Ruthless

Chapter 4

Exit Hell

March 27

Wednesday late morning

I barely keptfrom slamming my office door shut behind me. The blue lighting from the CC poured into the room through the glass wall.

The blinds were opened all the way now, but I needed privacy. I pressed a button on my desk and the blinds whirred as they ran along the track, until they closed and blocked out everything.

I’d brought my punching bag to HQ and into my office when I was promoted to Senior Agent and Team Supervisor six months ago. Everyone knew I worked off my stress with the punching bag, and many times other agents had used it.

Now was a good time to let the bag have it.

I jerked off my overshirt and tossed it in a corner, leaving me only in my T-shirt. Bare-handed, I slammed my fist into the bag.

I hit the bag harder and harder, faster and faster. I felt no ache, no pain, just numbness and anger.

Had Randolph stumbled across something vital? It was common for a RED agent to encounter critical evidence that could easily disappear if not seized immediately. She could have been trying to download information from a hard drive or take pictures of important documents.

Sweat started beading on my forehead as I continued to hit the bag.

When RED agents were in, we couldn’t just extract ourselves from a location and get back in after obtaining a warrant. I wondered if that’s what had happened to Randolph—if she’d been caught grabbing evidence.

I slammed my fist into the bag again, feeling the blow burn all the way to my shoulder.

Fist to the bag. Again. Again.

For a second I could see the faces of the men who’d beaten the shit out of me in that Cuban jail, unusually corrupt members of the Policia Nacional Revolucionaria, PNR, while they tried to get me to tell them who I worked for when I’d assassinated their leader.

I speak nine languages and I understood every word when they told me rape was next.

One of the four men had said I would bring good money, an American on the sex slave market. The man laughed and left the cell, after telling the other three men he’d be back soon.

Harder, harder, I hit the bag so hard pain started to shoot through my arms.

I could still smell the sweat of the three men, the stench of piss in the cell. I could still feel the hardness of the chair they’d shoved me onto before they’d started slamming their fists into my face and body. They’d bound my wrists behind me and hadn’t let me catch my breath between each punch they landed.

The stink of the first man’s breath was hot on my face as he leaned close to me and started to unzip his pants as he told the other three men to cut off my clothes. He grasped the top of the seat back, released his penis, and slowly stroked it while leering at me as the other men started toward me.

No. Fucking. Way.

I gripped the bottom edge of the seat with my bound hands.

The moment the bastard leaned close enough, I gripped the seat with my fingers for leverage. I swung my legs up and clenched his neck with my thighs. One quick squeeze and jerk, and the sonofabitch’s neck snapped.

I twisted out of the chair, avoiding the now dead man’s body as he collapsed onto the wood so hard the chair shattered beneath his weight.

Before the other men had even realized what had happened, I was on the floor next to the body and jerking the dead man’s gun out of his holster with my bound hands as I rolled away.

Shouts filled the cell. Shots echoed in the small space as I pulled the trigger and shot in the direction of the men, with my hands still bound behind me.

If I could create enough commotion to send them scattering, I’d have a chance to make a break for it.

I kept rolling, moving, shooting.

One of my wild shots made contact. It was the fattest man who screamed and dropped. Blood was already soaking his chest as I looked over my shoulder while scrambling to get to my feet.

A chilling clicking sound next to my head. I went completely still. The one remaining man in the cell pressed the barrel of a handgun just over my ear.

“You fucking bitch,” the man said in English.

“Not in your lifetime,” I growled right before I ducked and shot one of my feet out between his. He didn’t have a chance to make a startled sound before I jerked his foot out from under him and he went down, flat on his back.

My spine chilled as a bullet grazed my left ear when he shot at me from his position on the floor. Sweat dripped down his flushed red face, and he raised his gun again.

I swung my leg out and kicked the gun from his hand. He shouted and grabbed for my ankle. I almost lost my balance because of the way my wrists were still bound behind me. I managed to square off on both feet on the concrete floor.

