Strike, p.48
Strike, page 48
part #4 of Stronger Series
“Yeah?” he said answering.
“Do you know if they made it back to the hotel?”
He didn’t even pause. “I haven’t received an update.”
“Fuck! Jaden’s signal is dead.”
I could hear him already shuffling around for his shit. “I’ll retrace the road,” he said and hung up.
By the time I made it up the stairs, I raced to the third remaining car, leaving Matt to catch up behind me. Ripping the driver’s side door open, I started the engine, giving Matt a second to get into the passenger seat before I backed the SUV up and flew out of the lot.
I followed the road for a good ten minutes before I caught the remnants of a car on its side a few yards off the dirt road. Pulling over, I could see the SUV Jaden and Kayla left in, the entire vehicle flipped completely over, massive dents everywhere, and fucking scratches from ricocheting bullets.
Jaden and Kayla gone, and the bullet-riddled bodies of both Jake and Allan were left behind. A large puddle of blood gathered near the car with drag marks leading away from it, but no body to go with it, though. Hopefully, that meant they at least killed one of them.
“Fuck!” Matt shouted as he took in the scene, his eyes lingering on the pair of delicate silver heels left in the dirt.
It took all my strength not to let my rage get the best of me as I searched for answers. The biggest dent was in the driver’s side, indicating that another much larger car had hit them from the left, rolling them over until they landed upside down. The car was bulletproof with a blast proof undercarriage, so there should have been no reason for any of them to have even left the vehicle.
I drew my gun as the lights of another vehicle approached and quickly holstered it when I saw Scott behind the wheel, pulling to the side of the road and climbing out to join us.
“Well fuck,” he said as he looked over the wreck.
“Whoever took them knew about the tech of their collars and had the capability to block their signals. Otherwise, they would have just cut them off and left them here,” I said aloud.
“There are two different sets of tire tracks over here,” Scott said as he observed the ground. “They had two vehicles.”
Fuck.
And with only two guards, they would have been easily outnumbered.
Forcing myself to steady my rising blood pressure and the panic boiling in my chest, I thought back to the last thing Jaden said to me before they drove off. Matt had enemies too. And they knew our tech.
“Matt,” I said turning to him and he stared hopelessly at the wreck. “Jaden told me you wanted Kayla stay close to her. Was someone threatening Kayla?”
He didn’t respond, just continued to stare on.
Grabbing him by the shoulders, I shook him as I turned him to me. “Matt, look at me and get your head back in the game. Was someone threatening Kayla?” I practically growled at him.
“Indirectly,” he replied.
“WHO?” I nearly shouted, ready to rip his fucking head off for keeping this kind of information from me.
“Tony Graves,” he answered.
I stepped back and absorbed his answer. Tony Graves was the manufacturer of the collars, a person we set up for the job. Why in the fuck would he go after Matt like this knowing what he was jeopardizing?
“Why? Why would he threaten Kayla? What did you do?”
“Darren,” Scott called as he looked over his phone, claiming my attention. “I missed this notification. The Lobos attacked three neighboring towns, left dozens dead.”
“When?” I asked.
“Three days ago.”
Scott then showed me an image on his phone from our security system showing Matt’s same representative standing in front of a covered flatbed truck while members of the Lobos carried away ammo cans and large black duffle bags.
Son of a bitch.
I didn’t even think, just reared back and struck my fist into Matt’s face and knocking him to the ground.
“You made that fucking deal,” I seethed as I struck him again. “You went behind my back, after I told you not to engage with them, and you sold them that weaponry.” Grabbing the lapels of his jacket, I hauled him up from the ground. “Why?!”
He groaned as he attempted to get his jaw to work. “Because I thought you were just being paranoid,” he answered as blood trickled down his chin from the busted lip I just gave him.
“And once again, my paranoia was spot on. Now, how the fuck does Tony Graves fit into this?”
Matt spat out the blood that was also filling his mouth as I released him to stand on his own. “His niece was down there on some charity mission. She was killed in the crossfire. Tony blames me and threatened action if I didn’t return his calls.”
Jesus fuck.
“And you didn’t want to tell me because you’d have to admit you fucked up.”
“I thought he was bluffing. No way would he want to fuck with us like that.”
Astounded, I stepped away from him, placing my hands over my hips to keep them from striking Matt again. A massive hurricane of rage, disappointment, and betrayal, stormed inside me, threatening to blow through the increasingly fragile surface of my calm exterior. I couldn’t believe the utter display of arrogance and stupidity. Had Matt been anyone else, I probably would have killed him already for what he had jeopardized. If anything happened to Jaden, I still may – friendship be damned.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Matt,” Scott muttered as he started making phone calls to organize clean up.
Turning back to Matt, I looked down at the closest thing I had to a friend, a man who now appeared completely lost and hopeless as he took in the wreck before us, hunched in disbelief at the consequences of his actions.
And now, I would have to be the one to clean up his fucking mess.
In one long stride, I grabbed him by his jacket and turned him to face me. “You had better hope that Graves doesn’t touch a single hair on Jaden’s body, because if anything happens to her, we’re done. Do you understand?”
