Capturing the Commando. Colleen Thompson

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СКАЧАТЬ lips parted as her brows rose. “Thirteen-point-six?”

      He nodded to confirm what he and Garrett had discovered from the tax rolls. “Married three times,” Rafe continued. “The most recent spouse filed for divorce and pressed charges for domestic battery. Wife number two vanished a few years prior. Powers claims she ran off with a boyfriend, while her family swears she’d never leave, much less stay away, without a word to them.”

      “How’d number one get off so easy?”

      Rafe shook his head, then shrugged. “We weren’t able to find any trace, so for all we know, she’s stuffed in a barrel somewhere offshore.”

      Shaking her head, Shannon blew out a long breath. “So how’d this charmer end up in the black-market baby business? I don’t suppose it was his compassion for childless families.”

      “His passion for the good life is more like it. He tended to pick wives with money and made sure a good chunk of it stayed with him, even when they didn’t.”

      “Tends to happen that way when the spouse takes off for parts unknown. Or conveniently drops dead.”

      Rafe nodded. “He seems to like the trappings. Flashy women, flashy lifestyle. Speedboats, sports cars, prestige ZIP codes—a hell of a lot more than he could afford on what he made as a family law attorney back in Texas. Maybe it turned out to be even more than he could fund with the occasional disappearing rich wife.”

      “Family law…” In spite of what she’d been through and how she must be feeling, Shannon’s gaze was focused, her expression razor-sharp. “So he would have dealt with adoption cases back in Houston, right?”

      “He had an office on the edge of River Oaks,” Rafe confirmed. “So I imagine he saw plenty of wealthy families desperate for a shortcut to claiming a healthy, white newborn they could call their own. And very, very grateful when he could make their dreams come true, no matter how he did it.”

      “Then at some point a lightbulb comes on…”

      Shannon’s handcuffs jingled as she snapped her fingers “…and Powers decides he’s looking at an unmet, extremely strong consumer demand. And who is he to deny the market?”

      “He’s a dead man, that’s who he is,” Rafe vowed as he thought of Lissa, the pounding of his own pulse a war drum in his ears. The need for vengeance roared past the grief that had ripped him open. His heart had gone missing, along with his capacity for mercy.

      “I thought you were only out to save your niece,” Shannon countered, but the words had no heat in them. And her slight smile said she understood, hinted that she wouldn’t argue with any outcome that left Powers and his men dead—or at least she wouldn’t protest too stringently. “Your niece and those other babies.”

      “If I have to choose between revenge and getting them out,” he said, “I won’t have to think about my decision for a second. But if I get my shot at Powers or those butchers he sent for my sister…”

      “A man could be forgiven for taking whatever measures necessary to free a captive family member, or even other innocents,” Shannon advised him, “but when it comes to a cold-blooded revenge killing, all bets are off, Captain. You know that as well as I do.”

      Rafe drew a deep breath to clear his head, then answered, “I’m not a man looking for forgiveness. I’ve come way too far to give a damn about that. All I care about is making this work. After that, the Army, the FBI, the cops—they can all pick at my bones or whatever else is left of me.”

      She had no answer except to look at him, her gaze as reproachful as it was somber. Could she—the same woman he’d shocked and abducted—be feeling some measure of compassion for him, along with the victims of Powers’s crimes?

      Rafe didn’t need and certainly didn’t want her pity, so he hurried to fill the space with an explanation of the operation he had come up with, a raid that would stand only a ghost of a chance—and then only if she would agree to help him.

      Shannon leaned forward, listening intently, her blue eyes lasering straight through his bravado to focus on the risks inherent in the plan.

      When he had finished, she shook her head. “That’s crazy. You know that, don’t you? Why not just let the feds conduct the raid? We have the people and the training. We can assemble…” A shadow passed over her beautiful features, troubling her expression. “We can… I can order the tactical teams and SWAT departments to breach those walls and get—inside.”

      When she paled, he suspected she was thinking of the Iowa cigar store standoff he’d researched online after Garrett had determined his “informant’s” true identity. He saw in her eyes that she was haunted by the two women and the new father who had died in the wake of her miscalculation. An error based on the best intelligence she’d had at the time.

      From his own experience in combat, he knew civilians sometimes became casualties despite every effort to minimize that risk. He recognized, too, the look of PTSD, the post-traumatic stress disorder he saw written in her blue eyes.

      But he pretended not to see it, respecting his promise not to bring up the incident. Instead he zeroed in on his real concern. “What do you think the odds are of the feds taking my information—data illegally obtained by Garrett’s hacker buddies—as gospel and running with it before another woman dies?”

      “We’d make it top priority, but you’re right, there would have to be independent, legally obtained confirmation. For the search warrant, among other things—”

      “And,” he added, “you’d also have a hell of a lot of interdepartmental chest-thumping as all the various bureaucracies fought for jurisdiction and wrangled over who got to take the credit.”

      She opened her mouth as if to argue, then very slowly let it close before nodding. “Even if I were crazy enough to agree to take part in this lunacy,” she began, “do you honestly think a force of three has a prayer of pulling this off without getting a bunch of people killed? Starting with us, I mean.”

      “I’ve come back from riskier missions,” he told her. “And run more than a few of ’em myself.”

      “With men you trusted?”

      “With my life.”

      “Yeah, well, this time,” she said, “you’d have exactly two on your team. A woman whose career is toast if she doesn’t betray you, and a techno-nerd brother-in-law who—no offense—looks like he couldn’t fight his way out of buying siding from a determined telemarketer. Do you really imagine you can rely on us?”

      “It’s a chance I’m willing to take.”

      “For what, Rafe? Because I can’t begin to imagine that a guy like Dominic Powers is keeping a bunch of infants stockpiled at his swanky Palm Beach hacienda. Can you?”

      “There’ll be records of where they’ve gone. Who’s adopted those kids. Somewhere. I have a source that mentioned some kind of ledger he keeps close at hand. He takes it out of his wall safe every morning.”

      “And you think it’s his client list, maybe even records related to the babies’ mothers?”

      “That’s exactly what we’re hoping.”

      “Is СКАЧАТЬ