I raised one of my boots and jammed it with everything I had onto the man’s larynx.

His cry rose up with a gurgle of blood and he looked at me as if staring death in the face.

He had been. One more smash of my boot and he instantly went quiet, his head twisted to an odd angle.

The man I’d shot was gasping and wheezing as the other two lay dead on the cell floor. I kept my eye on him as I knelt by the man I’d just killed. The gun clattered on the floor as I released it to use both hands to try to draw the dead man’s knife sheathed on his belt.

I moved my gaze to the cell door. The fourth man—had he really left the jail like he said he would? I sure as hell hoped so.

My fingers fumbled and I became aware of the tremors in my limbs from the adrenaline rushing through me.

I kept part of my attention on the dying man across the room as I finally jerked the knife free. I watched him for any sign that he was going for a weapon at the same time I cut through my wrist bonds.

The rope fell away. I lunged to my feet and brought the weapon up with my now free arm. I flicked my wrist and released the knife. It flipped end over end exactly three times before the blade buried itself into the dying man’s forehead.

He went slack, his glazed eyes staring at me, the knife protruding from just above his eyes.

Would the PNR officer who’d left be back soon?

Backpack. Where had they put my backpack? Everything I needed was in it, if it hadn’t been looted.

My bid for freedom had amounted to maybe ten minutes, but with all the gunshots, shouts, screams and other noise, if anyone else had been in that small jail they would’ve been on me already.

I grabbed the last dead man’s pistol and tucked it into the waistband of my cargo pants and pulled my shirt over it to hide it. In moments I’d jogged through the jail and in a crappy office found my backpack on the desk—the backpack intact, thank God, and it looked like the contents were secure. They probably hadn’t had enough time to look. Apparently they’d been too busy with me.

I peeked out the front entrance and made sure everything was clear. No sign of the first man or any others in uniform. Then I stepped out of the stinking jail and into the welcome sunshine of that Cuban town.

Men and women, and even children stared at me as I dodged through a crowded street. I felt warmth on my face and I dragged the back of my hand over my cheek. Blood coated my skin when I looked at my hand.

Shit. I needed to get cleaned up and get the hell out of this town. I had a rental car waiting, but I’d be stopped for sure if anyone got a good look at me. Not to mention I’d be a bit conspicuous trying to get on a plane looking like this.

My jaw felt bruised and swollen, and it hurt when I clenched my teeth. My white shirt was ripped in places and filthy, my taupe cargo pants not a whole lot better. Just by being seen by civilians I was leaving a trail.

I ducked down one side street to another until I found a run-down hotel and checked in. The short man with graying black hair said nothing as I handed him what was probably double the usual rate. The suspicion in his eyes was keen as he reached for a key before handing it to me.

This wasn’t going to work. He’d probably be notifying the PNR as soon as I walked away.

Still, I took the key but hurried straight through the hotel, out the back, and into another side street.

It took two more hotels until I hit one with a kid manning the desk. Again, I paid double the rate, only this time I went to the room I’d been given and rushed to clean up.

I kept a few first aid supplies in my backpack, and I used them to clean up the gash above my eyebrow and the cut along the cheek. As fast as I could, I used antiseptic wipes to clean all of the cuts to keep them from becoming infected.

I’d just stripped out of my torn clothing when I heard my cell phone ring from inside from backpack. I froze. When I carried a phone on an assignment, I kept it on silent or vibrate. This time it was ringing, and I hadn’t been the one to set it on ring.

For a moment I just stared at my backpack. The only people who had that number were my FAS handlers.

It stopped ringing. I hurried to my pack and snatched the phone out and looked at the incoming caller display. Unknown.

That’s what it always said when a FAS tried to get a hold of me. One of the Cubans must have screwed with my phone.

It rang again. And I stared at the display as it lit up. I didn’t want to answer it. I didn’t want to know what they were going to ask me to do next. I gritted my teeth and instantly regretted it as pain shot from my jaw to my temple.

