Thief (Blood & Bone Enforcers MC)

Not much slower, because she couldn’t deny she wanted him like crazy.

But at least a tiny bit slower.

Blowing out a breath, she shifted around on the bed, trying to get comfortable. Her thoughts had started an ache in her core that was distracting, but she needed to focus. Her movements made her stuffed lion tumble into her side, and she picked it up with a smile, her heart flooding with warmth.

Winning her that stuffed animal was possibly the sweetest thing ever. Noah was a mountain of a man, but he was basically a teddy bear inside.

Okay, Lily, stop thinking about Noah and focus already, she chided herself.

It seemed like a nearly impossible task, but once she went to the website and started typing

out commands, she got lost in what she was doing. Her fingers were flying over the keys as she attempted to hack it. It was locked up tightly, but there had to be a way in.

Frowning at the screen, she bit her lip and then tried another avenue, straightening when it got her in. Frown deepening, she read the information, trying to puzzle it out. It looked like there was an auction going down, but the people purchasing tickets must have been loaded. The starting bids were astronomical.

But she couldn’t figure out what they were for. There was another wall between her and what the attendees of the gala were bidding on, but she was determined to get in. Her curiosity was burning through her, and her instincts were screaming that something wasn’t right about the whole setup.

It was too exclusive, too private, and the objects they were bidding on were far too expensive. She could buy a really nice house—two of them, in some cases—with the money of those starting bids. Whatever it was, it might be what the Enforcers were looking for.

Typing out a few more commands, she felt satisfaction fill her as she got past the final hurdle and into the hidden site. But as she scrolled, the satisfaction she felt turned into horror.

They weren’t auctioning off expensive objects. They were auctioning off women.

The gala was basically a front for human trafficking.

She scrolled through the page, counting seven women. Frowning, she cocked her head as she read their stats, but she didn’t know what they meant. Purebred? How could a woman be a purebred?

It didn’t matter how they were describing the women to prospective buyers. What mattered was that they were selling them at all.

“Noah. I got in.”

She was staring at him as she said it. He was just putting his empty containers back in the bag, and he looked up, his brow immediately furrowing when he saw her.

Already rising, he asked, “What is it? What did you find? It must be bad to put that look on your face.”

“I don’t think it can get worse than this,” she replied, turning the laptop so he could see the screen better. “They’re actioning off women, Noah. For exorbitant sums.”

He sucked in a breath as he squatted down next to the bed and leaned in closer to the screen. “Son of a bitch. Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Look. Underneath the pictures are their starting bids, their auction ID, and their descriptions. Although I don’t understand what a lot of that means. How is a woman a purebred? Or see with her here, they state that her color is green and gold. That doesn’t make sense, I admit, but the gala tomorrow night is clearly an auction, and these poor ladies are on the block.”

“Fuck,” he spat, startling her when he shot to his feet, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “I’ll be right back. I’ll be in the hallway, but don’t open the door, even to poke your head out. Shit just got real, and we’re too close.”

Mouth open, she watched him stride to the door and yank it open. He almost slammed it behind him, but he caught it at the last moment and eased it shut.

He was obviously going outside to call Blake, and she thought at any other time, she’d be tempted to try to listen in. She’d already known there was more going on with the mission than just the basics she was told. Too much didn’t add up, and every time Noah called to update the Enforcers, he went where she couldn’t hear.

And she might not understand what the descriptions of the women meant, but it was clear that he did.

But she was disturbed to her core by what was going on, too much to even try to listen in. Shoving the laptop away from her, she picked up her stuffed lion and leaned back against the headboard, cuddling it close.

She felt like she was ten years old again, needing to get comfort from a stuffed animal. But the only other thing that could give her what she needed in that moment was the mountain of a man, outside in the hallway letting his team know just what kind of fucked up shit was going on in Idaho.

Closing her eyes, she hugged the lion close, trying to force the image of those women out of her mind. A thought occurred to her and she sat up with a curse, pulling the laptop back to her. She quickly took screenshots of each page, making sure she had all the women’s images saved.

She’d hacked into a website, and their security had been topnotch. She couldn’t just leave it up indefinitely. If they had techies on their end, and she was sure they did, they could find the breach and track her movements, even pinpointing her location.

Once she had everything she needed, she quickly exited out of the website, and started typing out commands to wipe every bit of the search from her laptop’s existence. She wasn’t sure exactly what they were dealing with, so she was going to take every precaution.