Barracuda security compl.., p.12
Barracuda Security Complete Trilogy, page 12
part #1 of Barracuda Security Series
“You want that, sweetheart? I bet he’d show you a better time than that tall jerk you were with tonight.”
I didn’t have to think about it long. I knew I was in a hell of a lot of trouble right now, and I couldn’t allow my defiant personality make it worse. I got up and slid around the seat, moving next to the bleeding man. He was hunched over, half turned, only his shoulder and the back of his head visible. I recognized him, but this time, he was not camouflaged, but wearing regular clothes: a heavy leather jacket over jeans and a T-shirt. I touched his shoulder, but he didn’t react, just moaned softly as I pulled him back and got a look at his face for the first time.
I’d kind of thought he might be familiar to me, maybe one of the soldiers who’d come to visit Roman when he was in the hospital in that coma. But he wasn’t. I didn’t know his face from anyone else in this van.
I pulled his hands away from his stomach. The blood soaking them, reeked of iron and copper and something else—faint undertones of human waste, as if he’d crapped his pants when he was shot.
When his hands came away, blood oozed from the wound. But it wasn’t just blood.
“This is bad. He needs a hospital, a surgeon.”
“Just stop the bleeding for now. We’ll take care of him.”
I leaned forward, gripping the back of the driver’s seat. “I’m telling you, he’s in bad shape. He’s going to die if you don’t get him to a hospital.”
“And I told you to back the shit up, lady! Do you not listen to anything people tell you?”
The other guy reached over and pried my hands off the seat. He made a face when the blood on my hands transferred to his; his eyes jerked back to check out his friend.
“Oh, God! She’s not lying, Tony!”
“It just looks bad because he was bleeding. When we clean it up, it’ll be better.” The driver reached over and smacked his friend on the shoulder. “And stop using my name!”
“I need something, a cloth or something, to stem the flow of blood.”
The passenger dug into a bag in front of him and handed me a shirt. “It’s all I got,” he said, shrugging.
I turned back to the injured guy, pressing the shirt to the wound. He groaned, clearly in pain, but he never opened his eyes. It was really bad. I didn’t think he was even conscious.
I was holding the wound, putting pressure on it. I remembered taking a first aid class in high school and that’s what they said about bleeding. The harder I pushed, the more he groaned, but he still didn’t open his eyes. I studied him, trying to memorize his face. When this was over, I wanted to be able to describe him to the police. I wanted to make sure he was punished for this. I also wanted to know who he was and why I was involved. Why had he come after me? And what did Roman have to do with it?
“Where are you taking me?” I asked the passenger, figuring if I was going to get answers from anyone, it would be from him.
He glanced back at me. “I don’t know. This is his operation.”
“He hired you.”
“Shut up!” the driver said, glaring at me in the rearview. “You don’t talk. You just help him.”
“You want to help him, you should take him to the hospital. There’s an emergency room on Souncy Road.”
He glared at me again, but he didn’t alter his course. Clearly, he wasn’t as concerned as I was.
I waited a few minutes, trying to watch the street signs. It wasn’t hard to figure out where we were going, actually. I grew up in this town. I knew every street, every building. They were headed toward the beach, probably the row of motels that sat just above the boardwalk. Those motels were usually pretty empty this time of year, making them a perfect place to hole up for people who didn’t want nosy neighbors.
“You in the Army together? That how you know each other?”
“Marines,” the passenger said. “We served in Iraq together.”
“Yeah? My brother was Army.”
“Marines are braver. We go in first, you know.”
“I’ve heard that.”
I lifted the shirt and the wound in this guy’s belly began to ooze again. I tugged at his shirt, pulling it up enough to see his bare chest. He had a tattoo above his heart, the emblem of the Marines. I was hoping for a name, anything that might give me more of an idea who he was, but there wasn’t anything but that emblem.
“How long have you guys known each other? Iraq was, what, ten years ago?”
“Something like that.”
“We’ve known each other since ’03,” the passenger proudly announced. “Longest I’ve ever known anyone!”
“Shut up, Jake!”
“You really want to see this guy die? ’03. That’s a long time to know someone and then just watch them die.”
“Maybe she’s right, Tony. Maybe we should take him to a doctor. We could just drop him off at the door!”
Tony slammed his foot on the brake and turned, shoving the barrel of a gun in my face. “If don’t stop talking, I swear I’ll take you back there and make you shut up. Do you understand me?”
