You’re just playing a part.

Despite everything, Tate could feel his body responding to Hannah. Responding to the intoxicating, sweet taste of her skin against his lips.

Dammit, get a grip, Colton.

Satisfied that he had performed as expected for whatever camera or cameras hidden in the room, Tate whispered the same message into Hannah’s ear that he’d told her yesterday.

“I’m here to rescue you,” he told her.

He couldn’t allow his guard to go down, not even for a moment. “You and the others,” he added. “But this isn’t going to be easy and I’m going to need your help to pull it off.”

Hannah turned her head slowly to look at him. He could tell by the look in her eyes that he’d made a breakthrough.

She was finally beginning to believe him.

Colton
Showdown

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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About the Author

MARIE FERRARELLA, a USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author, has written more than two hundred books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.

To

Sebastian Burgess,

Welcome to the world,

little guy

Prologue

Her face haunted him.

Ever since he’d seen her on that DVD, the one that had been made to showcase the “selection” available for purchase by the members of the “discerning” male audience viewing it, Detective Tate Colton had been equally fascinated and sick to his stomach.

Fascinated because Hannah Troyer, one of several young women displayed on the video, was at once hypnotically beautiful and so obviously innocent. And sick to his stomach because he knew what was going to happen to Hannah. Knew what was going to happen to all the innocent young women who appeared on the video. Each and every one of them was destined to become the object of some depraved pervert’s lechery—as long as the right price was quoted and met.

Unless he and the FBI agents on his team got to those girls first.

Someone was kidnapping Amish girls and selling them to the highest bidder because in this jaded age of too much too soon, the idea of an untouched, pure young woman still held an almost addictive allure for some men.

In this case, the “some” were exceptionally wealthy men because innocence had become a commodity that did not come cheap. Instead, it was bade and bargained for like the rare product it had become, only to be forever lost at the hands of depraved men who had no idea how to rightly value such a treasure.

Eyes on the screen, Tate went back over the DVD and played it forward again, watching the same small section he’d viewed before of the girl he’d seen while going undercover as a prospective buyer.

Watching her.

Gray-blue eyes, alabaster skin, hair like flame.

They called her Jade. But she was Hannah Troyer.

He knew her name—her real name, only because Hannah’s brother, Caleb, was desperately searching for his younger sister. The search had created strange bedfellows because, just recently, Caleb had wound up becoming engaged to his sister, Emma, a Special Agent with the FBI. They were working together on a joint task force to find the missing girls. According to what his sister had said, she and Caleb were going to be married once this case was finally wrapped up.

That made it sound so easy, Tate thought cynically. A piece of cake—and it wasn’t.

There wasn’t anything at all easy about this case. Not for the two dead girls they’d already found. Not for the whole of the small Pennsylvania Amish community—ironically called Paradise Ridge—which was holding its collective breath, waiting and praying for their own to be returned to them unharmed.

Tate had an uneasy feeling that wasn’t possible. Even if they found all the other missing girls and they were still alive, they were no longer unharmed. Far greater than the physical scars they might have incurred were the emotional scars that had to run across their young, tender souls.

In this sex trafficking ring, the mostly faceless bastards who were abducting the young women were systematically destroying their innocence so that the girls—all between the ages of 16 and 20—bore little to no resemblance to the sweet young women their families were frantically searching for.

“I’d like to gut each and every one of those bastards,” he muttered under his breath, finally shutting off the DVD player. The large screen he’d been watching went blank.

Emma, the only other person in the room with him, laughed shortly. There was no mirth in the sound. “You’re not the only one who feels that way.”

As she spoke, she put her hand on Tate’s broad shoulder and was surprised by how rigid it felt. Well, maybe not so surprised, she silently amended. Tate, who’d been the one to initially ask her to join his task force, took his work very seriously, but this had to be a new level of intensity, even for him.

“I think that if we ever find the people who kidnapped Hannah, Caleb would be tempted to temporarily renounce his pacifistic ways, just for the time it would take to pummel these worthless scum into the ground. But indulging in fantasies isn’t going to help us rescue these girls,” Emma pointed out. “And we are going to rescue them,” she told Tate with utter conviction, not for the first time.

Failure, as the saying went, was not an option here. There were too many lives at stake, too many families waiting to get their daughters back.

Tate knew he would have felt a personal obligation to bring the girls all back to their families even if the people affected by this heinous ring were not technically his neighbors.

The Colton family ranch in Eden Falls, Pennsylvania, was named the Double C in honor of Charlotte Colton. Charlotte was the woman who, even though she hadn’t given them biological life, had, for all intents and purposes, along with her husband, Donovan, given him and his five siblings a reason to exist, a reason to live.

The couple, whose lives were so tragically cut short along with those of so many others on 9/11, were well-known for their dedication and their generosity. Over the course of two decades, they had adopted six completely unrelated orphans, given them their name and their love and knitted them into a family. A family who never took what they had for granted. The ranch where they grew up was right outside a little village named Paradise Ridge.

Civilization, with all its technological progress, seemed to have stopped at the borders of the tiny town. The hardworking citizens of that town led what was considered an idyllic life that echoed their ancestors’ existence. Until a serpent somehow found its way into Paradise Ridge and stole some of the town’s young women.

Tate was determined to find those girls and the ones from Ohio.

Especially, he silently promised the face that haunted him, Hannah. Find them and free them. Even if it was the last thing he ever did on this earth.

“C’mon, Big Brother,” Emma was urging him. “You and I have a sting to plan and coordinate.”

Snapping out of his mental fog, Tate rose from the chair he’d taken to view the DVD for the umpteenth time, searching for some telltale clue he might have missed before.

He looked at his sister as they got ready to meet the others involved in this undercover operation. “Tell the truth, Tomato-head, you’re going to miss this once you turn in your badge for a butter churn.” He still loved to use her childhood nickname, to her annoyance.

Try as he might, he just couldn’t picture his driven sister in that kind of laid-back, rural setting—not for more than ten minutes.

“No, I’m not,” Emma countered with feeling. Then, when Tate’s eyes held hers, she shrugged. “Well, maybe just a little,” she allowed as they left the office. Because he’d forced the truth out of her, Emma punched his arm.

Tate’s deep laugh echoed up and down the hallway. Maybe Emma wasn’t going to miss this life, but he sure as hell was going to miss Emma.

Chapter 1

He wasn’t one of those people who had an obsession about cleanliness. Tate Colton had never had a problem with getting his hands—or any other part of him, for that matter—dirty, if the job required it. That kind of dirt he could put up with and ignore.

But dealing with these subhuman creatures who made their living trafficking in human flesh, in destroying young lives and thinking absolutely nothing of it, was an entirely different matter. It made him want to go back to the hotel room where he was registered under his assumed name and take a shower. A long, scalding-hot shower to wash away their stink.

