Page 34

BONES

Grace Black was in the kitchen drinking coffee when I entered. Dawn ribboned across the eastern sky and the whole team was up and present, save for Alphabet who was out with Goblin but would return shortly.

Five hours of sleep was usually enough for me. Today was no different, except I felt like I was on edge, sleep deprived, and tense. All three of my men were in different stages of a decaying orbit as they fell in toward Grace.

The model didn’t seem to have to do anything but exist to be a colossal distraction. Whether she was in shorts and a tank top, or an oversized sweatshirt and leggings, she stood out against the rest of us.

Far too damn delicate, fragile, and small. I doubted she’d ever held a weapon or had a self-defense class. The image of her wounded eyes when we’d first begun placing or helping the former captives return to their own homes left an indelible impression.

No doubt existed within me that she had been hurt, likely raped. The attempts of a few to reacquire her had kept her in our custody. Taking her to base, however, had been my choice.

That was a command decision I had to live with, and I would. At the sound of the door opening, I downed the last of my coffee. “Ten minutes. Then we get started. Make sure Miss Black has something to cover her mouth and nose.”

After rinsing the cup and leaving it next to the sink, I went to retrieve my gear. Every interrogation was different. Enhanced methods might get answers, but they didn’t always get accurate ones or even particularly truthful ones.

A person would say just about anything to avoid pain—especially after they were in tremendous amounts of it. Pain could be compartmentalized, but survival could overcome resistance. You just had to know what you were willing to suffer.

Interrogation should be tailored to the subject. It really wasn’t one size fits all, as most things in life weren’t. I’d spent the past week learning about Maurizio Gallo from his likes and dislikes to his personal preferences, history, and habits.

More, I’d learned about his family. An abusive, authoritarian father and an emotionally aloof and distant mother fostered poor self-esteem in young Maurizio, along with a difficulty in regulating his emotions.

He struggled in school, his father’s wealth often buying his son out of trouble. Based on observed behaviors and three ex-wives, Gallo struggled in social situations unless he was totally in control.

While there were no reports of physical abuse where his previous spouses were concerned, all three detailed his emotional unavailability and hostile home environments. With his wealth, he could pay off his ex-spouses and detractors, essentially “erasing” their complaints.

The combination of traits and historical behavior made him the ideal candidate for human trafficking. He preferred to pay for his companionship, to own it, to detail what they could do, think, and feel. When he tired of them, he discarded them like a used-up toy.

Spoiled. Vain. Damaged.

This was the man who wanted to purchase Grace Black’s presence and time. The amount suggested he wanted far more and he was willing to pay any cost. He was involved in the labyrinthine conspiracy surrounding her kidnapping and the disappearance of her sister.

How involved?

I opened the door to the wine cellar, flipped on the light switch to flood the darkness, and then descended the steps. The others were behind me. Maurizio Gallo squinted painfully against the sudden brightness.

The skin at his wrists was raw from his struggles with the restraints. His feet were swollen, likely from sitting in the uncomfortable chair. The sallow color of his skin under the spray tan looked even more ill. He was pudgy in several spots, a man used to soft living, rich foods, and too much alcohol.

Gallo glared at me even as he teared up from the light. Then he looked past me to the others as they ranged out. I said nothing, not yet. Let him get a good look at who we were and where he was.

The moment his gaze latched onto Grace, it reflected in his eyes. Shock rippled over his face, his mouth opened and he tried to wet his lips. He shifted against the hard wood of the chair and his shriveled little cock twitched.

“Come—” The word came out hoarse as though he’d turned his throat raw from yelling. Or maybe it was just dry from lack of water. The dried yellow stain of urine on the plastic liner we’d spread out on the floor below him said he wasn’t that dehydrated yet.

Gallo coughed.

The dry hack was as unattractive as the rest of him.

“Grace,” he finally managed to wheeze out, though he added some reverence and lust to his rough voice. “Come closer.”

“Get a grip, Floppy.” I set the foldable tool bag down on the counter and unrolled it. “She’s not even here.”

“She’s right—” He choked off the rest of his statement when Voodoo just stepped forward, blocking his view. The man had a gift for looming when he so desired. Gallo’s eyes widened and he tried to retreat into the chair, but he couldn’t really go anywhere.

“As I was saying,” I continued, as I made a point of examining the tools I had with me. This wasn’t the full measure of them, just some that might come in handy—the ball peen hammer for example. “Get a grip, Floppy. We’re not here to answer your questions.”

Lunchbox shifted and moved to stand right behind Gallo now. Yes, the guys understood exactly what we were doing. They didn’t say anything or touch him. They were just there. From the corner of my eye, I caught Gallo beginning to tremble. Whether from cold or fear it didn’t really matter.

“Then why—” The man’s accented voice was a record scratch. The hints of Italian was nowhere near as profound as some I’d heard. Still, it was there.

