Page 44 of Rescuing Rebel

With everyone staring at me,I clear my throat and finish my thoughts. “Let’s say, for a moment, that we pose as a client and have one of our female operatives put herself up as the victim.” I hold up my hand, forestalling the chorus ofNos!I’m about to receive.

“Let me continue. We bring the client, whichever of us is in that role, our kidnapping victim, and Charlie team as kidnappers and security. That gets us in the door.”

“In the door, and it places one of our female operatives at risk for rape, torture, or worse.” Sam’s comment is dismissive, and he’s moments from shutting me down.

“Not if we rescue her.” I jump on Sam’s comment.

“Rescue?” Mitzy’s brows bunch together. “What does that get us?”

“Get another team to mount a rescue. Remove her from any threat. Our client will be pissed, make a scene…”

“And you’re all tossed out on your asses.” CJ shakes his head. “I don’t see this helping.”

“What if we become the solution to Haven’s problem?” The final piece is coming to me. It’s just out of reach, but all I have to do is keep talking. It’ll come to me. “What if we offer a solution to a problem they don’t know they have yet?”

Forest’s gaze sharpens, his head tilting slightly. “You’re suggesting we create a security breach for us to fix?”

Yes!It’s like he’s reading my mind.

“Exactly. That breach allows us to extract our operative. Get her out of there. The client will get pissed and demand answers. We will ‘help’Haven figure out what happened. Swoop in to save the day, as it were. Our client can insist we stay behind to fix the breach while he waits for another opportunity to kidnap his girl.”

“Complicated.” Mitzy’s gaze practically bores a hole between my eyes, but her incredible mind is working on the problem. “But, if everything works, we could…” She turns to Forest. “What do you think?”

“It might work.” Like Mitzy, Forest’s brain is a modern marvel.

“I can engineer something they won’t be able to ignore.” Mitzy’s eyes flicker with a spark of hope. “It’ll take time to figure a way for Charlie team to solve it realistically.”

“It’s risky,” Forest grunts, his eyes hard and assessing.

“Agreed. Too risky,” Skye jumps in, the voice of reason.

“Everything we do carries inherent risk.” My statement hangs in the room, but I’m right.

I feel it.

The determined faces of my men turn to me, each of them nodding in agreement. It is risky. No one debates this. There’s no assurance of success, and if any of us is caught, it’s a death sentence.

But we’re Guardians.

We don’t shy away from danger.

We charge headfirst into it.

“Not agreeing to anything, but let’s see what we can come up with,” Forest concedes, his voice confirming the resolve etched on his face. “We balance risks in favor of our personnel. I’m not exposing anyone to the risk ofrape.Not without a solid plan and backups to that plan.” His gaze shifts to Skye. “Lots of backups.”

She returns a steady gaze.

The plan may be rough, the outcome uncertain, but one thing is clear. We’re committed to taking Haven down.

As the meeting adjourns, the resolve in the room is palpable.

* * *

A month later,we’re still no closer to our goal.

Hours blend into days, and days blur into nights until they’re nearly indistinguishable. We enter this vicious cycle of searching for any vulnerability we can exploit. When we think we’ve got it nailed down, someone invariably notices a critical flaw, and we start over from square one.

When not working the Haven case, Charlie team spends time on several hostage rescues in Cancun, reuniting families who lost loved ones to the kidnapping trade. When not on mission, we train, honing our skills in the field. In what free time we have leftover, we work with Mitzy and CJ to hammer out ways to attack the problem that is Haven.

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