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Chapter 1
Apparently, camo couldn’t hide you from everything. Justice yanked free of another thorn in the brush-choked woods. She squatted at the tree line and focused her night vision goggles on the rear of the bleak home turned bleaker business. The battered, white-shingled two-story sat on the poorest edge of a rural community in Pennsylvania.
Rural as hell. They didn’t even have their own police force and had to rely on staties.
She snapped pictures of the gravel-and-stone backyard and the rusty propane tank propped on wooden legs like a miniature submarine dry-docked after fifty years at sea.
The whole “massage parlor” was dingy, dirty, and depressing.
Given the choice, most people steered well clear. Not Justice. She wanted inside. Planned and plotted on it. Call it a childhood dream, making good on her vow. Call it redemption, making it up to Hope. Call it revenge, making them pay for Hope’s death.
It would help if Momma’s oft-heard mantra—patience…reconnaissance always comes first—didn’t keep popping up like a jack-in-the-box to wave a scolding, white-gloved finger at her.
Momma. What a fun sucker.
A single light, green through her goggles, shone over the steel back door. She zoomed in on it as her breath fanned against the midnight air. Her camera click, click, clicked. No exterior handle. They’d have to pop it. And no security cameras. Figures. See no evil. Hear no evil. Or at least, record no evil.
She snapped photos of barred and blackened windows and a rusty fire escape that led up to a metal-gated door secured with thick, elephant-proof chains.
These guys weren’t taking any chances. Which meant more surveillance and late nights for her. Unlike her other siblings, she always got saddled with recon for the family’s underground railroad.
Not for long though. After two years of planning, the mission as dear to her as her own heartbeat—breaking up a human trafficking ring—was only a few weeks away. Yeehaw! She was going to bust heads.
Her earpiece clicked, and her brother’s voice came through. “Justice, youse…uh, you in position yet?”
Tony. He worked so hard to weed out his South Philly. She liked his accent. But being adopted into her big, crazy family had taught her people could have some weird issues.
“Aw, Tone, can’t spot me? Is it my expert camouflage or that stealth gene you’re missing?”
Tony snorted. The sound tightroped between amused and annoyed. “Yeah, you know as much about being a Choctaw as I do about being a Chihuahua.”
“It’s in my blood. Only thing in your blood, paisano, is cement shoes and boosting cars.”
Laughter feathered through her headphones, making her want to scratch through her face mask to dig the tickle from her ears. “Just get the pic—”
The massage parlor’s back door crashed open. A dark-haired girl, maybe fifteen, sprinted out, wearing a too-loose bustier and a thong as inconsequential as her chest.
A man broke out after her, hauling back with a belt thick enough to double as a swing.
“Tony.”
“No. Think larger mission here. Not one girl. All of ’em.”
The heavy slap of leather on flesh ricocheted like a gunshot.
Soundless, the girl tucked her shoulder and veered to the side, toward the woods, toward Justice.
Justice’s chest tightened and heated until it became as hard and f
ixated as the steel on her Sig. Adrenaline flooded into her body. The scene slowed and intensified.
The girl’s eyes were wide and frantic. The desperate eyes of a hunted child.
She couldn’t sit here—ass on haunches—and do nothing. As ineffective as government raids that took months to organize and ended with not one conviction of a principle. Not one.
This was what the League of Warrior Women was about: Stopping the shit that other people stood by and let happen. It’s what her sister would have done. It’s what Hope had done for her.
Every nerve in Justice’s body begged to act. But she kept absolutely still. Movement attracted attention. Stillness went unnoticed.
The man grabbed the girl’s hair and yanked her back. The girl struggled and flailed, twisted and fought. The man drove a belt-wrapped fist into her neck. She sagged, gasped.
Tony’s voice came through the headset, smooth and controlled. “Stay put, Justice.”
Too late. She’d already stood, raised her gun, and was in fact mid-motion of pressing the trigger when he’d spoken.
There was a sharp snap, like a broken twig, as the bullet fired from her suppressed Sig. The man’s head flung back. He dropped to his ass, surrendered to the gravel.
