Page 4 of Rescued

Swearing, he yanked on the steering wheel to get back into his lane. Luckily, he could tell by the scraping sounds that the underbrush he’d sideswiped had only taken off a little of Gunn’s paint.

Dude would get over it.

Switch reached the compound in record time, used Gunn’s key fob to open the gate, and bounced up the rutted road that led to the airfield, halfway up the mountain. Still on time—barely.

He parked the truck askew and poked his head into the guardhouse, where a couple of the wolves were on duty. “On my way out,” he said. “Personal mission.”

Before they could answer, he raced into the section of the hangar where the helicopters were parked. He gave his little bird one regretful pat and passed it by, heading for one of the longer-range military choppers.

He checked the log book, then did the preflight checks. It was fueled up and ready to go.

Climbing out, he positioned the pneumatic dolly under it, then hooked up the tractor, pulling it outside to one of the helipads. Unhooking the tractor, he returned it to the hangar, then got in the helicopter and started it up.

Its throaty engine and larger rotor sounded nothing like his, but hopefully the guards weren’t paying attention.

He spun up the rotor, made his final checks and took off. As he lifted off he saw Matéo Sanchez come running out of the building, and the muzzle flash as he fired a warning shot.

Damn, he seemed pissed. Switch didn’t know why; it’s not like anyone was using the helo.

A crackle of static came over his headphones, which he’d put on automatically, and then Matéo’s voice came on.

“Dammit, Switch! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“I needed a long-range helo. I’ll bring it right back.”

“And how the fuck am I supposed to explain this to Thanatos?”

“It’s not like he comes out of his dungeon and inspects the aircraft. Just… don’t tell him.”

He knew that wouldn’t happen. These guys were the most pansy-ass bunch of tattletales he’d ever seen. They told that refugee from an old Dracula movie everything.

And what they didn’t tell him, he seemed to know anyway.

But he’d deal with that later. It’s not like Thanatos would kill him on the spot. Probably.

And who cared if the old ghoul was pissed off? Switch didn’t work for him. He wasn’t even going to stay here.

Breanna Carter shivered on the rooftop of a building on Long Island, waiting for the helicopter that was supposed to take her from a dangerous world of glitz and glamor to a ‘safe’ place just like the one she’d spent most of her life working so hard to leave behind.

There was some irony for you.

She was still wearing the shiny red dress she’d started the evening in, and a sequined wrap that was useless against the cold.

Marie, one of the team who arranged escape plans for people like her, draped a light jacket around her shoulders. “Here. Take this until you get to the safe house. They’ll have clothes for you there.”

Breanna slid her arms silently into the jacket, stuffing her wrap in the pocket. She knew she should say ‘thank you’. She should be more grateful.

But Marie’s clipped tones and slightly judgy look said the new clothes would be a lot more practical than shiny dresses someone else had paid for. They also said, ‘That’s what you get for trying to fit in where you don’t belong. You should have known better.’

Despair was spreading through her—that old, familiar despair she’d lived with for so many years. The sick certainty that she was going to live forever in a dismal little town with no money, no hopes, no dreams. Just keeping her head down and appeasing whoever held the purse strings—employer, husband—so she could have a crappy roof over her head and cheap clothes on her back.

That’s where they were taking her. And she didn’t want to go. But she wasn’t willing to die instead.

Another shiver went through her. Her feet were freezing in the strappy heels that matched the dress. She wished she’d stuffed her fold-up flat shoes in her bag—the ones she sometimes wore home at the end of a long night partying. When Jackson let her get away with it, anyway.

He never let her or the other party girls on his string look anything but glamorous and perfect if they were where a client might see them.

Jackson’s girls weren’t call girls, the way some people thought. But they did provide a fantasy for his so-called friends: thin beautiful women who were models or looked like it, to crowd around them in clubs while they wasted literally tens of thousands of dollars in a single night on exclusive VIP rooms, crazy expensive liquor, bottle parades, and other extravagances that were all designed to make other men envious of how rich and popular they were.