by HELEN HARDT
He’d walk through a thousand more slimy jungles for this. He’d throw down his life for this.
If he lost her again, he’d want to be dead anyway.
* * *
In true Pacific Northwest style, the Seattle-Tacoma weather gods broke out one of their best downpours in honor of the girls’ homecoming. It was another lucky twist of fate, because when Heidi was finally reunited with her daughter and the TV cameras zoomed in for their close-ups of the mother and daughter sobbing on each other, nobody paid attention to one Sergeant Hawkins behind them discreetly wiping “rain” off his own face. Rayna had a similar reunion with her brothers, who could easily fill out most of an epic movie cast—even with two of their seven out on deployments. Zeke kept careful watch nearby until something outside the terminal window caused a thunderhead to cross his face, making the clouds outside look like cartoons.
After making sure a Sea-Tac security officer was instructed not to take his eyes off Sage, Garrett snuck behind the camera crews and stepped next to his friend. “Dude, you look like you saw the spawn of hell himself.”
Zeke’s lip curled, exposing pure rancor. “I did.”
“What’re you—”
His friend cut him short with a rough grunt and a curt nod. Garrett followed the trajectory of that move, looking outside. Their plane had taxied to a gate at the end of the terminal, adjacent to what looked like the airport’s main security operations. Considering who they’d just shuttled home, the move wasn’t surprising. His scrutiny took in a one-story building with a mess of communication equipment on its roof and a swarm of people in dark-blue uniforms both inside and out. There were four standard-issue police cars present, flanking a black van that looked anything but standard.
Because it wasn’t.
Standing in the rain outside that van, his wrists and legs chained and his elbows bracketed by two FBI suits, was the man he’d last seen kneeling in jungle grass, busted in the act of trying to broker women into slavery.
King.
If blood could really scream, Garrett was certain his did. As if beckoned merely by the strength of that silent chaos, the asshole below raised his head—and instantly zeroed in on the spot where Garrett and Zeke stood. Like a slow-motion demon, King turned up a knowing grin in greasy increments before licking his lips as if finishing off a juicy steak.
“Evil” was too good a term for the bastard. So was “worm in the sewer of humanity.”
Garrett barely controlled the craving to pound the window. “What the fuck is he doing here?”
“I don’t know,” Zeke rumbled. “But I’m gonna damn well find out.”
“Good.” It was agonizing to take in a breath. “Good.”
“I’ll call you.”
“You sure as hell will.”
“In return, I need a favor.”
“Make a list of options for killing the guy?”
Z grunted. “Well, that too. But for right now, Rayna and Sage don’t get told about this, okay?”
Garrett whooshed out a long breath. “Dude. I’m only out of the doghouse by half a step.”
“And I need you with me on this right now, G. Please.” His friend tensed, making his body seem like a mountain atop an earthquake. “For fuck’s sake. They both just got back into the States, where they don’t have to jump at every movement in the shadows, or guard their food like they’re prison inmates, or be afraid of breathing for fear of what that asshole has in store for them next.”
He pivoted, taking in the solid brick his friend’s jaw had become. “Okay,” he uttered. “Valid points. But…that’s not all, is it?”
Zeke looked ready to take his own turn at smashing the window. “No,” he confessed quietly. “Rayna’s already battling some fucked-up nightmares. Lots of them.”
Garrett felt his brows jerk. “And you have firsthand knowledge of this already?”
“It’s not like that, asshat.”
“And…how is it, then?”
“I slept on the couch in her room, okay? She’s been through hell. She hasn’t had anyone to be strong for her. I just…needed to be there. It just needed to be me.”
“Yeah.” Garrett said it as he turned and looked back at the mob who still clamored near Sage, Rayna, and their families. “I get it, Z.”
Hell, did he get it. He got it all over again, this very second, when Sage looked toward the position he’d been occupying behind her right shoulder. When she discovered the Sea-Tac officer there instead, her gaze scoured the terminal in panic. Garrett stepped over, making sure he hit her line of sight. When she found him and visibly relaxed, it was the greatest high of his day. Screw that—of his year.
He fought the compulsion to finish off the deal by lunging for her, sweeping her into his arms, and dragging her home, safe against his side. Her grateful little smile didn’t help his resistance. He settled for what he could do about things. He nodded back, mouthing two words.
I’m here.
From the depths of his being, he swore to stay near. Even if she demanded that he take a knee before her, smack a sword to his chest, and swear it with the fealty of his last breath, nothing would change—nor would it for a long damn time. She wasn’t getting rid of him, no matter how many industrial-strength chains he’d just seen hanging on King’s body. The slimebag hadn’t just been extradited to the same country as her. King was in the same goddamn city now. It changed everything and nothing with the same stunning blow.
Sage laughed at something her mom said. The sound warmed every inch of Garrett’s senses, reaffirming the promise he’d just made to Zeke. His woman felt safe enough to laugh again, and he’d make damn sure things stayed that way, even if she took a few breaks to restart her rebel yell behavior toward him. He held no illusions that she wouldn’t go there, either. Her attempt to unravel his thinking about “Sir Garrett” would take flight with some new inspiration, and he’d be tempted to hogtie her all over again.