All Matt could do was nod.
“Good. Now get Graves on the fucking phone so I can fix this.”
And by fix, I mean decimate the fuck out of Tony Graves for fucking with what’s mine.
53
Déjà Vu
“Jaden. Jaden wake up,” a familiar feminine voice called to me. I groaned, wanting to tell it to fuck off, but my mouth felt like it was made of rubber. “Come on, Jaden, wake your bitch ass up!”
Excuse me, bitch?
That had my attention.
My senses slowly started coming back to me, my entire body aching as I came to realize I was lying on a concrete floor. Reality mixed with déjà vu slapped me right in the face.
Hadn’t I literally just done this?
“What. The. Fuck,” I managed to slur as I lifted my heavy arms to my face, wincing with every move as my face burned from the touch.
“Finally. I’ve been trying to wake you forever,” came Kayla’s rattled voice to my right.
Cracking open my eyes, my vision blurred to focus as I looked her over, a feeling of icy dread shooting through my veins as I took in her current state. She was covered in dirt, scrapes and bruises, her hair a complete mess, her dress torn and filthy and her shoes were missing. There were specs of dried blood on her arms and a massive cut around her hairline, and her bottom lip was busted open and swollen.
What the fuck happened???
Forcing myself to sit up, I was grateful there was a wall directly behind me as I rested my stiff spine against it. Looking around, we were in some kind of concrete room with a metal security gate being the only thing locking us in. It was almost as if we were in some kind of storage unit.
“Goddammit.”
Assessing myself, I looked down at my bare legs to find them mirroring Kayla’s, dirty and covered in scrapes, blood, and a shit ton of bruises. Thankfully, my boots were still on. My arms matched my legs, but I was glad to see my knuckles on both hands were bloody and bruised.
At least I’d given someone some shit in the process.
I turned my gaze to Kayla who was looking at me with concern and terror. “Are you okay?” I asked as I got my mouth to work.
“I’m fine, but I fucking told you I had a bad feeling,” she said with a scowl. “Are you okay? You’re really bruised up.”
“I bruise easily,” I replied as I took a deep breath, finding relief that nothing felt tight or sharp as I inhaled. “Comes with the territory,” I added, tugging at my red hair.
“Right.” She nodded, but as she did, the dim light from the singular bulb above us caught the shine from her collar. She was still wearing it, and a quick assessment told me I was still wearing mine as well – another conclusion of one of two things: really smart kidnappers or really dumb ones.
“How long have you been awake?” I asked her.
“Maybe twenty minutes.”
“Have you seen anyone?”
She shook her head. “It’s been quiet. But I haven’t screamed for anyone yet either. I figured that camera over there would have alerted someone that we were awake.”
I looked in the direction she was pointing, noticing the black lens with the little red light on it. I hated playing the waiting game.
“What do you remember?” I asked her.
Taking a deep breath, she exhaled as she leaned back against the wall next to me, her eyes glazing over as she tried to focus.
“I remember the sound of metal crunching,” she said, and the moment she said it a flood of memories hit me. “I remember a sharp jerk.”
“We were in a car accident,” I stated, the flashbacks becoming clearer.
She nodded. “Yeah, I think we rolled completely over.”
“It came from the left side. I remember the headlights now.”
Kayla nodded vigorously. “Yeah, I remember the blood rushing to my head from hanging upside down from the seat belt.”
“And then the gunfire came,” I said, remembering the brash sounds of the bullets ricocheting off the car.
“I remember the noise now. How loud it was.”
“I think our driver was killed on impact, and then Allan opened his side of the door to shoot back.”
“Yeah, yeah I remember seeing him hanging limply now.”
“Can you remember the faces?” I asked. They were all blurry to me. I only remembered big men with guns.
She shook her head. “Not really. Men like that all look the same to me. I think there were four or five of them, though.”
I nodded in agreement.
Kayla then started chuckling quietly to herself, causing me to raise a brow at her.
“I just remembered you punched one of them in the mouth because he called you a little cunt.”
I snorted. “That might explain this then,” I said, holding my fist up and exposing my torn knuckles.
Kayla smiled and then immediately froze as another memory hit her. “You killed one of them. I think you managed to get one of their guns, and you shot him in the face.”
I thought long and hard, searching deep in the back of my head for that one. The feeling of a struggle started to resurface, my arms flailing until my hands gripped a weapon at someone’s waist.
“I think I remember that now.”
And then the sharp pain of a needle pricking my skin came back to memory, my vision going dark after that.
I shook my head in irritation as I recognized the irony of it. “We really gotta stop waking up like this, Kayla.”
She snorted a laugh. “Agreed.”
Over the next hour, I spent the first twenty minutes looking over the room we were in. It wasn’t very spacious, but there was enough room for me to stretch out all the kinks in my body as I learned as much as I could about our location.
The only thing visible was the wall on the other side of the hallway we were clearly being held in. Pressing against the security gate, I could push out only about an inch to see a door a few meters down the hall to my right and more hallway to my left. Definitely felt like we were locked in a storage unit.
