Page 35 of Owen (Blue Team #1)

“What does that mean exactly?” I heard Myles ask Tex.

He’d been talking to the man for the last ten minutes. But he hadn’t put the call on speaker, the way I was feeling and the incredulous expression Myles was sporting, it was probably a good thing I couldn’t hear what they were discussing.

Natasha had been gone ten hours. She was not on a flight to Chicago. No ticket had been purchased in her name. I would’ve been impressed Tex could hack into the Spokane airport’s security feed as quickly as he had if my goddamn woman hadn’t gone rogue.

I might’ve been concerned how Wilco had found us if I wasn’t so motherfucking pissed I couldn’t see straight.

Max had done his thing in Chicago. He dug up what he needed and let it slip to the right people that we had the intel we needed to take Wilco down. Word had traveled faster than Max thought and Wilco had a few extra hours to make his play.

The fuck of it was, Eva’s accident was just that—a goddamned accident. Someone had blown a red light and T-boned her. A sixty-two-year-old physician, who had dozed off behind the wheel after being on call in the ER .

A goddamn accident that had nothing to do with Wilco.

Yet, Natasha hadn’t waited for the facts and details. She’d heard Eva, Elijah, and Liam were injured and had taken off like a shot.

Now she was well and truly missing.

Franco Dalto had met her at the airport, then she’d walked out with him, climbed into the back of a luxury SUV, and they’d driven straight back into Idaho and vanished.

One of the reasons Rhode had built his cabin in Sandpoint was because Idaho was not a state that intruded on the privacy of its citizens.

It was not common but it wasn’t rare, at least not in Northern Idaho to see men and women walking down the street with a sidearm strapped to their belts.

There weren’t cameras on every telephone pole like in big cities, thus Tex didn’t know where Franco took Natasha.

Outside of him crossing back into Idaho, she was a ghost.

We’d taken Rhode’s Jeep down to Coeur d’Alene and now we were on standby. Ghost, Abe, and Mozart were headed our way. Cookie, Benny, and Dude were staying in Maryland and they’d head to Chicago with Thad, Kyle, and Brooks if Nat made her way there.

Cruz had put together a team and he was headed to Chicago. The FBI was taking no chances using local resources. I was fairly certain that was going to ruffle feathers. I was a hundred percent certain I didn’t give a fuck.

I wanted Wilco shut down. However that came to be I no longer cared.

My priority was getting Natasha back.

And when I did I was handcuffing her to my bed where she’d stay until she saw the error of her ways.

“And you’re positive?” Myles’s question pulled me from my thoughts. “Garrett on that, too?” There was a pause then, “Copy that. I’ll call you back.”

Myles tossed his phone on the hotel dresser and kept his eyes adverted when he said, “Pissed as fuck at your woman. ”

I felt my neck tighten. I clenched my jaw and tried to clamp onto my patience.

I failed.

“Don’t—”

“Pissed as all fuck,” he interrupted me and turned his head to look at me. “Worst part is I wanna be more pissed than I am but the problem is I understand why she bolted. Not only that, I respect it.”

What the hell?

“Say again?”

“She called Tex on her way,” he told me something I very well knew. And he knew I knew it because Tex had already called in this information.

“Right. She called him on her way to the fucking airport where her plan was to get on a fucking plane and fly her ass straight back to the nightmare we’d all been trying to clear her of.

A plan that was shot to shit. Now she’s in the wind with a man who we know has no conscience, no issues hurting women, and not a shred of decency in his body.

A man who will not hesitate to hurt her, violate her, or kill her.

What she didn’t do was fucking trust me to handle it.

So with all of that, how can you stand here and tell me you respect her decision to bolt? ”

In true Myles fashion, he said what he had to say and he said it straight. No punches pulled, no thought, he just laid it out.

“Naomi fucked your shit up.”

“Why are we talking about her?”

“She fucked you up so bad, years after you got shot of her ass, she was still dragging you down, and I know that as fact because when I met you that bitch had been gone a good number of years and those wounds were still fresh. A man who is over his ex-wife unlocks that ball and chain and throws it away. He doesn’t throw another padlock on and wear it around his neck.

