by Rebecca Deel
Twenty minutes later, a key jangled in the front door lock. Plastic bags rattled as Thomas shifted them from two hands into one. A flip of a light switch. The room remained dark. An explosive curse followed by a deep grumble as he kicked the door shut with his foot.
Jon, on his feet, waited until Thomas passed within a foot of his position before he moved. Within seconds, Thomas cried out, landing face first on the floor, bags scattered, arms immobilized from behind. More struggles which suddenly ceased as Jon made liberal use of his knowledge of painful pressure points and holds. “Who are you? What do you want?” Thomas demanded.
“Information.”
“I don’t know nothing.”
Jon chuckled while adding more pressure, enough to cause Thomas sharp pain. God bless the Navy SEAL training. Came in handy. “You better hope you do know something, Thomas, or I won’t have any reason to leave you breathing.” Despite not having plans to kill Thomas, the enemy sensed if you weren’t committed to a course of action. To save Dana, Jon knew he would do whatever was necessary. The acrid scent of Thomas’s fear tainted the air in the room. “Will anyone miss you, Thomas? Maybe your mother? Oh, wait, she can’t miss you. You killed her already, didn’t you? Bet it didn’t take too long. She was within two months of dying from pancreatic cancer. Did you convince yourself you were committing a humanitarian act by helping her to the Pearly Gates a little faster?”
Thomas froze.
“Since you’re not exactly Ghandi, guess that means no one will care if you’re dead.” Jon waited, ready with more painful tactics if Thomas still proved uncooperative. Thanks to his black ops training, he knew many ways to elicit information from reluctant witnesses. Some left the recipients undamaged. Others didn’t. To recover Dana, he wouldn’t lose one minute’s sleep over using every interrogation skill in his arsenal. In fact, he welcomed the chance to vent the fury raging in his gut, the guilt that ate at his insides like acid. Ten days she’d been missing and Jon had been too busy looking into Joe’s murder to more than wonder at her silence before returning to the search. He knew better. The living always trumped the dead. Joe would have been appalled. Never again, Jon vowed. Dana would never again take second place in his priorities.
Jon felt his quarry’s capitulation before Thomas’s words confirmed it. The body language was a dead giveaway.
“What do you want to know?”
“I’m looking for a woman. Name’s Dana Cole.”
Thomas tried to turn his head and get a look at the man who pinned him to the floor. He doubted the man could identify him in the pitch black room, but he couldn’t take the chance on leading anyone to his partner. Jon increased the pressure on a nerve which he knew caused excruciating pain to radiate down the legs.
Thomas let out a high-pitched howl which seemed to bounce off the living room walls. Jon released enough pressure so the pain was tolerable. Barely. “Next time I won’t be so nice.”
“I’m sorry, man. Sorry.” He sobbed.
“Let’s try this again, Thomas. Dana Cole.”
“I don’t know nobody named Dana.”
“Wrong answer.” Jon ramped up the pressure on the nerve long enough to leave Thomas squealing and begging for mercy.
“I swear, man. Her name don’t sound familiar. I know lots of broads. Can’t remember all their names, you know? Tell me what she looks like. Maybe I’ve seen her.”
“Long black hair, green eyes, small height, slender build.”
“She got a tattoo or something I’d notice? I mean, that sounds like a lot of women I know.”
Jon rested his full body weight on the one knee pressed into Thomas’s kidney. The stench of warm urine filled the room. “She works at Sartelli Construction.” Not for much longer, if Jon had anything to say about it. If necessary, he’d take on extra jobs for Fortress so he could pay her salary at Wolfe Investigations before he’d let Dana step foot on Sartelli’s turf again. She was too important to him to lose her to the likes of Sartelli. Even if she rejected him, which she’d be smart to do, he’d still make sure she worked a safer job. Maybe Maddox could find a job for her at Fortress.
“Name don’t mean nothing to me.” The fear leaching through in his voice spoiled the bravado of his words. Some people were ultimate liars. Thomas wasn’t one of them.
