Keltan had been in and out, checking on Lucy, who was in the bedrooms in the other wing of the offices. He’d only let her discharge herself because they had an on-call doctor with her.
Fucker wasn’t taking any chances.
Neither would Heath.
Ever a-fucking-gain.
It was just him and Luke now. Luke had been exhausting all his contacts in and out of the law enforcement. They’d put APBS out on Craig. On women matching Polly’s descriptions. Were running any cars that were stolen from the same area Polly was taken. Running all of Craig’s cards.
And they were coming up with shit.
The door burst open.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” a female voice demanded.
Luke moved the second the owner of the voice stormed into that room.
She held up her hand to her husband. “Don’t you come near me,” she hissed. “You don’t get to come near me when I have to find out from one of my sources that there’s a missing person’s alert out for Polly. My sister. And then my other sister, who is pregnant, got punched in the face by Polly’s total fucking asshole of an ex-husband.” She pointed at Luke as he opened his mouth and tried to move forward. “I. Am. Not. Done,” she seethed. “I am also armed. And I wouldn’t normally shoot the father of my baby, not even to get on Jerry Springer, but this qualifies as extenuating circumstances.” Her voice shook, from what most people would’ve thought was fury, considering she just threatened to shoot her husband.
But Heath knew her, saw more than most people. And she was holding on by a thread. And her voice was shaking with terror. It took a lot to scare Rosie.
“You decide to keep that shit from me when I could’ve fucking helped,” she hissed.
“You had an ultrasound,” Luke said, voice soft. “They were checking to make sure you didn’t have placenta previa. If you did, anything upsetting, anything raising your blood pressure will risk you and the fucking baby.”
“And you think my blood pressure is nice and steady right now?” she screeched.
Keltan entered the room, upon seeing Rosie, he muttered, “fuck.”
She raised her brow. “Fuck is right.”
“Sit,” he said, nodding to the table.
“Are you telling me that because I’m pregnant and I couldn’t possibly stand just like I couldn’t possibly handle the news of Polly being kidnapped as soon as it motherfucking happened?” she demanded.
“Rosie,” Luke murmured.
“Nope,” she hissed at him.
Keltan rounded his desk and sat. “I’m telling you to sit because we need to talk.” He gave Heath a look. “All of us.”
“Whatever,” Rosie muttered, sitting beside Heath.
She reached across and squeezed his hand.
That was Rosie. She was hard as nails but was soft where it counted.
“Wire just gave me some info,” Keltan said once Rosie had quietened enough for him to speak, she was glaring at her husband and he was glaring at her.
“You remember the shooting that you were involved in with Polly last year?” he asked Rosie.
Luke stiffened.
As did Heath at the memory. But not for the same reason as Luke. Or maybe for precisely the same reason, because someone tried to tear through their whole world with bullets.
“I vaguely recall it,” Rosie said dryly.
“We assumed it was to do with your shit because, well, you’re you,” Keltan said.
“Aww you’re so sweet,” Rosie said, forcing a grin.
“Let me guess, it was aimed at Polly?” Heath said, the words acid coming out. He needed to remind himself that none of those bullets hit her then. But that was hard as fuck to do when he had no idea what was hitting her now.
Keltan nodded.
The room turned wired.
“Okay, it’s fine to shoot at me, but at Polly?” Rosie said.
“It’s never okay to shoot at you,” Luke hissed.
“Not the time,” she muttered back.
“It was some kind of threat to Craig, as much as we know,” Keltan explained. “Apparently he was getting in deeper when he’d only been low level at the start. He was causing enough shit that they sent him a message. Obviously they didn’t know they were separated by that point. Which I’m still confused about.” He looked to Rosie. “Is the reason she divorced him because of that?”
Heath knew that wasn’t true. Because Polly wouldn’t have protected him if she knew he was at all connected in human trafficking. No matter her views on peace or feelings toward him.
He knew what it wasn’t, but still, he had no fucking clue what it was. He had been planning on gently probing it out of her in the periods he wasn’t fucking her today.
He’d thought they had time.
He was a fucking hopeful idiot.
Rosie’s expression changed. She pursed her lips.
“Now is not the time to protect Polly’s secrets,” Heath clipped. “Not if it could be the reason we fucking find her.”
“It won’t,” Rosie said.
“You can’t know that,” Heath replied.
She didn’t back down. “I can.”
“Rosie, they need to know this shit,” Luke said, his voice soft as if he were trying to protect her. Heath didn’t give a fuck about protecting Rosie’s feelings right now.
“No, this will only distract them from what they need to figure out. Which is where Polly is,” she said.
“Just fucking tell us!” Heath roared.
Rosie jumped. And not because she was jumpy at all by nature. She was harder to shock than Duke. But Heath didn’t yell. Not at anyone. Especially not at women.
“He hit her,” she said, voice small, a contrast to Heath’s roar. The three words silenced the room.
Keltan’s face drained of all color.
Heath’s body drained of oxygen.
He hit her.
He hit her.
He couldn’t stop the words from screaming in his mind.
“That’s why she left him,” Rosie continued. “She swore us to secrecy because she knew how much it would hurt Lucy.” Her eyes found Heath. “How much it would hurt you.”
“Of course, she’s the one whose husband hits her, and she worries about how that’ll hurt everyone around her,” Heath spat.
Rosie flinched.
Luke glared at him.
He didn’t give a fuck.
Because Polly had carried that around for two years.
This fucker didn’t hesitate to hit her when she was with him when he had her as his wife. Now he didn’t...
“Rosie’s right,” Keltan clipped cutting off Heath’s toxic thought. “As much as that makes me wish we’d castrated him when Lucy first suggested it, it doesn’t change anything now. And there’s more. These fuckers have had their eyes on her since the divorce. Probably since the marriage. They trailed her around Europe.”
Heath stopped breathing.
“Only reason they didn’t snatch her because she moved so often, so erratically, they couldn’t pin her down.”
“You’re telling me that Polly unwittingly evaded some of the most ruthless fuckers on in the world just because...she’s Polly?” Rosie asked in disbelief.