Hard Justice Read online

  Vince released the bag with a growl. “Jesus Christ, woman. You’re a fucking nuisance.”

  Hands on her curvy hips, she stepped into his space, the top of her head barely hitting his chin. Mighty Mouse with a bad attitude. “Oh, please. You’re a big bad SEAL and you can’t take a little tap?”

  “You want to turn this into a hand-to-hand sparring match, English Muffin? Fine with me.”

  She ducked his frontal assault and spun, her foot impacting two inches above his knee. The damn thing buckled and gave her the upper hand for about five seconds. Vince took his time, blocking each of her moves while he waited for the one that would regift him the advantage. When her eyes shifted left, he spun right. Now behind her, he pinned his forearm across her collarbone and anchored her back against his chest.

  “Are you done yet?” His lips brushed over the shell of her ear. Every one of his internal alarms went ape-shit, including the one between his legs, which was semi-hard and nestled perfectly against the small of her back.

  Fuck, he couldn’t help it. All night watching her, then picturing her posing nude. He could only keep his body in check for so goddamned long without having at least one minor slip.

  Charlie stilled for about two seconds, her backside moving into a slight sway. And hell if she didn’t do it again, the second time pulling a low groan from his throat. His grip lightened to step away, but it was too late. Two small hands yanked down his arm, and a set of teeth bit into the flesh of his hand.

  “Fucking-A,” Vince howled, releasing her quickly.

  Charlie ignored his colorful curses and swayed her ass over to her water bottle. “Yep. I’m about done now.”

  Vince opened his mouth to comment, but movement at the doorway caught his attention.

  Stone stood off the mat, arms folded across his chest. And fuck, he didn’t look happy. “I need you in the meeting room. Now. And Charlie, I want your ass in there in another ten.”

  Vince nodded, not having any clue how much of the show he’d seen.

  He tossed Charlie a glare before leaving the room, and followed Stone deeper into the underground labyrinth that was Alpha Security headquarters. They had not only a training room, but a shooting range, offices, and a meeting room that made the Pentagon look half-assed. And all of it built into a section of the Blue Ridge Mountains. To the outside world, Vince and his team were business owners and bouncers who’d taken over the running of a much-loved neighborhood bar. To a select few topside, they were the men who got shit done when the government’s hands were metaphorically—or logistically—tied.

  The meeting room was empty when they got there. “You want a bag of ice for that hand?”

  Vince glared at his boss’s smirk. “Maybe a tetanus shot. Look, about what happened in the training room, I—”

  “This isn’t about the training room, although it does involve Charlie.”

  Stone wasn’t an easy guy to read—at all. But his silence spoke a thousand fucking words. “What about her?”

  “I’ve offered her a primary position in a case.”

  Vince narrowed his gaze on his boss. Having been champing at the bit for a real field assignment, the mouthy Brit should’ve been walking around HQ busting their balls and gloating. “If you’ve assigned her a case, then why the hell has she spent the last hour neutering Scooter? What the hell kind of case is this?”

  Lips pressed in a tight line, Stone looked grim. “DHS. More specifically, human-trafficking, with a possible link to agency corruption.”

  Vince’s eyes widened. That sure as hell wasn’t what he’d expected to come out of Stone’s mouth. “In the Department of Homeland? Shit. And you think English can track the perps electronically or something?”

  “That would be fucking nice, but no. It’s a bit more complicated. I’m not sure what you know about Charlie pre-Alpha, but—”

  “Nothing, and it’s bloody well going to stay that way.” The woman herself stood in the doorway of what she and Penny had once dubbed the Room of Testosterone. Her brown eyes shifted to him before traveling back to Stone. “Sorry, I didn’t think I should wait and chance missing all the fun. And I’m glad I didn’t. What’s Navy doing here?”

  “I told you that if you decide to go through with this, you’d have a partner.” Stone nodded toward Vince. “Franklin’s yours.”

  Charlie’s calculating gaze slid to him before returning to their boss. “No way in hell.”

