Nothing happened except the breathing silence continued.
I capped the water and tried again. “I can hear you.” Whispering, the echo wasn’t as loud, but it was still there and I noticed another sound.
Tilting my head, I listened. It was as if…. I exhaled and held my breath a moment to hear better.
Creaking, but like a yawning creak. And a deep, deep hum that was almost inaudible, it was so low. The pieces falling together, I closed my eyes and held perfectly still. That’s when I felt it.
Pitch.
Then sway.
Pitch and sway.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
Pitch and sway.
Holy fucking shit, I was on a ship….
In a cargo container.
With no air.
Panic slammed into me, and I started to hyperventilate.
Oh God, oh God, Oh God.
Something touched the top of my hand, and I shrieked.
The sound echoed so loud, it scared me, and I was on my feet in half a second flat.
“No, no, no!” My hands as guides, I felt my way around the container until I came to metal bars and levers, and I started banging and pulling and yelling. “Help, help!” My foot kicked something. “HELP.” I grabbed the metal rod and shook it as hard as I could.
“Stop,” a female voice hissed.
I froze.
Ship engine yawning, bodies breathing, the stench of urine and sweat. “Who are you?”
“We’re not supposed to talk. Sit down. A bucket is in the corner if you need it.”
Oh dear God. “How many?”
“No talking.”
I felt her move away.
“Wait,” I pleaded in a whisper.
I waited, but she didn’t speak again.
Too many breaths to count later, I shuffled along the wall in what I hoped was the way I’d come because now I wasn’t only terrified, I was desperate to find that water bottle.
My hands feeling each ridge of the cargo container, I cursed myself for not counting how many I had passed. My feet shuffling, my dress stuck to me with sweat, I made my way as far back as I’d thought I’d come, and when I still didn’t encounter the water bottle, I went further.
Welling tears broke their barrier and spilled down my face, but still no water bottle. Biting my lip to keep from sobbing, I dropped to my hands and knees. Crawling, sweeping my hands, I went a couple feet in one direction, then what I thought was twice as far back in the other direction but in my panic I wasn’t sure.
On my third sweep of the ground around me, my fingers brushed against plastic.
Gasping, a sound more cry than victory escaped, and I snatched the water bottle off the filthy floor.
Grit and God knows what all over my hands, I sank back against the wall, pulled my knees up and cradled that bottle like it was more precious than the first time I held Ethan.
HOLDING A BORROWED GUN to a man’s head, I stared at the security footage on the video screen.
I was angry that we’d lost hours chasing the wrong lead. I was enraged she had been taken by a trafficker, and I was sick at what could have happened to her by now. But when I saw her limp body being lifted out of a car, I saw red. Then the man in the blue shirt tossed her into a cargo container like she was a rag doll, and I vowed to commit murder.
My nostrils flaring, my jaw ticking, I forced myself to speak. “Stop the tape.”
“I-I-I swear,” the port authority guard stuttered, “I didn’t see that happen the first time. I d-d-d-didn’t see her get thrown in the container.”
Of course he had not seen it. He was paid not to. I glanced around the port, but all the containers looked similar. “Where is that container now?”
“It-it-it’s already gone.”
Seething, calculating, I glanced at his worn uniform then the keys he had ignorantly left on his desk. Reaching around him, I snatched the German-made key fob and pressed the unlock button. An expensive sedan within sight of his windowed office blinked its headlights.
I pressed the gun harder into his temple. “How long have you been taking payments to look the other way?” I was going to kill him and the man who had taken her.
The guard’s hands shot up. “Wh-wh-what are you talking about? I-I-I just do my job.”
My finger twitched on the trigger.
“Don’t do it,” Luna warned through the telecommunication device in my ear. “It will draw attention.”
I glanced outside the security office set above the docks as Luna came up the stairs before I scanned the port. No one in the immediate area, no one looking up here—it would be a clean kill.