Pure boredom eventually got the better of me, so I decided to conserve my energy and sat back down next to Kayla against the wall.
“So what happened after I got booted from the room back there?” I asked her.
Kayla gave me a little smile. “Darren actually agreed with you.”
My brows rose of their own accord. “Really?”
“Yeah, said they were better off finding willing women.”
This was surprising.
“He ended up making another deal, though,” Kayla continued. “He basically has the right of first refusal to purchase the ‘retired’ fighters.”
“Goddamn him,” I replied. I did everything I could to point out how stupid that “business proposition” was, but of course Darren would figure out some way to turn it around in his favor. Fucker.
“What the hell happened after you got booted? You leave and suddenly the whole place goes to hell?”
I’d just realized I hadn’t had the chance to tell her about Alexa.
“You remember the female fighter we watched?”
Kayla nodded.
“You didn’t recognize her either, did you?”
Her brows furrowed together in confusion before she shook her head.
“She was in the same auction we were.”
Kayla’s eyes bulged in surprise. “But I don’t remember her at all.”
“Neither do I, but I guess that was her intention. She didn’t want to attract any attention to herself. I guess she was successful.”
“So how did she end up there?”
“She got sold to some old fuck, and the same night she finally strangled him in his sleep, Holden came to collect a debt from the old man. He saw what she’d done and thought she would be capable of more, so he took her and turned her into that.”
“Damn,” Kayla whispered under her breath.
“Yeah and what’s worse is she blames me for it. She said Holden got the idea from when I fought the guards during my sale. And she actually tried to fight me because of it.”
“She did what?!” Kayla screeched. “You actually fought her?”
“Yeah, she’s actually a damn good fighter too. But Clive and Owen broke us up before we could really tear into each other.”
“Wow, what a crazy bitch,” Kayla replied.
I shrugged. “Maybe she’s right. Maybe it is my fault.”
I couldn’t help but struggle with all the what-ifs that were currently battling each other in my head. Maybe I should have just kept my mouth shut and my head down. God knows Darren probably would have passed me up, Megan would likely still be alive, and Alexa might have secured her freedom.
I was so impulsive then, so radical in my mission to remain undefeated and stay above the surface when I should have just learned to breathe underwater. Maybe then I could have breached the surface when it was safe again. But it was too late to change the past.
“Hey, don’t do that. It’s not your fault. There’s no way you could have known what would happen.”
I shook my head. “I was stupid then,” I retorted as the regret started to swim through my veins.
“No, you weren’t. You gave a lot of us hope when we had none.”
“Yeah, and what did that do for all of you?” I said, turning to her. “We’re back in a fucking cage again.” I shook my head and started to laugh at the craziness of it all.
“Hey, you gotta look at the upside. At least it’s a lot bigger than last time.”
I snorted before fully laughing out loud. “You’re right. We finally got an upgrade.”
We chuckled for a moment before we went back to being silent as we waited for whoever brought us there to make themselves known.
It didn’t take very long for me to become impatient again as I stood and started to pace back and forth while Kayla sat bored against the wall. What the hell were they waiting for? This couldn’t have been random. They had to know who we were; otherwise, our collars would have revealed our location and this place would have been under siege by now.
As much as I hated to admit it, I wondered what Darren was doing to find us and if he was going out of his mind with the raw, unrestrained rage I’d witnessed earlier. After seeing him tear through people left and right to get to me during that massive brawl like it was effortless to him, I feared for anyone he might see as a threat. I remembered staring in awe as he destroyed everyone in his path in seconds.
His obsessive possessiveness over me might actually come in handy for once. But if he wasn’t here by now doing the same thing, then he either didn’t know where we were, or he was dealing with a stronger adversary than I thought. Our kidnappers were apparently more sophisticated than I had hoped.
Finally, after what felt like hours, the sound of a door creaked open and slammed shut followed by the echo of heavy boots headed our way. Kayla nearly rushed to my side as three men dressed in black military gear stood before the security gate and watched us for a moment.
I folded my arms, irritated that they were purposely stalling and stared back, noticing the M16s slung over their shoulders, the Glocks at their hips, and the hunting knives strapped to their thighs. A lot of weaponry for people just standing around and watching.
“All right, are you guys just gonna stand there and be weird, or is someone going to tell us why the fuck we’re here?”
The middle one of them stepped forward. “And just who the fuck are you exactly?”
I raised a brow in confusion. Was he serious? How did they not know who they’d taken?
“You guys miss the memo on who you were kidnapping or something?”
“We know who she is,” he said, pointing at Kayla. “But we need to confirm who you are.”
So they were originally after Kayla. If they didn’t know who I was, why didn’t they just leave me behind?
“Why didn’t you leave me behind then if you didn’t know who I was?”
He glared at me. “Just answer the fucking question, bitch,” he growled.
Grinding my teeth, I wanted to punch myself in the mouth for what I was about to say, but I needed to know if it meant anything to these assholes. “Jaden Davis … bitch.”
