26. Brutus
brUTUS
"YOU CAN'T DO THIS!" My wonderful, beautiful Anna screamed as the man arresting me yanked me out into the hallway. "THEY DIDN'T FUCKING DO ANYTHING!"
I went to call out to her again, but Cap shot me a look over his shoulder. A look that said, this is what we all agreed to. Don't blow it.
My guilt was outstanding.
We should've told the girls this was part of the plan.
Out the door we went, one by one, with the DOJ slapping cuffs onto us without even reading our rights. Jasmine was quick to the punch, and even I could see the pride in Ghost's eyes, even as they shoved him through the front door of Anna's home.
I looked around at all of the broken glass. The gas that had filled the area just to make things look good. The doors slammed in, the knobs jammed into the plaster of her walls.
Would I ever be able to make this place safe for her again? Had this really been the only way to execute this? All of the men had agreed in church except for me. None of them seemed to take into account that this was Anna's home.
I'll make you a new one. I'll fix it. I swear it.
My silent vow had to be enough, because when I got shoved out the front door toward one of the blacked-out SUVs that had rolled up on us in the middle of the night, I had to pay attention to something else.
The shrieking girls behind us curdled my stomach. For the first time in probably my entire adult life, I felt the start of tears burning behind my eyes. I swallowed the knot in my throat.
"I'm sorry," I whispered as the DOJ officer placed his hand on top of my head. "Duck," he muttered.
I grunted as I got shoved into the back of the vehicle.
Make them let go. Please.
For as long as I lived, I'd never forget her face. The whimper that came from the back of her throat. The desperation in her gaze. The thing I'd seen in her eyes when she pulled back to look at me, like she was trying to read something she couldn't quite translate.
She'd almost had it. She was close.
Anger surged through me. It took every ounce of energy I could muster within my body to sit in the back of that goddamn vehicle with my hands cuffed behind my back.
I reminded myself of the church meeting.
Of the agreement we all made. In order to keep the women safe, it had to look like we were being arrested, too.
That way, if any stragglers from the trafficking ring were watching, they'd assume we were swept up in this just as much as they were.
So that they didn't retaliate against the girls for our actions.
"You better not fucking do that again," Ranger growled as the door on the other side of the SUV ripped open.
"Sorry," the DOJ officer muttered as he shoved Range in next to me.
He swept his gaze over to me and I saw he had a knot bulging at the side of his head. I furrowed my brow and went to ask him who I was killing, but Range just shook his head. "Caught a stray elbow in the chaos. Asshole wasn't looking where he was dragging me."
I turned my head forward. "I don't like this."
"Me neither."
"Then why the fuck did we agree with it?"
"Because we have to make the trafficking ring think that they've won. Even if just for a moment. If we're in trouble alongside them, it's less of a risk of retaliation against the girls."
I nodded slowly. "Right."
I wasn't sure I believed it any longer, but Cap and King were certain this would work. Arrest us alongside the raiding of the trafficking ring's buildings, and no one would be any the wiser that we were the ones who'd brought them down.
I still wasn't sold on it. I still wasn't sure this would end the way Cap and King wanted it to. How the hell were the girls protected without any of us around to ensure it?
"Hey," Range said as he scooted closer to me. "Brutus."
"Yep?"
"When all of this is over, I'll help you piece Anna's home back together."
I stared out the tinted window, listening as the engines of the vehicles cranked up. "I'll be shocked if she still even wants to live here after all this."
"We have men posted in the woods," the DOJ agent in the front seat said. "Seven of them. A couple in the trees. If any stragglers from the raids come for the women, we'll be prepared."
"You fucking better be," I growled.
The entire way to the precinct in King's hometown, I thought of Anna. Would she ever forgive me for this?
They put me in a processing room, not a cell. Small, fluorescent, a metal chair bolted to the floor and a table that had seen better decades. I paced the length of it until I'd worn the route into my brain, then sat, then stood again.