Standing outside the office, Luna gave me a look through the glass window that said he knew exactly what I was thinking. He tipped his chin toward the guard. “He isn’t the main objective.”
I did not care. My angel was in a cargo container, and I wanted to kill the security guard who had looked the other way.
His weapon in front of him, another in his thigh holster, Luna scanned the docks. “We’re out of time. Find out which ship she was put on.”
I gripped the back of the guard’s neck and squeezed. “If you want to live, tell me what ship she was put on.”
The guard shook like a woman. “I-I swear, I d-d-don’t know.”
I slammed his face down.
His head crunched against hard plastic and pieces flew off his keyboard as he cried out.
I jerked his head back up by his hair. “Last chance,” I warned.
Blood poured out of his nose. “The Altamira!”
“Where is it going?” I demanded.
“Altamira, Tamaulipas,” he rattled.
Still standing outside the office, Luna’s curse came through the comm. “Jesucristo.”
I slammed the guard’s head down again and held him there. “Where?”
“Mexico!”
“When will it get there?” I barked.
“Two, three days,” the guard cried.
More rage than I had ever felt filled my veins. “Tell me the exact time,” I ordered. “When did it leave and when will it dock?” How long could she survive in a cargo container?
“Thirty-two hours, thirty-two. It-it-it left an hour ago.” He broke down and sobbed. “Pl-pl-please, don’t kill me. They force me to take their money. I have no choice.”
My finger itched. He had a choice. “We all have choices.” I glanced out the window at Luna, but he shook his head once before scanning the docks again.
“Tell him to delete the security feeds from tonight,” Luna spoke through the comm again. “We don’t want Estevez to know we’ve been here.”
I moved the muzzle of my gun to the guard’s cheek. “Delete the security footage from tonight. All of it.”
“I-I can’t do that. I’ll get in trouble if I delete everything.”
“Would you rather die?”
He did not move, he did not speak.
“Delete it,” I barked.
His hand shaking, the guard clicked through a series of steps and four of the nine different views on his video screens blinked to gray. “It-it’s done.”
I glanced at Luna through the glass as he kept watch on the deck surrounding the office. Raising an eyebrow, I silently asked if needed to know more. He shook his head once.
My gun still jammed into the guard’s cheek, I withdrew my hand from his neck.
“She wasn’t the only one tonight,” the guard blurted.
My teeth ground in anger. “How many?”
“S-s-six, including your girl.”
“How many times a week?” A month, a year? How often were women taken?
“Wh-what?”
“How many times a week do you look the other way?” I moved the muzzle to his forehead.
“I-I-I swear, j-j-just one, one time a week!”
Luna stepped into the office, his weapon drawn on the guard. “You have forty-eight hours to quit this job or disappear.” He yanked the guard’s wallet
out of his back pocket, opened it, and took his driver’s license. “If you’re smart, you’ll do both before I come back.” Pocketing the license, he threw the wallet on the desk, glanced at me, then tipped his chin toward the door before walking out.
With one last warning look at the guard, I followed Luna.
“She’ll live,” Luna said as we hit the bottom of the stairs.
“Do not make empty promises.” A man was only as good as his word.
“How Estevez is transporting these women, it isn’t his first rodeo.” Holstering his gun, but doing nothing to conceal it, Luna strode back toward the SUV.
“Excuse me?” I did not understand, nor care for the comparable sayings I heard outside the compound.
“I meant this isn’t the first time Estevez has done this. Dead women are useless to him. They’ll survive the transport to Mexico. That’s all I was saying.” He unlocked his vehicle and got in the driver side.
I got in the front passenger seat, but I was not convinced she would survive an airless container for thirty-two hours. “I need to get to Mexico.”
“We need to get to Mexico,” Luna corrected, turning over the engine. “And you need to get mission focused. Cage the anger.”
I had never served in the military, but there had been men on the compound who had. I knew objectives in the military had been called missions, and I understood what Luna was saying. Same as tracking, I needed to focus. “Understood.”