Once he received the assignment from his supervisor, Hugo Villanueva, he knew that going undercover in order to find and save the Amish young women who had been kidnapped would require him to associate with, in his opinion, the absolute dregs of the earth.

Dregs in expensive suits.

You could dress a monkey up in fine clothes, but he was still a monkey, Tate thought. No amount of expensive clothing could change that, or change the fact that the people he was forced to interact with were lower than scum.

He’d think more about stepping on a beetle than he would about terminating the existence of one of these cockroaches.

To look at the man who had brought him up to this particular hotel suite—his current tour guide to this underworld—someone might have thought the man was a successful businessman or the CEO of a Fortune 500 company instead of the utterly soulless lowlife that he actually was.

Impeccably dressed in what was easily a thousand-dollar suit, his guide to this lurid world of virgins-for-sale smirked at him confidently as he opened the door leading into the suite’s bedroom.

“I’m sure we can find something to pique your appetite, Mr. Conrad,” he said.

Tate scowled at the shorter man. “I said no names,” he snapped, mindful of the part he was playing in this surreal drama.

The other man laughed, enjoying what he considered to be the display of ignorance on the part of this new client.

“Nothing to be worried about. What are they going to do?” he asked, gesturing at the bedroom and the young women being held there. Each and every one of them were dressed in identical long, slinky white gowns. “Post it on the internet? None of them even know what the hell the internet is,” he stressed, jeering at the young women who were virtually prisoners in this suite. “They all live in the Stone Age. Trust me.” He patted Tate’s arm and the latter shrugged him off as if he was flinging off an annoying bug—an act that wasn’t lost on the man. “Your name—and your sterling reputation—are both safe here,” he assured Tate.

“C’mon, c’mon,” the man snapped at the young woman he was herding into the room for his “client’s” final review. “He hasn’t got all night. Or have you?” he asked, looking over his shoulder at Tate, a lecherous grin spread across his angular face. “You know, if you’ve changed your mind and want to make your purchase now—” He left the sentence open, looking at Tate expectantly.

“I haven’t changed my mind,” Tate answered formally. The deal was that he got to see the young women in person in order for him to finalize his choice, and then the negotiations regarding the pending “purchase” would go from there.

Inside, Tate was struggling to contain his fury. The woman he’d “requested,” “Jade,” was looking at him apprehensively like a mistreated animal afraid of being beaten.

Had she been beaten?

Tate looked her over quickly. “What’s wrong with her?” he demanded, channeling his anger into the part he was playing—a man who wanted the “goods” he was considering purchasing to be perfect. He was well aware of the fact that the blue-gray eyes continued to watch his every move. Tate swung around to confront the other man. “She looks like she’s been manhandled,” he accused angrily.

The man shrugged indifferently. “Don’t worry. Nothing happened that would have left a visible mark on her.” His flat, brown eyes raked over Hannah from head to toe, as if to reassure himself that she wasn’t displaying any sign of bruising in plain sight. “That’s the one rule—other than payment up front—the boss won’t tolerate any visible marks left on the merchandise.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Tate saw Hannah flinch at the label the man had contemptuously slapped on her. Merchandise.

His anger flared.

“She’s a person, not merchandise,” Tate retorted, glaring at the guard.

“Hey, at the price you’re going to pay, she’s anything you want her to be. You want a person? You got it, she’s a person.” He turned to look at the redhead he’d led out of the bedroom for Ted Conrad’s perusal. “A soft, sweet-smelling person, aren’t you, honey?”

Smirking, he slid his hand along her cheek and down the side of her neck.

It was obvious that the guard didn’t intend on stopping there.

“I’ll thank you to take your hands off her,” Tate warned darkly as the man’s hand just grazed the swell of her breasts.

Anger flashed in the other man’s eyes, but just as quickly, it subsided. The main reason he’d been told to bring this client here was to get Conrad to make his final decision so that the deal could proceed.

Apparently, it looked as if the deal was about to be sealed. The bottom line was, and had always been, money. So, much as he would have personally rather shot out this client’s kneecaps, the guard raised his hands in the air in mock surrender.

“They’re off,” he declared dramatically, wiggling his fingers in the air to underscore his point. The smirk on his face deepened as he looked at Hannah knowingly. “So, this is the one you want, eh?”

“She’s the one,” Tate replied, his tone scrubbed free of any emotion.

The other man nodded his approval. “Gotta say, you’ve got good taste. She’s a beauty.” With hooded eyes, he looked her over again. It was obvious that he was putting himself in the client’s place. “She also looks like she might last you awhile.”

Hannah drew in a breath. They’d given them all some sort of pills, but she had managed to fool her captors into thinking she’d swallowed hers when she hadn’t. Each word from the guard felt like a dagger, stabbing into her heart.

Her eyes swept over both men. “Please don’t do this,” Hannah pleaded.

It was impossible to know which of them she addressed her plea to.

For his part, though he took care not to show it, Tate felt terrible. He could certainly imagine what was going through Hannah’s mind. What Caleb’s sister was anticipating. He would have given anything to comfort her, but that wasn’t what was going to save her.

In order to accomplish that, he had to be convincing in his role. Which meant that he needed to go on with this charade, continue to maintain this facade so that he could, ultimately, get her and her friends away from these men.

If he went about it the traditional way, pulling out a service weapon and threatening to shoot the other man if he got in his way, Tate knew that he might—or might not—be able to get out of the hotel with Hannah. Most likely, they’d be stopped before they ever made it to the street level.

No, this way was more effective. It just required a great deal of focus and an iron will—and the ability to block out that look in her eyes to keep it from getting to him.

“What did I tell you about opening your mouth?” the guard was demanding angrily. He pulled back his hand, ready to bring it down on her face.

Hannah’s alarmed cry tore at his heart.

“If she has one mark on her, the deal’s off,” Tate warned him in a voice that was deadly calm, belying the turmoil that lay just beneath.

The guard stopped in midswing. The expression on his face told Tate that the guard was getting fed up with what he undoubtedly considered a high-and-mighty client. The man let his guard down for a second, the sneer on his face telling Tate that he thought he knew his type. Not just knew it, but hated it because he felt inferior to the supposedly rich client.

“You don’t buy her, someone else will,” the guard jeered contemptuously. But he dropped his hand to his side nonetheless. “Sit!” he ordered Hannah with less compassion than he would have directed to a pet dog. Only when she complied did the guard finally look his way. “So, I take it we’ve got a deal. You’re interested in acquiring this tasty morsel?”

Tate’s expression gave nothing away, including the fact that he could easily vivisect him without so much as a thought. “I might be,” he replied after a beat had gone by.

