Hard as You Can (10 page)

But if he spilled any of this personal reaction toward her instead of speaking about her like the operational asset she was, Nick’s radar would sound off all over the place. “A little. Not as much as I hoped, but I laid some good groundwork. And, I managed to get us some ears inside her place, too. Whatever good that may do.”

Nick’s gaze narrowed. “How’d you end up at her place?”

Shane recounted the entirety of his night, from bugging Confessions and his confrontation there with Crystal, to following her to her apartment, helping her sister, and finally questioning her after bugging her apartment. He conveniently left out the dance. And the feel of her body in his arms. And how hard she’d made him no matter how much he’d tried to rein himself in.

Marz immediately got to work on the computer, connecting to the transmitters and testing the feeds.

Shane held up a hand and started counting off on his fingers. “Here’s what I nailed down for sure. Church is involved in human trafficking. Some part of it takes place in or via Confessions. And there
is
a delivery taking place Wednesday night. I think I need to sit on my hands for twelve to eighteen hours and see if Crystal reaches out. In the meantime, we get some ears on those transmissions and see if she has any conversations that might be useful. If not, I’ll need to go back in and push a little harder.”

Nick nodded. “Was she as skittish as at the club?”

“Every bit. Even in her apartment. She was pretty clearly afraid I’d be found there. No doubt by whatever scumbag took a hand to her and marked her face.” Not wanting the others to see how much Crystal’s abuse affected him, Shane scrubbed his hands over his face and tugged his fingers through his hair, still stiff with the gel.

Marz froze, his gaze cutting up to Shane, while Nick’s expression slid into a scowl. “Shit. Someone beat her?” Nick asked.

Shane dropped his hands and felt a big bucket of pissed off park itself on his chest. “Yeah. Because of what we did.”

“She said that?” Nick asked, his tone subdued, like he didn’t want to rile Shane any more than he already was. Which meant Shane was doing a stellar job hiding how angry he was over this. Fantastic.

“She didn’t have to,” Shane said, needing to put an end to this topic. “Anyway, the degree of her fear and the fact that someone had no qualms marking her in a visible way both seem to point to some kind of association with a higher-up in the Church organization. And, if I’m right that this same someone outfitted her otherwise no-frills apartment with several thousand dollars in high-end media components, he’s either a boyfriend or a sugar daddy or something. Least that’s what my gut is telling me.” Though, when they’d danced, Crystal sure hadn’t responded to him like her heart had been claimed by another man. Because,
damn,
she’d been every bit as affected by their dance as he had. He’d put money on it.

“Sounds right,” Nick said. “Seems like the sister could be an in with Crystal, too. If the girl needs medical care she’s not getting, you could no doubt white knight it and earn some favor.”

Shane frowned. “If Jenna’s not getting treatment or medicine, she’s in some serious trouble. She had a full-blown grand mal seizure. Doubtful Crystal’s pulling in health benefits as a waitress, so unless someone’s picking up the tab, I have no idea how she’d cobble together money for the meds. They’ve gotta be damn expensive.”

The clacking under Marz’s fingers stopped. “Hold up a minute. If someone
is
covering the sister’s doctors’ bills and meds, that’d certainly give that person a strong hold on Crystal, and it would incentivize her loyalties toward them and away from us. If any of that’s true, you sure we aren’t barking up the wrong tree? ’Cause we don’t have time to spare.”

Marz had a point, so Shane bit back the knee-jerk irritation that threatened at the suggestion that Crystal wasn’t reliable. Because his gut told him she was even if she needed a little time. Years of finding, managing, and working with informants gave him a sixth sense about these things that he’d learned to trust. “What you’re saying all follows, except we don’t know if any of it’s true. Until we do, Crystal’s our best option. And it’s worth saying that she was more than a little interested in my medical training. Like maybe she saw an alternative in me. But I could only push so far without scaring her off. I’ll figure out what’s going on. Don’t doubt it.”

“I don’t,” Nick said. “But we can’t put all our eggs in one basket. Tomorrow night, B-Team should visit Confessions and see what else they can learn and who else they might be able to tap for intel.” B-Team was one of the three-man teams they’d created to run the operation that led to Charlie’s rescue. They’d had two possible locations to investigate—Shane, Nick, and Easy on A-Team focused on Confessions, where Charlie had in fact been held, and B-Team’s Beckett, Marz, and Miguel infiltrated one of Church’s front businesses, a storage facility across town.

