Even though General Smithers had formed MF7, the military group organized to eradicate human trafficking all over the world, he’d been a thorn in their side from its inception. But it was only in the past week that his team had realized the man who’d recruited them, Hannah’s father, was behindcontinuingthe trafficking rings, not eliminating them. He’d used MF7 to take out the competition. Whatever survivors they’d saved, the General had forced them back into sexual slavery.
That truth gutted Hawk, but knowing Hannah was somehow connected made him sick to his stomach. He’d left her to protect her from all the powerful, evil men his team went after. What the fuck had happened?
Was it all for nothing? Would it have been better not to leave at all? To risk going AWOL?
“Looks like the news about the General is finally making global headlines,” Draco grunted before he sat straighter. “Wait a minute…” He tapped his phone screen as he spoke, drawing Hawk from his thoughts. “This press statement just declares General Smithers missing? Is that really the only thing they’re going to report on? They’re making it sound like he’s a victim.”
Hawk dropped his finger from his worn lips and the damn cut he’d accidentally started messing with again. “That was the agreement the FBI, district attorneys, and BlackStone came up with.”
Draco huffed. “So we’re just going to leave out the whole running a sex trafficking ring in an underground facility where they had to clean out dozens of burned corpses?”
“Yup,” Hawk answered as he rolled to a stop at an octagonal red sign inscribed with the word “ALTO.”
His tall stature forced him to lean forward in order to glance underneath the visor and read the street numbers.
“Why?” Draco growled his question.
Between the two of them, it’d been comfortably quiet all the way from BlackStone. Draco had even napped on the plane. But it seemed like the silence had run its course.
“Because if we tip our hand to the whole world that the General is in charge of all this shit, then whoever else is aiding him could grow suspicious and go into hiding.”
“You think a former United States Army general going missing wouldn’t be enough to make his coconspirators suspicious?”
Hawk sighed. “It’s all we’ve got right now. Hopefully, his investors and the men underneath him will believe he’s just gone underground and they’ll keep still and quiet, giving us enough time to come to them, rather than scatter and ruin everything. For all we know, that’s exactly what he’s done, gone into hiding himself. But in either case, we have to find him before we let that cat out of the bag—”
“And before he finds Hannah,” Draco finished for him.
Hawk nodded once and his voice broke over his answer. “Yeah. Before he finds Hannah.”
“Why do you think he’s keeping track of her?”
“I… don’t know. But it can’t be good. She and her father were never close, but I had no idea she’d cut him out of her life completely. I hope she’s okay,” he murmured the last bit under his breath.
Draco’s dark-blue eyes bored into the side of his face, giving Hawk the feeling that the man was trying to read his mind. “I know you like her, and believe me, I know all about wanting to chase the girl. But if that is all this is, then we’ve got to go back home and tackle the rest of our problems head-on. We need to find General Smithers and that bald Russian fucker he always has with him. We can’t do that if we’re all over the continent. We’re spread too thin as it is. That’s why you’ve got me going instead of one of the able-bodied members of BlackStone.”
Hawk flicked his eyes over Draco’s body as he indicated himself. The blond Viking giant looked almost comical in the rented Ford Focus, his legs stretched out to the brink in the passenger seat. From the looks of his strong build, no one would ever guess he’d been in a coma for over a year after being shot by “that bald Russian fucker.”
Since waking up, Draco had to resort to government-classified drugs to get back into shape. He was better than any normal civilian, but he was right about the reason he’d been chosen for this trip. BlackStone Securities, the firm Hawk founded to give his MF7 crew purpose after being kicked out of the military, needed their teammates to be in tip-top shape. While Draco was miraculously leaps and bounds more agile than he’d been just two and a half months ago, he was a far cry from the elite soldier he’d once been. He probably never would be again.
It was why Hawk had accepted Draco’s offer when he volunteered to ride with him to check on Hannah. Unfortunately, like Draco insinuated, the entire trip was arguably something Hawk was doing to appease his guilty conscience. But there was more to it than that… wasn’t there?
Hawk shook his head, trying to focus on the pitch he’d delivered to his teammates to convince them to let him—their own leader—go on this wild-goose chase of a mission.
“It’s more than that. I’m notchasingHannah. There’s nothing between us anymore, not since I broke it off before entering MF7. But we don’t have any leads on the General’s or his henchman’s whereabouts. The FBI and the rest of our team are still going through all the information Callie and Phoenix were able to get from General Smithers’s HQ and everything you and Nora were able to retrieve from Gail Haynesworth’s office at Charitable Technologies International. It’s a ‘wait and see what information we can piece together’ situation and instead of sitting on my ass, I’m going to go after the one lead I can follow up onnow. Not wait for someone else to tell me what to do. That’s not my style.”
Hawk’s fingers had tightened more around the wheel with every word of his speech, anticipating having to continue to justify his decision with Draco. They were in Mexico already, sure, and allegedly only a mile away from Hannah’s home, but if his team all felt like he needed to go back to Ashland County…
No. Fuck that.
“What if we can’t find her—”
“Look,” Hawk barked, unable to stop his frustration from deepening his tone. “If you want to go back, by all means, be my guest. But I’m not leaving until I find her. A megalomaniac sex ring trafficker is looking for her and missing himself. I left Hannah behind once for this team, and I’m not doing it again.”
Silence crowded the air in the small car again, but instead of the usual comfort in their quiet, it filled the air like the humidity outside, making it hard for him to breathe.
“Well, shit. When you put it that way…” Draco muttered before finally taking his eyes off of Hawk and returning them to the busy road the Focus continued to roll down. “I’ve got your six, Hawk. Always. If this is what you need to do, we’re doing it.”
The air he hadn’t realized he’d been holding leaked from his chest, escaping the viselike grip that fear had been clutching him with for the past two and a half months, ever since he’d recognized Hannah’s picture among a group of missing women. He’d confided in Wes and the two of them had been looking for her ever since. It wasn’t until they’d found the General’s picture of her in his office that they’d gotten their first big break.
