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1
LEE
The thud of the helicopter rotors reverberated through me as I stared down at the blackened waters of Lake Michigan. This entire rescue mission was nothing but a giant clusterfuck, and my thoughts had turned as dark and cold as the frigid December night.
From being tasked with finding a single missing person, to losing one of my men and adding two more missing persons to the list, this whole night reminded me of why I’d finally left the Marines.
A fuckin’ mess.
When my friend and colleague, Vinny Leonetti, had called earlier requesting help, I hadn’t given it a second thought. Vinny had helped me in innumerous ways. Finding his girlfriend’s missing friend had sounded like just another open and shut case. Never once did I imagine this would be the last case my employee, Brendan Stone, would ever work.
“They took Jen, and Levi’s gone too,” Vinny had said over our comms.
He didn’t say what happened to Brendan, but he didn’t need to. There was no way my man would have let anyone take Jen and Levi if he was alive.
My chest clenched, and I gritted my teeth against the pain. I couldn’t have anticipated someone barging into the apartment I left him in, murdering him and abducting Jen and their fifteen-year-old friend.
“There, on the right,” our pilot, Van Thaylor, broke in after what seemed like hours of quiet. “Is that the trawler you’re looking for?” He read off the boat’s registration number on the hull, and one of Vinny’s buddies on the other end of our comms confirmed it was correct.
We’d tracked Jen this far—to this dark patch of water near the Manitou Islands—and I could only hope her friend, Kelly O’Connor, was with her.
I peered through the darkness, eyes locked on the solid white, red, and green lights around the boat. They gave off enough light to see some of the crew on board—from the looks of it, only one piloting the boat and another four spaced out around the bow. There was no hiding from them, not with the noise of the chopper rattling the air.
Once they caught sight of us, they started to move, guns raised toward our craft as their own bobbed and dipped on the waves. Thaylor maneuvered the helicopter toward the bow as my men and I readied to disembark. We hadn’t even gotten the door open before they started to shoot.
Maxwell and Dennis were first to jump off. They laid down fire the moment their feet hit the deck, keeping the assholes from taking the rest of us out as we climbed aboard. My old Marine buddy, Mitch Saunders, got the first hit. His gun went off over my head as I jumped down. The thud of the gunblast felt like it hit me in the chest. My lungs squeezed as the dead man fell to the floor. Another man fell over the rail as the force of Warren’s bullet slammed into him and pushed him off his feet.
“You two,” I said, pointing toward Dennis and Maxwell, “go around the starboard side. Saunders, Johns, follow after and keep an eye out. I want this boat stopped now. Warren, you’re with me.”
My men listened to my orders, their guns going off and hopefully taking down a few of the others who were returning fire. Warren followed after me, watching our backs as I watched our fronts. I took down one man who jumped out from behind a door, then sped along until we got to the empty, open deck at the stern of the boat.
I caught movement off to my left, and I spun in that direction, gun raised and ready to shoot before my brain caught up and stopped me, forcing me to lower the weapon.
“Jen?” Vinny’s girlfriend was on her hands and knees, her wrists bloody around the plastic ties binding them, her pants rumpled and pulled down her thighs. Her head whipped up at the sound of my voice, and her terrified gaze met mine. “You okay?”
She accepted my lowered hand, allowing me to pull her from the floor. “I will be.” Her voice shook as she cast a glance toward the door she’d tumbled out of—and the bloodied head of the man lying there. “Kelly’s downstairs. Rhys has her and I think…”
“It’s alright.” I pulled her closer, wishing I could give her the comfort I knew she needed but knowing I didn’t have the time. Not if Kelly was in danger. That’s who we’d come here for. I whipped out my knife and sliced through the plastic ties on Jen’s wrists before handing the blade to her. “My men are on board clearing the boat. You stay here, Warren and I will go downstairs and get Kelly.”
“There are others there,” she called as we turned toward the steps. “A lot of them.”
I gave a sharp nod, then followed Warren down the narrow stairs.
Knowing what I did about the people who took Kelly, I still wasn’t prepared for what we found below. Two dozen or more women and teenage girls were tied to rails that were bolted to the floor. Some looked ill, some were balled up on the floor, each in differing levels of disarray.
Bile rose in my throat when I saw them, and I tried to tamp down the thoughts of what would have happened to them had we not arrived. I dragged my gaze across each bedraggled form, looking for the shock of wild red hair and the round, freckled face from the pictures Vinny had shown me.
Warren turned to me when he reached the end of the room, face pinched in concern. “She’s not here.”
“Fuck—” Before I could say more, a sharp scream came from the room to the side of the stairs. Warren raised his gun, and I ducked as low as I could, slamming my foot against the door and barreling in.
The horror before me stopped me in my tracks.
Kelly was there, her hair fisted in the hand of a dark-haired man, her skirt flipped up over her ripped shirt as he did exactly what I’d hoped to prevent. The bullet from my gun pierced his skull, putting a stop to that. Blood splattered Kelly and the wall behind her as the man’s eyeglasses shattered against the bulkhead near her face. She shrieked, kicking and pushing, tossing the asshole to the floor as she scrambled away, scrambled for the corner of the filthy, disgusting mattress.
“You okay?” Warren called from behind me, and Kelly’s frantic gaze zipped to mine.
“Got her,” I called back, trying to quiet my voice and the rage pumping through my veins. I lowered my gun, raised my hands, and ducked through the doorway into the room. “You alright?”
