30. Vince
30
VINCE
It had been ninety-three minutes since she had been taken. Ninety -three of the longest minutes of my life. And we still had no better idea where she was or who had taken her than we did ninety-three and a half minutes ago.
The FBI had been called. Same with the US Marshals . Parker was surprised when we informed him that Cat and Val had been in WITSEC and was very insistent that we move quickly before the other branches of law enforcement arrived. He said when the Feds get involved it becomes harder to do any job quickly because of the extra red tape. Archer had made similar comments back when he was a cop.
My phone buzzed, and I pulled it up quickly, hoping someone had found something. A new text from an unknown number. When I opened it, it revealed an image of Cat tied to a chair in some kind of industrial building.
“Fuck,” I roared. “ It’s her.”
Immediately, Archer , Wade , and several cops stood at my side. I showed them all the image.
“Call that number,” Archer prompted. “ On speaker.”
I tried, but an automated voice announced the voicemail had not been set up for the number. Likely a burner phone. I pulled the photo back up, hoping I could see some kind of clue as to where she was.
The phone rang with another unknown number.
“Put it on speaker,” Officer Hess said beside me.
“Where is she,” I demanded, praying this call would give me some insight as to where Cat was and that she was still alive.
“Fletcher,” a voice I had never heard before said. “ You took a few things of mine, so now I took something of yours.”
He continued speaking, and my anger grew, but before I had a chance to respond, the call ended.
“Let’s go,” I commanded as I started to move to the door.
“Wait!” Archer yelled. “ This isn’t about the sisters. There’s no ransom or anything he wants in return. He only wants you, Vince .”
I paused as Archer’s words sunk in before he spoke again. “ This isn’t about the Cross Street Kings murdering their parents. It’s about revenge against you.”
I turned to look at him, taking in everything he’d just said as my dad spoke up. “ He’s right. They already have Cat . If that was all they were after they wouldn’t have bothered calling you. They don’t want Cat . They are using her to lure you there—it’s a trap.”
“Revenge for what?” I asked, racking my brain trying to think of something.
“My guess? Bounty hunting,” my dad shared. “ Family or friend of some skip you put in prison seeking revenge.”
My phone buzzed again. This time a single text with an address.
“I’m going,” I announced. “ They aren’t killing Cat because of me.”
“Vince, wait,” Archer yelled. “ We don’t even know if Cat is actually at that address. If your dad and I are right, this could be a set-up to a different location.”
“I hear you, Archer , but it’s the only lead we have,” Parker chimed in.
I understood what Archer was saying, but I was with Parker . I had to try.
“I have to go,” I told them all.
“Then let us come up with a plan and a backup plan,” Wade spoke up.
“It’s at least a fifteen-minute drive, even with sirens on,” Parker said, pointing at a map on his phone. “ The smart thing to do is to meet here two blocks over and finalize our plan before we go in.”
“I’ll call in the SWAT team,” Hess added.
“I don’t like it,” Archer groaned.
“Then stay here, but I’m going,” I told him and made my way to the door.
I went down the hall to grab a gun and some ammo my dad kept in his bedroom. After I loaded the clip and grabbed two more, I began to lock the safe up.
“Son, you need to be smart about this,” my dad spoke from the doorway.
“I know, Dad , but if this was Mom , you would do the same thing I’m doing right now,” I reminded him. “ I’m not going to be stupid, but I also can’t just sit around here and wait.”
“Then take some extra gear.” My dad walked over to his closet and grabbed a Kevlar vest, a multi-tool, and a taser.
I took what he gave me, thanked him, and made my way to the front door. Archer and Wade stood there waiting.
“We do this together,” Archer decreed.
“Get in the car, assholes,” Wade grunted. “ I’m driving while you two come up with the plans.”
* * *
In the car, Wade , Archer , and I came up with three different plans based on the information we had. We had also called Axel on the way there, and he was going to meet us at the location Parker had sent us. When we walked up, Parker and Hess informed us of their plan. Admittedly , it was very close to our Plan A , so we agreed.
Axel wasn’t there yet, so I would let the others fill him in, because I wasn’t waiting for him to go in.