I nodded, dropping my head, and trying to look defeated. To be honest, it wasn’t hard...I was scared. My hands were covered in blood and this man beside me was dying, I was sure of it. I didn’t know what they were going to do with me—didn’t know what they’d been told to do with me. The man in charge seemed intent on making me suffer, but the guy who really seemed to have been in charge was dying. What if they didn’t have a contingency plan? What if they didn’t know what to do with me if this guy died? What if they decided to cut their losses and kill me just to get rid of me?
My hands started to shake as I thought about Maclean. He was back at the house, unconscious beside the bed. What if he wasn’t just unconscious? I’d only heard the one gunshot, but what if the guy in the passenger seat, what if he’d shot him? What if he was lying there bleeding to death? What if, with every second we were away from the house, he was slowly sinking closer to too late?
And then I saw red lights flashing behind us.
“Goddamn it!”
The driver had begun to drive again, but I guess a cop had seen him suddenly stop in the middle of the street. What would they do?
“Tony? What are you going to do?”
“I have to pull over.” He glanced back at me. “Cover him up!”
He took the gun and leaning over Jake, hid it in the glovebox. Jake tossed a small blanket back at me. I used it to cover the blood-soaked shirt pressed to the bleeding wound in to the other guy’s stomach. Tony looked back at me, his eyes moving slowly over his friend, and then he glared at me.
“You say a fucking word and I will go back to that house where we got you. I’ll go and I’ll slit that man’s throat in the middle of the night. You might go home, but one morning you’ll wake up and find yourself in a pool of your lover’s blood. Do you understand me?”
I nodded.
“And then I’ll find everyone else you love and kill them, too.”
An image of Molly popped into my head, making me freeze with terror.
“Keep your damn mouth shut. Got it?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
Tony pulled the van over to the side of the road. We waited, ten incredibly long heartbeats, as the cop walked up to the driver’s side door. I closed my eyes, fear so palpable in my chest that I could actually feel its weight pressing against my ribcage. The only thing I could hold on to was his threat against Maclean. If he was threatening to kill him, that must mean he was still alive. Right?
“Good evening, gentlemen,” a familiar voice drawled. “Can I see your driver’s license?”
I opened my eyes as a small spark of hope suddenly sprang alive in my chest. The cop was Jimmy Grant. He knew me. I knew him. Would he realize I didn’t belong in this van?
“What were we doing wrong, officer?”
“You stopped in the middle of the road back there. That’s a hazard.”
“Oh, yeah, sorry about that. There was a cat in the road.”
“A cat? I didn’t see any animals.”
“It was a little one, and he ran off toward the trees.”
Jimmy nodded, reading the name on the license. “This is from Georgia.”
“That’s where I live. I’m just in town visiting a couple of old buddies.”
“How long do you plan to be in town?”
“Just another day or so.”
“Sorry to disrupt your vacation like this.” Jimmy stepped back, looking at the side of the van. He happened to glance through the window and spotted me. “Ms. Gruffydd,” he said, surprise clear in his eyes. “How are you this fine evening?”
“Jimmy,” I said politely, slightly inclining my head.
He moved closer to the window again, studying me over the driver’s shoulder. “These friends of yours?”
I lifted a hand, remembering the blood on them at the last second. I quickly lowered it, but then ,I lifted it again, moving it into the light just below the line of the rearview mirror, hoping Jimmy would see it and realize something was wrong. He was watching me, but his expression didn’t change as I said, “Friends of my brother. From the military.”
“Oh, I see. You served overseas?” he asked, dragging his eyes from me to focus on the driver.
“I did. Iraq, and then a few tours in Afghanistan.”
“Thank you for your service,” Jimmy said. His eyes jumped back to me. I could feel Tony the driver watching me in the rearview mirror, but I tried it again, moving my hand into the light of Jimmy’s flashlight, hoping desperately he would see the blood.
“We’re actually on our way back to the motel. It’s been a long night, and Ms. Gruffydd here agreed to come collect her brother. He had a few too many, you know.”
Jimmy nodded. “Roman Pierce can be that way sometimes.”
“Roman Pierce?” Jake, the passenger, said with a bit of a start. He looked at me, his eyes narrowed slightly, but he didn’t say anything more. Maybe it was the death grip Tony had on his wrist.
