Corbin E-Book

Mayer Dale

• Herausgeber: Valley Publishing Ltd.
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Corbin is tracking a cabinet minister’s pregnant daughter, who’d been snatched off the streets several days ago. The incident followed several other missing women’s cases, except those women already had given birth, and their children were also kidnapped at the same time. Then the body of one of the mothers is found …

Nellie would do anything to save her unborn child, but finding herself a prisoner was never something she expected to happen. When one of her guards grills her over an image of someone asking questions about her, she realizes she isn’t as alone as she’d assumed. Now if only a rescue could be mounted before any others die …

A rescue is one thing, but getting to the bottom of this nightmare becomes even more urgent, as the kidnapper refuses to give up on Nellie’s unborn child and the big payoff if he succeeds …

Leseprobe

Books in This Series:

Kerrick, Book 1

Griffin, Book 2

Jax, Book 3

Beau, Book 4

Asher, Book 5

Ryker, Book 6

Miles, Book 7

Nico, Book 8

Keane, Book 9

Lennox, Book 10

Gavin, Book 11

Shane, Book 12

Diesel, Book 13

Jerricho, Book 14

Killian, Book 15

Hatch, Book 16

Corbin, Book 17

Aiden, Book 18

The Mavericks, Books 1–2

The Mavericks, Books 3–4

The Mavericks, Books 5–6

The Mavericks, Books 7–8

The Mavericks, Books 9–10

The Mavericks, Books 11–12

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

About This Book

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Epilogue

About Aiden

Author’s Note

Complimentary Download

About the Author

Copyright Page

About This Book

What happens when the very men—trained to make the hard decisions—come up against the rules and regulations that hold them back from doing what needs to be done? They either stay and work within the constraints given to them or they walk away. Only now, for a select few, they have another option:

The Mavericks. A covert black ops team that steps up and break all the rules … but gets the job done.

Welcome to a new military romance series by USA Today best-selling author Dale Mayer. A series where you meet new friends and just might get to meet old ones too in this raw and compelling look at the men who keep us safe every day from the darkness where they operate—and live—in the shadows … until someone special helps them step into the light.

Corbin is tracking a cabinet minister’s pregnant daughter, who’d been snatched off the streets several days ago. The incident followed several other missing women’s cases, except those women already had given birth, and their children were also kidnapped at the same time. Then the body of one of the mothers is found …

Nellie would do anything to save her unborn child, but finding herself a prisoner was never something she expected to happen. When one of her guards grills her over an image of someone asking questions about her, she realizes she isn’t as alone as she’d assumed. Now if only a rescue could be mounted before any others die …

A rescue is one thing, but getting to the bottom of this nightmare becomes even more urgent, as the kidnapper refuses to give up on Nellie’s unborn child and the big payoff if he succeeds …

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Prologue

Corbin Wallace entered his hotel room, worn out and ready for some rest, after the successful end to his recent op with Hatch.

He read the message from Hatch on his phone, telling Corbin to stay on his side of the adjoining rooms, and he laughed out loud. “Well, Hatch, you called it, and Millie’s all yours, but, dammit, I want the next one.” With all the pressure of the last few days now resolved, Corbin crashed and slept through the night.

When he got up the next morning, he found more messages from Jonas at MI6, and Corbin knew that the next few days would be crazy busy.

He saw Millie and Hatch a couple times, but they were clearly in a world of their own, and Corbin was so happy for them. By the time he was done with MI6 and had a chance to catch up with the happy couple, Corbin looked over at Hatch and asked, “So, will you stay here for now?”

“Yeah, I will,” he confirmed. “How are you doing? Is your arm okay?”

“Yeah, the bullet went a little deeper than I realized, but I’m good. Just worn out, but a few days of rest will be good for me.”

“Well, hopefully that is something you get,” Hatch noted, “but, as usual, there are never any guarantees.”

“I know. Apparently the next job is just around the corner.”

