Page 2 of Rescuing Tobias

Maybe not, but they’d still made the decision to cave and do the trafficking ring’s bidding instead of reaching out to the cops for help. As far as Tobias was concerned, that made them every bit as complicit in every single crime the ring committed as the doctors and nurses who had willingly signed up to get a paycheck.

Innocent people like Ava had been snatched off the streets, held against their will, and had their organs removed from their bodies without permission. The way he saw it, there was no good excuse for working for the ring. Regardless of whether or not you had joined by choice, you were there, you helped kill people, and you deserved to rot in a prison cell for the rest of your life.

This ring was going to be burned to the ground, and everyone involved in it was to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Prey was a family, and if you messed with one of them, you messed with all of them. The second the organ traffickers abducted Ava, they’d sealed their fate.

Now it was time to go in there, save some lives, and take into custody the doctors and nurses who thought they could play God.

The sensation of ants in his pants, that need to move, to do something to work out the energy pulsing inside him, stilled and turned into a cool, steady, calm. One he was used to from when he was still in Delta Force.

Like riding a bike, when Rex pulled the truck over a short distance away from the old school building, Tobias climbed out, ready to complete this mission. It might have been four years since he was last on the ground, but he knew what to do, it waswritten into his DNA. The pain in his back could be easily shoved aside as he focused on the task at hand.

Bring down the trafficking ring that had tried to kill his teammate and everyone involved in it.

March 13th

9:41 P.M.

No matterhow long they kept her there, Isabella Baker would never stop trying to escape.

Never.

Sooner or later, she was going to find a way out of this hellhole.

Or she was going to die trying.

By this point, she wasn't even sure she cared which one it ended up being.

Anything so long as her suffering ended.

When she’d followed in her parents’ footsteps and started up an aid agency with her very best friend in the entire world, Becca Marsden, she could never in a million years have foreseen how it would all turn out.

One minute she’d been in Cambodia, working hard to improve the lives of villagers by providing education and medical care, and then the next, she’d been abducted.

Isabella knew who to blame.

Well, at least indirectly.

It was Becca’s ex, Connor Charleston, who had brought trouble to their door. The fact that he’d reappeared in Becca’s life over a decade after he’d blown it up, and then the very next day their village was raided, was too big a coincidence to be believed.

Not that she thought he’d willingly brought trouble to them, but in the end he had.

She’d done everything she could to protect the villagers she thought of as her people, done everything in her power to fight off the rebels who had flooded their village. But in the end, it hadn't done any good.

They’d still abducted her.

Held her in a small metal cage for what had to be close to a week as they transported her by land across borders before she was finally held in an airport hangar. At the time, she hadn't been certain what her fate was going to be, but she’d known whatever it was would be horrific.

That last night before she was sold was the worst.

Having delivered her to the location they’d been given, the rebels decided to have a little fun with her before they sold her off.

Try as she had to block out that night from her mind, it remained stubbornly there.

The smell of alcohol and cigarettes, their drunken voices screaming and cheering, the taste of them as man after man shoved their penis in her mouth, the many times she’d been sure she was going to suffocate. Their hands tearing at her clothes, holding her down, and spreading her open so they could each take their turn. The burning pain that morphed into something deeper, a throb she swore she could still feel the echo of months later.

Months.

It had to have been months since the woman in the black skirt suit arrived. Her hair had been pulled back into a perfect bun, her makeup highlighting the narrow angles of her face, and she’d had a sweet, melodious voice that didn't fit in the least with the woman’s evil personality.

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