  “If your backup isn’t one of ours, it doesn’t happen. I’m not letting you go back on the inside without someone we can trust standing next to you. I’m sorry you’re having a problem with that, but that’s how it’s going to be.”

  “What about Logan?”

  “With you away, I need him running operations here.”

  “Chase?”

  “Out on a surveillance gig. Rafe’s on another assignment too. And I’m not sending Trey, knowing his mind would be back here on Elle and the baby. Franklin’s your second. You can either accept it and sit down to hear the rest, or I can call our contact at DHS right now and tell them it’s a no-go. Your choice.”

  Charlie trying to pass Vince over in favor of one of the other guys chafed him raw. Being one of the newest to the team didn’t mean he was a fucking rookie. In his years of service, he’d seen and done things that would give a person’s nightmares nightmares. Fuck, he still woke up most nights in a goddamned cold sweat.

  Charlie sat two chairs away, refusing to look him in the eye. He didn’t even know exactly what the assignment entailed, but he was suddenly hell-bent on making sure he was there for its duration, whether she liked it or not.

  “Charlie was approached tonight by a DHS agent looking for assistance with one of their dying cases. They’re about two steps away from writing it off and calling it a loss,” Stone addressed Vince.

  It took him a moment to register what his boss was saying and to connect the dots—to Preppy Boy. Vince shifted his attention to Charlie. “The dipshit with the chinos was a DHS agent?”

  Charlie nodded, still not looking his way.

  Vince turned to his boss. “Okay, so why the hell are they approaching English? That kid was barely out of diapers there’s no way in fucking hell he’s high enough on the DHS food chain to know about Alpha.”

  “They didn’t approach Alpha Security. They approached Charlie because they believe she’s the inside they’ve been lacking. I’m making it an Alpha Security issue. I contacted our department liaison and told him that if she decides to go through with it, it’ll be us taking point. Actually, taking the fuck over. Color me surprised when he sounded relieved. They’ve lost three agents trying to get on the inside of the Franconi crime organization, and the fourth, their deep-cover agent, is suspected to have switched jerseys.”

  “Franconi?” Vince’s eyes narrowed. “Why do I know that name?”

  “Most people do unless they’ve been living under a rock.”

  Suddenly, it clicked. “Why the fuck would Charlie have insight into a human-trafficking ring led by one of the East Coast’s most notorious crime lords?”

  Vince stared down Stone. Stone looked expectantly to Charlie. And Charlie finally flashed her dark brown eyes Vince’s way and admitted, “Because Arturo Franconi’s my uncle.”

  * * *

  “Uncle.” The truth of that word sliced up Charlie’s throat like razor blades. Her aunt’s marriage to Arturo Franconi meant he’d been gifted guardianship of eight-year-old Charlie when bad weather and a twisty road took both her mother and her aunt away with one veer of the steering wheel.

  Growing up in the middle of a crime cartel hadn’t been the type of life experiences her mother had had in mind when they first set off across the globe, but Charlie had been subjected to it nonetheless…for eight years, until she’d gotten the final push to make a quick, clean break.

  “You may want to close your mouth before a fly beds down in your tonsils,” Charlie addressed an obviously shocked Vince. “Yes, Arturo’s my uncl
e, but only because some judge in Florida signed a marriage license.”

  Vince’s gaze snapped back to Stone. “You’ve got to be shitting me right now.”

  “Wish I was,” Stone answered. “If you and Charlie decide to do this, you rely only on each other and no one else. There’s no way in hell we’re going to take a chance that the deep-cover agent is still loyal to the feds.”

  And that was something that Charlie couldn’t yet wrap her head around. “I know DHS said Brock Torres has become like Arturo’s appendage, but I can’t see it. I know Brock, or at least, I thought I did. He couldn’t stand the fact that his father worked for Arturo before he left for the Army, and he hated it even more when he got out. Him working for the organization—cover or not—is really hard to picture.”

  Stone slid a large manila envelope down the table. Surveillance photos. Each image ignited a flash from Charlie’s past, erasing nearly a decade in an instant. Except for the obvious aging of her uncle’s colleagues, the first few pictures didn’t make her blink more than once. The one of Brock, however, made her pause. And stare.

