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Blackness consumes me.
TWENTY-ONE
Alec
Sometime later,I crack open my swollen eyes. My head throbs from multiple blows and, as my vision comes into focus, I find myself in the back of the van with my hands tied behind my back and my ankles securely wrapped in duct tape. As I look around, Barbi gasps when she realizes I’m awake.
“You’re alive.” Tears stream down her face and fear fills her eyes.
“How long was I out?” When I speak, my voice is shakier than I’d like.
A quick scan of injuries reveals what I fear. Those fuckers beat me to a pulp and the shocks didn’t help. I’m bruised and battered, but not dead yet.
“Who are these people?” Barbi looks at me with fear and desperation in her eyes.
My heart sinks as the gravity of the situation settles in. I’ve heard that accent before. It was in the screams of men dying during one of the several assaults Bravo team launched against Maximus Angelo’s estate. Minister of the Interior for Nicaragua, Maximus Angelo coalesced power and wealth through the disgusting trade of human trafficking.
We first became aware of the operation when Brady single-handedly rescued Angie and Izzy from a cartel, recognizing Angie’s face in a hostage broadcast during enforced time off down in Costa Rica.
Her husband, a Special Forces Special Operations Surgical Team surgeon, saved Brady’s SEAL team years ago when they were caught behind enemy lines, fighting for their lives. Because of him, Brady lost none of his men during that mission, and when the doc passed suddenly, his life tragically cut short following an auto accident, Brady and Booker attended the doc’s funeral.
Three years later, upon seeing Angie’s face on that video feed, Brady didn’t think twice. He crossed the border into Nicaragua and executed a single man rescue mission, bringing both Angie and Izzy out alive.
We only became aware of Maximus Angelo when he sent his right-hand man, Matias, down to abduct Izzy, or rather the stash of diamonds she unknowingly carried in a rabbit’s foot given to her by one of the mechanics on her team with the Doctors Without Borders. That humanitarian organization brought Angie and Izzy down to Nicaragua. Unfortunately, their altruism changed the course of their lives.
We lost the diamonds we didn’t know Izzy carried to Maximus Angelo, but still had the rabbit foot given to Angie. That’s when we discovered the fortune in diamonds as well as coded information inscribed in the metal brad of the rabbit’s foot.
We mounted the rescue mission to retrieve Izzy and wound up with Maximus Angelo’s daughter, Carmen, clinging on. Through her, we were able to decode the information on the brad, but it was useless until we returned from mission number three to Angelo’s estate. We freed the women he held captive, as well as Rosalie, Carmen’s maid and best friend.
Rosalie’s an angel. She took it upon herself to memorize the names, and the numbered designations given to the women trafficked through Angelo’s estate. Her nightly prayer of remembrance was the final key we needed to identify each woman by name and match them up to the numbers in Angelo’s ledger.
That mission was supposed to close down Angelo’s human trafficking organization for good, but the wealth and power he accumulated amounted to no charges filed and not a single moment behind bars.
His partner, Artemus Gonzales, ensured that didn’t happen, and the men who jumped us, and locked us in the back of this van, have exactly the same accent as the men we fought during all three missions.
As for what’s happening now, I can only think it’s connected to the solo mission that took me away from Barbi.
Cara, a client of our new Guardian Protectors, came to Guardian HRS because her location in WITSEC kept getting blown. We thought there was someone in the FBI leaking her whereabouts, but after Chase single-handedly fought off several waves of men sent to kill her, and after an all-out shoot-out at Forest Summers’s mountain estate, where I will gladly admit Mitzy’s Rufi performed flawlessly, it was discovered the men located Cara using an embedded tracker.
That’s what took me away during the time I couldn’t answer Barbi’s texts. My mission was to carry the tracker and lead Artemus’s men on a wild goose chase, while Chase helped Cara disappear. That was the final piece of the puzzle. Cara’s father, a protocol officer at the U.S. Embassy, became embroiled with Artemus and Maximus, feeding prospective clients—aka buyers—into their auctions to purchase the trafficked women.
Guardian HRS now has everything it needs to rescue the victims from the buyers they were sold to. Mitzy and her gang are fast at work devising a rescue plan for the women who were taken, sold, and are now only God knows where.
I can see why they’d take me, but why Barbi?
Leverage?
Well, shit. This isn’t good.
“I don’t know, love.” My mind races as I try to make sense of what’s happening. “Do you have your phone?”
“No. They took it.”
“Shit.” I feel around for my phone, as best I can with my arms tied behind my back, knowing it won’t be there.
“Alec, I’m scared.” Her voice cracks and tears stream down her face.
I debate telling her everything. Knowledge is power, but it’s also a liability. In Barbi’s case, such knowledge may turn into a dangerous liability. Which gives me pause, but I don’t want to lie to her. She deserves to know what we face.
