Special Forces: Operation Alpha: Protecting Beauty (Kindle Worlds Novella) (The Bounty Hunters: The Marino Bros. Book 5) Read Online Free Page A
step in the right direction. Hell, he thought so too. But it had been the wrong career path for him. Working on Cat’s case nearly destroyed him.
Tex watched the looming horizon and the row of buildings from the mainland appear in the distance as he steered the craft toward the direction of the waterfront restaurants and continued to reflect on Cat. How had she ended up here, in Florida, of all places? Last he heard, she had been placed into witness protection after she testified against the Demetrius Makas clan. That was the name of the group smuggling in girls and boys as young as nine into the country who were then thrown into flop houses throughout the D.C. area. The girl had briefly been placed in the foster care system, but was in a group home with counseling during the course of the trial. After that, he lost track of her. He’d only seen her in his dreams and they hadn’t been pleasant ones. And, even though he had only seen her from afar, he knew it was her. He wouldn’t, couldn’t ever forget her. What had happened to that woman over a decade ago never left him. Never would. As he told Melody, she was the reason he became a Navy SEAL. He’d never given her the complete story before now, just that he once worked a case where the victims had to suffer before being rescued. He knew he couldn’t be that patient any more. She understood without him having to go into the minute details. But it seemed like he would have to tell her now.
His brief stint as an FBI agent definitely soured him. It was the waiting around to build a case that had done it. The legalities of inaction had practically destroyed his soul. Waiting for orders to go and save the victims, orders that took forever as they made their way through the courts after his superiors were satisfied they had effectively built a solid case was something he battled every day while working her case. That woman, really just a girl then, and her friends, well, if you could even call them that, had been raped, abused, beaten, and used as sex toys for months while his department sat on the locations of the various brothels in the Maryland and Virginia areas. Being still new, he had to sit on the case, gathering the data, doing surveillance, while his bosses got their ducks in a row in order to hold a Grand Jury Trial and put the criminals away. It had been a lot to ask a young idealistic man with dreams of saving the day.
And the worst part about it for him had been the fact that many of the victims were still kids at the time. Some of them were young teenaged girls, kidnapped from all over the world, being used as sex slaves right in his own backyard in Virginia. In one of the houses there had been a nine year old boy. But because his superiors wanted more than just the men who handled them here in the U.S., more than just Demetrius Makas and his crew, the investigation dragged on while they partnered with the CIA to catch even bigger fish.
It had not been an easy few months for him. He’d questioned his superiors’ orders, something he’d been trained not to do. But while he eavesdropped with high tech equipment in a small apartment across the street, men came in and out of Cat’s location, raping her, raping them, the five others, four girls and one boy, who were in the rented house on Belmont Avenue. His job most nights had been to conduct surveillance, and gather information. Listen to phone calls, check in on the rooms that were bugged, pass any new information on up the chain of command, and then wait. Wait. Wait, while someone else decided they had all the evidence they needed, and the paper trail was documented with dotted i’s and crossed t’s in order to take down the entire Greek man’s operation that was connected to the international operation that kidnapped young, vulnerable people to use in the sex slave industry.
It had been a huge operation. Bigger than they had initially suspected when they found the brothels after a tip from a
Tex watched the looming horizon and the row of buildings from the mainland appear in the distance as he steered the craft toward the direction of the waterfront restaurants and continued to reflect on Cat. How had she ended up here, in Florida, of all places? Last he heard, she had been placed into witness protection after she testified against the Demetrius Makas clan. That was the name of the group smuggling in girls and boys as young as nine into the country who were then thrown into flop houses throughout the D.C. area. The girl had briefly been placed in the foster care system, but was in a group home with counseling during the course of the trial. After that, he lost track of her. He’d only seen her in his dreams and they hadn’t been pleasant ones. And, even though he had only seen her from afar, he knew it was her. He wouldn’t, couldn’t ever forget her. What had happened to that woman over a decade ago never left him. Never would. As he told Melody, she was the reason he became a Navy SEAL. He’d never given her the complete story before now, just that he once worked a case where the victims had to suffer before being rescued. He knew he couldn’t be that patient any more. She understood without him having to go into the minute details. But it seemed like he would have to tell her now.
His brief stint as an FBI agent definitely soured him. It was the waiting around to build a case that had done it. The legalities of inaction had practically destroyed his soul. Waiting for orders to go and save the victims, orders that took forever as they made their way through the courts after his superiors were satisfied they had effectively built a solid case was something he battled every day while working her case. That woman, really just a girl then, and her friends, well, if you could even call them that, had been raped, abused, beaten, and used as sex toys for months while his department sat on the locations of the various brothels in the Maryland and Virginia areas. Being still new, he had to sit on the case, gathering the data, doing surveillance, while his bosses got their ducks in a row in order to hold a Grand Jury Trial and put the criminals away. It had been a lot to ask a young idealistic man with dreams of saving the day.
And the worst part about it for him had been the fact that many of the victims were still kids at the time. Some of them were young teenaged girls, kidnapped from all over the world, being used as sex slaves right in his own backyard in Virginia. In one of the houses there had been a nine year old boy. But because his superiors wanted more than just the men who handled them here in the U.S., more than just Demetrius Makas and his crew, the investigation dragged on while they partnered with the CIA to catch even bigger fish.
It had not been an easy few months for him. He’d questioned his superiors’ orders, something he’d been trained not to do. But while he eavesdropped with high tech equipment in a small apartment across the street, men came in and out of Cat’s location, raping her, raping them, the five others, four girls and one boy, who were in the rented house on Belmont Avenue. His job most nights had been to conduct surveillance, and gather information. Listen to phone calls, check in on the rooms that were bugged, pass any new information on up the chain of command, and then wait. Wait. Wait, while someone else decided they had all the evidence they needed, and the paper trail was documented with dotted i’s and crossed t’s in order to take down the entire Greek man’s operation that was connected to the international operation that kidnapped young, vulnerable people to use in the sex slave industry.
It had been a huge operation. Bigger than they had initially suspected when they found the brothels after a tip from a
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