Jehovah

Chapter Eight

Connor jerked out of a deep sleep to hear knocking on the door of Josie's bedroom. He looked down to find Josie once again draped over his torso, still dead asleep despite the noise, and then looked at his watch to see that it was a little past 0300. Connor sighed and slid out from under Josie without waking her to answer the door.

"Yeah, I'm coming," Connor said, still groggy from sleep. He opened the door to find John standing in the hallway.

"Boss, Alexi is here."

"It's fucking three in the morning!"

"I know, but he needs both of you downstairs in the living room. Something important has come up."

"Okay," Connor said as he rubbed his face to wake himself up completely. "We'll be down in a few minutes."

"Yep."

Connor closed the door and walked over to Josie's side of the bed, bending down to shake her gently until her eyes opened.

"What?"

"Alexi is downstairs and needs to see us both."

Josie looked at the clock on the bedside stand with a groan, "You've got to be kidding me."

"Nope. Grab your robe and let's get this over with."

Josie grabbed for her robe while Connor put a shirt on, and they both made their way downstairs into a fully lite living room. Neither of them looked awake, and Josie looked extremely irritated.

"What in the hell is going on,' Connor asked, exasperated with the chaos they walked into at a very early hour. John and Alexi both came forward at the same time.

"We have a problem,' they said in unison as the team stepped aside to reveal Riley sitting on the couch in shackles, sporting a bruised face and bloody nose. He sat looking at Josie and Connor, having heard only one door open, in shock and then anger. Riley tried to stand, but Marcus pushed him back onto the couch.

"Sit your ass back down till we tell you otherwise, Riley."

"Riley here turned himself into me two days ago after hearing some interesting conversations by his employer,' Alexi said with a hard look in Josie's direction. "Go ahead and tell them, Riley."

"I work for this older gentleman, but I don't know his name. He has this thug that works for him, a man named Shalef, who just returned from an Egyptian prison."

Josie paled visibly at the sound of his name and wobbled on her feet slightly. Connor slipped a hand around her waist to steady her. Riley threw Connor a dirty look before moving his eyes back to Josie in concern.

"Shalef...he's supposed to be in prison. The Egyptian army said they would not let him go after you found me...', Josie could not finish her sentence. Riley's expression changed to one of alarm.

"Shalef kept saying that he was going to take great pleasure in ending your life and making it last as long as possible. He plans on torturing you, but why did you say found you? What's happened?"

"They held her for over three days, Riley," Connor said when Josie would not answer. 'Your associates beat the shit out of her and would have done much worse had we not been able to find her."

Riley looked from Connor to Josie and saw utter contempt on her face as she looked at him.

"Nice group of people you're working for, Riley. If you want to help, tell the team everything you know,' Josie said to him before turning away. Riley was up off the couch before anyone could stop him and grabbed Josie's arm.