Chapter Seven
“You’ve looked over the files I put together for you?” Lawson inquired as he strode into the office where Xavier, Cade and Aaron were waiting for him.
All three of them nodded.
“It’s a lot to take in,” Cade admitted, as Lawson took his usual seat at the other side of the desk.
“I know,” he agreed. “But I want you to be as prepared as possible. Granger’s got a serious reputation and the last thing we want is to be walking into this situation without everything we need to know.”
“How did you even come across this case, anyway?” Xavier asked, as he leafed through the papers of the file Lawson had delivered to them that morning.
He’d called a meeting with the guys, not giving many details at the time, and he was glad to have them here and ready to go.
He always felt better when he had a team in place, ready to take on whatever was out there waiting for them. Especially a team like this one.
“It’s a long story, but the shorter version is Lainey,” he replied, clasping his hands in front of him.
“Lainey. As in Lainey Daye Lainey? This is why she contacted you?” Xavier inquired with a furrowed brow. Aaron and Cade looked at the men, waiting for more details.
Aaron spoke up. “For those of us not in the know, who’s Lainey?”
“She’s someone I partnered with over a decade ago in the CIA—we were good friends.
She left the active side of the agency and went on to become an analyst when she started a family.
This came across her desk while she was doing research on a case.
” Lawson rubbed a hand down his face. “It’s blown up into a big deal for her, put a target on her back, so she came here looking for my help. ”
Cade’s curt voice cut in. “So she stirred up a hornet’s nest and brought it to you for us to help clean it up?”
“It wasn’t really her fault—”
“Lawson, seriously,” Xavier interrupted. “What you’re not saying is she was told to stand down for whatever reason and she kept digging, got herself in trouble.” He shook his head. “I didn’t work with her, but I remember how she did things.”
Lawson sighed. “She didn’t do it deliberately, Xavier. If something like this crossed your desk, would you ignore it? It’s missing women, trafficking young women, maybe even girls…in our backyard.”
“I’ve been thinking about this since Kieran showed us— and sent Lawson—that article last night.
It made everyone at the table uneasy with possible danger so close.
I think we should help,” Aaron offered. “I mean, our women drive these roads all the time. What if it ended up being one of them? You’d be kicking your own asses or worse if something happened. ”
Lawson nodded his head toward Aaron in thanks.
He appreciated him voicing his thoughts on the matter, because that’s exactly where his own had gone.
Aaron was a former police officer and engaged to Bailey, who currently worked as a cop down in Blue Ridge.
She and the other women there at the lodge traveled to town on these roads all the time.
If something ever happened to any of them when the guys could help prevent it…
“What I need to know is whether or not you think you’re going to be able to handle it.” Lawson directed his comment to the other two men.
Xavier and Cade exchanged a glance. For the first time in a long time, Lawson saw some doubt on Xavier’s face.
“Problem?” he asked.
“From this file, this is a large crime ring and this guy sounds pretty dangerous,” Xavier remarked. “You sure it’s something we can handle?”
Lawson frowned. If there was one person he always expected to jump into a new mission feetfirst, it was Xavier.
“Yeah, I know we can,” Lawson replied. “Unless you’ve got your doubts.”
“It’s not doubts, exactly.” Xavier sighed.
“It’s just…this guy sounds like seriously bad news and we have no idea how many men he’s got working for him.
I don’t want to bring that kind of trouble here to the lodge.
Again. We built this place as a safe haven for people who needed it.
To help them recover and find their way after the hell they’d seen and been through.
And this place has seen more danger than it ever should have over the last year.
We’re still recovering from the last. And…
Hannah. Now there’s something here I know I need to protect. ”
Lawson grimaced. He should have expected this.
Xavier and Hannah had fallen for each other hard and fast these last several months, and Xavier wasn’t the guy he had been when they had first started Warrior Peak and the tactical unit.
He was more settled now, more focused on what was good for him, instead of what would give him a thrill in the moment.
“I don’t crave the excitement or need the adrenaline rush the way I used to,” he continued, gesturing down to the file in front of him.
“Justice? For sure. But danger? I don’t know if I can handle that again.
Or handle putting Hannah in the middle of that.
I’m still dealing with what happened last time. ”
“Agreed,” Cade echoed. “This really hit home for River. She’s been more unsettled since Kieran mentioned the missing women at dinner. She could have been one of those women. It took her a long time to feel safe again after all she went through and it’s brought a lot of that back up for her.”
Lawson could see why Cade would be particularly protective of her.
A crazed cult leader had chased River hundreds of miles to kidnap her, planning on taking her home to marry him.
Cade had actually picked her up hitchhiking on the side of the road on his way to the lodge a few years ago.
So, yeah, he understood. Everyone there at the lodge had demons of some sort they dealt with and this would stir a lot of them up.
He got it on a more personal level, too.
Because there was someone here he cared about, more than he could put into words.
Hell, when she had asked him to elaborate earlier, he hadn’t been able to.
He could still remember, all too clearly, the way she had looked at him, the pain in her eyes when he hadn’t been able to come out with what he needed to say.
He should have told her a little of what was going on.
She’d asked if there was danger, and instead of ignoring her question, he should have offered something.
Anything, so she’d understand that he was just concerned about her safety, that he wasn’t trying to kick her out or get rid of her for good.
It was for protection…because he cared and he didn’t want her in the line of fire.
