Chapter 14 #2
Until one woman threatened to slit his throat.
Until one woman showed him kindness when she owed him the opposite.
Now that woman was gone, and he couldn’t think of anything else but getting her back.
It had been well over twenty-four hours since he injected the drugs into her system and held her in his arms while she passed out. The trust she showed him was staggering, and it had almost brought him to his knees. Probably would have if he wasn't cradling something precious.
And Makayla was precious. He had no idea how she did it, no idea how she’d come out the other side of her childhood ordeal without bitterness and anger, how she looked at the world and found light where he only found darkness.
For the first time since he was a small boy, he wanted what Makayla had found, he wanted more than emptiness.
Which meant getting her back was non-negotiable.
“Van.” Falcon sounded surprised when he opened the door mere seconds after Van had pushed the buzzer.
Not that the man could really be surprised to see him.
He’d used the code at the front gate to gain access to the property, and he knew that Falcon had cameras up everywhere, so the man would have tracked him down the long driveway as soon as he got an alert that someone had come through the gate.
“I told you I was coming,” he reminded his boss as he stepped past him when Falcon held the door wider open to let him in.
“I know you did, I guess I just … wasn't sure you'd actually follow through.”
Anger sparked inside him. While it had been a staple of his childhood, he’d been in his teens by the time he learned to shut it out, shut everything out, function like he was empty inside, because that was the only way he could survive the horrors he lived through daily.
Now it curled around him like an old friend, and he didn't bother slamming the door in its face. Instead, he embraced it.
“You thought I'd leave her to rot after I told you I was coming to you to talk about how we’re going to get her the hell out?” he snarled.
Apparently, the threatening step he took toward his boss only amused Falcon because the man grinned at him. There was something similar in their smiles, and he knew they were a lot alike in so many ways. Or at least they had been. Until Hope came along and saved Falcon.
“Welcome to the club,” Falcon said, clapping him on the shoulder.
“What club?”
“The fallen for a woman club.”
“I haven’t … I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say …” Van stammered—something he never did—but he couldn’t seem to finish his sentences.
While he wasn't sure he’d fallen for Makayla per se, he did know that he wanted to be around her, wanted to soak in her sunshine and let it thaw his heart.
He wanted to see her smile and hear her soft, gentle voice.
He just wanted to look at her and soak in her presence because she was like oxygen for a dying man.
And maybe that’s what he’d been all along.
Not empty inside, but dying.
“Don’t have to admit it out loud if you're not ready to,” Falcon told him. “I fought it like hell at first. Wound up hurting Hope because I refused to accept that it was already done, I'd already fallen for her. But I got my head on straight eventually, and you will too.”
For now, he wasn't ready to say anything like that out loud. He’d never expected to have even a friend, let alone someone who could be more. And while it scared the hell out of him, he did acknowledge that Makayla had the power to be more.
If she wanted to be.
And that was what scared him the most. Because why on earth would she want anything to do with him?
She was goodness and light, sunshine, there was no other way to describe her.
But that didn't mean she would feel anything for him other than the kindness and care she showed to everyone who crossed her path.
Allowing himself to fall for her if she wasn't going to fall for him in return seemed like suicide, and he was nowhere near ready to take that kind of risk.
But he could ensure he got her back home safe and sound.
“There was no address,” he told his boss as they walked through Falcon’s house toward his office. Because they worked undercover, they rarely went into the main office building in the city because it was too risky. Usually, they met at some local park or café, but occasionally he’d come here.
“For him? The man who bought her?”
“There’s always an address. The information required by Azure always includes an address. So why isn’t there one this time?”
It had been bothering him since he learned that she’d been sold.
Since he was the one who uploaded all the profiles, he always logged all the intel he could gather about the men buying the trafficked women.
Information he then sent on to Prey for them to go through and figure out the best way to extract the women without alerting Azure to the fact that someone was targeting their clientele.
Only this profile, which had bought Makayla, hadn't provided an address. Yet he was still allowed to proceed through the system.
There was only one reason he could think of that it might have been permitted by Griffin and whoever he was working for.
“I can think of one reason,” Falcon answered, even though the question had mostly been rhetorical.
“Are you thinking the same thing I am?” Van asked because he needed to know he wasn't crazy here. This could be everything they’d been working toward from the beginning. This could be what they needed to destroy Azure for good.
And Makayla was right in the middle of it.
“I'm thinking that it’s him, the man we’ve been looking for,” Falcon said what Van had been wanting to hear.
“One of the partners,” he said slowly. It was almost unbelievable.
Of course, it was what they’d wanted all along.
But knowing that the owner of Azure might have been the one to purchase Makayla made that icy knot in his stomach tighten.
“It makes sense,” he continued. “She was bought before she was uploaded onto any platforms, so only someone inside the ring could have known about her existence. No way Griffin is selling any of his product to the men who work for him. We saw how that turned out with Mateo and Ally. But one of the heads of the ring would be able to do whatever he wanted.”
“If it is who we think it is, then we might have to tread carefully,” Falcon said, and there was a gentleness to the big, gruff man’s voice that Van didn't like in the least.
“Tread carefully?”
“I know you know what I'm saying, Van. This is what we’ve been working toward for months. Intel that will bring Azure crumbling from the top down. If Asahi Watanabe is one of the two heads of Azure, then we have important choices to make.”
Choices.
Ones that would require him to think logically and without emotion. To forget that it was Makayla’s life hanging in the balance, and do what needed to be done to complete the job he’d taken on.
Even if that meant hanging her out to dry and sacrificing her for the greater good.