Alveus (ABC's Inc. Romance #1) (27 page)

“Go back to bed,
Oma,” he said, throwing clothes into the bag. “I have business to attend to in
London. I’ll call you.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw his grandmother
shaking her head sadly before retreating. Unconcerned, he finished packing.
Walking to the door, he turned for one last look. Throwing the still unopened
envelope onto the bed, he pivoted on his heels and exited the room.

Dane passed Greig
on his way back to the garage. “Make yourself at home, buddy. She’s gone and
I’m out of here!” He didn’t wait for an answer. Bringing his mobile to his ear,
he spoke, “I want the plane prepped and ready for an overseas flight – yes,
that’s right, Heathrow.” After confirmation that his private jet would be
waiting for him, Dane threw his suitcase in the boot and climbed into the
Mercedes.

Dane’s
anger began to dissipate during the drive to the airport. He remembered Lexi’s
disappointed comment,
“Disappear into the night as you always
do,”
as well as her plea,
“Daney, please don’t ever leave me again.”
She left
me
this time, he reminded himself.
“
She knows no other way.”
Her parents kept her
isolated and then left her alone when they died. And then, she is bound to have
erratic behavior after what she’d been through. The doctor in Frankfurt had
warned him that victims of human trafficking often develop p
sychological
effects including personality and dissociative disorders, suicidal tendencies, and
Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Running into Prince Ahmad had to have triggered
a reaction – hell, the asshole had pretty much left her for dead!

He
parked the car and strolled toward the private terminal. It was a beautiful
night and he watched the planes take off, enjoying a gentle breeze from the
Potomac. Pulling out his phone, he tapped Greig’s number.

“Cooled
off, yet?”

“Is
that how you always answer the phone, Droid?”

“Okay…
Hello English, have you cooled off, yet?”

“It
seems so,” Dane admitted. “Have you heard anything about where she is? Is Pips staying
with one of your sisters?”

“No,
she’s not with either one and she’s not answering our calls. We’ve been talking
and Gretch thinks Lex probably got a hotel room for the night. She seemed to
need some time alone and has likely turned off her phone. What about you – you
alright?”

“I’m
at the airport, planned to check on the London office.”

“I
may be out of line here, but are you sure that’s a good idea? I mean, it didn’t
seem too smooth the last time you tried that.”

Dane
chuckled, remembering the chewing out Brenda Gale had given him the last visit
he’d surprised her with. “You’re probably right about that,” he attested. He
noticed a large man hurrying toward him, maybe someone from the crew wanting an
update on his flight plans. “Look, someone’s coming for me, I’ll call you
later,” he said, quickly ending the call.

As
the figure drew close, Dane was hit by surprise when he recognized him.

“Have
you got a plane?” the fellow asked, bypassing greetings. Still stunned, Dane
nodded affirmative.

“Excellent,
I’m in need your help, sir,” Dice Fuller announced.

Dane
was still shocked into silence as he witnessed Dice ushering a half dozen
bedraggled young girls onto Brighton Industries Citation X. They looked
frightened, holding onto one another with one hand and clasping a blanket
around themselves with the other. Another man, dressed in black, assisted a
final girl in – actually carrying her the remaining few meters. Settling her
into a chair, he looked up and nodded. Dice had already secured the door,
turned, signaled for Dane to follow, and then entered the cockpit.

By
the time Dane sat and attached the seatbelt, the large man was piloting the jet
down the runway. He kept his questions to himself. Dice had promised to
explain, and he trusted the man to keep his word.

Finally
able to divide his attention, Dice turned to Dane.

“The
plane we flew in was sabotaged,” he explained. “Your timely presence and
cooperation has saved those girls’ lives. Perhaps not from immediate death, but
most definitely from a brutal life of sexual slavery. My team intercepted a
human trafficking exchange in New York, but once in the air our plane
experienced engine problems. I have a contact here, so we detoured to this
airport where he brought us in safely. The ground crew says that the engine
will need a complete overhaul. We’ve got to get these girls out of the country
quickly, in order to make our connection with the team who has arranged to take
them back to their homes in the
Republic of Moldova
.”

“Wow,”
Dane was wrapping his brain around the sudden challenge to his emotional state.
“My flight plans are for Heathrow…”

“We
have notified our contacts of the change,” the big guy said. “They will be
ready to meet us there.”

Dane
sat quietly, allowing the information to soak in. It was more words then he’d
ever heard coming out of Dice and noticed for the first time that the big guy’s
voice held a slight southern drawl. He had no problem with helping those poor
girls, actually they were still children. It sickened him to hear what had been
in store for them, and he was honored to play a small part in bringing them
back home to their families. He called Greig to update him on his status.

“Well,
I sure didn’t see that turn of events coming,”
his friend acknowledged.
“So, the big guy has recruited you for the NRF,
eh?”

