15. Chapter 15
Sully sat next to me in first class, while Khai sat behind us as we made our way to Chicago.
Several boys had been kidnapped over the course of two months, and the police were useless.
Dalton and Layla found the connection and the leader of a white supremacist group who would take young boys and indoctrinate them for their militia.
It was a large cell, but where the boys were being held was on a small farm, so the three of us could handle the assignment.
The client was a wealthy man who had been on the inside and had some change of heart. Or he wanted retaliation. Whatever the reason, we were going to stop it. The result would be the same .
When I turned the Wi-Fi on my phone, a text appeared from Thomas. I opened the text app to find a selfie image of him while he was at work.
Thomas: I’ll miss you.
“Who’s that?” Sully asked, snatching the phone from my hand.
“Give me my phone back.”
“Nope. Is this a new boyfriend?”
“That’s Thomas.”
“He looks like a nerd.”
I huffed at him, trying to get my phone back, but his arms were much longer than mine.
“He does not,” I said.
“You need someone tough and strong like my Mal.”
“I do not need anyone to dominate me.” Never again .
Sully scrolled through my messages, and I felt the heat of anger spreading.
Sully and I were alike in many ways. We couldn’t feel love like others could, with him being a psychopath.
We both loved the thrill of the kill, but Sully took it up a notch with torture, while I stuck with the plan and the job.
“Oh! Our young Padawan is a dominant, eh? Isn’t that adorable?”
But Sully and I differed in personalities. We both wore masks, but Sully laughed and teased easily. I had to force those behaviors.
“If you do not give my phone back—”
“Enough. Both of you,” Khai hissed quietly behind us. “You are drawing too much attention.”
“I’m only playing with our boy here,” Sully pouted, returning my phone .
“No more playing. We have a job to do.”
I turned off my phone and stared out the window, looking down at the puffy clouds, before Sully elbowed me. I rolled my eyes. “What?”
“Does he know?”
Sully didn’t have to elaborate. He meant what I did for a living.
“No.”
“And what if he finds out?” The threat was clear in his voice.
I took a hard look at him, staring into his copper eyes that matched his hair. “You will not go near him.” I didn’t care if Sully was a brother or not. I wouldn’t let anyone harm Thomas.
“You can’t keep who you are from him indefinitely.”
“That is for me to decide.”
“No, that is for the family to decide. Every time someone new comes into the fold, it changes us.”
“And we have adapted.”
He sat back in his seat, stretched his long legs out in front of him, and sipped on his water. “Your boy looks innocent. Too innocent. He’s going to be afraid of you when he learns the truth.”
I stared out the window again, wondering if that was true. Would he try to leave me if he found out what I did?
“You’re wrong. He loves me.”
“Your boy looks weak.”
“He is stronger than he looks.”
Why was I justifying this to him? It was none of his business who I dated.
Sully shrugged, quickly growing bored, while I opened my phone to look at the image of Thomas again. His curls were unruly, and he had taken off his glasses, revealing his pretty blue eyes beneath thick lashes. His smile was crooked as he gave the peace symbol.
No, Thomas wasn’t weak. He worshiped me, so he could take anything. I knew he’d still love me, even if he found out what I did for a living.
After we landed, we headed straight to the safehouse to drop off our bags and retrieve our weapons, which were stored in the basement.
I quickly got dressed in my black combat gear and strapped on my throwing knife holster around my thigh.
Khai sat on a chair in the finished basement, honing his sword, long black bangs falling into his face.
He was always honing, as if it soothed him, similar to the way I often tapped my fingers.
Meanwhile, Sully flipped his own blade open and closed.
We all had our ticks. Sully’s knife was a dagger Malik had given him for his birthday two decades ago, and it was still sharp enough to cut through the toughest skin.
I selected a Wilson Combat SFX9 Pistol with a suppressor, but only in case I needed it. I’d always choose my daggers over a gun.
“We go in quietly,” Khai said, who was put in charge of this assignment despite Sully being the oldest at thirty-five and the leader’s lover. He wasn’t a planner. He also toyed with his marks and broke the rules too often. “I mean it, Sully. ”
Sully feigned innocence, placing a hand over his heart. “What? I’m amazing at what I do.”
