Chapter 2
Five years later
“Rhode, you’re with Reese and Davis to secure the safe house,” Wilson McCray, Takeback’s team leader and federal liaison, told me as he started with assignments. “Cole, Jack, Asher, you’re with me.”
I stood in the shadows with my team and glanced around the bankrupt lumber mill. The area was awash with activity: police, fire, ambulances, passenger vans, and unmarked black SUVs surrounded the rescue site. Local and federal law enforcement out en masse.
This operation was three weeks in the making.
Forty-one victims had been rescued. It wasn’t the first time the team had recovered children—boys and girls as young as ten.
Neither was this the first time I’d seen teenagers or young adults.
The sixty-year-old woman who had her arms wrapped protectively around the three youngest didn’t surprise me either.
Nothing did anymore.
I once thought I’d seen it all—ten years as a SEAL deployed to the most war-torn countries, I’d done and seen shit nightmares were made of.
Nothing could prepare a person for this level of depravity.
Human trafficking knew no age, no race, no religion, no gender, no economic status.
It was the devil's work.
Period. The end.
“The families been called?” Davis asked, his voice low and angry.
“Yeah,” Wilson answered. “The closest is thirty minutes away. Vic’s name’s Kiki Welsh. The rest will be a few hours.”
I found the young woman in question amongst the other two victims who had family close.
The three had already been separated from the rest of the group and paramedics looking them over.
So far, none of them had injuries that would necessitate an ambulance ride or a medivac.
But that didn’t mean shit. The EMTs couldn’t assess the real damage of the trauma they’d endured.
Weeks’ worth of work, a successful rescue, yet my stomach still clenched. Victims but no one to arrest. Something wasn’t right. Traffickers didn’t leave their merchandise unattended.
Before the team could disperse, there was a loud commotion complete with a shrill scream.
“My daughter’s over there.”
“Shit,” Wilson cursed.
Shit was right. Family at the rescue site was never good.
“Kiki!”
The young woman had no reaction to her name being shouted.
I slowly turned and found a tall, slender, older woman with stick-straight black hair, beside her an older, taller man with salt-and-pepper hair and an olive complexion.
And next to the older couple were two women.
One of them was the spitting image of the older woman.
I couldn’t see the other woman’s face but she, too, had dark hair.
Kiki Welsh was a ginger. A true redhead complete with green eyes, pale skin, and a face full of freckles.
“Wilson, you better go over there.” I jerked my head toward the family. “And pray that girl’s adopted.”
Wilson looked from the redhead to the family calling out her name, then back to the redhead, and mumbled a string of expletives before he moved the few feet to the police barricade.
“Shit,” Davis muttered, doing the same slow perusal Wilson had done. “This isn’t going to end well.”
“Ma’am, I’m Wilson McCray. If you give me a minute, I’ll get you and your family cleared,” he greeted the family.
“My daughter’s been missing a week! I’m not waiting another second!” the woman shouted.
“Tallulah, Mama, he’s going to help us. Let’s give him a minute.”
The sound of the soothing, lyrical voice hit me square in the chest. A pinprick of recognition washed over me.
I turned and my eyes hit on the family. The last name Welsh didn’t mean anything to me, and I never forgot a name or a face and none of them looked familiar, but that voice—I knew it.
Hell, it had been years, and sometimes I still heard it in my dreams.
One night.
Six hours.
That was all we’d had. Yet letting her leave without getting her name was a regret.
A huge one.
I knew it when she’d slipped from my hotel bed.
I’d felt my chest get tight when she’d walked out the door.
It had been five years, and I still wondered what it was about her that to this day had me tied in knots.
There were long stretches of time when I’d convinced myself it had been the sex.
Other times I’d told myself it was her spontaneity.
The woman had grabbed ahold of our night together like it was her last on earth.
She’d taken my hand, followed me to my hotel room, then proceeded to live out a fantasy. And in doing so, rocked my world.
But it wasn’t just the sex. It was the times between sessions when she smiled and laughed and teased that had clinched the deal.
It was the way she got off on me taking charge, and she had no issue voicing how much she liked it.
It was the way she’d turned the tables and tussled with me for dominance.
Slow, drugging kisses. Hard, deep, wet ones. The woman was dynamite.
Beyond all of that—how good she was in bed, how sweet she tasted, the warm flowery perfume I could sometimes still smell, it was her eyes.
So pretty, I couldn’t stop staring into them while I was moving inside of her.
So blue they looked like the Caribbean Sea.
Big, blue, expressive eyes that held so much happiness and excitement they were intoxicating.
The kind of eyes you could get lost in. The kind that held you captive. The kind that made you smile just by looking into them.
So, fuck yeah, I regretted letting her go. It was one of the top five biggest mistakes I’d ever made.