“Might be,” the man echoed with contempt. He was at the end of his patience. “Look, the man I represent doesn’t like having his time wasted. We’re alike that way because neither do I.”

Tate slowly walked around the young woman, deliberately pausing and taking a lock of her hair between his fingers. He made a show of sniffing it. “That goes both ways.”

Suspicion immediately entered the guard’s eyes. “So what do you have in mind?”

There was no hesitation on Tate’s part. “A man doesn’t buy an expensive car without taking it on a test run, seeing how it handles,” he pointed out, his voice continuing to be flat.

It killed him to see that Hannah had winced again in response to his words, and he saw real fear in her eyes as she watched him.

How did he get it across to her that he was one of the good guys without blowing his cover?

“Go on, I’m listening,” the other man said.

“I’d like a private session with her, to see how we ‘get along,’” Tate proposed.

“The boss doesn’t deal in damaged goods,” the other man snapped.

“I have no intentions of ‘damaging’ her. Just ‘sampling’ her,” Tate informed him. “There are a lot of ways a man can see if he likes the goods he’s getting.”

He was standing in front of Hannah now, looking into her eyes, wishing there was some way to set her mind at ease. His back was to the other man and he smiled at Hannah. The smile was kind, devoid of the lust that had supposedly brought him here. Lowering his head so that his lips were right next to the young woman’s ear, he whispered, “Caleb sent me,” before straightening and backing off.

Her eyes widened, but she held her tongue.

Tate said a quick, silent prayer of thanksgiving to whoever it was that watched over law enforcement officers.

“What did you say to her?” the guard demanded. There was no arguing with his tone.

Tate turned to look at him, emulating the latter’s previous smug look. “I told her that paradise was at hand.”

As he said that, Tate slanted a look toward Hannah, hoping she would put two and two together and take some comfort in the covert message. He couldn’t tell by her expression if she’d believed him—or even understood what he was trying to tell her. He wasn’t even sure if she’d heard him say that Caleb had sent him.

Terror, he knew, had a way of blocking out everything else.

The man relaxed a little, then laughed. “Good one,” he pronounced. “That’s where she and some of those other girls come from, some backward hole-in-the-wall called Paradise Ridge.”

Tate tried to sound casually uninterested. A man making small talk, involved in a meaningless conversation that would be forgotten before he walked out the door. “Is that where all the girls are from? This Paradise Ridge place you just mentioned?”

His question was met with a nod. “This batch is. They picked up others from—” He abruptly stopped his narrative. His eyebrows narrowed over small, deep-set eyes. “What’s with all the questions?”

Tate shrugged. “Just trying to find out how big a selection you’ve got—in case things don’t work out with this one,” he explained.

“Oh, it’ll work out,” the man promised. There was no room for argument. He looked at Hannah pointedly. “She knows what’ll happen to her if it doesn’t. Don’t you, honey?” The smile on his lips was cold enough to freeze a bucket of water in the middle of May.

This time, instead of fear rising in Hannah’s eyes, Tate thought he saw anger. Anger and frustration because, he guessed, there was nothing she could do right now about the anger she was feeling.

The other man was apparently oblivious to her reaction. It was clear that fear was all he looked for, all he valued.

“Don’t want to wind up like your girlfriends now, do you?” he taunted her.

Things suddenly fell into place. The annoying little troll was referring to the two dead girls Emma and Hannah’s brother had initially discovered. Solomon Miller, a so-called “repentant” Amish outcast had brought them straight to the bodies, hoping to use the fact that he was informing on his “boss” as a bargaining chip.

Initially part of the group of men involved in the sex trafficking ring, Miller had become the task force’s inside man, trading information for the promise of immunity once all the pieces of this case came together and they got enough on the men running this thing to take them to court—and put them away for the next century or so.

If they didn’t wait until they discovered exactly who was behind all this and bring him—or her—in, if they just grabbed up the two-bit players they were dealing with in this little drama, the operation would just fold up and relocate someplace else.

And Amish girls would continue disappearing as long as there were sick men to make their abductions a profitable business.

No, they had to catch the mastermind in order for this operation to be deemed a success.

“Don’t threaten her,” Tate warned. When the guard shot him a malevolent look, he told him, “I want her to be willing to be with me, not because she was threatened with harm if she wasn’t.”

The guard looked at him as if he wasn’t dealing with a full deck. “Hey, man, don’t you know? It’s better when they fight you.”

The world would be a much better place if he could just squash this cockroach, Tate thought, struggling to hang on to his temper. With no qualms whatsoever, Tate would have been more than willing to put everyone out of their collective misery—himself included.

But instead, he was forced to tamp down his temper and nonchalantly tell him that “We each have our preferences.”

“Yeah, well, you’re the man with the bankroll,” the guard grumbled resentfully.

“Yes, I am.”

Tate was grateful for the elaborate lengths the department had gone to in order to give him a plausible backstory. His brother, Gunnar, had funded his huge bank account.

Whoever was running this sex trafficking operation wasn’t a fool, Tate concluded. He was very, very careful to get everything right. That included vetting his clients rather than just accepting them at face value, or going with hearsay.

Nothing was simple anymore, Tate thought. Not even the peddling of flesh.

“So it’s settled?” Tate asked the man. The blank look he received in return forced him to elaborate. “I can have a private session with her?”

“Soon as I run it by the boss” came the reply.

“And how long is that going to take?”

He knew things had to progress at their own pace, but he hated the idea of leaving the girl alone with this thug for another moment, much less for another day or two. There was no telling what could happen in that amount of time, and he didn’t want to take any more chances than he had to.

“Anxious?” the other man jeered, enjoying himself. He liked having the upper hand and, in this case, he clearly got to call the shots. “Tomorrow. Come back tomorrow. She’ll be ready for you then.”

Just what did that scum mean by “ready”?

A premonition had a shiver zipping down Tate’s back, but there was absolutely nothing he could do about the circumstances. Tate was well aware that if he pressed, if he remotely said that she looked ready now or tried in any way to hurry this along, the whole thing could just fall apart on him. There were steps to take and he knew it.

That didn’t make taking them any easier.

If this was rushed, the people they were after would smell a setup and not just back off but vanish into thin air, taking the young women with them. He’d seen it before.

Hell, he’d been part of it before—having an operation unravel on him that allowed a killer to be set free. The man was ultimately taken down and brought to justice, but not before he’d killed several more young women. Young women who wouldn’t have died if he had done his job right in the first place, Tate thought ruefully.

That wasn’t going to happen again, he vowed. This time, he was going to do things by the book. Even if that meant he had to find a way to physically restrain himself.

“What time tomorrow?” he asked the guard.

“We’ll get back to you about that,” the man told him, affecting a superior attitude.

Tate narrowed his eyes, looking as cold as the man he was dealing with. Colder. “I don’t like being jerked around,” he said in a voice that contained an unspoken warning.

