Walker (In the Company of Snipers #21) - Irish Winters Page 0,57

off. Made him wish he’d ended the conniving jerk before the Guatemalan task force had ever arrived.

Justice would’ve been served then, and Walker had been angry enough to have taken matters into his own two hands. He could’ve ended Renzo. God knew he’d wanted to. But Emily had needed him more.

By the time the AF transport landed at Naval Air Station North Island, Coronado, CA, Emily had been emotionally drained, so had Walker. But when Quinn broke down the second he’d spotted Emily… When he’d finally had her in his arms… When she’d acted like she’d wanted to crawl inside her daddy’s skin and never be seen again—Walker’d known he’d do it all over again. That was what friends did for friends. He was just damned thankful he’d gotten to Emily in time.

But the next time around? If ever Walker were to ‘bump’ into Renzo again? The rat bastard wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in Hell. As it had turned out, Renzo’s posh beach home had only been a temporary staging point, a quiet, out of the way place where he’d collected his buyer’s assets, and where those human assets had been drugged, dressed up, paraded, displayed, and auctioned off to buyers all over the world. Via freakin’ satellite.

Some perv in far off China had ‘ordered and purchased’ Emily. Walker planned to visit China someday, soon. He didn’t know how; he didn’t know when. But he would locate the entitled Mr. Su Chen Fong. Walker only needed to see the guy once. At a distance. Under a damned dim light. In his fuckin’ crosshairs.

Oddly, the morning after Walker had delivered Emily into her father’s and mother’s safekeeping, he’d been rudely awakened by the local Navy MPs, who had already been inside his house. Wasn’t that a kick-in-the-gut coincidence? Walker knew he’d been targeted the second he’d destroyed that perverse human supply line in Guatemala. He just hadn’t known by whom. Certainly not Quinn. Sure wasn’t his brothers from Team 18. Walker wanted to meet whoever was behind his sham of a trial. He wanted the name of the bastard who’d benefitted from the torment he’d encountered in that dark, crowded basement, where blankets and tears had covered a dank, concrete floor. Then he wanted Mr. Asshole Fong. In that order.

Yet here again, another human tragedy lay in his hands like a horrid gift. As if she hadn’t done enough, Karma seemed to have tagged him for a repeat performance of what he’d found and done in Guatemala.

Caught between the Devil and the deep blue sea, Walker set the disgusting stack of human purchase orders aside, then spread out the black-and-white photos from pocket number two. He counted twenty-one. All little girls, each photo assigned a three-digit number in the upper back corner, which coincided with the number of digits inked onto Emily’s perfect little-girl foot.

Jumping out of the chair, Walker strode back to the door and flipped the switch that opened the ceiling vent. The cockpit was suddenly too warm.

Back at the desk, he lined up the color photos alongside each corresponding B&W. The same women and girls were in both sets, but the B&Ws were obviously preliminary shots of possible targets. The color versions were after shots. After the females were abducted. After they’d been dressed in scanty outfits, then posed as dreamy-eyed models. After they’d been drugged, then obviously staged to go to, or were already on, the black market.

What a messed-up world. He nearly choked on the thick bile creeping up the back of his throat. He hadn’t yet found a clue that led to the person behind the scenes. Damn it. He couldn’t show Brimley what he’d found, didn’t dare take the guy into his confidence. Not about this. Yet Walker couldn’t delay returning to the galley, either. Brimley was already suspicious, but holy hell! Why couldn’t one day pass without turning to shit? Made him think of Kenny’s sardonic philosophy, that no good deed ever went unpunished. Wasn’t that the truth?

In the end, Walker repacked the wallet, then hid it under the mattress in the master suite where he slept. It’d be safe and out of sight there. After he swapped his swim trunks for khakis and a clean shirt, he slipped into his boat shoes and headed for the galley. Before he could make any decisions, he needed to know precisely what he’d found and who he was really dealing with. There had to be a name in that tablet or on those flash