Chapter Twenty-Five

Natasha

I didn't think I'd be able to sleep after Doc left, but Graham arrived armed with chamomile tea and, twenty minutes later, I could barely keep my eyes open. His knock startles me awake, and I check the clock. Shit. It's almost 8:00 a.m.

"Natasha? We need to get to the warehouse in the next half an hour. Are you decent?"

I'm on my feet in under a minute and yank the door open. "What's wrong? Is Doc okay?"

"He's fine," the young man says. His smile is so easy, like he's never come up against a problem he couldn't solve. But there's also a lifetime of pain and worry in his eyes. "He patched Wyatt up. But West got some intel out of the guys who broke into Doc's house, and we're calling in some of the big guns for help."

"The big guns? There's someone out there bigger than Ryker?"

Graham's laugh lights up his entire face. Any exhaustion he carried from the long night fades away—or maybe that's the coffee he obviously made. My mouth waters at the scent.

"Impossible. The man's almost seven feet tall. His daughter's in the one hundred and twenty-fifth percentile for length. That kid is going to tower over Wren by the time she's a teenager. The big gun I'm talking about is the former head of the Joint Special Operations Command. He retired a few years ago. He's part of the family in a weird way. Grew up best friends with Trevor, but no one knew it until we had to rescue Ripper from Afghanistan." Graham shrugs. "It's a whole thing. Once this whole mess is over, you and Doc should come to one of West's BBQs. That's where the newbies get to hear all our stories." Graham turns and heads back down the hall. "Do you take anything in your coffee? I'll fix you a cup while you change. We're out of here in ten minutes."

"Black, please. I'll hurry." I grab a pair of tailored pants and a flowing blue tank top. At the last second, I dart back to the shopping bags and fish out a black lace bra, and high-cut panties. I don't know why, but I want to feel pretty today.

Because this might be the last day I have with Doc before I run?

I want to memorize everything about him. The way he touches me. The sounds he makes as I wrap my fingers around his dick. His taste. But also, his smile. His laugh. The crinkling around his eyes. The feel of his hand on mine.

The hot water stings when it runs over the stitches at my hip. But the wound is healing. No trace of the infection that could have killed me.

Carefully, I smooth body wash over my skin. Why didn't I ask Doc to bring his soap from home? When he smells it on me, he gets this possessive look in his eyes. It shouldn't be so arousing. He's not some over-the-top romance novel hero and I'm not a damsel in distress. But I can't help the way I react to him.

When I emerge from the bedroom, Graham has two travel mugs sitting on the counter next to the floppy hat and oversized sunglasses I wore on the way here.

"We control all the cameras in the building." He shows me his phone screen with a long list of devices. "The internet connection is encrypted to hell and back, but I'll loop them all until we're in the SUV for good measure." He dons a light jacket to hide the gun strapped to his hip.

"How long have you worked…uh…here?" I ask when we're in the elevator.

"Almost four years." A grin curves his lips. "Best job in the world."

"Wyatt almost died tonight. How can you say that?" I might need to change my mind about Graham. I'd thought him smart and capable, if a bit young. Now, I wonder if he's just naive.

He sobers, and as the elevator reaches the garage, takes my arm and leads me to the black SUV in silence. He doesn't speak again until we're on the road. "When someone calls us, they're out of options. Did you know the average ransom demand these days is over four hundred thousand? That's average. One of the cases we took on last month had a three-million-dollar price on his head. He was an executive for a tech company out of Malaysia. The company itself was worth a fortune, but they refused to pay. His family didn't have that kind of cash. We got him back for two-hundred-and-fifty thousand. Safe. Nothing more than a broken arm, a handful of bruises, and some really awful memories. But when we breached the old factory where he was being held, we found six other victims. Including a husband and wife who'd been taken while doing volunteer work in the Philippines. Their entire net worth was only a little over a hundred-and-fifty thousand. The terrorists were asking for over a million. That couple had been there for a month. No one was ever going to come looking for them." He meets my gaze as he stops at a traffic light. "Sam and Debra are back in Spain with their three children now. A boy and two girls, all under the age of twelve."

"Shit."

The SUV accelerates smoothly onto the freeway. "Kidnapping is a global business, Natasha. I get to save people for a living. All over the world. Yes, it's dangerous. Yes, every single time we go out on a job, there's a chance one of us—or all of us—could die. Q worries—a lot. But he's alive because of what we do. And how good we are at doing it."

"What do you do when you're not saving people? You don't go on jobs every day, right?"

