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Two hours until touchdown and the Pacific Ocean stretched out brilliant blue below the jet. Taz stretched out his legs and blinked the sleep out of his eyes. He’d fallen asleep with the brown colored contacts in, adding a weird itchiness to his eyes to go along with the pinch in his neck and the numbness in his ass, thanks to the comfortable looking chairs that were not.
As soon as the room came into focus, he searched the cabin for Bianca. She wasn’t huddled up with Lexie, tethered as always to her laptop, or playing cards with Duke, Lash and Marko.
The cockpit door opened and Bianca walked out still chuckling at something Vivi must have told her. Her gaze connected with his and the smile curling her full pink lips froze and her eyes went wide. It was the first time she’d seen him since Elisa had tried to chop, wax and dye her way into the makeover torturer hall of fame. He’d seen the results in the mirror. He’d gone from looking like the rough-around-the-edges Roma boxer who’d fought his way to the light heavyweight to looking like some rich, preppy hedge fund manager asshole type—exactly how Trey Alderson should appear.
His hand automatically went up to the short buzzed sides. The top was longer but Elisa had snipped off the waves that always fell into his face. His movement must have knocked the shock out of Bianca, because her smile tightened before melting into a grim line. She narrowed her brown eyes and looked away, keeping to the opposite side of the cabin. Still, it was tight quarters and she couldn’t walk past him and still stay out of arm’s reach.
But she didn’t hesitate. Not his girl. No, she brazened past him, almost making it—but he caught her.
An electric current shot straight to his cock as soon as he wrapped his fingers around her slim wrist. Her step faltered just the tiniest bit, but he clocked it. Attraction, passion, anger, hunger, and want made the air sizzle around them. His cock went from stiff to impossibly hard. One tug and he could tumble her into his lap. Would she resist? Judging by what had happened in the bedroom earlier, not for long. She still wanted him as much as he wanted her.
Leverage. That’s what he had, and he was going to use it—just not yet.
Color high in her cheeks, she pulled away from him and he didn’t try to hold her there.
Bianca disappeared into the bedroom where Elisa had set up her makeover torture center. She could go hide from him a little bit longer because once they got to Indulgence, she wouldn’t be able to.
Someone who wasn’t hiding sat bold as brass next to the table where his brothers were playing cards.
Tamara held her chin high and her shoulders back, her face as serene and icy as a mountain lake in January. At first, second and even third glance, she looked as if she didn’t give a shit that everyone on the jet thought the worst of her. She played a good game, but Taz saw the cracks in her facade. Her knee hadn’t stopped bobbling since they left Ft. Worth, her bottom lip was going to be bloody soon if she didn’t stop chewing it and tension had her entire body strung tight.
“Oh look, Butt Chin is awake,” Duke called out, using the nickname his brothers had used for him until he’d gotten old enough to grow a beard.
Taz dragged his gaze away from Tamara and flipped off the grinning fools gathered around the table. Too drag-ass tired to do more than that, he let his eyes drift close, but the vibration of his cell phone against his thigh stopped him from getting any much-needed sleep.
The caller ID read: Isaac Camacho. He glanced up at Tamara. She lifted her chin and looked away, out the window and at the deep blue below. She could ignore him all she wanted, that didn’t mean he was just going to hand over a million dollars without getting a little more information first.
He pressed the talk button. “That didn’t take long.”
“I know. Sometimes it hurts to know I’m so good,” the freelance investigator said in his trademark gruff bass that made it sound as if the former Recon Marine smoked a pack or two a day. “Not that I can take all the credit on this one. Your girl isn’t exactly an unknown entity.”
“She’s not my girl,” Taz snapped back. “And what do you mean by unknown entity?”
“Whoo, simmer down there, man,” Camacho chuckled, obviously not impressed by the show of frustration. “The Idaho State Police have a warrant out for one Miss Tamara Post.”
Taz’s gaze snapped back to Tamara, but he kept his voice low. “What for?”
The sound of papers shuffling came over the line before Camacho said, “Breaking and entering, violating a restraining order, and kidnapping.”
“What the fuck?” If Camacho had reported Tamara was a space alien who ate kittens and bathed in orange juice, he wouldn’t have been more shocked.
“Yeah, not a bad sheet for a beauty queen.”
Taking a deep breath, Taz laid the facts out in his head like a to-do list but for the life of him he couldn’t mentally check off any of them. “Who did she kidnap?”
“Her dead sister’s kid,” Camacho said. “Seems her sister’s will named Tamara as the sixteen-year-old’s guardian. The sister, Amelia, and the husband, Jarrod Fane, were divorced. I’m still working on getting the court transcripts, but judging by the number of files connected to the proceedings, it was one nasty divorce. But of course, I have just the skills needed to get some details out of a sheriff’s office clerk with the sexiest little voice.”
Like most of Lash’s old Marine buddies, Camacho could drag out a story with the best of them—which was probably why he and Loud Mouth Lash had stayed close after they’d both gotten out of the Corps. Still, if he didn’t cut him off now, Camacho would talk until his cell battery died.
“Give me the short and snappy, Camacho.”
“Alrighty,” he said. “The ex-husband leads some kind of cult. Think Jim Jones or David Koresh mixed with some survivalist militia outside of Redfin, Idaho. I’m talking some creepy, well-armed motherfuckers. I’m surprised the sister made it out alive to even file for divorce, but she did and with the daughter, Essie.”
He tried to remember everything Tamara had ever told him about Amelia. It hadn’t been much. She was younger. A teacher of some sort, maybe kindergarten. They didn’t keep in touch. Now he knew why.
“I take it she wasn’t alive for long after she got out?”
“Three weeks after the divorce was final, she disappeared. Body showed up five days later. Tamara, who hasn’t gone by your last name for years from what I see, was with Essie at the time and skedaddled with the kid.”