Jimmy took one more look at Tony’s license, and then handed it back to him. “Well then, I’ll let you get back on your way. Just try not to stop in the middle of the road again.”
“Of course. Thank you, officer.”
“Goodnight, Ms. Gruffydd.”
I nodded, disappointment, a horrible weight in my heart. “Goodnight, Jerry,” I said softly, thinking just one more attempt…maybe if I used the wrong name, he’d know there was something going on here. He knew me. He knew I knew his name.
Jimmy stepped back and stared at me through the window as Tony started the engine and slowly maneuvered the van back onto the road. I didn’t turn. I didn’t want to give Tony any cause to think I was giving a signal to the cop. But my heart was in the lowest place possible; my hope of being rescued, snuffed. .
Chapter 15
Maclean
I had no idea where I was when I opened my eyes. When I realized I was on the floor beside the bed, I couldn’t figure out if I’d fallen, or if I’d sat there intentionally. Then it came back in a rush.
“Rylee!”
I pulled myself up, pain slicing through my skull. I groaned, and touched the back of my head. My fingers came back bloody . I stared at them a moment, and then I pulled myself up and grabbed a pair of jeans. I was dressed in a flash and out the door, running to my car.
I didn’t know where I was going. But I had to find her.
My phone rang.
“Rylee?”
“No, it’s Jimmy Grant.”
“Jimmy, I don’t have time—”
“I think your friend, Rylee Gruffydd is in trouble. I’m following a van that contains your friend and two out-of-town gentlemen and a third man who looked as though he was barely breathing. Would you happen to know anything about that?”
“Where? Where are they?”
“I’m not going to tell you that until you tell me what’s happening and how big a response I need to call out here to deal with it.”
“You better call a code black.”
“That bad?”
“These guys have very little to lose, Jimmy. They aren’t going down without a fight.”
“All right.” There was a heavy sigh. “As a friend, I have to tell you that coming out here will get you into a shitload of trouble, trouble I’m sure you’re quite aware of.”
“Yes, sir.”
“As a cop, I have to tell you to stay the hell away. We don’t need civilians getting involved in all this.”
“I understand.”
“But as a husband and a father…they’re headed out to the Stormy Weathers Motel.”
“Thank you, Jimmy.”
Chapter 16
Kai
I was hobbling around my bed, about to sink under the soft sheets for a good four hours of sleep when my phone vibrated. I sat heavily on the edge of the mattress, picked the phone up, and unlocked it with my fingerprint. There was a message from Alexander Grosse.
That was fast!
I’d known Alexander for fifteen years. He’d investigated a little problem with my unit back in Afghanistan; items kept going missing. It turned out to be a local kid, not one of the men, but that didn’t change the way the men responded to Alexander, or the way he responded to them. He wasn’t judgmental, he was simply thorough. I respected him for that.
A couple of years later, he came to investigate another ordeal on the base where I was stationed. We had a beer and it turned into a pitcher, then another. By the time my injury happened, Alexander was the only person I asked to come see me in the hospital. He was a good man, an honest man. He was one of a few men I considered a true friend.
I opened the text. His word questioned the veracity of the text I’d first sent him:
“Why would that man be meeting with your friend?”
“That’s what I was asking you,” I replied.
He came back with: “Is this the same man who hired you to protect his sister from Johnson?”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s the connection. This is the head of Black Jacket. He’s a business man, not really involved in the mission planning, which is what he hired Johnson for. As far as we know, he’s clean.”
Somehow, I didn’t think he was. He was just careful.
The phone rang. It was Alexander.
“You’re in something deep here, Kai,” he told me.. “This stuff Johnson’s been doing, it’s not good, man. He’s been really careful, but it’s not good. We were going to catch him soon enough. But if this guy’s involved, then it goes a hell of a lot deeper than I ever suspected. This could go deeper than anyone suspected.”
“Deep as in, what?”
“Deep as in the CIA already sniffing around, but they might take over if this is what I think it is. You need to back off, Kai.”
“I can’t. This is my town, my friends. I’m in this whether I want to be or not.”
“Then take me off your next-of-kin-list. I don’t want to come identify your body in the morgue.”
He hung up on that, giving me a bit of a chill.
Seriously. What the hell was happening here?
Chapter 17
Rylee
Tony grabbed my arm and dragged me out of the van. I screamed, and he smacked me, making my head snap back with a force that I could feel all the way to my toes. He jerked me close to him and hissed in my ear, “Try that again, bitch, and I’ll make due on my promises.”
