26. The Face-Off
26
THE FACE-OFF
Francesca
“ C ’mon, Frankie-girl. Need you to wake up.” The whispered voice was raspy. It sounded familiar but unrecognizable at the same time. Like she’d heard it a long time ago but not since.
Francesca frowned and tried to roll over, but she couldn’t. Movement was stopped. In fact, she wasn’t even sure she was lying down, so rolling over probably wasn’t going to happen.
“Sick,” she managed to cough out.
A swear word was followed by the snick of a knife. Whatever had held her immobile was no longer holding her, and a hand shoved her forward at the waist. Vomit spewed from her mouth into a bucket someone had placed between her spread legs. As she heaved, a hand brushed up and down her spine.
“Get a towel. Cold water. Rory, get a bottle of water.”
When the heaves stopped, Francesca tried to shake the hand off of her back, but she was too weak. She couldn’t even sit up on her own. Another set of hands helped her sit against the ladder-back of the chair, and then the hand that had been rubbing her back was wiping her mouth with a damp cloth. She opened her eyes, but it was hard to see.
“Fionn?” she asked.
“Aye, Frankie, it’s me. Rest, girl. You’re gonna feel like shit for a while. Sorry.”
Pressure was placed on her wrist tied to the arm of the chair, the zip tie briefly cutting into her skin, and then the pressure was relieved. “Here, little sister, drink this.” A bottle of water was shoved into her hand. Someone freed her other hand. She struggled to open the water bottle.
A hand covered hers over the bottle, a second cracked open the seal, and then the person helped her take a few sips of water. There was pressure against the zip ties on each ankle and then blessed relief. Her extremities tingled sharply with pins and needles. She didn’t even have the strength to hold the water bottle, let alone raise it to her lips to drink.
She squinted in the light. Things were slowly getting easier to make out, although the light was making her head march drunkenly to a heavy beat. Three shadows, roughly the same shape and size, stood in an arc between her and the doorway of the office they were in. She looked around and saw a calendar with a Kitty Hawk on it. A statue of a Cessna, some sort of award sat on top of a file cabinet next to the calendar. There was also a series of framed certificates, including a photo of a handsome man shaking hands with the president. She didn’t know who the man was, but he looked friendly.
They were in a private hangar at the airport. That meant they were taking her back to New York City. Or an airborne grave between here and there. “Why?” she croaked.
“Rest,” her brother Rory ordered her. “You’re going to need it.” He turned in profile. “I’ll be back in five minutes, Mannix. Fionn will stall the best he can when Oisin returns, and you may need to run interference.” Rory looked back at Francesca. “Keep drinking. Your stomach won’t want you to, but it will help you push off the effects.”
The two brothers left. Mannix grabbed a roll of duct tape off the desk and tore a piece off. When Mannix walked behind Francesca’s chair, she wanted to dash from the chair to the door, but her limbs were still in too much pain to move, and she knew she’d crash to the floor immediately if she tried. Not only that, but her head was swimming, and any form of movement—even breathing—left her nauseous. Running and having to stop to vomit would just get her caught. She’d have to wait for her strength to return and watch for an opening.
She waited for the tape to come over her mouth, but it didn’t. Instead, he taped something to the back of her chair. Afterward, he went to stand guard at the door, his back to the wall. If the door opened, it would cover his person, almost as if he wanted to be able to hide his presence from someone coming in.
A few minutes later, there was a quick three-tap knock at the door, and Rory reentered. Mannix left the room, leaving her alone with Rory, who checked the water bottle. “Drink some more. It seriously will help. I have zero time for debate, so I’m going to talk, and you’re going to listen, or even I won’t be able to help you. I’m going to leave your hands unbound, but when that door opens, you need to put them behind the chair and pretend they’re tied up. I won’t rebind your feet, either, but in a minute or two, you’re going to have to put them back in place, and I’ll have to curl the zip ties back around them so that it looks like you’re still tied up.
“If something happens to the three of us, there’s a knife taped to the back of your chair. Use it. He won’t hesitate to kill you because right now, we are the only reason he’s keeping you alive.”
“What the hell is going on, Rory?”
“You’re in a lot of shit, Frankie.”
“Really, dumbass? What the fuck? I wasn’t bothering any of you.”
“Well, that’s not exactly true, is it? All of our hard work, making sure you and Michael got away, and you go and undo it all by spotting our father in a restaurant. Million to one odds, Frankie, what the hell?”