“It is,” Hatch confirmed. “Sounds like I’ll be your handler. Although I’m not sure how long the Mavericks’ department will function. The focus is changing I believe, the brass being what they are.”

Corbin smiled. “In the meantime, I presume you’ll be handling it from here?”

“Absolutely, since I have a reason to stay close.” He watched as Millie neared, and, when he held out his hand, Millie immediately grabbed on to it and smiled back.

“I’ll help MI6 go through all the contents of the warehouse.” She looked over at Corbin. “I suspect it’ll take a few weeks.”

He laughed. “Are you kidding? That’ll take a few months.” But he turned to Hatch and added, “Just give me a couple days to recuperate, if you can.”

“If I can. And then we’ll figure out where you’re going.”

“Maybe nowhere,” Corbin suggested. “Maybe it’ll be nice and calm, and we’ll just stay here in England.”

“Hey, it’s possible,” Hatch admitted, “and I’m not against that at all.”

“Good,” Corbin murmured. “Give me a couple days, and then we’ll talk.”

But it wasn’t a couple days; it was only a day and a half. Just as Corbin stepped out of the shower, his phone rang.

When Corbin answered, Hatch asked, “Are you ready?”

“Yeah, sure I am. Where am I going?”

“You’re staying in England after all. A nice local job they want cleaned up fast. Seems Jonas is busy, so, with any luck, you won’t even see him.”

“So MI6 knows I’m here, with an active case, and will leave me alone? I’ll believe it when I see it. So what’s the case?”

“We’re not exactly sure yet, but a woman and two children have been kidnapped. They’ve been gone for two weeks, and now another woman with two children was kidnapped as well.”

“I’m sure MI6 doesn’t want me involved in that.”

“Maybe not, but, as of now, a third woman has been taken—at least that’s the ones we know of. We Mavericks wouldn’t normally be involved with something like this either, but as we’re on their turf …”

“Well, great,” Corbin noted. “Does this third woman have kids too?”

“No,” Hatch replied. “However, she is pregnant.”

“How on earth is that a good deal, … even for a kidnapper?”

“It isn’t, and the body of the first mother just showed up, and unfortunately her kids remain missing.”

“Shit.” Corbin’s heart sank. “You know how I feel about kids.”

“I know it, and, if you want to pass on this one, just tell me.”

“No, I’m not passing on anything,” he snapped. “I’ll go in there. I can’t stand any rat bastard who preys on kids. I’ll take him down. Don’t you worry.”

“Oh, I believe you will.” Hatch laughed. “Say hi to Nellie for me.”

“Who is Nellie?” Corbin asked suspiciously.

“The daughter of one of the members of parliament. She’s the latest woman who’s gone missing.”

“And do you know her?”

“Nope,” he replied. “But obviously it’s your turn at saving the damsel in distress, so chances are she’ll become a good friend during this investigation. In which case I’ll say hi in advance.”

Corbin laughed. “Oh, Jesus, that’s all I need. Well, I’ll believe it when I see it. You look after Millie while I’m gone.”

“Count on it,” Hatch said quietly. “And you watch your back. I don’t like that I won’t be there to watch it for you. You will have a partner though. He’s on his way, but, considering he’s stateside, he’ll be a day or two getting here, I understand.”

And, with that, Corbin hung up and turned to pack. He knew this op would be hard, given the kids’ element. It also needed to go down fast, and he needed to do it right. But, as always, he was ready.

“Well, Nellie, for better or for worse, here I come.”

Chapter 1

Corbin Wallace studied the area around him. He referred to his notes, double-checked the location, and realized this really was where Mary Hennessy and her two children were snatched in the first place—an unassuming corner in a small town, near the bus stop. It looked like she had been prepared to get on or to get off a bus with the kids. Possibly had changed her mind and accepted a ride from a deceptive friend or a friendly stranger. However, without eyewitnesses or security cameras, it was all conjecture.

But, from that point on, nobody knew what happened to her. It’s as if she just vanished into thin air. Except her body had shown up in an industrial section, just outside of Heathrow Airport. No sign of her kids.

