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No one would want her after this. Which really didn’t matter. Devon Greeley had died five years ago. Devon Magnus had died when Brandon had showed up in Daly. And Devon—Cannon and Hawk’s woman—she died when she’d been abducted.
Now, she was no one.
Twenty
Hawk paced the panel truck trailer where they were stationed to wait while Zoran Kuznetsov’s men infiltrated the compound where Devon was being held. He and Cannon had been ordered to wait and to stay out of the way.
Almost fucking impossible. Devon had been taken over a day ago. Anything could be happening to her, Hawk was finding it damn hard to wait. He wanted action.
Flashes of his old life clawed at him and tried to pull him back to the take-no-prisoners mindset he’d mostly escaped until now.
Mostly. Once in a while, his harder edges appeared, and now was one of those times as growls rumbled from his chest in response to the waiting. Dev was in there. Alone and probably terrified. He hoped fear was all she’d endured. Zoran’s Bratva or not, Hawk would end any man who hurt her and give no fucks about it.
“Calm down,” Cannon whispered, coming up beside him and placing a hand in the middle of Hawk’s back.
“Can you calm down?”
“No, but there’s not enough space to go into beast mode in here, babe.”
Only Cannon could get away with calling him by an endearment. Cannon and Dev, actually.
Jerking a nod, Hawk clenched and unclenched his fingers.
“His guys are inside now,” Cannon told him. “And Zoran’s surveillance crew took over the feed from the security cameras. Come look.”
Hawk nodded again, feeling stiff as he and Cannon went over to where Jax stood. The truck was setup as a command center. A bank of screens showed the inside of the warehouse the Baranov Pakhan had turned into a mansion-fortress in the heart of the city. The place looked like nothing from the outside, but what showed on the screens, which were tapped into cameras and hooked into listening devices, appeared as ritzy as any palatial home Hawk had ever seen on TV.
The camera feeds gave them an excellent idea of what was going on inside the building. For over an hour, they’d seen limos and SUVs with blackened windows dropping of tuxedoed men—men now roaming the ballroom inside, where several women stood in enclosures as if they were zoo animals to be gawked at.
“Looks like we’ll be rescuing more than just your woman,” a man they’d met earlier said as he studied the screens before him. Where Zoran was smooth, if dangerous, this guy, his brother, Yuri Kuznetsov, had a lethal edge to him. “We knew these assholes were trafficking, but we could never pin them down. It ends tonight.”
His finger clicked on the computer mouse as he adjusted his views. Hawk, Cannon and Jax stood shoulder-to-shoulder behind him, watching the monitors, mirror images with their feet planted and arms crossed over their chests.
Despite being on the edge of meltdown, Hawk was laser-focused on one thing: getting back Devon. However necessary.
“Fuck, don’t look!” Cannon exclaimed suddenly as Dev filled the screen, but Jax had already averted his gaze to his feet. Hawk’s blood drained from him, lava-like rage replacing it. Their Devon was essentially naked and bound in a ballroom filled with men.
“My brother’s men will retrieve her,” Yuri said while he typed something into the control panel. “I will be one of them.”
“Not enough Baranov blood in your bed every night,” one of the nearby men quipped.
Yuri reached over and basically punched him in the back of the head. “You do not speak of my wife that way.”
Hawk and Cannon exchanged looks. Even with Hawk’s past, this so was not their world. There had been gang rivalries, but nothing had been this high tech or orchestrated. But none of it enticed Hawk, not like it once might have. He and Cannon just wanted to save their woman then get the hell out of here and return to where the most dangerous things were wildcats and frightened cows. They’d go home and forget they’d ever known a thing about this.
The longer they waited, the harder it was for Hawk to stay calm, though. Especially now that they’d seen her like this. Bound and practically naked. She’d looked as if she were shaking. She had to be terrified, and she probably thought no one was coming for her.
Oh, baby girl, you are so wrong.
He’d told her once that he’d burn the world for her, for her and Cannon. He’d vowed it yesterday, again. That was no less true now, hours later. Even without the help of the Kuznetsov Bratva, he never would have stopped searching for her.
He just wanted to wrap her up in his arms and let her know everything would be okay, no one would be allowed to hurt her.
“Change of plans,” Zoran said, stepping up into the truck.
“What is it?” Hawk asked. “We can’t leave her there.”
“You are right. But after assessing the situation, I do not believe she will trust my men enough to escape with them while we clean house. Come with me, Cannon Moffitt and Hawk Quidell.” He curled his fingers, beckoning for them to follow, already turning toward the cab door he’d entered through. “I have tuxedos for you, so you will appear to be one of them. Baranov has people from all over the world visiting for his fucked-up auction. They will not know you are cowboys from Wyoming.”
