Page 36 of Rescuing Micah (Prey Security: Cyber Team #3)

“Teresa talked to both of us about her idea and we both agreed that it was a good one,” Raven added, her tone a little less arrogant than her brother’s.

“While we had all hoped it wouldn't come to this, Teresa knew the risks, and she was prepared to take them for a chance at bringing down the trafficking ring once and for all.”

“That’s not on her shoulders,” Micah growled. Yes, her team was working toward that goal, and yes, she now had several personal reasons to want the organ trafficking ring destroyed, since they had gone after her and the people she cared about, but it wasn't on her to end it.

Knowing she was out there, alone, no doubt drugged, possibly hurt, there was a chance they had even already put her under and removed another one of her organs, was enough to make him lose his mind.

Good idea or not, he didn't care. All he wanted was for Teresa to be safe.

The opposite of what she was right now.

“Teresa felt like it was. This was her idea, I did not push it onto her, and neither did Raven. She wanted to use the fact that the ring is currently fixated on her to our advantage, and I thought her plan was a solid one, so I decided to trust her.” Eagle looked him directly in the eye as he spoke those words, and Micah had no doubt it was a challenge.

If her boss could trust her, why couldn’t he?

Maybe because Eagle wasn't emotionally invested in Teresa the same way he was.

Sure, Eagle cared about every single one of his employees, everything he’d ever heard about Prey suggested they were a family, and that their founder and CEO would go to the ends of the earth for any one of them.

But it wasn't the same.

Micah was desperately in love with Teresa. He wanted to spend the rest of his life making up for his bad decisions twelve years ago, and treat Teresa like the amazing queen that she was. To do that, she had to still be alive.

He could handle—barely—her kicking him out of her life, but he couldn’t handle losing her.

Couldn’t handle knowing she wasn't out there somewhere chasing the happiness she deserved.

“I do trust her,” he snapped.

“Then have a little faith,” Eagle told him.

“That would be easier to do if her tracking implant wasn't a prototype. If it had been tested before and we knew for certain that it was going to work. But we don’t know anything. She could have deliberately put herself in harm’s way without any options for us to find her,” he said desperately.

“She was confident that it would work,” Raven assured him.

“Then why haven’t we heard anything from her yet?” If Teresa’s new tracking device was going to work, she could have activated it any time in the last eight or so hours.

That was almost how long it had been since they’d been awakened by the fire alarm.

There were so many things he wished he’d done differently.

Starting with refusing to leave her apartment. If there really had been a fire, it would have taken a while for it to reach them, and by then his backup would have been there, and they could have surrounded Teresa as they got her out, made sure nobody could get to her.

Although knowing what he now knew, that Teresa had been prepared for a second abduction attempt, he thought it was unlikely she would have agreed to stay.

Was there anything he could have said to convince her not to do this?

His heart insisted that there was. That if he’d known of her plan, he could have found the right words to say to plead with her not to put her life on the line. To show her that there was another way to bring the ring down that didn't involve her willingly allowing herself to be taken.

His head knew that was a lie.

There was nothing he could have done to change Teresa’s mind. She was too stubborn, and once she got an idea in her head, it was next to impossible to dislodge it.

“Any number of reasons,” Raven reminded him.

“Maybe they’ve kept her unconscious. Maybe they have her restrained in such a way that she can't access the tracking implant. Its whole design is that it remains inactive so that it can't be detected. To activate it, she needs to be able to hold her finger above it so that it can read her fingerprint and turn on. As soon as she can do that, we’ll know where she is.”

“And if she can't get to it?” There were so many variables. So many things that could go wrong, and that was terrifying.

“She will,” Eagle said with more confidence than Micah could muster.

“And if it doesn’t work as she intends it to?”

“It will,” Raven said, echoing her brother’s confidence.

“If I didn't think her tracker was ready to be field tested, I would have told her no and insisted that she remain here with the others. I believe in what she’s been working on, and this wasn't something she whipped up overnight. She’d been creating it for almost a year now, working on it in her spare time. It was already almost ready to be tested, and while I didn't think we’d be testing it on her under these circumstances, it was her baby, and this is what she wanted to do with it.”

Of course it was.

Teresa had never met a situation that she didn't feel responsible for.

It was something he both loved and hated about her. It was amazing that she always wanted to be everyone’s hero, take care of them, look out for them, and protect them, but it always came at great personal cost.

This time that cost could be her very life.

“I believe in her and that’s why I went to bat with Eagle for her,” Raven continued. “I do know how terrifying this is, Eagle does too. We’ve both been where you are right now. I lived through hell for a decade when Cleo was taken, and Olivia was snatched right from this very building.”

Eagle growled at the mention of his now wife’s abduction.

Usually, Olivia helped run the Cyber Team with Raven, but lately she’d been helping set up a second Cyber Team at Prey’s West Coast offices, leaving Raven solely in charge there for now.

But he had no doubt that if Eagle’s wife had been there, she would have agreed with Raven’s assessment to trust Teresa and the tracking device she’d created.

“Nathaniel has been through this with Ava, and Tobias with Isabella, and I specifically requested that Rocco’s SEAL team be on standby because not only are they familiar with the trafficking ring, but they’ve also gone through similar things with their now wives,” Raven informed him.

“No one is telling you this is easy, but we are all on your side, and we are asking you to just have a little faith in Teresa. She’s smart, and she’s brave, she wanted to do this, and I suspect part of the reason was because of you. ”

“Because of me?”

Raven nodded. “These last few weeks she’s been forced to confront her past. I know what that’s like, and I know that sometimes you reach that point where you’re ready to let it all go and take that leap of faith into the future, knowing there are no guarantees.

That’s how it was for me with Max, and I think that’s how she feels about you.

She’s ready to jump, but to do that, she needs to eliminate this threat to her happiness. ”

Of course, Micah was so proud of his girl for being committed to facing this situation head-on and being willing to put it all on the line.

But the line was her life.

How was he supposed to deal with it if she wasn't rescued in time and died because he was back in her life, and he’d worked hard enough to earn a second chance, one she would do anything to grab hold of?