Out of nowhere, Charlie’s recollections about his time in the storage facility slammed into Shane’s brain. He braced his hands on the desk as the pieces turned in his brain . . . and finally clicked together. “Well, goddamn,” Shane said.

“What?” Marz and Nick said at the same time.

“Church’s storage facility. When we interrogated that thug on the boat the other day,” Shane said, referring to the man whose attempts to kidnap Becca had landed him on the wrong end of Nick’s favorite knife, “the guy said Charlie had been at the storage facility, and Charlie said he’d heard women locked up inside there with him. Jesus. Could a storage facility be any better of a place through which to traffic women? I bet there are box trucks in and out of there all the time, maybe even container storage. What if there are records at that facility that would give us more intel relevant to Wednesday’s meeting? What the cargo is, who the cargo’s intended for, maybe even where it’s being delivered.”

“Well done,” Marz said, his fingers flying over the keyboard again. “Maybe I can get us into their server. If not, we’ll need boots on the ground. Shane could be right, though. There’s a reason they were so trigger-happy there.” And Marz would know, seeing as how three of the Churchmen’s bullets had turned the guy’s pants into Swiss cheese.

“All right. This is good. We’ll brief everyone in the morning and put together a plan. In the meantime, you two should get some shut-eye,” Nick said. “We all look like the walking dead.”

Marz chuffed out a weak laugh as he scrubbed his hands over his face. “Roger that,” he said, pushing out of his chair. “I’ll start fresh on all this on the flip side.”

“You guys make any progress here?” Shane asked. Marz’s computer research was at the center of a number of mysteries they were trying to solve.

Marz blew out a long breath and tugged his longish hair behind his head. “I spent all night burying our IP address so deep you’d have to go to China to find it. Now I’ve got some spiders crawling the web for all possible meanings of ‘WCE,’” he said, referring to the depositor’s initials Charlie had found in his father’s twelve-million-dollar bank account.

Shane pressed his lips into a tight line. Twelve million dollars. Apparently the going rate for selling out the men and the values you were supposed to defend. Fucking Merritt. Shane counted his failure to see his commander’s true character as the second biggest mistake of his life.

After Molly.

Sighing, Marz continued. “Also been trying to unravel the mystery of Becca’s bracelet without much luck yet.” When they’d rescued Charlie the night before, the guy had only needed one good look at a bracelet their father had sent back from Afghanistan to see that the design actually embodied binary codes that translated to six-digit numbers. What those numbers meant, though, nobody knew. Marz pointed to a cardboard box sitting on the far end of his desk. “And I sorted through all the papers Becca had from her father, but nothing seemed to connect to the numbers.” The frustration in Derek’s voice was unusual, but understandable. They were looking for a needle in a Himalaya-sized haystack.

“You’ll figure it out. Don’t worry about it,” Shane said. If anybody could, it was Derek DiMarzio.

“Appreciate the vote of confidence, but I feel like I’m spinning my wheels. Charlie might be able to help, though. After all, I’d missed the bracelet, and he’d only needed one look to realize its significance.” Shane suspected Marz might be right since Charlie seemed to have been cut from the same scary-brilliant cloth. Marz shrugged. “Anyway, the transmitters are all up and running, so anyone wanting to listen in or review the recordings can.”

“Thanks, man,” Shane said, clasping hands and bumping shoulders with the guy.

“
No problemo.
” Marz repeated the action with Nick, then headed toward the door, his nearly even gait almost hiding the fact that, a year ago, Shane had held the man’s femoral artery between his fingers when a grenade had blown off everything below his right knee.

When Shane looked at the guy, he saw many things—a survivor, a friend, a brilliant mind. But he also saw one of the few unequivocal things he’d done
right
in his life. It wouldn’t make up for failing Molly or his team.
Nothing
could make up for that. But it sure explained why Shane always felt that just a little of the weight on his shoulders lifted when Marz was around.

Because it was surprising just how much a lifetime of guilt weighed when saddled around a man’s shoulders.

What a fucking track record Shane had. No run-of-the-mill screwups for him. No. His mistakes were of the epically catastrophic kind. Every damn time.

