23. Dax
DAX
Gun at the ready, I kept my back to the hallway wall, keeping my head on a swivel, looking back and forth to make sure no one snuck up from behind me while keeping an eye on the doors ahead of me.
This was one of the worst situations to be in alone with no backup.
Too many doors and places for dick wad biker men to hide even if I had a trail to follow after my best buddy, Bane.
The wound he had couldn’t be that bad if he were moving this fast down the hall.
I reached the door to another room. The door was closed, so I peeked in the small window and saw a woman curled up on the bed.
Was this where they kept their skin before sending them out to their strip clubs?
Get them addicted and dependent on the drugs then send them out into the world to make them money?
I gripped the door handle, but it was locked, so I was going to need to find a set of keys.
Sure, no big deal, I’ll add it to my to-do list, the first one being getting out of this alive.
That wasn’t too hard to accomplish, right?
Fucking hell, I needed a vacation after all this was over.
Now, when I looked at the rooms along the hallway in a different light, I saw most of them were closed.
Only two stood ajar at the end of the hall.
There was a set of double doors making me wonder if they were locked too or if the power being out in this place made that a moot point.
Wait, was the power out in this place? If they were using it to keep girls here, they might have it on the grid—only one way to find out.
Feeling confident the rooms had women in them, I picked up the pace following the blood trail to the last room.
Double-checking my gun had a bullet in the chamber, I glanced into the room quickly before I dropped to my knees, then fell to the ground, gun aimed above me.
If anyone had been in the room, I’d have had a clear shot, and if they heard me outside the door, they would have aimed higher giving me time to take them out, but the room was empty.
Getting up, I took stock of the room and noticed it was a medical room of sorts, and someone had grabbed a handful of gauze from a trolly of supplies full of vials of sedatives, heroin, and a syringe.
I felt the air shift behind me, causing me to react before my brain registered someone was there.
Spinning as I dropped to a knee, I shot twice in a row hearing a grunt followed by a thud.
It wasn’t Bane but another of the Mad Dogs who was sliding down the wall clutching his chest below where his heart was.
Popping up, I stalked forward seeing the blood pooling around his thigh and slapped the man’s hand away from his chest wound.
“How many of you are there?” I demanded, digging my thumb into his wound.
The man screamed but managed to keep his mouth shut instead of sounding like a dying animal.
He thrashed, trying to punch me, but he wasn’t moving all that fast, so I got out of the way easily.
Sagging against the wall, he settled on throwing verbal punches instead.
“Fuck you. The boss should have just killed you at the quarry like all the others. Too bad you didn’t see the carnage we left behind, bodies everywhere.
I’d be surprised if anyone lived through that. ”
“That was really stupid of you, now you just make me want to torture you more,” I explained, setting the muzzle of my gun against his neck, letting the hot metal sear into his skin.
This time the man screamed nice and loud.
“Oh, I’m just getting started. See, you decided to corner me in the medical room.
I wonder what kind of goodies I could find in here to make this as painful as possible. Shall I take a look?”
“Why would I tell you anything, I’m going to die as it is from this hit,” the man pointed out as blood started to drip from his mouth.
“Yes, but just how quickly do you think that will happen? Do you want the last moments of your life to be worse than what you’ll experience in hell when you get there or quick, making it all end drifting into the darkness?”
His answer was to spit it at me. Before he ever saw it coming, I pistol-whipped him right in the jaw. “Do you know how many times today I’ve been spat on? Just for that, you no longer have a choice in the matter. You’re going to die, squealing like a pig, do you hear me?”
Shoving myself to my feet, I grabbed a syringe wrapped in sterile packaging ready for the next woman to have her life taken from her.
I snatched it up and opened it, pulling the plunger back.
I grabbed the ketamine and pulled a dose I hoped would just make him paralyzed but keep him coherent enough to talk.
Once that was injected into his large vein, I ripped the plunger all the way out.
I was just going to need the pointy bit for this next part.
“I feel like you’re an old-school kind of asshole so let’s stick to tradition, shall we? ”
I grabbed his hand and shoved the needle right under his pointer fingernail.
It wouldn’t surprise me if his screams echoed through the whole building as I yanked it out and moved to the next finger and the next.
I got done with that hand and started to move to the next when he finally broke and told me what I wanted to know.
“It was just me, there’s no one else, but Bane will be back soon with backup. He wanted me to kill you or keep you here until he brought the rest of the crew to deal with you.” He sobbed.
Pushing the needle into his thumb slowly this time, I pressed for more information while he was feeling chatty. “How many in the crew he’s waiting for, and who has the keys to the rooms?”
“Please, please just let me bleed out in peace. I told you what you wanted to know,” he begged.
My hand slapped against his cheek as hard as I could manage, leaving behind a bright red welt. “You lost the right to an easy death when you spat on me. Now focus and tell me what I want to know. I hear doing this to toenails is even worse than hands—”
“God, why didn’t we listen… everything about you is true,” he cried, shaking his head back and forth. “You’re going to kill us all, aren’t you, just like you did the Blackjax. You’ll hunt down every single last one until the Mad Dogs are wiped from existence.”