“Nobody’s jerking you around,” the other man promised, sounding more than a little nervous that this encounter could turn physical. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said again, this time far more amiably.

“I’ll look forward to it,” Tate said, not bothering to tone down the note of sarcasm in his voice. He looked from Hannah to the man, wondering if she even realized how breathtakingly beautiful she was. She reminded him of a rose newly in bloom. “In the meantime, I don’t want anyone touching her.”

The other man began to smirk again. “She really got to you, eh?”

Tate was aware that men like the one he was dealing with directly understood only one thing: money. It was the only language they spoke. However, he hadn’t been given the suitcase that was to be filled with the cash he was to trade for Hannah. That came tomorrow.

Whatever cash he had on him at the moment was his own, but it was only paper as far as Tate was concerned. Paper that was capable of buying both him and Hannah a little peace of mind.

Taking out his wallet, Tate removed a hundred-dollar bill. As the other man eagerly put his hand out, Tate tore the bill in half and handed one piece to him.

“What the hell is this?” the man demanded. “Some kind of stupid game?”

“No game,” Tate assured him. “You get the other half of the hundred when I come back tomorrow and see for myself that she’s all right.” His eyes bored into the other man’s dark ones. “We have a deal?”

The other man cursed roundly, then shoved his half of the bill into his pocket. “We have a deal,” he retorted grudgingly.

“Good.” Tate turned on his heel and crossed to the door.

Tate could almost feel Hannah’s eyes watching him as he walked out of the suite.

Tomorrow seemed like an eternity away.

Chapter 2

“Did you see her? Was she there?”

Caleb Troyer fired the anxious questions at him the moment the thirty-one-year-old cabinetmaker walked into the makeshift, satellite FBI office.

Rather than the customary laid-back attitude normally associated with people who came from the Amish community, Caleb reminded him of a rocket that was ready to go off at the slightest provocation.

He couldn’t say that he blamed the man, either.

“Yes, I saw her,” Tate answered.

He glanced toward his sister, who’d come in with Caleb. He sincerely wished that Emma had followed protocol and persuaded Caleb to stay away and let the task force do its work.

Granted, the distraught man was Hannah’s brother as well as Emma’s fiancé. However, Caleb was also a civilian and, in his experience, overzealous, emotionally involved civilians had a way of causing a mission to fall apart.

They couldn’t afford to have that happen. Too many young, innocent lives were at stake. And Tate had absolutely no intention of watching another mission self-destruct on him.

“How did she look?” Caleb pressed. “Have they …” At a loss, Caleb searched for a word that didn’t drag a cat-o’-nine-tails across his soul, making it bleed when he considered the implication. “Have they hurt her in any way?” he finally asked nervously.

Beneath the cabinetmaker’s apparent restlessness was anger. Tate could see it in the other man’s gray eyes. Tall and muscular, Caleb Troyer, once unleashed, would be a force to be reckoned with. Not that he could honestly blame Caleb for what he was feeling. If all went well, maybe Caleb would get his chance at some payback when the operation was over.

But until then, the man had to be restrained.

“She looks tired and frightened,” Tate told Hannah’s brother.

His response was true—as far it went. What Tate didn’t add was that when he’d initially seen Hannah in the motel room with the other two girls—before he’d been given the DVD to watch, she’d appeared to be drugged, as were the other girls. It was the easiest way to control the “inventory” and keep them from escaping.

Caleb definitely didn’t need to know that. If he did, that might provide the missing ingredient that would set Hannah’s brother off and God knew that Tate had more than enough to deal with without having to worry about the father of three suddenly going ballistic on him.

He could just picture Caleb storming into the motel room, breaking down the door and subsequently getting shot for his efforts. If that happened, he’d have another body on his hands—as well as his conscience—and his sister to deal with.

Omitting certain details was the far safer way to go in this case.

“If you know where she is, then what are we waiting for?” Caleb demanded impatiently. He looked from Emma to Tate, searching for a glimmer of support. Why were they hanging back? “Let’s go get Hannah and the other girls,” he urged.

Turning on his heel, he was almost at the office door when Tate moved in front of him, blocking his way.

Tate completely sympathized with what the other man had to be going through, but what Caleb was proposing almost guaranteed a bloodbath.

“We can’t just burst in there,” he told Caleb as calmly as possible.

“Why not? Why can’t we just walk into the place?” Caleb wanted to know. He didn’t understand why this detective who’d promised to bring his sister and the other girls back was acting so reticent. Was he going back on his word? “You said there were just two godless thugs guarding the girls. There are three of us here—and you can get more,” he pointed out.

Caleb was obviously focused only on rescuing Hannah at all costs. He didn’t blame the man. But Tate was able to take several different points of view regarding the op besides the way Caleb did.

Tate did his best to make the other man understand. “Yes, I can get more manpower and maybe we could rescue Hannah and the other two without incident,” he allowed, deliberately not going into how dangerous that sort of overt action could be. “But we also want to be able to rescue whatever other girls the ring has hidden away—the girls who were kidnapped for the same reason that your sister was taken. And we won’t be able to do that if the guy who’s the brains behind all this gets wind of what happened.

“The minute he does,” Tate continued, “he’ll go underground and those girls will be as good as dead. We’ll never find them.” Tate took a breath, searching the other man’s face to see if his words had sunk in. Wondering if Caleb suspected that he was also lecturing himself as well as the victim’s brother.

Lecturing himself because Tate had the exact same reaction, the exact desire as Caleb. He wanted to save Hannah and the girls with her as soon as possible. For two cents, he’d go in, guns blazing, and take down those two worthless pieces of trash guarding the girls with no more regret than he experienced stepping on a colony of ants.

Less.

The only problem was, right now there were only two henchmen visible and he knew damn well that there had to be more thugs involved than just Tweedledum and Tweedledee. An operation this big didn’t function with just two flunkies.

There had to be more.

He put his hand on the Amish cabinetmaker’s shoulder and looked at him compassionately.

“I know it’s hard, but you’re going to have to be patient,” he told Caleb. “It’s the only way we’re going to be able to successfully rescue those girls. All of them,” he emphasized.

Caleb nodded. It was obvious that he was struggling with himself. “You are right. We cannot just go in and rescue Hannah, not when there are other girls being held prisoner as well.” And then he sighed and shook his head. “But this is hard,” he complained.

Caleb would get no argument from him. “Nobody ever said it wouldn’t be,” Tate agreed. He looked at his watch. The handler should be getting the money right about now.

It was the handler whose job it was to pick up the funds from Gunnar that were needed for the exchange. At least that part was easy. Securing the funds would have been a great deal more difficult if he didn’t have a billionaire brother who was willing to bring down this sex trafficking ring.

