Chapter 6
“Dude, stay away. You know it’s not gonna end well,” Harlan commented. “It didn’t the first time round and now she’s draggin’ you into some shit. I’m just tellin’ ya it won’t go well.”
Raider gripped the phone. His buddy was not wrong. He hadn’t seen Piper in five long years, and recovering from the soul-crushing agony when she’d kicked him out hadn’t been pretty.
“She’s in trouble.” Raider knew it as sure as he was standing in the deli. Piper was in serious trouble. He’d looked around when he met her in the parking lot and when she had been behind the strip mall. She had no backup. If someone had been there for her, he’d have spotted them. He was trained to spot all kinds of things and baby girl was flying solo. His gut tightened.
“All the more reason to just stay the hell away. Brother, it took you a long time to get over her. I’m still not sure you’re there. Look at your dating history. You never date anyone longer than a few months. Getting involved with Piper isn’t gonna make things better.”
The guy behind the counter yelled out his name and Raider stepped up to grab his sandwich. There weren’t many people left on this side of the island, but they all seemed to be in that little shop. Misery likes company and these people all needed to commiserate. Of course, it was one of the few shops still open and providing service. The only other place he’d noted that was open for business seemed to be the convenience store. At least on this stretch of road.
“I hear what you’re saying but I can’t leave her out there on her own.” He walked out of the store and slid behind the wheel of his borrowed pickup.
“What happened to her people? Shouldn’t they be with her? Can’t she ask them for help?”
All legit questions and he’d had the same ones. “I guess not. It’s weird. I hear what you’re saying and you’re right. I know you’re right.”
“But…” Harlan sighed, “You’re not gonna listen to me are you?”
“No.”
“Dammit, Raider. You never listen with the right head.”
“This isn’t about that,” he retorted.
“Yeah. Sorry.’ Harlan’s tone conveyed his remorse far better than his words. “Listen, keep me in the loop. I’ll fill the others in. You need us, you call.”
“Will do. I gotta go. Thanks, buddy.” He clicked off the call and answered the incoming one. “Hey, Hawk, thanks for getting back to me.” He was relieved to hear Jace Hawkins voice.
“No worries. What’s up?”
Raider hated to ask but he figured he would make it up to the guy somehow. “I need a favor.”
“Shoot.”
“I think a friend of mine is in trouble. It’s kind of a long story but my guess is she needs some help. I’ve heard a lot of good things about you and the Brotherhood Protectors, and I was wondering if you can backstop a cover for me quick time.”
There was a beat of silence and then. “Sure. What’s the name?”
“Rick Sinclair. I need to be an explosives expert. Military trained. You can use my real background for the rest of it. You can look me up.”
“Okay. I’ll have something up shortly. Fair warning… It won’t hold up if they dig too much but if they give it a cursory glance then it should be fine.” Hawk paused then asked, “Is there any point in asking what’s going on?”
“To be honest, I’m not sure just yet. I… I just need to make sure my friend is okay.” He didn’t want to lie to Hawk but he wasn’t up to getting into the details. “Talk to Harlan if you need some more background. He can fill you in.”
“Okay. We’ll have you up and running in thirty.”
“Man, I can’t thank you enough for this.”
“No worries. You guys are helping us out. This is nothing. A few keystrokes. You let me know if you need anything else.”
“Thanks, buddy.” Raider hung up. The knots in his stomach eased ever so slightly. Now he just had to hope that whoever was running the check was lazy or they were desperate. Either way worked for him.
Two hours later his phone rang again. “’Lo?”
“Raider,” Piper’s voice came through the phone. “Meet us back at the pharmacy parking lot.” She disconnected the call.
It was hard to tell with that short exchange, but he was pretty sure she was scared. Whatever was going on had her rattled. He glanced at the seat beside him. He’d bought a few burner cells and a few other things. Never hurts to be prepared. He tucked one cell in his boot and the other in the leg pocket of his black cargo pants. Chances were good, he’d lose the one in his pocket. The thug with Piper looked like the controlling type, but with any luck, he’d hopefully keep the one in the boot. He added a short-bladed dagger to his other boot and then got out of the truck. He walked across the parking lot.
The same guy from earlier got out of the van but Piper stayed behind the wheel. She’d kept her sunglasses on but she was biting her lip. He’d always hated when she did that because it meant she had doubts. Or afraid. Neither was ever a good sign.
“Get in,” the man said.
