Page 1 of Gideon

Prologue

Gideon

I crept silently through the undergrowth two feet beyond the huge wall that surrounded the estate. Saul—a recently retired Marine and expert with a sniper rifle we’d borrowed for the team—was in place. Saul normally worked up in Denver, but he’d flown to Florida because he needed a change. Our friend Chris ran a legitimate bodyguard agency which meant he had easier access to the types of guys we needed.

I knew from his vantage point, Saul could see the main electric gates and could take out anything coming or going if it became necessary. I hoped to god it wouldn’t be, because any extraction on American soil complicated things by a million percent. We’d done extractions like this a hundred times in our previous lives, but not so much since weall got home.

Maddox silently appeared beside me. Using his hand, he splayed all four fingers, keeping his thumb tucked in. Good, we’d expected four patrolling the perimeter. The trouble was they had dogs, but our team member Dion had a way with them and could deal.

I’d no idea how but it worked. Dion was eight feet from me, and I saw him put his hands to his mouth as if he were going to whistle, but no sound came out that I could hear, and yet the dogs all barked and led their handlers in the opposite direction.

That was our signal and silently the three of us scaled the wall and moved toward the house. We knew the Little was inside and we’d watched the asshole drive away ten minutes ago. The two permanent staff were always in their quarters by this time. Excitement zipped through me. I wouldn’t say retirement had made us soft, but it had certainly made us bored.

Not that I would wish the things we’d been told were happening inside that house on anyone, and hearing what the sadistic fuck had done to the woman he held made me want to slice and dice Jeremy Blakeny the Third. His daddy had controlled the money and managed to rein him in over the years, but now the old man was dead, and Jeremy simply bought what he wanted, especially people.

We’d managed to get some photographs, but even those were nearly two months old, and we only had the word of a gardener we’d managed to place that the woman was still alive. Our man had gotten cozy with one of the maids and she’d told him that apparently Blakeny was a saint because his fiancé was a psycho that kept trying to self-harm and starve herself but instead of dumping her, he paidfor round the clock private medical attention. The victim’s brother was the only one not to believe the sob-story.

We knew that a bullet was way too good for him even if Saul did have to take the shot, but we were staging this as a home invasion; with his lockpicking skills Keyhole was emptying the safe and Eric, our computer guy, was hacking the online accounts at the same time. Blakeny couldn’t buy what he didn’t have the cash for, and as soon as he realized that, we would follow it up with an unfortunate fatal accident so he couldn’t hurt anyone else ever again.

We just had to play it carefully, though, and would need a couple of months to make sure there was no police involvement to tie the incidents together. We knew Blakeny wouldn’t involve the cops, but the rest of the household staff, two cooks, a gardener, a chauffeur, and two maids, were unknown.

The man we had to stay away from was the butler. Andre Coleman was ex special forces—dishonorably discharged—and we were sure was instrumental in helping his boss imprison the girl and cover his activities. But we’d gotten word he had retired to his own rooms for the evening and was likely fucking one of the maids.

Keyhole got us in, and then we split. Maddox and I reached the master bedroom, but it was empty. I opened a bathroom door, then a closet, and frowned, but Maddox was one step ahead of me and swept aside some tapestry-style shit on the wall that hid a locked metal door. I texted a command and Keyhole appeared and went to the door. Within seconds, he had it open and stood aside, heading back to the safe.

There wasn’t anything Keyhole couldn’t get into, whether that was a computer firewall or a fortified undergroundbunker, and he was downloading the files for Eric to work through.

I followed Maddox in and stopped in shock. In my time, I’d rescued a lot of hostages, including many civilian aid-workers from the hellholes of this world, but this was different. The room should have been a Little girl’s nirvana. It was like stepping into a princess’s castle. There was a huge four-poster bed in the middle of the room—empty—with matching custom wooden furniture throughout the room from the large rocking horse to the changing table.

“Boss,” Maddox choked out, and I turned to look at the far corner of the room, and my eyes landed on the cage and the bundle of skin and bone that crouched in the corner.

Fuck.None of our intel had warned us of this. I was also willing to bet that our hostage’s brother didn’t expect what we would find either. The pictures of her losing weight and with bruises were bad enough, but this?

“Clare?” Maddox said and hunkered down in front of the bars. She whimpered and scrabbled backwards, and I swore when the idiot yanked his balaclava off and crooned to her, trying to quell her fear. I quickly typed out a message to Eric to make sure all surveillance video was wiped, and saw Maddox get a syringe from his pocket. Standard procedure. She certainly didn’t look capable of walking out. In fact, with her trembling and rapid, harsh inhales, I would guess she was a minute away from a panic attack. Suddenly realizing that apart from a tiny pink nightie she was practically naked, I reached over and grabbed a sheet from the bed and passed it to Maddox. She whimpered and tried to move away from him, and I heard Maddox swear under his breath and apologize. He quickly shot her up as he moved close and at the last second, I caught her look of betrayal as hereyes slid closed. Maddox wasted no time, and I helped him get her free. We didn’t need Keyhole for a simple padlock. Then he determinedly took her from me and cradled her close.

Which was unusual. He typically kept himself apart from the victims we rescued. Not that I blamed him. There’d been too many times where the intel was old and all we found were dead bodies. The dozens of successful missions never wiped away the few we failed at.

It took less than five minutes for us all to get out of there. If I’d been sure of all the staff’s complicity, I would have torched the place, but as it was, we had the girl. Eric had some contacts that would make sure that this fucker would be so busy worrying where all his money was disappearing to, he wouldn’t have the time or the cash to try to buy any more women until enough time had passed that we could do a favor to humanity by ridding the world of this particular stain.

We were maybe four feet away from the outside door when I heard the click of it reopening and immediately put myself between Maddox, who was carrying the girl, and whatever was about to happen.

I heard the shot and turned as the fucker of a butler went down with a bullet to the skull.

Looks like Saul had just saved us a job. Coleman and the handgun he was just about to use on us were neutralized.

We weren’t at all bothered that his brains were decorating the driveway.

Chapter one

GIDEON

I brushed an imaginary speck off my tailored Brioni pants and accepted a small glass of Macallan single malt from the cute sub that brought it. It wasn’t as if I was going to be playing tonight, and one wouldn’t hurt anyway.

“Gideon.” I looked up as Maddox Rourke folded his huge frame into the leather couch next to me and sighed. Maddox—Max—had been playing and had just sent home a very blissed-out sub. I eyed Max carefully and acknowledged silently that despite finishing what should have been a good scene, an air of dissatisfaction lingered around my friend and business partner.

There were four of us. Max, Walker, Dion, and myself. We’d met and served together twenty years ago, and for the last ten had taken the inheritance Dion’s godparentshad left him, worked upwards of eighty hours a week, and now owned a huge chunk of Tampa Bay. But Salvation—the club—was our baby.

Except, now that all of us were ready to settle down and enjoy our hard work, it seemed to be impossible to achieve. We all had particular but very similar tastes. And while I was trained and fully capable of tying a sub to a St. Andrew’s Cross and making them fly, I had been the first of them to acknowledge that wasn’t what I wanted. In a desert hellhole too many years ago when I thought I was going to die anyway, I’d confessed to the other three exactly what I did want, and our shared passion was born.

---