Chapter 13
Every time Hunter kissed her, the walls around Savvie’s heart crumbled a little more. If she wasn’t careful, he’d completely demolish the walls she’d so carefully constructed after shooting her stepfather and joining the organization to become a highly trained and deadly effective assassin.
Hunter made her think she had a chance at a normal life. That kind of thinking was wrong and would only lead to heartache.
She squared her shoulders and focused on rescuing the Caldwell captives.
She wasn’t sure why this mission meant so much to her.
If she’d refused the last assignment of taking Marcus Caldwell down, she’d never have known about the other people he’d lured into his lair only to be drugged and auctioned off like cattle at a sale barn.
She could have walked away before taking on that assignment and would have been blissfully unaware and well on her way to a new life.
But then Marcus Caldwell would still be luring women into his sick world and sending them off to be trapped in the sex trade. The people he’d already captured would suffer that fate. And Savvie would never have met Hunter Falcon.
The man was everything a girl could want in a relationship. He was strong, capable of protecting her, appreciated her strengths and was an incredible lover.
Savvie had to believe she’d made the only choice she could have made. Perhaps Fate had given her the nudge to accept the assignment, and in doing so, sealed her fate.
She couldn’t walk away from those who couldn’t help themselves. It would be like losing her mother all over again. She’d waited too long to stop her stepfather. Someone had to stand up for the lost souls who’d given up on ever being rescued. She prayed she wasn’t too late this time.
Savvie hurried toward the door on the side of the building, shrugged off the straps of her damp backpack and laid it on the ground beside the door.
She reached inside and pulled out a small toolkit folded into a leather pouch.
From the kit, she extracted a thin metal file and inserted it into the lock on the door handle.
She fished around until she felt the locking mechanism trigger.
She turned the knob, and the door opened.
Hunter stepped through while Savvie repacked her tools into her backpack, pulled her handgun out, tucked it into the waistband of her jeans and pulled her T-shirt over it.
Slipping the straps of the backpack over her shoulders, she followed Hunter into the building.
They hurried down a long hallway with doors on either side.
Hunter opened them, one by one, revealing a storage room with cleaning tools and supplies. The next was a large room filled with machines needed to run a compound as large as this. Air conditioning units, water heaters and generators, many of which were running, the sound deafening.
Hunter kept moving, carefully checking other doors and finding a laundry room and kitchen. He eased out of the doorway into the kitchen when they spied people moving around, preparing food.
The hallway ended in a T-junction. Left would take them toward the front of the complex. Right would take them to the rear.
Hunter chose to go to the right. Perhaps, like Savvie, he’d assumed the people in charge would be entertaining near the front of the establishment and keep the prisoners hidden in the back where their screams could not be heard.
They followed the hallway until it ended in a left turn that led down a staircase into a lower level with concrete block walls and doors spaced at even intervals with windows into the rooms beyond.
Or cells. Each door was locked from the outside with a hasp and a keyed lock.
Hunter stopped at the first door and peered through the small window into the room beyond.
Savvie stepped up beside him and looked inside.
Curled into a fetal position on the concrete floor lay a young woman who couldn’t be more than a teenager.
Hunter moved to the next door and peered through the window.
“We’ve found them,” Savvie whispered.
Hunter touched the button on his headset. “Eagle Rock, Yellowstone.”
“This is Eagle Rock, go ahead,” Hank responded, his voice reassuring
“Art located,’ Hunter reported. “Moving to rear of building.”
“Any sign of Yellowstone three through nine?” Hank asked.
“No.”
“Get them out,” Hank said. “We’ll take care of Yellowstone.”
Savvie dropped the backpack, dug out the tools she needed and went to work on the first lock. It took a couple of minutes to make the lock open.
Hunter motioned to the next.
Savvie worked on the next lock while Hunter removed the lock from the hasp and entered the first room where the teenage girl had pushed to her feet.
He held a finger to his lips and urged the girl to leave the cell and wait while they freed the others.
One by one, Savvie unlocked the padlocks. She was only halfway down the line of cells when one of the freed women whimpered and stumbled back into her cell, pulling the door closed. Others did the same until the hallway was clear but for Hunter and Savvie.
Footsteps sounded from around the corner at the end of the line of cells.