Whatever she broke in you was wide open, had been for as long as I’ve known you.

But those gashes started to close, then they stopped bleeding, and the longer Natasha was around the more they started to heal.

I know what Naomi did to you, and it wasn’t her overspending, her being a bitch to you, and it wasn’t her cheating.

That shit, a man can get over. She castrated your ass, and she did it in a way that made you believe you were the asshole in that relationship.

She made you believe you were a shit husband who couldn’t take care of his wife.

I cannot imagine why you allowed that, but you did, and since then you have kept believing it. ”

Fuck, that hit way below the belt. But as true as what Myles said was the case, I didn’t understand why he was talking about my ex-wife.

“Do you have a point to this?”

“Yeah, I do. Nat isn’t Naomi.”

Fuck me, I’d heard that before. Not only that but I’d come to that realization all on my own and didn’t need another goddamn lecture about it.

“I’m very aware of that.”

“I don’t think you are. You don’t trust her—”

“Come again?” I grunted and crossed my arms over my chest so I wouldn’t reach out and strangle my friend. “I don’t trust her? She fucking left.”

“She did, and she had reasons. None of those reasons were because she didn’t trust you.

The opposite actually. She trusts you with her life.

She went back because she knew you’d come and get her.

She trusts you’ll end this for her, but in the meantime, she’s protecting people she barely knows.

And she’s doing that not because she’s a good person, but because the people she’s protecting mean something to you.

They’re your people. That I can respect.

Her plan was shit, but she had no idea Wilco had hired a bounty hunter to find her, and she didn’t know because we didn’t even know.

Wilco did that on the DL, made the arrangements personally, and didn’t bring in his right-hand man until it was time for Franco to come and get her.

And we know that’s the case because the men Max managed to flip, had no clue Franco was out of town and had not heard Wilco was still looking for his niece.

As far as everyone was concerned they all thought he’d written her off. ”

I trust you with my life.

Fuck.

My head dropped forward and I took in the carpet.

I love you, Owen. Straight to my soul, I love you. No matter how this ends I need you to know you gave me everything. I’m happy. I’m clean. Now I need to do this so I can be free. So no one else is hurt. I’ll buy you time. But, honey, please hurry. I don’t know how long I can last.

“Jesus, fuck,” I spat.

I trust you with my life.

She was buying us time. She’d delivered herself to hell so no one else would get hurt.

Nat didn’t know the accident wasn’t because of Wilco. She just reacted and sacrificed herself for people she didn’t know very well but knew I cared about.

Fuck me.

Fuck me.

Fuck me .

I understood she thought she was doing the right thing, but she absolutely hadn’t. I understood because she’d spelled it out for me and I still thought she was wrong.

“I begged Natasha to come home,” I told Myles.

“Fucking begged. I’ve never begged for anything, not when the woman I’d spent years with told me she was leaving me if I reenlisted, and not when she served me with papers.

I didn’t beg to save my marriage but I sure as fuck begged Nat not to leave me. Yet she did.”

“Owen, brother, I get you’re pissed, I’m fucking pissed, too. She went off half-cocked and seriously screwed up but she did it for all the right reasons,” Myles pushed.

Therefore I pushed back. “Is there a point to any of this?”

“Yeah, Owen, there is. Tex and Garrett found her.”

“Then why the fuck are we still standing here?” I roared.

An old habit, one I’d conquered when I learned control, clicked back into place and my hands slid into my hair and I tugged until I registered the pain.

Something I hadn’t done in well over a decade, something I stopped doing when I started controlling every aspect of my life.

I kept everything in order so I would never feel this.

“We’re talking about this now, so when we get to her you won’t—”

“I won’t what?” I bit out. “Be pissed? Brother, I am beyond fucking pissed, and don’t tell me you understand because you don’t.

The woman you love isn’t at the mercy of a monster so you don’t know jack.

You think I’m pissed she left? I’m goddamn scared out of my mind that by the time we get to her, the woman who rolled out of our bed this morning will be gone.

