“Yeah, well, you’re the man with the bankroll,” the guard grumbled resentfully.
“Yes, I am.”
Tate was grateful for the elaborate lengths the department had gone to in order to give him a plausible backstory. His brother, Gunnar, had funded his huge bank account.
Whoever was running this sex trafficking operation wasn’t a fool, Tate concluded. He was very, very careful to get everything right. That included vetting his clients rather than just accepting them at face value, or going with hearsay.
Nothing was simple anymore, Tate thought. Not even the peddling of flesh.
“So it’s settled?” Tate asked the man. The blank look he received in return forced him to elaborate. “I can have a private session with her?”
“Soon as I run it by the boss” came the reply.
“And how long is that going to take?”
He knew things had to progress at their own pace, but he hated the idea of leaving the girl alone with this thug for another moment, much less for another day or two. There was no telling what could happen in that amount of time, and he didn’t want to take any more chances than he had to.
“Anxious?” the other man jeered, enjoying himself. He liked having the upper hand and, in this case, he clearly got to call the shots. “Tomorrow. Come back tomorrow. She’ll be ready for you then.”
Just what did that scum mean by “ready”?
A premonition had a shiver zipping down Tate’s back, but there was absolutely nothing he could do about the circumstances. Tate was well aware that if he pressed, if he remotely said that she looked ready now or tried in any way to hurry this along, the whole thing could just fall apart on him. There were steps to take and he knew it.
That didn’t make taking them any easier.
If this was rushed, the people they were after would smell a setup and not just back off but vanish into thin air, taking the young women with them. He’d seen it before.
Hell, he’d been part of it before—having an operation unravel on him that allowed a killer to be set free. The man was ultimately taken down and brought to justice, but not before he’d killed several more young women. Young women who wouldn’t have died if he had done his job right in the first place, Tate thought ruefully.
That wasn’t going to happen again, he vowed. This time, he was going to do things by the book. Even if that meant he had to find a way to physically restrain himself.
“What time tomorrow?” he asked the guard.
“We’ll get back to you about that,” the man told him, affecting a superior attitude.
Tate narrowed his eyes, looking as cold as the man he was dealing with. Colder. “I don’t like being jerked around,” he said in a voice that contained an unspoken warning.
“Nobody’s jerking you around,” the other man promised, sounding more than a little nervous that this encounter could turn physical. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said again, this time far more amiably.
“I’ll look forward to it,” Tate said, not bothering to tone down the note of sarcasm in his voice. He looked from Hannah to the man, wondering if she even realized how breathtakingly beautiful she was. She reminded him of a rose newly in bloom. “In the meantime, I don’t want anyone touching her.”
The other man began to smirk again. “She really got to you, eh?”
Tate was aware that men like the one he was dealing with directly understood only one thing: money. It was the only language they spoke. However, he hadn’t been given the suitcase that was to be filled with the cash he was to trade for Hannah. That came tomorrow.
Whatever cash he had on him at the moment was his own, but it was only paper as far as Tate was concerned. Paper that was capable of buying both him and Hannah a little peace of mind.
Taking out his wallet, Tate removed a hundred-dollar bill. As the other man eagerly put his hand out, Tate tore the bill in half and handed one piece to him.
“What the hell is this?” the man demanded. “Some kind of stupid game?”
“No game,” Tate assured him. “You get the other half of the hundred when I come back tomorrow and see for myself that she’s all right.” His eyes bored into the other man’s dark ones. “We have a deal?”
The other man cursed roundly, then shoved his half of the bill into his pocket. “We have a deal,” he retorted grudgingly.
“Good.” Tate turned on his heel and crossed to the door.
Tate could almost feel Hannah’s eyes watching him as he walked out of the suite.
Tomorrow seemed like an eternity away.
Chapter 2
“Did you see her? Was she there?”
Caleb Troyer fired the anxious questions at him the moment the thirty-one-year-old cabinetmaker walked into the makeshift, satellite FBI office.
Rather than the customary laid-back attitude normally associated with people who came from the Amish community, Caleb reminded him of a rocket that was ready to go off at the slightest provocation.
He couldn’t say that he blamed the man, either.
“Yes, I saw her,” Tate answered.
He glanced toward his sister, who’d come in with Caleb. He sincerely wished that Emma had followed protocol and persuaded Caleb to stay away and let the task force do its work.
Granted, the distraught man was Hannah’s brother as well as Emma’s fiancé. However, Caleb was also a civilian and, in his experience, overzealous, emotionally involved civilians had a way of causing a mission to fall apart.
They couldn’t afford to have that happen. Too many young, innocent lives were at stake. And Tate had absolutely no intention of watching another mission self-destruct on him.
“How did she look?” Caleb pressed. “Have they …” At a loss, Caleb searched for a word that didn’t drag a cat-o’-nine-tails across his soul, making it bleed when he considered the implication. “Have they hurt her in any way?” he finally asked nervously.
Beneath the cabinetmaker’s apparent restlessness was anger. Tate could see it in the other man’s gray eyes. Tall and muscular, Caleb Troyer, once unleashed, would be a force to be reckoned with. Not that he could honestly blame Caleb for what he was feeling. If all went well, maybe Caleb would get his chance at some payback when the operation was over.
But until then, the man had to be restrained.
“She looks tired and frightened,” Tate told Hannah’s brother.
His response was true—as far it went. What Tate didn’t add was that when he’d initially seen Hannah in the motel room with the other two girls—before he’d been given the DVD to watch, she’d appeared to be drugged, as were the other girls. It was the easiest way to control the “inventory” and keep them from escaping.
Caleb definitely didn’t need to know that. If he did, that might provide the missing ingredient that would set Hannah’s brother off and God knew that Tate had more than enough to deal with without having to worry about the father of three suddenly going ballistic on him.
He could just picture Caleb storming into the motel room, breaking down the door and subsequently getting shot for his efforts. If that happened, he’d have another body on his hands—as well as his conscience—and his sister to deal with.
Omitting certain details was the far safer way to go in this case.
“If you know where she is, then what are we waiting for?” Caleb demanded impatiently.