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“The drive Mitchell handed to you was heavily encrypted, but it contains enough to have Rouxier spending the rest of his life behind bars in a slam dunk of a case.”
“What?” Ethan asked. “Is he playing some kind of game with us?”
“Well, this is where it gets interesting. Meet August Fox, husband of James Lerner, dad to Annie Fox-Lerner. He’s an active Navy SEAL and officially he’s on deployment, but given he’s aka Aubrey Mitchell, I imagine he’s out there searching for his missing daughter.” Kayden pushed away from the desk and stared up at us.
“His daughter’s missing?” I asked, but in my heart I already knew, that dear little girl, his smiling husband… I knew it involved them somehow, and I leaned into Ethan.
Kayden’s expression was tight. “His husband was murdered, his daughter vanished, and he’s so deep undercover that August Fox probably can’t remember his real name.”
All my fears had vanished as soon as I realized that I was the lucky one. I still had Ben—he was over the courtyard, learning Spanish from his new friends, Oreo probably pacing up and down the table knocking pens on the floor.
He was safe, but if he wasn’t, if he’d gone missing, if Ethan hadn’t stepped in… what would I have done?
Anything.
I would have done anything.
ChapterThirty-Three
Ethan
“What about the children?What about the trafficking?” I stared at the smiling face of August Fox with his small family and couldn’t align what I saw with the man who’d sent me and Danvers out on his twoshipments. That man—Aubrey Mitchell—had ice in his veins, an evil about him I hadn’t seen through.
Nik threw me a look that spoke volumes—somehow he knew something I didn’t, but it wasn’t him who explained what it was.
That would be Kayden.
“We royally fucked up Fox’s case,” Kayden began.
“What?”
“Those two separate lorries of kids were supposed to be his thing, Aubrey Mitchell aka August Fox’s next step up the cartel ladder.”
“The fuck? He was going to sacrifice those kids to—”
“We don’t know that.” Kayden stopped me.
A shiver ran down my spine—was August Fox a good guy, or was he so deep undercover he no longer had a moral compass? “He shot Danvers between the eyes.”
Kayden raised an eyebrow. “That’s what I would have done if I wanted to keep my cover clean. Do you know how many children were lost to what Danvers allowed to happen? How much product ended up on the streets because of that asshole? He broke every single cardinal law he’d vowed to uphold; he was collateral damage.”
Nik cleared his throat. “It’s not that simple—”
“Yeah, it is,” Kayden snapped.
Nik and I exchanged glances. Would I have shot Danvers in cold blood? Could I ever go that far?
What if it were Ben who was missing? What if it was Ben and Josh I needed to find? What if their lives depended on me getting Danvers out of the picture and scoring points with the bad guys?
I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, Nik was staring at me, and he nodded. He was married, and I didn’t know much past that, but the shared glance spoke volumes.
For them, we would kill.
“Dad, can we make pizza?” Ben was at the door—had anyone thought to even lock it?
“Hey you,” Josh crowded Ben back, and shot me an apologetic glance that spoke volumes.We’ll talk later.
Part of me wanted to drag Josh back, the other part of me was relieved he was gone for this. I didn’t want him to see anymore.