Or handcuff her to the bed.
Or lock her into a spreader bar.
Damn it.
He’d been hoping that the long journey from Thailand and the return back to familiar soil would be the magic erasers on his darker sexual urges. But just the flash of that image in his head, of tying Sage up until she was totally at his mercy…
Shit.
His cock surged in ways that weren’t cool in the middle of a jammed airport terminal with the world watching on live feed. Thank God the crew from TMZ had skipped this particular news op. His hard-on was safe from their digital boner detectors for now.
And Sage still wasn’t safe from him.
He redirected his thoughts toward just getting her home right now. Maybe in a few days, things would be different. Maybe after Zeke did some digging, and assured them both that King was bound for some high-security hellhole somewhere, he could relax and rewire his head so it interfaced with his dick correctly again. The ways that Sage deserved. The normal ways.
Whatever the fuck normal was anymore.
* * *
His ringing cell roused him from a dead sleep. That part was pretty normal.
When it did that at seven thirty in the morning, it wasn’t normal.
Garrett gaped at the phone’s screen, certain he hadn’t read the time right. The last time he’d slept past five, let alone seven, had been in the days Sage made it worthwhile to sleep in. He hadn’t set the alarm last night, certain he’d wake up just because the den couch was as comfortable to sleep on as a bed of nails. But sure enough, here he was, clicking the green button to blurt a greeting to Zeke.
“Hey.”
“Hey, man.” There was a discerning pause. “Whoa. Did I wake you up?”
“Don’t worry about it. What’d you find out?”
He didn’t elaborate further on the question. The bombshell of seeing King had jarred Zeke as deeply as him. Zeke had likely sparked up his street network the second they’d left the airport. Z knew the workings of the Seattle streets the same way Garrett knew eve
ry part of a corn thresher. He had to admit that at times he couldn’t believe he was best friends with an orphan from Pioneer Square, but right now, he’d never been more grateful Z had kept up with that underground network.
“Plenty,” Zeke gave up in a growl, “and none of it’s pretty.”
“Hell.”
“Yeah, that’s what this is gonna feel like.”
He got up and peeked around the corner into the bedroom. Not a sound or a movement came from the bed piled with the poofy linens in dark green and cream that Sage had picked out when they first bought the place. She was burrowed deep and sleeping soundly, and if she wanted to do so until next week, he was going to let her.
“All right,” he said after returning to the den, “lay it on me.”
There was a weighted breath on the other end of the line. “His real name’s not King. I know that doesn’t surprise you. His sixteen other names might, however.”
“What the f—” He let a stunned breath stand in for the profanity.
“That’s only where the numbers begin with this guy. Apparently he’s been at this shit for a while. He grew up in Vegas as Isaiah Irwin. He dropped out of school when he was fourteen and started in the scene as a junior-level pimp. That’s when he became ‘Ice’ Irwin. When the big man there decided to offer franchise opportunities to his boys, setting each of them up in major cities across the country, Irwin was the Sea-Tac guy. He set up a very successful racket here, going high-end with his game. He catered to the tech-corridor execs and the guys coming to visit them, strictly shit out of the Alexis, the Four Seasons, the Edgewater. Naturally, he had a different identity that he used with each hotel.”
Garrett pounded a finger on his knee. “Slick asshole.”
“No kidding. Well, everything was going along peachy, happy girls and happy clients, until Irwin, or whatever the hell he called himself by then, decided to set up a little side biz and not tell the boss about it.”
“What kind of a side business?”
“He got a bunch of guys onto the base as contractors.”
“Our base? Fort Lewis?”
“Affirmative. Now you know where I’m going with this one, yeah?”
He wouldn’t be surprised if a megawatt light bulb of understanding appeared in the air over his head. “Holy shit. Was he tied to all those weapons that started disappearing off base a few years ago?”
“The ringleader. He set up a new identity for the racket; had the balls to name himself Rambo Righteous for it, if you can believe it.”
“I’m learning to believe anything from this bozo right now.”
“He ran the goods to the highest bidders in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, you name it. Three guesses as to what city he used as home base, and the first two don’t count.”
“Bangkok, Thailand.”
“Check,” his friend replied. “But the reason we never caught him is because he got a line on someone greedy from inside the supply chain. He didn’t need the base anymore, so he pulled his guys out before we nailed their asses. Another racket set up, another alias established.”
“Of course,” Garrett muttered. “And this time, he was Chuck fucking Norris.”
Z’s growl all but strangled him through the phone for defiling the great name of Chuck.
“Joking.”
Z forgave him with a quick grunt before going on. “Once the bastard got integrated into Bangkok, the criminal world was his oyster. Drugs, diamonds, even those ridiculous fake Rolexes.”
“And human trafficking.”
“Roger that. Loud and clear.”
Garrett could no longer contain his enraged growl. “He’s the eBay of illegal and immoral.”
“But the racket he ran with the highest debt to pay back is the firearms game. When you add his injured party to the mix, the United States government, you end up with an extradition back to the scene of the crime faster than you can say ‘do me in the ass again please, warden.’”