“We get in, kill everyone there, rescue the boys, and drop them off at the other safehouse for the authorities to come get them and take them home. No playing with your targets. This is a stealth mission.”
“Yeah, yeah… I know the mission, Khai. Don’t get your panties in a bunch.”
Khai stared at him blankly, his black, almond-shaped eyes fixed under thick black brows. He stared at Sully for so long that Sully huffed in irritation. “Fine! No playing. Can I cut them just a little?”
“Death and be done. No more.”
“This family has lost all its fun.”
Khai rolled his eyes and went back to honing his blade.
We took the large black van stored in the garage at the safe house and drove for over an hour toward the outskirts of Joliet, a suburb of Chicago.
When we approached the small farm, which was more like a compound, we parked the van and got out into the freezing night. Mid-February in Illinois was brutal. At least there was no snow to slip on.
We pulled on black balaclavas to hide our identities.
“Layla, we’re here. Shut it down,” Khai ordered through our communication devices .
“Aaaand… done,” she said. “You’re invisible to their cameras, and their security system is off.”
Khai stood, shorter than Sully and me, facing us as he unsheathed his sword. “First, Sully… no music. I need you to focus on any sound that could get you killed.”
Sully was known to use earbuds, playing disco music as he mutilated his targets.
“You act like I haven’t been doing this for fifteen years,” Sully groused.
Khai ignored him and continued with his speech.
“Sully, you and Easton approach from the back and split off. Easton, you’ll head into the barn, where the children are likely being kept.
Sully, you will head into the house from the basement.
I’ll approach from the front on the second floor and work my way down. ”
Sully and I simply nodded.
“We are ghosts. Remember your training,” he concluded before he ran off, sword in hand.
Sully and I jogged through the fields, hopping over fences and passing cattle, careful not to startle them.
There were floodlights over the barn and house, so the back area was well lit. This was where we had to be careful not to get caught. Sully veered off toward the house as I headed toward the barn, keeping to the shadows.
“I’m pinging off a satellite pointed down on you,” Layla said in my ear. “Easton, you have a guard headed your way at ten o’clock. The other guard is stationary. Sully, two guards are flanking the basement door. ”
I tucked myself next to two bales of hay and waited for the guard to pass. With a knife in my hand, I twirled it in between my fingers, keeping my heart and breathing steady.
The man passed me, his rifle strapped to his back. That would be his death.
I snuck up behind him, quickly grabbed him, covering his mouth as I shoved my knife into the base of his neck, right into his brain stem.
I held onto him and pulled him down to the ground as his body stopped fighting.
Knife wounds were never instant death, but he would die in a minute once his brain was severed from the rest of his body.
My heart rate barely accelerated as I dragged his body behind the bales of hay. It wasn’t perfect, but it bought me time.
The other guard was harder, since he stood sentry underneath a floodlight. I picked up a rock and tossed it closer to me, away from the light.
“Dean? That you?” he called out.
I peeked around the corner, watching him pull out his rifle and aim it in front of him. That was going to be a problem. If he fired first, it would alert the rest. And I needed to incapacitate him before he called for help.
As soon as he came around the corner, I used a roundhouse kick to knock the gun from his hands, then I quickly spun and kicked his head. As soon as he dropped to the ground, I stabbed the back of his neck as I had done with the first man.
As he bled out, I dragged him toward the back of the barn, away from the light, and rushed to get his rifle and put it with him. I removed my glove and checked his throat. He had no pulse, so I continued on .
On the other side of the barn was an overhang.
I grabbed the ledge and pulled myself up.
Once on the roof of the overhang, I walked over to the row of windows.
I peeked through each one, walking along the roof, counting heads.
Sure enough, the boys, ranging from three to eight, were being held in the stables.
They were sleeping on mattresses as two guards patrolled back and forth.
I counted the total number of children. Nine.
The exact number of children who were missing.
“All the boys are here,” I whispered.
“Upstairs is clear,” Khai responded. “Heading down to the next level.
“Two more guards, but there is a room full of older boys of about eighteen sleeping,” Sully whispered.
“Dalton is here and says to take them out as well. They’re already indoctrinated and pose a threat. We are to save the children only,” Layla relayed.
Sully groaned. “Ugh, I hate using a gun.”
“Do it quickly,” Dalton said over the line.