Page 60 of Her Noble Protector

“Hello?” she greeted.

“Hi, I’m here to see Mr. Gomez. I wanted to hire him.”

She gave Raiden a wide smile. “My son isn’t here right now. He’s doing some repairs on my trailer. He’s good like that. He’s very responsible, my Mel. He’s a hard worker.”

As soon as the woman said trailer, Raiden was positive he knew where Lisa was. He felt it in his bones.

“That’s what I’ve heard, Mrs. Gomez. That’s why I want to hire him,” Raiden smiled again. “This is a really big job, and it means starting tomorrow. Is there any way that I could talk to him this afternoon?”

The woman shifted the toddler on her hip and started to turn around. “Let me get you his phone number. What’s your name?”

“Sato. Raiden Sato. And actually ma’am, I was hoping to talk to him in person. There’s a lot to go over. I was hoping he could supervise this project,” Raiden said.

Her eyes got wide. “Really?”

Raiden nodded.

“Then you should go out to my trailer. It’s really out there. I own some land near Queen Creek, you can’t find it on Google. Let me give you directions; why don’t you come on in?”

He followed her into the tidy little apartment. Well, tidy except for the kids’ toys strewn all over the living room. He saw two boys, maybe five and six, sitting on the couch playing video games. Mrs. Gomez put down the toddler who sat down on his diaper then crawled over to a plastic hammer and headed to his brothers.

Mrs. Gomez went to the kitchen bar and grabbed a notepad and pencil, then started writing down directions. When she was done, she ripped off the piece of paper and handed it to him.

“Thank you for this,” Raiden smiled once again.

She smiled back.

“I’ll give him a call that you’re coming out there,” she told Raiden.

Shit, I should have thought of that.

He looked down at his watch. “You know, I don’t have time to go out there today. I’ll give him a call tomorrow morning and set something up with him to come out to the jobsite. But that would be great if you could let him know that good news is headed his way.”

Mrs. Gomez held out her hand and Raiden gave it a gentle squeeze. She was a nice woman, and the kids were cute. It was too bad her son, their father, was going to be going to prison.

He waited until he was in his car before he called Clint and let him know what was going on.

“Get to the house,” Clint said. “Since I drove here from Coronado, I’ve got everything we need for an op. We can set up here.”

“Get A.J. and Lydia to the Airbnb,” Raiden said.

“We’ll do it after we take off,” Clint said.

“Do it now.”

“Dude, I’m not sending Lydia away now. We’re going to be figuring out our plan and she’ll have input. She can leave when we leave.”

Raiden gripped the steering wheel tighter. Every bone in his body said to protect women, but his teammates were pairing up with some of the most kick-ass women known to mankind and it seemed that Lydia Archer was in that same vein. What’s more, he would bet anything that A.J. would have his balls in a vice if she’d heard what he’d had to say. Then he thought of Lisa climbing mountains. He bet when she got back into fighting shape, she would be the same way.

“Understood,” he said to Clint. “I should be back in thirty minutes.”

“All of us will be waiting.”

* * *

It was sweltering in the little trailer, and it was made worse by the fact that Nellie was cooking. She’d asked Lisa repeatedly what she’d wanted for dinner, and Lisa couldn’t come up with an answer. Everything sounded awful, and she was sure she would just vomit it up. To make matters worse, her entire body hurt from when Mel had tackled her as she made a break for it and stumbled out the front door of the trailer, screaming. Then when she looked around and saw that she was surrounded by nothing but desert, she wondered why he had even bothered.

“You’ll like Nellie’s meatloaf,” Mel said quietly.