Addy had to up her protection game. Just had to. Because despite Razo’s aggressive, audacious actions—his issued threat—she was more motivated than ever to hunt him down and make him pay.
Mack Jordan shifted the strap of his assault rifle and was fairly salivating in the RED team’s rental vehicle on the way to bust their suspect and find the missing girls. Mack and his fellow team members, Sean Nichols and Kiley Dawson, had waited countless months to bring the three Montgomery, Alabama teenshome. And as the team member with a fugitive-apprehension background, Mack was in charge of the op to rescue the abducted teens.
Sean pulled the SUV over just down the road from their target, and Mack climbed out of the vehicle, his trusty cowboy boots thumping on the asphalt. Sun shining overhead belied their dark mission ahead. He grabbed the battering ram from the back of the vehicle, the girls’ faces coming to mind.
Felicia. Becky. Izzie. All thirteen years old at the time of their abduction, disappearing without a trace. The RED team—his team often described as having superhuman skills—had been called in. But they’d failed and couldn’t find the girls. The investigation went cold, and their supervisor closed the case. Didn’t stop the team. They kept working in their free time until they tracked down the van that had driven off with the girls inside it.
The van was driven by Jim-Tom Williams, who was hunkered down in the dilapidated house just down the road. Their surveillance of this dump hadn’t shown the girls living there, but they’d watched the place long enough. It was time for action. Time to lean on this guy and bring the teens home.
“Y’all ready for this?” Mack nearly cringed at how strong his Texas accent came across when under duress or with adrenaline flowing through his body. Didn’t matter. Sean and Kiley were unfazed by it.
Kiley shifted her Kevlar vest and tossed her ponytail over her shoulder, the chocolate brown a similar color to young Becky’s hair. Kiley’s green eyes flashed from adrenaline. “Born ready for it.”
“I’m all in. Way in.” Sean, the most reserved member of the team, slid a hand into dark brown hair, his fingers getting caught in the slight curl.
“Then we’re a go.” Mack gave a final nod, cementing the mission in his mind, and set off, marching down the shoulder of the country road—steadily moving through the humid breezetoward the tiny clapboard-sided saltbox house. Rusty junker vehicles sat on blocks in the yard. Unmown grass billowed in the breeze. The invasive kudzu vine climbed up two vehicles and swallowed them whole.
The local SWAT team had cordoned off the street, and Mack had arranged backup from their department, their deputies manning the major thoroughfares in the area.
Mack crept up the weed-infested gravel drive.
His Spidey sense was tingling, and it never let him down.
Someone was in danger.
Was someone about to get hurt in the op? The girls? Sure, the team saw no sign of the teens on the premises, but the place had a root cellar, and Williams could be holding them captive down there.
Mack moved steadily forward, the others creeping behind him. Concern clawed at his soul. Growing stronger.
Should he abort? Continue?
Uncertain, he paused and flashed up his hand to tell his team to hold. He had to decide what to do. Quickly. If he didn’t, someone could get hurt.
Chapter 2
“I’VEDIEDONCEBEFORE,”Addy said in jest because this meeting was getting too tense, and she thought she might throw up right here on her supervisor’s desk. “What’s one more time?”
“Not funny, Leigh.” Gala Harris, Special Agent in Charge of ICE’s Portland office, closed her laptop after having watched the home-invasion video. She pushed the computer forward on a meticulous desk in an equally neat office, its shelves overloaded with reference books. The space smelled like a mix of vanilla and Harris’s peach shampoo, but the sweet scent didn’t put Addy at ease.
Harris tugged down the cuffs of her black turtleneck sweater while keeping her intense gaze pinned on Addy. “You need to take this threat seriously.”
Addy knew that, but then saying out loud that a ruthless drug dealer turned gun smuggler was gunning for her and her mother wasn’t an easy thing to admit. Verbalizing it for the first time made the threat very real. And scary. Even for a gun-toting agent. “Iamtaking it seriously. I promise.”
“Your actions don’t reflect that.”
Addy wasn’t about to admit her fear. And she wasn’t about to let it control her either. “We’ve moved Mom and Nancy to a safe house with twenty-four seven protection. They’ll be fine until Razo is behind bars. FYI, Nancy told me that my mom caused the injury to the man in the video. She stabbed him with a knitting needle.”
Harris shook her head. “You’re a chip off the old block, then.”
Addy chuckled but it was forced. “Hopefully forensics found blood when they processed my house—should at least be on my mom’s needle—and we’ll get the attacker’s ID from that.”
“And if we don’t?”
“I’m not going into hiding, if that’s what you’re getting at. I can’t let this creep win. He won’t run my life.”
Harris brushed a hand over glossy black hair cut bluntly at her narrow chin. She didn’t often speculate. She was a facts person and had often been accused of having ice flowing through her veins. Addy liked facts. Lived by them in her job. Most of the time. But she had also been told she let her emotions get to her on the job more often than she should, and she suspected right now was one of those times. After all, how could you not let a weapons smuggler abducting your mother shake you to the core?
“What exactly do you mean?” Harris asked.
