“No.” Troup shook his head. “Just from what I’ve heard and asked about. I have no relation to either victim.”
Something settled inside of me.
“Do you know when she moved in here in correlation to when the other victim moved?” I asked. “I thought when you lived alone you didn’t really get to live in a house on base. I thought they were more reserved for families.”
“Records show that both women moved about the same time. As to your other…” He was about to answer more, but a young man, a very nervous looking young man, interrupted him.
“C-Captain?”
Troup paused mid-sentence and looked at the young man in uniform at his side.
We’d all seen him come up, but usually—and this was only in the past few days that I’d been observing it—the people would wait to interrupt at least until Trouper was done speaking.
Not this kid, though.
He had balls.
“Taint,” Trouper drawled, giving him a hard time.
“Tint,” Tint corrected. “I’m sorry to interrupt. This is the key to her house. I would’ve been here earlier, but I’ve eaten a bad batch of fried shrimp, and it’s taking everything I have to stand here right now and not throw up.”
Trouper’s lips twitched.
“Is that right?” he asked.
I punched Troup in the arm. “Let him go.”
The kid looked horrified that I’d just hit Trouper.
Well, if only he knew that I’d done a lot more than hit Troup in my time.
Troup wasn’t ‘State’ to me, no matter where we were.
He would always be that seventeen-year-old boy that I’d grown up with.
So all this ‘Captain’ this and ‘Captain’ that that was going on meant nothing to me.
Troup was just Troup.
I would not treat him any differently just because he was a legend on this base.
And whew, boy. Was he a legend.
Like, no joke.
Everybody knew his name.
I had no idea, none, how freakin’ popular the man would be.
But the officer status paired with the sexy fighter pilot god-like status he had meant he was considered ‘hot shit’ on this base.
“Thanks for the key,” Troup grunted as he took the key out of the kid’s outstretched hand. “You can head home now. Make sure you report in every once in a while, so one of us knows you’re alive and doesn’t have to come check on you.”
The kid nodded and all but sprinted away.
He rethought that about two steps into his sprint and walked quickly to his car.
When Troup turned around and surveyed Easton and I, he had a weird look in his eyes.
“Just give it to me, Easton,” Troup sighed.
Easton, obviously holding it in for way too long now, looked at his brother.
“Do they shine your shoes?” he teased.
We both looked at the dirty boots that Trouper was wearing.
His flight suit was covering the tops of them.
“Maybe I should get them to?” he shrugged. “They are kind of dirty.”
“What about wipe your ass?” Easton continued.
Troup sighed. “No, I take care of that task quite fine on my own.”
“What about hold your dick while you pee?” Easton jeered.
Trouper pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re such a child.”
CHAPTER 14
You don’t have to get pregnant just because he smiles sexy.
-Fact of life
TROUPER
Two months later
“Easton,” I said as I stood up from my desk. “What’s up?”
Easton looked around my office, looking deflated when he didn’t find what he was looking for.
“We can’t find Beckham.”
Those words dropped like a bomb in my quiet office.
“What do you mean you can’t find her?” I barked. “She was at the house with you only an hour ago.”
I hadn’t stayed the night with them. Couldn’t.
Not and ‘sell’ this bullshit that they were wanting to sell.
Two more girls had been taken from the area in the time that the FBI had set up shop. And in that time, Beckham had gotten pissed.
Because one of those girls was Cannel, Toot’s fiancée.
That had happened last night, actually, and Beckham had become… possessed.
Though, seeing Toot’s face as he heard that his fiancée was missing was likely what set her off.
“Did she leave or did she get taken?” I asked.
“I think she left.” Easton paused. “But I don’t know for sure. There’s no sign of trouble from our place. Her car’s gone, and her bag.”
My gut churned.
“What about her phone?” I asked as I picked my office phone up. “Did you try calling it?”
He nodded. “I did. She didn’t answer. It’s off, or we’d be tracking it right now.”
I felt sick to my stomach.
This was what Toot felt yesterday when he’d been told.
The icy, fear-ridden, what the fuck am I going to do, feeling definitely wasn’t a good one.
“Find her,” I urged.
“We’re working on it,” he said. “I was just hoping that she was here, with you.”
I placed my hand over my heart, feeling as if there was an actual physical wound instead of a mental one.
“Please, Easton,” I begged. “Find her.”
• • •
Thirty-seven hours later
“I found her,” Easton gasped, his eyes hot and wired. “She’s… she took the tracker with her. The one in her purse. We found her off of an old road that leads to a swamp or something where there’s a house. One way in and one way out, unless you can access it via boat. And even then, it’d have to be one of those big ass fan boats. She’s… the heat signatures on the house show that there are eight people there.”
I had a feeling that there was more that Easton wasn’t telling me.
That there was something that I wasn’t going to like.
“I’m going with you,” I said.
Easton was already shaking his head.
“No,” he said. “But you can stay at the rally point line. You can wait for her there.”
The idea of doing that felt like acid burning in my gut.
“Easton…” I sounded broken.
“No, Trouper.” Easton was already shaking his head. “I don’t tell you how to do your job, you don’t tell me how to do mine.”
I closed my eyes.
I didn’t like hearing his words, but he was right.
I wasn’t trained to do what he did.
“Fine,” I said. “But the moment…”
Easton held up his hand. “The moment that it’s safe for you to come in there, I’ll let you know.”
That call came twenty-seven minutes later.
“Come on.” Easton’s words were clipped.
I was on my bike and riding like the wind seconds later.
When I got onto the front porch, it was to see a lump laying under a sheet on the ground near the door.