by Anna Blakely
It seemed as if he wanted to say something else, almost like there was more to the story, but he didn’t.
“So Jake McQueen owns the company and he’s on one of the teams?”
“He’s Alpha’s team leader. Just like Gabe is Bravo’s. Jake is also now Olivia’s husband.”
“Really?” Gabby found that surprising. And romantic.
The hero saves the girl, they fall in love and get married.
Actually, it sounded like something out of one of those romance novels her foster mom always indulged in when she thought no one was paying attention.
“Here.” Zade offered her his phone.
“What’s this for?”
“It’s open to the phone’s search engine. Type in R.I.S.C., and you’ll see I’m telling the truth about the company.”
Following his instructions—because she was too curious not to—Gabby waited for the information to load. She clicked on the first one and began to read.
The company’s site showed no pictures of their team members, however it did mention McQueen and how each of R.I.S.C.’s operatives were highly trained individuals specializing in skills including marksmanship, hand-to-hand, demolitions, and more. It also stated every one of the company’s operatives were former military and the best in their fields.
Swipe after swipe, each article about the private security firm was unique, yet they all told the same story. R.I.S.C. protected people. They’d helped people, taking down some very bad men in the process.
When they first met, Zade had told her he used to be a Marine. His physique and mannerisms supported his claim, as did his behavior tonight, along with the other four men’s.
It was possible he was telling the truth, but she wasn’t one to trust easily.
Gabby handed him back the phone. “This doesn’t prove anything. You could’ve picked any security company out there to claim as your place of employment.”
“You’re right.” He set the phone on the table beside him. “I could have, but I didn’t. And short of taking you to the office and personally introducing you to McQueen, or to Homeland to meet our handler, I don’t really know how to prove to you that I’m telling the truth. Unfortunately, we don’t have time to do either of those things, which means, you’re just going to have to trust me.”
She bit her bottom lip. God, she wanted to believe him. More than anything, she wanted to know someone out there was on her side in this.
“I didn’t go into the details of my company or what I do, because honestly, most of what we do is confidential. The guys and I don’t really talk about it outside the team, other than the ones who are married. I’m sure they tell their spouses what they can.”
“Spouses?”
He tilted his head. “That surprises you?”
“Actually, yeah. The other guys on your team all seem so…”
“Dick-like?” Zade smirked.
Gabby couldn’t help but chuckle. “Kind of.”
“That’s because we’re on the job, and it’s not a particularly pleasant one. Kole, Nate, and Matt are all married, and every member of Alpha Team is now either married or engaged. Actually, Jake and Liv just had their first kid, and one of the other guys on that team recently announced their first is on the way.”
It was hard to imagine men as broody and fierce as those she’d met tonight in any sort of relationship, let alone married with children. Especially Kole.
That man could turn fire into ice, his eyes had been so cold.
“You can trust me, sweetheart,” Zade continued on. “You can trust us. I know tonight wasn’t exactly the best way to show it, but promise you we’re the good guys. Hector Andino, on the other hand, is a terrible person who’s done a lot of terrible things. The bastard needs to be stopped, which is why my team is here.”
Gabby’s first reaction was to remain guarded. To be suspicious until she’d been given unfaltering, tangible proof. A product of her upbringing, no doubt.
Despite her suspicious nature and what Zade and his team had done to her tonight, there was no denying the truth. Not anymore.
It was there, staring back at her. It was in the conviction in Zade’s rumbling voice.
When they’d first met, Gabby’s gut reaction was that this man was good. Honorable.
Also like that first night on that tiny island, Gabby found herself wanting to tell him everything. The good, the bad. All of it.
You can trust him.
The thought was instant and fierce. A truth she suddenly felt to her core.
Her heart beat forcefully inside her chest as she stared back at him. Praying she wasn’t wrong, Gabby took a deep breath and said, “Hector Andino took my sister. I came here to find her and get her back.”
Chapter 7
“Are you out of your ever-lovin’ mind?” Zade stood and began pacing the length of his overpriced suite. “Do you have any idea how dangerous this man is?”
He couldn’t believe the story she’d just told him. Couldn’t believe the danger she’d purposely put herself in.
For weeks, Gabby had been traipsing around the country trying to track down the head of the largest sex-trafficking ring in the business. Alone!
Zade had the sudden urge to put her over his knee.
“Yes.” The stubborn woman stood and faced him. “I know exactly how dangerous Hector Andino is. Why do you think I’ve been working so hard to find him? Sam’s life is in danger, Zade. I can’t just sit back and let this happen to her. Let him sell her like she’s a…a thing to possess.”
In that moment, she reminded him so much of the other Bravo wives. Something that terrified him.
Gracie and Kat were two of the fiercest and most determined women he’d ever met. They’d both come damn close to losing their lives this past year but had held on. They’d both fought hard and never gave up.
To hear their husbands talk, the two incredible women had even come out of it all even stronger than before.
That familiar twinge of guilt began to seep through, but Zade pushed it back. If he thought about what happened to Kat on his watch, he’d really lose his shit.