  Every second of the last twelve years was etched on the hard lines of his face. In one particular photo, her one-time friend stood next to Arturo, looking oh-so-comfortable as they spoke, heads bowed low in conversation. Or maybe she should say her one-time supposed friend, because he’d evidently been on the job when he befriended her all those years ago.

  Stone stood, locking Charlie in his sights. “The only reason I didn’t put a stop to this right off the bat is because of you. I feel for the women being taken, too. I do. But I was dead serious. You and Vince either do this together, or you don’t do it at all. Figure out if that’s something the two of you can do without killing each other and let me know. I’ll be in my office.”

  Stone walked out of the meeting room, making Charlie painfully aware she was alone with Vince. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that he’d try demanding answers to the questions firing around in his head. Whether or not they’d be ones she’d answer was less certain.

  Vince leaned back in his chair, arms folded across his chest, and stared at her. He didn’t say a word. Not a mumble. Not even an audible sigh. He merely waited, as if he hadn’t just found out she’d been raised by a man who made hardened criminals piss in their britches.

  Needing to move, Charlie stood and began pacing the length of the room before she caught herself and picked a spot a safe three feet away. “I suppose you’re expecting me to plead my case on why I want to go.”

  “No, but if you think pleading may be necessary, then I’m curious why you think going’s a good idea.”

  “It’s not a good idea,” she said honestly. “Actually, I think it’s a horrid idea, and I can’t express to you how much I don’t want to do it.”

  He blinked, trying to understand. “Then why are we even talking about it? Stone’s leaving the decision in our hands. If you don’t want to do it, you say no. It’s that simple.”

  “It’s not simple. At all. Because if I’m in a position to find those nine missing women and prevent others from being abducted, then that’s what I bloody well need to do. Otherwise, we’re part of the problem.”

  “What problem?” Vince needed to know.

  “Apathy. The whole ‘Well, it doesn’t involve me directly, so I’m keeping my nose out of it’ mentality that’s been known to plague humanity.”

  “And what about putting yourself at risk?” When she didn’t answer, Vince stood, his towering height forcing her gaze north. Before he realized it, he was inches away from crowding her personal space. “I can’t imagine a man like Franconi was happy about letting you walk away.”

  Charlie snorted. “It’s not like he had a choice.”

  Vince raised a brow, his curiosity piqued.

  Charlie sighed, knowing she needed to tell him something. “I’ve had a fondness for computers for as long as I can remember—a fondness my uncle liked to utilize from time to time to help him slip out of tight spaces. Thinking how naive and trusting I was, it makes me cringe. But when I was fifteen, I wised up, stopped helping, and started working against him. The man’s seriously techno-illiterate. It let me construct a ticket to freedom…which I used when I was sixteen.”

  “So in other words, you blackmailed him.”

  Charlie shrugged. “What I did, worked. I left, and he knew if anything ever happened to me, all the information I’d collected through the years would get to the authorities. To this day, he doesn’t know exactly what I have on him…which, between you and me, wouldn’t have been enough to buy him five to ten years. I was a little too good at keeping his nose looking clean.”

  Vince stared at her as if trying to read her memories. Too intuitive for his own bloody good, he no doubt knew she was leaving something out. And she was. Oh, she’d used her computer savvy to magic her way out of his life, but she’d been forced to leave Miami and cut all ties before she’d drummed up enough damaging evidence against him.

  After her own abduction, Charlie focused on nothing but living.

  Chapter Four

  Nothing good ever came out of flying by the seat of your pants. Vince had learned his lesson the hard way eight years ago when one of his calls led to a good man’s death. Ever since, he prided himself on collecting all the data, constructing a plan, and sticking to it. They’d been in Miami for a total of six hours, and Charlie had already slid his plans through the fucking shredder.

  He flipped through their wrist-thick file on Arturo Franconi and his horde of merry convicts, and tossed it on the bed.

