24. Chapter 24
Chapter 24
“What’s the word, B?” Ezra asked Berlin over his earpiece. Normally that was what they called Bradford, but he wasn’t here for this op and they were sticking to initials for this one.
“According to the police scanner, there’s a pileup on I-10 and a robbery at a brewery that’s taking up everyone’s time. In addition to the normal Monday night bullshit. There are two cars dedicated to your area but they’ve both been pulled into the pileup. It’s a bad one unfortunately. But you’re all clear for the next half hour at least. And that’s even if a neighbor calls the cops, which I’m not betting on.”
“Thanks.” He looked at the others in the SUV—Tiago, Adalyn and Rowan—all wearing balaclavas. “We good to go?”
Rowan nodded first. “Let’s do this.”
They’d parked in front of an abandoned house that had a crumbling FOR SALE sign and no signs of life. It was two houses down from their target house in a struggling neighborhood that had never recovered from the last hurricane. Maybe it would eventually, but for now, none of the streetlights even worked and at least three of the homes were known drug houses.
Including the one where the threatening email to Magnolia had come from. It had only been forty-five minutes since he’d left her and Lucas back at the safe house and he had to stop thinking about them, to focus on the job at hand .
To find Samuel Perry—and not kill him. Probably.
“You got eyes on the drone camera, B?” Tiago asked. “I’m putting my tablet down.” He’d flown one of their smaller drones to get a full aerial view of the one-story dumpster fire of a house. The backyard had three rusted bikes piled in one corner, a washing machine, two dryers and at least three tires stacked up against the back fence. He’d set the drone down on a tree branch with a solid angle on the front door.
“Yep. No one coming in or out of the front door or any of the side windows on the east side.”
The direction they’d be infiltrating.
“Let’s do this,” Adalyn murmured. “If we can’t meet back here, go to the secondary meetup point.”
They all nodded their agreements and slid out of the SUV. There might be eyes on them but Ezra didn’t get that tingling feeling he normally did when being watched. Moving down the sidewalk in a single formation, they fanned out in the small front yard, with him rushing down the east side of the house, only stopping when he reached the edge of the back wall.
Weapon up, he peered around. He could see the camera on the back porch, but it was pointing in the opposite direction. “I’m taking out the camera,” he murmured as he hoisted himself up on the high porch from the east side.
“I’m at the front door, out of view of the camera here,” Tiago said just as quietly.
“By the west side window.” This from Adalyn. “I can see a naked woman sleeping, the TV on mute, through a crack in the blinds, but nothing else.”
“There’s no one in the window on the east side.” Rowan.
“Everyone, gas masks on,” Ezra said quietly as he reached around from behind and taped over the camera. Then he slid off his balaclava, shoved it in one of his pockets, then slid his gas mask on—and pulled out his flash-bang.
“Three, two, go.” He kicked in the back door, tossed his flash-bang, heard glass breaking, knew the others were making their entrances as well.
Shock and awe were sometimes the best option. Hell, more often than most .
Pistol up, he moved into the house on silent feet, sweeping into what turned out to be a kitchen.
A man in a white tank top and jeans staggered up from the table, crashed into the refrigerator.
Ezra moved fast, went to take him down, but out of the corner of his eye, saw movement. Hell.
He ducked at the incoming blow, twisted to the side and landed a punch in the other attacker’s gut.
The guy grazed Ezra’s head with his fist, but was too off-balance from the blast and smoke. Ezra moved behind him, kicked him hard so that he flew into his buddy.
They crashed to the floor, destroying a rickety table with it.
A screaming mostly naked woman ran past the kitchen and out the back door.
Gunshots sounded in the front of the house, but he had to tune it out for now. His team knew how to take care of themselves.
Ignoring the fleeing woman, he pinned the guy closest to him on the ground, slapped zip ties on his wrists and ankles. Just as he finished, the second guy was on his feet, a SIG in his hand as he stumbled at him.
He managed to get off a shot before Ezra returned fire, hit him once in the upper thigh. The guy screamed and tried to swing around, shoot him again, but Ezra had him down and on his stomach in seconds.
Flex-cuffs on, he stood, kicking away the weapon before he scooped it up. Normally he’d have aimed for the chest, but they wanted anyone here alive to answer questions.
Neither of the men he’d just restrained were Perry—he had that guy’s face memorized. But the guy who’d shot at him was Danny Murphy. An all-around piece of shit with a long criminal history who was also friends with Perry. “Clear in the kitchen,” he spoke quietly, ignoring the cursing and moaning from the two men.
“Front’s clear.” Tiago. “One tango down.”
“I let the woman get away. And I’m clear.” From Adalyn.
“I took down one too,” said Rowan. “Don’t recognize him from our file.”
“Stay where you are, then. I’ve got Murphy in the kitchen. B, you see anything on the drone?”
“No movement in the neighborhood that I can see and nothing on the police scanner. No one’s called anything in yet.” Clipped, precise words.
He might miss working with Hailey, who’d been their hacker for years, but Berlin was a total pro and knew her shit.
He rolled Murphy over, kicked him in the hip when he tried to lash out at him with his bound legs. “Nope. You’re going to answer some questions or I’m going to shoot you in the face.”
“Eat shit!” the guy snarled, his grungy beard needing a good wash. Or maybe a shave, considering bits of food were caught in it.
“Not if you were the last being on earth.” Ezra stood, stalked to the refrigerator while keeping his eyes on both men.
The other one was staying very still, likely hoping Ezra would forget about him.
Ezra opened the fridge, started shaking condiment bottles, found rolls of cash in two of them. Then he opened the freezer, found stacks of cash hidden behind frozen beef. He began setting the cash on the table, then grinned when he found a handful of diamonds in a salt shaker in one of the cabinets.