Put that shit away, man. Put. It. Away.
If he thought about it now, Zade knew he’d see Gabby in the same sort of dangerous situation, and that shit wasn’t going to happen.
Not while I’m still breathing.
With her hands on her hips and that stubborn, daring expression on her face, Gabby met his stare. Goddamn, she was sexy when she was trying to prove her point.
Oh, who was he kidding? Gabriella Stevens was sexy every minute of every day.
If the situation weren’t so serious, he’d take her to bed right now and do all the things he’d been dreaming of since he last saw her.
Praying she couldn’t see the untimely erection forming behind his zipper, Zade blew out a breath and focused on the conversation.
“You do realize La Paz is at the top of the list of most dangerous cities in Mexico, right?”
“You’re here.” Gabby crossed her arms and jutted her cute-as-fuck chin even higher.
His dick twitched. Jesus save me from headstrong women.
“That’s different,” he pointed out. “I’m a—”
“Man?” Her challenging brow rose as if she were daring him to say it.
Not that stupid, sweetheart.
Zade’s jaw clamped together, his control slipping. “I was going to say I’m a trained operative.”
“I have training.” Her adorable chin remained steady. “Just because mine didn’t come from the military doesn’t mean it isn’t useful.”
She’s talking about what she learned on the streets when she was younger.
It fucking gutted him to imagine Gabby as a child trying to survive with nothing more than a mother who didn’t give two shits about her.
“Never said it wasn’t, sweetheart. But it’s still not the same, and you know it.”
He agreed street smarts were invaluable. In certain situations
. They wouldn’t do shit to keep her safe while trying to go up against a man like Hector Andino.
“What I know is my sister is still out there somewhere.” Gabby refused to back down. “Sam’s out there, and she’s going through only God knows what. Trust me, I tried doing things the ‘right’ way. I went to the cops with Sam’s parents. We filed a missing persons report. The officer took down the information, but pretty much blew it off. Said because Sam was over eighteen and there was no evidence suggesting foul play, there wasn’t a whole lot they could do.”
A tear traveled over her soft cheek, and Zade’s hand itched to brush it away.
“I tried telling them, Zade. I explained how Sam isn’t the type of girl to leave town without telling her family where she was going. But the guy at the station’s front desk refused to listen to me. If it were me, with my background, I’d understand. But this is Sam. She’s good and sweet. She’s not like—”
“You?”
Did she honestly think she wasn’t those things and more? Zade had seen evidence of how good and sweet Gabby could be, and it pissed him the hell off that she thought less of herself.
Gabby shook her head. “She’s not like me. She’s better. But it’s Chicago, and the cops there have a lot bigger things to deal with than one maybe-missing twenty-five year old.”
We need to talk about how you see yourself, baby. Soon.
Zade understood what she was saying in regards to the cops. He also understood where the police were coming from.
Samantha was an adult. If she wanted to take off without telling anyone, that was her right, and the cops in Chicago did have a fuck ton of other, provable crimes they had to deal with.
It sucked, but that’s how it was.
That still didn’t mean what Gabby had been doing was a good idea. Hell it didn’t even make the bad idea category.
What she was doing—going off on her own to places no person, let alone an American woman should even consider going—was fucking suicidal.
“So you, what?” he continued chiding her. “Took it upon yourself to form a one-man search and rescue team?”
Gabby tossed her hands out to the side. “What was I supposed to do? It’s not like I had anywhere else to go, or anyone left to turn to. The only other option would’ve been to simply let it go. To accept that Sam was gone and go about living our lives as usual. Could you do that, Zade?”
“I’m in a different position. It’s not just me by myself, here, Gabby.”
“But what if it was?” She walked toward him. “When we were in Grand Isle, you told me you had two sisters. Is that true?”
Shit. He walked right into that one. “Yes.”
“What if one of them went missing without a trace?” Zade opened his mouth to say he’d turn to his teammates—because fuck, yeah, that’s what he’d do—but she put a hand up to keep him from it. “Pretend for a second you’re not on a black ops team.”
Damn. She knows me better than I thought.
“Pretend one of your sisters was missing, and you have no one you could turn to for help.” She stopped walking less than a foot away from him. “Would you forget about your missing sister and move on with your life, or would you do everything in your power to find her? Even if it meant putting your own safety at risk…or worse, your life…would you still do whatever you could to track down the son of a bitch who took her and get her back?”
Shit. Fuck. Shit.
She had him dead to rights on this one, and Zade couldn’t bring himself to say anything other than the God’s honest truth. “I’d walk through fire if it meant saving one of my sisters from a man like Andino.”
Gabby’s shoulders relaxed slightly, and her pursed lips curved upward. “Guess we’re not so different after all.”
“Gabby—”
“Samantha may not be my sister by blood, Zade, but we’re siblings in every other sense of the word. After I was released from the juvenile detention center, I was put back in the state’s custody. They put me in one of the smaller schools in hopes it would ‘keep me out of trouble’.”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head, and he understood why. She hadn’t been the problem. The fucker who’d attacked her was.
