22. Rishi
22
Rishi
W e found the warehouse almost by dumb luck.
We were maybe thirty minutes behind the van that had grabbed Cas on the 91, and Marcus was watching which three-plus lanes they went through. When they got off in Riverside, none of us were surprised, and I ignored how fast Rio was driving. In fact, it was taking all of my self control not to demand he drive faster. I knew Luis was behind us, and I also knew that Marcus and Captain Donovan were coordinating with the Riverside police and Sheriff’s departments.
Everyone had the van’s license plate number, along with a copy of an admittedly not great photo from the parking structure. There was a BOLO out on the van, and I could only hope that the fact that the kidnapping victim was a former LEO would sharpen the other officers’ vision.
We reached Riverside, got off at the same exit that the van did, and were hurriedly gassing up when my phone rang.
“Beat cop says he’s seen that van coming and going from a particular building several times,” Marcus said by way of greeting. “Coordinates incoming to all three of you. Donovan is fifteen out.”
Luis pulled up as I hung up the phone. “I got them,” he called over to us.
“Are we waiting for the cops?” Rio asked.
“No,” I said. “We’re going now.”
The warehouse was inconspicuous, looking just like every other one in this area. The only thing that varied were the gang tags and graffiti. I hoped that the officer who had called this tip in had the right building.
We left Luis’s car two blocks away, drove another block in the van, and parked. We walked in, blending well with other clusters of darker-skinned men hanging out on corners and near doors. We ignored them. We didn’t want to do anything to catch their attention.
Rio had a decent hood swagger and Luis and I simply followed him, heading toward the building and trying to look like we didn’t care what was around us.
We saw two cameras on the building, each keeping watch over one side. We stopped, leaning against the building itself, and Rio pulled out a baggie and a pad of rolling papers. My eyebrows headed north, but Rio casually rolled a joint, put it between his lips, lit it… and didn’t inhale.
He handed it to me after a minute. “Fake it,” he said under his breath . “I’m gonna take a leak,” he said in a normal tone, and he strolled off down the far side of the warehouse building.
I glanced at Luis, who looked shocked until I shot him a pointed look. I put the joint in my mouth a few times, then handed it over to Luis. He looked at it and did what we had done — but when he exhaled a plume of smoke came out and he bent double coughing.
I took the joint back and pretended to take another hit, whacking him on the back as I did so.
Rio came strolling back around the time Luis managed to straighten back up, eyeing him. “You didn’t tell me it was your first time,” he told Luis.
I barked a laugh, both because it seemed to be the right thing to do and because it was fucking funny.
Luis scowled at both of us, shaking his head when Rio offered him the pot again.
“Okay,” Rio said softly, while apparently very busy checking his phone. “Cameras on all sides, but there’s a door that looks like it’ll be fairly easy to open. Not sure what’s inside, but that’s a problem for future us. Everybody ready?”
We agreed, and I took one last pretend hit of the joint and crushed it out under my shoe.
Entry to the building seemed easier than it should, and that worried me. We found one guard. Rio took him out with a pistol butt to the back of the head. He bound him with a zip-tie and left him in the corner.
We looked at the labyrinth of hallways in front of us and looked back at each other. “I’m going to guess they don’t have those helpful directional signs like office buildings,” Rio muttered. He glanced at Luis, who looked a bit bloodshot but was still holding his gun steady. “You stay with me.”
We saw no one for a surprisingly long time, though they had to know we were there. I saw several cameras on our search, and then we turned one last corner and were met by four armed men. We hit the walls, taking cover, and Rio shook his head and stuck his arm around, firing off two shots blindly.
I heard a curse and a body fall, and I risked a look. One of the four was down, his shoulder bleeding. Two of the others were still covering our position while the third looked at his fallen comrade. I took a quick shot at one of the two covering us but missed, ducking behind cover just before they both shot back.
I looked at Rio, realizing that he had put his gun back into the holster, and my eyes widened when I saw that he was lighting a fuse attached to a round object around the size of a baseball. He tossed it around the corner, and the hallway that they were standing in began to fill with purple smoke almost the same color as the ball. Several more shots rang out, but soon they were all coughing hard, calling for a retreat.
Rio had put on a mask in the meantime and held two more out to Luis and I. The part of me that wasn’t terrified for Cas was admiring Rio’s preparedness. We put them on quickly and on a quiet count of three, we burst out and ordered the group of them down at gunpoint.
It was hard to see through the smoke, but I could make out two of them dropping, and I realized they were the ones who had been attempting to drag the one Rio had shot out of the smoke. The last one didn’t look back, running down the hallway.
Rio handed out more zip ties, and we quickly bound the hands of the two uninjured men behind their backs. The hands of the injured man we bound in front of him. He glared at us, and I met it unflinchingly. “If you make me regret this kindness, I will kill you,” I told him.
There was no way to know how many more men there were, but three less was good. Faintly behind us I heard shouts and wondered if that meant the police were here or if the sounds came from Fernandez’s reinforcements.
I saw a man with a gun and a tablet dash into a room ahead of us as two armed men ran out, and I growled. “That’s the one that took Cas,” I shouted at Rio, nodding at the one I recognized for certain.
I shot the man who had taken Cas, and the other watched his companion fall and looked at me with wide eyes.
“That’s right, you son of a bitch,” I snarled at him. I covered them while Rio zip-tied them too.
We stopped outside the door they had come from and listened.
“Where’s my daughter?” a voice inside roared, the rage unmistakable.
“Cover me,” I ordered, applying my boot to the door handle. Two solid kicks, and it flew open, with bullets narrowly missing us. “On the ground!” I bellowed, as Rio squeezed off a shot and the three of us fanned out into the room. I felt a red hot slice on my upper arm, but in the same moment, I saw Cas tied to a chair and covered in blood. Julio Fernandez held a blade to his throat.
I trusted Rio and Luis to handle whomever else was in the room, and I trained my gun directly between Fernandez’s eyes. “Drop the knife,” I said.
Fernandez laughed, his teeth bared in a feral expression. “No,” he said, slicing a thin line along Cas’s neck, just enough for the blood to well.
Cas sat rock still, the only movement he made was his chest rising and falling. His eyes flicked from me to Rio and Luis behind me.
Fernandez flipped the knife in his palm, taking it instantly from a slicing grip to a stabbing grip, and time slowed down as he raised his arm and–
“Drop your weapons!”
Booted feet pounded the concrete floor, and the room was flooded by men in tactical gear. One of them shot Fernandez, a clean bullet wound straight through his heart. He fell backward, knife clattering on the concrete when his hand hit the floor.
The rest of the officers covered Rio, Luis, and I as we quickly and carefully dropped our guns.
“Rishi,” Cas said, and my name sounded like a prayer.