Chapter 5
Ronan leaned back and waited for his debrief. It took less than a minute for the line to connect.
“Good job last night, kiddo.” Ronan wasn’t the one to start the conversation. Instead, Jacob King, Talon’s father, spoke.
“Thanks, Dad. The team did well,” Talon acknowledged. “What do we have on Shoemaker?”
“Shoemaker? Why do you want to know about him?” His dad’s confusion was evident.
“Didn’t you get the information about his daughter? Dude should have sent that over three hours ago.” Talon glanced at his watch.
“His daughter? No, you’ve caught me short. Hold on.”
“Wow, how did that happen?” It wasn’t like his father not to know everything about a mission when doing a debrief.
His dad chuckled. “I took the morning off. This call hit me before I got to my emails.” He could hear his father accessing his computer programs.
“Why did you take the morning off?” Talon was honestly curious. His mom and dad hardly ever took time off during the week unless they were going on a vacation out of the area.
“Mom is looking at doing some renovations to the house. Ah, here’s Dude’s report. Give me a second.”
Talon waited. He knew exactly when his dad hit the bit about Riley.
“Motherfucker.”
“Right?” Talon leaned forward. “Tell me you and Mom wouldn’t know if one of us boys were missing for a week.”
“You, definitely. We have an electronic tether on you that most parents don’t. Tristin, Tanner, and Trace aren’t tied to us with comms, but yeah, we talk every other day, sometimes multiple times in a day. But not all parents are like us. Some don’t care.”
“You should’ve seen her, Dad. She was covered in filth and dehydrated, had no food, and was enclosed in a metal box with no hope of rescue because her father didn’t tell us she was on the boat.”
“Did he know?” Jacob asked.
Talon drawled, “That’s what I’d like to find out. If he did, I have more questions for him.”
“Taking this a little personally, aren’t you?”
Was he? That gave him pause, but … Yeah, it was personal. “You’d take it personally, too, if you’d carried her out of that hellhole. She’d been strangled, beaten, and left to die.”
His dad was silent for a moment. “I’ve been there and done that, Talon. Follow your heart on this one.”
Talon frowned. “What? I assure you, this has nothing to do with my heart. This is a matter of right and wrong. And if this guy left his daughter there to die, he’s got problems.”
“With all of us. Hold on a second.” Talon heard his father typing. “I just called in a personal favor. I’m getting Elliot Sawyer to go over to interview this guy. Has his daughter called him yet?”
“I don’t know. Her phone was dead, but a nurse was going to let her borrow a charger.” Talon looked at his watch. “She’s probably resting. She was wiped out, so chances are she hasn’t called anyone.”
“Good,” his dad said as the keys kept tapping in the background. “Jared tells me springing the truth on the unsuspecting will let you know if they’re lying or not.”
“Elliot will know. He always knew when Reese or his brothers were up to something.”
His dad laughed. “Too right. Now, besides the matter of the woman left to die, were there any anomalies during the mission?”
Talon nodded. “One. They lit fires on the top deck.”
“Fires?”
“Not big ones. By the scorch marks on the metal, they were small, but they were lit. I can tell you it wasn’t for the heat. We’re melting in Satan’s crotch over here.”
His father’s laughter was surprised and something he loved to hear.
“For God’s sake, never use that description again.”
“Unbearably hot, wet, itchy, and uncomfortable as hell. How else would you describe it?” Talon drawled, and his dad howled with laughter.
“Stop.” His dad tried to compose himself, but it took a minute. “Now that I can breathe, what’s your guess about the fires?”
Talon’s smile slipped off his face as he answered his dad’s question. “Signals. I think they were sending acknowledgements or messages to someone on shore.”
“Okay, I’ll add your thoughts to the information on file.”
“Maybe Aunt Jewell or Con will be able to figure it out.” Talon yawned. It had been a long night and almost thirty-six hours since he’d slept.
“I wouldn’t doubt it, but move that off your scope. Your part of the mission is done.”
“Roger that.” However, he’d never forget about the woman he carried out of that metal tomb. He wondered if she’d text him. Probably not. She was overwhelmed at the hospital and most likely had a million people she could contact once her phone charged. “Tell Mom I’m alive and that I love her.”
“I will. Take care of yourself and your team.”
“Will do. Love you.” Talon yawned again.
“Love you, too.” The line disconnected. Talon made his way out of the comm building after collecting his earpiece and phone from the locker where he’d placed them.
