“Right. Let’s go. Thanks, Deke,” Blade said.
The old SEAL looked pissed. “You boys get that fucker, you hear me? Fuck him up good.”
“We’re gonna,” Alexei said as he stalked out the door.
They sprinted for the truck. Blade called Neo as they were en route, telling him what had happened. By the time they got to Alexei’s house, Kayla Jones was pacing the floor. When Alexei opened the door and walked in, she launched herself at him, grabbing his arms, pleading with him.
“Please save her. You have to save her! He’ll hurt her, Alex. I told Bailey he would kill her, but he won’t. Not really. He’ll just make her wish she was dead.”
Alexei removed her hands from him, gently, and walked her over to the kitchen table where he could sit her down. Neo was standing by, frowning. Alexei met his gaze, wondered at the way he looked at Kayla, then dismissed it as unimportant.
“I need you to look at a picture,” Alexei said, using his calmest tone. He had to switch into operator mode, had to treat this like any mission to save hostages. Had to pretend he didn’t care about Bailey while inside he was dying.
Blade took out his phone and gave it to her. She scrolled through the pictures. “It’s Dirk. He’s one of the enforcers for the Kings. He does the dirty work for the boss and some of the higher-placed lieutenants.”
“Why would he take her?”
Kayla wrapped her arms around her body and started to rock in place. She was a slight little thing. Pretty. No wonder Neo put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. Kayla stopped rocking then. Sat up straighter. Her brows drew together and her jaw firmed.
“James probably sent him. Because he believes Bailey knows where I am. He wants me back to punish me—and he wants to sell Ana to the adoption agency. They’ll pay a lot for an infant, especially a clean one. He’ll try to force Bailey to reveal where I am. When she does, he won’t let her go. They’ll pimp her out, Alex. They’ll keep her high and they’ll sell her body. At first, it’ll be the club that has a go at her. When she’s sufficiently broken enough, someone will take her on the road and pimp her out all day every day. Truck stops, bars, pool halls. Wherever they find guys willing to pay.”
“I thought you weren’t aware of this shit, Kayla? You told Bailey you didn’t know about it until you found a suitcase with condoms. What gives?”
She sucked in a breath, her eyes sparkling with tears. “I didn’t know, I swear. I pieced it together after—and while I was staying with Joanne, the girl who left the club. She clarified some things for me.”
Alexei didn’t have much sympathy for her at the moment. “You didn’t want to know, Kayla. But if you spent the past several months in that place, you had an idea of what was going on. You just didn’t want to admit it to yourself.”
A sob burst from her.
Neo didn’t take his hand off her shoulder. “Lay off, Camel. She’s upset enough, don’t you think?”
“No, he’s right,” she said. “I rationalized everything. James explained so many things away, and I believed him. I shouldn’t have.”
“Would Dirk take her to the club’s compound or somewhere else?”
“The compound. Absolutely. It’s set on forty acres, and there’s a mobile home park there as well as the main club.”
A fucking nightmare. “How many buildings?”
“Three main buildings and fifteen trailers.”
Fifteen fucking trailers. Jesus. “Where are they most likely to have her?”
Kayla shook her head as tears flowed down her cheeks. “I don’t know. James and I lived in one of the trailers—it’s a blue-and-white one, fifth trailer on the right when you enter the park. He might take her there first. But I don’t know for sure.”
“How the hell did you get out of there, Kayla?”
She swallowed, her face pale. “Ana had a well-baby appointment. One of the women took me. I told the nurse I was afraid for my life and I needed to get away. She wanted to call the police, but I convinced her not to. She stalled Neesa—that’s who took me to the appointment—while I went out the back. The nurse gave me money and called a taxi for me, and I took it to Annapolis and then took another to the apartment complex.”
“How did you know Dunn wouldn’t find you there?”
“I never told him where I lived before I ran away with him. I didn’t want Bailey to see him, so I always met him somewhere. My license had our old address on it, so he wouldn’t have gotten it off there even if he tried. Once I moved in with him, it didn’t matter anymore.”
