Chapter Thirty-Six

Seth and Cord raced for East Rockland Key. It had been a long night of failed leads, but he had another hunch, and if this one panned out, Devereaux would be in his arms by daybreak. If not? They’d be back at square one again.

They were nearly off the thin stretch of highway between the islands when his satphone vibrated in the holster on his hip. “McCray.”

“Where are you?” Alex bit out.

“Right now, I’m a mile from East Rockland Key. Why? What’s up?”

“Cassidy’s flying out at noon. Thought you should know.”

“Already? Is she well enough to travel?”

“Can’t take the chance she won’t go back to Cuba and start a war, so yeah. She’s going home where Jude can take care of her. What’s at East Rockland Key?”

“If I’m right, one of Montego’s business associates,” Seth answered discreetly. They still had a mile or so to go and there was no sense getting Alex spun up in Alexandria, where he couldn’t offer an assist.

“You were right about the woman you saw in the bar. I alerted the police. They found her unconscious in one of Sly Valentine’s buddy’s vehicles behind the bar, along with another woman. Both had Rohypnol in their systems. The police are looking for Valentine.”

“Thanks, Boss, so are we.”

“You alone?”

“No, Boss, Cord Shepherd’s driving. He’s the Marine I told you about.”

“Which one of Montego’s men?”

“Hopefully, Sly Valentine. Maybe Prince Basheer Bagani.” Seth held off mentioning that he no longer knew where Princess Lianna was.

“Bagani’s there?” Alex asked.

“Not sure, Boss, but I figure he might be.”

That earned him a spiked brow from the driver’s seat. “Who you talking to?”

Seth murmured out of the corner of his mouth, “My boss, Alex Stewart.”

Cord’s brows lifted all the way up to his hairline. “You work for Stewart?” he asked at the same time that Alex asked, “Is Shepherd the idiot who’s been running into Cuba rescuing women from Montego without sufficient support?”

Seth glanced sideways at Cord. “Yes, Boss, Cord is that idiot.”

Both brows spiked that time.

“Put him on,” Alex ordered.

Seth handed the satphone over. “He wants to talk to you.”

“Me?” Cord whispered, and wasn’t that interesting? The big jock fumbled the phone. It nearly hit the floor before it made it to Cord’s ear, and he said, “Yes, sir?”

Seth grinned. Alex might not bite Cord for that faux pas this time, but the day would come Cord would regret having ever addressed Alex with ‘sir’.

“Yes, sir, I mean…” Cord’s head bobbed as Seth listened to him respond to Alex’s rapid-fire questions. “No, sir. I understand. No, I didn’t mean that, I meant…”

Whatever had Alex on edge, it was damned funny to watch him put Cord in his place. Maybe there was some truth to that ‘once a Marine, always a Marine’ bullshit.

“Umm, sir, that might be a problem.” Cord winced as an explosive “Might?” ripped over the connection.

“Yes, sir, you see, she’s… she’s missing and…” Cord’s big head actually ducked into his shoulders. “No, sir, I haven’t contacted the authorities yet, but I will.” He shot Seth a funny as hell grimace. “I won’t? No, sir, I won’t. Yes, sir. Right away, sir. Would twenty-four hours be asking too much…? Yes, sir, it’s just that I’m a little tied up at the moment and… Absolutely, sir.” By the time Cord handed the phone back, he looked stunned and he was out of breath.

“Yes, Boss?” Seth asked, leaned back in his seat and already expecting the G-force of his boss’s wrath. Sure enough…

“When the hell were you going to tell me that Princess Lianna is no longer in your custody?” Alex snapped. “Who else is missing?”

“Actually, she was never in my custody, but you’re correct. Cord’s sister, Devereaux Shepherd, her son, Scottie, and her neighbor, Trish Crawford from North Dakota are missing at the moment, which is why we’re going to East Rockland Key. We’re fairly certain Sylvester Valentine is behind this, and we suspect he’s keeping Devereaux somewhere near—”

“You suspect? You don’t know?”

Seth faced the pavement ahead and met his boss’s questions head-on. “No, Boss, I’m not sure, but my gut’s telling me to follow this hunch. I can’t go to the police, remember? Not unless you’ve smoothed things over with the State Department. Have you?” That would make this day so much easier. Then the FBI would be involved like they should’ve been all along.

“Yeah, about that…” Alex hissed. “Farraq Khadeem’s missing. We suspect he’s fled the country, that he’s in Europe.”

“You suspect?” Seth couldn’t help tweaking his boss’s bad temper.

“I meant the State Department, smartass,” Alex came back with. “Jesus Christ, Seth, I’m not God.”

No, but sometimes, you’re the next best thing. “Understood. Do we have any idea where Khadeem might be hiding in Europe?”

