“Shawn?”
“Yeah.” A rush of relief loosened my shoulders. “I’m here. You’re okay.”
“Oh God,” she cried and tried to push off me. Wet hair was matted to her cheeks and neck and back, but I didn’t give a shit. “I’m so sorry.”
I cupped the back of her neck and held her firmly to me. “You have nothing to be sorry about.”
“Did I hurt you?”
A few bruises to my shins maybe before I fully secured her, nothing I couldn’t take. “No. I’ve got you.”
I held her until her heart rate slowed, returning to normal, and her body cooled despite being wrapped in my arms. “What do you need? A shower? More sleep?”
“I don’t think I’d fall back asleep.” She hiccupped over a cry, and I grabbed the corner of a sheet and wiped the tears from her cheeks and the sweat off her face. “I don’t know.”
“Then let me hold you. You’re okay, and I’m not going anywhere.”
She hiccupped again, and I closed my eyes, inhaled the hotel shampoo scent in her hair, the sweet scent of everything Addi, and counted the ticks and tocks of the room’s clock until her breathing settled and she fell back asleep.
Then I let the irritating, soft ticking lull me back to sleep, Addi in my arms, curled into me and burning from her body heat.
I woke to soft hands on my stomach, quiet puffs of breath against my chest, and strands of Addi’s red hair somehow draped across my lips.
I blew out a breath and brushed them away. The sun hadn’t yet risen, but considering it was the beginning of March, that didn’t tell me how early or late I had slept in.
I slapped my hand toward the nightstand behind me until I found my phone.
5:30 blared at me in bright numbers on my home screen and I groaned, dropping back to the bed and shoving my palms against my eyes. Addi had tossed and turned all night after her nightmares, waking me with soft, pained cries I was certain I’d never forget.
Now that I was awake, there was no way I’d be able to fall back asleep.
Carefully rolling out of bed, I quickly and quietly grabbed clothes so I didn’t wake Addi. Her features were currently peaceful and relaxed, so much at odds with how she’d been during the night.
She needed sleep, and I needed coffee and a meeting with Jaxon to figure out our next steps and protection plans.
I ducked out of the room without making a noise. After using the restroom in the small bathroom off the living area of the suite, I wasn’t surprised at all to see Jaxon on the couch. He didn’t strike me as a man who slept much, especially when deep on duty like now. Papers were strewn in a messy pile in front of him, along with his tablet and phone. He sipped a cup of coffee and flipped through the pages.
He didn’t react to my presence, so I went to the kitchen and filled a mug. The irritating wait of the Keurig grated my bones and tightened my jaw. What was suddenly wrong with pots of coffee you could fill the second you wanted a cup?
Finally, after the hours-long wait, I brought it to my mouth, took the first tongue-burning sip, and closed my eyes.
“What are you looking at?” I finally asked, once the caffeine energized my veins and I was coherent enough for conversation.
“Photos.” Jaxon slid one away from him. “Look.”
The images were grainy, taken from street security camera footage. He seemed to be alone, and he had his shoulders hunched. He was preparing to enter a building through a door that was being held open for him, an arm bracing it from the inside. The photo, captured at one in the morning, only showed his profile.
“Where is this?”
“New Jersey. Close to one of the Mancussos’ businesses. I have Luca sending me anything he can find.”
The photo wasn’t clear, but I’d stared at the man’s picture enough to need to grit my teeth together to fight back the urge to tear that image in two.
“Daniel.”
Last we knew, he’d been heading south, but he could have been anywhere by now. That was a long damn way to drive, but not impossible, and the build made sense, even though he was looking down, head slightly turned in the other direction. Too bad the asshole didn’t have something noticeable, like a tattoo or visible mark anywhere above the collar of his shirt to solidify our assumptions.
“Could be. The place is a sex club, kinky shit, and in an area where auctions are done sometimes.”
The more I learned about the Mancusso family and everything they were involved in, the more I wanted to burn them all to the ground.
“If that’s the case, at one in the morning, it could be anyone.” I imagined, at least, that most of that disgusting kind of shit didn’t exactly occur during normal business hours.
“Possibly.”
I collapsed back into the couch, too exhausted to hold my head up. Running a hand through my hair, down my face, I let it fall to the back of the couch and closed my eyes.
My mind swirled with solutions. If he was in New York, how big of a threat was he?
With the media attention on Matthew, there was no way he’d return to Charleston. I assumed his mom was safely back in the Mancusso fold in New York, tucked away and protected. Her family would let Matthew swing for the sex trafficking, denying any involvement, and we already knew there wasn’t a lot of evidence to connect them.
Hell, even anything we had was circumstantial and guesses.
“So we don’t have shit. And we don’t have the manpower—”
“Or firepower.”
“Or firepower,” I repeated, “to do anything more than wait for them to leave New Jersey or New York.”
Which meant sit on our asses and wait for them to return. They wouldn’t let this slide. Their southern operation was in shambles. They’d want retaliation for the men’s lives we’d taken, for Matthew’s arrest, and for freeing Addi from their clutches.
“Unless we draw them out again,” Jaxon said.
“No.” I glared at him, whipping my head in his direction so quickly a pain sluiced along the veins in my neck. “Not again. No fucking way.”
Jaxon chewed on the inside of his cheeks and cursed, the only sign during all of this that he was frustrated or pissed. “I know. It’s just all we have.”
And it wasn’t going to happen.
Not again.
No matter how brave Addi wanted to be, there was no way in hell I was throwing her to the wolves again. Not when we still had men in the hospital.
7
Addi
If fear hadn’t still been a slithering worm in my blood, barely holding me back from a constant state of a panic attack, I might have almost felt like a celebrity as we pulled out of the hotel in Pennsylvania and headed back to Raleigh.
I was in the middle row of a large, black SUV complete with fully tinted windows, and we were stuck in between four more matching SUVs, two in the front, two in the back.
Before we slid into the back of our vehicle, I was briefly introduced to Cort. As large and fierce as Jaxon, he had a scar that ran beside his right eye like someone had tried to slash at his eye and barely missed. It gave him such a furious look that had my breath stalling in my throat when he introduced himself. Closely cropped blond hair gave him the typical military kind of appearance, and after he said Good morning to me, he shook Shawn’s hand and nodded. Apparently as much for small talk as Jaxon, he hadn’t spoken since we got on the road. He was armed, a gun at his hip that I’d noticed before I climbed into the back seat, and on the passenger seat next to him were two more guns. Shawn was equally armed, loaded, and alert. His eyes hadn’t stopped scanning our surroundings, constantly checking our planned and alternate routes on a maps app on his phone for any potential problems.