Page 55 of Her Noble Protector

“I’m old enough to be your father, is who I am,” Raiden rumbled.

“I know, rad, right?” Her pretty blue eyes were dilated. He was so going to call the cops after he checked out the house next door.

He pulled her hands off his shoulders and set her away from him. “No, not rad. Go find someone your own age. Or better yet, go home to your parents.”

“Okay Boomer!” she threw up her hand. “You’re losing out.”

Raiden ignored the girl and pushed his way to the back of the house. Goddammit, they were running out of time and he was more than likely on a wild goose chase. When he got to the backyard, it was worse than in the house.

There was no grass to be seen, just cement. He saw three kegs set up and a table in the back corner where people were snorting stuff off the top.

Lovely.

He looked to the right and just a waist-high chain-link fence separated the two backyards. Surprisingly the Marks’ yard had grass and flowers. Guess the mom had taken care of things before leaving it to the gangbanger.

Raiden went to the side of the party house, ignored the couple who were actually fucking against the stucco, and slid over the fence. He took out his gloves and pulled them on.

He tried the sliding glass door, but it was locked. An easy fix because it was an outside-mounted slider. Raiden inserted the screwdriver six inches from the door frame and the door, diagonal from the latch, at the bottom, and pried upwards. He held on and then tilted the door a little bit until the latch lowered and he felt it release from the bracket.

He looked over his shoulder. Nothing had changed over on the other side of the fence except that young-love-on-stucco was over with, and the boy was passed out on the ground with the girl nowhere to be found.

Raiden let himself into the house.

It didn’t take him long at all to go through the home and realize that no one was there. He did find three guns and a bunch of weed, but nothing that pointed towards Mexico or Lisa’s kidnapping.

His pocket vibrated. Lydia. “Can this wait?” he answered.

“Clint has something, do you?”

“No. Give me three minutes and I can talk.”

“Okay.”

Raiden hung up and went out the back door, then jumped over the backyard fence. He saw two more bodies passed out in the backyard. Not good.

He made his way to the front door.

“Did you get your beer?” Bill asked.

“I got everything I needed to get,” Raiden said as he left.

He was dialing nine-one-one as he walked around the corner. The cops needed to raid that damn place, like yesterday. He was done with his civic duty by the time he got back to his rental, so he started it up and called Lydia.

“What did Clint find?”

“I’m conferencing us,” she said.

Raiden started the car and headed towards I-HOP.

“Raiden, so you got nothing?” Clint asked.

“Yep. Nothing. What did you get?”

“I made friends with a guy by the name of Rick Lopez. He’s working for a guy out of Mexico. He’s scared shitless of this guy. The guy is paying him big dollars—I mean big. But he also killed one of Rick’s partners today.”

“Does Rick know where Lisa is?”

“Not anymore.”