Page 8 of Room Ten: Praise Times Three

“Where is my father?” she snaps.

“He’s in his office with the FBI and his lawyers.” How Victor keeps his cool is beyond me. I’m already over her attitude, and I’ve only spent thirty seconds with her.

The put-out attitude drops from her face as confusion crosses her features. “Wait. What? How long ago—”

At that moment, her father walks out of his office.

She immediately goes on the offensive, attacking the man who looks wrung out. “When did you get a phone call asking for ransom?”

“Let’s go into the library.” Mr. Krushner grips her upper arm and escorts her across the foyer into a giant room. We follow Victor, leaving the FBI behind.

Soren takes the opportunity out of the FBI’s line of sight to grab a seat at a small desk, sliding his laptop and other gear out of his bag while the Krushners fight with each other and then with Victor and Lee. It’s obvious as I stand back with my team that she’s not thrilled to be placed in protective custody. Talk about babysitting a pop princess. I’m glad it’s them and not us. I’d much rather be on the team assigned to track down and extricate the kidnapped victim than play bodyguard to an unwilling body.

Even a body like hers.

“Daddy!” she whines, and I catch Lee and Case both flinch. Under any other circumstances, I’m sure her brattiness would make them hard. They like mouthy women. They like to make them submit. And they like to do it together.

Yes, we’ve seen them at Club Sin. We know that their sexual preferences are like ours, even though they enjoy women who challenge them while we prefer to pamper our shy lady and bring out her wild side.

Now she’s in Lee’s face, counting down her many obligations.

He, on the other hand, remains stone-faced, which I think only makes her madder.

“This is entertaining to watch,” Caiden says under his breath.

“It really is,” I agree.

The phone in Mr. Krushner’s office rings, and he jumps up from his seat to run out of the library.

Victor, Lee, and I follow him, standing in the office’s threshold as the FBI hits a button. The kidnapper has realized at some point that they have the wrong sister, and they are pissed. The sound of Leti screaming followed by flesh-on-flesh contact, presumably a slap, causes my blood pressure to rise.

I can’t stand to see a woman manhandled unless it is full-on consent in private or some place like the club, and even then it makes me antsy. I watched my mom’s boyfriend backhand her once, and I came at him with a baseball bat, breaking his nose and fracturing his cheek.

I was twelve.

Shaking it off, I tap into the deep, dark recesses of my brain where everything is numb. Memories from my past don’t haunt me here. Emotions don’t prevail. This is a job. These are our clients. Male or female, we will do our jobs and bring them home safely.

Lee bumps me on the shoulder, bringing me back to the here and now, and we move as a unit back to the library, closing the door behind us.

Lee turns to Victor. “We have to get her out of here.”

Victor nods. “Absolutely. The sooner the better. What did you see on the trace?”

We all turn to look at Soren. He shakes his head. “Whoever this is, they’re good. The signal is bouncing all over. It doesn’t sit in one place long enough to leave much of a fingerprint, but I’ll get it. It’s going to take me a few minutes to narrow it down.”

“The location on her phone stopped moving at six thirty-three this morning, so they could be three hundred miles from here by now,” Lee points out.

“Okay.” Victor takes control and hands out assignments. “While Soren is doing his thing, Reese, your team is on extraction. You should go to the garage and get everything ready. Lee—you, Case, and Porter have the princess. Good luck.”

I chuckle and slap Lee on the back before turning my attention to the ones and zeros flying across Soren’s screen. She’s difficult to find, which means whoever took her is no amateur. Soren is one of the best hackers in the world—recruited by all the three-letter agencies, and yet he’s chosen to stay with us. His brain is wired a little differently, but if he’s having a problem getting a lock on the kidnappers, they’ve got to have a decent amount of skill themselves. “Something tells me this is going to take longer than expected.”

Lee raises his brow. “Unless you kill whoever the fuck is behind this during extraction.”

A treacherous smile spreads my lips. “One can only fucking hope.”

“Don’t get shot,” Lee says as he walks out the door.

“You’re the only one who gets shot,” I grumble, landing a below-the-belt blow to Lee, who turns with a murderous glint in his eye. Oh, if we weren’t in a client’s house, we’d already be on the ground. Lee was shot three years ago while on a mission, and that injury plus the resulting surgeries got him sent home with a medical discharge. Once one member of the PsySpecOps team is retired, they are all effectively retired in the career field. Case and Porter could have stayed Army and cross-trained, but they opted to get out instead. We had a similar situation when Caiden blew out his knee during a firefight. They sent him home for surgery and extensive rehabilitation, decommissioning our team for six months. Our ETS was on the horizon and when Victor Townsend—retired Colonel Townsend, commander of the PsySpecOps 8thDivision—heard we were on the fence about reenlisting, he made us an offer we couldn’t refuse. The Townsend Agency only recruits and hires ex-PsySpecOps teams, which maintain our team dynamics, even though a couple of guys who live down south only come in on an as-needed basis, usually to team up with Victor himself.

Lee grumbles as he walks out of the room, “Fuck off.”

Caiden chuckles beside me. “I love those guys.”

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