“I’m ready. Let’s do this,” I told everyone.
“If you wear that vest, these guys may think you’re working with police,” Parker advised.
“I’m a bounty hunter and work in security. I think they’ll understand,” I countered.
“He’s not going in without it,” Archer argued, and Parker held up his hands in defeat.
“Here’s your earpieces.” Officer Hess handed all of us the micro-sized secure comms pieces.
I put it in place and then waited for the signal. We were positioned about a block away from the entrance gate of the warehouse. It was on a large property with a massive parking lot to the left and a wooded area behind it and to the right.
When ready, I began walking the block and a half toward the warehouse. When I got closer, I scanned all of my surroundings carefully, just in case there were people set up near the perimeter. I saw no one, so I proceeded with caution.
I made it through the entry gate and almost to the front entrance of the building when my hackles raised. Everything about this was too easy. I grabbed my gun from behind me and readied it at my side as I opened the main door. Unlocked , it slid open easily. I crept slowly inside a moderately sized vestibule area that must serve as a lobby of some sorts, and closed the door behind me before moving to another set of double doors on my left.
I entered into a large open space filled with giant blue steel drums set out in rows. Some rows were just single tubs next to a few forklifts. Other rows had the drums double stacked in groups of four on top of pallets. In the middle was a long row of open space.
It smelled of gasoline and chemicals when I first walked in. Whatever the combination was, it was potent. My gun still at my side, I slowly made my way through the warehouse, sticking closely to the giant blue drums and using them as a shield of sorts.
As I turned the corner around one of the drums, I noticed a chair in the middle beside a forklift with Cat sitting in it, tied up. She gasped when she saw me.
“It’s a trap, Vince . You have to leave!” she said frantically.
I’d suspected that, but I wasn’t leaving without her. “ It’s okay, baby. The cops are outside and so are Archer and Wade . We’ve got you.” I tried to calm her down, but her eyes widened at that statement as if that was not the news she wanted to hear.
As I moved forward to her to assess her condition, I spoke into my comms piece. “ I found her. Releasing her now and will be outside soon.”
Reaching for my knife, I cut the ties on her wrists then moved to do the same to the ties around her ankles.
Her hands now free, she leaned forward to wrap her hands around my neck in what I assumed was a hug, but then she whispered in my ear. “ If they can hear you, I have to be quiet.” Her voice was urgent and frightened. “ They have a cop on the inside helping them. He orchestrated this with the boss guy. It’s a set-up Vince . They’re going to kill us both. They’re going to set the barrels on fire. The cops are not here to help.”
I froze. They had a cop on the inside. A cop who was very likely standing outside pretending to be ready to help.
I needed to let my own men know without alerting the cops, who could also hear me. I thought back to my military days and remembered there was a code we would use in the event of a betrayal by someone we trusted. Usually , an informant that turned on us or an asset who we realized later was feeding us false information. I knew Archer may not get it, but Wade would. I just hoped he could pass on the message to Archer in time.
“Wade. There are several dozen drums in here filled with highly flammable materials. Also , Cat reports the presence of a compromised package. I repeat a compromised package. Going FRAGO . Switching to my friend Charlie .”
I’d given them the insight about the drums so that they could keep the cops from blowing the place up. Then I’d added in the FRAGO term at the end to let them know I was course correcting our initial mission plan, and going with Plan C , or Charlie .
The only problem was, Plan C had a lot higher odds of complications. Not wanting the bad guys to hear anything else we said, I ripped out my comms and crushed it with my foot. I just hoped the good guys knew what to do before the bad guys caught on.
“Alright, sweetheart, change of plans. It’s just you and me now,” I told Cat . “ Are you injured? Can you walk?”
“I can walk,” she said, her voice strong and determined. “ What are we going to do?”
“Since we don’t know who the mole is, or who is friend and who is enemy at this point, we’re going with a backup plan,” I instructed. “ I need you to follow me and stick close since you don’t have a weapon, okay?”
She nodded, and I helped her up and looked around the space. She quietly rattled off the two men she had seen and descriptions of them while I looked at possible escape routes.
