Chapter 37
Zane
I leaned against the car as we waited for Jordy to find where the BMW had gone.
O’Connor had composed himself and sat in passenger seat of my Cayenne.
Lucas motioned me over, so I strode to him.
“What happened?” he asked in a hushed tone, nodding toward my car.
“He can’t take fast driving,” I explained. “A complete lightweight. I don’t like him, and—”
“You’ve made that obvious,” he said dryly.
“I can tell he’s going to slow me down when it comes to assaulting the target. We could still trade, and you could take him.” I made it sound like a joke, but meant it seriously. It was worth a try.
Lucas’s eyes bored into me. “In this job, you have to put emotions like that aside and work with whoever you’re assigned. The job requires teamwork, not selfishness.”
Constance nodded.
“Copy that, Boss.” After that last comment, I felt about two feet tall.
His message was crystal clear. I might not like O’Connor, but trying to pawn him off on somebody else was selfish of me.
It hurt that I hadn’t seen that. Being called selfish was an insult to any SEAL. We were all about teamwork.
Lucas grasped my shoulder. “With good teamwork, one plus one is more than two. You know that. It’s your job to support him as much as it is his job to support you.”
I nodded as I looked back at my car’s occupant. “Copy that.” Teamwork.
For the next ten minutes, I worried that we’d be too late, that I’d be too late, to save her. The worry ate an acidic hole in my gut as different images of a lifeless Peyton assaulted me. It couldn’t end like that, it just couldn’t.
A singular mission formed in my head. I would track down this strangler and make him pay for all that he’d put Peyton through. Mercy would not be in my vocabulary.
Constance came closer. “You know,” she said, joining me, leaning against Lucas’s Cayenne. “It doesn’t make sense.”
Her words broke my preoccupation with vengeance. “What?”
“He’s after her because she can identify him. That’s our theory, right?”
“Yeah.”
“He got into the office and knocked out O’Connor. Why didn’t he kill her when he had the chance?”
“You’re saying he needs her alive?”
She nodded. “Carrying somebody out of the building who’s either fighting, or knocked out, is super risky compared to just leaving the building before anybody knows there’s been a breach.”
Constance’s theory gave me hope. If he needed her alive, we had time, much more than I’d thought. “Let’s say that is the case. What does he need her for?”
“Just guessing,” she said. “He could want to know what she told the police. He might want to know if she was close enough to notice his bi-colored eyes. I mean that’s the only way we identified him here.”
I was chewing on that when Jordy’s voice came over the comms. “I’ve got a location.”
That jolted me upright. “Where?” Constance and I joined Lucas.
“I’m sending the location with an overhead satellite view. And you won’t believe who owns the building.”
“We’ll be en route as soon as we prep.” That was Lucas. “Get a drone in the air.”
“Roger that,” Jordy responded. “Don’t you want to know who the owner is?”
Lucas rolled his eyes. “Sure.”
I waved O’Connor over from his seat in the car. When he opened the door, I explained. “We’ve got a location.”
“His name begins with the letter F and he has an accent,” Jordy teased.
Lucas’s fist clenched. “I’m not in the mood, Jordy.”
“Okay,” the techie said. “The building is registered to a front company for Dmitri Yaroslavsky and his buddies.”
I didn’t recognize the name.
The sneer that took over Lucas’s face said he did. “I warned those assholes.”
“What’s going on?” O’Connor asked after he hoofed over.
I raised a finger to my lips to stop his chattering. “Who’s Yaroslavsky?”
“Sounds Russian,” O’Connor commented, ignoring my suggestion to be quiet.
“Dmitri took over the Russian mob after his father got arrested for taking part in Serena’s kidnapping. I’m going to make him regret getting involved in this. But that’s secondary.” He opened the back hatch of his Cayenne.
We gathered around as Lucas laid down his tablet and called Jordy on his phone, putting it on speaker. The picture on the tablet showed a series of large rectangular industrial buildings.
“It’s the middle building in the view I sent you,” Jordie said.