FAS bastards.

I grabbed the phone. “Redbird,” I said in a harsh snap.

“Alexi Steele,” a female voice said, immediately sending a shock through me. None of my handlers were female, and no one ever called me by my real name. The woman continued, “If you don’t want to be killed in that motel room, I suggest you leave within the next three minutes.”

My bare skinned chilled. “Who is this?”

“If you make it out of there alive, I have a proposition for you.”

“What—”

The woman gave me an address on Portland Street in Boston, not far from my Southie home. “I believe you have a minimum of two minutes left before you’ll have company.” She hung up before I had a chance to respond.

The part about “two minutes” clicked first as I snapped my cell phone closed.

I swore and tossed the phone into my backpack, jerked on a clean pair of cargo pants and a tank top, and jammed the “borrowed” pistol into my pack with my own weapons. I left my discarded clothing and the rest of my mess. No time to clean up.

After I hitched my backpack on my shoulders, I slipped out of my motel room. I headed out the rear to make my way around the side of the building where I could see the road. Still some distance away two PNR jeeps barreled down the dirt road.

“Shit.” Must have been the fourth dickhead who’d tracked me down.

Being dark-haired like the locals—as well as too short to tower above anyone, even if I wore stilts—made it easier to slip into a crowd and avoid being spotted. Not being covered with blood was a big help.

As I walked through the crowded street, I kept myself on full alert, my senses automatically cataloguing everything including possible escape routes.

Who was that woman and how the hell had she known about what was going down, and how did she know anything about me?

The next day I walked into the building on Portland Street and was introduced to the world of RED by Karen Oxford.

My whole body was sweating now and my arms were like rubber. I leaned my head against the bag on my forearm.

Oxford had been just as stern and imposing then as she was now. Something about her made me feel as if I should come to attention. Like facing a superior when I was Special Forces in the Army. Before I’d fucked up.

I grabbed a towel from a shelf in a closet in the back of my office, near the corner where my shirt was lying. I always kept spare clothing in my office—casual and dressy, in case I needed either for undercover work, so I had plenty of extra things to wear.

I started dabbing my face, my neck, and beneath the hair at my nape with the towel.

The moment I met Oxford, every single nuance of it, was burned into my mind. “I’ve been observing you for some time now, always a RED agent following your trail,” she’d said, and my skin had gone cold.

She tapped a folder that was lying on the table in front of her with her forefinger. “Sniper in Special Forces before you made one hell of a mistake and you were court-martialed.

“Then an organization you can’t even name broke you and trapped you into working for that organization. Now, you are required to assassinate anyone they tell you to.

“You are sent to country after country and you are never told why you are ordered to kill these men and women. There is no time limit, and you have no way out. They continue to hold that same threat over you like a noose.”

I’d sat, stunned, as she laid out my professional life on the table.

“I am prepared to offer you a way out, Alexi.”

That’s when Karen Oxford saved my life.

RED had been my ticket out of hell.

I walked to my desk and plopped into my chair. The wheels made bumping sounds as I rolled across the carpet in front of my desk. The cotton of the towel was soft as I continued to dry myself off.

A few framed photos of my brothers, sister, and parents were on my black-and-chrome desk next to a chrome reading lamp, a huge computer screen, and an open Operation Cinderella manila folder. We still did some things old-school.

My bare office showed just how much time I’d had to make it the least bit “homey” since I’d been promoted.

I braced my elbows on the tabletop and rubbed my sweaty temples with my fingers.

Randolph hadn’t gotten out. In fact, her last moments had been nothing but hell. No matter what Oxford said, I couldn’t feel that it wasn’t my fault.

I braced the heels of my palms against my forehead.

Going undercover into the world Randolph had been immersed in was my next step.

A step I was more than willing to take to even the score for not only the auctioned women, but for Agent Stacy Randolph who hadn’t deserved her fate.