Washington DC
September
The five-inch blade glinted in the light as the girl—who was only fifteen and looked even younger—brandished it in front of Chase’s face. “Who are you?” she demanded.
He was glad to see she was prepared for danger, but a knife wouldn’t do her much good with the guys she was supposed to meet tonight.
“I’m here to help you.” He paused, then added, “Jessica.”
The girl was tiny—five-three at most and skinny as a rail. Her pale face had deep hollows under her eyes, which widened at his use of her real name. The hand holding the knife shook. “Who are you?” she asked again. This time, her voice was softer, suspicious, but less angry.
“Someone who knows the guys you’re here to meet are bad news. The job they’re offering you isn’t online.”
“How…how do you know about that? Are you one of them?”
He shook his head. “I’m not, but I know who you are because I’m watching them. When I see a young woman is taking their bait, I intervene before it’s too late.”
“You—you watched my audition?”
Chase shook his head. There were many things he wouldn’t do for this sideline of his, and watching child pornography pretty much topped the list.
“No. I read your reply to the ad and saw the selfie you sent. I have access to missing kids databases and ran your image. You ran away six weeks ago, so you were pretty easy to identify.”
She still looked suspicious, and he didn’t blame her. He could hardly tell her he worked for a large private security company that employed a hacker who could find his way into anything once he knew where to look.
And Chase had made it his life’s mission to figure out where to look. He was haunted by a face he couldn’t even be certain was real. He’d given up on finding her, but he would find the people who’d hurt her.
Who’d hurt him.
And in the meantime, he’d use his dark hobby to find girls like Jessica and intercept them before they were taken in by CamDames, a legal online camgirl operation that had branched off into sex trafficking underage girls on the side.
Jessica was their favorite kind of target. Young, homeless, and on the run. No money and out of options. This gig was her last shot, but she couldn’t walk in the front door to apply because she was underage.
On the legitimate side of the organization, CamDames offered a room to perform eight-hour shifts in front of the camera and maintained a dormitory-type living situation until each new recruit had earned enough tips to afford their own place. The backdoor portal made the same promises to underage girls. But none of the underage girls who answered the ad went to the official dormitory with the legal hires.
No. Girls like Jessica found themselves imprisoned and forced into prostitution with offline clientele. The girls never received payment for the sex acts they were forced to perform. It was sexual enslavement, but Chase’s only evidence of this wouldn’t stand up in a court of law.
CamDames had a squeaky-clean, legitimate setup on the outside, but someone in the organization was making a lot of money by trapping girls who applied for the job using a back door that had been set up just for the purpose of luring runaways like Jessica.
Because Jessica couldn’t be seen entering the premises, they arranged for a street-side pickup, and this was their favorite location. Out in the open, so it was supposed to feel safe for the girl. But it was a side street with less traffic and there were no cameras to capture a young girl waiting on the sidewalk in between two buildings with a dark, narrow alley at her back.
Just up the street was a coffee shop that had security cameras, but Chase knew from experience the cameras were for show. They hadn’t worked for months.
If Jessica balked at getting in the car, there would be no witnesses. And she was already a runaway, so no one to report her missing.
He nodded to the coffee shop on the corner. “They’re going to be here soon. Go inside Vivace Coffee. Now. Before they see you. There’s a blue-haired Black woman with a redheaded white woman sitting at the corner table. They’ll help you.”
The girl’s eyes flitted to the shop, then returned to his face. “Why should I trust you?”
“These men aren’t safe, Jessica. They’re going to sell your body, and you’ll have no say. Talk to the women in the shop. They’ll show you their IDs and take you to a safe place.”
“I—I can’t go back to my parents. My stepdad—”
Chase nodded. “I know. We found your social media posts. They won’t send you home. They’ll help get a guardian ad litem appointed so you’ll have an advocate to get you into a safe living situation until you’re eighteen.”
Chase and Tricia had done a lot of digging the moment they identified the girl this morning.
Jessica’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t believe you.” She lifted the blade higher, as her hold had drooped as they talked in the darkened section of sidewalk.