He chuckles. "No. We only take on two to four jobs a month at most. We train three nights a week. I work as a bartender on the weekends. West owns a Krav Maga studio. Raelynn works there part time. Inara's a translator. Wyatt's retired—for now. Hope does some book keeping work, and they go up to his cabin in the mountains every few weeks. Rip is on staff at one of the local animal shelters. Wren works for Second Sight—that's Dax's firm in Boston—on more mainstream jobs when she's not helping us."

I hunch a little lower in the seat. These men and women are saving lives. And for the past eight years, I've done…nothing. Before I found my way to Blakely, I worked a bunch of odd jobs—anything I could get that would pay me under the table. Washing dishes, cleaning motel rooms at a place I know rented by the hour, even being a line cook at a truck stop diner.

What would my life have been like if I'd been able to choose? If I'd been able to use my college degree in political science? Or get a master's degree in…anything?

"Natasha? We're here." Graham touches my arm lightly, concern in his eyes. "Are you okay?"

I sweep my gaze over a large parking lot with half a dozen vehicles. Three identical SUVs, a white coupe, and a vintage blue pickup truck.

"Sorry." I grab my new purse—an impulse buy from yesterday's shopping trip—with my passports and a thousand dollars tucked away in various pockets. "It's been a long few days."

He doesn't look convinced. But I'm out of the SUV before he can say another word.

The warehouse isn't much to look at from the outside. Gray. Industrial. Like every other warehouse in every other major city. Some of the windows close to the roof are cracked. Others have clearly been replaced at one time or another. The walls haven't been cleaned in years. But as soon as we step through the door, we're in another world.

Everything is so clean, it's practically sparkling. A climbing wall with multi-colored handholds rises all the way to the ceiling. I stop short, staring at the boxing ring and full set of free weights. I've seen gyms that aren't this nice. On the opposite side of the space, Ryker and West stand next to a coffee pot, watching me. A few feet away, Raelynn and Inara face off at a foosball table, and in the far corner, there's a living space, complete with couches and a thick carpet. Ripper sits on one, and another man—almost as big as Ryker—sprawls on another.

Doc strides across the warehouse, his sole focus on me. The power of his stare almost knocks me off my feet. We've been apart less than four hours, but it feels like a lifetime. He wraps me in his embrace, and I press my nose to his neck.

"Graham said…there was news?" I ask.

"Names." Doc smooths his hand over my hair. It's such a tender gesture, my eyes burn for a moment until I blink the sensation away. "West interrogated one of the men who broke into my place. Bastian and his crew—the ones you testified against—weren't working alone."

My stomach flips, threatening the coffee I managed on the drive here. "How many more?"

Doc's expression shutters. "We don't know yet, baby. But Ryker's—West's team won't give up until they figure it out."

"Pritchard's calling," West shouts across the massive space.

"Who's Pritchard?" I ask. "Is he the guy from JSOC?"

Doc nods, tucks me against his side, and leads me over to the couches. He doesn't let go as we take our seats. West taps his phone, and the center monitor lights up.

"Austin," he says. "About damn time, old man."

"For fuck's sake." Austin's East Coast accent is more pronounced than Doc's. "Colonoscopies aren't just for the elderly, frogman."

"Yeah, well, which one of us still has all his hair? That widow's peak of yours is looking a little sharp."

"Uh…West?" Austin's brows arch, confusion in his tone. "Speaking of AARP… Did you do some recruiting without telling me? From the local senior center?"

"Fucking hell. I'm only fifty-six," Doc mutters. "Seventeen years as a PJ gave me all this gray."

West chuckles. "This is our doc. Doc Reynolds, meet Austin Pritchard."

"Got a first name, Doc?"

"Yeah. Doc." His shoulders are so stiff, they might as well be granite. "I changed it more than thirty years ago. This is?—"

"Natasha Winters," Austin says with a hint of a smile. "Your disappearance made waves in my world. Well, when it was still my world."

"Austin was the head of JSOC until eighteen months ago," West explains. "Now he runs a group a lot like ours. But they tend to go after some of the dregs of humanity."

"As opposed to the unicorns and rainbows and Nobel Peace Prize winners we—you—take down?" Ryker snorts into his coffee.

"It's still ‘we.' You and Wren are just…backup now," Ripper says and nods at the screens. "Can we get to it? Cara's shift at the restaurant will be over in a couple of hours, and I want to be home when she gets there."

I look at the five photos on the monitor next to Austin's face. "Oh, my God. That's…Ambassador Norton. He's the one who insisted I go through Ranger school."

