RunningScaredBN Read Online Free PDF

and their mouths taped shut. Riley climbed into the truck. In an instant, one of the women broke free, pulled a gun from beneath her clothing, and aimed at Justin.
    “Kelly, watch out!” Riley shouted and dove toward the woman. The gun went off just before she tackled the woman to the bed of the truck.
    Clocking the woman on her chin, Riley turned to check on her partner. Blood was blooming on his left shoulder. “You’re hit.”
    “It’s nothing,” he growled. “Check and make sure the others aren’t armed, too.”
    Riley did this by rote while her mind went over what she should have done and warred with what she wanted to do, which was go check on her partner and make sure he was telling the truth.  
    The two other women were not armed and looked to be as they had assumed, victims of the human smugglers. Neither of them spoke English, so Riley had to explain with her limited vocabulary that they were safe.
    She tied up the woman who’d shot Justin. Leaving the other two women to comfort each other, she jumped from the truck to check on her partner. He was with the other women, four of them, explaining to them what was going on. Since Justin was fluent in Arabic, the women seemed to grasp the situation much easier. They knew they were safe.
    “You sure you’re okay?” Riley asked.
    “Yeah. I’ll get it checked out in a minute.”
    “No, you’ll get it checked out now.” Riley turned and shouted, “Thorne, we need you. Kelly’s injured.”
    In seconds, Aidan appeared. “Let me take a look.”
    “He says it’s nothing, but he’s still bleeding.”
    “He’s also able to talk for himself, Ingram,” came Justin’s wry reply.
    Riley smiled to herself. If he was well enough to be sarcastic and grumpy, he wasn’t hurt too badly.
    She watched as Aidan pulled Justin’s arm from the sleeve of his jacket. Blood now covered his entire arm, and Riley tensed up again. Maybe it was worse than she’d thought.
    “He’s right,” Aidan said. “Got lucky. Just a bullet crease across the top of his shoulder. Probably needs a few stitches, though.”
    “Just slap a bandage on it. I’ll get it checked out once we get this job done.”
    Riley blew out a gusty sigh. The op wasn’t the cleanest on record, but for the most part, it had gone the way they’d hoped.
    Sabrina appeared at the back of the truck. “We’ve got a problem.”
    “What?” Aidan asked.
    “Taylor Vaughn isn’t with them.”
    “Crap,” Riley whispered. “Where is she, then?”
    “The women don’t know. Said when they were taken, a couple of the men grabbed Taylor, threw her in another vehicle, and took off.”  
    Sabrina jerked her head in the direction of the handcuffed men lying on the ground. “They won’t say where.”
    “Guess we’ll just have to have a longer chat with them,” Aidan said.
    “And then what?”
    “And then we go find her,” Justin answered.

    Turning over a band of human traffickers to the authorities wasn’t as clear-cut as one would think. With the country being so fractured and sympathies split in various directions, LCR had numerous choices but was limited by one major obstacle—who did they trust? If anyone asked him, Justin’s answer would have been an unequivocal no one .
    Thankfully, McCall had worked out the logistics of who would get the prisoners, but once other people took custody, LCR could forget about questioning them. Getting information out of them would take time and skill. Fortunately, they had a master interrogator on the team.
      “Any suggestions on where we can go?” Riley asked.
    “Yeah.” Refusing to grimace at the ache in his shoulder, Justin pulled a map from the inside of his jacket, spread it out on the truck’s tailgate. “It’s not fancy, but two miles up the road is another road that leads to an old shack. Used to be a lookout for the rebels. Been abandoned for years. It should give us enough privacy to get what we need.”
    Riley looked around at the barren but