“So what’s your next move?” Emma asked her brother as Caleb retreated to the far side of the room. There was tension in her voice.

“I’ve set up a private one-on-one session with Hannah,” he told Emma. “Seems my credentials are so good that the man at the top is allowing me to have a private ‘preview’ with my future ‘purchase.’ I’m going to try to convince Hannah to trust me, but it’s not going to be easy, given what she’s been through.”

Overhearing, Caleb looked up, suddenly alert. “Call her Blue Bird.”

Tate exchanged quizzical looks with Emma. “What?” Tate asked.

“Call her Blue Bird,” Caleb repeated, crossing back to them. “It was a nickname I gave Hannah when she was a little girl. She was always running around, fluttering about here and there, so full of life, of energy. One day when she seemed to be going like that for hours, I laughed and told her she was like one of the blue birds we saw in the spring. The comparison pleased her so I started calling her that. Blue Bird.” A wave of memories assaulted him from all angles and he shook himself free, unable to deal with them right now. “If you call her that, she’ll know you talked to me and she’ll trust you.”

Tate nodded. It was worth a shot. “Thanks. That’ll help.” As he switched his cell phone to vibrate, he saw the way Emma was frowning. “What’s bothering you?”

There was a time she would have told him he was imagining things, that nothing was bothering her. But that was when the job was all important to her, and nothing came ahead of that. Now a lot of things did. And she was worried.

“Frankly, I don’t like you walking back into the lion’s den unarmed.” She knew he was pushing his luck. “You made it out twice unharmed. The third time—” she began skeptically.

“Will be the charm,” Tate assured her, finishing her sentence in a far different way than she’d intended to finish it.

But Emma continued to look unconvinced. “The people involved in this sex trafficking ring have already killed twice,” she reminded him. “What’s to stop them from killing you?”

He shrugged indifferently, as if she were worrying for no reason. “Well, for one thing, killing me off would be bad for business,” he told her glibly. “They’re after the money I told them I’d pay for Hannah. Word gets around that they’ve killed a client and their little virgins-to-the-highest-bidder scheme suffers a serious setback.”

He put his hands on Emma’s small shoulders. Funny, he never realized how fragile she could feel. Or how touched he could be by her concern. “Look, we’ve both been in law enforcement for a while now and nothing’s ever happened to either of us, right?”

“That’s my whole point,” she insisted. She put one of her hands on top of his, silently bonding with him. “Our luck’s bound to run out eventually.”

“Eventually means someday—not today,” he pointed out with conviction. “Now stop worrying—that’s an order,” he told her. “The sooner we get the information we need about whoever’s pulling those strings, the sooner we get to wrap this up and Caleb over there gets to make an honest woman out of you.”

Emma’s mouth dropped open for a second, and then she shook her head. “I can’t believe you just said that. Do you have any idea how incredibly old-fashioned that sounded?”

Her choice of words amused him. “You’d better get used to that, honey,” Tate told her, kissing the top of his sister’s head. “Old-fashioned goes with the bonnet and the butter churn.”

Emma continued to look at him, a knowing look entering her eyes. She wasn’t all that unusual, she thought. “Tell me you wouldn’t give up everything for the right person if she came along.”

“For the right person,” he echoed, momentarily conceding the point, then quickly qualifying, “If she came along. But until she does, I’ve got work to do. And right now, I’ve got to pick up a suitcase full of money before those thugs get antsy and decide to turn Hannah over to another bidder.”

The suitcase full of money meant he was seeing Hatfield, his handler. The thought of her brother walking around with that kind of money in a briefcase made her nervous. “I’ll go with you,” she volunteered.

But he had something else he felt was more important for her to do. “No, you stay here and make sure that your cabinetmaker doesn’t decide to do something stupid and wind up breaking down the hotel suite door and hauling out one or both of those bozos.”

Emma came to her fiancé’s defense. “What would you do if someone kidnapped me?” Emma asked him pointedly, trying to make her brother see the situation from Caleb’s point of view.

“Sending his next of kin a sympathy card comes to mind,” Tate answered dryly. And then his smile faded for a moment as he gave her a serious answer. “I’d track the kidnapper to the ends of the earth and gut him seven ways to Sunday—” But he was trained to do that. It was different with Caleb. These were men they were talking about, not cabinets. “But we’re not talking about me,” he pointed out.

Emma shook her head as she laughed softly. “No, I guess we’re not.” She brushed a quick kiss against his cheek. She was going to worry until she saw him safe again. She couldn’t help it. She was built that way.

“Watch your back, Big Brother,” she told him.

“Always,” he said. Crossing to the door, he opened it then paused for a moment to look at Hannah’s brother. Lines of concern were etched deeply into his handsome, young face. “It’s going to be all right,” he promised the other man.

The expression on Caleb’s face was half resigned, half hopeful.

It echoed perfectly the sentiment Tate felt within his soul.

The same two men he’d dealt with twice before were waiting for him in the hotel suite when he arrived with the briefcase of used hundred-dollar bills, arranged in nonsequential order, just as instructed.

The bald man with the goatee opened the door to admit him before his knuckles could hit the door for a second time. Tate walked in, nodding at him and the equally bald African-American. On the latter, bald looked good. The same couldn’t be said about the man with the goatee.

“It’s all there,” Tate told the African-American man eyeing the briefcase suspiciously as he placed it on the coffee table between the two men.

The man flipped both locks at the same time, then spared him a glance. “You don’t mind if I see for myself, right?”

It was a rhetorical question. Nonetheless, Tate chose to answer it in his own way. He quickly pressed the lid back down in place before the other man could look inside. Tate met the guard’s hostile gaze.

“I’d expect nothing less,” Tate assured him.

“Then what the hell are you doing?” the guard demanded hotly.

Tate looked at the man with the goatee, then back at Waterford, the African-American. “I’m waiting for one of you to show me Jade.”

“You’ve already seen her,” Waterford snapped. “Twice.”

“You’re right,” Tate agreed amicably. “And now I just want to make sure that she’s actually here.”

“He doesn’t trust you, Nathan,” the man with the goatee jeered.

“Shut up,” Waterford ordered, obviously angry that his name had been used.

Tate pretended not to notice the flare-up. “Well, do I see her?” he wanted to know, still keeping the lid down. Tate could feel his biceps straining as he continued to hold the lid in place. It had turned into a contest of strength, one that Tate was determined to win.

Waterford did not take defeat easily. He looked as if he could snap a neck as easily as take in a deep breath.

“Bring her in,” he instructed the other guard in the room.

The latter was angry at being ordered around like that in front of a relative stranger, but he was also obviously afraid to oppose the larger man. Muttering under his breath, the man with the mousy goatee went to the back of the suite, threw open the door leading into the bedroom and barked “Get out here” to the lone occupant in the bedroom.