“You got a passport?”
“No.” Getting a driver’s license took months. Despite knowing how to drive since before I was a man, I never had any documentation to my name on the compound. I had to apply for a social security number before getting a license. “How long does it take?”
“More time than we have.” He used the controls on his steering wheel to place a call. The display read Roark before it began ringing.
“I’m guessing five in the morning isn’t a social call,” a man said sarcastically.
“I need to get to Altamira, Mexico. Six women are in a cargo container, en route, all kidnapped for sex trafficking. We have thirty-two hours before they dock.”
The man did not even hesitate. “I’ve only got an eight seater. Unless you’re going solo, which for the record would be suicidal, that’s pushing it. Should I even bother mentioning you’ll need passports for the women for reentry?”
“I’ll handle reentry. It’s getting in I’m worried about. You’re on speaker. Roark, meet Callan. His stepsister is one of the hostages. He’s coming with me, and he doesn’t have a passport. We’re in Tampa and need to get back to Miami ASAP. Can you pick us up?”
“I can come now in the eight seater. You want a bigger plane, I need time and funds to rent one.”
“How much time?” Luna asked.
“Depends on what you want. There’s a twenty seater in Miami I can get ahold of on short notice.”
“That’ll work. How much?” Luna quipped.
“Eight grand an hour,” Roark answered. “Ten hours there and back and fuel, about a hundred grand.”
“Cristo.” Luna rubbed a hand over his face.
“I will pay for it.” I pulled my cell phone out and brought up my bank information. “Tell me where to transfer the money to.”
Luna looked at me incredulously. “You got that kind of money?”
“Yes.” I had much more. A hundred thousand dollars would barely make a dent in the amount I had inherited.
“Mierda,” Luna muttered. “Okay, Roark, arrange to get the plane, but come get us first.”
“On it,” Roark confirmed. “And for the record, Key West to Tampa, Tampa to Miami, Miami to Mexico, you’re racking up the favors, Luna.”
“If you’d get on my damn payroll, they wouldn’t be favors,” Luna countered.
Roark half laughed, half snorted. “I’m beginning to think I’d make more money working for you.”
“You would,” Luna agreed.
“But the hours would suck,” Roark retorted. “I’m on my way now. Pick you up at the executive airport in Tampa in fifty minutes.”
“Thanks.” Luna hung up and swung the SUV around, pulling out of the port.
I logged into my account. “Give me your bank information.”
Luna rattled off the name of the bank, which was the same as mine, then he gave me an account number.
I transferred the money. “Done.”
“Thanks.” He was quiet a moment. “We’re going to need backup. Going in to Estevez’s territory, there’ll be plenty of his men around, and we won’t have Mexican authorities on our side. This is going to get a lot more complicated than beating information out of one of his drivers.”
Luna’s men had gotten traffic camera surveillance footage of Estevez putting Emily into one of two vehicles around the corner of the club. On a hunch of Luna’s, we had gone to Estevez’s residence. One of the vehicles was in the driveway with the driver still behind the wheel. I’d pulled him from the vehicle, but it was Luna who had gotten the information that Angel had been taken to Tampa to the port.
As we drove to Tampa, Luna had discussed worst-case scenarios of not making it to the port before she was moved again. He had said Estevez was notorious for selling women in Mexico, where there was less of a chance of being caught by authorities. Luna had committed to following through if we had to get her out of Mexico, but he had warned of the difficulties we would face, mainly getting in and out of the country, and the number of men Estevez would have waiting.
I did not know Luna enough to trust him, but he had kept Decima safe, and the only other person I knew who could help was his friend Neil Christensen. Christensen had remained on the compound after I had killed River Stephens. He had waited with me until the federal agents arrived, coaching me on what to say. I had not kept in touch with Christensen, but he had said to call him if I ever needed anything.
I shifted in my seat, uncomfortable in the armor-plated vest. “Call Christensen.”
Luna glanced at me. “You tight with him?”