Savvie and Hunter ducked into one of the empty cells and pulled the door closed with a soft snick.
A big, burly man rounded the corner with a bandage wrapped around his bicep, followed by another man with a big knot on his forehead.
Savvie had seen these men before in the Setai Hotel in Marcus’s penthouse suite.
Savvie dropped to the floor and lay on her side in a fetal position like the first woman they’d encountered.
Hunter pressed his back to the wall beside the door.
The man with the bandaged bicep peered through the window into the room where Savvie lay on her side, looking back at the man through the veil of her eyelashes.
Burly man’s eyes narrowed. He shook his head and moved to the next door that she hadn’t yet unlocked.
A key scraped on metal and was followed by the click of a lock disengaging.
A woman’s moaning protest sounded as the men dragged the person from the next cell.
Savvie leaped to her feet.
When the two men passed the cell where she and Hunter hid, she held her breath and waited.
Once the two men were past the door to their cell, Savvie and Hunter eased the cell door open. Despite their care, the hinge let out a loud squeak.
The men turned as one.
Hunter and Savvie didn’t give them a fighting chance. They attacked first.
Savvie took the man she’d stabbed before in the bicep, dropped him to the ground and jacked his arm up between his shoulder blades.
Hunter slammed the other man against the wall.
The guy hit the floor and lay still. Hunter grabbed his arms and dragged him into a cell.
He came back out, holding up a set of keys, and then tossed them to her before dragging the burly guy into the same cell, When he came back out, he snapped one of the locks they’d removed into place.
Once they had all the young women out of their cells, they half-walked, half-ran with them back toward the machine room and the door they’d entered through minutes before.
Between Savvie and Hunter, they got the women over the wall, one by one.
Once the last one went over, Hunter helped Savvie up onto the wall. Together, they slid down the other side.
The crunch of footsteps on gravel had Hunter and Savvie taking up fighting stances, weapons ready.
As the two men came into view, they held up their hands.
The one in the lead whispered, “Yellowstone, we’re Eagle Rock. Boomer and Taz. Hank sent us to help get the ladies out of here. Our Zodiac wasn’t compromised.”
Hunter nodded. “Good. Then you don’t need me. I’m going back in to help find the rest of our guys.”
“I’m going, too.” Savvie hurried after Hunter, gave him the boost he needed to scale the wall and waited for him to reach down for her.
When he didn’t, she frowned. “What are you doing?” She reached up at high as she could. “I’m going with you.”
“Go with the women,” Hunter said. “Make sure they get out. I’ll see you later.”
“This is bullshit,” she whispered. “I’m going with you.”
He disappeared, dropping to the ground on the other side.
“No,” she whispered, her heart breaking into a million pieces. “Don’t leave me.” She looked around for help to scale the wall.
Boomer and Taz had rounded up the women and were moving them into the woods for the trek back to their Zodiac.
For a moment, Savvie stared at the wall, defeated. Starlight shone on the wall, casting little shadows on the chinks in the concrete blocks. If she could just get to the first one…
Savvie backed up several yards. Then she sprinted at the wall. When she got close enough, she leaped as high as she could and touched her shoe against the bricks, pushing herself higher and reaching for the crack in the brick.
Her fingers curled into the bricks, the treads on her tennis shoes gripping the coarse surface.
When gravity brought the weight of her body down, she almost lost her hold.
“No way,” she said through gritted teeth.
“You will not leave me behind.” Shifting her fingers, she got a better grip and reached for the next crack, then placed her foot in another flaw in the wall.
Working her way slowly upward, she pulled herself onto the top of the wall and slid over the other side, dropping lightly to the ground.
Then she was running toward the door she’d opened by picking the lock.
Once inside the building, she looked for Hunter. He wasn’t in the hallway with the mechanical room.
Savvie ran to the T-junction. To the right were the cells where the Caldwells had kept the women they’d offer up for sale to the highest bidders.
Savvie turned left, heading toward the front of the building and, hopefully, toward Hunter.
She’d gotten them into this mission to rescue those women. If anything happened to any of the Brotherhood Protectors, it would be her fault for dragging them into this effort.
She’d promised Kyla she’d make sure Stone returned home in one piece. If anything happened to him, their baby would grow up without a father. Or with a stepfather who could never love her and would abuse her and her mother.
