15. Thad
Thad
“Garcia has that tattoo?” I asked.
“Yeah, but this isn’t a picture of Jefferson.” She waved the five-by-seven image. “His was on his stomach.”
I didn’t want to think about Emerson looking at Garcia’s bare torso. Not even in the most abstract of ways. I’d actually liked to forget entirely that she’d spent time with him in general.
“Did he tell you what it meant?” Declan inquired.
“No. I asked, but when I did, he told me he’d tell me only after I told him what the tattoo on my back meant.”
Emerson looked like she wished she could suck the words back in. I wished she could’ve, too. I was actively pretending my name wasn’t on her skin, and much like Garcia, I wanted to know what it meant even if I didn’t want to acknowledge its existence.
“What about Omni? Did he ever mention them?”
“Who?”
Fuck, so that was a no.
Declan’s phone rang and he fished it out of his back pocket, checked the screen, and left the room .
“When you worked for Brown, did you ever run any sex trafficking cases?” Brooks asked Tatiana.
“No.” She shook her head.
“You worked for this man? The one you’re looking for now? The same one who was supposed to meet with Jefferson?” Emerson asked wide-eyed.
“Yeah. He was my handler.”
“What does that mean?”
Before anyone could stop Tatiana, she explained how she’d come to be employed by The Company and that Brown had been her point of contact—her handler.
But Leon had turned on Tatiana and set her up, almost killing her and Brooks while they were on a recon mission.
She also told Emerson that she was former CIA.
“So, he doesn’t work for the CIA?” Emerson asked, confused.
Yeah, that makes all of us, agápi mou, and none of us liked loose ends. Brown was more than that, he was a danger to all of us.
Declan came back into the living room with his phone still at his ear. “Emerson, did Garcia ever mention a place in Mabaruma?” he asked.
“Yeah. It’s in Guyana. He has a camp there where he trains dogs,” she confirmed.
“Did you hear that?” He went back to his phone conversation. “Have you been there?” His gaze on Emerson.
“Yes, once.”
“Right. We’ll be there. Thanks.” Declan disconnected, then told us, “Pack up, we’re leaving.”
“What? You’re leaving?” Emerson asked hopefully.
“All of us, you included.”
“No way. I told Zane I wasn’t interested in his plane ticket back to the U.S.”
“We’re not going to the U.S., we’re going to Mabaruma. ”
“You’re fucking crazy. Did you hear me? He trains his fighting dogs there.
You understand what that means, right? There’ll be like twenty dogs there being brutally beaten.
Which means they won’t be cute cuddly puppies; they’ll be mean and vicious and will rip your face off.
I’m not exaggerating either. I’ve seen it. I’m not going back there.”
“I don’t doubt what you say, and you won’t get close to the training camp.”
“Then why am I going?”
“You’ll see. We’re outta here in ten. Tex has a plane on standby.”
Declan walked back out of the room, leaving a scared and shaking Emerson looking around the room.
“You’ll be safe.” Tatiana tried to assure her.
“Yeah, safe is the last thing any of us will be. And I want it noted to your boss, I’m really unhappy, this wasn’t part of the deal.”
“What exactly did you think the deal was?” I asked.
“Not this. I’m not an idiot, I know he has me by the balls. He obviously knows what happened to David, so I know he could royally screw me. That is, more than I’m already screwed. I had no choice but to answer y’all’s questions.”
“There’s that word again—choice. You always have a choice. You just don’t seem to know how to make the right ones.”
I grabbed the dossier Garrett and Tex had pieced together about Emerson’s life post our relationship and stalked out of the room. I’d only gotten through the first few pages in the twenty minutes Emerson had stayed in the bedroom after I’d left.
With every sentence I’d read I thought I was going to be sick. I had to keep stopping and taking a minute to digest the fucked-up shit I was learning.
Autumn Pierce had been brutalized and I wondered how much Emerson knew about the two months her sister had spent with the sex ring.
Some details were in the police reports, but not direct statements from Autumn herself.
There was nothing from Autumn at all, the special victims detective had noted that Autumn Pierce had severe PTSD and was mute during the time of questioning.
Most of the details had come from Tex and what he could find on the ring. They were known for their depravity. And that was saying something since you had to be a sick fuck to be a part of a group who kidnapped and held women against their will in the first place.
The report had also confirmed there were two years of Emerson’s life that were missing, which confirmed her statement about it taking a week to explain the last eight years of her life.
Autumn had been found. But now she was gone again.
I grabbed my ruck off the bed and shoved the papers in the bag. I was so fucking tired working off of a few hours of restless sleep compounded with the emotional beating I’d been on the receiving end of, I wasn’t sure if I could stay awake long enough to even get to the plane.
“Let’s roll,” Declan bellowed.
“You should get some sleep,” Max said, sitting down next to me.
Tex hadn’t had a plane on standby, he’d had a luxury jet. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall when he handed that bill over to Zane.
We’d been in the air about twenty minutes and already Brooks, Tatiana, and Kyle were snoozing.
Declan was staring out the small window, looking like he had the weight of our mission on his shoulders.
For all the shit our team leader gave us, he was one of the best operators I knew.
Even if his training had come from the Marine’s and not the Navy.
I glanced down the aisle and Emerson had her eyes closed, too.
She looked just like the sweet Emerson who used to be mine. So damn pretty she took my breath. There’d never been a time when I’d looked at her that I hadn’t known how lucky I was to have her.
