“You’ll have to take it easy for a little while. At least a couple of hours.” Ronny nodded, feeling like he had when he was younger and tried his hand at a little pot. “I’ll help you to the dining room now. I think you’ll enjoy sitting at the table for a change.”
Ronny thought for sure that he could enjoy a great many things right now that he hadn’t even before the accident. Looking at Jon, he felt a connection and smiled at him. This, he thought, was going to be the beginning of his new life. For some reason, Ronny wanted to change things around and spice them up. It was time that he started making himself as happy as his little girl was now.
Thanking Jon again, he wanted to skip to the table, he felt so good. But Ronny took his time, and was happy to know that he’d be able to stand up with Reilly tomorrow when she and Boyd became man and wife.
Chapter 13
Hawk kept himself close to the wall as he made his way to the elevator that would take him to the room that he’d rented for the day. He thought of Reilly as he tried his best not to freak out with all the other people around him. She’d done this—found the missing kid after only three days of doing a search. Well, they were all hoping it was him. Hawk was on the elevator when he heard from Reilly.
Okay, I’m not sure what this shit is that I have now, but can you tell me what the people look like that are standing around you? He described the six people in the elevator with him. He didn’t even bother asking her what was going on. Hawk had enough shit going on now that nothing much surprised him anymore. There should be a woman with a dog. I have no fucking clue why it’s there, but do you see it?
A dog? I would think that it would be having a meltdown about now with me in the elevator with it. She told him it wasn’t really a dog. Okay. I don’t understand, but let me have a better look.
The woman in front to his left had a dog in her arms. He wasn’t sure that it was right. Hawk tried to get a closer look at the mutt, but she turned a little and he could see it laying across her arm. He told Reilly what he could see.
Okay, that’s what I can see too. I’ve hacked into the cameras where you are, and I can see you all. Christ, what are they doing shoving you up against the wall there? Never mind. I’m going to stop the elevator. Bear with me, please. The elevator came to a sudden stop and he held tightly onto the railing surrounding them all. Hawk, the police are on their way up to the floor that you’re on. The dog is a child that just came up missing at the hospital.
You’re sure? Okay, don’t answer that, you are. What do you want me to do now? She told him to just make sure that the woman didn’t hurt the little girl. I can do that. What does this have to do with the missing boy, if it’s related at all?
It is. She took young Emma there when she was six hours old. She’s done the same thing before this, and I’m working on trying to find those children as we speak. Her bank accounts have been sealed up, thanks to Lauren. And she’s going to back trace, if Lauren can do that, to see if she can find where the money came from. And I don’t know why I even think that she can’t.
She’s selling them. It wasn’t a question, but Reilly answered him as if it was. What is it I can do right now? I don’t want this child hurt any more than you do.
Nothing for now. I’m worried that when the police show up there, she’s going to hurt the child to get away. This has happened before, I’m afraid. He didn’t ask her what had happened, Hawk loved kids too—when they were someone else’s. When the elevator moves, I want you to do something that will distract her. I don’t know. Kiss her or something.
Hmm, no thanks. But I’ll see what I can do. He loved the women in his family, but Reilly, she held his heart a little tighter. He had no idea why—he got along with all of them—but he and Reilly could sit for hours, not saying a word, and be comforted by it.
The elevator started to move with a lurch, then stopped again. When it started moving smoother now, he thought of what he had to do in such a small space. Making his move now seemed the best possible time.
Bumping into the man next to him hard enough to knock him into the woman knocked her purse and cane to the floor. As he bent to pick it up, talking to her all the while, he moved himself into a better position. As soon as the doors opened, he was in a situation that he could not just grab the baby if things went south, but he was standing in front of her now instead of behind.
People moved out. Hawk was still trying to keep the woman inside with him when he heard the cops telling the two of them to put their hands up. As soon as the cop said that, she tossed the child into the air and drew a gun.
