Chapter 4
Chapter Four
The blare of his alarm jolted Jag awake. He groaned and fell back against his pillow. His sleep had been erratic, like it had been the past three nights, ever since little Angelica’s birthday party.
He kept having dreams of finding Steff in the corner of the room that had been set up in a large shipping container. Remembering how broken she’d been and still was in some respects.
Was it normal for her to have two panic attacks like she had at the party?
He hadn’t wanted to ask her for fear of triggering another one.
Even though he’d said he would talk to her the whole way to her place, after an initial couple of questions, they’d settled into a comfortable silence, broken up by the sound of their turn signals when they used them.
After he’d parked out the front of her apartment building, he’d waited for her to appear at the locked front door. They’d agreed that he would meet her there and she would buzz him in so that he could escort her upstairs.
What he’d really wanted to do was meet her in the parking garage, because someone could’ve been waiting for her. She’d told him that the area was well lit, and her spot was right by the elevator.
Steff had allowed him to accompany her inside her private space for him to check it out.
She hadn’t thought he was being over the top, in fact, it looked as though she was relieved that he’d done it.
He also didn’t say anything about how her place was lit up like a Christmas tree with every single light on.
He could guess why she did it, and he couldn’t blame her.
There’d been an awkward moment as they’d stood by her front door after his sweep of her home. He’d wanted to ask her out, but didn’t think that it was the right time. Or if he should. Instead, he’d told her to have a good night, and he’d let himself out.
She’d sent him a text the next morning to thank him for all he’d done, but that was it. There hadn’t been any other contact.
Jag should leave it alone. His presence had to bring up bad memories for her. It was probably being around him and the team that had triggered her panic attacks.
Throwing back his covers, he pushed thoughts of Steff from his mind. He had to meet his friends for their morning PT and then head into the office. Traffic was always a bitch, but he’d gotten used to getting caught up in morning traffic snarls.
He should try and find a place nearer to the office, but he was close to the beach, and seeing as he loved being near the water, he would deal with his daily commute.
Twenty minutes later, he was stretching in the sand when the rest of the guys turned up.
They gave each other a chin lift and set off down the beach for their run.
They’d do three miles, then they’d hit the ocean and battle the waves for another three miles.
After that, they’d hit the sand and do some pushups, sit-ups, burpees, and other gut-breaking exercises.
It wasn’t anything they weren’t used to, they’d done this and more when they’d been SEALs.
“You heard from Steff?” Fox asked as he ran beside him. His friend had called him the day after the party to check in and see if he was okay. Jag had given him a brief rundown of what had happened.
“No, not sure I will.” He kept his gaze on the horizon; he found that was the only way he could deal with running. It was his least favorite part of their PT workout. Others hated the beach exercises, but those were mind numbing for him.
“Why do you say that?”
Jag shrugged. “Would you want to be around a constant reminder of the worst part of your life? That’s what we represent. We’d seen her at her lowest point. I don’t think she blames Teresa for what happened, but they used to work together, and it was while she was on a job that she was taken.”
He wasn’t telling Fox anything his friend didn’t already know.
“Maybe.”
“What are you two gabbing about?” Deal ran backwards toward them. While he and Fox had been talking, the others had raced ahead of them.
“How ugly your face is,” Jag quipped.
“You wish you looked like me.” Deal flexed, and Jag kicked some sand in his direction.
“Are we having a party?” Hound had slowed down, so they were all running together.
“Nah, Jag and Fox were having a ‘girl’ talk.” Like Jag had done at Teresa’s place when talking about the cake, Deal used his fingers as quotation marks.
“Fuck off,” Fox said.
By now they’d reached their marker where they always stopped, and Jag bent over, resting his hands against his knees as he sucked in some air.
“Were you talking about Steff?” Hound touched his toes a couple of times.
Jag stiffened at his friend’s question. Was Hound interested in Steff?
It wasn’t as though he had any claim over the woman, but the thought of Hound and Steff as an item had his stomach churning, and he was worried the bowl of muesli he’d eaten before hitting the beach was going to make a repeat performance.
“Why do you want to know?” Jag managed to get the words out in a casual way, at least he hoped he had.
“You just answered my question.” Hound winked, and Jag saw the trap he’d fallen into. He hadn’t been as casual as he’d been hoping.
“You did spend most of the evening with her,” Deal said. “You followed her home, right?”
“I did. What of it?” Jag had an inkling of what his friend was getting at, but he’d learned to never make assumptions of what people were thinking.
“You know where she lives. I’m assuming you’ve got her number, why don’t you reach out to her? I mean, the worst she could do is turn you down, which, if she was smart, she should do.” Deal weaved back to avoid Jag’s swipe at him.
“Enough.” Fox used his team leader voice, which once would’ve had them all stop fooling around during PT, but because they were no longer in the Navy, they continued with their ribbing.
“I don’t know, Deal. If I was into guys, I’d date Jag, Fox, and then you,” Hound teased.
Deal clutched his chest. “You wound me, man. I thought you were my friend. I’d date you before Jag or Fox.”
“I wouldn’t date any of you,” Jag said.
They all laughed, and Jag was, once again, grateful that he was still able to work with three of his good friends.
There were some of his fellow SEALs, who once they chaptered out, got a little lost and didn’t keep in touch with the guys who’d had their backs.
The brotherhood was strong in some, but in others, it hurt too much because of the memories it brought back of the hard times.
The times when one of them hadn’t come home.
He and the others had lost a fellow SEAL early in their careers.
It had been the hardest thing they’d ever done, punching their trident pins into his coffin.
