RYDER: A Standalone Military Romance (Blake Security Book 1) (12 page)

              “Lynn.”

              “A pretty name for a beautiful woman. Thank you, Lynn. I have one more favor to ask.”

              She laughed. “Do all of these favors at least get me your phone number?” He grinned and picked up the pen attached to a chain on the counter. Taking a slip of paper out of his pocket, he wrote a number down on it and slipped it to her. I wondered if it was his real number. She flushed bright red and gushed, “Thank you. Now”—clearing her throat—“what else can I do for you?”

              “A man in a suit is about three places behind us. He’s going to ask you where we’re going. Will you tell him California?”

              She giggled and then said, “Are you serious? Normally, we just tell people that’s against the rules.”

              “He might be very persuasive. If you just tell him California, it will save you and me both a lot of trouble.” She nodded, and he winked at her and said, “I’ll be looking forward to that call.” I heard another giggle as Blake took hold of my arm and we walked toward the boarding platform. It would never fail to amaze me the things some people would do for money or a pretty face.
             

ALICIA

              I had been further surprised when Blake and I actually got on a bus headed for Gulfport. My head was filled with questions, but my anxiety kept me silent on the one-hour drive. When we got to the bus station and stepped off, I was ready to ask them, but as soon as I saw Ryder standing there waiting for us, my mind was back on that one track. He was wearing the same kind of uniform that Blake had on—only his had short sleeves. His biceps bulged out from underneath it, and in spite of everything else going on in my life at the moment, I was almost driven to touch them. I didn’t have to wait. He approached as soon as he saw us, and right there in front of Blake he took me into his arms.

As I was crushed to his big chest I said, “I’m so sorry.”

              I felt his lips brush against the top of my head. “It’s okay, just promise me you’re going to let us help you. You can’t do this alone, Alicia.”

              I pulled back and looked up at his handsome face. I saw everything I was looking for in his eyes. “Okay” was all I could manage. He put his arm around me and looked at Blake.

              “We’ll meet you there in fifteen?”

              “Twenty,” he said. “Unless you want to lend me your bike.”

              Ryder laughed. “Twenty,” he told his friend with a wink. I didn’t know what they were talking about until he led me over to a shiny black Harley-Davidson with bright orange flames painted on the gas tank. He slipped two helmets off of the handlebars and handed one to me. I took it but couldn’t believe he actually expected me to get on that thing.

              “I’ve never been on a motorcycle.”

              He grinned. “Another first then—like the boat. I feel honored.”

              “Ryder, I don’t know…”

              He cupped my chin in his hand and tipped my face up to his. “Trust me?” I nodded, and he took the helmet out of my hands. He slipped it over my head, and I stood there and let him strap it on. As I said before, the things a person will do for a pretty face. I watched him slip on his helmet and then straddle the bike. “All you have to do is hold on,” he said. “I’ll do the rest.” With a deep breath, I swung a leg over the bike and sat behind him. “Hold onto me, Alicia.”

I wrapped my arms around his waist, and he started the bike. It rumbled and growled to life and began to vibrate underneath me, sending tingles to every part of my body. I leaned into him tighter, not because I was scared at that point, but because I could hardly contain the excitement I was feeling. I felt him reach down and cover my hands with his for a second, and then suddenly we were moving. I felt the wind whipping through my hair and the pressure of the velocity pushing against me as he gained speed. That wore off as soon as we were cruising, and I was able to pick up my head and look around. Somehow Mississippi looked more beautiful from the back of a bike. Or maybe, it was simply the back of his bike that made everything look better. It definitely felt good to have my arms around him. I was completely comfortable…right up until he leaned the bike nearly down into the pavement and zoomed around a corner. My stomach flipped and rolled and my heart pounded against my rib cage. Once we were back upright, my vital signs continued to soar, not because I was scared but because I was so excited. Ryder sped up one street and down the other. I had no idea where he was taking me, but for the first time in a long time I allowed myself to completely trust someone, and it was amazing at how much lighter just the idea of telling him my secrets suddenly made me feel.