“I’m glad you’re prepared to defend yourself, but I’m not the enemy. Please, go to the coffee shop.”
Tricia’s voice came through his earpiece. “A dark cargo van is heading for the intersection.”
Shit. He turned to the girl. “Go inside. Hear them out. Tricia and Isabel will help you. It’s a public place. You can walk right out the door if you don’t trust them.”
She looked at him warily, then her gaze landed on the lit coffee shop. There were people inside. Witnesses who would remember her.
“They chose this spot because there are no cameras nearby and less traffic on this side street. You need to hurry. Go where people will see you and ask for help, so the guys in the van can’t risk taking you.” Chase pulled a ski mask over his face. “Tuck the knife away and get inside.”
Her eyes went wide with alarm at the sight of the mask. “What are you going to do?”
“Make sure they don’t go after you.” Chase slipped into the alley as the girl turned and ran.
The van rounded the corner as Jessica neared the crosswalk on the opposite side of the street.
The light changed just in time, and she darted across the intersection.
The driver stopped the van and called out the window, “Hey! Jasmine! Come back!”
Chase knew these guys always gave their marks names of animated princesses to use as an alias. They seemed to think it made the girls feel safe. And maybe it did, because girls like Jessica kept showing up. But then, Jessica was homeless and hungry and running out of options. Maybe the name Jasmine was the comfort of an old friend. And a promise of a happy ending.
Chase stepped out of the shadows when the passenger, a thickly-muscled white man, opened his door and jumped out, prepared to run after the escaping girl.
“Forget it. You can’t have her.”
The guy whirled around. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Her fairy godfather.”
The guy whipped out a knife lightning fast and lunged forward. Chase had been expecting it, and this was his absolute specialty.
Part of him wondered if he’d cut the meet time so close—changing the message the girl received so he could meet her a mere five minutes before these assholes showed up—because he’d been spoiling for a fight tonight. He wanted to see the face of this monster, to add him and the driver to his memory bank. To see if any fresh memories were triggered. But most importantly, because he wanted to beat the crap out of someone, and child traffickers were the ideal target for his rage.
Plus, if he could send one of these guys to a hospital, maybe he’d get a name from a police report.
Chase blocked the guy’s knife strike and followed with a jab to the sternum. The blade swooped down again. Chase met his wrist with a roundhouse kick that sent the weapon flying.
The guy wasn’t ready to give up, though, and came at Chase with fists.
In seconds, it was over. The guy lay on the sidewalk cradling his arm with a snapped radius and ulna.
He met the gaze of the chickenshit driver who’d stayed in the car while his buddy was getting his ass kicked. “I suggest you get him to a hospital. The arm will need setting.”
“Shoot the motherfucker, Terry,” the wounded man said.
“No gunshots. They’ve got the girl. It’s too late.”
“Shoot him!”
“Get in the fucking car,” Terry said.
At least Terry was smart enough to know the score. A gunshot would draw too many witnesses. If the goons were identified, the girls who’d been taken already might be found and rescued. Plus Jessica could testify and connect the dots. Jessica would be believed because her statement would be backed up by her two current companions—a former DC police officer and a US senator’s wife.
Of course, these guys didn’t know who was in the coffee shop, but they knew to cut their losses and get out if things went south. Coming after Chase with a knife could be the trigger that took down the whole operation.
Which was sort of Chase’s plan.
He definitely wanted to take down the operation, but it would be a long, slow process if he was going to uncover the top dog.
In the meantime, Chase got a chance to take out his burning aggression in a knife fight. Well, the other guy had a blade. Chase believed in fighting fair, so he’d been unarmed.
The injured guy cursed and groaned as he got to his feet and lurched into the open passenger door. He wasn’t fully inside before the van tore away from the curb.
Chase snapped a photo of the license plate as the van raced down the street and slipped into traffic. The license plate would go nowhere, he knew, but still, he had to try.
Once the van was long gone, he pulled off the ski mask and tucked it in his pocket, then headed the opposite direction from the coffee shop. Some would see his role here as that of a vigilante, so he didn’t associate with Tricia and Isabel in front of witnesses.