A moment later, Hannah, her flame-red hair piled up high on her head, wearing a green gown that looked painted on, delicately glided into the sitting room.

Each time he saw her, Tate couldn’t help thinking, she seemed even more beautiful than the last time. It almost made his soul ache to look at her, knowing what she had to have gone through. Was still going through, he amended.

He had a gut feeling that Hannah was tougher than she looked. He sincerely hoped so, for her sake.

“Satisfied?” the African-American barked, flinging his hand out and gesturing toward Hannah.

Tate withdrew his hand from the briefcase’s lid. “Satisfied,” he replied. Tate took a step back from the table. He smiled and nodded at Hannah before turning his attention to the man he’d made his bargain with the day before. Tate looked into his eyes, his gaze turning almost hypnotic. “And nobody touched her.” It was both a question and a statement that waited to be confirmed.

“Nobody laid a damn finger on her—or anything else for that matter,” the man with the goatee added when it was obvious that the client was waiting for more of a confirmation.

Tate looked at Hannah, who kept her gaze lowered, looking down at the rug. With the crook of his finger beneath her chin, he raised her head until she was looking directly at him.

“Is that true?” he asked her.

Surprised at being addressed directly without any curse words attached, a beat still passed before Hannah nodded her head.

“What are you asking her for?” the goatee demanded to know. “I said nobody touched her. I lived up to my half of the bargain,” he declared impatiently. “Where’s my money?”

“Right here,” Tate said, placing the other half of the torn bill into the man’s outstretched hand.

“What’s that for?” Waterford wanted to know, eyeing the single torn section suspiciously.

“Insurance,” was the unselfconscious reply. “Now I’d like some time alone with the girl.”

“Sure, knock yourself out.” The man with the goatee gestured toward the bedroom. “You paid for her, have at it,” he urged, and then he leered, “Sure you don’t want me to break her in for you?”

It was a crude play on words. Words that quickly faded away in the heat of the glare that had entered Tate’s eyes.

“What I want,” he began deliberately, “is for the two of you to make yourself scarce.” Tate looked from one man to the other. Neither seemed to grasp what he was telling them, or made any attempt to leave the room. “You can stand guard in the hall outside the suite’s door if it makes you happy.”

“We’re not leaving,” the goatee growled.

“I’m not telling you to leave,” Tate countered. “I’m telling you I want some privacy. There’s only one way out of this suite and it’s through that door.” He deliberately pointed to it. “You can both stand guard in front of it, or take turns—I really don’t care which you decide to do. But I don’t want to feel crowded while I look over what a briefcase full of hundred-dollar bills just got me. Understand?” he demanded.

Waterford shook his head. “I don’t know about this,” he said skeptically.

“You’re not leaving the hotel, just the room,” Tate argued. “We’ll still be right where you left us when you walk back in,” he assured them, adding in a voice that brooked no nonsense, “Those are my terms. If you don’t like them—” he made a move to reclaim the briefcase, his implication clear: he either got his way, or he would be on his way.

The choice was theirs.

The man with the goatee cursed roundly, adding a few disparaging words about having to put up with aggravating people.

In the end, he grudgingly said, “Okay, we’ll be out in the hallway in front of the door. Right in front of the door,” he emphasized. “So don’t get any big ideas about making a break for it.”

Tate deliberately looked at Hannah. “I assure you, any ideas I have have nothing remotely to do with the hotel door.”

The men didn’t look completely convinced, but they walked out of the suite. Once on the other side of the door, they made enough noise that just barely stopped short of waking the dead.

It was to let him know that they were right outside the door, as specified. Ready to stop him if he had any plans to escape with the girl.

Tate frowned. He didn’t have time to think about those clowns right now. It was Hannah who commanded all his attention.

When he turned around to face her, he saw the fear in her eyes.

The real work, he knew, was still ahead of him.

Chapter 3

Finding herself alone with the stranger, Hannah did her best not to give in to the fear that had been her constant unwelcome companion since this terrible nightmare had begun.

It wasn’t as if this man she was looking at was like the others she’d encountered in this world of outsiders. He seemed different than the two crude, insulting men who were in charge of keeping watch over her and the other girls who’d been abducted from her village and Ohio. Different even than Solomon Miller, a man who her small community had once turned out and who’d sought to avenge himself by throwing his lot in with the men who’d abducted her and the others.

This man she was with seemed different, Hannah silently reminded herself, but even she knew that appearances could be deceiving and she hadn’t known even a moment’s kindness since she’d been torn away from everything she knew and loved.

So why did she feel that this man somehow was different?

The tips of her fingers felt like ice. Her whole body felt as if it was alternating between hot and cold as she struggled to keep fear from rampaging through her like a runaway wild animal.

What was this man going to do to her?

And how could she stop him? He looked so much more powerful than she was.

Her brain was still foggy from whatever it was that the man with the facial hair had tried to force her to swallow earlier. Foggy, but not completely useless because she’d managed to keep the drug hidden in the corner of her mouth, between the inside of her lip and her gum. Still, some of it had leached into her system. But she’d heard enough to piece things together.

Even so, she couldn’t really believe it. Didn’t want to believe what she’d heard through the door that separated this new, fancy prison from the outer room where her jailers had sat, talking to the man who was now towering over her.

Had she actually been sold to him?

It didn’t seem possible.

People weren’t sold to other people. Things like that had taken place during a far more barbaric time, a shameful passage in the country’s history that was mercifully a century and a half behind them.

People didn’t buy people anymore. They didn’t.

And yet …

And yet, she’d seen the briefcase before the lid had come down on it. There’d been money in that case. A great deal of money. Was that being exchanged for her?

Had this man really bought her?

What did that mean?

Hannah could feel her soul seizing up within her as the fear she’d been trying so desperately to contain suddenly broke out of its confines and all but paralyzed her.

Maybe this was all just a horrible, horrible dream. A nightmare. And maybe, dear Lord, if she just closed her eyes, when she opened them again, she’d be back in her safe little house with her family around her. What she wouldn’t give to hear the voices of her nieces, Katie, Ruthie and Grace—her brother Caleb’s daughters—raised in some silly little inconsequential squabble.

Tears rose in Hannah’s eyes and she fought to keep them back. She couldn’t cry in front of this man, couldn’t risk it. She’d seen the effect that tears had on these cruel beasts who’d ripped her world apart. Mary Yoder had cried and they’d beaten her for it, seeing tears as a sign of weakness.

She had no idea where Mary was now, or even if she was still alive.

These men who had become an unwanted daily part of her life had no respect for weakness, no compassion or even pity. They had nothing but contempt for its display, and if anything, when they encountered weakness, it just made them crueler.