I was having so much fun on the bike that I was almost disappointed when we drove up in front of a small house in a quiet little neighborhood. I reluctantly let go of him when he stopped the bike and slid off. As I pulled off the helmet, I couldn’t contain the giggle that welled up inside of me. “That was…incredible.”

He grinned and put the kickstand down and slid off the bike himself. He slid off his helmet and took mine and attached them both to the handlebars. “When this is all over, I’ll take you for a real ride.”

I loved the sound of all of this being over. I also loved the sound of Ryder still being a part of my life when that happened. I might be kidding myself, but I wanted to believe that so badly.

He took my hand and started to lead me up to the house. He stopped suddenly before we reached the door. After that ride and now with his brown eyes locked into mine, my entire body was humming with need. He brought a hand up and lightly played with a piece of my hair that hung down along the side of my face before tucking it behind my ear and then leaning down to kiss me. I could hear his heavy breaths, and just before our lips met the thrill of the fact that I was doing that to him ran through me. He kissed me deep and hungry, and I heard myself moan into his mouth. That seemed to spur him on, and his hands were suddenly on my waist, pulling me tighter against him as his hot tongue explored my mouth. The rest of the world had all but disappeared right up until I heard the sound of Blake’s deep voice. “Come on you two, get a room. You’re sickening.”

I pulled back, embarrassed. Ryder didn’t look embarrassed in the least. As a matter of fact, he looked kind of proud of himself—and that made me feel even better. It took me a second to realize there was another man with Blake. He stepped up to the door and unlocked it. This man was shorter than Ryder and Blake but looked to be just as muscular. He was wearing the same thing they were, and the tattoos on his dark arms ran from underneath the sleeves of his t-shirt all the way to his wrists. His black hair was thick and sticking up in about five different directions, but it was a good look on him. His eyes were so dark they were almost black, but when he trained them on my face, all I saw there was softness. “Alicia, this is Abrahem.”

He smiled and the whiteness of his teeth sharply contrasted with his dark olive skin. “It’s a pleasure, Alicia.” He had an accent, but it was one I didn’t recognize. Judging from the looks of him, I’d have to guess he was from somewhere in the Middle East. He stepped back and let me enter the house first. I was startled by the sight of another man in the living room until I realized I knew this one, too. It was Leif. He’d filled in for Ryder a lot at the mansion, and I really liked his easy-going ways. He usually looked like a young country boy to me, but today—in his camo uniform—he looked like a soldier, like the rest of them.

“Have a seat, Alicia,” Ryder told me. “I’m going to get us something to drink.” Leif looked up from the computer he was typing things into and said hello.

“Hi,” I told him, as I took a seat in the chair across from him. Blake followed Ryder into the kitchen and Abrahem sat down on the couch next to Leif. Leif looked at him and pointed at something on the computer screen. Abrahem pulled his brows together in the middle and seemed to be reading something.

When he finished he asked Leif, “Have you verified that?”

“Yep, just now.”

“Does Blake know?”

Leif shrugged. “I haven’t told him yet. Y’all just got here, remember?”

Abrahem rolled his eyes at Leif, and then looked over at me and said, “Are you doing okay, Alicia?”

I nodded. I was okay but still anxious and slightly confused. As I looked around the room, I could see all kinds of sound and surveillance equipment. I wondered what it was all for. I didn’t ask however. I waited for Ryder and Blake to come back from the kitchen. Ryder handed me a glass of sweet tea and then sat on the arm of the chair I was sitting in. Blake took the other chair, and once everyone was settled, he looked at me with those piercing green eyes and said, “So let me tell you what we know Alicia, and you can fill us in on what we’ve missed when I’m done, okay?”

I nodded and took a sip of my tea to soothe my dry mouth.

