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She was absolutely gorgeous. Her long blond hair cascaded over her right shoulder. With her short-sleeved shirt I could see tattoos covering both her arms. Her lips were lush, and she seemed almost ethereal. She looked like a dream I didn’t want to wake up from. She was just my type.
If I was in a romantic comedy, I would be stumbling all over my words, but I wasn’t. Nothing about my life was funny; it was usually intense and filled with nightmares. I was suddenly struck with nerves, which was something I’d never experienced due to meeting a woman. It took me so off guard that I had no idea how to salvage this brief, awkward moment that happened as we both stood and stared at each other.
“Well, I’d love to stand and talk, you seem nice, but I’ve got to get myself a very large coffee before my flight,” she said, and her smile softened.
“Yes, I probably need to get to my terminal. Have a safe flight, and again, I’m sorry,” I apologized and tipped my ball cap like a good ole’ Southern gentleman would do.
“Nonsense, and you too,” she returned and then turned her back to me as she walked toward the food court on the other side of the airport.
I found my terminal and settled into a seat by the windows to wait for them to announce that my flight was boarding. I pulled out my phone and pulled up my app that contained all of our research so far.
Brent Ricketts was a rich bastard. He was a blond-haired, blue-eyed man in his forties. He looked like a rich playboy who modeled for a sports magazine for older men. He dressed flashy and did his best to ride the line between laying low and being noticed. He owned real estate all over the world, but it appeared that he chose Nassau for his large-scale trafficking operation. It wasn’t hard to see why; so many college kids vacationed there that he had endless women to choose from.
We didn’t have much information on exactly where Ricketts was living because he traveled so much. He had many homes attached to his name, and many of them were also owned by various corporations or trusts. We weren’t exactly sure which were investment real estate or which were for his private use. Even on the island he at least had partial ownership of over twenty homes. We did our best to try to pin down where he could be hiding, but it was honestly just a shit show—a shot in the dark. We needed to get our feet on the sand and scope out those properties one by one. These kinds of locate-and-extract missions were easier when we already had the intelligence. It was why I became the boots on the ground when I joined the Army. Sure, I enjoyed brain teasers, but I was not cut out for an intelligence job. While I was capable of research, I’d rather just be in the action instead. That didn’t matter now, because there wasn’t much intelligence about Robbie or what he knew about this trafficking ring in the tropics.
The original file that Bob Dempsey, AKA Boss, gave us didn’t have much information. There was a photo of Ricketts and a map of the tropics with Nassau and a few other islands circled. For all we knew, he had separate operations on each island. Nassau was our best guess after searching the number of disappearances on each of the circled islands. The number of missing women was tripled compared to the other islands. Yet not much was being done about it. There were no international headlines, no protests or large search parties. The women just disappeared quietly into the night while their government did nothing about it. It was scary and rivaled what happened to some women in the Middle East.
My phone vibrated in my hand as a message appeared on my screen.
Christine: Did you make it to the airport okay?
Me: Yes. Waiting to board my flight now. Don’t worry about me. You are getting married in two days. Go fret over the seating chart or something.
Christine: Hah! You know me well enough to know just how high strung I am. This wedding has had my anxiety whipping me around like a rollercoaster. I don’t want to think about one more little detail. I can’t wait for the whole thing to be over. Then I can call Jake my husband and we can all go hunting for some assholes.
I chuckled at her response. I felt bad because she was trying to plan an entire wedding in what was essentially two weeks. When one was as filthy rich as her family was, they could buy their way into any timeline. The problem was there were still a lot of decisions to make. At least that was what she told Mendez, who told me over beers last week.
Me: Everything is fine. If it makes you feel any better, I know that all Wells cares about is that you make it to the altar. You could be wearing a bikini under a trash bag and he wouldn’t care.
Christine: Thank you for that. I just sprayed water out my nose. My mom just gave me the most horrified look.
