Topping the Alpha: Trident Security Series (19 page)

Neither Nick nor Jake gave any indication they were aware of Alyssa’s location, but it was the latter who answered the other man. “Nope.”

“See, I’ll call bullshit on that, since I traced the last call she made from her cell to you.”

“Fuck. Does Wagner know? Wait a minute. Did you set that tail on me?”

Allman grimaced as he swallowed a gulp of his acrid coffee. “Yeah. I knew Wagner would have me investigate who she contacted and didn’t want him questioning me if he talked to the two fuck-ups he sent on the hit. I told your tail to observe and nothing more. Figured you could handle yourself.” He chuckled. “Want to tell me what you did to them? All they said was they had a run-in with you and refused to follow you anymore.”

While Nick grinned widely and chuckled, Jake just smirked. “Let’s just say Egghead and Polo were able to sharpen their interrogation skills.” He paused as a female trucker walked past their table on the way to the rest rooms. “All right…give us the lowdown on why you’re sitting on Wagner.”

“You’re not going to tell me where the girl is?” When Jake gave him a what-do-you-think look, Allman sighed and relented. “Fine. At least I know she’s in good hands and probably far away from here. The last thing I need is a teenage girl mixed up in all this.”

Taking a sip of his coffee, Nick frowned at the bitter taste. “Shit. I thought truck stops were supposed to have good coffee.” He pushed his cup to the side, then glared at Allman. “So, are you going to tell us what
this
is? Or do we have to play twenty fucking questions? Because I, for one, hate that fucking game.”

Snorting, the fed shook his head. “Yeah, you’ll fit right in with the rest of Trident.” He rested his forearms on the table. “Wagner came up on our radar about a year ago. Before that he was hometown-oriented—didn’t have many dealings that originated outside the Tampa area. Mostly white-collar stuff like money laundering.” The waitress returned with their orders and the fed waited until she was out of earshot before continuing. “Apparently one connection lead to another, and next thing we know, his name is being mentioned with illegal guns. I think it was just a matter of opportunity knocking and his greedy little hands getting itchy. Word was he became a middle-man for the Diaz cartel’s arms business, so my bosses sent me under. The guns get shipped as phony business orders, then distributed via his companies to clients in the Southeast. We’ve just been waiting for the opportunity to get Diaz up here.”

Suddenly losing his appetite, Jake knew where this was going and he wasn’t happy about it. “Let me guess—you guys don’t give a fucking crap about Wagner. You want Emmanuel before the DEA or FBI can get him and you plan on having Wagner cut a deal and testify. That prick is going to walk when this is all over, because you know damn well he’s the type to rat instead of going to prison.”

“Fuck,” Nick muttered under his breath and Jake was surprised the kid didn’t go on a rant. There were only two ways Alyssa was ever going to be safe and one of them just went down the shitter.

Allman held up his hand with a look of regret on his face. “I know. I’m not happy about it either after dealing with this asshole and it pisses me off even more after what you just told me about the daughter, but it’s not my call.”

Even though anger coursed through him, Jake knew not to take it out on the undercover guy—he was just following orders from higher up on the chain of command. “All right. So, when is this all going down? And where?”

“The shipment is coming in day after tomorrow. Diaz, himself, will be there along with a few cartel members who are spread out up and down the east coast. He’s coming to the states to start branching out again—wants to show his U.S. contacts he’s the real deal and can supply them with whatever they need. When I was down in Colombia, I overheard two of his lieutenants talking about the white-slavery trade. Looks like he’s getting things back to where they were before his brother died.”

Jake knew all too well what the Diaz cartel had been like under the eldest brother, Ernesto. Members of the original Trident team had been on SEAL Team Four at the time the drug czar was being investigated by the U.S. government. It was during one of their missions that the man was ultimately killed in a shootout.

“Where?” he asked again.

Allman shook his head. “Sorry, Jake. I know you guys are good at what you do, but I’m not risking this op for anyone—not even a teenage girl. I’ve worked on this too long to have it fucked up.”

When Nick growled and opened his mouth to say something, Jake subtly kicked his ankle under the table. “Look, I understand where you’re coming from. But is there any way you can make sure the deal is for the weapons charges only. If he’s got a blanket immunity, there’s no way we’ll be able to go after him for the rape, child abuse, and murder conspiracy charges.”