“You’re here to answer our questions,” I informed him.

“Then you let me go?” Yeah, the man desperately needed a drink. That would be a reward, if he was good.

“That depends entirely on you,” I said, drifting my fingers over to an ice pick. “Fuck around, and you’ll find out.” I pulled out the snippers. A tried and trusted tool.

Pivoting, I faced him and just tapped the device against my palm.

“What questions?” He jerked his gaze from me to Voodoo then tried to look back at Lunchbox before he flicked a glance to where Grace stood. I didn’t turn or say anything. Alphabet hadn’t closed in yet. He took guard position for now.

That worked.

Grace wanted to be here for this and she expected torture. Still, until you were face to face with someone else’s suffering, you had no idea how you would react. Alphabet could pull her out if this got bad.

I took one step and Gallo shrieked like I’d stabbed him. Even prepared for a reaction, the sound ripped through me like nails dragged over a chalkboard.

Lunchbox made a face behind our guest and shook his head.

“What questions?” Gallo demanded. “What? You haven’t asked me anything?” His eyes were wild, I swore they were rolling around so hard it was like seeing balls struck in a game of pool. He couldn’t seem to decide where to look. “Grace, cara mia , we are friends, yes? I am always generous. Yes?”

Voodoo slapped the man with the back of his hand. An open palm slap was pretty damn insulting. The back of the hand was almost as bad. “Don’t talk to her. Talk to us.”

Gallo cringed. “Then ask me something?” It was as much a demand as it was a plea.

The stink of urine accompanied the trickling sound of fluid. Yeah, whatever force he was trying to imbue into his words was lost with that response.

Fight or flight.

Maurizio Gallo had no fight.

Maybe he only had it when he paid for everything and had his lapdogs around him.

How sad for him.

Oh well, moving on.

“Explain your million dollar offer for Miss Black.”

Gallo snapped his attention back to me. “It was at almost three million… I raised it.”

That was an unexpected answer. “Excuse me?”

A soft scrape of shoe told me Grace was moving, but she didn’t close in, so hopefully Alphabet stopped her.

I nudged Gallo with a toe of my boot and he flinched so hard, he nearly toppled his chair. Lunchbox had to brace it to keep him from going down.

“Three million?” I prompted when Gallo wrenched his focus back to me once again.

“The auction site… after the manager—after she say no again . I went to the auction and there she was, cara mia, the beautiful—” He hesitated to say her name. Smart. It was about time. “She was there. Opening bid, one million… I was in the lead. It was over three when they put it on hold and now waits in pending.”

“Website?” Voodoo asked even as Lunchbox said, “Auction?”

The silence behind me reverberated with all her hopes, fears, and questions. Good girl, don’t say anything to him. We hadn’t discussed this part, but he wanted her attention. Denying him that was another tool in our arsenal.

“The website… The procurers, they find the best, the most valuable. The coveted. Art. Beauty.” Gallo licked at his dry lips.

“People?” I spit the word out.

“Yes,” the man said and then he tried to shrug, but grimaced because his wrists were bound tightly to the chair arms. “The beautiful Grace was there, I will outbid anyone to have her.”

They had an auction website. Rage crashed through me like a thunderclap.

Auction.

For people.

I tapped the snippers against my palm again keeping everything still. “Website address?”

“You have her, you have it.” Gallo stared at me like I’d sprouted a second head. I could feel Lunchbox and Voodoo exchanging glances. I didn’t check with them. I kept my attention riveted on the sad sack of shit in front of me. “How much do you want?”

I blew out a long breath. Instead of relieving my temper, it just fanned the flames. Lunchbox lost all expression and his eyes went flat. I didn’t have to check Voodoo to know that the man had basically just signed his death warrant with that question.

I had no problems with dealing it out when we were done.

With that in mind, I reached for one of his hands where they were secured and put the snippers to the tip of his finger. Gallo shrieked and struggled, the stink of ammonia increased and sweat began to bead along his body even in the chill of the cellar.

Yeah, fear could devour a man alive.

“Website address. Not asking again.” I kept him pinned with my gaze, snippers open and around his fingertip just above that knuckle.

With spittle flying from his lips, Gallo babbled out a string of letters and numbers. It was almost impressive, because he didn’t stumble once.

“Got it.” They were the first two words Alphabet had said since we got down here.

“One more question…” I straightened, vaguely dissatisfied that I didn’t have to start removing his digits one knuckle at a time. At the rate we were going, we’d intimidate him into answers.

“What?” Gallo snapped, impatient as I considered exactly how to word it. The sharpness in his voice matched the hard-eyed look he’d found.

Unimpressed, I broke his index finger. He blanched, all the color leaching from his face. His mouth opened and his scream came out harsh and grating. Fat tears escaped his blurry eyes and began to roll down his face.