The fact that the children weren’t with her was both good and bad itself. That no child-size bodies had shown up was great. What Corbin didn’t know was whether the children were being moved or trafficked into the sex trade or maybe into illegal adoptions. He had no information at this point in time. Nothing. For all he knew, a woman who couldn’t have children picked them up, deciding she wanted these two as her own family, killing the mother to get her out of the way.

It was a sick thought, but it was way better than the other options. What Corbin had now was a problem with further missing victims—a second mother and her two children and, on top of that, now the parliament member’s daughter.

Corbin still wondered why the Mavericks had been called in on that last missing woman. He surmised that the parliament member was pulling any strings to get someone on his daughter’s case. Corbin knew, if that were his daughter who had been taken, he’d want the Mavericks on the case, not MI6. Not that MI6 couldn’t get the job done, but the Mavericks would be faster, less hindered.

Also apparently, Nellie Abrahms, the parliament member’s daughter, was five months’ pregnant. Which lent itself to all kinds of possibilities and one big ugly connection—children.

With a last look around at the empty bus stop, the empty road, and the rolling fields on both sides, Corbin hopped back into his vehicle and moved quickly to follow up where Mary Hennessy’s body had been found.

According to the police reports that he’d gotten from Hatch, Hennessy died from a single bullet to the back of the head in an execution-style killing. The kidnappers-turned-murderers had made no contact with her family, had made no ransom demands or anything similar. So the kidnappers only wanted the kids, leaving their mother as extra baggage to be disposed of?

If so, Corbin had two other women who were in danger of meeting the same fate.

As soon as he arrived at the new GPS location, he noted it wasn’t so much a construction site as it was a largely ignored property, out of the way from traffic, with piles of gravel off to one side and a couple old pieces of machinery on another. Also large stands of trees framed the other two sides. A perfect dump site. And one likely only known to locals.

Corbin wandered the open area to confirm if any security setup of any kind was installed here. Nope, not that he saw, and he knew where to look for evidence of same. Anybody could have driven up at any point in time to dump the body and then drive off without being seen. No street cameras. No businesses or homes in sight. So likely no help from anyone in the form of potential witnesses.

He found a lot of vehicle tracks, probably after the police had come to claim the body. Corbin shook his head at that, checked out the crime scene photos on his phone, and realized that she’d literally just been dropped on the ground, and then somebody had driven off.

His heart went out to the poor woman. Had she fought over her kids? Had she fought her attackers? Had she just been uncooperative or cranky, and her kidnappers decided she was too much trouble? Maybe she’d done her job and given birth to those two kids and caused trouble afterward, so got the ultimate trouble in return.

Hatch was doing a deep dive into her history to see whether she had any enemies, ex-husbands, or connection to the other two missing women.

With that in mind, he headed to where the second woman had been kidnapped—the parking lot of a grocery store. Apparently she’d been out very early in the morning and had been waiting for the store to open, according to one of the store’s employees, who saw her waiting earlier in her car. In his eyewitness’s account, he saw the car later, only nobody was in it.

When they realized that the vehicle was still there by the end of the business day, they called the police, which meant a whole twelve hours of time had been lost. She was a single, vulnerable, had no husband.

Shaking his head at that, Corbin went to the third site, where Nellie had been last seen. And that was the university where she was getting her master’s degree. He wanted the campus’s cooperation to check up on the cameras all over the place, but he knew the local cops had already checked and had confirmed no sign of her—other than at one o’clock on the day she went missing. That’s apparently when she had headed outside, according to her friends, to meet somebody for lunch.

She hadn’t been seen since. Did the authorities know for sure that she was with the same kidnappers? No. It was well-known that she was pregnant, trying to complete her degree before her delivery date. She was excited about the pregnancy, and it was not a case of giving up the baby for adoption or an unwanted pregnancy. However, no father was involved in the picture.