Mulling it over a moment, Allman chewed and swallowed a mouthful of food. “Not sure about the murder charge, since I’m privy to the act—even though it was after the fact. His lawyers will make sure that’s in any deal. As long as we don’t come across evidence of the other charges, I think we can keep them out of it. I can talk to my superiors and the federal prosecutor, but I’m not guaranteeing anything. Most likely, they’ll jump at a chance to have their cake and eat it, too, but you know as well as I do, things can become cluster-fucks. Do you think you’ll be able to nail him?”

Jake’s cell phone rang and when he saw the number, he answered it. “Donovan.”

“I’ve got what you need,” the female voice told him. “Can you meet me at the airport? I have to take off on an assignment as soon as possible.”

“Yeah. Where?”

“Cell phone lot where you wait for arrivals, in a half hour.”

Jordan gave him her rental car description before hanging up. His gaze met Allman’s curious one. “In answer to your question, yeah, I think we can nail him.” Pulling out some cash, he threw it on the table to cover the bill and tip, then gestured for Nick to slide out of the booth. “We’ve got to go. Call me if anything else comes up, Craig.”

“Same goes for you.”

Minutes later, Jake and Nick were back on the highway, this time heading to the airport. Traffic was still a little heavy, but they were only ten minutes away from Tampa International. Just as Jake changed lanes, his phone rang again. This time he activated the Blue Tooth feature and Tiny’s voice came over the speakers. “Reverend, I’ve got bad news and you can kick our asses later. Alyssa’s gone—took off on her own.”

His hands gripped the steering wheel. “Fuck! What the hell is she doing?”

The big man’s baritone voice was filled with worry and regret. “Honestly, I think she’s on her way to kill her father.” Jake and Nick looked at each other in shock. “Long story short, we got distracted with stuff and she took Henderson’s gun and money. She dumped her cell phone in the driveway before taking off in our SUV. At most, she had a ten-minute head start before we realized she was gone. I called Sheriff Montgomery and asked him to check the roads heading out of town, but most of his deputies are out on a bad, multi-car accident. His brother volunteered to come get us. If we don’t find her, we’ll head to the airport. I’ll call Ian and have him send CC up with the jet. Sorry, man.”

“Shit.” Jake was pissed, but it would be a waste of breath to bawl the guy out. It was obvious Tiny and Henderson knew they’d screwed up, but Alyssa had taken advantage of the situation and probably would have ran off anyway at some point. Was she really on her way to kill her father?
Fuck a fucking duck
. “All right. Listen. We’re on our way to meet Carter’s contact. She apparently has what we need. There’s other shit going on that Alyssa has no knowledge of and she’s walking into a minefield down here. If you find her, lock her down tight. And call me the second you have her.”

“Got it.”

As Jake disconnected the call, Nick gaped at him. “Is she out of her fucking mind?”

“Apparently. Damn it.” He slammed his hand on the steering wheel then, realizing he was about to miss their exit, glanced in his blind spot before quickly changing lanes. “I don’t know what the fuck she thinks she’s doing, but we’ve got no way to track her. As far as I know, the vehicles up north are older models, so they don’t have locators in them. But shoot Egghead a text and ask him if they do, just in case.” Nick pulled out his phone and began typing. “If not, we’re just going to have to wait for her to show up, which means tailing Wagner and that’s going to piss off the feds, but I don’t fucking care at this point.”

When they pulled into the designated cell phone lot, Jake spotted Jordyn’s vehicle and pulled in next to her, facing the opposite direction, so they could talk without getting out. Both rolled down their driver’s windows and he got his first look at the woman who seemed to have the man-whore, Carter, twisted in a knot. She was about thirty years old and Foster had been pretty close in his imagined assessment—slender, yet fit, long black hair pulled up into a ponytail, and exotic brown eyes. Jake’s guess of South American heritage was neither confirmed nor denied when she spoke without an accent of any kind as she handed him a thumb drive. “This is the original from the safe. All his kiddie-porn is on it—and there’s more than one victim.” She ignored the men’s simultaneous curses and held up another drive. “I copied data from another drive that I left behind. This is the diary he kept on his other crimes—money laundering, arms and drug dealing, and some other stuff. Know anyone who’d be interested in getting this anonymously? We can’t just hand it over without explaining how we got it and screwing up the chain of evidence.”

