The Problem with Peace (Greenstone Security 3)

She could handle herself.

But Luke did everything he could to handle shit so she didn’t have to. Which was, of course, a constant battle with someone like Rosie.

Though now she was pregnant it was one Luke won.

Only after he’d physically dragged her out of a drug dealer’s house.

Heath only did missions with her because he knew she’d do them alone and he figured it was better for her to have backup. And he knew that she loved her child more than anything, she wouldn’t put it in danger. He’d planned on putting a stop to it when she started to show.

But she had done that herself.

“It better be the location of that fuck, and more importantly, Polly,” Heath said through gritted teeth.

It had been three hours.

Three hours.

A lot could happen in three hours.

And it wasn’t death.

Death could happen in three seconds. That wasn’t the thing drawing poison through Heath’s system.

It was all the other shit that would kill all the beauty in Polly’s soul. It might not take three hours to kill it all, because she was strong. But even killing a fucking inch of that was enough to haunt Heath for the rest of his days.

“Not yet. But he’s got intel on someone who might now.”

Duke stood. “On it.”

Heath wanted to go too. But he couldn’t trust himself not to kill the man before they got the right information. And making someone wish they were dead, think they were dead without killing them was Duke’s specialty.

He trusted that man with his life. And with Polly’s. Which were one in the same.

* * *

Six Hours Missing

He was about to crawl out of his skin. He was ready to tear it apart so he could feel something that wasn’t the utter fucking helplessness that was sitting in this fucking room not being able to do shit to help Polly.

Not being able to kill the fuck who made her bleed.

Duke was still working on the man.

But he was deep in the business, and they were trained to withstand torture. If he didn’t break soon, Heath was going to break him, if only to fuel his need for violence, for death.

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.