“The
what?”

“The
NRF, Noble Retrieval Force,”
Greig clarified.
“Dice
likes to keep it under the radar, if you know what I mean, but it’s an
international team dedicated to rescuing victims of human trafficking. I’ve
been part of it since we met in Germany. He’s got some powerful people on the
team, including royalty.”

“Hence,
the ‘noble’ part of the title,” Dane assumed, noticing that he’d caught Dice’s
attention.

“Well,
no. We believe that all humans have a right to be treated nobly and that no one
has the right to force another into subjugation.”
Greig’s tone enforced his strong conviction.

“You’re
a good man, my friend,” Dane said.

“As
are you, welcome to the team!”

“I’m
not so sure you could go so far as to call me a member…” He caught a slight
grin on the face of the big guy seated next to him. “Bloody hell…”

»ɞ»ɞ«ɞ«

The
heavy gates opened, allowing the powder- blue corvette to enter the familiar
factory complex. Lexi hadn’t been able to sleep, even with the assist of a
bottle of wine she’d picked up on her way to the hotel. The room was an
impulsive extravagance that she couldn’t afford. The pre-dawn light brought
with it Lexi’s regret for all of her impulses of last evening.
Dane is a
good man.
She carried that certainty in her heart. So, why did she treat
him so unfairly – was it fear? And if so, what was she really afraid of? How
can she ever take back all of the scathing words she’d written in the note left
behind for him? Her chest wrenched in remorse, she shook her head as if to
dislodge the thoughts. She’d already been over this all night long! It was time
to put her mind to something else, and the perfect deterrent was work.

Parking
next to the front entrance, Lexi slid out of her car and swiped her key card to
unlock the door. The new security system she’d installed was state of the art.
At the sound of the door opening, the night watchman startled, pushing himself
upright in the chair. Perhaps he’d been dozing? Lexi filed that information for
later, and greeted him in her usual friendly manner. Stepping into the
elevator, she pressed the button for the top floor and waited for the doors to
close. Just as the lift kicked in, she thought she heard a voice.
“We have
company.”
Goosebumps gathered on her arms. Had she heard correctly, or was
it just paranoia?

There
was one thing that had come out of Lexi’s determinations of last night, and
that was a resolution to never allow fear to control her, ever again. The
elevator let her off on the top floor and she determinedly marched to the small
kitchen, leading to the back stairway. If the guard was untrustworthy, he would
think she was making coffee. There were no security cameras in the executive
kitchenette or in the stairway, which could only be accessed from the top
floor.

Wishing
to covertly check on the watchman, Lexi left behind the satchel she carried and
slipped her phone into the inside pocket of her light jacket, beside her
keycard. Remembering how the stairwells echoed, she quietly opened the door and
slowly guided it shut behind her. She was grateful that she had chosen to wear
soft-soled shoes, as she silently tip-toed down to the ground floor. Unease had
her softly giggling –
sneaking in my sneakers!
Slowly she opened the
door leading to the lobby.
Crap!
It would lock behind her and she had
nothing to prop it open with! She tried holding it with her foot, while she
stretched to look out beyond the small alcove the door was framed in. Nope,
can’t see the reception desk. Lexi took a deep breath for courage and allowed
the door to close behind her. It did so with a low, but audible, click. She
held her breath and took a quick glance around the wall. The desk was unmanned.

Lexi
stepped out and surveyed the lobby – no guard.
Well, he just lost his job!
Walking behind the desk, she checked the monitors he’d supposedly been watching.
Yep, one was honed in on the executive floor hallway. He
had
watched her
go into the kitchenette! The other three showed different angles of the back
parking lot… and there was movement! The watchman was leaning against the
opening of a supply trailer, looking in. Maybe he was doing his job. But,
shouldn’t he have stayed at his post and called the police? Looking up, she
noticed that the door leading to the back of the building was held open with a
rolled newspaper!
Curious-er and curious-er.
She felt her pocket to make
sure the keycard was still there, yanked the newspaper from the door and
slipped outside before it closed.

There
were three storage trailers situated in a row, at an angle from the bay doors
of the warehouse. Hugging the wall, Lexi made her way to the corner and peered
around it. She could see all three of the containers. The one furthest from the
building had its door open, but it blocked any view of the inside. She crept
closer, sticking inside the shadow of the building. She could now make out that
her employee was speaking to someone. His voice rose and he angrily slapped his
hand on the metal door. Realizing that something was going down and she was at
risk, Lexi backed up to retrace her steps.

“Well,
what have we got here?”

Lexi
screamed for all she was worth, kicked with her feet, and jabbed with her
elbows, as the heavyweight lifted her off her feet and carried her toward the
open trailer.

“Put
me down this instant!” She bit the thug’s hand as he tried to shut her up.

“Yee-ouch!”
He screamed in pain, throwing her the rest of the way.