He dragged me into the room, pulling me so hard that my toe dragged on the cheap concrete slab in front of the door. Once in the room, he tossed me against one of the double beds and I fell hard to my knees, which hurt like hell. I sat in the room for a few long minutes, not even thinking about trying to get out the door. I could hear them out there at the van, struggling to get their buddy off the bench seat and into the room. I could have run then; I could have escaped, but Jimmy letting us go that way had chewed up so much of the hope in my heart that I just felt defeated. And, the thing was, I couldn’t really blame Jimmy for not giving a shit about what happened to me. I’m not sure I would have done anything if I had been in his shoes.
It was six months ago when Jimmy took the stand against one of my clients. It was a case involving a boy who was accused of sexually assaulting a local girl on the beach a few summers ago. Several people had seen the boy following the girl around at a party, but no one had seen the actual assault. However, the girl was the daughter of a local minister and her word seemed impeachable. I had nothing to use as a defense for this boy but to attack the cop who’d arrested him.
I went after him with everything I had. We have a pretty impressive private detective who works for the firm, and he uncovered the fact that Jimmy’s older sister had been raped when she was fifteen. Jimmy saw the attack and testified in open court about it. The man was convicted and died behind bars.
The attacker was Jimmy’s biological father.
I got him on the stand, went over a few of the points he’d already covered with the prosecutor, and then I tore into him, accusing him of being overly sensitive to rape victims, accusing him of using his own history to punish men like his father again and again. I accused him of arresting my client because the girl reminded him of his sister. I hit him over and over again, talking so much about his sister that even the judge was giving me dirty looks and the prosecutor was objecting on every question. Jimmy took it with a calm that was almost unnatural. But when I asked him if he thought he might have the same sort of tendencies his father had exhibited, if his own daughter was in danger from him, he went ballistic.
I’d wanted that reaction. It showed the jury he had a temper and that he might have acted out of his own emotional trauma. That didn’t mean I hadn’t felt guilty about it. I still woke up in the middle of the night, twisted in knots over it. But my client got off and his parents took him back to the East Coast, far away from the innocent girls of North Carolina. If I was more like Maclean, I might wonder if that was good enough. If I was like Maclean, I never would have done what I did.
I didn’t have to think about it long. I knew I was in a hell of a lot of trouble right now, and I couldn’t allow my defiant personality make it worse. I got up and slid around the seat, moving next to the bleeding man. He was hunched over, half turned, only his shoulder and the back of his head visible. I recognized him, but this time, he was not camouflaged, but wearing regular clothes: a heavy leather jacket over jeans and a T-shirt. I touched his shoulder, but he didn’t react, just moaned softly as I pulled him back and got a look at his face for the first time.
I’d kind of thought he might be familiar to me, maybe one of the soldiers who’d come to visit Roman when he was in the hospital in that coma. But he wasn’t. I didn’t know his face from anyone else in this van.
I pulled his hands away from his stomach. The blood soaking them, reeked of iron and copper and something else—faint undertones of human waste, as if he’d crapped his pants when he was shot.
When his hands came away, blood oozed from the wound. But it wasn’t just blood.
“This is bad. He needs a hospital, a surgeon.”
“Just stop the bleeding for now. We’ll take care of him.”
I leaned forward, gripping the back of the driver’s seat. “I’m telling you, he’s in bad shape. He’s going to die if you don’t get him to a hospital.”
“And I told you to back the shit up, lady! Do you not listen to anything people tell you?”
The other guy reached over and pried my hands off the seat. He made a face when the blood on my hands transferred to his; his eyes jerked back to check out his friend.
“Oh, God! She’s not lying, Tony!”
“It just looks bad because he was bleeding. When we clean it up, it’ll be better.” The driver reached over and smacked his friend on the shoulder. “And stop using my name!”
“I need something, a cloth or something, to stem the flow of blood.”
The passenger dug into a bag in front of him and handed me a shirt. “It’s all I got,” he said, shrugging.
I turned back to the injured guy, pressing the shirt to the wound. He groaned, clearly in pain, but he never opened his eyes. It was really bad. I didn’t think he was even conscious.