“Once we realized you were the target and not the baby, we started looking in a different direction. What we found out surprised us, to say the least. Your ex-husband seems to have a lot more money and power than we gave him credit for. Once we started digging, we realized that was probably due to the fact that he’s been accused of trafficking drugs, as well as humans, for years. So far nothing the authorities have on him has stuck. Usually someone else becomes the fall guy. None of his men will talk. It’s obvious they fear for their safety, or the safety of their family. Witnesses that have come forward have disappeared without a trace within weeks of agreeing to testify. Once a man goes to work for him, it’s for life. Either he will die an old man in Abel’s service, or as a young man, possibly at Abel’s hand. They seem to prefer prison over the idea of betraying him. That’s possibly due to the fact that the bodies in every murder Abel has been accused of have been badly mutilated before death.

Divorcing this man the way you did was an act of bravery deserving of a medal. One has to wonder why you’re still alive. I have a theory, but I’d really like to hear it from you. We all would. If you really want us to help you, then you’ll have to trust us, all of us, with your secrets.”

I looked up at Ryder. His eyes softened as he looked at me, and he nodded his head slightly. I sucked in another shaky breath and started to talk. The four men all had their eyes on me, and the only sound in the room—other than my voice—was their steady, even breaths as they listened.

“My brothers and I did not have a good life in Georgia. Our mother worked as a prostitute. She did nothing to hide that fact from us or anyone else. She used to tell us that it was a sin for us to be ashamed of her since she was doing all she could for us. That might have been easier to believe if when she was home, she acted at all like a mother. To my mother, every man was made to be used, and she had ideas in her head that someday she’d finally meet a rich man who wanted to take care of her and us.”

ALICIA

I took a break from talking and stood up and stretched my legs. Leif was still furiously tapping the keys of his laptop, and every so often Abrahem would look over his shoulder. Blake and Ryder were both trying not to rush me I think, but I was anxious to get this over with, so I sat back down and started talking again.

“When I was fourteen Mother met Abel Rapava at one of the clubs in Georgia. She was still fairly young, and her beauty hadn’t faded away too much at that point. He saw an opportunity and so did she. He offered her a position in one of his brothels in Moscow. She would be in charge of the girls and teaching the new ones as they came in. I didn’t find out until years later that most of the women in Abel’s places weren’t there by choice. My mother had to know that all along, yet she worked for him willingly because he not only paid her well, he supplied her with the drugs that she craved. I don’t know when she gave up on the idea of him wanting her as his wife someday, but when she did, her ideas of salvation came in the form of her then seventeen-year-old daughter. By that time, all of my brothers except Aleks worked for him. Aleks was smart, and while everyone else was wrapped up in the drug and human trafficking trade, he was studying and applying for universities and visas. He got accepted to the University of Mississippi on a visa, and when he left at eighteen, he promised he’d be back for me.

“Meanwhile my mother and older brothers had different plans. Abel showed up at our house one day and informed me that when I turned eighteen I would be his wife. I was given no room to object. I tried to run away, but I was caught the same day, beaten, and taken to Abel. I never saw the men again that beat me. My mother told me he had them killed for putting their hands on me. She thought it was something I should be proud of. It ‘proved’ he really loved me. In my mind, it only proved that he owned me.

“After we got married he put me in one of his clubs, working as the hostess. Everyone knew who I was, so even though there were rooms there that the other girls who worked for him were invited to and ‘entertained’ in, I was never approached. Everyone in Moscow lived in fear of him, and for a while, since under his protection and safe in his home, I thought that things might work out okay. We were married for about a year when he began to change toward me. He started out by saying cruel things and that advanced to physical abuse.” I felt Ryder take my hand. His tightened down on mine and gave me strength to keep going. “He told me I would be killed if I tried to leave him, but I decided that I’d rather be dead than beaten every day for the rest of my life and raped at his will. Karissa, my brother Daniel’s wife, tried to help me. That time—when I got caught Abel was the one to beat me. He beat me until I was nearly dead, and then took me to his doctor and insisted they “fix” me. I was bed-ridden for months. By the time I was healed enough to even be seen in public, it was almost a year later. That was when I found out that Karissa had disappeared. The police believed Daniel killed her, and if it came down to him admitting Abel did it or confessing, Daniel would have spent his life in prison for it.

