Page 3 of Russian Rescue

“So, your captors speak Russian, and the intercom language is Russian?”

After a pause, he breathed out, “Holy shit. I’m in Russia, aren’t I? Oh my God. I’m in Russia. I’ve never had any desire to go to Russia, and now I’m in fucking Russia, aren’t I? Oh God. They’re gonna kill me.”

“Stay calm, Wes. We will find you. Do you have any ideas on how to help us without you doing the heavy lifting?”

Another long pause, then he popped back in. “Brooks! Get ahold of Brooks!”

“Who’s Brooks?”

“He’s on the Elite Stealth Force Delta team. I got pulled into a Delta force op once when their hacker wasn’t available. Brooks was my contact through the mission. He’s an operative, not a hacker, but he’s way above average on computers. He’ll know what to do.”

I knew there were other Elite Stealth Force teams out there created after ours was formed, but our teams were highly secretive in our identities, and we never met one another. It shouldn’t have surprised me that Wes knew another team member’s identity, but it did. “How can I find him?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t have his number or anything. After the op, we kept in touch, and I play games online with him sometimes. Oh, wait! You can message him on Xbox. His gamertag is AssKick4U.”

As he spelled out the gamertag, I had to stop myself from teasing him for being a gaming nerd, but now wasn’t the time for jokes. Wes was in trouble, and from the sounds of it, he was in Russian hands. And for a hacker of his skill set, that was trouble not just for him, but for everyone. Hell, with his skills, Wes could probably be tortured into starting a freaking world war.

As the realization slipped into my mind, so did a new panic. The government would never let Wes fall into enemy hands. If they found out the Russians had him and they couldn’t get him out, they’d take him out instead. No question about it. Hell, I’d been commanded to eliminate similar targets before. I didn’t like it, but I understood it. Kill one to save a million.

But in my former life, that one had never been Wes.

“We can’t involve Elite Stealth Force,” I rushed out. “If they find out you’re in enemy hands, they may... you know. Give me someone else.”

“I trust Brooks,” Wes said. “He won’t screw me over. We’re friends.”

I bit my lip. “You’re sure? Your life could depend on this.”

“Yes. Brooks will know what to do. I trust him, and you can too. He’s not a skilled hacker like me, but he’s really good on the computer, and he should be able to access the traffic camera at the intersection across from my house. I should be on it. Have him start checking timestamps around fourteen hundred hours on Tuesday. That’s where they got me.”

“Got it. We’ll get started right away.”

“Seriously, Piper. Do not fucking leave me here.”

My heart clenched in my chest knowing how much fear he must be feeling. “Wes, we won’t stop until we have you back safe and sound. Do you understand me? No matter what, you hold strong. We are coming for you.”

“Shit, someone’s coming,” he whispered. “Gotta go. Hurry!”

The line went dead, and it felt like my heart died with it. Worry like I’d never known coursed through me as I wondered what they may do to my sweet Wesley. My Pretty Boy. One of the three people on this planet I would die for without blinking an eye, and one of the three people I’d ever trusted with my life.

And now he was trusting me with his.

I clicked on Marcus’s number, and when he answered, I put him on hold and called Knox. When both of my old teammates were on the line, I exhaled a deep breath and reached inside to find my inner strength to say what I had to spit out.

“You guys, someone took Wes. They’re holding him somewhere.”

“What?” Marcus growled. “Who has him?”

“It sounds like Russians.”

“No fucking way,” Knox ground out. “They took our Pretty Boy? If they harm one hair on his head...”

My throat tightened as I fought the strange sensation of tears starting behind my eyes. But before I let them loose, I swallowed back down all the fear for my friend swirling inside of me. “We won’t let them.”

“Any idea where he is?” Marcus asked. As our leader and the one who planned all our ops, he was likely already cycling through every possible option we had to find him.

“Other than likely Russia, that’s it. But we can’t even assume that. His captors speak Russian, and he’s in a room with no windows with an intercom that’s in Russian, but we all know that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. He hacked the intercom to call me. We only had a minute to talk because people were coming.”

Knox grumbled. “They could still have him in the States and just be fucking with him by putting a Russian intercom in the room. We did that a few times, remember? Took the target down the road to a room in a warehouse and tricked him into thinking we’d pulled him out of the country.”