I was holding the wound, putting pressure on it. I remembered taking a first aid class in high school and that’s what they said about bleeding. The harder I pushed, the more he groaned, but he still didn’t open his eyes. I studied him, trying to memorize his face. When this was over, I wanted to be able to describe him to the police. I wanted to make sure he was punished for this. I also wanted to know who he was and why I was involved. Why had he come after me? And what did Roman have to do with it?
“Where are you taking me?” I asked the passenger, figuring if I was going to get answers from anyone, it would be from him.
He glanced back at me. “I don’t know. This is his operation.”
“He hired you.”
“Shut up!” the driver said, glaring at me in the rearview. “You don’t talk. You just help him.”
“You want to help him, you should take him to the hospital. There’s an emergency room on Souncy Road.”
He glared at me again, but he didn’t alter his course. Clearly, he wasn’t as concerned as I was.
I waited a few minutes, trying to watch the street signs. It wasn’t hard to figure out where we were going, actually. I grew up in this town. I knew every street, every building. They were headed toward the beach, probably the row of motels that sat just above the boardwalk. Those motels were usually pretty empty this time of year, making them a perfect place to hole up for people who didn’t want nosy neighbors.
“You in the Army together? That how you know each other?”
“Marines,” the passenger said. “We served in Iraq together.”
“Yeah? My brother was Army.”
“Marines are braver. We go in first, you know.”
“I’ve heard that.”
I lifted the shirt and the wound in this guy’s belly began to ooze again. I tugged at his shirt, pulling it up enough to see his bare chest. He had a tattoo above his heart, the emblem of the Marines. I was hoping for a name, anything that might give me more of an idea who he was, but there wasn’t anything but that emblem.
“How long have you guys known each other? Iraq was, what, ten years ago?”
“Something like that.”
“We’ve known each other since ’03,” the passenger proudly announced. “Longest I’ve ever known anyone!”
“Shut up, Jake!”
“You really want to see this guy die? ’03. That’s a long time to know someone and then just watch them die.”
“Maybe she’s right, Tony. Maybe we should take him to a doctor. We could just drop him off at the door!”
Tony slammed his foot on the brake and turned, shoving the barrel of a gun in my face. “If don’t stop talking, I swear I’ll take you back there and make you shut up. Do you understand me?”
I nodded, dropping my head, and trying to look defeated. To be honest, it wasn’t hard...I was scared. My hands were covered in blood and this man beside me was dying, I was sure of it. I didn’t know what they were going to do with me—didn’t know what they’d been told to do with me. The man in charge seemed intent on making me suffer, but the guy who really seemed to have been in charge was dying. What if they didn’t have a contingency plan? What if they didn’t know what to do with me if this guy died? What if they decided to cut their losses and kill me just to get rid of me?
My hands started to shake as I thought about Maclean. He was back at the house, unconscious beside the bed. What if he wasn’t just unconscious? I’d only heard the one gunshot, but what if the guy in the passenger seat, what if he’d shot him? What if he was lying there bleeding to death? What if, with every second we were away from the house, he was slowly sinking closer to too late?
And then I saw red lights flashing behind us.
“Goddamn it!”
The driver had begun to drive again, but I guess a cop had seen him suddenly stop in the middle of the street. What would they do?
“Tony? What are you going to do?”
“I have to pull over.” He glanced back at me. “Cover him up!”
He took the gun and leaning over Jake, hid it in the glovebox. Jake tossed a small blanket back at me. I used it to cover the blood-soaked shirt pressed to the bleeding wound in to the other guy’s stomach. Tony looked back at me, his eyes moving slowly over his friend, and then he glared at me.
“You say a fucking word and I will go back to that house where we got you. I’ll go and I’ll slit that man’s throat in the middle of the night. You might go home, but one morning you’ll wake up and find yourself in a pool of your lover’s blood. Do you understand me?”
I nodded.
“And then I’ll find everyone else you love and kill them, too.”
An image of Molly popped into my head, making me freeze with terror.
“Keep your damn mouth shut. Got it?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
Tony pulled the van over to the side of the road. We waited, ten incredibly long heartbeats, as the cop walked up to the driver’s side door. I closed my eyes, fear so palpable in my chest that I could actually feel its weight pressing against my ribcage. The only thing I could hold on to was his threat against Maclean. If he was threatening to kill him, that must mean he was still alive. Right?
“Good evening, gentlemen,” a familiar voice drawled. “Can I see your driver’s license?”