Garrett dragged an ottoman over with his foot and then hiked his heel on it. “I hope the bastard is squealing like a pig as we speak.”
Zeke sent back an unsettled snarl to affirm the sentiment. “I hope the asshole isn’t doing anything right now except brooding in solitary.”
He waited for a deeper explanation of that. When Z didn’t give anything up except heavy silence, Garrett pressed, “What do you mean?”
For another long moment, his friend still didn’t talk. When he finally spoke, his voice dipped into a tone Garrett only heard on their messiest missions. “I mean that King’s still connected all over the area, Hawk. Big time. He got enough flow to buy out the big man from Vegas about six months ago, and now he’s numero-uno daddy pimp in town. My guys on the street tell me he’s even sold a few of his girls here into the Thailand stream.”
Garrett kicked the ottoman. As the cushion slammed into the wall, he lurched to his feet. “What?”
“Yeah, he’s a real beautiful specimen of humanity. Guess if he finds a girl who has no real family and can’t be traced, she’s invited to a yacht party on the harbor, which fast becomes a barge trip to Bangkok.”
He began to pace. His fingers ached with their hard grip on the phone. “If he’s still got money all over town, even prison won’t stop him. The Federal Detention Center Sea-Tac might as well be the damn Four Seasons.”
“Think that’s a news flash, dude?” There was a rough scratching on the line that sounded like his friend took a second for a hard swallow. “Hawk…he’s already put out some lines on Sage and Rayna too.”
“Fuck!”
“Good way of phrasing it.” His friend punched the line with another rough breath. “And once he connects the dots from the girls back to the guys who led the mission that took him down…”
“Hell.”
He didn’t need Zeke to fill in the rest of that scenario. The statements they’d taken from Sage and Rayna, as well as the aid workers they’d rescued, painted a vivid enough picture of the man’s disgusting depravity. Now that King was sitting on his ass at Sea-Tac FDC, he had lots of free time to scratch that sordid itch—with a revenge fantasy that started with recapturing Sage and Rayna.
“I’ve already taken this to Franzen,” Zeke continued. “He’ll be interfacing with the Feds on this, who will hopefully get the message and put a lockdown on who King gets to interact with for the foreseeable future.”
Garrett’s heart took a swan dive into his gut. “But he wants us to bring the girls to the base, doesn’t he?”
“Hell no! King—well, Rambo Righteous—had at least a dozen guys in on the weapons racket. They probably know the place better than we do.” It sounded like Zeke got up himself. The drone of a distant television came over the line. “The girls go nowhere near the base. We’re also on clamshell status on telling them anything. In case—” His friend coughed uncomfortably. “Well, in case they do get taken again, the less they know, the better.”
Just hearing the words caused a haze of rage to sneak at the edges of Garrett’s vision. It was a direct contrast to the scene he looked out on from the den window. The neighborhood sparkled in the morning sun, and the snowy heights of Rainier were radiant in the post-storm gleam. None of it made a dent in his tension or eased the lock of his teeth as he answered Z. “That is not going to happen.”
“I happen to heartily agree, my friend.” His friend’s heavy footsteps sounded on the line. After that, a discernible flicking sound. A cigarette lighter. It wasn’t surprising. Z only smoked when he was too tense to do anything else, and this situation likely qualified for that. “Hawk, I know this goes without saying, but it’ll make me feel better. Don’t take your eyes off Sage.”
“Check the box already, man. I assume you’ve got the scope on Rayna?”
“I’m running a gauntlet of her seven brothers to do that, but yes.”
“Call me later.”
“Check.”
He hung up with Z and, with phone still in hand, made his way back to t
he bedroom. Yeah, it had only been ten minutes since he’d last been in here, but this time he needed to see her, to touch her. To assure himself, especially now, that the last three days hadn’t been a dream he’d wake up from, back in Bangkok, drenched in cold sweat, and jamming his finger into a ring between his dog tags.
He stepped into the dim room, crossed to the bed, and took care to lower slowly to the mattress. He dipped the thing with his weight anyway, which gave him extra incentive to pull gently at the covers. He’d leave as soon as he saw the soft curtain of her hair and the soft contours of her face…
Which weren’t there.
“Sage?”
He murmured it at first, certain she’d buried herself really deep in the mountain of covers—which didn’t move even after he jabbed at them.
“Sage.”
He ordered it now, stripping the whisper from his voice as he swept the linens off the bed. The empty bed.
“Fuck! Sage!”
This was the part where he was supposed to wake up. This was the moment where he jolted out of the nightmare and faced the grief. But he didn’t wake up. The bad dream and the shitty reality were one hideous thing now. She was really gone.
Chapter Eight
Silence. Blessed, glorious silence.
Sage had swum the lake many times but never just enjoyed its serenity. She’d always been in too much of a hurry, plowing through the water in a hard breast stroke, revved by thoughts of what she had to do that day, of things she had to organize, of paperwork to complete, and orders to carry out on base. The exercise had always been satisfying but never fulfilling—just another task to cross off the list.
She’d never simply turned over on her back like this and floated. She’d never let the sun warm her face, the breeze flow over her skin, or the water embrace her like a giant swath of liquid velvet…