Chapter Forty-One
Helios
Scarred face.
Eagle tattoo.
The man who abducted me.
Raw fucking rage exploded, and I went back.
Eight goddamn years back.
Every step, every trigger pull, I recounted each motherfucking round I’d put in those assholes at that compound—six alone in the motherfucker who was outside the metal door of her cell. But not one of those traffickers had a scar, and now I realized the biggest fucking mistake I’d ever made.
I’d never asked her for an ID or a headcount.
Then I’d made the second-biggest fucking mistake of my life.
I didn’t interrogate the trafficker outside her door before I shot him.
Assuming he was one who’d worked her over, wanting the motherfucker to suffer, I’d unloaded three rounds into his gut, then three more into his chest, but I didn’t fucking interrogate him.
I didn’t ask who the hell he worked for.
When I absolutely fucking should have because I knew a scar-faced trafficker with an eagle tatt inked across his chest. Every SOF operator knew about him—the second cousin to the now-dead head of ISIS.
Aimal al-Hashimi.
Known as the Vulture.
But no one had seen him in over a decade, and he sure as hell wasn’t in that abandoned concrete bunker eight years ago when Ghost and I eliminated every fucking tango.
Which meant one goddamn thing.
Aimal al-Hashimi was alive.
And I should’ve put this together when she’d uttered “Eagle” eight years ago in that goddamn hospital room.
MOTHERFUCKING FUCK. I’d fucking missed it.
In the next second, I was Oscar Mike.
Rising out of the hot tub with a sobbing Haven in my arms, then double-timing it into the house, I fucking yelled, “ARES!” I knew he was here. I knew it the second we’d walked in from the garage. My brother had a special kind of quiet, and I goddamn needed that now.
Ares stepped out of the back office, took one look at me, and came at us, arms out.
“Code Red.” I handed her to him. “Get her dry clothes. Call Nix. We’re bugging out.”
“Copy.” Taking Haven, Ares threw me a questioning look.
Now wasn’t the time to tell him the fucking psychopath, Aimal al-Hashimi, was the one who’d kidnapped and tortured her eight years ago.
Or that he’d followed her to the fucking farmer’s market under our watch.
And I sure as fuck wasn’t entertaining the possibility that Haven was wrong.
The woman was a photographer. She saw shit in detail.
PTSD or not, she wasn’t fucking crazy. And the Vulture hadn’t been one of the targets eliminated in Ghost’s coordinated attack on ISIS six months ago. We needed to fucking move.
“The Vulture,” I clipped, using the call sign the Agency and Brass had given that sick fuck decades ago, because no way in hell was I downloading his real name in front of her.
“He’s not dead.” But that motherfucker was gonna be.
I wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. “Kitting us out. Meet in the garage in ninety seconds.”
“Roger that. Ninety seconds,” Ares confirmed, carrying a traumatized Haven toward her room.
Grabbing my cell and Glock off the counter, I aimed for the security panel and swiped to the emergency command to shut all the storm shutters. Then I hit up the panic room I’d tricked out the first week she’d moved into this house.
A minute later, I was in the garage. The back of the armored Yukon Denali was loaded up with three go bags and two full kits, and I was disabling the SUV’s GPS tracking.
Fifteen seconds after that, I was in dry clothes and boots, geared up with Glocks in my SOB and thigh holsters, extra mags in cargo pockets, and I was dialing Cypher.
The hacker answered on the first ring, but following protocol, he didn’t speak.
I recited my Paragon ID.
“Good copy, Helios. What’s going on? Ares texted Nix with a Code Red, but I don’t have details. Tracking your and Ares’s location now. Do you need backup at the house?”
“Negative on backup at current location. We’re bugging out, but I’m gonna need backup air support, and Nix on the Paragon, underway.”
Where I was taking Haven, I not only wanted a winged escort, I also needed Nix and his yacht that was tricked out as both a command center and fully loaded arsenal. Nix’s hacking skills almost matched Cypher’s, and he’d never fucking failed me as overwatch.
“Get Chaos to Opa Locka within fifteen, doing prechecks on the Embraer Phenom. Saint needs to get his helo in the air STAT. Directional heading south-southeast.” I fucking hated Saint, but Feralyn didn’t freak out around the crazy-eyed Marine-turned-spook.
In fact, he was the only other operator at Paragon Ops that she wasn’t uncomfortable with besides Ares.
I also needed to read in Ghost, but I’d call that motherfucker myself.
“Texting Chaos and Saint now,” Cypher confirmed. “Nix is right here. He can head out as soon as you give us coordinates. Code Red sitrep?”
Ares stepped into the garage with Haven.
Staring at the one person I’d never wanted to fucking let down, I answered Cypher. “The Vulture. Feralyn saw him at the local farmer’s market this morning.”
Haven held up her camera. “I-I took pictures.”
“You have confirmation?” Cypher asked.
“Hold.” I motioned for the camera I’d bought her.
Hands shaking as she turned the thing around, she brought up the digital display, scrolled, then stopped.
I looked.
Mother. FUCKER. “Confirmed,” I ground out to Cypher, staring at the son of a bitch as he held his shirt open, showing his ink as he leered at the fucking camera.
“Timestamp—” I glanced at my watch. It was past zero hundred hours.
“Oh seven thirty, yesterday.” Almost eighteen motherfucking hours ago.
Fuck. I powered down the camera, popped the memory card, and handed it to Ares.
“Ares is gonna send you the images. Track this motherfucker, Cypher. We’re exfilling Feralyn now.
Saint’s gonna be her protection detail. Nix’ll be close-range overwatch.
Once Feralyn’s secure, we’re fucking hunting. ”
“Copy,” Cypher confirmed, typing in the background. “Safe house location?”
I fucking hesitated.
Not because I didn’t know where I was taking her—I knew exactly where. But I’d never intended for the place to be a goddamn safe house. Fucking fuck. “Cell encryption secure?”
“Affirmative,” Cypher replied.
I recited the coordinates.