Power: Special Tactical Units Division (In Wilde Country Book 3) Read Online Free PDF

That was easy. What was tough was the part that involved listening to rich, spoiled babes call themselves designers and consultants and decorators.
    Those seemed to be their favorite occupations.
    He’d met one bubblehead who called herself a color designer.
    “It’s like feng shui?” she’d said in what he thought of as West Coast Speak, where every sentence was a question, “but with colors?”
    Tanner had nodded and kept a serious look on his face when what he’d wanted to do was howl.
    Now, here was this one, a four-star’s daughter, and she was into furs.
    Nasty.
    You killed an animal for food, or because it was trying to kill you. You didn’t kill it so some rich broad could wear it—but his opinion of Alessandra Wilde or Alessandra Bellini or whatever she called herself didn’t mean he could just let her die.
    “Lieutenant. Please. You have to find her before they—they hurt her.”
    Tanner suspected please was not a common part of John Wilde’s vocabulary.
    And that photo. The bruised face. The men touching her. She’d been hurt already, he thought, and his stomach rolled. The only question was how much more would they do before they killed her, because killing was what Bright Star was all about—assuming this was a Bright Star kidnapping, and his gut was telling him maybe not.
    Should he tell that to Wilde? No. For one thing, he didn’t have any facts to support the supposition. A low ransom figure, a poor drawing… It wasn’t enough.
    For another, he’d have to also tell him that if Alessandra had been taken by two bandits working on their own, she might well be in even greater danger.
    As vicious as it was, Bright Star at least operated under an organizational umbrella.
    “Okay,” Tanner said briskly. “Give me the name of your man at State. I’ll speak with him, make some suggestions.”
    A flush rose in Wilde’s face. “State’s not involved.”
    “But you said your contact there…”
    “I said he sent the information to me. Privately. Not officially.”
    “Why the hell not?”
    “I told you. State isn’t involved.”
    “I don’t understand. What do you mean, State isn’t involved? I’d have thought your first action would have been to pull at the strings you could.”
    “They don’t… That Alessandra is my daughter is not public information.”
    Tanner folded his arms over his chest. “Meaning what, exactly?”
    “Meaning it’s a long story.”
    The general’s tone had hardened. He’d gone into command mode. Screw that, Tanner thought. If he was going to take on the job of collecting information and formulating a plan to rescue the woman, he needed to know what was going on.
    “Then give me the abbreviated version, General.”
    Wilde’s face reddened. There wasn’t a way in the world anyone ever spoke to him like this. They both knew it, just as they both knew that the general was just going to have to deal with a new reality, a reality that was standing in front of him, glowering.
    “Alessandra is—she’s a child I had with my, ah, my second wife.”
    “And?”
    “And…” Long pause. “And, nobody knows I had a second wife.”
    “I don’t follow. You divorced your first wife?”
    “No.”
    “Then what? She died?”
    “Yes. And I don’t see what any of this has to do with finding my daughter and rescuing her from the clutches of a ragtag bunch of killers.”
    “Wrong.” Tanner’s voice was as grim as the look on his face. “Don’t dismiss them as a ragtag bunch. They’re well financed and their leaders, at least, are well trained. And I still don’t get why you haven’t involved the State Department. They know how to handle things like this.”
    “I told you. Nobody knows about Alessandra. About my—my second marriage. It took place in Italy. There’s no record of it here. I’d have to waste precious time on a lot of pointless explanations.”
    Explanations the man didn’t want to make. The unspoken words all but echoed through the