And that could be a completely different tangent to explore as well. What if the father wanted to be involved and had been cut out? Or what if he didn’t want her to carry the child full-term? Corbin quickly sent a message to Hatch, asking him to check on that. When he got a thumbs-up back, he realized that the team was on it and that they were going over these concepts, as he was.

He slowly retraced his steps and headed to the residence of the first family. No crime scene tape was up, and the door was locked. He made his way in the back door of a small townhome. As he stepped inside, he found the place had been trashed. He stood here for a long moment, his hands in the pockets of his jeans, while he contemplated that scenario. Why trash the place, if they’d already picked up the woman and children? What did the kidnappers gain by that?

According to the police reports, the grandmother had gone through the place and couldn’t see anything missing. The updates mentioned that the family hadn’t been here in several months, so didn’t really give any motive for a break-in later, unless someone knew the place was deserted and was looking for an easy score.

As Corbin wandered through the kids’ rooms, he was looking for clothing, toys, anything that would help calm the children. He found no stuffed animals on either bed, but he didn’t know if there ever had been. That was a question for the grandmother.

He checked the closets. They were stuffed so full that it would be almost impossible to see if something in particular had been removed from them. Then he headed to the mother’s room. It had a double bed, neatly made, and her closet was painfully thin, compared to the kids. He realized that was the symbol of single motherhood, all over again. She had done what she needed to do for the children, but it was much harder to get what she needed for herself.

Shaking his head, he went back to the living room. Couches were tossed. Bookshelves were bare. Toys were in the middle of the floor. At that, he stopped and frowned because, of course, in many cases, families didn’t put away playthings. So it’s possible the toys mess had been here before the ransacking. But it still didn’t make sense as to what the intruder was searching for—unless they took toys for the children and still left behind many more.

At the second residence, Corbin found a similar thing. Maybe not as badly torn apart as the first one, and that made him suspicious as to whether that was potentially just for show. Although what the ransacker thought that would do in terms of the investigation, Corbin had no idea.

But people thought very strange things when they were trying to throw law enforcement off their tracks and hide what they were actually up to. Corbin had hoped something here would tell him where to go next. And yet he saw nothing at either of the residences.

What he also found, as he walked through the second house, was no computer, no laptop, no electronic devices at all. Had the guys who’d kidnapped them stolen those items? Had the cops taken them? Or had just another thief after the fact taken advantage of the place being left empty with these easily sold items? Cases like this were probably all over the news, Corbin imagined, alerting the local riffraff. It wouldn’t be much of a jump. And it wouldn’t help his case either.

Unless … maybe the kidnappers were looking for medical records on the kids, for birth certificates even? That made some sense, along with getting the kids some familiar toys to keep them more settled during an otherwise unsettling time.

He quickly sent Hatch a couple questions on these new threads and carried on. As he drove up to Nellie’s address, he noted a whole different story, and he highly doubted her place had been trashed. He held up his ID at the doorman, who just frowned at him, and Corbin walked on through to Nellie’s apartment. This was a high-end section of town, classier and more secure than the two mothers’ apartments that Corbin had just visited.

He knew he’d already been given the green light to search by MI6, but it was always a bit of a shit show to see who would call for enforcement regardless. He quickly used his own access and slipped inside her apartment. Once here, he noted the place was neat and untouched.

The baby’s room was already prepped and ready, and—according to the colors on the wall, green with a hint of yellow contrast—he presumed she didn’t know the gender of the child she was expecting. He wandered through, looked at everything, and realized once again, he found no laptop, no computer, nothing in terms of electronics and communications. But then, if she’d been taken at the university, she likely had her laptop with her at the very time she had been kidnapped.

Shaking his head at that, he headed over to her desk. It was locked. He picked the lock and pulled open several drawers. He knew that the local cops had already been through this place, but that wasn’t necessarily a help when he would assess things differently. Frowning, not liking the way the investigation was going so far, he quickly moved through the desk drawers, but not a whole lot was here.

When his phone rang a few minutes later, it was Hatch. “The parliament member is looking for progress.”