Don’t think I’ve forgotten about you, asshole.
Unaware of his plans of revenge on her behalf, Gabby kept right on talking.
“I pretty much stayed to myself because by then I knew it was too dangerous to get too close to anyone. The other kids seemed fine with it. No one ever asked me to sit with them at lunch or hang out after school. Why would they? I was the ‘bad girl’.”
She made air quotes before blowing out a breath and finishing her story. “Anyway, this one day, a group of girls had cornered me by my locker after school. They were mouthing me, making fun of my clothes, and crap like that. Sam overheard them.” Gabby smiled. “There she was, a year younger and barely five feet tall, but man. She was a spitfire, even back then. Sam let those girls have it. Called each and every one out on their bullshit and told them what she thought of their behavior. After the other girls left, Sam pretty much forced me to go into the music room where her mom taught.”
“Annabelle?”
Gabby nodded. “Mrs. Shoemaker was my favorite teacher there. Between the two of them, I found myself ushered to their house for dinner. I went back the next night and the next. Before long, they were petitioning the court for full custody. I lived with them from the end of my junior year until the end of the next summer, after I graduated high school.”
Remembering what she’d told them when they’d first met, Zade asked, “Are you really a teacher?”
Her smile turned sad. “Not yet. But I hope to become one. The Shoemakers offered to pay my way through college, but I refused to let them. I told them I wanted to do that part of my life on my own. They’d already done so much, and I didn’t want to take money away from what should’ve been for Sam.”
“How did Sam feel about that?”
Gabby chuckled. “She called me a dumbass. I refused to give in, though. Annabelle and Everett didn’t have a lot of extra, but they’d worked hard their whole lives to make sure Sam’s college was paid for after she graduated. I wasn’t going to take a dime of that money.”
See? Fiercely independent.
“So what happened after you graduated high school?”
“I got a job at the neighborhood grocery store and also at one of those big, home improvement places. I found a community college that was close by and signed up for internet classes. I was nearly finished with their associate degree program when the school lost their accreditation status over some stupid clerical error. The school closed down, and just like that, I was back at square one.”
“Surely you would’ve qualified for some sort of state grant or a student loan. Right? Something you could’ve used at a different school?”
One that wouldn’t screw over their students.
“I could have gone that route, and hindsight, it probably would’ve been the smart choice. But you have to understand, I grew up with a mom who lived off of handouts. All she cared about was where her next fix was coming from, and she didn’t give a damn what…or who…she had to do to get it. We used food stamps and when those ran out, she’d mooch off of her so-called friends. That or she’d find some way other than cash to pay for what she wanted.”
Son of a bitch.
Zade’s heart ached for the little girl this woman used to be. Not only was Gabby’s mom a druggie, she’d whored herself out to get the drugs.
It was a miracle Gabby hadn’t gotten caught up in the life, too.
Thank Christ that didn’t happen.
It was no wonder Gabby didn’t want a hand-out from the state for her schooling. Zade understood and respected her need to pay for college on her own terms.
“Is that where you work now?” he asked. “The home improvement store?”
“It was.”
His gut tightened. “What happened?”
&nbs
p; “After we got nowhere with the authorities, Sam’s dad came to me. Everett begged me to try to find her. He was well-aware of my time living on the streets, both before and after my mom went to prison. Between that and my stint in juvie, he assumed I still had connections in what he called the ‘seedy’ parts of town.”
Part of him understood Everett Shoemaker’s decision to ask Gabby for help. He was a father desperate to find his only daughter. Except she wasn’t his only.
The second he and his wife agreed to take Gabby in, she’d become theirs.
Apparently, the man was willing to sacrifice one to save the other. That made Zade want to find the man and beat the shit out of him.
“Was he right?” Zade asked her. “Did you know people who could help?” Obviously she did, or she wouldn’t have made it this far.
Embarrassed, Gabby nodded, confirming his thoughts. “I made a lot of…contacts in the years before Sam’s parents took me in. I learned a lot about a side of life most people don’t even realize is there.”
Zade understood that. His time in the military and with R.I.S.C. taught him all about the dark, terrifying evils that existed in the world.
“I started spending every spare second I could tracking those people down,” she continued. “Soon, it began to interfere with my job. I called in sick a lot in order to walk the city looking for information on Sam. I finally went and talked to my boss. I explained what had happened and asked if I could take a leave of absence so I could keep searching. He told me he understood my need to find Sam and felt really bad about it all. But then he said if I wasn’t making my shifts every week, he’d have no choice but to find someone else who could.”
“What did you do?”
“I quit.” She shrugged. “I knew I wasn’t going to stop until I found Sam, but my boss…he was a good guy. I didn’t want him to have to make that call.”
Damn. Even in the midst of her own, personal hell, Gabby was still taking other people’s feelings into consideration.
You’re a much better person than you realize, baby. Why can’t you see that?
Running a hand over his jaw, Zade took a minute to consider all she’d told him. “With no job, how did you manage to travel the places needed to track down Andino? Louisiana’s a hell of a long way from Chicago.”