Pivoting, I focused on Grace then lifted my chin and nodded her toward the stairs. Questions stamped all over her face, but instead of arguing she nodded and headed upstairs, with Alphabet a half-step behind her. I followed them.

“Feel free to continue with him,” I told them when I was at the top of the stairs. They could pull more teeth, literally or figuratively, I didn’t care much. Right now, I needed a conversation with Grace without her guardians on point.

We also needed more on this website. At the top of the stairs, I closed the door to the cellar before following Alphabet and Grace into the living room.

“What’s up?” Alphabet’s neutral voice betrayed none of the ferocity burning in his eyes.

“I need to speak with Miss Black for a few minutes— alone ,” I stressed before he could object. “I need you to check that website. If there is some auction site that lists her, it’s a good starting point to track it back to the source.”

That would give us a target. Gallo was just the start. Frankly, I didn’t get “mastermind” off him in the slightest. He was a wealthy, spoiled man used to getting his way without giving a single fuck for a consequence. I doubted he knew much more than he was saying, but we had time to get the rest of it out of him.

Frowning, Alphabet glanced at Grace. “Are you fine with talking to him? I can be just in the dining room.”

“Your faith moves me,” I told him, then looked at Grace again. “I’d rather take Miss Black for a walk.” Away from all three of them. I needed answers and I was fairly certain she could give them to me if they weren’t all trying to shield her constantly.

As it was, she stood there with her arms folded and her eyes huge. While she was pale, I thought that had more to do with the contrast of her dark hair and bright eyes than anything else. She was also shivering. It was faint, but it was present. “Is ‘take me for a walk’ code for take me out behind the wood shed or dispose of me?”

There was the barest hint of sarcasm underscoring her humor.

Barest hint.

“I seem to have misplaced my sap,” I told her drily. “You’ll be fine. We’re going to take a walk, warm you back up, and I have a couple of questions I want to ask without you worrying about someone else listening or throwing in their two cents.” The last I gave Alphabet a hard look before looking back at her.

For his part, Alphabet sighed. “You probably could use the air.”

She chewed her lower lip then looked from him to me then to where Goblin watched us from the sofa. He’d been snoring when we got up here, but now he was in wait and watch mode.

That was good. It meant despite Alphabet’s tightly fisted temper, he wasn’t struggling.

“Okay,” she said. “Let me get my shoes.”

“Get sunglasses too.”

“Take mine,” Alphabet told her as he diverted to the dining room. I didn’t miss how he made sure to tuck her phone into the back pocket of her shorts.

Keeping her trackable was a solid idea. Fortunately, he didn’t make our leaving an issue. I guided her out the back door then toward the gate that separated the pool from the garden proper. After that, we descended steps to another gate that was tucked into a wall and hidden by overgrown flowers.

“This is kind of neat,” she said as I held the gate open for her. The sun was high, and the breeze strong. It was barely ten in the morning. We hadn’t been down there that long or at least it hadn’t felt like it.

I scanned the area before I secured the gate then motioned to the right. “If we go this way, we’ll take the long way around but we’ll be back at the villa. Fifteen minutes. Probably less.”

She studied me for a beat, or at least I thought she did. The sunglasses hid her eyes. With a nod, she turned to walk in the direction I indicated ,while using both hands to gather her hair up into a ponytail that she secured with a band she had around her wrist.

The heat felt good.

I let her set the pace. If I did, she’d have to take two steps for every one of mine and we’d be back a lot faster.

“You wanted to ask me questions?” The prompt was as unexpected to hear as it was to actually need it.

“I do,” I said, getting my thoughts in order. “You haven’t been a fan of our choices so far.”

“I haven’t been a fan of you just deciding everything for me without involving me.” There was an edge to the words, almost like she wanted to rap my knuckles with a ruler for daring to say otherwise. “That said, you guys have all gone out of your way to protect me. I know I haven’t exactly been easy.”

“That’s an understatement,” I muttered the words and she stopped dead to stare at me. “What? You are difficult, sometimes childish, incredibly fragile, dangerously vulnerable, and you don’t want to listen.”

Oh, I could see the virtual steam rising from her ears.

“Before you get angry,” I said, holding up a hand. “I accept that you have improved and that I could also learn to listen better.”

It was a concession.

Her mouth fell open. Whether she was merely speechless for a few seconds or just preparing to launch into a tirade, I shifted to nudge her back into walking. The affluent area had homes scattered all over the hillside. But it was still better to not linger too long in one space.

“You’re not wrong,” she finally said on a huff of breath. Well, maybe we could get to detente. “I’m working on it.”

“So am I,” I said firmly.

“Fine, so ask whatever the questions you have are and I will try not to just jump to some wild conclusion.”

“Very kind.” Yes, I deadpanned the words particularly since she sounded like she was doing me a favor.