“Abel decided then that we needed a child. He was like two different people. Some days he would tell me how having a child would “fix” what was wrong between us. Other days he would tell me that as soon as I gave him a child he was going to send me to hell with Karissa, and when that child was old enough, he was going to put her to work in one of his clubs. I was sick all the time, so when I did become pregnant, I didn’t know it right away. When my pregnancy was confirmed that was the exact moment I decided that no matter what I had to do in order to prevent it, Abel was not going to raise him or her.”

I looked up at Ryder. I expected to see judgment in his eyes, but all I saw was sadness. He seemed to understand how worried I was about what he might think of me. He bent down and whispered in my ear, “You’re doing great. Take as long as you need.” He reached for my hand, and I gave it to him. His touch energized me and gave me courage to go on.

“I grew to hate Abel the first year I lived with him before our daughter was born. Behind closed doors he was cruel and sadistic. I had no idea how to escape or where to go, but I knew if I stayed with him I would have to kill myself. Then when Natalia was born, things changed for me. I still despised Abel, but I began to think like a mother. If I took her and ran, what kind of life would I be able to offer her. Abel could give her everything, and as long as I was there to protect her, she would be okay.” I finally looked up at Ryder. Telling this man that had been abandoned by his own mother that I have a child had been one of my biggest fears. I expected to see judgment in his brown eyes. Instead, all I saw was warmth and empathy. He squeezed my hand again and gave me a little smile. I did my best to smile back and went on, “After my daughter Natalia was born Abel made me leave her with the nanny and go back to work in his club. I hardly ever got to see her and it was killing me, but being at the club did two things for me. One, it gave me access to cash. Abel’s union business was what he used to launder his money through, but there were safes full of cash at the club, and I was able to sneak around and get the passwords to two of them. I stole money a little at a time until I had a good nest egg. I still wasn’t sure how I was going to get out of the country, especially with Natalia, but I was meeting a lot of people from the U.S. in the club, and I was gaining a lot of information without coming right out and telling anyone about my plight.

“One night an older man came into the club. He sat at the bar and mostly just watched people. I asked if he was in Moscow on vacation and he started talking to me about his life. He told me that he was a high-ranking politician in Alabama. He and his wife only had one child. She was their princess, and she’d grown up sweet and beautiful and smart. He couldn’t say enough about her, but for the next three nights as he came back over and over to talk about her I wondered why he smiled while his eyes looked like he wanted to cry. I found out when he finally said, ‘When Danielle was twenty-four she came to Moscow for a global warming conference. She met a man from here and they fell in love. She came home for almost a year, and during that time this man visited a lot and we really liked him and welcomed him into the family. During that time he proposed and Danielle accepted. Her mother and I were sad that she’d be moving to Moscow once they married. Her husband owned a company that built helicopters and he’d just gotten a big military contract so he couldn’t move to the States. We worried about her naturally, but we eventually accepted that we were luckier than most. We had money and I had a job that gave me a lot of time off. I had access to a private jet so that we could visit often. Danielle and her husband lived happily in Moscow for ten years and had two beautiful children. His company became a great success, and on their tenth anniversary they went out to celebrate. They decided to take one of his company helicopters out for a flight that night on their way to dinner. He had his pilot’s license and thousands of hours under his belt, but something went wrong. The chopper crashed, and he and Danielle both died on impact.’

“Oh no! I’m so very sorry!”

“He nodded his head and said, ‘Me, too. If not for our grandchildren, my wife and I would have lost our minds. The kids are what we’re here for. We’re trying to get the paperwork done so that we can take them back to the States with us.’ I felt guilty, but in the midst of feeling bad for him I saw an opportunity for my daughter and myself.

“For the next few weeks Dante came into the club almost nightly. I got the feeling that he and his wife were finding different ways to grieve, and his seemed to be talking about his daughter. It was hard for me because I was so used to being hush-hush about my life, but I started sharing tid-bits with him here and there. Eventually I was comfortable enough to tell him that I feared for the kind of life my daughter would have if she stayed here and Abel raised her. I appealed to his paternal instincts, and one night I just outright asked him to take my daughter with him when he left Moscow.”