But it had also steeled their resolve to always have each other’s backs and always come home together.
It was their way of honoring their friend, whose last words were exactly that.
“Seriously though, when you were around Steff, she seemed calmer than she had been when she first arrived.” Deal looked him in the eye. “I think you calm her.”
Jag wanted to believe he did. Wanted to believe that he helped Steff, but he was still a little reluctant to pursue something with her. Not because he didn’t want to, but because of how they first met. “Yeah, maybe.”
“Call her,” Hound encouraged. “As Deal said, the worst outcome would be her saying no. The best outcome would be her saying yes. You won’t know unless you try.”
His friends were right. He had nothing to lose by picking up the phone. “I’ll call her later today. Or tonight when I get home.”
It looked as though Deal was about to tease him a bit more, but he snapped his mouth shut. No doubt one of the others had given him a look to tell him to be quiet.
“Now that we’ve finished sorting Jag’s dating life out, how about we finish our session?” Fox queried.
They all nodded and headed toward the ocean; Jag hoped the swim would clear his head. He didn’t need to be unfocussed at work, not when lives depended on him and the others doing their jobs and keeping people safe.
Jag grabbed a mug from the sideboard and poured himself a coffee before taking a seat at the conference room table.
It was Tuesday morning, and time for their weekly meeting.
He was feeling more switched on than he had been earlier.
The talk with his friends, while dealing with the good-natured teasing, had cleared his mind on the situation with Steff.
He worried that Steff might have had more panic attacks after what she’d experienced on Saturday night.
She lived by herself, and from what he could recall from the dossier they had on her when they’d been sent in to rescue her and the others, her parents had died when she was only twenty.
She didn’t have any other family, so she was alone.
Who did she call when she was feeling like she was being sucked under?
Did she call Cynthia? Were they still even close?
He didn’t know, but he wanted to find out everything he could about her, and he wanted her to tell him it all.
The only way that was going to happen was if he made the call.
Of course, there was no guarantee that Steff would want to see him, and if that happened, well, he didn’t want to consider that.
“Morning everyone.” Ox strode in with Julian, their FBI contact following behind him.
Jag sat up a little straighter. While they all considered Julian part of the team, he didn’t normally come to their weekly meetings unless there was a situation he needed Alliez to help him out on.
Isaac was the last one to enter, and when he sat, Ox got started.
“We’ve got Julian here with us today because he’s got some information for us with regards to Viktor Koznovi?, as well as further information on the connection between what happened to Marie, and what happened to Narelle Hennessey in Bali.”
In the world of human trafficking, the close connections between the scum who thought it was fine to rip people off the streets away from their families and friends, shouldn’t surprise him, but it did.
They had a contract with a security company in Perth, Australia, and had found out recently that one of the guy’s partner was almost kidnapped while holidaying in Bali.
The similarities between what had happened between Narelle and Marie wouldn’t have been picked up on by other people, but the men in the room knew all about how sick and twisted these assholes could be.
“Have you been able to link the two to Viktor or one of his associates?” Fox asked the question that had been rolling around in Jag’s mind.
“The thread is thin, but I think the more we dig and investigate, the more it will thicken up,” Julian said, and nodded to Cass who worked her magic, as the TV screen behind Ox lit up and a flow chart appeared.
Viktor Koznovi? was at the top, and had so many lines and boxes below his name, it was ridiculous.
“And you say the connection is thin? That looks pretty thick to me.” Jag studied the screen to see if he could recognize any of the names.
“You’d think so, but these are all the players that we know of.
” Julian shook his head as if he was shocked at the number of sick people in the world.
Jag wasn’t surprised. Some of the things they’d seen while they’d been staking out villages in far-off places not many people knew about, were hard to comprehend.
The things they did, and how they treated people was abhorrent.
They had been there for one task, and all of them left feeling accomplished that they’d completed their mission, but also hollow because there was more they wanted to do and couldn’t.
“How long is it going to take to connect all the dots?” Deal tapped his index finger on the tabletop. It was his trigger finger, and Jag knew he itched to eliminate every fucker listed on the screen.
“We’ve got Steve and the others from Power Security working on the Asia connection considering their proximity.
They’ve been liaising with a group of billionaires they’ve worked with in the past. The information is coming through, but slowly, because they don’t want to raise any eyebrows with their questions,” Ox said.
“Believe me, I want this fucker gone.” Isaac rubbed his arm that had almost been broken by Viktor when he’d been taken a few months ago.
“But he’s the head of a Bratva. Eliminating him isn’t easy, and is likely to start a war, not only within the group, but if it comes out we’re involved, then no one is safe. ”
If anyone should know about the inner workings of the mafia, Bratva, and cartels, it was Isaac. He’d lived and breathed the cartel life for eight years as an undercover DEA agent. He’d almost lost his life when the shit went down, and Cass’s connection to that very cartel was broken.
Viktor had taken Isaac as payback for a lost shipment of people he’d been trafficking, the very group that Steff and Cynthia had been a part of.
No one was really safe, but they all believed that Isaac wasn’t going to be targeted again.
“So, we just sit on our hands and let them get away with taking more innocent people?” Anger swirled in Jag, and he knew it was partly due to seeing what Steff was still going through two years after the fact.
“No,” Julian said emphatically. “We’re going to systematically dismantle it piece by piece. It’s going to take a while, and we have to be careful, but eventually we’ll get Viktor, and we will make sure that there will be no repercussions.”
Easier said than done, but Jag kept the words to himself.
If he could eventually go to Steff and tell her she was safe and wasn’t going to be a victim again, then he would do whatever he had to, to ensure that outcome.