“Where is the compound? Do you know exactly?”
She nodded. “Yes. I can take you right to it.”
“Just give us directions. Write it down if you have to.”
“Sure. Yes. Of course.”
“I’ll get Viking on the phone,” Blade said as Alexei grabbed a pen and paper from the table by the door and shoved them at Kayla. “See if we can’t get Black on the line.”
“I’m not waiting for a team to assemble,” Alexei said. “We don’t have that kind of time.”
“No, I don’t think we do either. But they need to know what’s happening. And if Black has assets in place, he can help.”
“That’s fine,” Alexei said. “But Dunn and this Dirk asshole are mine.”
“Copy that,” Blade said as Alexei stalked over to his gun safe and rolled the combo. The doors opened to reveal his own personal arsenal. He reached in and started to load weapons. Time to hunt some fucking bikers.
Whatever they’d given her was starting to wear off, but not quickly enough. Bailey felt drunk and high and sick, or what she assumed drunk and high felt like since she’d never been either of those things in her life. There was a decided loopiness to the whole thing, but not so loopy that she wasn’t aware of what was happening.
She was naked, on a bed in a dark and dingy room, and two men were advancing on her. One grabbed her wrists while she kicked at him. But her kicks were ineffectual and he soon subdued her, wrenching her arms high above her head and holding them there. He positioned himself above her head as well, trapping her arms between his body and his tree-trunk limbs. Her legs were still free, and she kicked out at the other man—James Dunn—as he shoved his pants down and tried to lie on top of her.
“No,” she cried out as his rubbery dick pressed into her thigh. It wasn’t quite hard yet, which was a bonus for her. The more she twisted and fought, the limper his dick became.
A fist landed in her belly, and she started to retch as the air whooshed from her. At the first touch of the fist, she managed to tighten her core muscles, but it wasn’t quite enough. The pain radiated out into her chest, her limbs. She couldn’t breathe.
“Fucking bitch,” Dunn growled as he stood over her and jerked on his dick. “You aren’t making this any better for yourself. Be nice to me and I might reconsider letting Dirk here fuck you.”
“Hey, man. No fair,” Dirk said. “I grabbed her for you.”
Something shook the bed as the room grew much brighter. A second later, a thundering boom reached inside and knocked them over the head.
“What the fuck was that?” Dunn said, stumbling back from the bed and over to a window. A window? She hadn’t realized there was one, but that was the source of the light that had made the room brighter.
There was another explosion. Fire whooshed into a column in the sky. Were those screams? She wasn’t sure because her blood pounded so loud in her temples and ears that she couldn’t really hear much of anything.
“Goddammit, what the hell?” Dunn said as he stuffed his dick back inside his pants and zipped them up. “We gotta get to the armory!”
He grabbed the chains from the floor, and he and Dirk wrapped them around her and locked them tight before sprinting from the room. Bailey lay there for a full minute, trying to clear her mind of the remaining grogginess before she started twisting to get out of the chains. They’d wrapped them around the bed and her body like a straitjacket, and she couldn’
t move much. The little distance she did move dug the chains into her naked flesh. The links bit into her skin, and she could feel them grow slippery in spots. She knew she’d cut herself, but she didn’t care if it meant she could somehow get out of these things.
“Help!” she screamed, though her voice was weak and not quite a scream. “Help!”
Another fireball lit the night sky, closer this time. Bailey fought harder to break free. She didn’t want to die. She wanted to live—and she wanted to tell Alexei she loved him. It might not make a difference at all, but it didn’t matter. When you loved someone, you told them. Just in case you never got to see them again.
Chapter 26
Ian Black arranged a helicopter. Alexei, Blade, Neo, Dirty, Viking, Cage, Cowboy, and Money, all suited up and ready to kick some serious ass, boarded at a private airstrip. It hadn’t taken the team long to get themselves to the rendezvous point. They’d been on their way the moment they’d gotten word that Dunn had walked out of custody.