The girl skittered away. Her eyes swung left and right before she darted for cover behind the derelict propane tank.
“Not for nothin’, J, you don’t listen to shit.”
Justice flipped up her NVGs, pulled down her face mask, and ran across the gravel. She checked inside the doorway for movement. All quiet.
She spotted the girl crouching by the propane tank, squeezed between the building and the rusty cylinder. The kid looked like a terrified skeleton—all haunted eyes and jutting bones.
Tony ran up, checked the dead guy for weapons. “Glock. Figures,” he said and slipped the weapon into the back of his belt.
Justice reached forward. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m on your side.”
The girl’s copper-brown eyes tracked Justice’s gloved hand like it came equipped with teeth and venom. For a moment, she was sure the girl wouldn’t take her hand. But she did.
Brave kid. Justice pulled her out. She’d shouldered heavier backpacks. Shrugging off her jacket, she helped the girl put it on. Keeping eye contact, she pointed at the dead man, then at the building. “How many more men inside?”
The girl held up her arm and poked two rabbit fingers from the long sleeve. Two more men inside. Justice shrugged at Tony. “No choice.”
His dark eyebrows knitted tightly together, but he started for the house. He bumped Justice’s shoulder as he passed. “Call it in.”
She elbowed him hard in the ribs. He oomphed and kept walking.
Justice put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. Even with the gloves, it felt like she’d grabbed a coat hanger.
Shielding Tony’s view, she held out the G19. Tony could be pissed later. And not just because she’d so expertly pickpocketed him. “Can you use this?”
The girl hesitated. Then with a face as starved and empty as a runway model, she took the gun, capped her fingers across the top, and racked the slide.
Justice pointed toward the woods. The girl dashed away, and Justice pressed the button on her earpiece. Gracie answered on the first ring. “You’re kidding me, right, Justice?”
Why were her siblings always giving her such shit? “Just get a van to site six, Gracie.”
She hung up and went inside. A dangling, red lightbulb lit a narrow stairway and slim corridor.
On the stairs, Tony gave her a what-took-you-so-long look? She shrugged. He motioned he’d go up. She nodded and crept the other way, down the hall.
At the end of the dim hall, gun raised, she sighted around a doorway. Ugh. That smell. BO and whiskey.
Once a living room, the space had been turned into an office. A desk, a television turned to QVC, a potbellied man in boxers passed out on a saggy couch.
She reached for a zip tie, stepped inside, and…crash and churn. Shit. The bottle of Jim Beam sailed across the hardwood.
Drunky leapt up, saw her, and lurched forward like Frankenstein’s monster. Biggest guy she’d ever seen, but slow and lethargic.
Justice skated around him, reached up, and slammed her gun into his head. One, two, three times. He dropped.
Still conscious? If anything, the hits had woken him up.
He grabbed her ankle. She fell in slow motion. Skull cracked against floor. Hand cracked against desk. Gun dropped.
Drunky reared up and slammed into her like a wrestler, pinning her neck with one beefy limb. He held her right hand. Her left arm was trapped and pressed between them.
Justice’s heart pounded electric currents through thinning veins. Pinned. It felt like the dream, the nightmare that still haunted her. Her gaze bucked around the room. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.
She fought off panic. Off the memory. She wasn’t a little kid. She wasn’t helpless.
Hand trembling, she groped past his boxers, located one sweaty ball. Squeezed.
Drunky cursed and pressed harder.
Justice’s eyes watered, black spots clouded her vision. She couldn’t black out. She’d die if she did.
No. Not like this. Not like Hope.
She kicked blindly again and again. Her foot connected with his ankle. He jerked, lost balance.
Justice thrust up her right hip, swung her foot flat, got leverage, and pushed. Drunky toppled.
Snakebite fast, she rolled and belly-crawled away. Where was her… Gun. Justice grabbed it.
Drunky came for her. She rolled, aimed. “Stop.”
Bam. The guy crashed back and down.
She looked up. Standing in the doorway, the girl lowered the Glock.