He gave her a few more sips from the water bottle as he talked. “You might have skated by, but no. Miss Inquisitive had to go and start trying to gather up all kinds of information on the family. You’ve been lucky until recently. We’ve got digital booby traps set on all kinds of computer searches, and had we seen it first, we would have let them go through. Unfortunately, Father saw them first, and he lost his shit.”
The disgust in Rory’s voice was evident. “Fucker’s lost all sense of reality. He’s always been a bit unhinged, but in the last three years, he has become a complete fucking psychopath. His sources told him about you cozying up to Sequeira. Somehow, he thought that meant you were coming our direction, even though you really weren’t. Fortunately, Father underestimated your skill, and your operation finished successfully, but decided as long as you were here, he’d finish the job anyway.”
“Well, clearly, the plan to take me back to New York and welcome me back into the family changed when he took a knife to my side.”
“Yeah. He decided you were too much of a liability since you’d taken down his connection. He’d finally accepted you wouldn’t come back willingly, even if under duress. Removing you would eliminate any possible threat, and maybe it would scare Michael back into the fold. On top of that, he’s got someone inside the FBI helping him out with you. Someone he’s got dirt on. He put together his plan, murdered the Sequeira girl, got you assigned to this case, and put his plans in motion.”
She already knew the answer, but she needed to hear it said aloud. “He’s responsible for all three women who were killed?”
“Yes. He was using them as cover for your murder. Another sign he went around the bend. A fucking bullet or a mugging gone wrong wasn’t enough. He had to get complicated.”
Her heart was breaking. It had been bad enough that the women had senselessly lost their lives, but to be the victim of her father’s twisted obsession over her and Michael made it worse.
“And the three of you? You’re not part of the Dirty McCabe legacy?”
She watched Rory grind his teeth together. “Make no mistake, Francesca. We are not good men. We are everything people think we are and more, but we’ve spent our lives protecting you and Michael so that you could escape it.”
“You ruined our careers with the PD,” she pointed out. “That’s hardly protecting us.”
“Yes, but it got you out of Father’s clutches, didn’t it? At least for a while. And anyone who knew either of you would know that those rumors were bullshit, no matter what the brass was spinning in the gossip mill.” Rory’s attention was diverted by something. He paused as if listening to someone talk. Tapping his ear, he replied, “Copy that. I’ll get her situated.” He tapped his ear again. “Dear old Dad is on his way. Time to get you back into position.”
He took the water bottle from her and tossed it in a desk drawer. Kneeling at her feet, he wrapped the zip ties back around her ankles so that her feet looked bound, the open cuts in the back. Then he positioned her arms behind her, making sure to allow her to feel where the knife was strapped.
“Don’t believe anything we say to him. We’ll sound like we’re with him, but know we will do everything to get you out of here. If shit goes bad, run. Don’t look back. If you have to, use the knife. Seriously, little sister, don’t wait for us, don’t try to help us. Just go. Evans will protect you.”
“Ethan?”
He ignored her question. He whispered his final words to her. “We’re so very proud of what you’ve become. We love you, girl. Be happy.” He kissed the top of her head, then moved behind her to lean his butt on the desk and take on the persona of a guard.
A few minutes later, two shadows passed the window bay that looked out from the office into the hangar. The first person through the door was totally unexpected. Special Agent in Charge Ortiz. Right behind her was Oisin McCabe.
“You see, my dear Stella? Safe and sound. Not cooperative but undamaged, as I promised.” He looked to Rory. “Is the jet ready?”
He grunted. “Fionn’s got it under control.”
“You’re not going to get away with this, Father.” Francesca glanced at Ortiz. “What does he have on you?”
Ortiz was pale and sweating. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, Frankie. I had no choice.”
“There’s always a choice. The choices may be shit, but I never pegged you to make the choice of advantage over what was right. But you’re right, it doesn’t matter anymore. Knowing my father, he plans to kill you. If by some miracle that doesn’t happen, you’ll be going to prison for a long time.”
“You are so right, Frankie,” her father said. Before she could even yell out a warning, Oisin had raised his hand, a gun at the ready, and the crack of the bullet being discharged happened almost simultaneously with Ortiz’s figure dropping to the floor. Blood sprayed back upon him, but he didn’t react. Rory was correct. He was a psychopath.
Some of the spray from the bullet passing through Ortiz’s skull at point-blank range hit Francesca. Bits of bone, brain matter, and blood hit her face, but other than a natural recoil to the noise, she schooled her expression as best she could. Showing her father any sort of emotion would only cater to whatever he was trying to accomplish. Not reacting was also a risk. It might anger him if she didn’t react as he wanted her to, but she’d take a bullet before she’d agree to whatever madness he proposed. Given her circumstances, she didn’t think she had long before she got a bullet either way since he’d already tried to kill her once.
