Chapter Twenty-Eight
NOAH
Those words coming from Jared, made every muscle in my body go stiff.
It meant using my house as bait. Yeah, no one outside of the people at Salinger Security knew that we were back.
Unless, of course, the asshole was watching us.
My gut told me we didn’t have much of a reprieve.
And after the mission we had been on, I was confident there was nothing wrong with my gut.
Still, I didn’t want my daughter anywhere near the asshole who was terrorizing her mother. I didn’t want her mother around much either. In fact, for what I planned, I wanted both of them as far away as possible.
I turned to Bex who had just walked in the front door. “I don't know where Trey is.”
Yeah, our other teammate had not responded yet. Jared had been at my house in a matter of minutes. He’d been with Nick since both of them had been at the farm picking up kids. The SEALs had just left on the same Private plane back to the Naval Base.
Everyone had been at my house before the police had arrived. Except Trey.
Apparently, the toddlers and babies were with their grandmother. Mr. Salinger was doing a school run and would be there as soon as he dropped the Waite boys at home.
It was one of my favorite things about the circle I had found myself in.
We took care of each other. Like Daniel Salinger had no trouble playing a taxi to a bunch of teenage boys, Scott Waite had no trouble offering to take out your woman’s stalker if you need me to.
The man was a sniper, his intent clear. And because I had taken a few lives myself, I knew the cost it would be for him.
Still, I thanked him and hoped it never came to that.
Literally, Ev, Sky, and I were surrounded by everyone in our circle, everyone on my team. Except, Trey. He probably went straight to sleep as soon as he got home. And he hadn’t seen the messages yet.
Nick folded his arms and frowned at me. “So, is the plan to attack and capture this delivery guy when he gets here in the morning.”
“I’m running his face through facial recognition but, yeah.” Jared never took his eyes from the screen. “I have one where he’s almost fully facing the camera. I should get something off that soon.”
Yeah, we were planning an attack. I didn’t need Everly, and especially not Sky knowing what we had planned once we captured the guy. I turned to Bex and winced. “It's not because you’re a woman, I swear.”
“I know.” She smiled and patted me on the back. “It’s because I’m her friend and you want her to be comfortable. I don’t need to be the one involved in taking this asshole down. In fact, it says a lot that you trust me to protect her.”
I couldn’t speak. There was just too much emotion flowing through me. Instead, I nodded. “Thanks.”
“Ev, Sky wanna go for a drive? Let the muscle do all the planning they need to do without whispering because they don’t want us to hear.”
Within minutes the three of them were out of the house. And we could plan, in earnest, what needed to be done. Mr. Salinger had arrived with Aidan and the kid had put himself to work as soon as he was there.
He’d put the photo through some social media software and had got a username for a singles website. Not useful if we needed an address, but it could help.
“What was that username, A?” Tex had asked Aidan, fully onboard with the teenager helping.
Aidan let out a sigh. “Wingman. Sometimes all lowercase, sometimes the w and m are upper sometimes just the w. According to his Together profile he’s a delivery man.”
We all turned to the kid at the same time. Together was a site for people specifically looking for sex. Jared was the one to ask though. “What the fuck are you doing on Together?”
“I’m not. I used your details to create an account.” He looked over at his brother. “How else was I supposed to learn more about this asshole?”
Something stuck in my head, “Did you say he was a delivery guy?”
Aidan nodded. “Yeah. Doesn’t say for which company. But as soon as J gets a name, I’m sure we could do a search. I’m not sure how legal it would be, but my brother could definitely do it.”
There was a hint of pride that might have escaped Jared’s attention, but not mine. The kid threw attitude at his brother, but he wanted to be just like him.
“Neville Cartwright.” Tex said as joined our conversation once more. “So, unless the G has a connection to a nickname or something we could be looking at a third party.”
Fuck. I hated when I had all the puzzle pieces and I just couldn’t put it all together. “What do we know? His name and according to his Together profile he’s a delivery man. What if he is not employed by a courier company. What if he handles shady deliveries independently.”
Nick was once again frowning. “So, then he would have had contact with G, wouldn’t he.”
Jared’s fingers moved across the trackpad of the laptop. “Gotcha.”
“What?”
“What?”
Nick and I shouted at the same time.
