LITMIR.BIZ

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      Tate completely sympathized with what the other man had to be going through, but what Caleb was proposing almost guaranteed a bloodbath.

      “We can’t just burst in there,” he told Caleb as calmly as possible.

      “Why not? Why can’t we just walk into the place?” Caleb wanted to know. He didn’t understand why this detective who’d promised to bring his sister and the other girls back was acting so reticent. Was he going back on his word? “You said there were just two godless thugs guarding the girls. There are three of us here—and you can get more,” he pointed out.

      Caleb was obviously focused only on rescuing Hannah at all costs. He didn’t blame the man. But Tate was able to take several different points of view regarding the op besides the way Caleb did.

      Tate did his best to make the other man understand. “Yes, I can get more manpower and maybe we could rescue Hannah and the other two without incident,” he allowed, deliberately not going into how dangerous that sort of overt action could be. “But we also want to be able to rescue whatever other girls the ring has hidden away—the girls who were kidnapped for the same reason that your sister was taken. And we won’t be able to do that if the guy who’s the brains behind all this gets wind of what happened.

      “The minute he does,” Tate continued, “he’ll go underground and those girls will be as good as dead. We’ll never find them.” Tate took a breath, searching the other man’s face to see if his words had sunk in. Wondering if Caleb suspected that he was also lecturing himself as well as the victim’s brother.

      Lecturing himself because Tate had the exact same reaction, the exact desire as Caleb. He wanted to save Hannah and the girls with her as soon as possible. For two cents, he’d go in, guns blazing, and take down those two worthless pieces of trash guarding the girls with no more regret than he experienced stepping on a colony of ants.

      Less.

      The only problem was, right now there were only two henchmen visible and he knew damn well that there had to be more thugs involved than just Tweedledum and Tweedledee. An operation this big didn’t function with just two flunkies.

      There had to be more.

      He put his hand on the Amish cabinetmaker’s shoulder and looked at him compassionately.

      “I know it’s hard, but you’re going to have to be patient,” he told Caleb. “It’s the only way we’re going to be able to successfully rescue those girls. All of them,” he emphasized.

      Caleb nodded. It was obvious that he was struggling with himself. “You are right. We cannot just go in and rescue Hannah, not when there are other girls being held prisoner as well.” And then he sighed and shook his head. “But this is hard,” he complained.

      Caleb would get no argument from him. “Nobody ever said it wouldn’t be,” Tate agreed. He looked at his watch. The handler should be getting the money right about now.

      It was the handler whose job it was to pick up the funds from Gunnar that were needed for the exchange. At least that part was easy. Securing the funds would have been a great deal more difficult if he didn’t have a billionaire brother who was willing to bring down this sex trafficking ring.

      “So what’s your next move?” Emma asked her brother as Caleb retreated to the far side of the room. There was tension in her voice.

      “I’ve set up a private one-on-one session with Hannah,” he told Emma. “Seems my credentials are so good that the man at the top is allowing me to have a private ‘preview’ with my future ‘purchase.’ I’m going to try to convince Hannah to trust me, but it’s not going to be easy, given what she’s been through.”

      Overhearing, Caleb looked up, suddenly alert. “Call her Blue Bird.”

      Tate exchanged quizzical looks with Emma. “What?” Tate asked.

      “Call her Blue Bird,” Caleb repeated, crossing back to them. “It was a nickname I gave Hannah when she was a little girl. She was always running around, fluttering about here and there, so full of life, of energy. One day when she seemed to be going like that for hours, I laughed and told her she was like one of the blue birds we saw in the spring. The comparison pleased her so I started calling her that. Blue Bird.” A wave of memories assaulted him from all angles and he shook himself free, unable to deal with them right now. “If you call her that, she’ll know you talked to me and she’ll trust you.”

      Tate nodded. It was worth a shot. “Thanks. That’ll help.” As he switched his cell phone to vibrate, he saw the way Emma was frowning. “What’s bothering you?”

      There was a time she would have told him he was imagining things, that nothing was bothering her. But that was when the job was all important to her, and nothing came ahead of that. Now a lot of things did. And she was worried.

      “Frankly, I don’t like you walking back into the lion’s den unarmed.” She knew he was pushing his luck. “You made it out twice unharmed. The third time—” she began skeptically.

      “Will be the charm,” Tate assured her, finishing her sentence in a far different way than she’d intended to finish it.

      But Emma continued to look unconvinced. “The people involved in this sex trafficking ring have already killed twice,” she reminded him. “What’s to stop them from killing you?”

      He shrugged indifferently, as if she were worrying for no reason. “Well, for one thing, killing me off would be bad for business,” he told her glibly. “They’re after the money I told them I’d pay for Hannah. Word gets around that they’ve killed a client and their little virgins-to-the-highest-bidder scheme suffers a serious setback.”

      He put his hands on Emma’s small shoulders. Funny, he never realized how fragile she could feel. Or how touched he could be by her concern. “Look, we’ve both been in law enforcement for a while now and nothing’s ever happened to either of us, right?”

      “That’s my whole point,” she insisted. She put one of her hands on top of his, silently bonding with him. “Our luck’s bound to run out eventually.”

      “Eventually means someday—not today,” he pointed out with conviction. “Now stop worrying—that’s an order,” he told her. “The sooner we get the information we need about whoever’s pulling those strings, the sooner we get to wrap this up and Caleb over there gets to make an honest woman out of you.”

      Emma’s mouth dropped open for a second, and then she shook her head. “I can’t believe you just said that. Do you have any idea how incredibly old-fashioned that sounded?”

      Her choice of words amused him. “You’d better get used to that, honey,” Tate told her, kissing the top of his sister’s head. “Old-fashioned goes with the bonnet and the butter churn.”

      Emma continued to look at him, a knowing look entering her eyes. She wasn’t all that unusual, she thought. “Tell me you wouldn’t give up everything for the right person if she came along.”

      “For the right person,” he echoed, momentarily conceding the point, then quickly qualifying, “If she came along. But until she does, I’ve got work to do. And right now, I’ve got to pick up a suitcase full of money before those thugs get antsy and decide to turn Hannah over to another bidder.”

      The suitcase full of money meant he was seeing Hatfield, his handler. The thought of her brother walking around with that kind of money in a briefcase made her nervous. “I’ll go with you,” she volunteered.

      But he had something else he felt was more important for her to do. “No, you stay here and make sure that your cabinetmaker doesn’t decide to do something stupid and wind up breaking down the hotel suite door and hauling out one or both of those bozos.”

      Emma came to her fiancé’s defense. “What would you do if someone kidnapped me?” Emma asked him pointedly, trying to make her brother see the situation

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