“What a shame, Thomas. I really didn’t want to kill you, but you’re not helping me out here.”
“You don’t understand, man. They’ll kill me if I talk.”
Jon leaned forward, eliciting another groan from the man underneath him, and whispered, “I’ll kill you if you don’t tell me what I want to know, and I promise, you’ll be in such agony you’ll beg me to end your life long before I slit your throat.”
“Okay, okay. Please.”
Again, Jon eased the pressure just enough for Thomas to talk with a sharp reminder of pain. “Sartelli Construction,” he prompted.
“I do some work for them on the side.”
“For Marcos Sartelli?”
“Maybe. I don’t know for sure. I’ve never seen Sartelli.”
Not surprising. Would be pretty careless of Marcos to let himself be tied to anything illegal. He’d learned how to cover his tracks from old school thugs in Italy. “What side work, Thomas?”
“I help a guy with moving stuff.”
Jon’s internal clock told him Thomas was stalling, hoping the arrival of his poker buddies would save his worthless hide. While he could take down all four men soon to arrive, Jon preferred not to risk a neighbor calling the cops. He pulled a small Smith and Wesson knife from the sheath on his arm and angled the blade across Thomas’s throat. “My supply of patience is running low, Thomas. Either you start talking in paragraphs instead of three-word sentences, or I’ll skip play time and slice your jugular now. You’ll be dead in two minutes.”
“I swear, man. I help this guy move stuff. Sometimes we truck equipment from one construction site to another.”
“Someone photographed you carrying an unconscious woman with one of Sartelli’s goons, scum bag. Who was the girl?”
Thomas stilled beneath Jon. “Someone took a picture?”
“Your ugly mug is very recognizable. That’s how I tracked you down so fast. Who was the girl?”
“I don’t know.”
Jon’s knife left a one-inch bleeding scratch on Thomas’s neck. “Who was the girl?”
“Ow! Please, no more. I don’t know her name. Honest. Just some drunk college girl. Gage thought it would be funny for the party girl to sleep it off and wake up on a construction site. You know, teach her a lesson. Shouldn’t drink if you can’t hold the booze.”
Jon almost snorted at the drivel spilling from Thomas’s lips. “What’s your excuse for the twenty-four pack of beer on the floor? Just so you know, that girl wasn’t in college, Thomas. She’s still in high school and disappeared the night you left her at that site. Guess what that makes you? An accomplice. I bet a cop would love to slap cuffs on you and haul you to jail for kidnapping.” An anonymous tip to Cal’s office was on Jon’s agenda soon.
“Hey, no way, man. I don’t know nothing about no kidnapping. I’m innocent.”
“Not buying it, Thomas. Where did you pick up the girl?”
“Some dude’s apartment.”
Jon changed his hold on Thomas’s arm, twisting it higher. The man screeched with pain. “Name or address.”
“Some place off Bell Road and Zelida. Don’t know the guy’s name or the complex.”
Jon’s blood ran cold. Dana’s complex. “I want an apartment or building number. Think hard before you answer, Thomas. Lie to me and I’ll know. I won’t be happy. Might even have to break a few bones to make my point. Start talking, Thomas.”
“I don’t remember. I was buzzed, man.”
“A landmark, then. Was it near the complex entrance?”
“Third floor of the building across from the laundry room. Saw a hot babe carrying a basket of clothes into a laundry room across the stre
et.”
Dana’s building and floor. Had to be Tim Russell, the neighbor across the hall with ties to The Watering Hole. “Describe the man.”
“Just an average white guy with a mustache.”
Jon narrowed his eyes. Sounded like Russell, but he had to be sure. “Which apartment?”
“Don’t know, man. Can’t remember.”
He applied more pressure. “Have you helped your friend pick up other women like that?”
Thomas shook his head, sobbing. “I only helped with the one girl.”
“How long ago, Thomas?”
“Three weeks maybe.”
Had to be Julie. Time frame fit and he was almost positive the fuzzy picture was of an unconscious Julie. “Which construction site?”
