Chapter 36
“Mother-fucking bastard!” he yelled, jumping to his feet. “Alexa!”
“Boss, I’m just in the other room and I have excellent hearing. You don’t have to scream,” Alexa said as she strolled into the room. “What’s up?”
“I need you to do a full check on Aadan Joseph. That’s a false name, he was someone else up until a few years ago. He now lives in Africa somewhere near Tanzania and he works for a wanted war criminal.”
She tensed. “Who?”
“The General.”
Alexa whistled. “Bossman, why are you looking into him? He’s no good. Too many red flags, even for me. Of course I don’t want someone cruel. I want a Robin Hood type.”
Lord, she was a worry.
But for the moment she was safe and he wasn’t certain that his girl was.
Picking up his phone, he called Tyler. He ignored the fact that he’d just called him an hour ago to check in.
“Brother, so nice to hear from you. I swear, you never call, you never text—”
“Is she all right?” he interrupted.
Once Tyler got on a spiel it could be hard to get him off.
Tyler sighed. “And when you do call it’s never about me. She’s fine. I promise. We’re at her apartment and apparently, there’s some protest this weekend that she wants to go take photos of so she’s working out the logistics.”
“A protest? I don’t like the sound of that,” he said. “Too many unknowns that could put her at risk.”
“You think everything is too much of a risk. But we’re going to go scope out the area today. Or is that a no-no too?”
Travis grunted. “Rather you stayed at home.”
“You can’t lock her up, Travis. She needs to live her life.”
“Not if it means she travels to some of the most dangerous areas of the world. Just let me know where she wants to go and when.”
He’d see if he could get home to take her. Not that he didn’t trust Tyler, but . . . he just didn’t trust him as much as he did himself.
Ending the call, he glanced over to find Alexa doing a headstand against the wall of his office.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Waiting. I like to be productive.”
Okay. He knew better than to ask. He really did. “I need everything on the General and Joseph, although that’s not his real name and I need it immediately.”
“All right, bossman. But why? We’re not going after them, are we? I mean, I like a challenge . . . but sheesh.”
“Do you know much about them?” he asked.
“Nothing about Joseph. But the General is a bad guy. Pretty sure he’s on Interpol’s Wanted List.”
“Caren got tangled up with Joseph and I want to make sure they’re not going to be a risk to her.” He explained about her meeting Joseph, then leaving.
“Wow. She dodged a bullet. I’m really shocked he just let her leave, though. That doesn’t sound right.”
“I know. And she thinks that because of that he’s not a risk to her. I want to be sure that he’s not. Can you do it discreetly, though? I don’t want to draw anyone’s attention.”
She saluted him. “Discreet is my middle name.”
Uh-huh. Sure it was.
Fuck.
“These are some bad guys,” Jace said as he read over everything that Alexa had sent them.
His gut churned as he closed his laptop. He couldn’t think about his sweet girl with these . . . these monsters. The things that they were accused of doing . . . it made him wonder how he was going to sleep tonight.
“I couldn’t find Aadan Joseph’s real identity,” Alexa said with frustration. “But the actual Aadan Joseph died fifteen years ago. He was an older guy who lived his entire life in Scotland.”
“You did well,” Travis praised her. “I want you to stop now, though.”
“I’m sure I can find out who he actually is.”
Travis shook his head.
“Too dangerous,” Jace told her. “You can’t put yourself at risk or any of us. If these guys found out we were looking into them . . . fuck.”
“What do you want to do?” Rusty asked.
Travis leaned back with a groan. “I don’t know why he let her go. He doesn’t seem the sort of guy to do that.”
“Unless he really did love her,” Alexa said. “Sometimes when you’re in love you do things you wouldn’t normally do.”
“Are you going to tell her everything you found?” Clay asked.
“I’m not telling her all of it.”
“She needs to know the risk though,” Alexa said. “If there’s any chance he wants her back . . .”
None of it made sense.
“He would have come for her already, though, right?” Jace said. “It’s been nine months. He would have tried to get to her.”
“Unless he didn’t know where she was?” Alexa asked. “You said that she used her grandmother’s maiden name when she was with him.”
“Yeah, but a guy like this has the resources to find her,” Clay said.
None of it made much sense.
And all he knew was that he wanted to get home to his girl. To make sure she was safe.
“I’m going to head home to talk to her. She and Tyler went to scope out a protest.” They’d gotten home twenty minutes ago because she’d messaged to let him know. He’d sent Gable with them, which had made Tyler grumble about not being trusted to take care of her.
But he didn’t care.
No one would take care of her like he could.