“Well, well, well, look what we have here.” Ezra held them in his gloved hand, was pretty sure they were real. “I didn’t expect this.”
“I’ll kill you!”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it before. Now, if you want to get out of this alive, you’re going to tell me everything I want to know about Samuel Perry.”
Even shot, bleeding and clearly in pain, Murphy frowned up at him. The smoke had now cleared from the room and his pain receptors were likely kicking into high gear, but he was surprised. “What? Why?”
“Because that asshole has pissed off my boss.” He made a big show of touching his ear so it was clear he was talking to someone else. He didn’t need to touch his earpieces, but didn’t want to explain shit to this guy. “Clean out the rest of the house. Weapons, cash, jewels if you find them.”
“Boss? Who the hell do you work for?”
Ignoring the question, he crouched down next to Murphy, placed his pistol over the guy’s crotch. They were running low on time in case someone decided to call the cops in, or worse, more of this guy’s crew showed up—which was a possibility since that woman had left. She’d had a little time to call for help. “Where is Perry? And don’t lie to me. I know he was here tonight.”
The guy swallowed hard, his eyes flicking down to the pistol without moving his head at all. “He was here, just grabbing some stuff he left behind. I told him he couldn’t stash his shit here anymore, that’s all!”
Ezra pressed his weapon harder against the guy’s crotch.
“I swear! Some detective was hassling me yesterday about Perry, demanding to know where he was. Something to do with his bitch ex. I don’t know, I swear!”
“You keep swearing, but I don’t believe you.” Ezra’s voice was low and calm.
“He’s telling the truth.” The other man said from on the opposite side of the destroyed kitchen table. “Perry came by here to get his stuff, then left.”
“Did he say where he was going?” Ezra didn’t take his eyes off Murphy.
“Nah, just said he found another place to crash.”
“I found the phone he used to text M,” Adalyn said through the earpiece. “Looks like he texted his ex too. Lots of nasty messages, all threats about how he’s going to make her pay for leaving him.”
“Whose phone did he use earlier?” Ezra asked.
“Phone?” Murphy stared up at him dumbly.
“Yes, phone. Your boy was texting someone.”
“He’s not my boy!”
“Yet you let him store his stuff here.” Ezra cocked his head to the side slightly.
“Yeah, because he’s a psycho! And…I owed him. He got me out of a jam a few years ago but now we’re square.”
“This is just a standard burner,” Adalyn said again. “He could have got it here or just left it when he was done.”
Damn it. “Where do you think he might have gone? ”
“Ah…I don’t know.”
Ezra pressed down on him again. “Think really hard.”
“There’s an SUV moving down the street, driving really slowly. Might be time to get out,” Berlin said. “You’ve got maybe three minutes.”
Adalyn strode into the kitchen then, so covered up that no one would ever be able to make out even her hair color. Hell, maybe not even that she was a woman. Silently, she scooped up the cash and diamonds and dumped them into a garbage bag she’d found who knew where.
“We’re slipping out a side window. We’ll meet you in the backyard,” Tiago said. “Hurry.”
The guys in the kitchen wouldn’t even see them, wouldn’t know their build.
Murphy shifted underneath him, sweat pouring off his forehead as he tried to back away—but there was nowhere for him to go. “Um…there’s this chick he sometimes crashes with. On Fourth Ave. I don’t know the street number, but that’s it, I swear! You don’t have to take my stuff.”
“You can tell your bosses that this is courtesy of Samuel Perry. That bastard stole from my boss, so we’re taking back what he took.” A complete lie, but it wouldn’t hurt to have more people gunning for Perry. And this robbery muddied the waters of why they were really here. He couldn’t let anyone know that this was related to Magnolia because it could make her a target.
Hell, this might be the best way to get that rat out of hiding.
Ezra stood then, keeping his weapon up and trained on the two men as he raced out the back door.
“They’re at the house.” Berlin’s voice was tight. “Three guys. I think someone called them. Maybe from a neighboring house. Or the woman who escaped.”
“I’m at the back fence,” he murmured as he used the washing machine to jump over it with ease. He raced across another overgrown backyard and met the others on the neighboring street.
“Come on,” Adalyn ordered, and the three of them fell in line behind her. There were a few people on their front porches smoking, but no one said anything to them—even with them wearing freaking gas masks. When they reached the next street, they made a hard left then looped back to the street they’d just come from.
“I think we’ve got enough time,” Adalyn said quietly as she replaced her gas mask with her balaclava.
Standing in the shadows of a giant oak tree dripping in old Mardi Gras beads, they all did the same.
“Let’s go,” she continued.
Knowing it was a risk, they raced back to their SUV, sticking to the shadows along the sidewalk. As they reached their vehicle, Ezra could see someone coming out of Murphy’s stash house.
“Gun it, I’ll take out their SUV.” He was already rolling down his window, had his pistol out and aimed as Rowan gunned the engine, drove right past the house they’d just robbed.
Murphy was on the front porch, shouting at someone, but dove for cover when they squealed by.
Ezra aimed, fired, pop , pop , took out the back tires.
Their shouts faded as Rowan took a sharp right, gunned it again.
“I’ll direct you using the fastest route,” Berlin said over their comms. “I can see those losers on the feed. They’re not going anywhere,” she practically cackled.
Ezra leaned back as relief slid through him. He wasn’t sure tonight had been useful, but it sure hadn’t hurt. And they were going to destroy the drugs they’d found and donate all the cash.
Their normal M.O.
“Berlin,” he started.
“I’ve already begun a search on anyone linked to Perry who lives on Fourth Ave.”
He grinned, even with a tightness in his chest. He wanted Magnolia safe and Perry gone. “You’re a rockstar…oh wise one.”
She snickered over the line. “You know it.”