“What the hell just happened? Where did they go?!?!” Victor yelled.
“I can’t believe they left us!” Melissa said as her friends started screaming.
The men guarding them were having difficulty calming them down.
“Stop that racket and tell me what the fuck’s going on.” Victor stormed over to Melissa and glared down at her.
Justin stared at Imani with newfound respect. He’d had no idea how gifted she was. When she spoke to him, it was as if she were speaking to him through an earpiece.
“Relax, Justin. We’re invisible to them, and they can’t hear us unless we want them to. You’ll soon get used to being able to see and hear everything within a mile radius.”
Only after Imani told him did he notice the distant digital images of persons in other parts of the building. The images were not clear enough to distinguish features, but he saw their body outlines, where they were in the casino, and whether the images were men or women. He returned his focus to Victor, who was even now reaching to grab Melissa around the throat in his rage at being thwarted out of extorting the guns he wanted. Justin and Colt moved simultaneously and silently to disarm Victor’s men.
It was almost comical to see the men react as they were disarmed and thrown to the floor by invisible forces. Imani threw them some duct tape to bind their hands, feet, and mouths.
Victor bellowed with outrage, but they intercepted him mid-bellow to take him down as well in mere seconds, stopping him from firing his weapon at Melissa and her friends.
“I’ll get the women out,” Imani told them as she removed her shield and came back into view of the others in the room.
“How are you doing that?” Melissa yelled.
“Let’s go.” Imani turned and left the room, not checking to see if the women followed her. They did follow her, though.
Justin could only shake his head as Imani boldly walked through Victor’s offices as he and Colt, with their shields in place, stealthily disabled Victor’s guards along the way. The four women left the quiet offices to enter the noisy casino, which was surprisingly crowded despite its off-the-beaten-path location and the less-than-attractive decor. They made it to Colt’s rented SUV without encountering any significant challenges, as Victor’s men didn’t see the women leaving as a threat.
Colt’s private jet was in the air out of Atlantic City almost two hours later.
“They won’t stop coming after what they want, you know.” Melissa laughed with nervous, almost drunken glee. “They’ll make you pay and pay again and again. You don’t know who Victor works for.” She laughed harder.
“That may be true, but you won’t be around my family to see it.” Justin was determined to not let Melissa get to him. She’d been throwing out comments like that ever since they’d gotten away from Victor and his men. After she’d deliberately lost money they didn’t have and shared Imani’s secret about making Colt’s custom weapons and shield, it was clear that she’d set them up. She wanted to hurt him for ignoring her for the past year, but he wasn’t going to let her poison permeate his life anymore.
“I won’t give you the easy divorce you want,” she warned.
“Then you’ll get nothing other than debt,” he told her bitterly. “If you know nothing else, Melissa, know that I’ll make you sorry for fuckin’ with my family. Going after me was fair game, but putting my family in the crosshairs of the mob? That shit won’t go unanswered.” He smiled without humor at her indrawn stunned breath. “What? Did you really think we don’t know who Victor and his people are?”
From the sheepish look on her face, Justin knew how deliberate Melissa’s actions really were. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“Yeah, that’s your problem. You’re not afraid of shit you need to be afraid of. Knowing how vindictive and spoiled you are, this play of yours shouldn’t have surprised me.” Justin gripped the short strands of his dark blond hair. “I never thought that even you would be so stupid as to expose yourself to such a fucked-up world. Do you think that they’ll leave you alone because you led them to us? What do you think will happen to you and your friends when they don’t get what they want?”
“I’m not worried.” Her words didn’t match her worried frown. Even her friends looked as though they’d suddenly developed severe stomach pains.
Justin ignored them for the rest of the flight and instead had a heart-to-heart talk with Colt. While Colt agreed to be his divorce lawyer, he cautioned Justin to stay away from Nakia. “Melissa already brought her into the discussion, but if you stay away from her, perhaps we won’t have to worry about dragging her into this.”
“The security detail I have on her for that asshole husband of hers needs to be doubled until this mess blows over.”
“And I guess you want the trust to pay for it.”
“I want her taken care of.”
“You haven’t agreed to stay away from her,” Colt observed.
“I won’t abandon—”
“This is not up for debate, Justin! You want a future with this woman, you stay the fuck away from her!”
Justin held his brother’s angry gaze without flinching. “You have no idea what you’re asking.”
“I’m not asking. I’m telling you what’s going to happen.” Colt’s voice softened. “I know how hard it is to stay away from someone when every instinct is telling you that she’s yours to take, yours to love, yours to protect. But, brother, you must stay away, no matter how long it takes.”
Justin gritted his teeth and took a long moment before he nodded reluctantly. “I’m leaving on government business anyway. So, I’m being forced to stay away from her until that’s over. After that, I’m not making any promises.”
“You are one stubborn fuck.”
“She’s mine, and I need you to look after her until I get back.”
“Yeah, you told me. Are you sure you want to do this with all this shit in the wind?”
“I don’t have any control over lunatics threatening the United States. This is what my unit does best.”
“Just keep your ass alive and talk to Imani before taking off. I’m sure she has made something for you.”
“You mean she has more than this watch and gun?” He held up the custom Glock that Imani had passed him in the casino.
Colt grinned as though to say, “You have no idea.”
Justin wasn’t surprised when Colt grabbed him into a huge bear hug. He knew that his older brother would always see him as the kid brother he was supposed to protect. It was probably killing Colt to not intervene in his deployment.
Chapter Nine
Nakia sat in her office in Austin and stared at the document that meant so much, however meant so little in the greater scheme of things. Her divorce was final, but then she’d been free of Ralph for months. He’d tried to talk her into giving him another chance by taking her to lunch a few weeks after their lawyers’ first divorce meeting. To this day she still had no clue what made her do something so stupid, especially after the disastrous clash they’d had at her apartment weeks before.