“That would be nice. I’ve just gone through the three homes of the three known victims, and I’m currently at Nellie’s apartment.”

“Anything?”

“Nothing, as in scarily nothing.”

“That’s not good.” Hatch swore. “Professional?”

“Professional at something. I’m still not sure that we have the same kidnapper for all three.”

“But Nellie was pregnant.”

“Which is a big difference than having two kids.” He stood, looked around Nellie’s high-end apartment. “So either we have different kidnappers here or the kidnappers have evolved their game.”

“I get it. It’s not some premise we can knock off, but I’m not sure that it’s anything that we can lock down either.” A long pause came, then Hatch asked, “Next move?”

“I’m heading back to the university to find her friends. Did we have a list?”

“We have very few. Just from what we know now, she was friendly with everyone but only had a rare couple of best friends, people who really got to know Nellie. I can send them to you.”

“That’d be good. I want to talk to them and see whether she had anybody in her life recently or the father of her child was around. Plus I want to ensure her laptop was with her at the time she went missing. I found no laptops or computers at the previous residences.”

“According to everything that the police reported, Nellie never told anybody who the father was.”

“Sure, but, depending on who she was as a person, and her stature in reference to the baby’s father and/or her own father, one of those fathers may have just found out himself that she was pregnant. And might have been unimpressed.”

“Yeah, the parliament member certainly is,” Hatch said cautiously, “but that’s not enough to go on.”

“It’s not enough for anything possible yet,” Corbin murmured, “but it is enough to start the wheels turning. I need the contact information of the grandmothers in the first two cases and that list of Nellie’s friends, anyone who may have known her movements leading up to this—like where she was, where she could have gone, things like that.”

“It’s all in the file,” Hatch noted cheerfully.

“The file is really thin,” Corbin snapped.

“I know,” Hatch replied, his voice lowering. “In Mary’s case, she didn’t have much in the way of friends. She was living on social security benefits and was figuring out what to do with her life apparently. I suspect she didn’t have a laptop, using her phone for everything.”

“Right. While she was doing that introspection, raising those kids would have been her priority.”

“It was evident that she was a devoted mother, and somebody noticed. The kids have been to the doctors a couple times over their young lives but no red flags. They weren’t school age yet, so no public records there.”

“Okay, have the team continue to hunt down answers for me, and I’m heading to the university.”

With that, Corbin hung up on Hatch and headed back to the university. By going to Nellie’s dean’s office, he accessed the schedules for Nellie’s student friends. With that out of the way, he quickly contacted several of them on the phone. Two people answered, both female, and—when he explained what he was doing and what he needed—he arranged for them to meet. Both agreed.

Setting the interviews at forty-five minutes apart, he met them outside the cafeteria, where he sat with them for a cup of coffee. When he watched one woman approach—Carly, his first interview—looking around nervously, he quickly got up and identified himself.

She nodded and sat down beside him. “I need to see some ID.”

“Good enough.” And he held out his ID.

She studied it, nodded. “I don’t understand.”

“What’s to understand?” he asked, frowning. “Your friend is missing.”

“I know, but I thought the local police were looking into it.”

“Her father has asked my department to look into it as well,” he said quietly. “So I need to know everything about her.”

Carly winced at that. “She wouldn’t like that. She is a very private person.”

“Maybe normally she would mind, but not if she’s in trouble, right? Her privacy won’t matter as much, if she needs help.”

Her friend’s shoulders sagged, and she nodded. “Nellie and her father didn’t get along particularly well, since the pregnancy …”

“He didn’t want her to keep the baby?”

“He was mad that she wouldn’t tell him who the father was.”

“Ah, well, that’s definitely an issue too.”

“She had a couple long-term relationships, and her father blew them up, both of them. Nellie figured that, at this point in time, her father would always interfere in her life, so she tried to cut him out, but it wasn’t working.”

“Fathers have a tendency to get a little heavy-handed.” She eyed him sideways, and he shrugged. “And obviously, in this case, it was too heavy-handed.”