“Send it to Keon at the FBI. He’ll make sure it gets to the right people.” Larry Keon was the Deputy Director, the number-two man in the agency, and Trident’s contact. He’d helped them on numerous occasions and the team returned the favors every chance they got.

“Fine.” Jordyn pulled down her sunglasses from where they’d been perched on her head and covered her eyes, but not before he saw them fill with loathing. “Tell that asshole, Carter, not to contact me again. I’m tossing my phone in the airport, so the number you have is no longer valid.” She put her vehicle in drive, her frown dropping further. “And nail this fucking pervert to the wall for me—otherwise, I’ll be tempted to come back and do it myself. And I guarantee it won’t be pretty.”

As she drove away, Jake turned to face Nick with his eyebrows almost reaching his hairline. “Damn. Carter’s going to have his hands full if he goes after her the way I suspect he will–sooner or later. And I can’t wait to watch the sparks fly when he lights up that firecracker.”

Putting on her turn signal, Alyssa exited the highway at a rest stop just outside of Tampa and pulled up to the gas pumps. She was exhausted after driving straight through to Florida. Thank God she found a GPS unit in the vehicle’s glove compartment, since she would have been hopelessly lost without it. The trip should have taken her a little over nine hours to get to Tampa, according to the calculations. But with the traffic, pit stops for gas and food, and a three-hour nap at another rest stop in Georgia, it was now close to ten o’clock at night.

Along the way, she’d thought about how, where, and when to approach her father. It would be hard to sneak up on him at the house, since she was sure he’d changed the alarm code again. He had a habit of doing that every few months, without telling anyone, and it’d driven her mother crazy when she came home and couldn’t shut it off. And her father always had other men around—men she didn’t like. While her father had never forced her to have sex with anyone else, she never liked the way some of his associates and friends had eyed her like she was a piece of meat and they were starving.

The best idea she came up with—and it wasn’t a great idea, either—was to lure him somewhere private, with no one else around, and ambush him. Once she killed him, she would toss the gun in one of the many lakes or swamps in the area so no one could connect it to her. After that was where she became unsure of what to do next. Would Jake help her? She was sure he would eventually figure out what she did. Would he turn her in to the police? From her experience, anything would be better than letting Oliver Wagner live and continue to molest her or any other girl. Yes, she was aware she hadn’t been the only one, but she never knew who the other girls were or how many of them had been abused. Her bastard father liked to compare her to the others while he was doing vile things to her.

She shivered and forced the memories from her mind. For now, she would gas up the empty tank and then find a place to sleep until the morning. She had to be on her toes when she faced down her abuser because when it was over, there would only be one of them left alive and Alyssa didn’t have a death wish. Even though for the past year she’d been scared her father would find them, she’d also learned that her future was what she made of it. And she wanted the future she’d dreamed of long before her perverted father changed her life forever.

* * *

“Anything?”

A hushed round of ‘negative’ answers flooded back through Jake’s headset. Marco, Brody, Nick, Devon, and he were scattered throughout Wagner’s neighborhood and the surrounding areas in discreet locations, keeping an eye out for Alyssa. It was a little before oh-one-hundred hours …plenty of time for her to have made it back to Tampa, even if she made some pit stops. They’d been in the area since six p.m. and nothing unusual had caught their attention. Boomer, Foster, McCabe, Tiny, Henderson, and one more operative on loan from Blackhawk Security would be taking over the watch soon, so the first shift could get some sleep. Ian had flown up to Washington D.C. for another one of the meetings he’d been having with the Pentagon and he was still being closed-mouth about what was going on.

Jake was more than worried for the teenager, he was terrified. Nothing good would come from her going after her father. She would either wind end up getting herself killed or arrested for pre-meditated murder—and at seventeen, she’d be tried as an adult.
Damn it!
Why the hell didn’t she just leave this up to him? He would move heaven and earth to help her and put her father where he could never hurt her again.

“Reverend, we’re here to relieve you.” Boomer’s voice was loud and clear through the earpiece. “Where’s everyone located?”

Tapping the mic, Jake gave his teammate his location and then the others followed suit. Minutes passed before the human hoot of an owl alerted him to Boomer’s approach several yards behind him. He’d been in the woods behind Wagner’s house, keeping an eye on the backdoor and yard.