“You knew?” I asked Max.
“I heard her when she was questioning the girls. She has a picture she keeps on her. She showed it to them and asked them if they’d seen her sister. But that was all I knew until the report came in.”
“And you read that before you came to get me this morning.”
“I did. I wanted to know how bad it was before I talked to you.”
I nodded my head, knowing Max was telling the truth—he wouldn’t have kept that info from me. The timing was shit, we’d gotten the order to pick her up before he’d had a chance to talk to me.
I wasn’t sure what this new information changed, or if it should change anything. The past was the past and the fucked-up truth was the woman I’d loved was dead. And in her place was this Emerson.
I couldn’t blame her for doing the things she’d done—hell, if I had a sister and the things that had been done to Autumn happened to her, I would’ve gone off the rails. There’d be dead motherfuckers all over the place. Those animals had torn Autumn up. Someone needed to pay.
But what I could and did blame her for was the manner in which she’d taken off and left me.
“She said she left to protect me,” I told Max.
“Maybe she did. ”
“Come again? How in the hell does that work? Protect me from who? The men who took Autumn?”
“From yourself.”
“Now you’re talking crazy shit like her.”
“No, I’m not and you know it. If you’d come home from that training op and found your woman in the middle of that particular shitstorm, you would’ve broken your neck making it okay for her.
Which would’ve meant, you would’ve gone on the hunt.
Which would’ve led to being masted, possibly kicked off the team, and even out of the Navy. ”
Goddamn, but he was right. I would’ve gone hunting and there’s no doubt I would’ve found Autumn.
“Did you get what you needed?” he asked.
Needed? Hell, no. Though, to be fair, I wasn’t sure what I needed to help myself get over Emerson. Maybe this was it, and I just needed a slap of cold-hard reality. We were no longer the people we were, there wasn’t even a we —at all. There was Emerson and there was Thad. Two different people.
“Yeah. I’m good,” I told him and hoped I wasn’t lying.
“You gonna talk to her?”
“About our past? No, I don’t think it’s necessary. Am I gonna try to put that shit behind me and treat her like any other asset? Yeah.”
“I think—”
“I appreciate your concern. I admit when she left me, she tore my shit up. And seeing her again in Mexico fucked with my head. Finding her with Jefferson pissed me off and threw me into a rage. But I can’t go there with her, not again.
Not the way I love her. I barely survived her the first time I had her.
So, I need to put space between us, and talking to her is not keeping my distance. ”
“I get it, brother. I have your back. Whatever you need.”
“Did you take a look at the satellite images Garrett sent over of Garcia’s camp?” I asked, changing the subject away from Emerson and the drama that had become my life.
“I did. The aerials suck. The canopy’s too thick to see shit. I was thinking the best way to infil would be the Kaituma River. There’s a dock there we could hit. But it’s boxed in by those goddamned trees.”
“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing,” I told him. “But it might be best to fast rope down straight in the middle of the back of the camp. We’d have at least five-hundred yards of clearing. But there’s zero cover there. We’d be fucked if we ran into unfriendlies.”
“Tex said he’s working on getting a drone in, but I still don’t see how that’s gonna help much, unless he hijacks that bitch and gets it down into the jungle. He’s crafty when it comes to getting us intel, but I’d think that’s beyond the scope of reality.”
Damn if Max wasn’t right. Tex had pulled off some crazy shit in the past. Some of the things he did should’ve been impossible. Yet somehow he’d always managed. But getting a UAV to fly low enough to get us the footage we’d need would be difficult.
“It looks like the camp is broken into two sections. The buildings near the house all have dog runs attached. But there’s two small houses in the back, looks like one fence encloses that area. You suppose that’s where he keeps the women?” I asked.
“Man, I hate having to guess, but without a few days to recon that’s all we’ve got—guesses.
And yeah, I’d say that’s where the women are kept.
I did find it interesting that Emerson talked about the dogs Garcia trained at the camp, but not the women.
That’s something I’d think she’d mention. She’s all about saving them.”
“She probably had no idea they were there. If she wasn’t allowed to venture out and look around, she wouldn’t have seen the two houses. They’re tucked back behind the tree line.”
“She’s gonna flip her shit, knowing she was so close to all those women. Tex estimates he keeps thirty to forty women there,” Max told me something I knew.
He wasn’t wrong about Emerson, either. Once she found out Garcia’s training camp was used for more than just training dogs, she was going to be upset. Tex and Garrett had compiled a thorough work-up on Garcia’s women.
The girls who were kept at the camp were for his VIPs. All of them in various stages of priming. These women were special, they were being educated and taught proper etiquette and grooming. They’d learn how to be the perfect companion for the sick fuck who’d purchased them.
“Glad that fucker’s dead.”
“Yeah, me, too, brother,” Max agreed and rested his head back against the seat.
Sleep didn’t come for a long time. All I could think about was how close Emerson had come to being forced into a situation she wouldn’t have been able to get herself out of.
She’d deny it, tell everyone she’d known what she was doing, and was safe because she thought Jefferson Garcia Baldwin had a soft spot for her.
But she was wrong—Garcia would’ve sold her to the highest bidder.
A man like him, as sick and depraved as he was, demanded loyalty but never gave any in return.
I finally drifted off thinking that Emerson’s days of chasing sex traffickers were over. There was no way I was allowing that shit to continue. Come hell or high water, Emerson’s white hat bullshit was done.