Me: Glad to help. Can’t wait to catch assholes and save people. Take care and remember what the day will be about.
Christine: I will, thank you, Strong. You always know what to say to make me feel better.
Me: Keep that secret to yourself or Wells might throw you over his shoulder whenever we are in the same room.
Christine: Okay, now you have me snorting. I’ve got to go before my mom has a stroke. Have a safe flight.
I pulled up my research app again and stared at the names and photos of those reported missing recently on the island. Some of them were tourists, but most were locals. I tried to commit each one to memory. With trafficking in areas like this, you never knew when you were going to run into a victim or who they’d be with. Sometimes they were sold like household servants, and other times they were trafficked for sexual acts. I wanted to save them all, just like we had in Vegas. We had gotten lucky there, and part of me questioned why Boss trusted us enough to do this. There were plenty of ways for a bunch of retired soldiers, even as highly trained as we were, to fuck up an operation of this size. When we were trying to get Mary back, we were so emotionally invested that we could have made some big mistakes. We didn’t have any personal connections to this place, we just wanted to continue our work and make a difference where we could, although I doubted we would be any more objective. This line of work was filled with emotion. Anger, sorrow, shock, there were plenty of emotions to take one by surprise.
There was going to be a payout when we caught the Ricketts bastard, but the money wasn’t a factor for any of us. We had always taken care of each other, making sure none of our buddies were hungry or cold. Now several members of our group had more than enough money to take care of the rest. Not that the rest of us would give up our pride to ask, but the option was always there.
I knew the crew was ready to get their boots on the ground–or flip flops in the sand–with this operation, but Jasmine, Jones, and Christine were more eager than everyone else. It was all they had talked about for two weeks. The night we found out about Brent Ricketts and his operation, Jasmine and Christine stayed up all night, throwing theories around, and eventually their men had carried them to bed, long after the sun had risen. I felt like I had been twiddling my thumbs most of the past two weeks, even though I was training.
Jasmine and Jones had been living together for the past year and had taken Jones’ sister under their wing. It became apparent shortly after she was rescued that she had some issues related to her kidnapping. She had worked through most of them by the time Robbie’s trial came around. She recently started a job at Christine’s foundation, helping others who were victims of the same abuse she suffered. She’d do good things as a phone operator and handling crises. She could help put victims at ease until the psychologists could get on the line. While I didn’t know Mary as well as I knew her twin brother, I was very proud of her, and I knew that Jones and Jasmine were as well.
Jasmine was Mary’s best friend, and she spent a lot of time making sure that Mary was okay after we rescued her. Jones forbade Mary from joining us on this trip. That didn’t go over well at first. Mary had yelled and refused to talk to him for two days, but in the end he won. She had finally settled into a new normal and was doing much better, and he didn’t want to jeopardize that. Halting a sex trafficking ring would be very dangerous and triggering. After a lot of consoling, Jasmine convinced Mary that continuing her work with Christine’s nonprofit would be the best thing for her.
Jasmine was looking forward to this wedding, but I could tell she felt guilty leaving Mary behind; they were best friends. Jasmine went through hell to help rescue Mary, and that included shacking up with Jones. The two of them bickered like a married couple, and it’s amusing to watch.
I was startled from my thoughts when theflight boardingannouncement was made. I stood up and was the first to join the line and board.
The airline didn’t have assigned seats, so I found a nice window seat toward the back of the plane, right near the door. I chose the spot out of habit—I knew how to exit a plane mid-flight safely. Not that I wanted to do that from a plane full of civilians.
I hoped no one would want to squeeze next to me. Due to my larger size, I unintentionally flowed over into the space of the seat next to me. My shoulders were just that broad.
I stretched my legs out in front of me and relaxed my arms, which were crossed against my chest. I popped my headphones in to ignore the sounds of others boarding and the speech that the attendants would give before takeoff. I’d jumped out of plenty of planes, and there was nothing they could teach me about survival if this bitch was going down.