“Wow,” Blake said. It was the first words any of them had said. “He just agreed to that?”

I shook my head. “No. He was very kind about it, but he told me there was no way he could do that. If he was caught, it would not only ruin his career but he’d lose his own family as well. He left and went back to the States not long after—and I expected to never see him again. Almost a year passed before he came back to Moscow. This time when he came into the club he brought his wife with him and introduced us. They both had a lot of questions about Natalia and my hopes were renewed until they left once again without taking her with them. I spent my days trying to spend as much time with her as I could and my nights in that club that I hated. I was becoming more and more miserable, and that only served to piss Abel off. He thought I should be grateful to him for my ‘wonderful’ life, and whenever he caught me not smiling, he’d beat me. I’d spend weeks at home healing before he’d let me go back in public, and sadly I loved being at home with my child so much that I almost welcomed the beatings.

“After one particularly bad incident while I was still healing and still showing signs of bruises, he came home in a rage. He told me his hostess had simply, disappeared, and he needed me to go into work. I covered the bruises with makeup as well as I could, but the truth was no one at the club cared. No one that was except for Dante who was back in town that night. The sight of him reaffirmed a belief in God that I thought I’d lost long ago. We greeted each other warmly and he told me that the paperwork was finally done and he was picking up his grandchildren the following day. I kept hoping that he was there to tell me he’d changed his mind about taking Natalia, but when he left he simply hugged me and wished me luck and then he slipped an envelope into my pocket and pressed his fingers to his lips.

“Once he was gone I opened it. Inside I found a birth certificate for a child named Rebecca Rose. The odd thing about the birth certificate was that other than the name and the parents’ names, it was identical to Natalia’s. There was a note inside that said, ‘It wasn’t an easy decision but my wife and I are both willing to do this for you and that innocent child. Have her at the airport by six a.m. tomorrow if you still want to do this.’

              “The nanny and Abel were still sleeping when I got home from the club early that morning. I took my beautiful daughter and met Dante and his wife at the airport. When I placed Natalia in her new grandmother’s arms, I felt like someone had shoved their fist in through my chest and ripped out my heart. But I knew I was doing the right thing. I was doing the only thing that a parent who loved their child could do. I left there and went home. I pretended I’d just gotten home from the club. I found chaos. The nanny had discovered Natalia missing, and she’d woken up Abel. Abel—of course—hadn’t called the police. He had his men there instead. I gave the performance of my life, screaming about how the police had to be called. I even faked a fainting spell. The whole time I was surviving strictly on adrenaline—and later that day when Abel’s doctor gave me a sedative, I gladly took it.

“Abel had Moscow turned upside down, and while he was doing that, I was playing the grieving mother and plotting my next move. As the months continued to pass with no sign of Natalia, Abel got meaner—and when he was home it was all focused on me. The last time he beat me, I called the police before I passed out. Somehow he was never formally charged with it, but I was able to use the photos the police and hospital took that night as leverage for my divorce. During that time, I took a job as a nanny, and that was where I met my friend who told me about the job in New Orleans. When the divorce was final, I applied for a visa and took the job. That was when I made my worst mistake ever. I’d been staying with my mother after the divorce. Once I was gone, she sold all of the things I left behind. In one of the jewelry boxes Abel had given me, I’d hidden the note from Dante in the false bottom. I don’t know why I didn’t throw it away. I was so stupid; it felt like some kind of connection to her that I could hold onto. Mother found that while she was searching for things to sell. It didn’t give away much, but it was definitely proof that Natalia’s disappearance was no ordinary kidnapping. I’m sure she got lots of money for that slip of paper. As far as I’m concerned, she sold her very soul to the devil. Now, Abel wants to kill me, but he won’t because I’m the only one who can tell him where his daughter is. So he’s decided to kill everyone close to me until I’ve had enough and tell him what he wants to know.”