“All three are warehouses, unused for at least a year as far as I can tell. Two other vehicles were parked in front of the middle building when the BMW arrived. The image isn’t the greatest quality, but two guys exited the BMW and carried a third person into the warehouse. ”
“They drugged her again,” Lucas assured me before my mind could go to a worse alternative. “Jordy, how many other tangos?”
“I’ll check earlier video and let you know as soon as I can,” the techie replied. “Schematic of the building is on the way.”
Lucas’s tablet dinged, and he pulled it up. One large open office area up front with a series of small rooms off of it, and the large open warehouse area in the back.
“They’ll be holding her in one of these rooms,” Lucas said, tapping the front area on the diagram. “The side emergency exits are probably alarmed.”
I nodded.
He pointed at Constance. “So, we’ll hoof it from the street, and we’ll stealth enter through the back door here.
” He tapped the diagram next to the loading dock.
“While you two…” He motioned between me and O’Connor.
“Hold outside the front entrance. I’ll give you the signal to breach when we have made our way through the warehouse area to the back of the offices. Then we go in from both directions.”
“Engagement and kit?” Constance asked.
Lucas set the rules of engagement. “Minimal non-lethal force except if necessary to save the hostage.”
She nodded.
I would have preferred looser rules, but the call was Lucas’s.
He continued. “We can’t risk being stopped by civilians, so body armor under clothing and handguns only, plus stun of course, and no helmets.” It made sense. Rifles or helmets could easily trigger a call to the cops if we were spotted.
O’Connor shook his head. “You make it sound like we’re invading a small country.”
Lucas fixed his gaze on the detective. “Constance is ex-Secret Service. Zane and I are ex-military, and we’re successful because we operate with precision.”
O’Connor shrugged. “Okay.”
“Kit up and let’s get moving,” Lucas said.
I had to help O’Connor get his vest on and adjusted, then I checked my SIG, grabbed extra clips and a Taser from locked storage for me.
“Don’t I get one?”
“Have you qualified on the Taser?”
“How hard could it be?”
That was a no. “Handgun only. Just stay behind me and don’t draw your weapon unless I say so.”
He shook his head, pulled out his revolver, and spun the cylinder.
A six-shooter? I’ll take the fifteen-round capacity of my SIG any day. I grabbed the blanket.
“What’s that for?” the detective asked.
He really was clueless. “You’ll see.”
After closing up the Cayenne, O’Connor followed me to our assigned location while Lucas and Constance hustled around back.
“Entering,” Lucas said a minute later over comms. “We’ll be in position in three.”
Peyton
“That’s it,” the voice said. “Time to wake up.”
I coughed, blinking water out of my eyes to see the monster in front of me, and Baldy, to my right. I was wet from my head to my chest.
Baldy laughed. “I told you the water would work.” A short dude stood behind him.
Sitting up, I blew some from my nose and squinted. Now I could see the misalignment in Monster’s nose from where I’d kicked him in Atlanta.
“Stand her up,” Monster ordered.
Baldy yanked me up roughly, moving behind me and holding my arms.
His grip was tight, otherwise I would have immediately attacked the man in front of me, the bi-color eyed devil.
“Who are you?”
The monster’s face contorted. “I’ll be asking the questions,” he spat. Then, like he’d flipped a switch, he relaxed. “If you give me what I want, this will all be very civilized. You may call me Lucifer.” Yes, the devil himself. It fit.
Baldy and another short dude both chuckled. The short one had a scar down his cheek.
“Why are you doing this?” I tried. Because he is a psycho asshole, of course.
Lucifer grinned. “Because we never got our dinner and you have something I want.”
A skinny dude arrived at the doorway. “I can’t find it.”
Lucifer spun and screamed. “Yuri, what did I say about interrupting me?”
Yuri was a new voice, and the count was now six minimum in the goon squad, which was going to make escape a second time close to impossible. But, I’d taken down one goon, and who said I couldn’t do it again?
“Sorry,” Yuri said. “I thought you wanted to know.”
Lucifer took in a long breath. “What I want to hear is that you found that damned purse. We need that key. Now take Marco and Oleg with you. Go over every inch of the warehouse, and don’t come back without it. Boris, you too.”
