Hawk and his boys were outside. Hawk on the prowl with his main man, Jorge, and another of his crew, Mo. He also had men in a surveillance van and eyes on the street, the back alley, the entrance of a nearby parking garage and the men’s bathroom.
I suspected (accurately) that Hawk was even more ready than me for this to go down. I suspected this because Creed and I had come in on the tail end of a job Hawk had been working for five months.
Apparently, some socialite in LA thought of her Mexican nanny as part of the family. She learned that her nanny’s sister, who had made a connection in Mexico to try to gain entry into the USA, had disappeared in the middle of attempting to seal this deal. Understandably, the nanny was beside herself and the socialite pulled Hawk in.
He investigated and found this happened often over the border to Mexican nationals so desperate to leave or to join loved ones that they didn’t check out the folks they handed their cash over to and thus they lost their money and their freedom.
Hawk wasted no time and got a lock on the slavery ring and the sister and it was sheer luck she was in Denver, Hawk’s home turf.
Extracting her safely was another matter which took frustrating amounts of time because it also took extreme amounts of preparation and finesse.
The part, or one of them, that made this job delicate was that, considering these folks were trafficking humans in the US of A, local cops had aligned with a federal task force to take down the entire ring which was operating multi-state. On the other hand, Hawk only had one mission, to recover the sister. So the task force wanted Hawk to back off. Hawk wanted to get the sister back to her family. There had been some butting of heads but Hawk Delgado was the kind of man who didn’t back down.
So he didn’t.
Enter me, posing as a madam of sorts on the buy for new talent. It had taken weeks and lots of work to build my false reputation as a viable buyer. Now that was done, I was to meet the contact tonight and he would take me to where they held their stock of available humans. I would confirm the girl was there, make the deal and skedaddle then Hawk and the boys would swoop in and recover the girl.
Easy.
I hoped.
“Visual. Front. Street. Mercedes parking three cars down from door,” Mo grunted into his microphone.
“Go time,” Hawk growled.
I sucked in a breath then lifted my glass to take a sip. My eyes slid back down the bar to the mirror where I could see Creed. His eyes were on me, intent, burning into my back.
He jerked up his chin.
I tipped my lips up slightly.
His eyes went to the door.
I put my glass to the bar and discreetly plucked the bud out of my ear, reached in my cleavage and grabbed my microphone, ripping it and the tape off and away.
I set them beside me on the bar and instantly, a waitress Hawk primed slid by, hand out. She covered the apparatus, walked behind me and it was gone.
I put my fingers to the slim, gold watch at my wrist, flipped a tiny switch on the side and the microphone engaged. Hawk had given me that watch. It had a microphone and GPS.
They’d pat me down, definitely. I had to go in unwired, no communications but I had Creed as a tail and the watch Hawk gave me. They could hear what was happening with me and they would know where I was at all times. I could not hear what they were up to nor know where they were.
I impatiently started to tap the toe of the foot hanging from my crossed leg and studied the watch.
Two minutes later, I heard, “Collette?”
My head turned and my eyes hit the man who acted as a middle man to sell humans.
Motherfucker.
I buried my sneer, smiled a small smile and extended my hand.
It was go time.
*
The minute I hit the warehouse, I knew I was fucked.
This was because I was meeting the principals and amongst them was Nick Fucking Sebring.
Shit, shit, fuck.
His eyes came to me and they widened momentarily as I braced, mentally preparing to run and about to scan the environs for a makeshift weapon or cover I could use until I could get my lips to my watch and alert Creed and Hawk to the situation.
But as I thought this, I saw his face go blank. He didn’t call attention to me and stared at me like he’d never met me before when he had, numerous times. I’d been working for Knight for years and Nick used to work for him too so our paths had crossed.
Fuck, how had Creed and I not clocked this?
Fuck, fuck.
Creed said Nick didn’t keep good company but seriously, these were nasty motherfuckers and we’d been all over his ass, Creed for over a month.
Seriously. How had we not clocked this?
“I take it you’re Collette?” one of the other dudes said to me on his approach.
I took a step back, surveying him, cold shoulder. There was no rule saying I had to be a friendly flesh peddler. I also did a quick head count. With the middle man, the leader of the gang who was approaching and Nick, there were three other men.
Too many.
Fuck.