Knowing what a man like Victor was capable of, if he got his hands on Sarah…
“I don’t get why the cops can’t handle this, anyway,” Cade remarked, interrupting his thoughts.
Lawson shook his head. “That’s the problem,” he explained.
“When Lainey brought this to me, she said she took her findings to the higher-ups and they shut her down. Told her to drop it immediately. She thinks a few might be looking the other way deliberately or involved in some way. Shortly after that, she was targeted. Had to move her family to Florida and she came here for help. She’s determined to finish it and she can’t go home until she knows her family is safe and the threat is gone. ”
“And she came to you because you worked together?” Cade asked.
“Because she knows she needs this dealt with by people outside law enforcement,” he replied, narrowing his eyes. “And by people who aren’t going to get tangled in red tape.”
“And you think we can trust her?” Xavier wondered aloud.
“I know we can,” Lawson said. “She needs our help. If she could have dealt with this on her own, she would have. But she can’t. And if this guy gets to her…” His gut clenched at the thought. He didn’t even want to let his mind go there.
Xavier rolled his shoulders back, nodding. “Then I guess we have to do something about it,” he said, his voice certain.
“And you agree with her assessment that this Granger guy and his sons are responsible for the women who’ve been going missing on the highway?” Cade asked.
“It makes sense from the information she collected on the guy. I would be shocked if that wasn’t mostly him,” Lawson replied.
“All the more reason to get this under control. I don’t want him operating close to us, when we’ve got so many vulnerable people coming here.
If he picked up someone who was looking to get to the lodge, I don’t think I would be able to forgive myself.
” He shook his head, trying to eliminate the thought from his mind.
“So how exactly do we move forward with this, then?” Cade asked, flipping through the file on Granger once more.
“We need to get our hands on one of the guys working for him,” Xavier suggested.
“The file said he had a bunch of guys stationed out along the road. They likely aren’t heavily armed or well-defended.
It wouldn’t be too difficult to shake one of them loose, get them talking to us. I doubt they’re all that loyal to him.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Lawson warned. “This guy’s got his hands in everything. There’s probably no limit to what he’d do to keep his thugs loyal to him. Threaten families, hook them on drugs.”
Or maybe that was just what Lawson had to believe. Because if he was honest with himself, and admitted that there were people out there willing to do stuff like that without any good reason, it would have messed with his mind.
“Either way, we can’t afford to wait around. Aside from your friend being in danger, think of all the innocent women they’ve already grabbed or plan to. Our women here,” Aaron reminded them.
“We have to find his base of operations in the area, and we need at least one of Granger’s guys to give us a location. And we need to do it fast before another woman goes missing,” Cade confirmed.
The thought of it set Lawson’s teeth on edge. He knew they were right. He still couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that this had been going on in their backyard and he hadn’t known. It could have continued happening right under their noses and he would have had no clue.
Until it came to Warrior Peak. Until it hurt someone he cared about.
Until it came for Sarah.
He shifted in his seat, turning his attention back to what mattered here. They needed a tight plan, and the guys were right—they needed to act fast.
“Alright, let’s do this then. We also need to call Sheriff Willis and go over all this with him when we have an idea of how we’re going about it,” Lawson declared.
“We know for a fact he’s on our side, and he’ll be aware of the disappearances since it’s outside Blue Ridge.
We’ll need his help officially, if we manage to catch anyone. ”
They went through the file again, running over every detail to make sure they were all on the same page. It was a lot to take in, Lawson knew that, and he didn’t want to risk anything by not making certain that the guys were clear on the task at hand.
They tried to figure out where Victor’s base of operations might be, derived from the information that they already had, but there wasn’t much to go on.
There were a lot of isolated areas up in the mountains where they could be hiding.
There had clearly been a concerted effort to make sure nobody could gather too much intel on this guy.
Who did he have in his pocket? And how much harder was that going to make their job?
Much as Lawson was trying to stay focused, he found his mind drifting back to Sarah. He couldn’t stop thinking about the way she had looked at him before, the pain in her eyes when she had called him out and asked him if he really wanted her to stay.
If he’d had any sense, he would have told her yes, of course, he did, that he needed her here. That he would do anything to keep her around. But he couldn’t, not right now, not with everything that was going on.
And now, she was going. He had passed her cabin earlier, and had seen an open suitcase sitting on the bed, half-filled with her clothes.
It had made his chest pang with regret, and he wished he could take it all back, wished he could just tell her how sorry he was and that he didn’t mean for it to happen like that, didn’t mean for her to actually leave.
Since everything that had gone down with Jed, he had been extra protective of her, and aware of just how vulnerable she was. Aware of just how much it would have hurt if something had happened to her.
When he had seen her right after the attack, the rage he’d felt had caught him off guard.
He could normally control himself, even in the most impossible of situations, but with her, it was different.
With her, his emotions took control, and he would have done anything to get revenge on the person who had done that to her.
Thinking back to their earlier conversation, he should have handled it better.
Told her a little about the situation and asked if she’d be willing to take a short break.
Hang out in town and concentrate on herself for a bit.
Not make it seem like he didn’t want her around. Like he was kicking her out.
He knew it wouldn’t have been forever, but she hadn’t. Not the way he voiced his concerns. When they were done with their meeting, he could seek her out and try to explain. Because if something else happened to Sarah, he would never forgive himself.
But right now, he needed to stay on task. Finish going over the information with the guys and figure out a plan to take down Granger and his crew. Then he’d see where things stood with Sarah. The stakes were too high to get distracted right now.