This was a private mission without the sanction of HOT. But somebody somewhere had worked their magic, and the SEALs were currently assigned to some shadowy organization that didn’t have to play by the same rules as the United States military. Alexei didn’t know how it had happened. He didn’t care either.
All he cared about was getting to Bailey and getting her out before the Kings of Doom abused her. She was there. They knew it for a fact now. Black had people watching the compound, and they’d reported the arrival of an ancient Volkswagen Bug. A man had been driving. What appeared to be a woman with pale hair slumped in the passenger seat. It was too dark to verify the exact hair color, but the woman had to be Bailey.
The helicopter zoomed straight to a drop zone within the forty acres. The SEALs rappelled down a line onto the ground. A man came out of the shadows. Their contact from Black’s team. After a few quick introductions, they were off and running through the woods.
“Got an extraction team waiting with SUVs,” Jace Kaiser, Black’s man, said as they ran. “We’ve set charges near their fuel-storage facility. They’ve also got an armory and an ammo-storage facility—that’s regrettably not hardened,” Jace added with a grin. “Charges set there too. It’ll be a helluva show.”
They all knew that the blame for the explosions was going to rest squarely on the Kings of Doom. Black’s men—and the HOT SEALs—were never here. The whole thing would be set up in such a way it would point to some sort of faulty decision made by the club.
“Do you know where they took the woman they just brought in?” Alexei asked.
“There’s a group of trailers a little distant from the others. They use them as a brothel. They took her there about an hour ago. I’ll show you which one.”
Alexei told himself to get prepared for what they might find. What if it was too late to save Bailey from Dunn’s plans to use her body? What if she’d already been violated and hurt?
He gripped his weapon against his chest a little harder and focused on the run through the woods. If she’d been violated, if they’d taken her sweetness and fire away, made her frightened and mistrustful instead—well, he’d do whatever he had to do to bring her back. He’d fight for her. He’d slay dragons for her, and he’d prove to her that he had her back. Always.
They reached the outskirts of the compound. Alexei scanned the area with his night vision goggles. There were motorcycles parked in the yard, men and women inside one of the buildings and on the porch to that building. It was an old structure, probably been there for fifty years, with weathered wood and a multitude of old gas and oil signs hammered onto its face. In any other setting, it’d be charming.
But not here. Here, it was a sick parody of a normal bar setting in a country town. Because what they were doing here—doing to women and girls against their will—was illegal and immoral and unconscionable.
“Which trailer?” Alexei asked as they observed the buildings from a safe distance.
“See that cluster over there? Five of them. They took her into the second one.”
“All right,” Viking said. “Let’s get into place so we can blow this puppy and get to work.”
“Copy that,” everyone said. Then they split up and went for their designated target. It had been understood from the beginning that Alexei was going after Bailey. Blade was at his side as they ghosted through the night toward the trailer. He wanted, more than anything, to kill Dunn—and Dirk—but that was not what they were here for. Their orders were simple.
Get Bailey. Raid the operation and get the goods on how it functioned. Don’t kill anyone unless absolutely necessary. He hated that last part, but he understood it. A military operation with casualties in a quiet Maryland town wouldn’t go over well if it made the front page of the Washington Post. Not that it was technically a military operation, but anyone with any knowledge of how Spec Ops worked would see through the smoke screen.
“Delta Echo is in place,” Viking said into their earpieces, using the military alphabet to identify himself. “Leaders, report.”
“Alpha Kilo in place,” Alexei said. The rest of the team reported in.
Jace Kaiser came over the comm. “Prepare for fireworks, my friends. Juliet Kilo, over and out.”
A moment later, the night sky exploded into light. Alexei and Blade waited to see who would appear outside the trailer they were watching. After the second explosion, James Dunn ran out the front door. Dirk was right behind him.
Alexei lifted his weapon. Blade’s hand came down on his arm, gripping it hard. “Not what we’re here for, buddy. Not tonight. Let’s get your girl.”
