Devour (Unbreakable Bonds 4)

Jagger was a man who liked to be in charge. The place screamed wealth and power in a way someone with his kind of narcissistic personality no doubt got off on.

Hollis had come in as a possible distributor for Georgia. Seemed Jagger was ready to take his operation nationwide. But it was Hollis’s old contacts and job in that state that had made the feds approach him in the first place. He wasn’t a cop whose face was known in Jagger’s circles locally, and his work undercover at his old job in Atlanta had been the perfect cover.

After seeing walls of photographs of missing kids in a house in Mount Adams the year before, Hollis hadn’t been able to say no. Hadn’t even considered it for a second. He’d walked away from his work in Missing Persons years ago to save his sanity, but knowing someone he’d begun to care for had been a victim of this man had brought him back in.

Thoughts of Ian Pierce ghosted through his mind, as they did every time he stood in the same room with Boris Jagger. Ian, a local chef and someone Hollis really wanted to know more…personally, had been on his mind from the moment he’d first seen him.

And knowing what this brute had done to the young man had made Hollis ready to tear him apart with his bare hands. It had been all he could do not to pull out his gun and shoot the motherfucker every single time he saw him.

He’d come in working the drug side but hoping to get close enough to find out the main location of Jagger’s other, more insidious, trafficking business. He’d been unable to get more than some random code words he couldn’t make sense of—but then today, he’d gotten a break.

Jagger had been out eating his once-a-week indulgence of fried foods when he’d called, screaming bloody murder for everyone who worked for him to gather at his house. Someone had screwed up. Badly.

As one gorilla after another gathered in the hallways two hours earlier, Hollis had been able to learn that Jagger’s new street drug had been delivered to his home by mistake. Jagger, a typical drug lord, merely oversaw the complicated workings of trafficking—he didn’t dirty his big hands with the actual goods. This was a mistake of epic proportion, and Hollis had quickly called it in.

Now, S.W.A.T. teams gathered outside, and he was stuck on the inside because he was worried about a damn kid he’d seen lurking behind the wall of guns.

“Truck’s here!”

The yell came from the small surveillance room next to Jagger’s office.

His phone vibrated in his pocket and his blood went cold. They couldn’t wait for him any longer. He didn’t have to look to know the signal had been sent.

“Jagger!” the security guy yelled. “We got pigs!”

The lights snapped out and all hell broke loose.

Shouts came from every direction; bodies slammed into him as men ran to positions at the windows. There were too many in this stupid mansion for Jagger’s men to cover them all. The connected stone houses wrapped the pool and gardens…and the pool house where Jagger had the drugs stashed temporarily. Hollis had warned his guys they’d have a narrow fucking window because Jagger was too smart to think he could keep the drugs here overnight, and he’d been right. Two and a half hours was all it took.

It was probably good the lights were out because Hollis’s fierce joy was probably stamped on his face like a scary Jack Nicholson grin.

They had the fucker.

Not for the kids, but this would be enough to put him away for a long, long time.

A sharp cry sounded to his left. A young one. There was a heavy thump. Hollis grabbed the small flashlight he carried out of habit and flipped it on, aiming the light in the direction of the pained yelp. The kid had been shoved into a wall and he sat on the floor, rubbing his shoulder, his skinny legs pulled up to his chest. Damn, he looked maybe thirteen. Fury burned a hole through his gut. Another man ran by the kid, nearly tripping over him. He stopped and kicked the boy’s side, and Hollis saw red. He surged across the floor, hauled back, and punched the man in the face as he grabbed his gun. The guy screamed.

“What the fuck, man?”

Hollis just cocked the gun and aimed it with one hand while his flashlight showed the weapon. “You know he doesn’t let you hurt the kids. Get in his office. Now.”

“I didn’t mean to kick his boy.”

“He’s not going to be too happy you did,” Hollis snarled, letting his Georgia accent bleed into every word.

“I think Jagger’s got more important shit to worry about right now, don’t you, asshole?”

Someone shoved into Hollis from behind and it gave the thug enough time to take off. Hollis reached down and picked up the kid. “You’re gonna get seriously hurt right here. See all those windows? I expect they’ll be breaking any second now.”