“You don’t understand,” she whispered.

“No, I don’t, but it would be nice if I had an idea of what was going on.”

“She wanted to disappear. Nellie wanted to have the baby, without her father hassling her or coming by the hospital and telling her again to abort or at the very least give it up for adoption.”

“I doubt adoption was on her mind.”

“Well, she thought about it, but only when she was majorly depressed and usually because of her father.”

At that, Corbin studied her. “Is there something I need to know about her relationship with her father?”

“Only that it was always fraught with difficulty,” she murmured, “and I know for a fact that he didn’t want her to have anything to do with keeping this child.”

“She must have figured that her father would never ease up. So she decided to go ahead and have it anyway?”

Carly nodded at that. “That was my take on it, but we didn’t really talk about it. I did ask her if she was scared about doing this alone, and she said yes, but she was also determined.”

“Right, because anything else would be too hard to live with.”

She looked over at him in surprise. “You do understand.”

“I understand human nature,” he murmured.

“She’s a really nice person. I hope everything is okay.”

“Do you think she’s really missing, or do you think she’s just disappeared to be on her own?” At that, he got a flat stare.

“I don’t know. I would have hoped that, if she had decided to disappear, she would say something to me.”

“And I guess that’s the question that I’m coming to right now.” He stared at his first witness intently, but she didn’t flinch. “I’m afraid something’s seriously wrong. I know the police are very concerned, but they’re also toeing Daddy’s line. She’s been reported missing, so, therefore, as far as the police are concerned, it’s a big deal on its own. However, we also have several other cases of missing women.”

“Of course you do.” She shrugged and stared at a spot behind his shoulder. “Hey, it’s not like people don’t go missing nearly every day. The public thinks it won’t happen to them. Plus I think Nellie was totally focused on having this baby and avoiding her father.”

“Safety is an interesting thing. It’s not always what it appears to be.”

“You know what? That’s something she would agree with. She would totally say that safety was an internal thing and that she wouldn’t ever really feel safe again.”

“Did something happen to her before? Something that triggered this reaction in her, so that she didn’t feel safe?” he asked quietly.

“Yes, absolutely. It was another kidnapping attempt from quite a few years ago, and I think it’s also why her father is so protective.”

He pulled up Nellie’s file on his phone. “I don’t have any listing of any such prior incident.”

“Not too many people even know about it. It wasn’t public knowledge.”

“So what happened?”

“There was a kidnapping, about ten years ago maybe.” She stopped, frowned. “It could have been even further back than that, maybe thirteen years ago.”

“She would have been about sixteen?”

Her friend nodded. “Yeah, so would have been around then.”

“What happened?”

“She woke up to an intruder in the house. He had a gun and forced her out of the home, where he walked her down the block to his vehicle. He tried to get her into his vehicle, and she fought back. As soon as she started screaming, making a ruckus, rather than shooting her, he hopped into the front seat of the vehicle and took off.”

“Interesting. That should be in her file.”

“No, I think her dad squashed it pretty good,” she said, with a wry look. “After that, everything became even more impossible. Nellie felt smothered constantly. And every time she had a boyfriend, her dad would tear apart his life. He had a knack of finding something and then used it to force the guy away.”

“So her father is very controlling.”

“But he also came close to losing her so …”

“Got it,” he murmured. “Sounds like I need to have a follow-up with dear old dad.”

“I highly doubt that this old event is related to her disappearance.”

“Maybe, but it’s also possible she has taken off on her own, rather than letting her dad in on her life.”

“Yes, you’re right.” She stared at him pensively. “Nellie should have at least let somebody know, so that we could tell the family that she’s just choosing to not see anybody.”

Privately Corbin thought the whole thing was a nightmare, but people, especially when threatened, acted unpredictably. And when hormones were added into the mix and a pregnancy …

Nellie Abrahms opened her eyes and then slammed them shut again. “How many times do I have to do this?” she whispered. “It’s a never-ending nightmare.”