She had to be strong, Hannah told herself. Only the strong survived and she needed to survive, needed to find a way to get back to her family again, back to Caleb, who needed her to help him take care of his motherless daughters.

Be strong, Hannah, be strong, she silently urged herself. He knows Caleb. That has to mean something.

Somehow, digging deep, Hannah found the strength she was looking for. Found it and clung to it for all she was worth.

Raising her head, she forced herself to look into the tall, imposing stranger’s eyes. They didn’t look like the eyes of a cruel man. Perhaps she could talk him out of this shameful thing he was about to do.

“Please,” she implored him. “You don’t want to do this.” Hannah took a deep breath, willing her nerves to remain steady. She congratulated herself on speaking without allowing a telltale tremor to emerge in her voice and betray her.

Her eyes remained fixed on the stranger’s. Taking another breath, she repeated the sentence, her voice sounding a little stronger this time. “You don’t want to do this.”

The trouble was, God help him, he did, Tate thought. It wasn’t that the undercover role he was playing had gotten to him. He found everything about this persona loathsome. Anyone who preyed on helpless girls, using money and connections to satisfy his unnatural lusts, was nothing short of despicable.

But the truth of it was, since the very first time he’d seen her face on that DVD recording that had contained a virtual catalog of innocence for would-be bidders to view, he’d found himself almost hopelessly attracted to the abducted young woman.

It didn’t matter. He knew he couldn’t do anything about it. Knew that to act in any way on these feelings under the pretext of playing his part was more than reprehensible. His sense of honor, or decency, wouldn’t allow it.

But he couldn’t be anything less than honest with himself and, the thing of it was, under different circumstances, he would have attempted to find a way to at least strike up a conversation with Hannah. Hopefully, that would lead to spending time with her and then perhaps …

Perhaps what? She was just twenty—and he wasn’t. And hadn’t been for a long time.

Besides, he reminded himself pointedly, under any other circumstances, your paths wouldn’t have even crossed.

And it was true. When would a career detective have any occasion to meet a sheltered young woman who spent her whole life entrenched in the bosom of her close-knit Amish community? The answer to that was simple: never.

The tension in the room was so thick, he could almost see it. Somehow, he had to put Hannah at ease, make her relax a little by convincing her that he was not the enemy.

Tate took a step toward her and saw Hannah instinctively shrink back. The very action made him feel terrible for her.

I’m your friend, Hannah. Your friend.

But how did he get her to believe that? Especially since this room was undoubtedly bugged and probably under the ring’s surveillance?

“Have they hurt you?” Tate asked her gently.

The young woman slowly moved her head from side to side, never taking her eyes off him, as if she was afraid that if she looked away, he would take the opportunity to jump her. It was painfully clear that she didn’t trust him to maintain the small distance between them.

If she didn’t trust him when it came to something so basic, how was he going to get her to trust him enough to tell him what he needed to know?

And then he recalled the nickname Caleb had told him to use. It was worth a try.

“You can tell me,” he coaxed. “Did they hurt you, Blue Bird?” His voice deliberately dropped as he called her by the nickname.

Her gray-blue eyes widened and he heard Hannah’s sharp intake of breath. She continued watching him as if she didn’t know what to expect.

“Not since the last time you came,” she finally replied, speaking so quietly that, had he not been looking at her lips, he wouldn’t have even known that she’d answered.

So, the torn bill had worked, he thought. He didn’t kid himself that the guard he’d given it to had any sense of honor, only greed, but that was all right. He wasn’t above using whatever worked.

“But before then?” he pressed.

The small, perfect shoulders rose slightly and then lowered in an almost imperceptible shrug. The clinging green gown rustled a little.

“Before then,” she murmured.

“Who?” he asked, moving closer to her.

Tate saw the young woman automatically shrink into herself again, but this time, she didn’t step back the way she had before. This time, she remained where she was.

“The one with the scraggly hairs on his chin,” she told him.

The man with the goatee, Tate thought. Of the two henchmen, he looked like the more dangerous one, the more unpredictable one.

“Did he hurt you … badly?” Tate pressed, unable to make himself ask Hannah if the scum had actually raped her.

Somehow, phrasing it that directly seemed to just intensify the horror of the attack. He didn’t want to resurrect painful memories for her, he just needed information.

To his relief, Hannah shook her head. “No, not badly.” She knew what he was asking her. Uncomfortable, she pressed her lips together, testing each word cautiously as she uttered it. Her eyes were once again riveted on his face as she watched his reaction. “He tried, but the other man—” What was it that she’d heard the dark-skinned man called? “Nathan,” she suddenly remembered. “Nathan pulled him off me and hit him. Nathan said that no one would pay for me if I was ruined.” She raised her head, a glimmer of defiance in her eyes, as if these were odds she’d managed somehow to beat. “You paid for me.”

Tate paused. He had no doubt that there was probably a camera in the suite somewhere—possibly several—watching his every move, recording his every word. Anything he wanted to convey to her would have to be almost inaudible if he wanted to have a prayer of getting out of here alive—and ever coming back to rescue the girls.

“Yes,” he answered. “I paid for you. Or at least made a partial payment,” he qualified. The rest he was to bring to the “party” that was being given. A party where he and other so-called pillars of society were to be coupled with their bought-and-paid-for virgins.

A party that, rumor had it, the mastermind behind this ring was also to attend.

She didn’t quite follow him. A partial payment? “So do you own me?” she asked, still unable to grasp the concept, even as she heard herself ask the question.

“I will as soon as I make the second payment,” he corrected her, playing to whatever audience would eventually be sitting on the other side of the camera and observing this.

Hannah paused, her head spinning. The conversation didn’t seem real to her, like something in one of the books that were forbidden for her and young people like her in the village to read.

“And when you make that second payment,” she finally said, “then what?”

“Then you’re mine,” he said as matter-of-factly as he could. He saw another glimmer of defiance in her eyes before it faded away again.

Good for you, Tate thought, pleased. They hadn’t broken her spirit. This meant he had something to work with. And that, hopefully, would help her get back to normal once he brought her back to her village.

Watching him intently, Hannah was frantically searching for something to cling to, something to give her hope that there would be an end to this nightmare and that the end she was seeking wasn’t tied to her demise.

There had to be more to this than what there was on the surface.

There had to be, she silently insisted.

“Why did you call me what you did earlier?” she wanted to know, focusing on the name the stranger had used. How could he have possibly known she’d been called that as a child?

Unless …

Unless he had actually spoken to Caleb. Had Caleb sent him, as the man had claimed? It didn’t seem possible. Caleb wouldn’t have left Paradise and walked among the outsiders—

He would. For me, she realized and knew it was true. Hannah looked at the stranger expectantly, waiting for an answer. Then, in case he’d forgotten what she’d asked, she said, “You called me Blue Bird.”

