Payton and I stood by our rental car and watched as Ethan, Ezra, the Paxton brothers boarded the Whistler private jet. I was used to watching my teammates leave me behind in whatever country our last job was in. I didn’t have a home to go back to, so it was just easier to wait out the downtime in the local country than to try to pretend I belonged somewhere. What I wasn’t used to was having someone stay behind with me, and to be honest I didn’t want to have to babysit the newbie agent anymore. I had been on that duty for the last week, and while Payton wasn’t nosey or annoying, I still didn’t want to hang around her for the next week. I needed time to myself between jobs and I knew that Ethan was going back to Montana to talk with Cole about what to do with Payton. I doubt that he will let Payton join our team, so there was no use in getting attached to the little spitfire.
When the plane door closed I finally turned to look down at Payton. She was standing several feet away from me and she was looking at the plane with a twinge of sadness in her eyes. If I didn’t know any better, I would say that this woman had just said goodbye to a lover that she didn’t think she would ever see again. But I had been watching her and knew for a fact that she didn’t get physical with any of my teammates in the last couple of weeks.
When the plane started to pull away I decided to break the silence and settle things between us. “So where are you planning on staying?” If Payton even gave the slightest hint of tagging along with me, I was going to have to put a stop to it now.
“I am going to rent a car and head down to Playa Baracoa for a while and then maybe drive down to Mariel or San Cristobal,” Payton replied while still watching the plane drift away from us. Well, I was planning on staying in Havana and was relieved to hear that she was going to leave the city. Maybe she knew that her position on our team was temporary and also wanted to avoid making any bonds.
“You can take this car,” I told her as the plane took off. “I am going to stay in the city. I will text you the details in case you need anything but otherwise, I will see you when Ethan contacts us to regroup.”
There, I thought, I wasn’t completely closing her out but also made it clear that I didn’t expect to see her again until our break was up. Payton didn’t seem bothered by this and dropped me off downtown before nodding her head in goodbye and leaving me to my own devices.
Thoughts of the newbie agent faded as I made my way to a bar and ordered a drink while scoping out the place for women that looked like they were ready for a night of fun. If I didn’t find anyone looking for a no-strings-attached one-night stand, I would just buy someone for the night. I wasn’t opposed to paying for it. At least then she knew what I wanted from her. I wasn’t looking for a relationship. I was just looking to relax and have some fun before taking up the mantle of responsibility for the next Whistler job.
Three nights later I woke up to a loud knocking at my hotel room door. The woman that was sharing my bed barely acknowledged the noise and rolled over when I got up to see who was at the door. I looked through the peephole to see Payton Taylor reaching to knock firmly on my door again. What the hell was she doing here? I had told her what hotel I was staying at in case she got into any trouble here in Cuba, but I thought she understood that I wanted to be left alone. The days that we spent staking out Ivet had proven to me that she could respect personal boundaries. So why was she waking me up in the middle of the night three days after the rest of the team had left?
When I opened the door, she wasted no time before talking. “Liam. I know that you don’t know me very well, but I am going to ask you to trust me. I need you to come with me right now. I will explain everything once we are on the plane. But right now, we need to hurry.”
What-the-fuck. Maybe I was still dreaming. I looked back over at the naked woman in my bed. Nope. If I was dreaming, I would definitely be in bed with her and not standing in a doorway with a newbie demanding I leave my much-deserved vacation.
I was about to close the door in Payton’s face and go back to bed when she touched my forearm and said, “It’s a matter of life and death. I need you to come with me now.” I looked down at her hand on my arm. I had watched this girl for the last couple of weeks and noticed that she didn’t touch anyone. Sometimes she wouldn’t move away when Oliver touched her but other than that I knew that she went out of her way to avoid touch. It was the touch to my arm that told me Payton was serious. Well-Shit. It looked like I was going to leave my warm bed and bedmate to follow the whim of a newbie. She probably wanted me to save some abused wife or rescue a prostitute off the street. I had gotten the ‘I must save the whole world’ vibe off her.