Hawk was able to hold the child while the others did what they had to do. The crime scene was a mess, but the child was safe, and that was all that mattered to them at the moment. The doctor was on his way to examine the child, then take her back to the hospital for tests and such. He was reasonably sure that the child had been drugged, and that frightened him a little.
Hawk had been feeling like he’d been run over three times and left in the sun to rot. Not just in the last few months, but even before that, he thought. His job had been boring, the same thing over and over. He’d be called in to kill someone, take them to the police, or just find them. Today he’d felt needed, useful even. And as he sat there, waiting on the doc to come and see the child, he realized that he was also feeling lonely.
Hawk had been a loner all his life. Even as a child he would participate in activities, sports and things at school and with his family. But he didn’t engage with them. Once whatever was going on was over, he would curl into himself and walk away. He wondered why he’d been that way a lot over the last few years, and thought it was too late for him to change.
Now he found that he not only wanted to change, but he also wanted to hang out more with his brothers. His sisters too. Because to Hawk, none of them were in-laws, but his sisters.
When someone touched his arm, Hawk’s first reaction was to kill. Looking up at the man standing in front of him, it took him several seconds to get rid of the urges that had been as much a part of him as breathing. The man seemed to understand as he sat down next to him.
“Battle fatigue. I can recognize it on a fellow sufferer.” He asked for the child, and when Hawk just stared at him, the man smiled. “I’m Doctor Cameron Scott. I’ve been sent here by Lauren McCullough to look over the child and to admit her to the hospital for observation. You should contact her.”
“I’m sorry.” He nodded and took the baby from him. Hawk watched him as he listened to her heart and checked her over from head to toes. When he was finished, Hawk told him again how sorry he was and tried to explain. “I’ve been military longer than I’ve been a civilian. I have to keep myself in control. My brother—he’s a doctor too—he told me to write it all down. It’s helped a lot.”
“Good for him. When I first came home, it was difficult for me as well. People aren’t like us.” Doc Scott handed him the child. “You hold onto her. She’s going to be just fine, but I’m to understand that there is a young man too that I should see.”
“He doesn’t know that the woman he was with is dead. I don’t know how he’ll take that. I’ve been unable to see him, as they’ve got him pretty much tied up with questions that apparently he’s not answering for them.” Doc Scott stood and asked him if he’d come with him, and to bring Emma, the little girl. “You need someone to protect you?”
“No, I think perhaps you might be able to help Mike better than I can. I want you to talk to him.” He asked him if he knew what was going on. “Yes. When the door was broken down to the room, he was tied to the bed with a chain. There was no food or water near enough to him to get it—just out of his reach, as a matter of fact. I’m sure that she did that on purpose.”
I have some information for you. Hawk told Lauren what he was doing before she could give him what she had. Good. His name was Mike Raver. Now he goes mostly by Shithead. I kid you not, Hawk, if she wasn’t dead already, I’d go there and kill her myself. You’d not bel
ieve the shit that Reilly has found since we have a name.
I believe it. He entered the room as she was giving him a rundown on the stuff that the boy had endured. I’m with him now, Hutch. He’s like a wounded bear. That’s all I can think of. Poor kid.
He’s going to need a lot of help before he’s going to be all right. His parents have not been informed yet that we might have found him. I want to get him someplace where he can be examined and have blood work done before we tell them that this kid might not be theirs after all. Hawk handed Mike the baby when he reached for her, knowing that the kid had been doing this sort of thing for a long while. She’s taken at least three more babies that we know of at different hospitals across the state. Same way. She goes in, pretending to be the nurse for the nursery. Cuts all the monitors on the kid, strips it down to its bare skin, then drugs and dresses it. I’ve got some people working on her bank accounts. What’s going on now?