“Blue Birds look pretty against the sky when they soar,” he said evasively, doing his best to recall exactly how Caleb had explained the reason for the nickname to him. “It just seemed to fit you,” he concluded, looking at her pointedly.

Willing her to make the connection between the nickname and what he’d whispered to her the last time he’d seen her.

Had she heard him then?

Or had she been too drugged or too despondent at the time to understand what he was saying to her?

Tate watched the young woman’s face for some sort of clue. Unlike his own stoic expression—his “game” face—Tate saw a myriad of emotions wash over Hannah’s heart-shaped face.

And then, he could have sworn that what looked like enlightenment entered her eyes—just before she shut down again. Shut down as if she was afraid to believe him. Afraid to get her hopes up, for fear that she was only going to have them dashed again.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” he said to her as gently as he dared. “I’m not going to do anything to you. I just want to talk.”

“Talk?” she echoed, as if she didn’t understand the word. As if it was just too much for her to hope for.

“Talk,” he repeated. “I want to get to know you.”

She still looked as if she didn’t comprehend the word, or at least was confused by it. “They said …” The words felt as if they had gotten stuck in her throat and she tried again. “They said I should be ‘nice’ to you.”

There was no mistaking what the euphemism actually meant, though she refused to think about it.

“Who’s they?” Tate asked, doing his best not to put any undue emphasis on the question. He wanted it to sound like nothing more than an idle query, one of many that could crop up in the course of a conversation. “Do you mean the two men outside the door?” he asked, trying to get her to talk to him.

She shook her head. “No, another man. I’d never seen him before. He and the man with him said if I wasn’t nice to you, I’d be sorry.” Either way, she lost, Hannah thought.

Picking up the slender thread, Tate continued, doing his best to sound almost uninterested, just mildly curious. “This man you didn’t know, did you hear anyone address him by name?”

But Hannah shook her head again. “They just called him ‘Boss,’” she told him.

Jackpot!

Kind of.

Subduing his excitement, Tate lowered his voice and asked, “What did he look like?”

Instead of answering him, Tate saw apprehension return to her eyes as she looked at him nervously. “You are trying to trick me.” It was half a question, half a statement.

“Trick you?” he echoed in surprise. Why would she think that?

“Yes,” Hannah insisted. “You are here. He is the man who arranges these things. You must know what he looks like.” Suspicion rose in her voice. Was he trying to trap her somehow? She didn’t understand any of this, not the abduction, not why she had to be here, nothing. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“I’m not trying to trick you,” he assured her gently. “And the only men that I’ve dealt with are those two gorillas outside in the hall. Them, and that man I first spoke to on the telephone,” he added.

The first step in the operation had been finding the website. The one that had advertised “a cleaning service that will leave you swearing that you’ve never been serviced so well in your life.” It had fairly screamed sex trafficking. Tate was almost certain that the voice he’d heard when he dialed the number had belonged to the man in charge. And that that man wasn’t just some ingenious nobody off the street. Rumors and suspicions pointed to the head man being someone high up, not just on this food chain, but on the social food chain as well.

Someone with dark secrets and a darker soul, who satisfied perversions that made anything Tate had previously come up against seem almost docile and childlike by comparison.

Tate looked down into Hannah’s face. Right now, she was the closest he’d gotten to this sex trafficking ring. She might even unknowingly hold the key to taking it down. He needed to find out what she knew. The only way to do that was to talk to her. But he needed to make certain that he wasn’t overheard; otherwise, the op fell apart and the whole ring could just disappear into the night, taking the girls with it—or, if that was too much trouble, leaving behind their lifeless bodies. He had a feeling that it could go either way, and that was a risk he wasn’t about to take.

Debating what to do, after a beat Tate took her hand in his and led her over to the sofa. It was obvious that she followed him reluctantly, but he could work with that, he told himself.

When he turned to look at her, the apprehensive expression he saw on Hannah’s face almost tore him apart. He’d always thought of himself as a protector, a man women felt safe with. To see himself reflected as a potential monster in Hannah’s eyes was a startling revelation. But there was no other way he could interpret what he saw. Hannah looked as if she was holding her breath, waiting for something terrible to happen to her.

Tate forced himself to continue. He was her only chance at survival—he had to remember that. Sitting down, Tate tugged lightly on her hand. When she looked at him quizzically, he coaxed, “Come sit on my lap.”

Her mouth went completely dry.

Was this how it was to begin? The destruction of her virginity—was it going to start with a softly spoken invitation, only to escalate to unspeakable behavior?

She wanted to run.

And yet, she knew she had no choice. Nathan and the other man were just outside the door. She wouldn’t make it past the threshold. And she didn’t want to die the way her friends had. She wanted to live. To live and someday find a way to escape.

So, when the man who had paid for her tugged on her hand again, Hannah willed her knees to bend and did what he bade her to.

She sat down on his lap.

She was trembling, Tate realized the moment she made contact with his lap. He could feel her trembling and hated the fact that she was afraid of him.

Hated this whole charade.

But he knew it was the only way to save Hannah and all the other girls who had been so viciously snatched away from their families, not to mention everything they knew. And their only sin was that they were all so innocent in a world where innocence had ceased to be a common thing and was now a rarity, something to be elevated and observed, like a perfectly cut diamond.

He had no choice but to continue playing this role he had swiftly come to despise.

Tate slipped one arm around her waist, holding Hannah against him. Inclining his head, he began to slowly kiss the nape of her neck.

He struggled to keep from immersing himself in the scent, the feel, the taste, of her.

It’s a part—you’re just playing a part, he silently insisted as he lectured himself over and over again not to get caught up in what he was doing.

Despite everything, despite his desperate attempt to keep a tight rein on himself, Tate could feel his body responding to Hannah. Responding to the intoxicating, sweet taste of her skin against his lips.

Dammit, get a grip, Colton. You’re supposed to be here to rescue her, not ravage her or scare the poor girl to death. She’s not your private playground.

Satisfied that he had performed as expected for whatever camera or cameras hidden in the room for the sole purpose of observing his every move, Tate whispered the same message into Hannah’s ear that he’d told her yesterday.

Except that he embellished on it.

“My name is Tate. Caleb sent me. He was the one who told me to call you Blue Bird so that you’d know I was telling you the truth. I’m here to rescue you,” he told her, his arms tightening just a touch around her waist to prevent any sudden moves on her part, motivated by surprise.

He couldn’t let his guard down, not even for a moment. “You and the others,” he added. His breath feathered along the side of her neck as he spoke. “But this isn’t going to be easy and I’m going to need your help to pull it off.”

Hannah turned her head slowly to look at him. He could tell by the look in her eyes that he’d made a breakthrough.

She was finally beginning to believe him.

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