“So, Nick has me tracking someone with the handle AntMan.” Jared eyed Nick before he continued.
“He’s an Information Broker. Small time but he has all the same contacts as a man the CIA was tracking a few years ago.
Which means he could potentially be sitting on some pretty high stakes intel that should not land in the wrong hands. ”
“I’ve been tracking him as well.” Tex chimed in. “We need to talk about this Jared."
“You can chat about that later. Get to the point, Jared.” The preamble was more irritating than necessary, and I wanted the plan finalized before Bex got back with Ev and Sky.
“Well, AntMan had been chatting with someone named G. And while I cannot see the messages, because he is that fucking good. I can tell you that the messages were delivered to Marina De Ferrier.”
I looked over at him. Skepticism coated my thoughts. “How can you tell it's not a front or a reroute or whatever?”
Jared rolled his eyes. “Because I’ve been doing this for a while. I know a thing or two. Also, I had a good mentor.”
“Yes, you did,” Tex called across the airways. “And don’t you forget it.”
“Can you tell when those messages came in?”
“I’m just verifying.” He frowned as he checked and opened the calendar app on his phone. “The day of the snake delivery and the day of…” He checked his phone, but I finished for him.
“The night he broke into the cottage.” I ran my hand through my hair and tugged at the strands. “Dammit. That’s how he had found her in the first place. Is there any way we can find this AntMan asshole.”
Tex spoke up once more. “There’s a rumor going around certain cyber circles, that AntMan doesn’t want to piss off the Salingers.
I could try and use that. I don’t know that he would even agree to work with us though.
But perhaps if he wanted to stay in your good books a simple request for information would work. ”
Nick actually spoke up as the voice of reason. “We can keep him in our back pocket. Let’s see what you can dig up on Cartwright. Do we have an address yet?”
Jared switched between apps, fingers racing across the keyboard. Meanwhile, my missing teammate still bothered me.
“Has anyone confirmed that Trey is at home. I cannot believe he’s not answering his phone.”
“I have an address for Cartwright. I’ve sent it to everyone’s phones.” Jared spoke as Tex once more joined the conversation.
“I’ll do a search for Trey using the derma tags you’re all still wearing.”
The pesky thing was still itching on my arm. At least it would come in handy seeing as we had a means to track Trey. His absence was disturbing me more and more. Something had been off about that guy from the moment I met him at the side of the road.
“Jared, you said something about a nickname?”
“Yes. Neville Boris Cartwright. I ran all sorts of searches on the guy, nothing to do with G.” He clicked a few things.
“Actually, that is not true. There’s an email to someone called G.
It's in code, as opposed to encrypted. It looks like an initial contact and then they switch over to the same app G had used for AntMan.”
“So, G is not the delivery guy. It's someone else.” Fear and anger coated every word that came out of my mouth. “G is someone who has been in town since the shit started happening. I glared at my teammates once more. Find me Goose.”
Jared got to work at the same time my phone rang.
Time stood still as everything in me froze. Everly’s phone number appeared on my screen. “Ev?”
“Dad.”
My daughter’s broken voice had my blood turn to ice. I put the phone onto speaker “Sweetheart, talk to me.”
“Bex’s been shot. He took mom.” Sirens blared. “I need to…”
All of us started heading out. “Where are you?”
She rattled off street names of the corner she was on.
Jared paused and turned to me. “That’s where Cartwright stays.”
Those words had me moving even faster. “Sweetheart, We’re on our way.”
I was about to tell her not to hang up when she did just that. Instead of calling her back, I shot into action.”
“Trey is leaving the area.”
We all raced to our cars. Wherever Bex was, was where I needed to be. Jared jumped into the passenger's seat. Then before anyone could say anything, Aidan was getting into the back.
Jared stopped his brother. “You cannot come with us.”
Aidan just glared. “Maybe I’m afraid to stay alone in a house that’s just been targeted by a stalker.”
That kid wasn’t scared. He was with the best in the business. He also knew how to scare the shit out of his brother. I didn’t have the patience to watch it play out, though. “Well played, kid. Now get in the fucking car and keep your head down.”
Those were the last words I said before I let the fear slip away, and once again became the operator I never wanted my kid to see. The one who would take out Trey fucking Gosling.