“Some shopping center in Wilson County. I didn’t pay much attention.”
Jon’s eyes narrowed. “Why not? What were you doing?”
“I was in the back of the van with the girl. Gage told me to keep an eye on her.”
Jon could smell the lie wafting from Thomas’s lips. “Don’t lie to me, Thomas. Did you touch her?” Her clothes had been intact from what he could see on the grainy picture, but that didn’t mean Thomas hadn’t taken the opportunity to cop a feel or do something worse and re-dress her.
“No.”
Another change in the pressure.
“Okay! Yeah, so I peeked. She was a looker.”
“Last time, Thomas. Did you touch her?”
“A little. Wasn’t much time, man. I didn’t hurt her. I swear.”
“Think hard, Thomas. Who else do you know from Sartelli Construction?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Brenna booted up Eli’s laptop, typed in his password and waited for the programs to load while listening to his low-voiced murmur in the next room. As long as Eli was occupied, she could spend some time surfing the Internet for references to Scarlett’s Beauties. Eli’s warnings to stay out of that part of the research still rang in her ears. But some small piece of information might be the key to finding Dana and freeing her. Brenna rocked at researched. She had to be good at it for her historical romances. Nothing ticked readers off more than catching factual errors in fiction.
Once the programs loaded, she clicked on an icon tucked in the corner of the screen. An icon for Fortress? The security group Eli and Jon freelanced for? Brenna leaned close to study the options on the screen and chose what looked like an information database.
The cursor blinked in a dialog box beside the search button. She hesitated a minute, eavesdropped on what she could hear of her bodyguard’s conversation until satisfied Eli would be a few minutes more, then typed in the name of the human trafficking organization.
Within seconds, information flooded the screen. Brenna read as fast as she dared, eyes widening with each new level of data revealed. Nausea bubbled at the atrocities the victims suffered, the degradation inflicted on the innocent. How could more than 20,000 people a year in the United States be taken by human traffickers and no one seem to care?
“What are you reading, sugar?”
“A nightmare.”
“What kind?”
“A tragedy, one with women and children being sold, some by their own families, into a hopeless existence. Did you know Scarlett’s Beauties is a high-end business? They only deal in special requests for sleaze-bag clients. Highest bidder gets the prize.” Bitterness laced her voice. A tragic existence that might swallow Dana in the next few hours.
“You’re not surfing the Internet with my standard browser, are you?”
She tore her gaze from the screen. “I clicked on the Fortress website and tapped into their database. I should say I’m sorry for breaking my promise and searching a secured site, but I won’t. I’m not sorry. I’m mad. How can they get away with this? Why isn’t the news media squawking about this instead of global warming or a third-world disaster? Aren’t people’s lives more important than the environment? How many commercials do we see all the time on television about animal abuse? What about people abuse? This is inhumane.”
“You don’t have to convince me, Brenna.”
Something in his voice, a conviction, sorrow, registered through her fury and caught her attention. “Why not? What do you know about this?”
“More than I ever wanted to. More than I can live with some days.” He held out his hand. “Log off the computer and we’ll talk.”
Although reluctant to stop her research, Brenna complied with Eli’s request. She allowed him to lead her to the living room couch. She turned sideways, one leg bent on the cushion, her back resting against the arm of the couch so she could observe his facial expressions. Tough to watch this hurting man. She suspected his story would be both painful and personal, an idea supported by Eli leaving the room encased in darkness broken only by one lamp’s soft glow at its lowest three-way setting.
“I won’t be able to tell you everything you want to know, Brenna. A lot of it is confidential, an op while I was a SEAL.”
“Your operation involved Scarlett’s Beauties?”
“Yes, though it wouldn’t matter if it were this group or any of the many others that prey on humans.” He stopped speaking for a minute, his hand clenching into a fist.