I did not know the expression tight, but I could guess at its meaning. “He said to call if I ever needed anything. I have never contacted him.”
Luna was quiet a moment. “Extraction from a foreign country is a lot to ask of someone.”
“You agreed.”
Luna exhaled. “There’re six kidnapped woman, Anders. You willing to gamble someone besides us is out to rescue them?”
“You did not call the authorities.” It would have been easier for him if he had.
“Because I know how this shit works. By the time they get organized and call whoever the fuck needs to be in on it so they don’t step on anyone’s toes, or make a bad political move, the women will be sold. Once that happens, good luck finding any of them.”
“You are doing this out of chivalry?”
Luna glared at me. “I’m not gonna judge the shit you came from, but don’t mistake me helping you for anything other than what it is.”
“Which is?”
“The right fucking thing to do,” he ground out, hitting his steering wheel to make another call.
Neil’s voice boomed through the car’s speakers a few seconds later. “Ja.”
“You’re on speaker. I got Callan Anders in the car. We’ve got a situation.”
“Explain,” Neil ordered.
“Javier Estevez.” Luna bit his name out. “Finally caught the fucker in action. He drugged and took a woman from Frenzy last night, Ander’s stepsister. The stepsister and five other women are now in a cargo container on a feeder ship that left Tampa an hour ago, heading for Altamira, Mexico. We have thirty-two hours before it docks and we lose any lead we have.”
“Stepsister or a female from the compound?” Neil asked.
Luna smirked.
I answered. “My biological father is married to a woman who has two daughters. Emily is one of her daughters.”
“No biological relation,” Neil stated.
He did not ask
it as a question, but I answered anyway. “No.”
“Where are you now?” Christensen asked.
“Tampa,” Luna answered. “Roark is picking us up and we’ll be back in Miami in two hours. Then we’re flying to Altamira. I know a foreign extraction is a lot to ask, but we could use the help.”
“I am foreign,” Neil said with his Danish accent.
Luna shook his head. “Mexican extraction then.”
“I will be at your office in two hours.” Neil hung up.
I thought about the other women that had been taken and wondered how many women growing up had been brought to River Ranch against their will. “How long has Estevez been taking women?”
“Since before I got out of the Marines. He was a small-time thief before I enlisted, then I come home to this shit.” Luna shook his head. “I wish I could say it was women, but that pendejo takes underage girls as well.”
“Why has no one stopped him?”
“Try catching the fucker in action. He’s slippery as hell.”
“He has to be caught in action?”
“If you’re the authorities, yes.”
The surveillance footage was more than damning. I did not understand the intricacies of the law, and I did not care. I was going to get my angel back however I had to. “What will happen to the women in transit?”
“Hopefully nothing.” Luna glanced at me. “You got something going on with your stepsister?”
I had told him she was my stepsister. I would not deny it now, but I did clarify. “We are not biologically related.”
“Is that where you draw the line?”
My jaw ticked. “I have been judged my whole life. You will have to try harder to insult me.”
Exhaling, Luna looked over his shoulder before changing lanes. “Last time I saw you, you didn’t have a girlfriend.”
“Last time you saw me, I was pulling you out of the line of fire and killing the man who raised me,” I corrected. “I do not remember you asking if I tended to any women.”
“Tended?” he scoffed.
“Do you have a better word?” Men should tend to women.
“Fuck yeah, I have a better word. I got a lot of better words. How about love, cherish and honor? Any of that sound familiar to you?”
I was not ignorant. I knew what marriage vows were. But before you deserved the right to marry a woman, you showed her you were able to care for her. “I never disrespected your woman.” If that was what this was about, he was wasting his breath. “If you want to be angry that I tended to her before you ever met her, then that is on you. I have no control over how you decide to think.” He was a fool if he thought Decima ever belonged to me. She never loved me, not like a woman should love a man who tends to her. Unlike my Angel, Decima had never gazed at me with any softness.
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