Defending Raven (Mountain Mercenaries #7)
Susan Stoker
Chapter One
Dave “Rex” Justice couldn’t sit still. He and the six men he’d been working with for a few years, along with Zara Layne, were on a private plane on their way to Lima, Peru.
No one had said much since boarding, probably still in shock from learning that the man who they knew as the bartender at The Pit was in reality the leader of the Mountain Mercenaries. The tension in the plane was thick as any he could remember, and his team had definitely been in tense situations in the past. Dave knew he should probably say something to lighten the mood, but he could think about only one thing. His wife.
He’d found her after ten agonizingly long years.
Well, he hadn’t found her. Ironic, considering the amount of money, time, and effort he’d spent looking for her.
“Why don’t you sit down, Dave,” Gray suggested.
Dave ignored him. He couldn’t sit. Couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. Knowing he was so close to seeing his wife again made him unable to do anything besides pace the short aisle in agitation.
What if she’d disappeared in the few months since Zara had last seen her?
What if he’d come this close, only to lose her again?
The thought was repugnant and unacceptable.
“I think it’s time you told us the entire story about Rex and the Mountain Mercenaries,” Black said.
Dave turned to look at the men he’d recruited and hired, and sighed. Black was right, they deserved some answers. Lord knew he’d been too stressed to do more than grunt in response since they’d refused to let him come down to Peru by himself.
He sat on the very edge of one of the leather chairs in the plane and faced the men he thought of as brothers. To them, however, he’d simply been Dave, the bartender. They hadn’t suspected he could be the elusive “Rex,” their handler and boss. He’d been able to keep eyes and ears on them because they spent a lot of time in The Pit, the bar he’d owned for years.
Ever since they’d each found a woman to love and cherish, however, they’d been spending less and less time in the bar, and he knew things were changing.
Yes. They’d earned some answers. But after Zara, Meat’s fiancée, had recognized his Raven from a picture posted behind the bar, Dave hadn’t been able to think about anything other than getting to his wife.
Sighing again, he ran a hand through his dark-brown hair. He wasn’t sure exactly where to start. The last decade had been one crushing disappointment after another when it came to the search for Raven, and to be this close now was literally about to drive him crazy.
“As you’re now aware, I’m the man you used to know as Rex,” he finally said. His southern accent was more pronounced, probably because he hadn’t gotten much more than two hours of sleep in the last twenty-four. He’d been busy arranging for a flight to Peru and running through different scenarios as to how the reunion with his long-lost wife might go.
“After my wife disappeared, law enforcement officials in Las Vegas did what they could to find her, but their time and abilities were limited. After her case went cold, I began learning as much as I could about the sex-trafficking industry. I scoured the internet and quickly learned exactly how depraved mankind could be. In the process of looking for my wife, however, I stumbled across other missing women . . . and children. But I didn’t have any way of helping them. All I could do was turn over the information to law enforcement in their hometowns and hope they acted on it. It was frustrating and sickening. So I started thinking about the what-ifs . . .
“What if I got a group of men together who could go in and rescue the people I’d found through my research? What if I could return wives, sisters, children, to their families? I know what it would’ve meant to me if someone had found Raven and helped her get back home. Through my research and my rather uncanny ability to find people, I’d already made some good connections in the government and with some other very powerful people. When word got out about what I was doing, how I was successfully tracking down kidnapping victims, I even began to get . . . donations. You wouldn’t believe the amount of money that was thrown my way. Relatives of people we’ve found, organizations who advocate for the missing and abused, all sorts of people and groups were willing to give money to aid the cause.
“Once I realized I needed boots on the ground, and that simply finding people on the computer wasn’t good enough, I began looking for men I could trust to go in and rescue the helpless victims I’d found. I researched each and every one of you, and handpicked you because of your military records and your expertise in different areas.
“Black, you’re the best negotiator I’ve ever seen. Meat, you, of course, are a genius with computers. Ro’s ability with cars and engines is unparalleled. Gray, your skill at being invisible on missions is legendary, and Ball, you can outdrive just about anyone on the planet. As for Arrow . . . you’re just an all-around badass. I needed the best of the best, and you all were it.”
“So, you wanted us to find your wife?” Ro asked. “Hell, Rex . . . er . . . Dave, we didn’t even know about your wife until a year or so ago.”
Dave shook his head. “Yes and no. I mean, if I found her, I definitely wanted men I could trust to go and get her, but it was more than that.” He shook his head. “I suppose I need to go back to the beginning.”