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silence. For a moment Rafe thought he’d lost the connection. When Yuri finally responded, his voice was quiet, hesitating. Then he proceeded to give a long-winded description of the famous Russian river that Rafe could have read in any travel guide.
    While not always 100% forthcoming, Yuri had never, ever before dodged any of Rafe’s questions about the Russian mob, no matter how high level or secret the information. Long ago he and Yuri had agreed, that if there was one person in the world they could trust, it was each other. Knowing that Yuri was holding back information on a critical life and death matter kept Rafe awake all night. Not that he could have slept anyway. Not with the image of Nicki’s stricken face looming in his mind.

 
Chapter 6
    Chapter 6
    After Vlad signed off, Rafe reconvened the team, assigning specific tasks. Nicki glanced at the fierce-looking men encircling the table. She had been around fighters all her life. It was her life. But she had never known a group of warriors the likes of the ISA men. They were the elite of elite. In the few short years since Rafe created the enterprise, they had become an international force of bad boys to be reckoned with. All of them were ex-military, representing a cross section of special ops veterans. Caleb and Grayson had been on Rafe’s Ranger team, while the others had followed him based on his infamy alone. To a man they shared Rafe’s disdain for the constraints imposed on uniformed fighters by civilian and military leaders. Like Rafe, they thrived in the shadows. They operated so far off the grid they wouldn’t recognize it if they saw it.
    Surveying the group, Nicki suppressed an appreciative smile. In addition to being fearsome, each one of them scored at least an eleven on a ten point stud scale. Like every special ops guy she knew, they were gorgeous. It wasn’t only their physical prowess, their extraordinary bodies. It was the enticing vibes radiating off them. Every woman who met them wanted to see for herself if the tales she’d heard about bad boys were true. The ISA men proved their mamas right.
    Rafe’s men were hard, dangerous adrenaline junkies. Nicki ought to know: she was as well. Each of them had joined the team for one reason. Rafe. He was a warrior’s warrior. His reputation preceded him and he re-earned the loyalty of his men every day they were together. He was the consummate leader. He headed every charge, and never assigned a task he wouldn’t do himself. Tall and lean, his cultured manner and easy elegance didn’t fully mask the danger simmering just below the surface. To the delight of his men, he thumbed his nose at the establishment—which perversely made him and them in more demand than ever. Jobs that the military wouldn’t touch or the spooks evaded, Rafe took on eagerly, demanding and receiving previously unheard-of fees. There wasn’t a job dangerous enough or suspect enough for Rafe to turn down. As Rafe had told Nicki last night, his goal in life was helping the good guys and taking out the bad guys as viciously as possible.
    After Rafe had assigned tasks to the other men, he turned to her.
    “Nicki, I want you to hit the social media sites and chase down any possible connection between these two girls. Find out if they participate in similar chat rooms, play the same internet games, shop in the same online stores. Then talk to their friends, their families. Find their nexus. There has to be some connection between the two of them besides their prominent high income parents.”
    Nicki silently agreed and went to work. She forced herself not to think about him, to ignore him and concentrate on her task. It might be tedious grunt work, but she knew how critical it was. She was more familiar with the sex trade than many of the men on the team. Over the years, she’d met countless victims, listened in stunned disbelief to their hideous stories, and participated in multiple rescues. Long ago she’d stopped asking