Lexi
landed hard at the feet of her night watchman. He looked scared. She glared at
him and turned her head toward the rest of his company – and gasped.

The
female villain of her nightmares grinned triumphantly back at her.

“Help
the princess to her feet, boys,” Cass ordered. “Well, well, well, it seems our
paths are destined to keep intercepting. I would take it as a bother and get
rid of you once and for all, but you keep bringing in the money. I really don’t
see the draw, do you?” she asked her cohorts. “Maybe this time I’ll let them
have some playtime with you. How would you like that, boys? You remember my
boys, don’t ya princess?”

Lexi
was standing, with one of Cass’s
boys
holding each arm. “You mean Bert
and
Ernie
, here?” she ad-libbed. “Then, who does that make you –
Miss
Piggy?
” she asked the ample bodied blonde. The woman grabbed her under the
chin and squeezed. Bringing her face close, Cass stared into Lexi’s unflinching
eyes.

“Yeeeeess,”
she drew out the word like a purr, “I can see the firecracker Ricky warned me
about, now. Aren’t you the gift that just keeps on giving?”

Ricky?
Uncle Richard?
Lexi’s answer was to raise her knee and
jab it to her gut. Unfortunately,
Ernie
countermanded that move by
blocking it, although she did have the satisfaction of it landing in his groin.

“My
uncle is a coward, slithering away to hide under a rock. He’s nothing but a
leech that will bleed you dry, just like he does everyone else he comes in
contact with. You are a fool if you think you mean anything to him. He cares
for no one but himself!” Lexi was silenced by a hard slap across the face.

“You
are the fool, little princess,” she growled. “Ricky is a very wealthy,
extremely powerful man. He rules over a huge empire, and one day I will rule by
his side. It is you who will be crawling under a rock to hide! Gag her
disrespectful tongue and lock her in the trailer! Maybe that will cool her
temper by the time we return with the other girls.”

“Cass,
you don’t realize what you’re doing,” the night watchman warned. “She has a lot
of big shot friends. Look, I didn’t sign up for this – a few foreign girls
nobody cares about…” Cass pulled out a small pistol and shot him between the
eyes.

“Useless…
Throw him in there with her,” she ordered. “We can deal with his body later.”

»ɞ»ɞ«ɞ«

A
friendly punch to the arm woke Dane from a deep dreamless sleep. He must have
really been exhausted – with good reason. How did the other guys do it? How
many hours had it been? How many days? Crossing back and forth across time
zones within… what, twenty-four hours? Shit, it could be yesterday, for all he
knew. He’d flown a lot with his business and crossed time zones, but never the
Atlantic twice in so short a time. It didn’t help that he’d been through an
emotional crash just before this whole adventure began. But, now the unexpected
diversion was ending and he could get back to healing his relationship with
Lexi.

The
exchange had gone smoothly. They’d taxied into an open slot at Heathrow’s
private sector, next to a small opulent jet with a royal insignia from some
foreign country. Dane’s first thought was that the Queen must be entertaining
company, and then realized it was to be the transportation for their
passengers. The surprise registered on his face, but the only communication he
received from Dice was a barely perceivable nod of his head. Without a word, the
quiet giant opened the cabin door and began descending the steep stairway to
the tarmac. The other member of the team – introduced to Dane as Parley, a
take-off from his last name, Parmalee – took up a defensive position to the
left of the open door. He motioned for Dane to keep out of sight from the opening.

What
happened next reminded Dane of a duel from an old Mexican Western. Another man debarked
from the “royal” jet, and cautiously approached Dice. Both men kept their hands
ready to grab what was assuredly a concealed weapon. Both sets of eyes darted
in continued surveillance of the vicinity. They met somewhere in the middle and
spoke. The other chap smiled, turned to his plane and motioned for someone to
join them. The three men then headed to his plane.

Dane
was introduced to the first bloke as Gray, the second as Sue, and then handed a
revolver.

“Do
you know how to use this?” Gray asked, his voice laced with a mid-European
accent.  He nodded, assent. “Good, just keep your eyes out for anything
suspicious, but don’t fire unless one of us shoots first – got it?” Again, Dane
answered with a nod.

Parley
spoke softly to the girls in their own tongue, gathering them at the door. They
seemed to trust him and followed as he led them down the metal stairs. Dane was
told to stay with the plane, as the rest of the men formed a circle around the
young women, escorting them to the neighboring transport. One of the girls
broke free from the formation and ran back to give Dane a hug. She was probably
about ten or twelve years old. She looked up at him, smiling with silent
gratitude. His emotions rose to the surface. Brushing a lock of hair from her
face, he grinned in return and gave her a gentle nudge back toward the others.
He watched the perimeter vigilantly as the little one rejoined the rest. Parley
went with the girls, while Sue joined Dice and Dane for the return trip to the
states.