No. No. No.
And then there were her growing feelings for Hunter. If anything happened to him, she would never know what he wanted to talk about. What he meant by it wasn’t over between them. She’d never know if they could fall in love and make a life for themselves despite her past career choice.
Damn it!
Where was he?
Savvie ran to the next T-junction in the hallway, slowed and peered carefully around the corner.
The hallway was empty. Voices sounded to the left, moving toward her.
Savvie turned right and raced down the corridor, slowing long enough to twist doorknobs.
Most of these doors were locked. If she didn’t find an open one soon, the men belonging to the voices would see her.
She’d be captured, adding one more worry to the men who’d already helped her out of a bad situation in Miami.
Nearing the end of the hallway, she was running out of options. The last door she tried opened. Knowing she only had seconds to decide, she pushed through the door and gently closed it behind her.
Footsteps sounded, coming closer.
Savvie glanced around the interior of the room, searching for a place to hide.
She was in a sitting room with an ornate mahogany desk taking up the other side of the room with a laptop open on its surface.
With no other hiding place, she ducked behind the desk and folded her body into the knee space, making her five-foot-seven-inch frame as small as possible.
She’d barely settled when the door to the room banged open.
“How could you let this happen?” a man said. “You promised to remove the obstacles. There’s been nothing but obstacles since my brother’s death.”
Instantly, Savvie realized that Marcus’s brother, Jesse Caldwell, was in charge and the one behind the sex trafficking operation.
“Especially that woman you sent to get Marcus out of the picture,” he continued. “You were supposed to take care of her as well.”
“I can’t help the men you hire are incompetent.”
“You should’ve known they couldn’t contain her. She’s a fucking trained assassin. One of yours.”
Savvie’s blood ran hot through her veins, anger blossoming like a pervasive flower with a heady scent.
She’d been set up by her handler in the organization.
Bastard!
She fought the urge to leap out from beneath the desk and confront him.
Footsteps crossed the room, moving toward the desk.
“Well, Don, your mistake will cost you,” Jesse said. “I’m docking ten thousand from what we agreed on.”
“The hell you are,” Don said, his tone tight and angry.
“You only accomplished half of the task. You were supposed to take care of Marcus and then eliminate her. But you didn’t, did you?” Jesse demanded. “Your precious assassin is now making it her mission to destroy my operation.”
The more she listened, the angrier she got.
A telephone rang on the desk.
Jesse Caldwell stepped behind the desk and lifted a phone off the receiver.
“What now? You’re fucking kidding me. Well, don’t just stand around with your thumbs up your ass—find them.
The auction is in full swing. We have to deliver what they’re bidding on!
” He slammed down the phone. “This is a fucking disaster. Neither of us is getting paid if we don’t find those women. ”
“Did your men let the guys they caught on the beach get away?” Don asked. “Did they take the women?”
Savvie’s anger took a back burner. What had they done with Hunter’s team?
“No,” Jesse said. “I had them drop them in the tank. It’s secure. The only way out is to drop them a line. That isn’t going to happen.”
“What’s the tank?” Don asked.
“A natural blow hole off the southeast corner of the compound. It fills with water at high tide and traps whatever falls in there until the tide recedes hours later. The tide is coming in now. It won’t be long.”
Savvie’s heart squeezed hard. Hunter’s team would drown at high tide if they didn’t get them out soon.
She willed the men to leave, praying she’d have enough time to get to the tank and drop a line for the men so they could climb out.
“I don’t like that those men found this location,” Don said.
“They wouldn’t have found us if you’d gotten rid of your assassin. I’m surprised she wasn’t with them. Are you sure they got everyone from that boat?”
“That’s what they said.” Jesse tapped on keys. “In the meantime, we need to move money from the Cayman accounts to the Swiss accounts. They found us here. They might find our accounts.” More keyboard typing sounded above Savvie’s head.
“Okay, done,” Jess said. “We need to get back to the conference room and check on the progress of the auction.”
“Auction progress won’t matter if they don’t find the ladies,” Don reminded him.
“It’s a small island,” Jess assured him. “They’ll find them.”
After the two men left the room, Savvie scrambled out from beneath the desk and ran for the door.
She had to find the tank before it filled with water.