8. Jack
8
JACK
A fter reviewing the systems logs and network traffic, I trace the IP and track the digital footprint. Everything leads to dead ends.
But the man from the video, Caspian Vorn… I know that guy—his face, but under a different name—and he’s suspected of working with some nasty people. Trafficker level people. The kind who will have no problem killing an innocent young woman and leaving a six-year-old motherless.
Worse, they wouldn’t think twice about killing the girl, too, if they couldn’t get to Sloane alone.
We need to watch her, even if she doesn’t want us to. And I don’t really want to go behind her back to do so.
Vorn isn’t giving me many options, though. Sloane will have to deal with us. It’s not safe for her otherwise.
So, I do something else she’ll likely hate me for. I dig into her life. The barrage of texts she got between 10:15 and 10:30 spiked my interest. According to Hastings, she didn’t even check them.
What connection did that have with the warning Boone gave us about her?
I check her personnel file again. Her address has recently been changed. She signed a new lease four days ago, got a new bank account three days ago, a new license plate and car registration in-progress.
Her old address is in someone else’s name. An Alistair Fitzwilliam. Her ex, presumably.
I don’t see a simple breakup, as hard as those can be with any number of variables. The way Sloane is reacting screams of more.
This isn’t the broken heart Hastings coddled for the last year after he came back from a month-long deployment to find his wife with another woman. It looks different.
She’s fighting for control, something she’s comfortable with at work but not outside of it. That’s more than obvious from her reaction to being protected. The term babysitting offers a power dynamic, and it’s not simply our age or positions.
It’s whatever she had to make a clean break from. Whatever sent her to a new bank account with little money in it, even though her bank records show no credit cards and nothing in her name beyond the new account.
So, where did all of her money go?
Was she paying the bills in her ex’s name? Would make sense with where she’s leased a temporary one-bedroom apartment. It’s not a good side of town, but the rent is low and the leases are short.
It only leaves her more vulnerable. Especially with the open apartments in her building.
Fuck, Sloane.
If I could gain that from a few public searches, what has this Caspian Vorn dug up on her?
My fingers itch to keep digging, but she has no active social media profiles. At least not for the last six years. They’ve been deactivated, but the remnants I find show her so very young and pregnant in front of the local college campus, with an infant in the hospital… and then, nothing.
What happened to that proud momma, the one clearly shown to us this morning?
I refrain from looking into her life before then, her childhood, and what left her alone in that hospital room with Reese Moxie Montgomery. I’m sure what I’ve already uncovered will more than bite me in the ass.
I don’t know this Alistair Fitzwilliam, but I don’t like him and whatever he’s done to Sloane. And I sure as shit know I’ll find something if I look into him.
Abandoning her desk, I slip into the stacks alongside Hastings and Cole, watching her in her element.
God, it’s sexy. She’s in charge. No-nonsense. Comfortable with ordering people around, making them slow down and open up boxes and crates even as they grumble at her.
She waves them off, literally, like they’re bugs buzzing annoyingly in her ears.
It doesn’t keep them from griping, but she handles them well enough that I don’t feel the need to step in. I can only imagine how she’d turn on me if I did.
I lean closer to the guys as they continue with her inspection of older inventory and tell them what else I found while I did research on our pretty little asset.
Wow, even in my head, that sounds dirty.
I can’t help it. She’s growing on me.
“What do you mean, you didn’t look into her ex?” Hastings half laughs. “Suddenly grow a conscience about snooping? Need a new line of work?”
I grin. “Mostly, I have a feeling I’ll go nuclear if I do. It can wait. I’d rather we earn her trust and have her tell us what happened there.”
“Because the basics are a bit obvious?” He peers between Cole and me to watch her for a few long seconds.
Suddenly, that broken heart of his doesn’t seem so broken.
“She’s getting bursts of texts that make her jittery every eighty minutes. Like the person sending them has a set schedule.”
My heart sinks as the possibilities click together. “Like a lecturing professor? I used to have those seventy-five-minute classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays in college, the entire semester I attended before I joined the SEALs.”
Cole smiles and nods. “She was pregnant already when she went to college.”
“Yeah,” I confirmed.
Cold anger flares through me. This is why I didn’t look into it. I knew my hands would ball into fists like they are now with the want to bust Fitzwilliam’s face into a pulp.
It’s better that I don’t know where to find him.
Cole slaps a hand on my shoulder. “So far, she seems to think it’s safe to ignore him. We’ll do the same unless he gives us a reason.”
“I won’t have to look far for one.”
Boss nods behind me to Boone, and the man nods back, arms crossed over a barrel chest that screams old power from a foundation of fighting. The stories hold true.
And his protective behavior is making more sense.
“Did he tell you what happened?” I asked.
“No. He didn’t need to.” His wheels are turning, putting together a plan to protect her tonight. But with her knowing or without her knowing?
I leave it to him and turn back to Sloane.
Part of me wants to offer help as she checks and double-checks serial numbers and weights, and maybe that’s why I end up in the center of it all before I register my action, cataloging every movement, every item being brought in, every inch of Sloane as she leans over, crouches, inspects.
It’s difficult looking away from her.
She must feel my gaze because she spares a second to peer back at me over her shoulder, a small narrowing of her eyes as she meets mine, but her attention is pulled away a second later.
Her voice grows stern as she snaps her fingers at one of the recruits with a hand-powered forklift. “Hey. Did you open those up?”
The guy shakes his head.
“And what about my having everything else opened up makes you think that it’s okay to run off with that before we check inside?”
“I—uh—we usually?—”
“We’re doing it differently today.” Sloane waves her hand behind her at me, Cole, and Hastings. “We’re being audited, or something like it, so hold your horses and open those up to confirm everything in there is what’s supposed to be in there.”
Biting back my laugh, I enjoy how she sets him straight and has him rooting around those boxes in seconds. She even admonishes him for not having a box-cutter handy before offering her own.
A capable woman is a strong aphrodisiac.
The smaller boxes and crates finish first and are cleared out of the loading bay as the last large tower of plastic-wrapped boxes skids to a stop beside Sloane. A recruit cuts through the plastic with quick, jerky slices. The tower sways, and the recruit jumps out of the way as it starts to tip.
Toward Sloane.
I’m in front of her in a second, arms closing around her shoulder and waist as I swing us both out of the way.
The heavy boxes crash against the hard cement, but I’m surrounded with the scent of honeysuckles and the heat of Sloane’s body against mine.
Her hands grip my arms, chest heaving with her heavy breaths, and her eyes have gone wide and wild as they stare up at me. Her mouth parts.
And fuck, do I want to kiss her.
I’m more than tempted to.