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“I got all of that,” Declan said before I could relay the message. “I’m already on the bracelet and tracking Hazel’s whereabouts. Shit.” He glanced away from his computer monitor at me. “She’s back in Chicago.”
“Get the address. I’ll call Colton Carr and see if he can get to her with a team before we can get there.” I grabbed my coat and gulped the last of my coffee.
“What about Izzie?” Declan asked. “Maybe we should send Aiden and Lincoln?”
“Lincoln’s busy with the insurance adjuster after what the bastards did to his restaurant,” Aiden said from across the hallway. His boots clunked on the floor as he hurried into the office with us. “I’ll come with you. We need at least a two-man team.”
I laughed under my breath. I doubted two of us and the U.S. marshal would be enough to take down the Chicago mafia and rescue Hazel. “Declan, you stay here and track Hazel. Aiden, call Lincoln and tell him we need him ASAP. Offer him full-time, again. We need his help. We need all the help we can get,” I muttered under my breath.
Declan glanced at me. His voice was tentative. “We could call Jayden. I know it’s not ideal, but we could use the manpower.”
“Absolutely not.” I wasn’t inviting an off-gridder to our team. Jayden may have been one of us in the military, one of our unit, and our team, but he’d chosen them over us. “They’re responsible for the hostage takeover at the resort yesterday.”
“You don’t know that Jayden was part of that; everyone involved wore masks,” Declan said.
“Why are you defending him?” I asked. “And not everyone involved wore a mask. Emma was there, and so was Jayden. I stripped his ass bare and stole his clothes.”
“Shit. You didn’t tell us that.” Aiden laughed. “I would have liked to have seen that. Any chance you took a picture?”
I rolled my eyes and grabbed my truck keys on the desk. “I didn’t have time. Too bad, right? I’m heading out to the hanger. I’ll call Carr on the way. Are you coming, Aiden?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t miss the opportunity to kick some ass. Let me call Lincoln while we’re in the car.”
“Shit. I need to call Ariella too. I told her I’d pick up lunch and bring her back with me to the office.” That wasn’t going to happen. Maybe she’d be able to get Skylar to drive her to the resort to pick up her car. If not, I’d give her a lift tomorrow or when I got home.
* * *
Lincoln, Aiden, and I teamed up in Chicago with Colton Carr and his team of U.S. Marshals along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“She’s still on the property,” Declan said. He forwarded her location to my phone.
Examining the screen on my cell phone, there was a tiny red dot that blinked as it appeared to pace back and forth. I wasn’t sure whether the position was approximate or she was in fact moving, but we had her whereabouts, as long as the bracelet was still on her.
“We’ve got a team ready to go,” Agent Bishop said. He was dressed in a suit, his team in SWAT gear surrounded the perimeter.
We stood just outside of the command center, a vehicle set up on the side of the road around the block and out of sight.
A young woman with long blonde hair wearing a Kevlar vest stormed into the command post. “I’ve got eyes and ears on the place. You should be getting a signal any moment.” She sat down in front of a monitor and adjusted the frequency, picking up the video feed and audio of Hazel.
“That’s her. That’s our target to extract,” I said, giving confirmation.
“SWAT goes in first,” Agent Bishop said. He was tall and lanky. He’d probably never spent a day in the military, but he commanded with authority.
“Fine,” Lincoln said. He stood behind me, arms folded across his chest. He hadn’t moved an inch, not even to step out of the way as agents came and went, having to squeeze past him in the narrow hallway.
“Do we have a visual on Nikolai Agron?” I asked.
“Not yet,” Agent Bishop said. “We have confirmation that Franco Ivanov is there, along with another man who we’re running through our database. There are also a number of support staff, but the key players for the mafia don’t appear to be onsite.”
“Other than Franco,” I said. He was one of the key players, and while he may not have been the head of the mafia, he was the reason we were here.
Agent Bishop watched from the screen as he gave commands to his fellow agents. They entered the perimeter of the property and came up along the house. “Wait until I give all-clear to enter.”
I stared at the screen from over his shoulder. They were waiting until Hazel would be out of immediate danger. She wasn’t near the foyer. It would take several seconds from the breach until they entered the room where she was located.
Enough time to shoot her or grab her as a hostage and threaten her life.
I hated watching on the screen, unable to be part of the action. My hands bunched into fists.
