“Nope, not going to even go there. Just be ready, sweetheart, I intend to put on a full court press,” Jared said and winked at her.
She shook her head, turned away, and walked shakily into the kitchen. When she entered the room, she saw her friends sitting at the table drinking a beer. “I need one of those,” she muttered and went to the fridge and grabbed a cold beer from inside. When she turned around after popping the top and drinking the first long gulp, she saw that they were smiling at her.
Jade came, wrapped her arms around her best friend, and said, “So I was thinking, a wedding in July in the back, we can have flowers and a gazebo set up. It will be amazing.”
Miles and Danny laughed and walked into the living room where their brother was sitting with a smug look on his face.
***
Luca sat back and smoked his cigarette. The fools thought they had pulled one over on him. They had no clue the dedication that he put into finding his daughter. He knew where she was finally. All it had taken was torturing that little fool of an infiltrator.
Until then he thought he’d actually have to try and capture one of the men who had raided his compound.
They were military, but he had training too. Now he would just kill them all and disappear. There were no known photographs of him, so once he got them, no one else could get to him.
Luca put out his cigarette and stood up. He was leaving this job to move on, the man he left behind would be able to finish off this pig at the hospital. Nobody got away from Helmut; he could track anybody, anywhere and leave like a ghost. His flight was leaving in an hour. So he decided to call Helmut and find out if the pig had squealed. Even though they both carried burn phones, they’d speak in German as an added precaution.
“Helmut, what is the status on this pig, when will you move on to slaughter the next?”
“I missed, there was someone else, a woman in the room and she screamed very loudly.
I had to leave. I’m tracking them now, we’re outside of Loveland so they must be headed to the ranch.”
“How much time do you need before you move on to the next?”
“I’ll move quickly before they have time to organize a defense, one day, maybe two.”
“Good, leave no witnesses.”
“I never do.” And he disconnected.
Luca smiled, wiped down the phone and threw it away, he had others.
Chapter 6
Traci was ignoring her friend who was making plans for them to have a double wedding, or trying. Trying to ignore Jade took real effort and the shock of all she’d been through that day was starting to wear on her nerves. She knew this was going to be a long few days if she was cooped up with them. This really sucked!s he thought to herself. She was used to having her space and time to herself, and she was hyper-aware of Jared all of a sudden. Every move that he made, she noticed.
Finally Zach returned with Colton and they had something new to focus on. She had been surprised to hear what the situation actually was. She knew that Jared had been in the military. She followed his career along with Jade. They had both been proud of him when they learned how much he accomplished in his time in the service. His parents had been proud.
Traci and the others were waiting for a meeting that Jared called a few hours ago. He wanted to explain to them the situation after he was briefed by Colton. Traci smiled and remembered the way the man had greeted her. Jared growled at him and told him to back-off when he kissed her hand. Then Jade announced that Traci was her soon to be sister-in-law. Colton smiled and winked at her before releasing her hand and hitting his friend on the back. “Nice choice.”
“Hey.” Traci had protested. “I’m not a side of beef. I can make my own decisions too, and I say that we’re not engaged. If fact, I can flirt with or talk with, hell, even have sex with, anyone I like.”
The men had raised their eyebrows and Zach laughed. “Why do our women keep announcing in this room that they want to have sex or have had sex? I think maybe we need to talk to them about that Jared. It seems like they’re a little too free with their words. Either that or you need to redecorate.”
“Talk all you want, dumbass. I was just clarifying my situation for the tall, hot man that came in. You never know when the batteries will run out and I’ll need a new toy,” Traci snapped.
Colton laughed. “I’m feeling very objectified. Don’t get me wrong, I would be more than happy to be your stand in; however, I would prefer not to have my dick referred to as a toy.”
Traci frowned and looked around the room. She had done it this time, stuck her foot in her mouth like Jade. She had always prided herself on being the one with more control, but when she got around Jared, all reason just flew out the window. It was like a disease, one that she needed to get rid of.
She stomped her foot and began to leave the room when she heard Jared call out to her in front of all his family and friends, “Darlin’, go and throw those batteries away. You won’t need them when I get my hands on you.”
“You’re not getting a finger on me until I say it’s okay, Jared Michael Cassidy!” she stated and left the room to walk into the kitchen where Marguerite was getting food prepared for the group of them. At least here she felt comfortable, in the kitchen she was in control, no surprises, no upsets, and only her rules. Well, in this kitchen, it was Marguerite’s rules but still just as comfortable. And while she was there, she grudgingly made the necessary phone calls to shut down the diner for a few days. Her manager was giving all the perishables to the local homeless shelter and after speaking with Jade, had negotiated a “vacation shut down” so the employees would get paid but it wouldn’t put the diner too far into the red. It was going to be a long night she thought and jumped in to help.
It turned out that she was right, the meeting with Colton had lasted late into the night.