  “We need to talk about tonight,” Vince called through their hotel suite’s bathroom door. “I’m not convinced this is the way to go.”

  “And I told you, it’s the only way,” Charlie’s muffled voice came through the door.

  “And it’s a logistical fucking nightmare. Too big a space. Too many bodies. There’s no way in hell I’m going to be able to track the comings and goings and watch over you. I’m one man.”

  “Then I guess it’s a good thing I’m a woman because we can multitask—and I don’t need to be watched over.”

  The bathroom door flew open. Vince nearly swallowed his damn tongue. Her yoga pants and exercise tank gone, Charlie’s navel-plunging dress not only didn’t have a fucking neckline, but it dipped into a severe V, showing off her twinkling belly button ring—and skin. A lot of fucking skin.

  “That’s what took you so long?” The words escaped his mouth before he could stop them. “For the degree of clothes you’re not wearing, it should’ve taken you five seconds to get ready.”

  “Wearing less requires more maintenance.”

  Charlie strutted past him, making him choke on what was left of his own goddamned spit. Not only was her outfit backless, revealing the feminine top curve of her ass, but each sway of her hips gifted him a glimpse of her cherry blossom tattoo.

  “Where are you planning on strapping Gregor?” Vince watched her pick up her Glock and pack it back in its case.

  “Nowhere. As much as it pains me to leave him behind, we can’t go in armed in the traditional sense, so I’m resorting to the backup.” She pulled out a pair of throwing knives and a thigh holster and caught him mid-ogle. Her voice dropped to a low purr. “Want to help me secure them into place?”

  Yes.

  “No.” Sweat dampened his forehead despite the fact their suite was air-conditioned to the nines.

  Charlie chuckled as she propped her booted foot onto the edge of the bed and began adjusting her blade holster. “So what were you blathering about logistics?”

  Vince cleared his throat and got his mind off Charlie’s legs and back on their night’s plans. “The point of being here is to make sure you get on Franconi’s radar.”

  “Wrong. We’re here to find information on the abductions and whoever’s responsible.”

  “How’s going clubbing going to make that happen?”

  Charlie pulled out the list of suspected hunting gro
unds from their file and not-so-gently smashed it against his chest. “DHS managed to link most of the reported disappearances to these three popular, Franconi-connected clubs. I thought you were going to brush up on the details while I got ready.”

  “I read the list.” Vince ground his molars.

  “So what would you rather us do? Sit in a car outside the club and stare at the exit?”

  That was scarily close to what he had planned.

  “You do realize this city practically has a limitless number of clubs, right? All with multiple egress points. We can’t keep our eyes trained on them all—even using recording surveillance. We need to focus on the clubs with the most activity and try to figure out what we’re up against—why these clubs are the ones that keep getting hit. And we can’t do that while sitting in a car. As for getting on Arturo’s radar, he’s going to know I’m in town before we sip our first drinks—if he doesn’t already.”

  Charlie finished tucking her throwing knives into place against her thigh and let her dress drop. “Any unsightly bulges?”

  Not beneath her dress. Behind his zipper was a different story. He’d been fighting off a hard-on since she stepped out of the bathroom looking like La Femme Nikita. Usually there were any number of the guys around to keep his head on straight. Charlie Sparks was most definitely not one of the guys, something Vince Junior was evidently starting to realize.

  She turned, mistaking his discomfort for disbelief. “What is it that has your panties in a twist, Navy? Does taking a back seat to a woman really bother you that much?”

  “You’re not a woman. You’re English.” Vince tried reminding himself that this was Charlie he was picturing half-naked and oh-so-fuckable.

  Her brown eyes sparked with a flame of annoyance. Or hell, an explosion. “Sorry to disappoint you, love, but if I’d had a penis, I would’ve been let into the boys club a hell of a long time ago. But penis-challenged as I am, I’m the one with the inside scoop. I know how Miami works. And I know how Arturo and his brood of miscreants work too. You’re going to have to trust me. This is what we need to do. Walking up to his front door and ringing the doorbell won’t do anything except ensure we end up like those out-of-commission DHS agents.”