He’s caring for the infant. Checking her diaper. Holding her in his arms and rocking her back and forth. Let me see what he’s saying. Hang on. Mike was telling the child that she had to be quiet, that she’d be hurt if she wasn’t. And that when she got to her new home, she was to remember him so that someone would love him when he was gone. He told Lauren what he said to the baby over and over. Lauren, I think he believes that he was going to be killed today. I don’t know why I think that, but he’s just too defeated not to think that.
That’s what we think too. Hawk, this bitch stole some pretty heavy-duty drugs about two hours ago. Just before she took Emma. Hawk told Lauren that the doc said she was all right. Good. I should have warned you he was coming. But I have shit going on here too. The woman’s name is Shelly Weeks. Well, I guess it was Shelly Weeks. She actually pulled a gun on you? What the fuck is this world coming to when a nice man like you, who hadn’t pulled his weapon yet, is accosted like that?
He’d not been able to let any of the cops have the child; she seemed to need him as much as he needed her. As he was asked, several times, if he was all right, Hawk told them he was fine. Lauren must have ripped them a new ass, was all he could think about.
When Weeks tossed the baby into the air, Hawks first thought was it was a grenade. Then as his mind snapped into the present, he felt the first of many bullets enter his body. He only just managed to grab the child before she hit the floor. He was sure that she wouldn’t have survived that, not as little as she was.
Weeks was pulling out another weapon when he grabbed her by the throat. His hand was tight around her, but she didn’t struggle. He knew that this wasn’t going to end with this bitch in jail. She’d hurt others and gotten away with it.
Tightening his grip on Weeks, he’d morphed his hand into a long blade and removed her head. It was that or she was going to get by him when he fell to the floor holding onto the infant. And since she’d put about a magazine of bullets in his body, he was sure that it would be labeled as self-defense. Or he hoped so.
He might not die from the wounds, but it sure as fuck hurt like hell. Falling to his knees first, he told the cops who he was, who he worked for, as well as his serial number and rank. Not that these men would give two shits about any of that, but the cell phone ringing in his pocket told him that Lauren or Reilly would save his ass from going to the chair.
They had treated him differently when the phone was put away. Hawk had still been lying on the floor, his wounds all but sealed up. He wondered what they would have done had they seen that the bullets seemed to push their way out of him and roll down the inside of his shirt. He thought they just might shit themselves.
“She was going to kill me today.” He looked at the boy, Mike, when he spoke in a whisper. “I don’t know how you knew I was in here, but I sure do appreciate it.”
“You’re so very welcome.” He looked at the doc, and when he asked to be introduced to Mike, Hawk nodded and lifted the boy’s face up to see him. “I’ve been held captive before too. It ain’t pretty, is it?”
“No, sir. Are you going to give me away too? I don’t want to go to that home.” He asked him what home that was and Mike told him. As he relayed the information to Lauren, he wanted to go there now and take care of the place. “Nobody comes out of there when they use them all up.”
“No, there is no way in hell you’re going anywhere but to the hospital. Mike—your name is Mike, did you know that?” He said that he did, and he knew that he’d been kidnapped. “How?”
“She kept this book. And she made me look at it every day, telling me how my parents never searched very hard for me. If I ever have me a baby, I’m sure never gonna stop looking if somebody takes it.” Hawk asked him if he knew the place where the book had been and if there were any other names in it. “Yes, sir. There are newspaper clippings of all the babies. She would make us read them every night before we went to bed.”
Mike was examined, and he and Emma were taken to the hospital. Hawk stuck around. He knew that when Lauren had information for him, he was going to kill every adult in the place. Stretching his neck, feeling the pop of muscles when they stretched out, he was standing outside the hotel when she got back to him. He was going to his car even as she told him, several times, to stand down.
~~~
Jamie was sick. Not ill, but sick all the same. When she’d first started working here, she had wondered how they could pay her as much as they were and not have any customers. But as the days went by, she began to see the place for what it really was. At least she had a pretty good idea that she did.
Sneaking around hadn’t been her strong suit while she’d been looking for the babies. She was better at coming up with excuses as to why she was someplace that she wasn’t supposed to be. But today she knew just where they were, and she was going to take them out, even if she had to carry them in her clothing as she went.