She’d fallen asleep on the couch with Jade and somehow they’d ended up in Jade’s old room in a large bed that she was sure hadn’t been in the room while it was Jade’s. Zach was nowhere to be seen. She heard the knock on the door announcing Danny just before he pushed it open and stuck his head through. “Meeting in an hour.” Jade and Traci got ready and grumbled at the early hour and went down the stairs.
They were all waiting in the kitchen for Jared and Colton to tell them it was time for an explanation. It had better be good too, she thought.
The sketch artist that was supposed to have arrived yesterday apparently had gotten lost, and ended up spending the night in town after she had finally arrived. Traci knew she would be out first thing this morning to see her.
Colton popped his head into the room and said, “Ready?” Traci followed along, slower than the rest. She was feeling anxious about seeing Jared again. She wasn’t sure if it was his pain meds making him so aggressive or if he’d finally, actually come to his senses. The things he kept saying to her were keeping her off-balance, she was having trouble finding her feet with this new Jared. It gave her hope where before she wasn’t sure that there was any.
When they entered the room, all of them stopped and looked at the boards that had been pulled in and pictures that were taped to them. It was like a real police war room, Traci thought. Though she had only been allowed to see it once when Jade was being threatened by Tommy the asshole. She was sure that this is what they all looked like.
Her heart pounded when she looked at Jared in his Air Force BDU’s. Holy shit he was hot! She studied the picture closer and smiled. It looked like he hadn’t shaved in a week. The handsome, grumbly, clean cut, shaven Chief of police looked human in that picture.
She wondered where it was taken. She knew they were stationed in Germany. But that was about all. Traci sat in the chair closest to Jared on instinct. She thought if he needed anything that she could go and get it. Sadly, someone had already thought of it.
A tall glass of water, his pain meds, and his antibiotics were sitting on the table next to him. She noticed that sometime during the night he had w
ashed and changed clothes, somehow he’d even washed his hair. She remembered he couldn’t take a full shower for another 4-5 days or risk serious infection. Probably his friend had helped him. He looked better. The color was back in his cheeks. Hopefully that meant that he was on the road to recovery.
Jared saw her looking at him and winked; she rolled her eyes and looked around the room. Everyone was staring at them waiting to see if she was going to make another announcement. “Knock it off,” she growled and then turned pink when they all laughed.
“Just waiting to see if we’re talking about sex or killing. Either one is perfectly fine with me.” Miles smirked and Traci wanted to reach out and slap him.
“Boys and girls, we have a lot to cover here so settle down,” Colton said, then stood and looked at the people in the room. “I would rather have not told you most of this, but Jared insisted that we tell you exactly what you’re up against. Keep in mind that this is confidential military information. When we were stationed in Germany, we were assigned with another group, we were the Alpha team, and they were Bravo. Bravo team, called Team Red Horse, was a great set of guys. Since we all went in at about the same time, we were also discharged within a year of each other. We got together and opened our own business. Some of the missions we went on were deemed classified. So I will only relate the ‘brief’ portion of the mission. As Team Alpha, designated Bold Lighting, we were the tactical aggressors, Team Bravo was our com unit and back up.” Colton walked to one of the boards and pointed out all of the members of the teams to them. Sadly, he then explained how all of the men on Bravo team had been killed. Traci felt the tears welling in her eyes. These men had put their lives on the line for their country and now they were dead. She wished she could send the families a thank you card for allowing their spouse, brother, or son to give his life for their safety. That is what the men had signed up for when they went into the military. They had defended freedom at the risk of their own lives. She looked at Jared and smiled. He hated to be called a hero, when he returned from his service he had shut himself off from everyone for a while. She wished now that she had been more forceful about taking care of him.
He had to have mental and emotional scars from what he had seen.
“Then we come to our team. Of course, there’s Jared and myself and the other fire team members are Lance and Dom. They’re currently searching for information about the men who are here. Just before we all retired, we had a mission. It was to remove and return an informant of ours to the base for debriefing. The man had indicated that something big was coming down and he needed to get out to a safe place before he would explain what was going on. The informant was deep under cover with the RTF, a terrorist group in Germany. He had been undercover for three years and had finally reached a point where they trusted him enough to plan their attacks in front of him. At the time of his extraction, we had successfully thwarted six terrorist attacks with information passed to us by him. The RTF were frustrated and angry, but luckily had not suspected our informant,” Colton said and pointed to another board where there was a list of high-profile places in Germany.
“Jared and the rest of the Alpha Team went in and secured the informant.
Unfortunately, when they got there he wasn’t alone. He’d fallen in love with the sister of the leader, a man named Luca Hauptman, and insisted that she be brought with him.
He said that he would not come in if she were not allowed to also. We were in a fluid situation so we brought her along and figured that the brass would sort it out at the base. We didn’t ask questions, we just performed our mission.” Colton explained and then looked around the room and continued when he was sure that everyone was with him so far.