He glanced at the phone. The text icon on the lock screen made him smile.
He swiped the screen only to feel a punch of disappointment.
The texts were from his brother, Trace, and his cousin, Reece.
He rolled his eyes and pocketed his phone.
He’d answer their texts after a solid six or seven hours of sleep.
He made it to his room and stripped down, placing his rifle beside his bed and his handgun on the bedside table.
Then he flicked a sheet over his naked body before dropping into the rack.
Punching the pillow, he wondered why he was disappointed she hadn’t texted him.
He was so damn tired he couldn’t work it out.
Maybe he’d figure it out after he got some sleep.
Dude’s words stirred him from a dead sleep. He mumbled half asleep, “What did you say?”
“Fuck, Skipper, I didn’t know you were still asleep.” Dude sounded pissed at himself.
Talon lifted his head and glanced at his watch. “That’s okay. I’ve been down long enough.” He needed to get on the same schedule as the rest of the world and sleep at night. Five hours of sleep would hold him until tonight when he could crash again. “What’s up?”
“I thought you’d like to hear the interview with Harlan Shoemaker. The guy in New York …”
“Elliot Sawyer,” Talon provided.
“Yeah, him and another guy, Marcus King … any relation?”
“Yep, another cousin.” Talon swung his feet to the floor and stretched.
“How many cousins do you have, dude?”
“Way too many to count.” Talon stood up and grabbed his jeans, slipping them on commando.
“Anyway, those two interviewed him. I haven’t listened to it.”
“You can hear it when I do.” Talon scratched his chest and shuffled over to the single-serve coffee machine. He poured some water from his bottle into the back of the machine and put in a pod. “Ready whenever you are.”
“Hitting play now.”
“Mr. Shoemaker …” Talon recognized Elliot’s voice.
“Let’s cut the pleasantries and get to the reason you’re here, shall we?” The man’s voice was sharp and cut through Elliot’s words.
There was a pause. Talon could just imagine Elliot lifting his eyes to the man and staring at him for a moment. Elliot didn’t suffer fools or assholes. At this point, Talon was pegging Shoemaker as a level ten asshole.
“As I was saying, Mr. Shoemaker, we’d like to see your paperwork approving the rare earth transportation.”
“Why?”
“Because Guardian is in control of three containers of yellowcake uranium, and we aren’t going to release them unless you have the legal authority to ship, sell, or process the minerals.”
That was Marcus. The man was just like both his fathers.
Direct and uber smart. The guy earned a full-ride scholarship to Harvard and could have had his pick of law schools, but he wanted to follow in his dad Jared’s footsteps.
He wanted to work for Domestic Operations, and Talon knew someday he’d run the freaking branch.
The intellect on that dude was off the charts.
“Brittany, we’ll need legal in here and tell them to bring the file on the mineral agreements in the Sahel region.”
“Yes, sir,” a woman’s voice answered.
Elliot played nice. “Thank you. We have some other questions as well.”
“Do I need my lawyer present?”
“No, sir, this is about your daughter,” Elliot continued.
There was silence for a moment. “Why? What did she do?”
“Sir?”
“What else could this be about. Guardian Security asks about my daughter, which means she’s in trouble. If she did something illegal, that’s on her. She’s her own person.”
“Ah, no, sir, she was found in a metal container on the ship. She was beaten and left to die.”
“By who?” Her father’s words snapped back at Elliot.
Talon hissed. “Stop the recording.”
“Stopped,” Dude replied immediately.
Talon shook his head in disgust. “What would your first question be if you had a kid and someone told you they were beaten and left to die?”
“I’d want to know if she were okay and where she was.”
“Yeah, me, too.” Talon grabbed his coffee and sat down. “Okay, let’s hear the rest.”
“We’re working on that. We have DNA, pictures, and fingerprints of the pirates, plus the woman in charge is alive and in our custody, so we’ll have answers shortly.”
“Do you want to know how your daughter is?”
Marcus’s voice held none of the contempt that would drip from Talon’s if he’d heard the question.
“I’m assuming she’s alive, or you would have told me she’s dead. Where is she? I’ll send someone to bring her back to the States.”
Elliot gave him the name of the hospital. “Figures she’d mess up a job as simple as environmental compliance,” her father muttered.
“Excuse me?” Marcus said with a hint of disbelief in his voice.