Holy Shit. The kid had killed the guy.
Wheezing through a throat still aching, Justice lurched to her feet. She sucked in hot, rank air as her legs Jell-Oed under her.
Ignoring the twist of nausea and the feeling of wrong, she picked up her night vision goggles and staggered away from the corpse. She went over to the girl. “You didn’t have to.”
Tiger-fierce red-brown eyes scanned away from her over to the body. The girl spit on the floor. “I wanted to.”
Justice knew that anger, wasn’t sure she disagreed with it, but still… “You wait here. Right here.”
She went back down the corridor and up the narrow stairs. She swung her gun around as she checked the upstairs hall. Tony had taken out the other guard. He was passed out and hog-tied in the hallway.
Tony stepped from one of the corridor doorways. “Did I hear a problem?”
“Not anymore.”
“Seriously, J? Stop killing people.”
She glared at him. Definitely not the time to explain. “Guy had a hundred fifty pounds on me.”
Literally.
Tony pointed to the man knocked out, hands bound behind his back and tied to his feet. “That guy’s no featherweight. It’s called training.”
Dick. What did he know? Sometimes the only thing that made her equal to those she went up against was a gun. She gestured at the doors in the hall. “Where are the girls?”
He reached past her and pushed a door open. He nodded toward the occupants. “Salvadoran.”
She walked into the room. The young women and girls who’d been stolen, tricked, or coerced from their lives and countries huddled together in a dark corner. The windows had been painted black. There was one dresser and a full-size bed. Probably the same setup as every room up here.
She automatically gave the instructions in Spanish. “Stay calm. No one will harm you. We are rescuing you. You will be cared for. You will not be harmed. Stay calm. Follow us.”
The group began to panic. Cry out. Someone threw a shoe at her. Ouch. Great. She stepped back to Tony. “You got
this?”
He nodded and lowered his gun. “Always a people pleaser, J.”
* * *
At the pickup location designated as Site 6, they loaded the freed slaves into the white panel van. The girl who’d saved Justice refused to get inside.
Justice put her hand on the kid’s bony shoulder. “What’s your name?”
She looked away, then down. “They called me Cookie.”
Cookie? That wasn’t a name. That was a dessert. Well, if she’d learned anything from Sesame Street it was that C was for Cookie.
“Thank you for saving my life, Cee.”
The girl’s fiery-brown eyes, prematurely set to suspicious, appraised Justice. “Am I free?”
Justice pointed at the back of the fifteen-passenger vehicle. “Get in the van. Freedom is your next stop.”
The girl shook her head. “I want to go where you go. I want to…” She hesitated as if looking for words in a language she didn’t know that well. “I want to be what you are.”
Kid had no idea what she was saying, what would be required of her, but rules were rules. If they asked and showed any kind of real promise, they got to try.
“Get in the van. A woman with red hair will be at your destination. Her name is Gracie. Tell her what you told me.”
The girl nodded, turned, climbed into the van, and dragged the door shut.
Justice hit the door twice. The van pulled away, trailing a cloud of exhaust. When the taillights faded, she turned and slipped into the front seat of the black rental, next to the elephant in the room. Tony.
She cast her brother a sideways glance. Every inch of his five-foot-eleven frame looked ready to pound her to a soft, mushy pulp.
Tony ripped off his hat and gloves. He ran agitated fingers through black, wavy hair damp with sweat, causing it to stand on end.
Justice started the car and adjusted the heat to “off.” She let out a breath, tightened gloved hands against the steering wheel. Aw, hell. “Stop pouting.”
Tony hit the dash. “You gotta get over this cowgirl, Kill Bill bullshit. Why not send up a signal flare telling the Brothers Grim we’re after them?”
The wheel spun through her fingers as she turned the corner. She flicked on the headlights and accelerated onto the highway.
Tony was so uptight. If only she’d known when she’d first seen him—a twelve-year-old runaway scrounging for scraps—what a pain in the ass he’d become. Never should’ve begged Momma to adopt him. The first boy in the family. “Get over it, Tony. An eye for an eye.”
