Chapter 1
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Rubin Martin pushed the hair off his forehead and blew the sweat off his upper lip.
“Come on. It’ll be fun,” Trent had told him. “Come on. Mason put out the call. You know we’ve got to answer.”
The trouble was, Rubin would have answered regardless, but listening to Trent always made it so much easier for Rubin to make that commitment.
Not that he was against being here. Nope, not at all.
If Mason put out the call, he was here, he was answering, done deal. He wouldn’t have thought twice before jumping in with both feet.
Yet his buddy’s constant nagging seemed overly optimistic.
Trent continued on. “Come on. It’ll be fun. You wait and see. It’ll be great. You won’t even know how much fun until we join this new team. It’ll be awesome.”
Rubin glared over at Trent, the eternal ray of sunshine. It was too early in the morning for this shit.
Noting Rubin’s frown, Trent grinned unrepentantly. “See? It’s already fun, isn’t it?”
Rubin closed his eyes ever-so-briefly, then returned his gaze to the scene going on around him. He was pissed—and getting even more so by the minute—but Trent loved pushing people’s buttons and knew all the ways to do it.
As for the fun part, it was ridiculous just how much fun they were having. He wanted to say that to his buddy, but no way he would do that. It would just egg him on.
Not as long as they were in the situation they currently found themselves.
Besides, if Trent was right and if this was all meant to be—though according to Trent, everything was meant to be—they should get through this without any problems. The trouble was, getting through this without any problems was starting to look as if it would take a miracle.
They had bad intel from the start, and that was never a good way to start a mission.
Hearing a whistle up ahead, he caught sight of another team member sending the go-ahead signal from the far side. Rubin motioned at Trent and started to creep forward.
The mission parameters themselves had been easy enough. Get over to Europe. Take a completely different method of travel but get to the designated private university there, all before the kidnappers completed their job. Get the gals and get the fuck out.
It all sounded simple enough and even looked easy enough, … until the shit hit the fan.
By the time they’d arrived at the location their intel had provided, they’d been on a wild goose chase, following the kidnappers’ trail … to Kazakhstan.
Now they were a little short on intel and a whole lot short on time, especially given that one of these kidnapped college students was a US senator’s daughter. Another example how targeting family members was one hell of a way to get things done in a certain manner over in America.
Rubin didn’t want to say everybody was for sale, but sometimes those who refused to accept a bribe needed additional persuasion, like his daughter being kidnapped.
So far, the waters were too calm. The silence was deafening.
And to make things even scarier, no ransom demands had been made either.
The student had been there one day and gone the next, along with a couple other females.
He suspected that was mostly for the optics—to make it a little harder to identify who the kidnappers really intended to kidnap and what they intended to do with them.
The senator had absolutely no doubt about the why.
He just wanted to ensure he got his daughter back.
And, of course, taking care of the guys who had done this once and for all would never be off the table for Rubin.
Humans doing this to other humans deserved the greatest punishment as far as he was concerned, but then sometimes justice changed, depending on who was in power.
Rubin and Trent appeared at Oakley’s side. “What did you find out?” Rubin asked softly.
Oakley whispered, “Two bodies, one down, one moving … slowly. I don’t see any men. It seems somebody has already been here and has taken what they wanted and, by the looks of it, are long gone.”
Trent stared at Oakley in shock for a brief second, but he recovered right away. “Shit. I sure as hell hope you’re wrong. They shouldn’t be that far ahead of us.”
“Yeah, I hope so too,” he muttered, “but it’s not looking good.”
Rubin’s hand signals had the four of them all evenly spaced out and ready to proceed.
Carefully, guns ready, they moved into the warehouse in formation.
They had tracked down the missing women here, and, as they approached, Rubin heard sobs.
He raced forward and found a young woman on the floor, badly injured.
He knew instinctively it wouldn’t be the one they were looking for.
He knelt at her side and whispered, “It’s okay. We’re here to help.” She sobbed even harder. She had an obviously broken arm, likely a broken leg, and he wasn’t sure what else.
He quickly radioed back what he’d found, knowing that everybody else was searching for Tricia Forman, Senator Forman’s daughter.
When they reconvened, they confirmed that Tricia was still missing and how they instead found another woman, dead.