He reached his SUV and climbed inside, then pulled out the one-way earpiece—Tricia hadn’t been privy to his conversation with the goons, plausible deniability and all that—and donned his Raptor headset to check in. “All clear on my end. How is Jessica?”
“Scared, but she’s willing to come with us to the shelter once she looked up who Isabel is on her phone.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Last fall, after a chip had been removed from just behind Chase’s ear and his memories started coming back, he’d confided to Isabel some of what he knew…and some of what he feared. She’d been tortured with similar methods years ago, and they’d long shared a bond because of it.
He’d known she would understand. Wouldn’t judge. Would listen.
She was the friend he’d needed and never really knew he had.
And he’d desperately needed friends after the chip was removed. He had a lot of damage to work through, and it wasn’t like he could see a therapist. It was a bitch of a therapist who’d abused and tortured him in the first place.
Over the course of their conversations, Isabel had formed a plan to fund a shelter for runaways, especially ones like Jessica, who faced abuse if they returned home.
Within weeks, Isabel had quit her job at Talon & Drake so she could devote herself to the endeavor full-time. Her husband, Chase’s former boss, Senator Alec Ravissant, set up an endowment to fund the home, and it was off and running by mid-March. Isabel’s work was kept from the press because the shelter was confidentially located—not even Chase knew where it was—and her involvement could bring unwanted attention. She was a high-profile senator’s wife who’d been the target of scrutiny twice already, the last being nearly a year ago when Rav had received threats that might have been intended for her, followed by an explosion at their Maryland estate.
At the shelter, Jessica would get the help she needed, including an advocate who would help her legally separate from her parents. It wasn’t a permanent home, but they’d do everything they could to get her placed in a safe foster home with ongoing support and supervision from the advocates at the shelter.
There were no guarantees given that she was a minor, but she also hadn’t just handed herself over to sex traffickers to escape her sexually abusive stepfather, so it was a win for now and hopefully forever.
He cracked his neck and took a deep breath. He was wound up from the fight, and adrenaline coursed through him. He put his SUV in gear and set out for home sweet home, Raptor’s Virginia compound. Maybe the company gym would help him work off this energy, but then, it never had before.
The last time he’d felt this way had been in Portland, six weeks ago, when a group of white supremacists abducted Raptor operative Josh Warner’s girlfriend, Maddie, and his teenaged niece, Ava. Chase had a rousing fight with the prick who’d threatened to cut Ava. He’d needed a few dozen stitches after Chase turned the guy’s own knife against him.
It had been scary how good that fight had felt. The exhilaration of releasing his rage on a nasty target. He’d been craving it like a drug ever since.
Even better, this time he didn’t have to sit down for hours of debriefing with federal, state, and local cops and prosecutors in the aftermath.
He needed to figure out how to better channel this energy. How to deal with this flood of emotions. Because it was all new since the chip was taken away. For two years, the chip had spoken to him with silent words, controlling his actions, his memories, his emotions.
Eleven months after the chip was removed, the range of emotions he was able to feel once again remained both terrifying and exhilarating.
He hadn’t known there’d been a mute on his feelings until it was stripped away, and the first thing he felt was horror over what had been done to him, followed by earth-shaking rage.
Two years’ worth of banked rage meant he had a mountain of it inside him.
Rage he’d let loose tonight when he snapped a guy’s arm like it was a popsicle stick.
He wanted to do it again.
He breathed through the ferocious urge as he navigated the busy city streets. He tried to exhale the fury, as if that was a thing. This wasn’t who Chase was.
The violent vigilante was who they’d made him into.
He didn’t want to be a man who craved violence. A weapon they’d wielded like he was some sort of monster.
Wake the sleeping monster with the ring of a silent bell.
He’d seen the note. Knew what it meant.
When he tapped into the rage, was he waking the monster? Or was he merely releasing the demons that haunted him?