The youngest member of Trident’s Alpha Team, dressed in black and camo like the rest of them, sidled up to him in complete silence before he spoke. “All quiet?”

“Yeah.” Jake stood from his prone position and handed over his night vision goggles. “Brody caught her SUV on a traffic cam on I-75 when she crossed over from Georgia about five hours ago, but the Florida system is down with a glitch and he hasn’t been able to locate her since. I let Allman know we were out here. He’s not thrilled, but knows if Alyssa tries to kill Wagner, it could screw up his op.”

“Do you honestly think she’s going to try and kill him?”

He sighed and tilted his head from side to side, working out the kinks which had settled there. “Yeah, I do—but I don’t blame her for wanting to. I just hope we find her first.”

Boomer nodded his agreement, then dropped to the ground to take over the watch. Stealthily finding his way back to where he would meet Nick a few blocks away, Jake tried to think of where Alyssa might be if she’d arrived in Tampa by now. The possibilities were endless, but he knew of several crappy motels which didn’t require credit cards upon check-in. Places like that usually charged by the hour though, and he hated to think of the teenager in one of them. But the alternative wasn’t much better—sleeping in the vehicle somewhere.

As he approached his truck, he noticed Nick sitting in the driver’s seat, so he hopped in the passenger side and tossed his headset in the middle console. “A chauffeured ride? What more can I ask for?”

Putting the SUV in drive, Nick smirked at him. “How about some sex in the shower when we get home?”

Even though Jake’s cock twitched happily at the thought, he shook his bigger head. “Later. For now, I want to hit a few motel parking lots and other places where she might be holed up until morning. I’ve got a bad feeling about this and we need to find her before it’s too late.”

“Damn. I hate when the right thing to do overrides my sex life.”

“Me, too, Junior. Me, too.”

* * *

“It’s me, you bastard.”

Oliver Wagner froze for a moment at the young, female voice coming through the cell phone earpiece. “You little cunt. Where the hell are you?”

“Tampa.”

What the fuck was the bitch doing here?
Tampa was the last place he expected her to show up. Well, at least he didn’t have to have those fuck-ups look for her anymore.

“If you don’t come meet me with those pictures and videos you took of me, you sick son of a bitch, then I’m going to the press.”

He growled as rage filled him. “You wouldn’t fucking dare.”

“I’ve got nothing to lose anymore. You killed my mother. You made sure I was isolated from anyone else that would help me. I’ll leave you and your perverted lifestyle alone. All I want is the pictures and videos, so I can destroy them. If I find out you made copies, I’ll go to the press.”

Shocked at how strong and determined she sounded, Wagner mulled over his options. There was no way he was turning anything over to the little bitch, but making her think he would was the perfect way to draw her into a trap. He’d kill her, then have two of his minions take the body out into the Gulf of Mexico and sink it. “Fine,” he spat out. “But then I never want to hear from you again. If you go to the press or police, I’ll fucking kill you myself.” He rattled off the address of the building where his landscaping business equipment and vehicles were stored—since today was Sunday, it would be closed. The area was also isolated, so he didn’t have to worry about anyone reporting anything unusual or any witnesses. Opening his desk drawer, he pulled out the .38 caliber handgun he kept there. “Be there in one hour or the deal is off. If that happens, I’ll hunt you down and make you regret it.”

“Just bring everything, you bastard, and I’ll be there.”

The line went dead and Wagner took several deep breaths to keep from throwing the cell phone against the wall, shattering it into hundreds of pieces. The little cunt would rue the day she defied and threatened him.

* * *

“Reverend, target’s on the move.”

Jake put his SUV in drive. “Copy that, Devil Dog. We’re ready to tail him. Everyone else stay in position and keep an eye out for our girl.”

It was ten minutes to nine in the morning and the two surveillance teams had switched places, once again, in the area surrounding Oliver Wagner’s property. Nick and Jake’s hour-long tour of the no-tell motels in the middle of the night had been fruitless. And Tampa was too big of a city, with plenty of places for Alyssa to be hiding at, for them to even hope of finding her if she didn’t want to be found. The interstate traffic cameras were up and running again, but it was too late for them to be of any assistance. The city-wide traffic cams might be useful, but Jake wasn’t too optimistic that Brody would find her after he’d hacked into the system. The geek was currently in his war-room at Trident doing his best to find her. However, the black SUV she’d taken was as non-descript as they come, so chances of spotting it among the thousands of other vehicles in Tampa was slim.