“They all kept coming and going from that door on the left,” she said, pointing to the door I came in from. “ The chemicals in these barrels are flammable, and the one guy, Spade said they would get you in here then somehow light a fire and lock the doors.”
“Spade?” I hadn’t heard that name before.
“Yes, the other guy was called T ,” she replied. “ I never got the boss’s name because they just called him ‘boss’. This has to do with something that happened to you in Oklahoma .”
Oklahoma? I’d never been to that state before. “ You sure?”
“Yeah, he said this was revenge for Oklahoma .”
Oklahoma. Oh shit. Oklahoma —the jackass bounty that Diego and I had to chase down and we turned in to the police. My dad was right.
“Vince, we don’t have much time. We have to find another way out of here. The door you came in will be a trap, and the other door is locked with that chain.”
Just as she finished that sentence, a loud whoosh sound came from behind me.
The door I had just come in a few moments ago from the vestibule area now had flames shooting out from underneath it, along with a growing line of fire on the ground spreading straight toward the drums.
“To the windows. Now !” I urged her forward quickly. There were tons of windows along the left side of the building. The only problem was the bottom frame of the windows was at least eight feet up.
“How do we get up there?” Cat asked, her voice strong and determined.
“We’re going to have to MacGyver our way out of this,” I told her, scanning the room. “ Help me push this drum, quick.”
There was a single drum roughly six feet from the wall that we needed to push as close to that wall as possible so that we could climb up and hopefully reach the window. But we also needed to do it fast before the fire spread to the barrel and engulfed it in flames.
The drum was heavy, several hundred pounds by my guess. We both pushed hard and managed to get the drum within a foot of the window, which was close enough. I hopped up and again pulled out the multi-tool that my dad had given me.
“We’re going out through here. It’s not ideal, but it’s our best shot.”
“What about the guys outside? What if they see us?” Cat coughed, the smoke around us getting thicker as the fire spread through the warehouse.
I expected to see worry on her face, but instead there was determination and fortitude.
“If Wade and Archer understood my message, they should be in position to cover us. They’ll handle it. Just stick close and be ready to run once we jump out.”
Cat nodded back to me. I put my gun back in its holster at the small of my back and reached for the glass break feature on the multi-tool and swung hard at the window. The loud, sharp shattering of glass reverberated through the room.
I lifted Cat up on the drum with me and helped her climb through the window.
“Be careful,” I warned her so she didn’t cut herself on the sharp glass.
Once she jumped from the sill, I followed.
Just as we made it out, loud shouts could be heard from nearby, which I imagined were the cops scrambling toward the building which was now engulfed in flames. Then , a small burst of fireworks appeared by the gate entrance to the warehouse.
I grabbed Cat’s hand and pulled her with me as I ran to a small wooded area beyond the warehouse. It wasn’t huge, but it was getting dark, and would provide a hidden vantage point of what was going down at the warehouse.
There was a larger tree up ahead with a slight slope down behind it that we could duck behind. Just as we squatted down behind the tree, a loud explosion came from the building we were just in, and the whole left side of the warehouse was engulfed in flames.
I glanced back to see smoke billowing out. Two men sprinted from the side of a dumpster near the warehouse toward a car parked at the very edge of the parking lot. I tried to get a good look at the vehicle, as best I could from so far away. The vehicle raced toward the gate to exit the property, but just as they cleared it, the car exploded and flames shot out.
“Were those the good guys or bad guys?” Cat asked.
“I hope the bad guys.”
“What do we do now?” Cat asked me as we both stared at the scene in the distance.
“Now, you turn around and don’t do anything stupid if you want to live,” a familiar voice said behind me. “ Did you really think it would be that easy?”
I turned slowly, at the same time stepping in front of Cat to protect her, and came face to face with Parker . He had his gun aimed right at me with a look of consternation on his face.
“You’re a hard asshole to get rid of,” he remarked as all the puzzle pieces started to fit into place.
It all made sense now. How they knew my name, phone number, where I lived. The connection with Oklahoma . How easy it was to walk into this warehouse. All those random times Parker would show up where I was.