Alexei pulled against Blade’s hold for a second. Then he growled and dropped his arm. He could have taken the motherfuckers out with a tap to their heads and never missed a beat. But that’s not what they’d been ordered to do.
He broke into a run, heading for the trailer. Praying Bailey was in there and that she was okay. If God would only let her be okay, he’d never ask for another thing in this life.
Bailey struggled against the chains, uncaring that they cut her, and screamed as loud as she could. She feared it wasn’t very loud. The building shook and someone else screamed nearby. Another woman?
“Help me! Please!”
Bailey couldn’t stop the sobs that welled up in her chest and broke free. She wanted out of here so badly. She was angry and scared and the tears were coming whether she wanted them to or not. No matter that she told herself to stop, they wouldn’t.
Suddenly there was a commotion in the building. Booted feet pounding against the floor. The entire building shook. Why did it shake? Dark shapes burst into the room where she was trapped, and she screamed again. One of the shapes rushed toward her, and she tried to shrink away.
Gentle hands landed on her skin. Tender hands. “Bailey. Baby. Oh God, baby.”
She blinked and tried to gulp back a sob of relief. “Alexei?”
“Yeah, honey. It’s me.”
Yeah, so she cried harder at that revelation. Way to impress him with her strength. And then she just didn’t care anymore. Who needed to be strong when you had someone else to do it for you? Sometimes it was okay to hand over the reins to someone else and let them carry you. There was plenty of time to be tough later.
Tender hands slipped over her, assessing the chains while he tried to soothe her at the same time. “Don’t cry, baby. I got you. I’m getting you out of here. Promise.”
If not for his voice and his hands, she wouldn’t know it was him. He was dressed in black, with a helmet and what looked like a binocular thing on top that he’d shoved back when he’d rushed over to her side. His face was dark, and he carried a gun slung over his shoulder and an ammo belt that contained bullets and other things she didn’t even know.
“Alexei. You found me. Thank God you found me,” she blubbered. Was she even making sense? She didn’t know. Her head hurt. Her body hurt. And she was still fuzzy, still not able to focus for very long without feeling nauseated. “Si
ck,” she said. “So sick.”
“I know, baby. I’m going to take care of you.” He took something from his clothing and then she heard a snap and felt the chains give way. They were thin chains, like dog chains, and he was cutting through them. One by one, they fell away. He pulled them back, then shoved them off the mattress, cussing beneath his breath as he did so. She felt him ripping at the sheets, and then he picked her up wrapped in one. She didn’t even care so long as she was getting out of here.
He cradled her close and strode out of the room. Another dark-clad man met him in the hall. He was also holding a woman in his arms.
“Objective acquired,” Alexei said. “Copy that. Alpha Kilo out.”
“Let’s boogie,” the other man said.
It was a strange conversation, but she didn’t have time to figure it out because they rushed out the door and into the night. Bailey clung to Alexei, arms around his neck, face buried against his chest as he ran. She wanted to stay awake, wanted to enjoy every moment she had with him, but the pain in her body wouldn’t let her.
“Love you,” she muttered. And then a curtain dropped over her eyes and everything went silent.
Chapter 27
She woke to a strange beeping sound. And she was cold. Bailey tried to shift, but her body refused to move. Panic welled inside her and her eyes snapped open.
The room was white. She had an impression of machines and tubes before a face hovered over hers. A face she recognized.
Kayla.
“Bailey, oh my God—you’re awake. It’s okay, sissy. You’re safe. You’re in the hospital. They just have to check some things out, but you’re okay. Can you hear me?”
Bailey managed to nod. She felt so sleepy. “Can’t… move.”
“It’s the medication. It’ll wear off and you’ll be fine. But it’s keeping you from feeling the cuts and bruises right now.” Kayla smiled, but the smile shook at the corners. Bailey tried to frown, but it hurt to frown. Her entire head hurt.
HOT SEAL Redemption: HOT SEAL Team - Book 5 Page 20