Brenna’s heart squeezed, almost prompting her to give him an out, but she needed all the information available. She hated to cause him more pain or resurrect difficult memories. Brenna reminded herself that this man was an elite warrior, one trained in deadly combat, a lethal weapon himself. This wouldn’t be the first or last difficult task he ever performed. And if this group was as determined to survive and thrive as she suspected, more ugly things lay ahead in their quest to free Dana.
“A few years ago, a dignitary’s daughter was snatched from her home overseas. My team and I were deployed on a mission to rescue the girl. Intel told us she was being held in a compound about three miles inland.”
Brenna’s throat tightened. She remembered this kidnapping since it sparked a storyline in one of her historical novels. It was an ambassador’s sixteen-year-old daughter. Her stomach lurched. The kidnapping didn’t end well, so she had changed the ending to suit the romance she was writing. And Eli had been involved in the rescue attempt? What horrors had he and his team been exposed to on that operation?
“The father contacted an old friend, one connected to the military. The father was told to go along with the demands. The Scarlett Group contacted him with instructions for delivery of the ransom. He followed them to the letter, Brenna. Even had the money transferred to a Swiss bank account ahead of the deadline.”
Eli leaned forward, forearms resting on his thighs, hands clasped between his knees. “No one was supposed to know about the mission. We arrived in the middle of the night. Took a few minutes to get the team and equipment into position. We reached the compound around three a.m., the time most people’s biorhythms are low. The goal was to get in and out with the girl before the enemy knew we were there. Same objectives as most of our missions.
“We didn’t encounter any resistance. No guards, no booby-traps, nothing, and that was unusual. We knew something was wrong, but without further intel or a change in mission instructions, we followed orders and proceeded to the compound.”
“What happened?” Brenna whispered.
“We were too late. The kidnappers had killed the girl and several other women and children before our boots hit the ground. It was such a blood bath several members of the team resigned after that failed op.”
“What about you?”
“Jon and I were the first to walk away. We had already realized we were slowing down. Special forces work is for young men in top form. Jon and I were reaching the end of our time on active missions and neither one of us wanted to ride a desk for the rest of our careers. That last op helped us make the decision to walk away while we still could with our sanity intact.”
Brenna couldn’t imagine the nightmarish end to Eli’s last mission. Didn’t want too, either. Unfortu
nate for her, a vivid imagination was prerequisite to writing fiction. Brenna’s overactive story generator supplied graphic details her logical side wanted to suppress. “There’s no way you walked out of that compound without scars, Eli. They might not be visible, but I know they exist. How can you sleep at night with that burned into your memory?”
Eli gave a mirthless laugh. “Oh, I sleep every night, sugar, even if it is only four hours. It’s the faces of every one of those women and children that populate my dreams, the same rush to rescue them before the kidnappers slit their throats. And, no surprise, I always fail to arrive in time to stop the slaughter of the innocents. And when I can’t sleep, there is always The Duke.”
“The Duke? You mean John Wayne?”
“My sisters keep me well supplied with movies where the good guys win out in the end.” Eli grinned at her. His eyes remained bleak, haunted. “Can’t beat a good John Wayne film.”
“After what you went through, they give you war movies?”
“Westerns most of the time. It’s probably Dad’s idea, but it sure wins hands down over any chick flick the girls would have bought me. I know that might be a great disappointment to you, sugar, but I just can’t handle crying into my hankie.”
“Was your father in the military as well?”
“Sort of.”
Brenna frowned. “How can you sort of be in the military? Was he in the National Guard?”
“Nope. Dad was a jarhead. Career.”
Brenna grinned. “Jarhead? That’s the Marines, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yeah. Dad was Recon. Special forces. He hoped I would follow in his footsteps.” Eli chuckled. “He carried on like I’d committed some heinous crime by joining the Navy, but I knew he was proud of me for serving in the military. He didn’t care what branch though he trash talked the Navy any chance he got.”
“What did he say when you resigned from the SEALs?”
“Nothing except he loved me and would stand behind me whatever I did. He understood, Brenna. Dad saw things just as bad when he served, things he couldn’t talk about and still had flashbacks of years later.”