with his hand on the butt of his gun. “Daniella Monroe, you will come with us.”
They don’t give me a chance to respond before taking my bag, spinning me around, and cuffing my wrists together. One of them starts to pull me towards the exit by my upper arm, but I plant my feet and jerk free of his hold. “I can walk on my own. I came here voluntarily, and I’m not going to run.”
Whatever the soldiers see in my eyes must convince them, because the one on my left gestures for me to keep moving. Five minutes later, I’m locked in the back of a police car that’s speeding away from any semblance of safety.
No one speaks for the forty-minute drive to The Crypt, and when we arrive, General Ochoa meets us inside the doors. The experience feels eerily similar to the visit I made here with Trevor, except for the handcuffs and my worry for the man I love.
“Señorita Monroe, thank you for joining us,” the general says with his plastered-on fake smile and overly solicitous tone. He’s dressed to show off his position today, with even more medals covering both sides of his chest and gold braids on each shoulder.
“You can drop the act, General. I know why I’m here and I have a pretty good idea what you’re going to do to me. I can’t stop you. But I want to see Trevor Moana. Right now.”
His dark brown eyes narrow and he leans close enough for me to smell his stale breath. “Watch your tone, puta. You are a resident of La Cripta now, and you will learn that here, I control everything.” He snaps his gaze to the guard behind me. “Search her. Thoroughly. Then put her in a cell on Sublevel One.”
As the guards practically lift me off my feet and carry me into the elevator, the general calls after us, “I hope you enjoy your time with us, Señorita Monroe.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Dani
Cold air hits my bare shoulders as I remove my shirt and place it on the table in front of me. The two soldiers—their name tags read Alvarado and Gurrero—removed my cuffs as soon as we walked through the door and ordered me to strip.
I don’t have a choice. The room is small with only a single table in the center. A third soldier guards the room from the outside, so even if I could take both of these guys down, I wouldn’t get anywhere.
Aikido taught me not only how to fight, but when not to. This is one of those times.
“Quítas el sostén y las bragas,” Alvarado says when I lay my pants on the table next to the shirt.
Swallowing hard, I unclasp my bra, take off my panties, and cross my arms in front of me, trying to hide as much of myself as I can from these two men leering at me like I’m some prize they won.
But they don’t touch me. My clothes, on the other hand… Guerrero scans them all with a metal detector and Alvarado checks every seam and fold. When they finish, they advance on me. “Face the wall.”
Ryker prepared me for this, but I still want to cry when they run their hands through my hair, under my breasts, and between my ass cheeks. At least they spare me the horror of sticking their fingers inside me.
“Vestirse.”
I can’t get my hands on my bra and panties fast enough when Alvarado gives the order for me to get dressed again. Guerrero examines everything in my bag, then asks me for my phone’s unlock code.
“I’ll give it to the general after I see Trevor Moana.”
Alvarado grabs a fistful of my hair and wrenches my head back. “You do not give the orders.”
“Neither do you,” I snap, and he shoves me against the wall hard enough the impact ignites sparks of pain from my shoulder all the way down my arm, and my knees buckle, sending me to the ground.
“It is useless to resist,” he says as he towers over me. “Everyone breaks here.”
Peering up at him, I force strength into my voice. “I’ll stop resisting as soon as the general gives me what I want.”
They move faster than I expect, and I’m bent over the table with my arms pinned at the small of my back. Panic floods me, and I scream, but all they do is cuff me—making the bracelets so tight, my fingers start to tingle—before they take me to Sublevel 1, march me down a short hallway, and then lock me in a cell.
“Turn and press your hands to the bars,” Alvarado says, and when I do, he removes the cuffs. “You will wait here until the general is ready for you. Do not expect it to be soon.”
As soon as they leave, I sink down onto the thin cot and choke back a sob.
I’m not hurt. They didn’t do anything my doctor hasn’t done.
Well, except for sliding a hand between my ass cheeks. My doctor has never done that.
I don’t know how long the general’s going to make me wait, but there’s a camera right outside my cell, so all I can do is look scared. Not difficult. Having mortar fire exploding all around me was less terrifying than this. At least then, I had armed soldiers protecting me. Now…I’m alone.
Drawing my knees up, I wrap my arms around my shins and bow my head.
“Look beat,” Ryker says as we’re going over the plan. “Make him think he’s getting to you.”
I start to rock back and forth in tiny movements. After a few minutes, I get to my feet and curl my fingers around the bars. “General Ochoa! How long do you plan on keeping me down here? I’m an American. There’s a record of me entering this country. When I don’t show up for work in two days, the Washington Post will break the story I wrote before I left. Want to know what’s in it? You. Your name. Your face. And copies of all of our text messages. You were careful. Didn’t use a traceable number. But I know it’s you. And so will the rest of the world.”
I barely have time to curl up on the cot again before the soldiers are back. But this time, there are four of them. I’m surrounded as they bring me down another level. According to the blueprints, this is the command center. We pass a room with dozens of monitors lining the wall, each showing a group of cells. I try to stop and catch a glimpse of Trevor, but one of the soldiers behind me yells at me to keep moving, and the other shoves me forward.
Call Sign: Redemption Page 17