Page 63 of Hawk

“No,” I said firmly. He didn’t have to say another word. I knew exactly what he was thinking, and we were not using Mika as bait to lure Butch out of hiding.

“Hawk—”

“Absolutely not,” I growled and then looked to Wolfe.

“Chance.” Wolfe nodded toward the door. “Why don’t you go check in with Kat? Make sure we’re all working with the same information.”

Chance looked between us, and I could tell there was more he wanted to say, but the look on Wolfe’s face made it clear he needed to leave the room. As soon as the door shut behind him, I looked at Wolfe.

“Weare notsending Mika out there as bait. If they’re running a human trafficking ring, they could snatch him up, and I’d never see him again.” I shook my head. “No. No way.”

“Hawk, just listen to me. You’ve been looking for this guy for a couple of weeks, and you haven’t found him. Chance isn’t wrong. This is an opportunity for us to draw him out and get rid of him for good. Mika can’t stay cooped up in here forever. It isn’t fair to him.”

I thought about what Mika said this morning, about not even wanting to crochet at this point, and I knew Wolfe was right, but there had to be another way.

“I don’t need Chance to get rid of him for good,” I grumbled, and Wolfe gave me one of hisdon’t be an idiotlooks.

“A way for us to get rid of him for good without you going to prison. That’s not what Mika would want, and you know it.” He wasn’t wrong, but I rolled my eyes anyway. “I want to ask you something, and I want you to think about it and answer me honestly.”

“Fine.”

“If this was one of our clients… not Mika… what would you say to them?”

I knew what he was getting at, but this was Mika, and I didn’t want to lose him. Finally, I begrudgingly answered. “I’d tell him that we’re good at our job and that we’d keep him safe. That this was the very best chance we have of putting an end to this and that he could trust us.”

“Right. So, Hawk, we’re really good at our job, and this is the best chance we have of putting an end to this. You can trust us to keep Mika safe.”

“I’ll ask him. But I won’t make him do it.”

Mika

I was lying on the couch in a pair of sleep pants and a t-shirt, watching television and eating junk food, when Hawk came in. The look on his face told me that not only had he learned something big, but that he didn’t like it one bit—which meant I probably wasn’t going to either. I sat up and put the bag of cookies I’d been munching on to the side.

“What is it?”

“Remember the FBI agent I told you about?”

“The one that’s friends with Wolfe?” I knew he’d asked Kat to send the information we had to a friend of Wolfe’s who was in the FBI, but last I’d heard, they hadn’t heard back from him.

“That’s the one. His name is Chance Kelly. He came by today to let us know that the FBI was already looking into the Iron Jackals.”

“But I thought Kat didn’t find anything?”

“She didn’t, but that was by design. The federal task force that’s looking into their involvement with human trafficking had everything locked down tight.”

“Well, that’s good then, right?” I would’ve thought he’d be thrilled to find out that there was an investigation already in motion.

“It would be, if the federal task force had any idea where the Iron Jackals were located. Until we started asking questions, they didn’t even know they were in Texas.”

“Okay, but now that they know, they’ll do something about them, right? They must be up to something bad, or the FBI wouldn’t be interested in them.”

He came over and sat down beside me, taking my hand in his. He ran his thumb in a soothing circle on the back of my hand.

“It’s a human trafficking task force, mouse.”

My shoulders fell. “So they really are involved in human trafficking then.”

“It looks like it.”

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