“Fuck it, Viking,” Chase growled. “I’ll do the paperwork for you—after I kill this motherfucker.”
“I suggest you let her go, Androv,” the man named Viking said. “Or my boy here is going to put a hole in your head that no amount of money will cure.”
Grigori cut off her airway—and then he shoved her away and she stumbled and fell to the pavement, her knees and hands hitting hard, the pebbled surface scraping her skin.
And then hands were on her shoulders, beneath her arms, pulling her up, turning her into a solid body, her face mashing to his chest. He whipped the veil from her face, and cool night air rushed into her lungs as she sucked in a breath.
“Sophie, thank God.”
“Chase,” she said, but it came out sounding like shhhhhhze.
“Baby, you’re okay. You’re going to be okay.”
“Chase…”
“I got you, baby. I got you. I’m not letting you go.”
She clung to him just to be sure.
35
“Human trafficking,” Mendez said, throwing a sheaf of papers down on the table in front of Grigori Androv. The man didn’t even flinch, just looked up with hot, crazy eyes.
They’d brought him back to HOT HQ hooded and cuffed, and now they had him in a room with Mendez, Viking, Chase, Hawk, Richie Rich, Iceman, Kid, and Brandy. Victoria was with Sophie, taking care of her and getting her tended to by the on-call physician assigned to HOT.
Chase had wanted to be there with her, but he’d needed to be here even more. Because he needed to hear what Mendez had found out, and he needed to know how they were going to stop Androv. It wasn’t as easy as locking the asshole up and throwing away the key. The man was, unfortunately, respected by those who had no idea just how evil he was.
And HOT was a military organization, not a civil one. They weren’t the police or the justice system. They couldn’t prosecute him, couldn’t put him in jail. That was up to a DA.
“You sell women and children, Androv,” Mendez said, his jaw tight. “You promise them a better life and then you sell them into sexual slavery. Your people shake down the pimps regularly, taking a cut.”
“It is called free enterprise,” Androv said, his Russian accent thicker than normal. “And you have no proof. This is not proof.”
Mendez sat on the corner of the desk and swung his leg casually. Like this was just a friendly get-together. Anyone who knew Mendez knew that the calmer he was, the worse it was. In fact, he hadn’t made eye contact with Chase since he’d arrived, and far from making Chase feel like everything was cool about the fact he’d gone off on his own mission, he was pretty sure there was going to be some hell to pay. Mendez had helped him and Sophie, but no way was the colonel going to let this pass without comment.
“You kidnapped and drugged Sophie Nash. By your own admission, you were planning to sell her to a Mexican drug lord. I have the recordings. I also have your files. Everything in them. The women, the underage girls, the records of where you sent them. And then there are the private sales, like you were attempting tonight. You kept very meticulous records.”
Androv lifted his chin. “My name is nowhere on those files. Forgeries, all of it. Faked by your people so you could frame me. As for the recordings…” He shrugged. “I speak at a lot of events. A skilled engineer could easily make a mix of my words to implicate me.”
“So that’s how you want to play it, huh? It’s a setup, you did nothing wrong, we want to take you down.” Mendez looked thoughtful. “Sounds reasonable to me.”
Then he leaned forward, his expression deadly. “You’ve sold your last human being, Androv. It ends here. I will destroy your ability to do business in every single location named in those files. I’ve shared the information with the intelligence community. Teams are moving to shut down every single operation you have around the world. By morning, you won’t have a network anymore.”
Beads of sweat broke out on Androv’s brow. He looked angry—and worried. A cornered animal was a bad thing, but there was nothing the man could do right now.
Mendez stood and Androv shrank against his seat in fear. It was a reasonable response considering the look on Mendez’s face.
“I’m turning the information in your files over to the district attorney. I’m turning you over to the police. Will they let you go? Probably. But know this—you fucking touch Sophie Nash again, you fucking breathe the same air she breathes, you’re dead. Dead. I’m doing things the legal way tonight—you’d better take advantage of it.”