I nodded and went to put on some clothes and wake up the girl in my bed. I couldn’t remember her name right now, but she didn’t seem all that worried about being kicked out of a man’s bed in the middle of the night. Payton checked her watch three times before I was ready to go. She had never been this dramatic before, we must really be on a timeline. I followed her down to the car that I had left her with, and we drove to the private airport. But instead of the small jet that Whistler used, there was a full-sized private plane sitting on the tarmac. Planes like this were reserved for the uber-rich. What had this girl gotten herself, and now me, into?
I had assumed I would find other people on the plane, but we were the only ones that boarded, and Payton told the pilot to take off as soon as possible. I didn’t like this. I didn’t like not knowing where I was going, and my patience was wearing thin. After the plane had taken off and leveled in the sky, I gave Payton my ‘Don’t Fuck With Me’ look and said, “Ok, you got me on the plane. Care to explain yourself now?”
Payton took a deep breath, like if she was preparing herself, and then said something that made my entire world stop.
“My name is not Payton Taylor. Payton is an alias that the witness protection program provided me with after I testified against a large crime family in New York.” Well, I thought to myself, that explained a lot. Her unwillingness to give any personal details was because her safety depended on keeping her real identity a secret. But why was she telling me this in the middle of the night on a huge fucking plane?
“That crime family would do almost anything to find me, including putting a ten-million-dollar bounty on my head. And while the U.S. Marshals assure me that no one will discover my new identity, I decided not to blindly trust the U.S. government to protect me. I hacked into each and every person’s computer that was connected to my old life and planted spyware that alerts me if they ever mentioned my new alias or anyone that I was associating with.”
My bad feeling about this was increasing. Ten million dollars was an insanely high bounty. This sounded like deep mob shit. Stuff where everyone involved ended up dead. And Payton, or whatever her name was, had just involved me. I might not dislike this woman, but I wasn’t going to jump headfirst into mob shit for her. No fucking way.
“When I started working with your team, I added all of your names to the list that the spyware would identify.” She paused to look at her watch again. “One-hour and thirty-seven minutes ago my system alerted me that FBI agent Joe McDonald had entered your name into a report as the next-of-kin that detailed the kidnapping of one Grace Harris.”
My ears started to ring and all I could hear was the loud thumping of my heart within my chest. Gracie. Someone had taken my little Gracie? No. There had to be some kind of mistake. Payton didn’t know what she was talking about.
“No. Grace is at school. She is attending Columbia University. She is fine.” Payton pulled out a tablet and handed it to me. I searched her eyes for the hidden trick here. There was no way that she was telling me that my little sister had been kidnapped. All I saw within Payton’s eyes was a serious concern. Oh no, the newbie really believed that my sister had been kidnapped.
I looked down at the tablet and saw an initial FBI field report. I read through it and found that a girl named Kate Daniels had reported Grace missing after she and Grace had gone out to a club called The Church. The two girls had become separated and hours later when Kate still couldn’t find Grace she had gone to the local police. They told Kate that she had to wait to report Grace missing but had filed a report anyway. The report detailing a young girl gone missing from The Church was flagged by the FBI who were working on a case involving human trafficking of girls taken from clubs within the area. Special Agent McDonald had confiscated the security camera feeds from the club and confirmed that Grace was taken by two unidentified males and written up this report to request more manpower in his search for Grace and three other girls that had gone missing this month.
I found his name listed as the next-of-kin for Grace just as Payton had told me.
Oh my God. My little sister had been kidnapped by human traffickers. When that fact finally sunk in, I surged to my feet. “I have to get to New York. I have to find her.” My chest was tight, and the walls of the plane were starting to close in on me. Grace was all the family I had left in this world. It was my responsibility to protect her. I had to protect her.
My name being called in a harsh tone brought me back from my panic and I looked down at Payton. She was standing very close to me with her palms outstretched in a stopping motion. I looked around and remembered I was on a plane. I was now standing in the aisle and towering over Payton who was saying, “That’s where we are going Liam. You are on a plane. And we are already on our way to New York. We are going to find your sister. But I need you to calm down,” she told me in a stern voice.