"Louis Francis Norton," Austin says. "Formerly Senator Louis Norton of the great state of Louisiana. All around garbage pile of a human being. He's been accused of sexual harassment six times. Rumor has it, that's why the President sent him to East Timor."

"Is he going to be a problem for us?" West asks.

Austin shakes his head. "I know people who can put pressure on him. He's a coward. The other fucks on this list, however… They've got a good thing going—they've had a good thing going for fifteen years. Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria…"

I look from Doc to West to Austin. "They've been running drugs for fifteen years?" I ask.

"Maybe more. A few of us in senior command suspected, but we never had any proof. Not when we could do something about it. But now…" Austin grins. "I have resources I never dreamed of when I was at JSOC. What say we make a case against them and wrap it up in a pretty little bow? We do that, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice will put an end to all of them."

Ryker helps Wyatt out to his SUV. Ripper is talking to Austin's tech genius, Zephyr. Something about following the money. The two Army Captains and the Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel all have offshore bank accounts, and at least one of them—Captain Bishop's—has more than ten million in it.

I lean against Doc, my head on his shoulder. Raelynn said she'd take us back to the apartment in a few minutes, but she and West are in the middle of an intense discussion about purchasing an old helicopter she found online.

"How did they find your house so quickly? Ryker said it would be at least two days. Maybe four."

He links our fingers and brushes a kiss to my knuckles. "Bastian sent someone to see Clancy."

"Oh, God. Did they hurt him?" I can't believe no one thought to tell me. Panic claws its way up my throat. I start to shake, but Doc takes me by the shoulders.

"West had someone check on him. Apparently, the guy Bastian sent chatted him up for an hour or so, trying to rent Campsite Four. He's fine, baby."

I press my hand to my chest, trying to calm my racing heart. "I lied to him—told him I needed a week off for a family emergency. I knew I'd never be able to go back, but…he's going to hate me when he figures it out. Just like Gladys."

"Who's Gladys?" West asks.

I jerk around, shocked he's suddenly right behind me. The man moves with a lethal silence I haven't encountered since my days in the army.

"She's a friend. My…only friend. She lives on the other side of the resort."

Doc clears his throat. "She's also eighty-three years old, swears more than McCa—Ryker, and decided the first day she met me that Natasha and I were supposed to be together."

"We need to get someone on her. If you're close, chances are Bastian's gonna figure that out." West looks around the warehouse and frowns. "I don't have enough goddamn people to cover Seattle and Blakely. Not with Wyatt out of commission for the next two weeks. Need to make some calls."

"Gladys is in Seattle," I say. "I convinced her to stay here with her niece for at least another few days."

West blows out a breath. "Well, that's something. Do you know the niece's address?"

"No. But I can get it. Can I see her? Gladys?" I don't want to face my friend. But I need to say goodbye before I run. To give her one last hug and tell her I love her.

"Don't see why not. Call her. If we can leave in a few minutes, Graham and I will follow you and Raelynn. The kid can keep an eye on her until I get some private security in place."

I pull out the new cell phone and dial. But four rings later, the call goes to voicemail. Bella doesn't answer either. "Maybe they're dress shopping?" I check my watch. "Are department stores even open at 10:00 a.m.?"

"You know her niece's last name?" West is on full alert now, and I shift closer to Doc, needing his steady strength to ground me.

"Cavalli. Annabella Glory Cavalli."

"Rip? Annabella Glory Cavalli. Need an address!" he calls before turning his attention back to me. "Does Clancy know about Gladys? Would he have any reason to talk about her? And her niece?"

The panic returns with a vengeance. I grip Doc's arm, my fingers digging into the corded muscle. "He knows who she is. They're close."

"Got it," Ripper says. "Sending to your phones now. Ry's going to be closest. He could be there in fifteen, tops. Think he'd give the woman a heart attack if he knocked on her door?"

"Bella isn't easily intimidated. She's a lawyer." Doc gives my hand a squeeze. "Take a breath, baby. I'm sure she's fine. You'll see it for yourself soon enough."

I wish I could believe him.

"Send him," West says. "We're out of here in five minutes. Graham? Gear up for surveillance. I'm not taking any chances."

As Raelynn pulls up to the small apartment building off Pike Street, her car's display flashes with Ryker's name.

"How close are you?" he asks before she can even say hello.

"I'm fixin' to park. Why?" She glances over at me, and something's very, very wrong.

Ryker's gravelly voice is rougher than it was only half an hour ago. "I need Doc up here right now. We've got a problem."