Skinny Yuri disappeared along with the short guy with the scar.
Lucifer turned back to me. “Where is the purse?”
What the hell did he want with my purse? Whatever it was, I wasn’t helping because I stopped being valuable to him when he got what he wanted. “How would I know? Baldy here took it. Ask him.”
“Not me,” Baldy complained. “It was right over there when you left.”
“We know you took it when you went through the wall,” Lucifer growled.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The slap was immediate and so hard it whipped my head to the side.
Intense pain bloomed across my face, but I refused to give him the pleasure of seeing me react. “Yeah, I remember now.”
Lucifer’s eyes widened. He really wanted my purse.
“I threw it in the fireplace out there.”
Anger wrote itself across his face. “Stop with the jokes. There’s no fucking fireplace.” He lunged forward and punched me in the stomach.
All the air whooshed out of me as I doubled over. It took me a few seconds to straighten up. When I did, I spat the blood in my mouth at him, catching his chin.
He wiped it away and laughed. “That’s the spirit I like. We are going to have such a good time, dear Leighton.”
Dear Leighton, my ass. What I needed right now was a little explosive vomit to make clear what I thought of him.
“Or…” he continued. “I could let Vlad have a go at you with his blade.”
Zane, where are you? Please hurry. This is about to turn really, really ugly.
“Let’s stop playing games,” Lucifer said as he wiped his chin again on his sleeve. “I know she gave you my watch, and it wasn’t at your apartment, so it has to be in your secret stash. I want the key and the location.”
The watch. Realization hit me in a flash. I’d taken that watch with me to remember Cassie.
She had given me the fake Rolex as soon as she’d received it as a gift from this monster.
Even though it was a fake, I’d liked the idea of wearing a man’s watch, and the statement it made.
She said she would never become a target by wearing something that looked that flashy. She’d explained it was because her sister had been robbed and badly beaten while wearing an expensive watch.
Lucifer had to be the man who’d given Cassie the watch before she gave it to me. He just explained why my apartment had been trashed, but not what was so important about the stupid watch? Granted he was a psycho so thing didn’t have to make sense.
That first night, Buzzcut and Shorty had wanted the watch too, but at the time that fit with being robbed.
“I want it back,” he seethed.
“What watch?” I asked in my most earnest voice.
This time his slap came from the other direction.
I brought my head back to level and worked through the pain. “Thanks. Now my bruises will match.”
He made a fist but restrained himself. “I want the watch.”
“I have a Timex, but you wouldn’t want it. It died.”
“I’m not a patient man,” he growled. “We’ll see how many cuts it takes to loosen your tongue.”
“Go ahead and kill me if you want. I don’t know anything about a damned watch.” My only hope was to delay until Zane found me.
He got in my face as I squirmed against Baldy’s hold on me.
“I’m not going to kill you, my dear Leighton.
” He laughed, spittle landing on me. “Don’t you remember my promise?
We are going to have a very good time together.
” He grabbed my breast and roughly squeezed.
“A very good time. Then my Russian friends can sell you.”
This time, I didn’t miss when I spat in his face.
He swung and punched me on the side of the head. Black splotches appeared in my vision to go along with a splitting headache.
He backed up, wiped off his face. “I think it’s time we cut your shirt off.” He opened up a knife, and the scraps of my top fell to the floor.
I gasped when he placed the blade against my stomach.
Lucifer’s lip curved up.
Asshole.
“I think I’ll start here.” Lucifer grinned like the devil he was. “Last chance to tell me where my watch is.”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.” It had been at Zane’s house last time I’d seen it. But no way was I giving him anything he wanted because after that I was dead.
Vlad chuckled behind me.
I gritted my teeth, but it wasn’t enough to hold back my scream of pain as Lucifer drew the blade across my abdomen. It wasn’t deep, but it hurt like hell. I gathered in a breath. “I hope you cleaned that blade.”
Lucifer grinned and spat on it.
Double asshole.
“The watch,” he prodded. “I need the watch.”
“What watch?” I managed a laugh.