I opened my eyes as a small spark of hope suddenly sprang alive in my chest. The cop was Jimmy Grant. He knew me. I knew him. Would he realize I didn’t belong in this van?
“What were we doing wrong, officer?”
“You stopped in the middle of the road back there. That’s a hazard.”
“Oh, yeah, sorry about that. There was a cat in the road.”
“A cat? I didn’t see any animals.”
“It was a little one, and he ran off toward the trees.”
Jimmy nodded, reading the name on the license. “This is from Georgia.”
“That’s where I live. I’m just in town visiting a couple of old buddies.”
“How long do you plan to be in town?”
“Just another day or so.”
“Sorry to disrupt your vacation like this.” Jimmy stepped back, looking at the side of the van. He happened to glance through the window and spotted me. “Ms. Gruffydd,” he said, surprise clear in his eyes. “How are you this fine evening?”
“Jimmy,” I said politely, slightly inclining my head.
He moved closer to the window again, studying me over the driver’s shoulder. “These friends of yours?”
I lifted a hand, remembering the blood on them at the last second. I quickly lowered it, but then ,I lifted it again, moving it into the light just below the line of the rearview mirror, hoping Jimmy would see it and realize something was wrong. He was watching me, but his expression didn’t change as I said, “Friends of my brother. From the military.”
“Oh, I see. You served overseas?” he asked, dragging his eyes from me to focus on the driver.
“I did. Iraq, and then a few tours in Afghanistan.”
“Thank you for your service,” Jimmy said. His eyes jumped back to me. I could feel Tony the driver watching me in the rearview mirror, but I tried it again, moving my hand into the light of Jimmy’s flashlight, hoping desperately he would see the blood.
“We’re actually on our way back to the motel. It’s been a long night, and Ms. Gruffydd here agreed to come collect her brother. He had a few too many, you know.”
Jimmy nodded. “Roman Pierce can be that way sometimes.”
“Roman Pierce?” Jake, the passenger, said with a bit of a start. He looked at me, his eyes narrowed slightly, but he didn’t say anything more. Maybe it was the death grip Tony had on his wrist.
Jimmy took one more look at Tony’s license, and then handed it back to him. “Well then, I’ll let you get back on your way. Just try not to stop in the middle of the road again.”
“Of course. Thank you, officer.”
“Goodnight, Ms. Gruffydd.”
I nodded, disappointment, a horrible weight in my heart. “Goodnight, Jerry,” I said softly, thinking just one more attempt…maybe if I used the wrong name, he’d know there was something going on here. He knew me. He knew I knew his name.
Jimmy stepped back and stared at me through the window as Tony started the engine and slowly maneuvered the van back onto the road. I didn’t turn. I didn’t want to give Tony any cause to think I was giving a signal to the cop. But my heart was in the lowest place possible; my hope of being rescued, snuffed. .
Chapter 15
Maclean
I had no idea where I was when I opened my eyes. When I realized I was on the floor beside the bed, I couldn’t figure out if I’d fallen, or if I’d sat there intentionally. Then it came back in a rush.
“Rylee!”
I pulled myself up, pain slicing through my skull. I groaned, and touched the back of my head. My fingers came back bloody . I stared at them a moment, and then I pulled myself up and grabbed a pair of jeans. I was dressed in a flash and out the door, running to my car.
I didn’t know where I was going. But I had to find her.
My phone rang.
“Rylee?”
“No, it’s Jimmy Grant.”
“Jimmy, I don’t have time—”
“I think your friend, Rylee Gruffydd is in trouble. I’m following a van that contains your friend and two out-of-town gentlemen and a third man who looked as though he was barely breathing. Would you happen to know anything about that?”
“Where? Where are they?”
“I’m not going to tell you that until you tell me what’s happening and how big a response I need to call out here to deal with it.”
“You better call a code black.”
“That bad?”
“These guys have very little to lose, Jimmy. They aren’t going down without a fight.”
“All right.” There was a heavy sigh. “As a friend, I have to tell you that coming out here will get you into a shitload of trouble, trouble I’m sure you’re quite aware of.”
“Yes, sir.”
“As a cop, I have to tell you to stay the hell away. We don’t need civilians getting involved in all this.”
“I understand.”
“But as a husband and a father…they’re headed out to the Stormy Weathers Motel.”
“Thank you, Jimmy.”
