Defending Raven (Mountain Mercenaries #7)(39)
“The first few months after you disappeared . . . weren’t good,” he said hesitantly. “And I know it’s ridiculous for me to say that, considering what you were going through. Me being sad and confused and angry seems petty in comparison.”
She leaned over and put her hand on his arm. “I can’t imagine what you went through,” she said softly. “I mean, I wasn’t exactly at Club Med myself. But to have me there one second and gone the next had to have been terrible for you.”
“It was hell,” Dave said. “Absolute hell. I couldn’t stop thinking about what you might be going through. Wondering if you were dead or alive . . . and if alive, were you wondering why no one was showing up to save you? I went a little crazy. I took several trips back to Las Vegas and basically harassed the police. When it was obvious they couldn’t do anything more than they’d already done to find you, I kinda lost it. I decided if they weren’t going to get off their asses and find you, I’d have to do it myself. Which wasn’t fair to them. They’d gone above and beyond to track you down, but you seemed to have disappeared into thin air. Then I got it in my head that a local motorcycle gang had taken you and was keeping you hostage in one of their compounds.”
He stopped talking, remembering how low he’d sunk to try to infiltrate the Vegas Panthers Motorcycle Club.
Raven’s hand moved from his arm down to his hand. She intertwined her fingers with his and squeezed.
Dave stared down at their clasped hands, and the ball of hate he’d held inside him for ten long years seemed to shatter into a thousand pieces and simply dissolve.
Having his wife back with him, touching him voluntarily, trying to comfort him when he should be the one doing everything in his power to take care of her . . . he’d forgotten the power she’d always had over him. How with only one touch, she could make him melt.
“I did some things I’m not proud of, but I never killed anyone. I’d spent over a month hanging out and drinking with the men in the MC. We were at a bar one night, and while I was drinking, I started thinking about you. I was pissed off and frustrated. I’d wasted a month of my life trying to infiltrate the gang and find out if they were involved in sex trafficking, and all I’d gotten for my efforts was a raging headache every morning. I knew no one trusted me, and I couldn’t handle it anymore.”
“What’d you do?” Raven asked softly.
“I confronted the president of the club. Got in his face and demanded to know where you were. Let’s just say he wasn’t too happy that I wasn’t who I’d portrayed myself to be, or that I’d gotten in his face. His sergeant at arms and VP took me out back and beat the shit out of me. They thought I was from a rival gang that was trying to get intel about the Vegas Panthers. They left me with this as a souvenir.”
Once more, Dave fingered the scar on his neck. It went down past the collar of his shirt to the top of his chest. He’d been very lucky they hadn’t really wanted to kill him. If they had, he would’ve bled out within minutes.
“I knew then I had to change my tactics. After getting stitched up, I went home to Colorado Springs and put all my energy into learning how to use the web to my advantage. I needed to see if I could track you electronically. I learned how to glean information on almost any group or individual by hacking into their bank accounts, social media, email, phone records, or following them by hacking traffic cameras, even home-security cameras.”
“How’d you come to team up with your friends?” Raven asked.
Her eyes were focused on his face, and she truly seemed riveted.
“After a while, I started finding out about other women who’d been kidnapped. I ran across stories about children who’d been taken out of the country by their noncustodial parents. I hadn’t found you, but I’d stumbled across other networks of traffickers. Other women who were someone’s wife, sister, daughter, friend. I couldn’t just leave them to suffer, not when I knew where they were and what they were going through. But after my ill-fated attempt to do things on my own, I knew I’d never be able to pull off a full-blown rescue. So . . . I hacked into a few military databases.”
“Holy crap, wasn’t that dangerous?” Raven asked, squeezing his hand.
Nothing felt better than her hand in his. Dave nodded. “Yeah, if I’d gotten caught, I would’ve been in deep shit, but I was lucky. I looked up records of some of the most decorated Special Forces soldiers and sailors. If I was going to send them into dangerous situations, I needed to know they could hold their own. I didn’t want them to know who I was, though. I mean, who would agree to work for a blue-collar bar owner who’d never been in the military?
“So, I convinced them all to come to The Pit for an ‘interview.’ They were pissed off when ‘Rex’ never showed, but what they didn’t realize was that I already knew they could do the job. It was their chemistry with each other that was in question. I wanted a group of men who would have each other’s backs with no question. Who could work together in the most stressful of situations.”
“And they could,” Raven concluded.
“Yup. They bonded over their irritation that I never showed and played pool and talked all evening. Before they left, I knew they were the team I needed.”
“How are you able to pay them?”