Knowing Wagner would most likely be leaving the house at some point during the day, Jake and Nick had been parked nearby, ready to follow him when he did. While on the first shift the night before, Marco had snuck up the driveway and tagged the man’s BMW with a tracking device, right next to the one the ATF had attached to the undercarriage months earlier. Now, sitting in the passenger seat, Nick turned on the tracker’s receiver and it beeped sharply as the screen lit up. “Got him. He’s going to pass right by us.”

Sure enough, a few seconds later, the steel-grey vehicle drove past where they were idling in the lot of a baseball field, down the street from the residence. Jake waited until Wagner made a left turn at the intersection, before pulling out to shadow him. If they drove to a busier part of town, he’d get closer, but for now they were relying on the tracker.

“Take the second right—he’s heading east.”

Following Nick’s directions, Jake tailed Wagner to a seedier side of town for another twenty minutes. Bypassing blocks of apartment buildings and businesses, they were lead toward a mainly commercial yet sparse area. Here, the individual properties took up at least three to five acres each, so everything was spread out a bit.

“Slow down. He turned left up ahead, but not onto a street. Must’ve pulled into one of these buildings.”

The SUV slowed and passed several commercial sites. Jake kept one eye on the road and the other on the property lots, until he spotted the BMW parked next to a white pick-up truck. Wagner was disappearing into a weather-beaten warehouse with two other men on his heels. “There he is, walking into that grey building.” Seconds after he passed the entrance to the property, he slammed on the brakes. “Fuck!”

Nick’s gaze whipped around and he tried to figure out what Jake had seen. “What is it?”

“The SUV Alyssa was driving is parked on the side of the warehouse.” Jerking the steering wheel to the left, he spun the truck around and stopped at the entrance to an adjacent parking lot—pulling in front of the other one would alert the occupants to their presence.

Devon’s voice came over his headset along with some interference. “Reverend, you cut out. Did you say you spotted our girl?”

Rattling off the address on a dilapidated sign stuck in the ground near the entrance, Jake shoved the gear shift into park. “Haven’t spotted her yet, but the SUV is here. Start hauling ass, but we can’t wait for you. There’s a least two tangos with Wagner.”

Damn. Fuck. Shit. And damn, again.
The teenager must have contacted her father and arranged to meet him here. God help her if shit went down before they got inside. They leapt from the vehicle, drawing their weapons. Nick fell into step next to Jake, their eyes on the lookout for Alyssa and/or trouble.

“Cops?” Devon asked over the airwaves.

“No,” Jake responded in a low voice, hoping he didn’t regret that decision. “We’re going to try and do this without creating a hostage situation and screwing up a federal undercover op. We’ll stay wired so you can hear everything go down.”

“Copy that. Be safe, brothers.”

The asphalt was cracked and crumbling in spots with green and brown weeds popping up here and there. Scattered litter forced them to take extra care not to kick anything or trip. The few windows in the building were covered in dust, dirt, and grime, making them impossible to see through and a large garage door was down in place. The smaller metal door the men had entered was still ajar by about eight inches. As they silently approached the structure, Jake hand-gestured for Nick to go around back. They were outnumbered and it would be better if they went in from two different directions, doubling their vantage points. He also hoped Nick would spot Alyssa before the other men did.

As the kid veered off, Jake crept closer to the open door, where he paused and listened. He was unable to see inside due to the bright sunlight outside and the darkness within. But his gut clenched when he heard Wagner’s voice echo throughout the structure, demanding the teenage show herself. Fuck that duck again, this was about to get ugly.

* * *

“I’m here, you little bitch. Where are you?”

Alyssa peeked around the tractor she was hiding behind, then jerked back again.
Shit.
Her father wasn’t alone—she should have expected this. She didn’t recognize the two men, one blond guy, the other bald, but that didn’t mean anything. Her father employed a bunch of creepy, intimidating men. Shivers of fear and foolish remorse surged through her body. This had been a stupid idea.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Why hadn’t she thought this through better? The hand holding the gun quivered and she swallowed the lump in her throat.