I barely remembered getting yanked out of the vehicle. I barely remembered the handcuffs coming off my wrists. I just remembered the four walls closing in and my mind stuck on Anna's face, over and over, like a record with a scratch in it.
The door opened after what felt like hours. My head snapped up.
It was a police officer I didn't recognize, carrying a tray of food and wearing the kind of look that said he'd pulled the short straw tonight.
"Hungry?" he asked.
I crossed the room in two strides. "How are the girls?"
He set the tray down on the table. The nametag on his chest said Connald. "Fine. They're just fine. We got them all in one room together so they're not sitting alone. Made a spaghetti dinner."
Some of the knot in my chest loosened. Just slightly. "Anna. How is she?"
Officer Connald's mouth twitched. "She's a real spitfire."
"Is she all right?"
He nodded. "She's great. Every once in a while she calls out from her room to do a roll call, and the girls all answer back." He paused. "She's keeping their spirits up. Every single one of them."
My chest puffed with something I didn't have a word for. Of course she was.
"Char?" I asked. "Marla?"
"Doing well with their interviews. They've got a lot of information. We're grateful for it."
"They went through hell," I said, leveling a look at him. "You better be treating them with respect."
He lifted his hands. "The utmost. King's got one of his men sitting in on every DOJ interview. Nobody's alone in a room."
I let out a slow breath and turned to the food. Spaghetti. The smell of garlic toast reached me and for a single, absurd moment I almost laughed.
I didn't eat. I sat down on the metal chair and I thought about Anna in that room, and I stayed there long enough for the food to go cold.
The door opened again. This time it was a different officer, older, moving with the unhurried efficiency of someone who'd done this job for thirty years.
"Got some news for you," he said without preamble.
I stood.
"Raids on all seven of the ring's installations are complete. Thirty-two men brought in tonight." He said it the way men like him said everything. Flat, factual, no ceremony. "It's done."
Thirty-two.
I stood there and let that number land. Let it fill the room.
All seven installations. Thirty-two men in custody.
The operation that had been running through our towns, through our state, through the lives of every woman they'd taken, all of it wrapped up tonight while I paced a processing room and ate cold spaghetti.
I sat back down. Put my elbows on my knees and pressed my hands over my face and just breathed.
The Watcher had been wrong.
It was done.
After an amount of time I'd long since stopped counting, the older officer came back.
"All right, Mr. Lancaster. Ready to get out of there?"
"Yes," I growled.
He walked me down the hallway, and I heard the others getting released ahead of me. Cap's voice. Ranger's. Ghost's quiet footsteps somewhere behind. The hallway opened up into a wider corridor near the front of the building, and that was where I stopped walking.
Anna was standing at the end of it.
Her hair was still wild. She had on a robe tied haphazardly around her waist, crooked on her shoulders, like she'd grabbed the first thing she could find and hadn't bothered to fix it since.
Her feet were wrapped. Her eyes were red and swollen and fixed on me like I was the only thing in the building worth looking at.
She didn't run. She just stood there, and so did I, for the space of one breath.
Then I crossed the hallway and she came off the wall and I had her in my arms before either of us said a word.
She whimpered when I crushed her to me, picking her up off her feet, and she wrapped herself around me and shook with the kind of silent sobs that are so much worse than the loud ones. No sound. Just her whole body telling me everything she couldn't say yet.
"I'm here, Anna-mine," I whispered as I walked down the hallway with her. "I'm here and I'm not going anywhere. I'm so sorry."
"My poor house," she said through her tears.
"I'll fix it. I'll fix all of it, don't you worry about a thing. I'll put the windows back in. Ranger's a spitfire with plaster, he'll get the holes the doors made—"
"Shut up," she whimpered, and sobbed harder against my shoulder.
I barely made it out into the corridor before I sank to my knees.
The sound of her crying shattered something inside of me. I held her as tightly as I thought I could without hurting her and she wrapped around me like she was never letting go, and I just thanked every star I'd ever looked at that it was over.
If I was lucky, she'd let me spend the rest of my life making it up to her. Anything to stay at her side so I could worship her the way she deserved.