The upstairs bedroom was off limits to her. In fact, all the upstairs was a place she’d been told not to go. But she was polishing the staircase when Ben said he was going to the store, and nodding when the door closed behind him, she ran as fast as she could up the two flights of stairs to the bedroom.
Now that she was where the babies were, she had to think what the fuck she might have been thinking. She didn’t have a gun, but she knew that Ben did. So did Shelly. They were armed all the time, she’d found out, and that was what had scared her the most. But not enough to stop trying to find the children.
Jamie wasn’t a sleuth or whatever she might have been called. But one night, not long ago, she’d gotten up to see if she had indeed locked up the cabinet with the cleaning supplies in it when she saw Ben and Shelly Weeks standing in the kitchen with a young couple.
It never occurred to her that this wasn’t normal. That the couple had left the child in their care and was coming back for it. The Weeks ran a daycare, or so she had been told. Now she knew not only what the place was, but also that the children of the place were being held as sex slaves. Jamie was going to take care of them too. Just as soon as the babies were safe.
Getting closer, just to see what the infant had looked like, loving children of all ages, she heard what was really going on and her belly lurched up. They were selling them the child. And for a great deal of money too.
The conversation was about how they couldn’t tell anyone where the child had come from, who had sold it to them, or anything else. If they did, Ben told the couple, not only would they lose the child, but their lives as well. He had pulled out a handgun, she supposed to make his point.
That had been three weeks ago. Now she was as close to finding them as she’d been able to. Jamie could hear them then, the pitiful wails of a baby. Her heart broke for it, and she doubled her efforts to find them.
She found the secret door and opened it just as she felt something touch the back of her head. Jamie wasn’t stupid, she knew that she’d been caught and that it was a gun, Ben’s gun, that was currently making its way into her brain. She didn’t turn when he told her not to move.
“You don’t listen very well, do you? I thought we told you several times, not to go snooping around. And what do I find? Not only were you someplace that you shouldn’t have been, but you’ve gone and found the one place that we were hiding from you.” Jamie told him that she just wanted the babies. “Not going to happen, I’m afraid. You’re going to die, right along with that brat that’s been living with us.”
She had no idea who that might have been. The children, not the babies, were nowhere she’d been able to find them. And now it looked as if she never would. Jamie wanted to cry. She’d been so close.
The noise behind her had her turning. It was a mistake—she knew that as soon as she was pulled up against the front of Ben and he held her there. The gun to her head and his hand over her mouth made it impossible to beg the monster of a man in front of her not to kill her.
The gun in the man’s hand looked tiny compared to his size. She thought perhaps he was some kind of shifter, but she had no idea. They’d told her once, a friend of hers who had been a wolf, that they were bigger in their human form for the other part of themselves. Jamie thought this guy must have had a lot of others in him. He grinned at the two of them, and Jamie felt the hairs on her arms dance. She’d was more afraid of the stranger than she was Ben. And he had a gun to her head.
“Let her go.” Ben laughed and said that he wasn’t going to do that. “No sweat off my balls. You kill her and you’re still going to be dead. Purgatory is just waiting for another sick fuck like you.”
She screamed behind the hand that covered her mouth. He’d just told Ben to kill her. What a fucking bastard. But there wasn’t any way that she was going to be able to make him eat those words. Jamie was reasonably sure that she was going to be dead in the next few minutes.
“Your wife, I killed her earlier.” Ben said that he’d not. “Yep. Cut her fucking head off where she stood, and still managed to save both Mike and Emma. As Mike told me what you’d done to him, I came right over to end your fucking miserable excuse for a life. You’re just lucky that I don’t have time to play. I would make you suffer in ways that you live through so that I could start again.”
Boyd_McCullough’s Jamboree_Erotic Jaguar Shapeshifter Romance Page 16