Traci was sitting on the edge of her seat; she could feel the tension in the room. She wasn't sure who it was coming from more, Jared’s family suddenly faced with what he’d done all those years ago while in the service, or Jared who was looking at his family cautiously, waiting to see their disapproval or disappointment. It broke her heart. Traci reached over, put her hand on his, and squeezed, giving him the encouragement she felt he needed.
“We made it out with virtually no resistance. It was a simple mission. However, that wasn’t where it ended. The woman had lied to our informant. Once she was free of them, she announced that she wasn’t Hauptman’s sister, she was his wife. We were pissed. She had used him to get out. But the informant was too much in love to care.
He accepted everything she said at face value. She said that she’d been kidnapped and beaten before becoming the leader’s wife. That could have been true, she just didn’t seem the type, didn’t have the attitude of a woman kept for years against her will. It was all bullshit. Anyway, we took them back since they provided the needed information and then were given a free pass to enter the US,” Colton said and walked to the last board that was up.
“This is where it gets hairy. Luca was angered when he believed his wife had run off with one of his supposedly loyal followers. His other followers weren’t nearly as upset.
The intel from the informant was that his relationship with the woman was known and overlooked by the rest. We received further intel by having the informant call another member asking if Luca was planning on coming after them. The RTF didn’t realize they’d run to us, just that they’d run away. He was told that they would finish their current plans and then Luca intended to go after her. He’s known to be extremely possessive and quite brutal. We got wind of him looking for her close to the base. They hadn’t figured out the informant was responsible for their failures. They were trying to locate him because of the woman. Had we not brought her, our informant would have gotten away clean. So we did damage control, we put up all the shields and covered our involvement. The brass contacted the German Government and told them what was going on. They agreed to support us in trying to take out the RTF. The RTF was a continual threat to Germany so it wasn’t difficult to get their support. The fact that their agenda makes them a threat to entire world is why our Government agreed to get involved in the entire program,” Colton said.
Pointing to yet another picture up on the board, he continued. “This is where they were supposed to attack. Working with the German police, we had set up a plan to capture the group with a murmur, instead of a bang. Even though their plans were set, it wasn’t necessary for us to try and catch them in the act. Because of the informant’s information, there was enough evidence to arrest them immediately. On the day that we were supposed to go in, we received information there was a child involved. The woman had left the child, her daughter, with the RTF and never told the informant about her.
As she was innocent, we weren’t prepared to allow her to be collateral damage. So our team was tasked with extracting this 16 year old girl,” Colton explained.
“The Police and other Fire Teams took care of the terrorists. We questioned the mother until we had enough information to proceed. Hauptman had at least loved her enough to protect her from this side of his life. He had a separate residence where she was taken care of by a housekeeper and two maids. Several people in the neighborhood were interviewed under various pretexts, it was discovered that the RTF leader was a regular visitor with the girl, but few of them knew if her mother was even alive. In fact, many believed she was dead because they had never seen her. None of us had any good feelings about the mother, we couldn’t understand her selfish attitude. It was a simple extraction, the housekeeper and maids never knew we were there. Somehow, Hauptman found out it was us. He must have had some passive security that didn’t show on our scans. Through our wire taps, we learned he’d figured out who’d taken her.
We pissed him off big time, and laughed about it, thinking his days were numbered. We thought we were protected, apparently we were wrong,” Colton said.
“We have information that Luca Hauptman has found out who was involved in his daughter’s disappearance. He bribed several of the local German Police to give him the details. Somehow, he has found ou
t about all of us and he wants his daughter. Lance and Dom are working on finding out what happened to her. We’re all on alert. I think he went for Jared first because he was Team leader. In his mind, Jared should know where the daughter is now. Traci, you saw him. He knows it. Because of that, you’ll be targeted also. They don’t leave witnesses. Luca Hauptman escaped the dragnet and while most of his followers were arrested and are still in prison, a few escaped with him.
The RTF disbanded years ago, the governments believe it was because we took them down hard enough with that operation. Now we know otherwise, Luca Hauptman is still a terrorist, he just changed his agenda. Luca Hauptman blames us for the loss of his daughter and is consumed with ideas of revenge.” Colton stopped and looked around the room again.
“What about the mother?” Traci asked quietly. She would never understand how a woman would leave her daughter with a monster and go with another man. It pissed her off that she had not fought for her own child. Traci would never do that.
“She and the informant were relocated to a small village in Italy. We had originally planned to bring them to the US, but the woman was deemed a security risk and that was cancelled. We’re looking to see if they’re still there or not. I don’t really care about her. When we notified her that we had her daughter and were willing to have her taken to where they were staying, she refused. Her reason, she said, was that she’d never been close to her daughter,” Colton said.
“Bitch,” Jade muttered and looked at Traci. “Is the daughter in the U.S.?”
“As far as we know, yes. She was brought here and adopted. The government sealed the adoption and we’re trying to get permission to look at it, but so far, they are denying our requests. It’s understandable, the girl never knew anything that was going on, she was innocent. I remember when we brought her back to the base, she was terrified.” Jared spoke for the first time.