“Let’s get this straight. I said the State Department thinks he’s in Europe, not me. I’d bet he’s on his way to Cuba, maybe the States. The only thing the State Department knows is Khadeem’s no longer in Saudi Arabia. The king made it clear he’ll behead Khadeem as soon as his men find him.”

“So he knows what Khadeem did to Lianna?”

“And to Prince Bagani,” Alex muttered, his voice gone weary. “You need to tread carefully. The king of Saudi Arabia’s after Khadeem, but I doubt he’ll admit to any indiscretions in the royal line, no matter how distantly related Bagani is.”

“Hold a second, Boss,” he said as he asked Cord, “Do you know what happened to Lianna’s hands?”

Cord shot him a dark look. “Yeah. We found her nailed to a—”

“Rape stand,” Seth finished, his mouth gone dry at the thought of the pretty blonde humiliated like that.

“Yeah, if that’s what you call it,” Cord murmured. “I killed the bastards who did it, and I’d do it again. Why’d you want to know?”

“You hear that, Boss?” Seth asked as he rested a hand on Cord’s shoulder.

“Got it,” came back terse and low.

Just to be clear, Seth told Alex, “Bagani dumped Lianna on Montego, and Montego’s men defiled her hands, but Cord got to her before they had the chance to defile her body. You really want me to let Khadeem, or Bagani for that matter, live?”

“No, but you’ve got to be damned careful. The world’s watching us. Make one mistake and we could be at war. Cover your six.”

“I intend to,” Seth answered. “I’ll be in touch the minute this thing’s over.”

Alex disconnected. Seth turned to Cord and whined, “Are we there yet?”

Cord rolled his eyes as he pulled into the left turn lane. “Almost. Your boss is quite a guy, huh?”

You could say that. “Yeah, Alex is something all right.”

“He, umm, he…” Cord seemed to have trouble speaking as he crossed traffic and they headed north. He tried again. “He, your boss, Alex Stewart, umm…”

“Will you just say it?”

“He offered to fund me,” Cord murmured. “Me. My work. Do you believe that? Some guy he doesn’t even know. He offered to fund what I do down here in the Keys. Said he was proud of me, but that I’m a dumbass for thinking I could take on the world and do this all by myself. Said a Marine should know better than to do stupid shit like that, but he also said he’d ante up enough money that I could pay my guys and buy my own building and… Jesus Christ, McCray. He said if I came to work for him, he’d support me every step of the way.”

Which was why Seth worked for Alex Stewart. There was no better boss in the world.

By then the scenery had changed from strip malls and residential to backwoods and gravel roads. “I’ve got twenty-four hours to give him an answer, and, get this. He said it better be the right one.”

Seth nearly smiled, but they’d just passed a derelict motel. Damned if there weren’t two vehicles parked there, a sleek silver Maserati and a beat-up POS economy car. “Pull over. Now.”

Cord parked the Chevelle in the tall reeds and swamp grass, not that Seth minded having to climb out and fight his way through the brush to get to the road. Cord joined him at the rear of the Chevy, his weapon in his hand. “How do you want to do this?”

“Quickly,” Seth murmured as he scanned the various points of egress and started forward. The clapboard building faced west, its rear wall against twelve-foot high grass, weeds, and shrubbery. The asphalt parking lot to the front of it was cracked and full of weeds, though these were shorter and worn from travel. The faded sign over the one main door at the south end of the building indicated what might have been the office, but Seth headed for the single door/window combination of the next thirteen rooms. With those two vehicles parked where they were, he bet Sly and Bagani were in the fourth room north of the office.

“Can you believe these guys parking out in the open like this?” Cord whispered as he racked his piece. “Damn, they’ve got nerve. You think she’s here?”

Which was why most people never recognized human trafficking when they saw it. The perpetrators had a helluva lot of nerve and they conducted much of their business in broad daylight.

“One way to find out,” Seth muttered, his entire being on high alert, his senses drawing all elements in his surroundings to him. The direction of the slight breeze coming from the north. The angle of the early morning sun to his left. The birdsong from every leaf and branch, and Lordy, Lordy. He’d almost forgotten how much and how loud birds chattered, sang, and chirped at the first glimmer of dawn.

Cocking his head, he tuned his ears on the weathered building ahead, no longer sure he’d heard voices coming from there. Stealthy now, he sidled up to the nearest corner of the building and looked down the length of what had once been a long wooden porch. Straggly tufts of gray Spanish moss clung to the underside of the decrepit overhanging roof. Something rustled in the bushes at his rear, but that something was smaller than a human, so he disregarded it as negligible. Mankind didn’t scurry.

“Think you can get past the rear of this motel without being seen?”

“On it,” Cord said as he stepped into the weeds.

“We’ll go in once you’re at the opposite end of this porch, understood? We’ll meet in the middle.”

“You bet,” Cord replied as he rounded the corner and disappeared.

“Hurry,” Seth murmured, more to himself than at Cord. “Devereaux’s here. I can sense her.” And my gut’s churning up a storm.