“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 unfocussedat work, not when lives depended on him and the others doing their jobs and keeping people safe.
Jag grabbeda 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 weeklymeetings 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 Koznovic, 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 Koznovic 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 ofthe 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.
Chapter Five
The sun streamedthrough the front window, and Steff wiggled her toes in the patch. She did this every afternoon. After living in a dark room for so long, she didn’t take the sunlight, or any light, for granted. She didn’t care how expensive her power bills were, she kept the lights on in her apartment 24/7. It made her feel safe and also helped with keeping her panic attacks at bay. She still had some on, even in her sunlit apartment, but she knew from experience that the darkness was a major trigger for her.
Dalton hadn’t said anything when he’d followed her home after Angelica’s party. At the time, she’d still been feeling vulnerable about what had happened in Teresa’s backyard, so she hadn’t cared that he saw how she lived.