“You set me up,” I surmised out loud, trying not to move much, keeping Cat at my back since I at least had a Kevlar vest on and she did not. “ Why ?”
“It’s nothing personal,” he remarked as if this was just a stroke of bad luck. “ Of all the bounties to pick up…. My boss was not happy you took in his best dealer.”
“Your boss is the chief of police,” I tried to remind him, hoping there was a little bit of good still left in him.
“Yeah, well, the other one pays better. And the chief …” he snarled, and I was surprised at the derision in his voice with that word. “ Seems even after ten years on the force, he didn’t think I was good enough for the promotions I deserved. My new boss, however, does, and it appears you’re just another loose end he needs tied up. You just saw how the other loose ends were dealt with.”
So those were the bad guys in the car. And their boss made sure they didn’t live to talk about what went down tonight.
I felt Cat’s hands reach slowly under my shirt where my gun was. I knew what she was doing, so I needed to provide her a distraction.
“How did you know the plan changed?”
“I'm not an idiot. I heard your weird code shit. And then your buddy whispered something to your cousin then pretended to take a call on his phone and they walked away. Two can play that game,” he sneered. “ I decided to pretend to take my own phone call and snuck off to follow him. I overheard him tell your buddy you suspected a mole and you were going with plan C which would have you cut through these woods and meet up at the gas station a few blocks over when it was clear. I decided to meet you halfway and join you in the woods. Props to your boy Axel though. Not sure where he got the fireworks, but that was a clever distraction. It also worked in my favor too, because then everyone spread out and didn’t notice me running for the woods.”
Shit. Parker was smart, I’d give him that. The gun was now fully out of my holster. I now needed to put my trust in Cat . I knew she and her sister knew how to shoot a gun. They had one themselves. What I didn’t know was if she knew how to shoot my gun.
I took a step forward and to the left to hopefully give her an opening if she needed it.
“Don’t fucking move!” Parker yelled and pulled his gun up higher, aiming right at my head.
I saw Cat’s movement out of the corner of my eye just as Parker moved his gun away from me and toward her. Not knowing if she had enough time to react, I lunged. Two shots rang out, followed by another as I shoved Parker to the ground. I heard Cat scream, several other voices yelled, and Parker bellowed in what appeared to be both pain and anger. Despite his loud moans, he fought back and I struggled to get him pinned.
Several moments later, Archer spoke from beside me. “ Here ,” he said as he helped grab Parker , causing him to wail in pain.
I looked down to notice the blood gushing out from his shoulder and realized he had been shot.
Just then, two other officers joined us. “ I got him,” one said. “ You can let go.”
No disrespect, but I wasn’t sure who to trust yet, so while I moved off him, I did not lose my grip on him just in case he fled. The other officer grabbed his cuffs and began to put them on Parker .
“Quincy Parker you are under arrest,” Hess started to say as the other officer came up beside me.
“We’ve suspected him for almost a year now but didn’t realize how deep he was in this until tonight,” Hess explained.
I had so many questions to ask him, but it was Wade’s voice that broke me out of that thought.
“We need a medic!”
I turned to see Wade squatting down next to Cat , who was up against the tree, swaying as one hand reached up for her forehead.
“Cat!” I called out as I leapt the few feet over to her.
Had she been shot too? There were at least three shots fired, and I hadn’t checked to see where they went or who fired.
“Cat, baby, what’s wrong?” I knelt down, placing a hand on her shoulder and gently guiding her back so she was seated, with her legs folded under her.
“I think she fell back and hit her head on the tree,” Wade answered for her. “ Quick check shows no other severe injuries, but her head is bleeding in the back.”
I moved closer, not caring that I essentially shoved Wade out of the way. “ Kit - Cat , stay with me,” I told her as I gently lifted her head so she would look at me.
At my command, she let out a pained groan. Not wanting to wait any longer, I gently scooped her up and barked out, “ Where’s the ambulance?”
I would just take her myself. I tried not to jostle her too much as I made my way through the wooded area.
I wasn’t going to let her die on my watch.
Not after everything else I had already put her through.
I would make sure she pulled through. I had to.