Page 6 of Hard

Wolf wondered how the fuck he’d missed that half of Phoenix was present in this same hotel and had been since yesterday. Of course, he hadn’t been in on this particular plan—because he’d been handling other things—but he was starting to question his Spidey-senses.

He should never have gone to see Rossi without Caleb present and that was something he would never do again. Even the look of surprise on Rossi’s face when he had walked into the man’s study should have clued him in.

“Where’s Caleb?” Rossi had craned in neck to see around him as if Caleb was hiding behind him.

“Not for this one,” Wolf had said and took a seat.

Stefano had made a sound under his breath.

“What?” Wolf frowned at Stefano. Rossi and Stefano were never apart and Wolf had heard rumors that they would be retiring soon. He wondered where that would leave Phoenix.

“It’s your funeral,” Stefano had scoffed and sipped at the cup of coffee in his hand.

Stefano had been right. He’d fucked up. But his and Caleb’s relationship was strong enough to weather it.

A chair scraping brought Wolf’s attention to the small conference room and he gave an up-nod to both Wild and Storm, who sat next to one another. Wolf briefly wondered who was watching their kids. Although little Megan and Chase weren’t so little any longer, ages ten and eleven still took supervision.

He wanted that for him and Caleb. To adopt a child. But that would need to be after he retired. Which was still way down the pipeline. He would be forty-three this year and had no intention of retiring until he was pushing fifty at least.

Caleb’s shoulder bumped him and he smiled, discretely linking their fingers together.

In the back of the room sat Fear and Lash, and Wolf wondered briefly if they knew about his screw-up. By the look on Caleb’s brother’s face, they did know. Lash gave him an icy squinted stare.

Noah walked in with Asher and Seth and all three men took a seat.

“So now that all the players are here, that makes ten of us,” Roscoe said, pulling up a PowerPoint on the wide wall screen.

Rossi wasn’t fazed by him being here at all and that made Wolf suspicious.

“I have a sneaky idea I’ve been played,” Wolf murmured against his shoulder.

Caleb snickered and glanced over.

Wolf was correct.

This hadn’t been a job to do by himself, but rather a lot of the team were here.

So what if he’d lied? His white lie had woken Wolf up.

“Would I do that?” Caleb asked with an innocent bat of his eyelashes.

“Mhmm. You had planned on me being here,” Wolf said.

“Give the man a brownie point.”

“We could have just talked,” Wolf whispered the complaint.

“No, we needed to be apart for you to see what you were doing.”

Wolf gazed into his eyes with that eerie silvery gaze before giving a slow nod.

“You’re right. I would have been too close,” Wolf admitted. “And as much as it made me angry that you disappeared, it worked.”

Rossi broke into their covert conversation to continue. “Seth, Asher, Wild, and I will take the perimeter. Wolf, Caleb, Fear, Lash, and Storm will breech the inside.”

Rossi brought up the inside plans of an apartment building located not far from the hotel. “As soon as one floor is cleared, I’ll send in Asher to start retrieving victims. Carl Grant is our ultimate goal. The informant said that the man’s office is located at the end of the hall on the top floor.” Rossi gave Noah a nod.

Noah stood and turned to them. “Carl Grant is a sex trafficker who has been preying on runaways in the streets of the city. We had almost caught him in California, but he evaded us and hightailed it to Virginia. So here we are.” Noah pointed to the wall screen. “We will meet at dark tomorrow night and apprehend this bastard.”

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