Page 47 of Her Noble Protector

“Fuck,” he murmured as it went to voicemail.

“Kane, call me. It’s urgent.”

He clicked back to Harry. “Kane’s unavailable. I’m going to pull in either Clint or Dex from California.”

“I can help,” Harry said.

“I know you’re Military Intelligence. I know you can help, and I want you to. That’s why we’re going to have a joint call. But you gather intel, we do ops.” He clicked away and went through his contacts. It was Clint, since his last name was Archer and he came up first.

Where are the sirens?

“Raiden?” Clint answered.

“Yeah, in Arizona. Got a situation. A kidnapping. You available to help?”

“Yep.”

“Patching you into a friend of mine who’s with me, Army Military Intelligence, Harry Chapman.”

“Link us up,” Clint said immediately.

Raiden pressed his fingers against Cami’s throat. Her pulse was good. She moaned.

“Stick with me, Cami. Help’s on the way.”

He connected the calls.

“You both on?” He heard them both say yeah. “Harry Chapman, Military Intelligence, out of Arizona. Clint Archer, Navy SEAL communications expert out of Coronado. The situation is this. Lisa Garcia, twenty-seven, recently rescued from kidnappers in Mexico, by my team. She took out one of the leaders. According to the local federales, none of the kidnappers made it out alive, we took them at their word, never confirmed. I’m thinking this is payback for her role in killing the leader.”

“Why not just a hit?” Chapman asked.

“When was this mission exactly?” Clint asked.

“The mission was eight weeks ago. You should be able to go to Captain Hale and get the info,” he told Clint. “Harry, the fact that it was a kidnapping and not a hit is the reason I think these two things are related. This is a grudge. Someone wants to take revenge, and my guess is they want to see her suffer.”

“That’s good then,” Clint said. “Means we have some time.”

Raiden closed his eyes at the thought of Lisa suffering. Then he heard sirens.

“I have a witness with me. Her name is Camilla Ross. She was hurt during the kidnapping. She said that they were driving a white van, saying Rainbow Landscape. The police are arriving; they’ll be combing the neighborhood to see what they know. If either of you could tap into that info, that would be great.”

“What are you going to be doing?” Clint asked.

“I’m going to the hospital with Cami. After that, I’m going to find these motherfuckers.”

* * *

“Where is our money?” a man asked in Spanish.

“Just calm down, you’ll get your money,” another man replied in Spanish. He sounded bored.

“I’m not going to calm down. Do you know what kind of time I could do for kidnapping? This is bullshit, I want my fucking money, and I want it now!”

She drew in a shaky breath and realized all of her clothes were on, and no one was touching her. A tear of relief seeped through her blindfold. Somebody wanted money for her. Nobody was touching her. She could deal with this.

I can.

Lisa’s whole body shook at the sound of a gun going off. Was that the sound of a body hitting the floor? It sounded like it had happened right beside her, but she couldn’t see anything. She couldn’t even scream because she had a gag in her mouth.