Chapter 16
Kai
I was hobbling around my bed, about to sink under the soft sheets for a good four hours of sleep when my phone vibrated. I sat heavily on the edge of the mattress, picked the phone up, and unlocked it with my fingerprint. There was a message from Alexander Grosse.
That was fast!
I’d known Alexander for fifteen years. He’d investigated a little problem with my unit back in Afghanistan; items kept going missing. It turned out to be a local kid, not one of the men, but that didn’t change the way the men responded to Alexander, or the way he responded to them. He wasn’t judgmental, he was simply thorough. I respected him for that.
A couple of years later, he came to investigate another ordeal on the base where I was stationed. We had a beer and it turned into a pitcher, then another. By the time my injury happened, Alexander was the only person I asked to come see me in the hospital. He was a good man, an honest man. He was one of a few men I considered a true friend.
I opened the text. His word questioned the veracity of the text I’d first sent him:
“Why would that man be meeting with your friend?”
“That’s what I was asking you,” I replied.
He came back with: “Is this the same man who hired you to protect his sister from Johnson?”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s the connection. This is the head of Black Jacket. He’s a business man, not really involved in the mission planning, which is what he hired Johnson for. As far as we know, he’s clean.”
Somehow, I didn’t think he was. He was just careful.
The phone rang. It was Alexander.
“You’re in something deep here, Kai,” he told me.. “This stuff Johnson’s been doing, it’s not good, man. He’s been really careful, but it’s not good. We were going to catch him soon enough. But if this guy’s involved, then it goes a hell of a lot deeper than I ever suspected. This could go deeper than anyone suspected.”
“Deep as in, what?”
“Deep as in the CIA already sniffing around, but they might take over if this is what I think it is. You need to back off, Kai.”
“I can’t. This is my town, my friends. I’m in this whether I want to be or not.”
“Then take me off your next-of-kin-list. I don’t want to come identify your body in the morgue.”
He hung up on that, giving me a bit of a chill.
Seriously. What the hell was happening here?
Chapter 17
Rylee
Tony grabbed my arm and dragged me out of the van. I screamed, and he smacked me, making my head snap back with a force that I could feel all the way to my toes. He jerked me close to him and hissed in my ear, “Try that again, bitch, and I’ll make due on my promises.”
He dragged me into the room, pulling me so hard that my toe dragged on the cheap concrete slab in front of the door. Once in the room, he tossed me against one of the double beds and I fell hard to my knees, which hurt like hell. I sat in the room for a few long minutes, not even thinking about trying to get out the door. I could hear them out there at the van, struggling to get their buddy off the bench seat and into the room. I could have run then; I could have escaped, but Jimmy letting us go that way had chewed up so much of the hope in my heart that I just felt defeated. And, the thing was, I couldn’t really blame Jimmy for not giving a shit about what happened to me. I’m not sure I would have done anything if I had been in his shoes.
It was six months ago when Jimmy took the stand against one of my clients. It was a case involving a boy who was accused of sexually assaulting a local girl on the beach a few summers ago. Several people had seen the boy following the girl around at a party, but no one had seen the actual assault. However, the girl was the daughter of a local minister and her word seemed impeachable. I had nothing to use as a defense for this boy but to attack the cop who’d arrested him.
I went after him with everything I had. We have a pretty impressive private detective who works for the firm, and he uncovered the fact that Jimmy’s older sister had been raped when she was fifteen. Jimmy saw the attack and testified in open court about it. The man was convicted and died behind bars.
The attacker was Jimmy’s biological father.
I got him on the stand, went over a few of the points he’d already covered with the prosecutor, and then I tore into him, accusing him of being overly sensitive to rape victims, accusing him of using his own history to punish men like his father again and again. I accused him of arresting my client because the girl reminded him of his sister. I hit him over and over again, talking so much about his sister that even the judge was giving me dirty looks and the prosecutor was objecting on every question. Jimmy took it with a calm that was almost unnatural. But when I asked him if he thought he might have the same sort of tendencies his father had exhibited, if his own daughter was in danger from him, he went ballistic.
I’d wanted that reaction. It showed the jury he had a temper and that he might have acted out of his own emotional trauma. That didn’t mean I hadn’t felt guilty about it. I still woke up in the middle of the night, twisted in knots over it. But my client got off and his parents took him back to the East Coast, far away from the innocent girls of North Carolina. If I was more like Maclean, I might wonder if that was good enough. If I was like Maclean, I never would have done what I did.