I found that focusing on what Payton was telling me allowed me to calm down. And I needed to be calm right now. Grace needed me. Payton was right, this was not the time to lose my head. “We are flying to New York?”
“Yes. It is a three-hour flight. This was the only plane available to take off right away. You are getting to New York as fast as you can.” I took time to process that. Payton had kept checking her watch. She must know that the first twenty-four hours after someone was kidnapped were the most important. If they weren’t found in that time the chances of getting them back alive dropped dramatically. I looked down at my watch and saw that it was a little after five AM. I turned and grabbed the tablet I must have dropped and found that Grace was taken around 10:30 the night before. Seven hours. Grace has been missing for seven hours. By the time we got to New York that number would be ten hours. Giving me fourteen hours to find my baby sister.
That meant I needed to use these hours on the plane to find out everything I could. I didn’t have time to panic right now. I needed to remember my training and get Gracie back. I sat back down and turned to Payton. “How do you know Special Agent McDonald?” It was his computer she had installed the spyware on meaning that he had to be connected to her secret past.
Payton hesitated before answering and I wanted to scream. Grace’s life was on the line. This was not the time to be keeping secrets. “He was one of the agents that worked to bring down the crime family that I testified against.”
“What did you just leave out of that statement?” I demanded in a snarl.
She let out a breath and looked down at her hands. “We were involved romantically and did not leave on good terms. He owes me, and we can use that to gain access to his investigation, but it is not going to be a happy reunion.”
She was worried about having to confront an ex when sex traffickers could be hurting my sister right now. I clenched my jaw and both of my fists so I didn’t punch her. Payton saw my reaction and said, “Liam, I will use every contact that I have and do everything within my power to help you find Grace. We will leave no stone unturned. I promise.” I looked into her eyes and saw that she meant her words. Maybe I was too quick to judge Payton. She had gotten me on this plane. This very nice and expensive plane.
“How did you get this plane?”
“I’m rich.” She said in a dismissive way. “After I got the alert about Grace, I called the airport and found that this was the only private plane with a pilot. I contacted the people who own this plane and bribed them to let us use it for the day.” She rented the plane from a private party. That was some quick thinking. I would have called my Whistler contacts and had a jet flown down to Cuba which would have wasted precious time. Maybe Payton was better at this than I was giving her credit for.
“Speaking of money,” she said as she typed away at her laptop. “I am going to set up an account that you will have access to. In case there is a ransom demand you will have the funds ready. We will call that plan B.” She was still focused on her computer, so I had a hard time reading if she was serious. Payton wrote some numbers on a piece of paper she pulled from her bag and handed it to me. “This account has five million in it. That is the routing number and passwords to gain access.”
I took the piece of paper and stared at it in disbelief. Did she just hand me access to five million dollars? “I am going to start looking into The Church and any criminals that have an association to the club. Joey is old school and all his investigation notes will be on paper. That’s why we will need to go see him in person when we land.”
I was still shocked about the five million dollars and wondered who the hell this woman was. When I didn’t respond to her statement, Payton looked up at me and started to look uncertain. “I know Joey – Agent McDonald that is. He is very possessive over his cases. If we bring the entire team or Whistler as a whole in on this, he will close down until the higher-ups order him to corroborate with you. I am suggesting you use my connection with Joey to get you into the FBI investigation. But Grace is your sister Liam. If you would prefer the rest of the team to help in New York, I will make sure they get there as quickly as possible.”
Payton was asking me if I trusted her enough not to call in every single person I knew to help find Gracie. And the answer to that was no. I did not trust anyone to find Grace except myself. But without her, I still wouldn’t know that Grace was missing. And now I was halfway to New York with a slush fund and a plan to gain access to the FBI investigation. I was willing to try it her way for a while and nodded at Payton to let her know. But the second that we stopped moving forward I was calling in the cavalry.
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