She’s lived through enough, and I’m terrified if Franco touches her, violates her, she will not be Natasha.

You’ve seen her—when she goes inside her head and has to remember who she had to be she shuts down.

The switch flips and she’s off. I’m afraid when I get her back I won’t be able to get her back .

Now stop wasting time and tell me where she is. ”

“Outside of Missoula, Montana.”

Christ, that was under three hours away.

Ten hours she’d been gone and she was under three hours away.

Fucking, fucking, hell.

“Why are we still standing here?”

“Two reasons…no, three. We’re waiting for Kevin and Gabe to get back from picking up Abe, Wolf, and Mozart, we’re waiting on Tex and Garrett to finish gathering their in tel which includes a brief from Cruz. And last, I needed to see where your head was at.”

I rocked back on my heels and opened my mouth, but before I could say anything Myles got there first. “Check your temper, brother. You know why we needed to have that conversation.”

Myles’s phone clattered on the dresser and we both looked at it before he snatched it up and answered.

“Garrett?”

“Update. Cruz checked in and confirmed Wilco Pollaski is not in Chicago. He and his team couldn’t gain entry. Cruz made the call to keep this under wraps, as in need to know only. They called Dude and he agreed to go up there and help them. He’s on his way there now.”

“Dude?” I inquired.

“You and Brooks are our demo experts. Brooks is tied up and you’re there. Dude volunteered to handle Cruz’s situation.”

“Are you saying Pollaski’s brownstone is rigged?”

“Rigged to blow sky high. Cruz called it at the last second. His team was going to breach and a wire caught his attention. He inspected the best he could and called it into Tex. Tex called Dude.”

Close calls were never good. A close call with an explosive device was ass-clenchingly too close.

“Anyway, since the company jet is on its way to Idaho, Zane called in a marker. Dude’s flying there in luxury. Cruz has his warrant, so as soon as Dude works his magic, they’ll be in.”

Dude would have that place cleared in no time.

The man not only knew how to disarm any IED he also had excellent instincts.

He’d taught me a lot, most of it had nothing to do with making and disposing of ordnance.

He’d taught me to trust my gut, use more than my eyes and ears to assess a situation.

A lesson that had proven invaluable over the years .

“Last thing,” Garrett said and I froze at the tone of his voice. “Don’t kill the messenger but Wilco ran. He knows he’s fucked, and a man like him does not run, he stays and fights for his kingdom.”

Which meant Wilco knew his kingdom was crumbling and he’d be livid thus he’d take that anger out on the person he felt responsible for his demise.

Natasha.

My throat clogged and bile rose.

“The game’s changed,” Myles muttered.

“It has. Cruz wants your body cams on, capture if possible.”

“Garrett—”

Garrett didn’t wait for Myles to continue his statement. “If possible. Cruz isn’t stupid—that’s why he wants the body cam footage. Shit happens, he knows this. The FBI wants Pollaski, if you can deliver him breathing that’s the first option. If you can’t, well, shit happens.”

“Copy that. We should be on the road in the next half hour.”

“I’ll have everything you need before you get there.”

Myles disconnected the call and held my gaze.

“Promise me you got your shit together.”

I didn’t bother opening my mouth to speak. I couldn’t make that promise and I wouldn’t lie to my friend.

“Fuck.”

Yep, fuck about summed it up.

“Owen—”

“Don’t make me promise you something you know will be bullshit, Myles.

What I will tell you is, Natasha is my first priority.

I will get her out by any means necessary but I will not actively hunt Wilco.

That said, he or Franco stand between me and my woman, I will not hesitate to take either of them out. ”

“I can live with that. ”

It was good he could because that was the way it was going to be.

I’m coming for you. And fair warning, baby, when I do I’m gonna be fucking pissed.

I’m counting on it, honey.

Ten hours ago I’d burned through my pissed.

Now fear coated my skin. It had burrowed deep, it had infused my bones, and it had taken over my mind. All I could think about was that Natasha was in the hands of the Devil.