“Frankie, why did you have to be so stubborn? Why couldn’t you just fall in line with your brothers? We’ve had a long, illustrious career within the PD. We run the city. No one gets in our way. You could have had New York at your feet if you’d just done what you were told. You would have wanted for nothing. A life of total luxury. Your pick of husbands.”
“You’ve never understood what I wanted out of life. I did not want to be one step from an organized crime family’s principessa.”
“But that’s what you were, my dear, whether you wanted it or not. That’s what you’ve never understood.”
“If that’s the case, why let me go through the academy?”
“What better example of our power in the city than to see yet another McCabe turned? Especially the notoriously perfect Francesca. If I could turn the imperious rule-follower, everyone would know no one was safe. And with you in our midst, Michael would have folded easily.”
“I won’t become your puppet. You’ll have to kill me. As for Michael, all of you have always underestimated him. You’ll be forced to kill him, too, when he refuses to comply.”
Oisin sighed. “Yes, I’m afraid I do have to follow through on that, but Michael will have to wait. I would have preferred to leave your boyfriend out of it. A true hero, that one, but… he of all people would have understood the importance of sacrifice. Leave it to my only daughter to prove to be too stubborn even for my persuasion. Because of that, things are a bit too hot in San Antonio for your death to occur here, so we’re going to take a little trip and take care of things along the way. Can’t investigate a murder that happens in a totally unrelated place, now, can they?”
It became crystal clear to Francesca that if she got on that plane, she was doomed. If her older brothers were to be believed, she was going to have to fight her way out, and either she would die, her father would, or maybe both of them. Both would certainly not walk out of this alive.
Oddly, she felt no regret at walking out of this building with his blood on her hands. Maybe it was always meant to end this way. Maybe the only way to break the McCabe legacy was for all of them to go down. Although, it seemed like her brothers were something else entirely. Hopefully, taking care of her father would be enough for the cycle to break. If she was the sacrifice to make that happen, then so be it.
If she managed to survive, her career would be over. She wouldn’t be able to go back to the bureau, even if killing him were justified. The scandal would be too great to recover from, and no one would trust her. Would that include Ethan? She would hate it if it destroyed what they seemed to have started, but sometimes life was unfair, and you didn’t get what you wanted.
Her fingers stretched to reach the knife on the back of the chair, careful not to move anything but her fingers. She had managed to secure the knife in her grasp when there was the sound of gunfire in the hangar outside. Oisin’s focus was not distracted, although he obviously heard the commotion because he ordered Rory out of the room to see what was going on. “Take care of whatever that is,” he snarled.
Rory said nothing as he exited the room, but as he went out the door behind their father, he risked one more glance at Francesca, giving her a nod. Then he drew his gun and closed the door behind him.
“We can stop pretending, Frankie,” her father told her.
“Pretending?”
“Pretending you’re still bound to that chair. Pretending your brothers haven’t provided you with a weapon to defend yourself. They’ve been protecting you since you were a child.”
Panic set in. How did he know? “How do you figure? They were beyond cruel to me my whole life. I was a girl. A waste of space. They bullied me throughout my entire school years. They beat the shit out of me on a regular basis, terrorized me so that I slept with one eye open. They threw obstacle after obstacle in my way at the academy. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re the ones who spread the lies that I was sleeping with every city official in order to protect your corruption. Why in the world would you think they would be protecting me?”
Anger blazed through the McCabe patriarch’s entire being. “They were cruel to you to train you to stand up to me! They taught you to be immune to insults and lies and scandal! They made you stronger than any boy and taught you to fight so that you could take out men their size! Made it so you could stand up to anyone, no matter their level of authority! Everything they did was to make you stronger and able to withstand me! They’ve been useful to me up until now, but don’t think they won’t pay for that,” he snarled.
Frankie brought her arms forward, the knife in her hand as she stood. “If you’re going to kill me, you need to do it now. Those gunshots mean that the FBI is here and has found you. You’re not leaving this hangar alive, whether by my hand or theirs. We both know you won’t go quietly.”
He raised his hand with the gun. “It didn’t have to be this way, Frankie. You could have just come home like you were supposed to.”
The shattering of glass combined with two gunshots. The first shot came from Oisin McCabe and hit Francesca high in the chest, sending her crashing back into the chair, which then tipped onto its back. The second shot came from outside the office, both shattering the window and killing Oisin McCabe. She lay on the ground looking up at the lighting in the ceiling. Her last thought before slipping into unconsciousness was how Ethan would take her death.