“Now that you understand the situation, why don’t you tell me what I want to know?” I asked, holding the needle to the next finger, lifting the hand so he could see me doing it. “How many men is Bane bringing with him?”
“I don’t know. Mastiff sent out the call to all branches of the Mad Dogs that we were going to war with Two Tricks and needed everyone. He sent part of the crew to the Phantom Saints compound and the rest here. I guard this place so I wasn’t involved in the meetings.”
“So does that mean you have the keys?” I pressed.
“Yes, yes, I have the keys. I swallowed them so you couldn’t get out…” he admitted.
I dropped his hand with a growl. The look on my face must have told him what came next as he looked at me with wide-eyed panic. “You know what this means now, don’t you?”
“Kill me first, please. I’ll tell you anything else you want to know just kill me before you go after the key,” he pleaded, snot running from his nose, making him look like an utter mess.
This man had well and truly been broken if he was begging me not to gut him while he was still alive.
It was like he knew I wouldn’t have a problem doing it, which I wouldn’t, for the record.
“Is there anything else I need to know about this place? Weapons stashed, booby traps, secret way in or out of here? Answer these, and I’ll put a bullet through your head and end this all right now,” I said, putting the gun right between his eyes to prove my point.
He sagged in relief at this. “We’re on the third floor.
There’s a locked med room on the second floor where we keep the drugs and a stash of guns if we were ever to get hit.
It should be enough for you to hold your own for a little while, at least. The whole place is set to blow through, Marco made sure that nothing could get traced back to him.
That man really likes to blow shit up. The C4 is in the basement in the old boiler room.
There might be traps there, I don’t know.
We were told never to step foot in the place, and if we did, he’d see it. ”
Hearing this told me I had less time than I thought.
If word got back to Marco that I took Mastiff out and could compromise his business even more than I already had, he’d have no problem blowing this whole place up.
By the sound of it, he had eyes on the building in some way.
I was on borrowed time, and I needed to get these women the fuck out of here.
Without a second thought, I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger, feeling the splatter hit my face with how close I was.
What the fuck did it matter if I got more blood and guts on me, I was about to play find the key in a man’s intestines.
I couldn’t tell what was more strange—that I’ve done this before or this man knew that?
Guess the legend of Two Trick and Dax, the enforcer, wasn’t that far off from each other.
Setting the gun aside, I went back to the tray of medical stuff and looked over my options.
There weren’t any scalpels, but I bet he had a knife on him somewhere.
Squatting, I grabbed his ankles and pulled him flat before I patted him down, pulling out his ammo and second gun.
Rolling him to his side, I found the hunting knife on his belt and unbuttoned the sheath.
The blade was sharp and well cared for, and it would do the job nicely.
Before I thought more about what I was going to do, I plunged the knife just below his breastbone and pulled down with all my body weight.
The feeling of the skin being sliced through was oddly easier than I thought it would be.
Now for the messy part. Making another cut across his stomach allowed for easier access to his guts.
I reached in and started pulling. You know, in school, they talk about the fact you can wrap the intestines around the world, but I think that’s a bunch of bullshit.
With what I’m dealing with, there’s no way that could work.
Granted, I was impressed it all fit in our walking meat sack of a body, but it wasn’t getting me to Florida let alone around the world.
Unsure of how long ago he swallowed the damn keys, I had to feel up every part of the big and small gut ropes.
When I still didn’t find them, I moved onto what I guessed to be the stomach and sliced that open.
There, wrapped in a condom, was the damn set of three keys I needed to get myself and these girls out of here.
Thankfully, this room had a sink, and I could wash off my arms and face, not wanting to give them more nightmares than they already would have.
The other thing I figured I’d need was the rolling gurney table since who knew how fucked up these women would be.
Most of them seemed to be passed out in their beds.
I ran the gurney to the end of the hall and got the door open on the second key.
A beautiful black woman was wrapped up in a ball, clutching the white sheet to her chest. The amount of noise I’d been making and how she didn’t hardly stir told me she was knocked the fuck out.
Walking over, I squatted down and shook her shoulder gently. “Hey, you in there?”
I got a muttered reply, and her arm flopped open from where it had been tucked under her chin. This gave me a clear view of the track marks where they’d injected her none too kindly either.
“Fucking hell,” I snarled, brushing my hands through my hair.
How was I going to get fifteen drugged-out women before Bane got back?
The answer was I couldn’t, not alone, but I could get them all in one spot near the door so when Cam called the FBI and got us help, they wouldn’t have to find them.
What I needed to do is get the bomb defused and keep the Mad Dogs from taking this place over before the FBI came.
Taking a deep breath, I got behind the woman, hooked my hands under her armpits, and hauled her up.
Heaving her onto the gurney, I made sure she wouldn’t roll off, and I bolted down the hall to the second open room near the doors.
It looked like a normal room no one had occupied, so I slid her off the table and leaned her against the wall.
She listed to the side but still didn’t show any signs of waking up.
Turning on my heel, I went to the next room, moving as fast as I could on borrowed time.
“Don’t fuck this up for me, Cam,” I muttered as I maneuvered the next girl. “Too many people are counting on you.”