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Eric slowly walked the perimeter of the cabin for the third time in the last two hours. He didn’t want to think about all the laws and rules he was breaking. Left and right, he was trampling them to keep his friend safe. He was risking his job and his reputation as a stand-up lawman, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.

In all his years on the job, he had seen too many innocent people hurt because law enforcement was too slow to move. It wasn’t incompetence or apathy on the part of his colleagues. It was the red tape and the bullshit laws that made it impossible to protect victims.

What good was a restraining order against a psycho with a gun who was pissed off because his wife finally had enough and wanted to leave? It wouldn’t stop a bullet. It wouldn’t stop angry fists.

Sometimes, Eric found himself fantasizing about taking the vigilante’s way. Just pounding the absolute shit out of some dirtbag’s face or pulling the trigger on a child rapist. Some people were unworthy of life, and it sickened him to see them walking free among good people, sniffing out their next bit of prey.

Nikolai’s crew didn’t have restrictions. They didn’t have lawyers and judges tying up their hands behind their backs. They lived by their own code, and that code was going to keep Nisha alive.

For the second time in the last ten minutes, Eric detected the faintest shimmer of metal in the distance. He pretended not to see it and kept walking. It was someone with a weapon. Rifle probably. Aimed right at him as he moved.

But they hadn’t taken a shot yet and didn’t seem inclined to either.

They’re watching us.

More and more, Eric believed there was something much bigger at play here. Kiki escaping his prison escort was the tip of the iceberg. The shooting that had killed Robin Harris and nearly ended Savannah and Chess began to feel like a distraction.

For a shooter to be able to pick the exact place and time where Nisha and the other women would be entering and exiting? To pick a vantage point and set up his equipment? That wasn’t dumb luck. That was someone who had been tipped off by a leak inside law enforcement.

But who? Why?

The questions swirled around in his tangled thoughts as Eric finished his perimeter check. His keen investigative mind kept going back to Tony and Adrian. What Kiki had done was vile and sick, but it had clearly been something he did for his own benefit. He tortured and killed those women because it made him feel good.

Tony and Adrian kidnapped and molested those kids because it made them money. They were motivated by greed. Mostly. Tony did seem to have a nasty taste for children. He was getting something other than money from it, but not Adrian. For Adrian, it was money and power.

When Vivian had been kidnapped by traffickers, Eric had gotten his first real look into that world. Walking around the warehouse and touring the shipping containers where those women had been kept was horrifying. He had known that world existed, but until he smelled it, felt the grit under his fingertips, he didn’tknow.

There was a whole other level to that hellish world beneath even that. Children. More than one of his colleagues had burned out in the sex crimes unit from being exposed to the trauma of child sexual abuse. Those were nightmares you couldn’t unsee, and no amount of therapy was going to wipe their brains clean of those vomit-inducing photos and videos.

Someone had been paying Adrian for his work. As far as Eric knew from a mentor who worked that case, the FBI swooped in, grabbed all the evidence, and took jurisdiction. No one ever followed up locally, and the financiers and buyers of that filth were never caught.

Did Kiki know who they were? Was that his ace in the hole? His final bargaining chip? Did he want to trade that information to escape the needle?

What if he had been busted out by the traffickers? Not to rescue him and give him a new life in exchange for his silence, but to kill him and silence him completely?

Which made Nisha incredibly valuable.

If there was one thing in the whole wide world that would draw Kiki out of hiding, it was her. The woman he had groomed from childhood, beaten into submission and abused as a plaything. The woman who had reclaimed her power, told the world about his crimes and fought to have him put on death row where he belonged.

Yeah, Kiki would risk anything to get his hands on her.

When Eric stepped inside the cabin, he smelled something delicious. He found Nisha tending something on the stove. “Smells good.”

“It’s almost ready,” she called back with a smile.

Ilya pocketed his phone and approached him. “Well?”

Eric nodded. “Still there.”

“Well, if he wanted to kill you, he would have taken the shot by now.”

“Yes.” Eric glanced at Nisha who was far enough away she couldn’t hear them talking in low voices over the stove’s exhaust fan.

“Do you want to kill him or do you want me to do the honors?”

Eric snapped his attention right back to Ilya. “Are you insane? I may not be wearing my badge right now, but I’m still a fucking cop.”

Ilya lifted both hands to placate him. “Say no more, friend. I’ll handle it.”

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