Page 90 of Love at First Rep

Typing continued until Carson answered. “A green 2010 Honda Civic, so he’s not doing this for the money.”

“Danvers, Babs,” McHugh started, and Garrett had to remind himself those were the code names for Thea and Taylor. Memorizing one set of names was hard enough. Did they really have to give him two? “Put a tracker on that abomination. Felicity, where does he live?”

Carson answered after a moment of typing, reminding him that Felicity was his code name. Freaking BFS. “He lives about thirty minutes from here in a townhouse.” Carson pulled up satellite imagery of the guy’s place. “His alarm system runs on an app that’s so easy to hack, even one of you could do it.”

Doubtful. Garrett wouldn’t even know where to start, and had no idea about the skill level of everyone else in the room.

“Tracker’s on his car,” Thea said.

“Great. Head back to HQ and we can talk kidnapping,” McHugh commanded.

Anatoly rubbed his hands together like a freaking supervillain, a terrifying glint in his eyes. “Finally, time for fun.”

28

A MAN SAT IN the middle of the interrogation room, a bag over his head. Cru wandered around him. Rafe glanced at Garrett to see him focused on the scene and wondered if he experienced any déjà vu from his interrogation the day before.

Wait, was that yesterday?

Time was hard to keep track of in the middle of a mission like this. At least for this round of questioning, Rafe and Garrett were untied and free behind the two-way mirror, along with the rest of the team. Except for Felicity, who watched the feed from the command center.

Rafe reached for Garrett’s hand and intertwined their fingers, drawing Garrett’s gaze. He gave Rafe a soft smile. Garrett was practically a weapon himself, capable of so many things, but that smile? That had the power to disarm Rafe faster than anything else.

A pained shout broke the silence, and Rafe’s gaze snapped back to the room. Mick was awake and frightened, but Cru wasn’t about to go easy on him. Hopefully, some intimidation would get him to talk.

Every so often, Garrett tightened his grip, likely a reaction to watching Cru work, or Anatoly, as he’d introduced himself to Garrett. Rafe had to wonder if Garrett had any trouble keeping track of everyone. At least Brookie, who maintained her spot across from Mick to intimidate him, only had the one name to worry about.

It didn’t take the Russian long to get everything they needed. Cru was terrifying when he needed to be, and he handled this guy like a typical suspect, rather than playing the cat and mouse game he’d employed with Garrett. This time, he wore a tattered hood to conceal his identity, only his eyes visible to Mick. Way better than Miguel’s Fake-Ass Zorro shit. Rafe planned on teasing Miguel with that nickname as much as he could.

“I needed help,” Mick cried, tears running down his cheeks. “They kept sending us more and more kids when we were already overcrowded. The warden said my job would be on the line if I couldn’t stop the fights, which escalated every day. I had to do something. I can’t afford to lose my job. I’m still paying off student loans, and rent is insane. I can’t…”

Mick trailed off, a wave of sobs hitting him.

“How did you find out about the drugs?” Cru rasped, his Russian accent thicker than usual.

Once Mick regained control of his breathing, he said, “A woman reached out to me, said she could help. Said she could take care of my problem without anyone getting hurt. I tried saying no, but then…” Mick paused to take a deep breath. “She sent me a picture of my mom gardening in her front lawn and said people would make me pay if I refused. I had no other choice. And the drugs worked! It only took a couple days of dosing the water supply for everyone to calm down. They don’t have the energy to fight anymore. They can’t…”

The man broke into another round of sobs.

Rafe shook his head in annoyance. Sure, drugging a bunch of teenagers, even if they committed crimes, was fucked up. But this guy felt like he didn’t have a choice. They all lived under a broken system that made the richest richer and left everyone else shit out of luck. It was only a matter of time until people got desperate enough to do the unthinkable. Especially when they were being threatened. Rafe could see in Cru’s slumped stance that he had the same thoughts. Mick wasn’t an evil villain worth torturing, just a desperate man who should have blocked an unknown number.

“The woman, who is she?” Anatoly said. “Tell me everything, and I will let you live. Hold back, and I will let Brookie chew on your body parts for lunch.”

“I don’t know her name, I swear,” Mick choked. His arms and legs were tied to his chair, and his button-down shirt soaked through with sweat. “I only have a phone number, but I never deleted any of our messages. You can see our whole conversation. We only ever texted. I saved her under Aunt Tabitha, like she told me to.”

Cru stomped over to the counter filled with his torture tools and grabbed Mick’s phone. He held it up to Mick’s face to unlock it and walked away as he fiddled with it. A moment later, the door to the observation room banged open, and Cru held out the phone to McHugh.

“That was much less fun than I thought it would be,” Cru said, and Rafe could tell he was frowning behind his hood.

“Don’t worry, Cru,” McHugh said. “I’m sure this will lead to some real bad guys for you to torture eventually.” He turned to the rest of the group. “I’m going to give this to Felicity. Clean this guy up and get him home. Put a protection detail on him and his mom.”

McHugh left the room, and everyone followed. At this point, none of them needed explicit instructions on what to do. They were a well-oiled machine.

Rafe turned to Garrett. “I’m going to set up the protection detail, and you’re going to work on the contact with Felicity and Robin. You’re going to comb through those text messages for intel on the drug network. You can see if there’s any clues about who this person is, if we can’t track the phone number.”

“Why Robin?”

“He’s incredible with puzzles and codes and can read between the lines better than anyone I’ve ever met.”