“We should hit the road.” Reese’s suggestion pulled me from my thoughts.
I lifted my hand to curl it around the back of my neck and squeezed.
“Give me a minute.”
Indecision weighed heavy. I was working a job and my priority was the victims we’d rescued, but I couldn’t get my brain on board. I knew that voice, was sure of it, and I wasn’t making another mistake.
I started to make my way to the police line when I saw her.
Time stood still.
Those eyes.
Her hair was longer, but other than that, she looked the same. She held the older woman’s hand, and her other arm was around the younger woman’s shoulder.
Christ. Bad timing.
The worst.
My gaze went from the woman’s arm back to her face. I heard her gasp right before her eyes went wide.
The young woman who was leaning into her looked up, her body jolted, and she muttered a very loud, “Oh my God.”
“What? Do you see her? Where is she?” the mother asked and craned her neck. But when her gaze hit me she jerked as well.
What the fuck?
“Remington,” the mother breathed.
“This is Rhode Daley. And like I said, my name’s Wilson McCray,” Wilson quickly corrected the woman. “We work for an organization called Takeback. We assist federal and local law enforcement.”
When none of the women spoke, the man cleared his throat and pulled his wife closer.
“Michael Welsh. This is my wife Tallulah, our daughter Letty, and a family friend, Brooklyn Saunders. We’d be obliged you get a move on getting us to my daughter.”
Brooklyn Saunders.
Finally, a name.
Brooklyn.
“Mr. Welsh, take a walk with me,” Wilson started, then continued, “Rhode will stay here with your wife and daughter.”
I peeled my gaze from the women and looked at my team leader. Hard-set jaw, eyes narrowed. Not at the man’s tone or demand, but because there was a strong possibility Kiki Welsh was not there.
“I don’t understand!” Mrs. Welsh screeched. “I want to—”
“Tally, stay with Letty and Brooklyn. I’ll be right back,” Mr. Welsh said.
“But—”
“Mom. Let Dad handle this. He’ll be right back,” Letty said, obviously catching on, like her dad, that something beyond the obvious wasn’t right.
Wilson lifted the police tape, Michael ducked under, and together they walked in the direction of the ambulance.
Awkward silence ensued. This was not the time or place, but I wasn’t letting the opportunity pass.
“Brooklyn?”
Her blue eyes skidded to mine and I didn’t miss the wince.
Good Goddamn, that felt like a bullet to the chest.
I’d spent more time than I should’ve over the years thinking about her. She’d plagued my dreams. Seeing that wince, killed.
“You must be Dulles,” Letty cut in.
“Come again?”
“Dulles. The airport.” Letty turned to Brooklyn and bumped her shoulder. “This is Dulles, right?”
“Um, yeah,” Brooklyn stuttered.
Before I could figure out what to say, the truth slammed into me.
Brooklyn had come with the Welshes—the family that lived thirty minutes away.
My cabin in Sandpoint was a little over an hour from where they were in the Spokane Valley.
Not that I spent much time in Idaho, but over the last five years, I’d been in the area several times a year.
Brooklyn had been close by the whole time.
“What’s going on?” Mrs. Welsh demanded. “I want to see my daughter.”
“Why would you do this?” Michael Welsh roared.
Fucking hell.
Tallulah pushed through the tape, Letty on her heels, Brooklyn a step behind.
My hand shot out and wrapped around Brooklyn’s bicep.
“Get your friend and her mother back.”
“What? Why? How bad is Kiki?”
“That’s not Kiki, babe. I don’t know who she is, but she gave a false name. Get Tallulah and Letty back. Let Mr. Welsh handle this.”
“Oh my God.” Brooklyn paled, then she yanked free and ran after her friend.
Bedlam ensued.
Brooklyn practically tackled Tallulah from behind and wrapped her arms around the woman. Michael Welsh was shouting. Davis ran to assist Wilson. Reese, Jack, and Asher rushed to form a barricade to keep the women back. Cole came to my side, and together we moved to flank the women.
“What’s happening? Where’s Kiki? Is she hurt? I want—”
“Mama, come with me,” Letty pleaded and grabbed her mother’s hand.
“No. I want—”
“Tallulah, Mama, please. Please come with us,” Brooklyn tried.
It was then a mother’s intuition kicked in. And when it did, I cringed. The pain was so great it pierced my vest and cut me to the core.
Tallulah Welsh’s legs buckled, taking Brooklyn to the ground with her. Letty dropped to her knees in front of her mother. Then with Brooklyn and Letty bracketing her, a mother’s wail of anguish rent through the air like a clap of thunder.
I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, they locked with ocean blue.
I’d waited five years to look into those eyes again.
Five years to right a monumental screw-up.
Bad timing. The worst.
But now that I’d found her, I wasn’t walking away without a fight.