Which was why, with every passing minute, Shane’s instincts lit up all over the place when it came to Crystal. Saving her just might represent a chance to earn a little redemption. He felt the truth of that into his very marrow. Any other outcome was unthinkable. Intolerable. Liable to take him to his knees once and for all.

Shane forced himself from his thoughts and turned to Nick. “How come you’re over here with us ugly mugs instead of holing up with a certain blond-haired cutie?”

A hint of humor flashed across Nick’s face. “We were holed up until Charlie started feeling bad. He said he was okay, but Becca wanted to sit up with him for a while.”

“Gotta respect that.”

“Yeah. I can only imagine how I’d feel if it were Katherine lying in that room right now, having gone through what Charlie did.”

Nick didn’t mean anything by mentioning his younger sister. Shane knew he didn’t. But it still totally sucker punched him. Because having failed to be there for Molly when it mattered most, he’d never get the chance again.

“Aw, goddamn, man, I didn’t mean—”

“Ain’t a thing,” Shane said, shaking his head. “Just know if I can help with Charlie, you can count on me.” Suddenly, Shane realized the gruffness in his words made them sound a bit like an accusation given their recent history.

Sure enough, Nick’s expression told him he’d heard the same thing. Damn, would they never recover that old, comfortable easiness that once came so naturally? “Thanks. I hope you know the reverse is true, too. Always has been.”

“I know you have my back.” Which wasn’t exactly the same thing as being able to count on someone, was it? When the shit was flying, sure. Shane had no doubt that Nick Rixey would have his six. But day to day, when the crisis was past, and it was just the regular slog of life, when they no longer had this catastrofuck of a situation to drown out the physical and mental pain this past year had inflicted? Yeah, he wasn’t so sure about that.

Time would tell, he supposed.

A weighty pause filled the space between them. Nick crossed his arms and dropped his gaze to the floor. “But . . . ?”

Shane shook his head. “I don’t need to say it, Nick. You know as well as I do what went down between us.”

Rixey gave a tight nod. “I do. Question is, you gonna let me build a bridge or not?”

If only it were that simple. Shane didn’t want to hold this grudge. Feeling hurt and betrayed took energy and headspace he didn’t have to spare. But some emotions couldn’t be willed away. No matter how hard you tried. He had a lifetime of experience to prove it.

“Come on,” Nick said, walking away.

“What?”

“Just come on.”

Sighing, Shane forced himself to move, no idea what Nick wanted and very little patience left to find out. Halfway across the room, he yawned so big his eyes watered, and his jaw cracked—

Something knocked him in the gut. “What the hell?” he said, his arms rising up to block the attack and finding . . . a pair of black boxing gloves resting in his grip. He glared at Nick. “Aw, hell no.” He tossed them to the floor, his patience just about worn clean through.

“Pick them up,” Nick said, tugging on a thick black glove.

“No.” Shane stepped toward the door.

Nick moved in front of him, blocking his way. “Pick. Them. Up.”

“I’m not fighting you.” Shane nailed the slightly taller man with a glare. Throwing fists wasn’t going to fix what was broken between them, and Shane wasn’t a vindictive asshole. At least, not usually.

Jabbing both gloved hands against Shane’s shoulders, Nick’s light green eyes narrowed. “Put the goddamn gloves on, McCallan.”

The shove made Shane’s GSW sting like a mofo and tripped a wire in his brain, unleashing all kinds of things he’d been trying to hold tight. Anger. Regret. Hurt. Guilt. He shoved right back. “Screw you, Rix.”

“That’s the spirit. Now do as you’re told and glove up.” He knocked his gloves together and arched a brow.

Do as I’m told?
“Fuck that noise. We aren’t working for Uncle Sam. And you sure as hell aren’t my superior anymore. What’s your fucking problem, anyway?”

Pressing his lips together, Nick shook his head. “I’m not the one with the problem.”

Shane scoffed. “Oh? Is that right? Then why’d you shut me the hell out the past year?”

“And
now
we’re getting somewhere.” Nick walked past him, and Shane flinched back, his adrenal gland doing its job and flooding plenty of fight instinct through his body. He was wound as tight as barbed wire. Nick scooped the gloves from the ground, turned, and chucked them at him again. Hard.