It took several phone calls but finally a medical team was on the way as were the authorities.
When Sam, the injured woman, heard about the dead woman, she burst into heartfelt, agonizing cries of despair. “We tried so hard to do what they asked of us,” she cried out. “They didn’t need to kill her. They didn’t have to do that.”
Rubin knew why they’d done it. It was a warning that Tricia would be next, if she didn’t do what she was told.
That was a message nobody would mistake.
Rubin talked to Sam while giving her pain medication and preparing her to be moved, still trying to get as much information from her as they could.
However, she didn’t seem to have a whole lot.
“We did everything we could, everything they told us. We didn’t have anything to do with it. They didn’t have to kill her,” she cried out. “They didn’t have to kill her.”
“No, they didn’t.” Rubin faced her, trying to calm her down, but she jerked away from him. He understood her state of mind, but they still needed information. “Did you see any other students taken by these men?”
“Just one other, Tricia. They still have her, unless she’s here.” Sam sobbed between hiccups as she looked around. “Is she here? Did you look for her? Is she dead?”
He raised one hand. “She’s not here. We have looked, but we didn’t find her.” Sam started to cry again, the same deep, bone-chilling sobs. “We’ll find her,” Rubin declared. “I promise.”
She shook her head. “They wanted her,” she shared, sobbing harder. “They were after her, right from the beginning. Shirley told me that they wanted Tricia, but I didn’t believe it.”
“And Shirley is the dead girl?”
“Yes. Shirley Boston. I didn’t want to believe it. Even when we tried to tell them that we weren’t part of anything, that we had no idea what Tricia was mixed up in, they didn’t care. They knew, but they didn’t care.” Sam continued to sob.
“Right,” Rubin muttered. “You got caught up in something that had nothing to do with you. I’m so sorry.”
After that, Sam kept ranting for another half hour, and he was stuck guessing, nudging her, subtly trying to get some intel to go on.
She was still crying and repeating the same words, when they managed to splint her arm and leg before moving her, so they could transfer her out of the area and get her some proper medical care.
“What did she mean by that?” Oakley asked Rubin. “The part about telling the kidnappers they had nothing to do with it.”
“I imagine they realized they weren’t the intended target and probably tried to get out of trouble by indicting Tricia.
” He stared at Oakley, frowning now. “Look. They were just three women against who-knows-how-many men. Survival instincts take over,” Rubin reminded him. “We see it time and time again.”
“I know,” Oakley acknowledged. “I shouldn’t judge. We’ve seen plenty of instances where people do all kinds of stuff to save themselves.”
“In this case,” Rubin noted, still alert and looking around the place, “it didn’t work quite so well for Shirley.”
“Right. I think they got a little tired of her. Yet we don’t know that for sure, and Sam’s not coherent.” Oakley pointed with a shrug at the ambulance, where Sam was being buckled in by the medics.
“Not sure she’s even got anything to add,” Rubin stated, as he stared at the woman.
“Did you get anything out of her?” Oakley asked.
“Not much,” Rubin admitted, glancing back at the rest of his team.
“Care to share with the rest of the class?” Trent asked, as he and Hayden approached.
Rubin shrugged. “So, they’d been held here since they were abducted.
Apparently, more men arrived in the middle of the night.
Sam was sound asleep, mostly from exhaustion, when she was kicked awake, and they explained that she had a message to pass on, and the message was simply Do what they say or else.
Then they proceeded to beat the daylights out of her.
I’m not certain she ever realized that beating her was how they were conveying the message she was to pass on. ”
“And they left her alive?”
“Yes, they left Sam alive, but they shot the other one, right in front of Sam. The dead student is Shirley Boston, by the way. They ended up killing her. Sam was hoping that it wasn’t a fatal shot, but clearly it was.
” Rubin stared at the sheet-draped body, getting ready for transport in a coroner’s van.
“And I’m sure that was just as intended. ”
“Of course it was,” Oakley grumbled, his face hardened. “These guys won’t do anything halfway. They are pros.”
“I passed the message on to Mason,” Rubin shared. “He’s not impressed.”
“Ya think?” Oakley muttered bitterly.
Even Trent, who always had a carefree attitude in the worst of situations, stood beside him, glaring at the world around him.