He reached the compound and parked in the fleet garage. He nodded to the guard at the front desk as he passed and made his way to his quarters. Thankfully, he didn’t have a scratch on him from the fight, or he’d find himself facing questions he didn’t want to answer. The only compound residents who knew about this extracurricular sideline were Tricia Rooks and the tech wizard who insisted everyone call him Mothman. Isabel hadn’t even told her husband about the vigilante aspect, and he owned the company.
The hacking they were doing was illegal, but then, the business they were going after wasn’t legal, and they weren’t looking to gather evidence for arrests and convictions. They were trying to save kids from being trafficked.
Chase could be fired for using company computers this way, so he only used a personal computer, as did Mothman and Tricia. They used the company network, but there was no way around that. Mothman had set up firewalls and VPNs to prevent anyone from following their trail into Raptor’s system, and the company had their own internal setup for Mothman’s…sometimes questionable security work.
Chase wasn’t really worried about getting fired, not after what had been done to him—all because he worked for Raptor—but still, if he were, so be it.
He was doing what needed to be done in a feeble attempt to save his sanity along with the lives of runaway teens. And one thing was certain, without this work—this lifeline Isabel had thrown him last winter—he might well have given in to his demons months ago.
One foot in front of the other. It was how he made it through each day and how he made it to his quarters now. He was on the first floor and had a two-room suite with a window in deference to his status as a member of Falcon team but also because he’d been to hell and back—twice—thanks to Raptor.
He’d play that card if he had to with the company CEO, Keith Hatcher, but he had a hard time believing it would ever come to that. Not when the owner’s wife was working with him and using the man’s money to rescue teens at risk of being trafficked. The majority of the runaways they rescued identified as female, but there were a growing number of trans and nonbinary kids who were unsafe at home, and they were especially vulnerable and targeted by predators.
He punched his code into his door and pressed his thumb to the reader. He trusted everyone who lived in the compound—a year ago, he’d been the threat within—but he would never leave his quarters unlocked. Aside from not wanting his extracurriculars found out, deep down, he wondered if there could be another like him. Another sleeper.
But eleven months ago, every single Raptor operative had shaved the spot behind their ear in solidarity and to submit to inspection. Plus, Dr. Parks was in prison.
There weren’t others like him. There couldn’t be.
And yet the fear was there. Deep inside. With nowhere to go.
He locked the door and leaned against it. He radioed to Tricia that he was back, then signed off. He was alone. Safe. He remembered everything.
No blackouts. No glitches. Tricia would have told him if there was a gap in time.
He hadn’t had a gap since October, but still, he tracked his movements every time he left the compound. The lock on his door was his time stamp. If he left in the middle of the night, Mothman would alert him and ask why.
He’d built this structure of check-ins and tracking to keep himself sane. After his cabin burned down, he’d tried to rent a few for away time, but quickly realized he needed others available to track him one way or another. The five weeks he’d spent in Oregon had been fine because he’d been with Josh, Ava, and Maddie. Josh knew his concerns.
Now he was back and pumped with adrenaline, and there was only one thing that appealed, and it wasn’t the gym.
No. The thing he wanted most right now was what he’d promised himself he wouldn’t do again when he returned to Virginia.
He’d also promised himself he’d never go there when pumped on adrenaline like this. Was it dangerous to mix the two? Would the adrenaline heighten his reaction?
Would it become another drug? Would violence and Desiree become the hit he needed to keep going?
He hadn’t logged in to that account in six weeks. Since before Portland. He was done. He didn’t need her.
Well, he did. But he didn’t want to. He wanted to be normal. He wanted to be attracted to women who weren’t pixels on a screen. He wanted to walk into a bar and see an attractive woman and feel something, even if it was nothing but a mild attraction to a pretty face.
But out in the world, he was numb. It was only here, in this private room, and only Desiree who made him feel.
He was so utterly broken. He hated that the only time he felt strong emotions was when the violence was triggered.
Sure, he laughed. He cared. He had spent many hours enjoying being in Portland with Josh and his family.
But right now, he was in his skin, feeling in a way he couldn’t process. And he wanted to see Desiree when he was feeling like this.
He needed to see her.
He sat down in front of his laptop and logged in, hoping she was online tonight and looking to earn a little money.
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