“I can be.” Despite the catty little rebellion in her tone, she didn’t stick her tongue out at me.

“Miss Black…” I sighed now.

“Mr. Boy?” She gave me a pointed look.

“Maurizio Gallo is not your problem.” Better to start with the facts. “Did he wish to purchase you? Yes. Though he is more of the customer than the supplier.”

“That’s a horrible thought,” she admitted.

“Agreed. Alphabet will deal with the website. We can use it to track back to whomever the suppliers were that were listing you there.” While that might be an effective next step…

“He never mentioned Amorette.” No. The man had not. “Maurizio didn’t know about my sister before. I never talked about her. But down there, he was saying a lot but he never mentioned her.”

“No.” I kept my head on a swivel. There was a mother out for a walk with a stroller. Cars rolled by. The sounds of town a few short blocks down the hill carried upward. “He mentioned your auction as pending. Also, that he wanted to be the top bidder.”

“Because he likes beautiful things.”

“Yes.”

“Amorette and I are identical.” Her sigh was so deep, I wanted to offer her comfort but I had none at the moment. “He didn’t include her in this.”

“No, either she was sold separately or she is being held in abeyance for a future auction.”

“Or it’s that second group that took her.” She let out a low groan. “I hate this.”

“I know. I wish I could offer you some type of reassurance. This is merely the first mission. We gathered more information. We may yet gather more. If nothing else, we will shut down the website and its owners. We will eliminate that problem.”

I could promise her that.

“But if they weren’t involved with Amorette then we are no closer to her than when I came off that truck.”

“No. The more time that passes. The more likely it is what trail there might have been will go cold. We don’t know who the other parties are. Competitors? Allies? Until we do, we can’t act on it.”

She paused under the shade of a huge tree that seemed to drape over another garden wall like a lover. “You want me to give up on finding her.”

I paused, facing her. “What I want is irrelevant. What I want to ask is how long do you want to devote to this task? We can do everything we can, but if we have an indeterminate timeline, at what point do you accept that we may never find her?”

At what point did she let her sister go.

“It hasn’t been that long yet.”

“No, it hasn’t. We have actionable intel. We may turn up more. As we find it, we will act. But we cannot stay in this state indefinitely, particularly if all leads dry up.”

This was why I wanted to talk to her alone. The guys were not reasonable where she was concerned. They were making more and more choices around her and for her, not for any plans we might have had or future mission objectives.

That was dangerous for all of us.

“Consider this, Miss Black, how long do you want to take? How much time will be enough? How far are you willing to go?” I held up a hand. “You don’t have to tell me, you don’t even have to know. Eventually, we will need to answer these questions. For you.”

For them.

I needed solid metrics to plan around.

“I hate that you’re asking me this,” she said in a half-whisper that carried no anger, just sadness. That sadness scraped away at some of my irritation with her.

Rather than offer her any platitudes, I cupped her elbow and set us off again. We would be back at the villa soon enough.

We’d just turned the corner toward the gates that opened up to the drive for the villa when the first popping sounds reached me. Muffled gunfire, but definitely gunfire.

“The gates are open…” Confusion filled her voice. “Are they watching for us?”

No. The gates shouldn’t be open. At the gate themselves, I tugged her back toward me and nearer to the wall. There was more gunfire. It was unmistakably the sound of a weapon’s discharge. Semi automatic.

“We need to go,” I told her, wrapping a hand around her biceps.

“What?” She looked up at me. “The guys…”

Yes. My guys were up there. “I’m aware, Miss Black.” I pulled her with me. She wasn’t armed and I wasn’t taking her into that situation. Our current strategy called for whoever was closest to her to exfil with her immediately in case of assault or conflict.

She was my problem now.

“Bones,” she argued as I increased our pace and she half-jogged to keep up with me. “We can’t just leave them.”

“We can,” I told her. We were almost to the backup vehicle. We all had keys for it. “We will.” When she would have dug in her heels, I just picked her up. “Listen to me, Miss Black. You fighting me and arguing right now just slows me down. We need to secure you then I can get them out, if they haven’t already done it themselves. The longer it takes me to secure you, the longer it takes to get to them.”

I kept everything as even and neutral as possible. Air whooshed out of her and she stopped struggling. “Fine.”

Good girl. At the escape car, I unlocked it and pointed her inside. For once, she just obeyed. In the driver’s seat, I started the car and kept an eye on the rearview.

In a perfect situation, the guys would have cleaned up the problem and would call us for a rendezvous within thirty minutes. That would be ideal.

When I got the car turned around, Grace let out a horrified gasp. Goblin raced toward us down the street. The closer he came to us, the clearer it was that he was covered in blood.

This was definitely not an ideal situation.

Goddammit.

****

The story will continue in OWN, Book 3 of the BLOOD Brothers.