Page 2 of Shadow Redemption
“I’m relieved to hear that.” After another minute, Ruth left the room and made her way to the parking garage where she’d left her SUV. Her lips curved. An SUV a certain mysterious operative had insisted she drive instead of the sweet little red sports car he’d labeled a deathtrap. She didn’t know where he’d special-ordered the vehicle, but it felt heavier and more secure than anything she’d driven, and she loved it. Ruth frowned. Now that she thought about it, the SUV looked and rode like the one her sister and Trace drove. A month after she escaped Hugo, Ben had parked the SUV in her driveway and handed her the keys without an explanation.
As she walked toward her SUV, Ruth’s skin pebbled again. Scowling, she spun, determined to find the person watching her and saw no one. For the first time, she feared that her time with Hugo had broken her in ways that couldn’t be fixed. Was she going crazy despite her counselor’s efforts to help her?
Gritting her teeth, Ruth clutched her purse close to her body and moved at a quick clip toward the darkened corner of the garage where she’d been forced to park. As she neared the SUV, she noticed a white envelope on the windshield.
A parking ticket? Couldn’t be. This was a free parking garage provided courtesy of the hospital. Had someone dented her SUV? She circled the vehicle, looking for signs of damage. Nothing. Huh. Ruth unlocked the SUV and tossed her purse inside, then reached for the envelope.
Lifting the flap, she peered inside and gasped, horror filling her. Fighting not to throw up, she scrambled into her vehicle, locked the doors, and cranked the engine.
Gaze firing all around, she grabbed her purse and felt around the interior for her cell phone. Hand shaking, she pulled up her contact list. She would call Trace, but his team was out on a job somewhere and Bridget didn’t know when they’d return. That meant Ben was also out of reach.
She selected the next best option on her call list and prayed as she drove from the garage. Looked like she wasn’t crazy after all.
CHAPTER TWO
Ben Martin eased his Go bag from his shoulder and unlocked his SUV. Man, he was glad to be home. Three weeks in a cesspool chasing another scumbag human trafficker was three weeks too long. At least the outcome had been good.
He snorted. Right. Shadow, his black ops team, had freed the sex slaves, most of them children, but the damage had already been done. Some kids looked at him with terror in their eyes. The most damaged ones were resigned to yet another encounter with a child abuser.
Ben swallowed hard, shoving the painful memory behind an impenetrable wall to deal with later. He drove from the Fortress parking lot at John C. Tune Airport.
His cell phone rang. Frowning, he glanced at the readout on the dashboard and sighed. If the caller was anyone else, he’d let the call roll into voicemail. You didn’t ignore the boss if you wanted to keep your job, and he definitely did. He loved working for Fortress. He tapped the screen. “Yes, sir?”
“My office, now.”
Hands clenching the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip, he said, “Shadow just got off the jet. I’m not good company right now.” Understatement, that. He was lousy company. The thing he needed most was a hard, pounding workout, a long hot shower, and about twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep, provided the nightmares didn’t catch up with him.
“Tough.” Brent Maddox ended the call.
Ben growled and accelerated onto the interstate. Whatever the CEO of Fortress Security wanted better be quick to handle. Ben wouldn’t be able to fake civility more than a few minutes without biting someone’s head off or ending up kicked out on his butt. Maddox didn’t put up with insubordination.
Forty minutes later after fighting through ugly Nashville traffic, Ben parked in the underground garage at Fortress headquarters and slammed his door, temper close to boiling over. He needed to wrangle the temper under control or his boss would do it for him after handing Ben his head on a platter.
He punched the elevator call button and stepped into the car. While the elevator rose to the appropriate floor, Ben took a minute to shove the temper and foul mood behind lock and key.
When he walked into Maddox’s outer office, his assistant waved him through. Ben gave a perfunctory knock and opened the door. He pulled up short when he spotted the distinctive blond hair of the woman sitting in front of Maddox’s desk. He stiffened, steeling his resolve yet again to resist the magnetic pull of the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life.
Maddox motioned to the remaining empty chair. “Sit.”
“What’s going on?”
A scowl. “I’ll explain when you sit down.”
Jaw clenched, Ben dropped into the chair, aware of Ruth Monihan as he was of no other woman on the planet. He was also aware that she hadn’t lifted her head to look at him since he arrived. What was up with that? He and Ruth were late night calling buddies, not strangers.
Although he wanted to demand answers from his boss, Ruth’s continued silence concerned him. “Are you all right?” he asked her.
Ruth shook her head, arms crossed over her stomach as though protecting herself from a blow.
Not good. Adrenaline zipping through his veins, Ben looked at Maddox. “What happened?”
His boss slid an envelope across his desk to Ben. “Someone left this on her windshield today. We tested for fingerprints and found none except Ruth’s.”
Ben withdrew a single sheet of paper from the envelope. His eyes widened and his mouth grew dry at the picture of Ruth in a revealing long white dress. He frowned. Ruth looked like she was wearing a wedding dress. Where was this taken? This wasn’t a photo shoot. She was walking into a room filled with people, her arm in the grip of a big bruiser.
Ben sucked in a breath as recognition hit him. The bruiser was one of Hugo Torino’s men. Torino, a wannabe gunrunner, had kidnapped Ruth with the intent of forcing her to marry him. Ben and his teammates had freed Ruth, captured Torino, and tossed him to the feds. “Is Torino still locked up?”
A nod. “Zane checked with the feds and the prison. He’s in isolation, unable to communicate with the outside world. This isn’t his work.”