“No.” Raider wasn’t stupid. Once he got in the van all negotiation was over and chances were good he’d be stuck in whatever mess Piper was involved in. He wanted to at least get a feel for it first.
“Get in the fucking van,” the man growled.
“Do I look like a fuckin’ idiot to you?” Raider countered. “You tell me what the job is and what you need me to do in detail. If my gut doesn’t tell me I’m fucked, then we’ll talk about transportation. And I need to know if you’ve got the right equipment. Also, I want to know what I’ll be paid.”
The man glared at him, his jaw working. He squinted around the parking lot but it was much emptier than it had been earlier. People were leaving. The air was thick with ash. Raider had taken his bandana off to eat and regretted not putting it back on. The volcano wasn’t letting up and it wasn’t looking good. Houses had already been lost to the lava flow.
“I need you to blow a hole in a floor. We’re coming up from underneath. You need to do it as quietly as possible, not too much noise or vibration in the floor. There’s something that could…break if it rattles. You’ve got about fifty feet between the hole and the target that needs to stay solid. Think you can do it?”
Raider ran quickly through his options as he stared at the thug. They were for sure robbing the bank. If the vault door felt too much vibration it would automatically go into lockdown mode and they’d need something special to unlock it.
Raider cocked his head. “Depends. What’s the floor made of?”
The guy looked at him and shrugged. “Fuck if I know. What are floors usually made of? I got a guy who can answer those questions. So you in?”
He still hesitated. His gut was telling him this was bad news. The whole thing was screaming at him to run in the opposite direction but then he glanced at Piper, still sitting stone-faced behind the wheel. Shit. “How much?”
The man looked at him. “Fifty K.”
Raider shook his head. “Nope. You’re doing something big and this is last minute which means you lost your original guy. A hundred K.”
The guy grunted. “Double? No fucking way.”
“No deal then. See ya.” Raider turned to go.
“Fine, fucking one hundred thousand but you better be fucking amazing at this or I’ll kill you myself.”
Raider turned back, his stomach doing a flip-flop. The speed this guy agreed to doubling the amount was bad news. “Fine.”
“Get in the fucking van.”
Raider shrugged. “I need to grab some clothes. I’ll meet you?—”
“Get in the fucking van. We’re doing this tonight. You don’t need clothes.”
Another bad sign. “Okay,” he started toward the van. “What do I call you?”
“Denlo.”
Raider climbed into the vehicle’s cargo space. The van rocked as Denlo hoisted himself into the front passenger seat. Piper put it in gear and they rolled out of the parking lot. The entire drive was spent in silence. They didn’t go far, only about three miles but it took a while. The roads were still lousy with people leaving and more and more avenues of retreat were being closed off because of the lava flow.
Piper pulled into the parking lot of a no-tell motel and parked outside of a room on the back side of the sleazy place. She and Denlo got out. Raider followed suit.
“Follow her,” Denlo growled. Raider said nothing as he followed Piper into a room. Two other men came out of a room two doors down and joined them. Piper closed the door and took a seat on the bed. The two men sat in the chairs at a small table.
Denlo turned to Raider and said, “Put your hands on the wall.”
“What?”
“On the wall,” Denlo demanded.
Raider turned and did what he was told but swore as Denlo body searched him. “Take it easy, buddy. I’m not carrying.”
Denlo pulled out the cell from his pocket but didn’t bother with the boots. Raider made a mental note; Denlo hadn’t been formally trained. In some ways that was good, but it also meant that he might do something really fucking dumbass at the wrong moment. Always a happy thought.
Denlo plopped down at the table. Raider turned and leaned on the wall. “So tell me details. What’s the set up?”
Denlo nodded so the one called Baker started talking. “We’re going in through the floor of the bank. There’s an empty store beside it. They used to be one space so the storage beneath the store extends under the bank. We want to come up through the floor close to the front. The vault is in the back corner.”
Raider nodded. “What’s the floor made out of?”
“The usual. Concrete and then a subfloor and then padding and carpet.”
“You sure it’s not reinforced?” Raider asked. It would be really unusual for the floor of a bank not to be reinforced with steel.
“It’s not,” Denlo supplied. “We know the guy who redid the space when the bank moved in. He did the walls but not the floor. Deemed too expensive. It’s just a small local bank.”
Raider nodded but he was trying to sort through what he’d just heard. Why the hell would they rip off a small local bank in a strip mall? There wouldn’t be much money in that. Not with it being closed from the volcano.
He refocused and dropped into the role of an explosives specialist. “What kind of equipment do you have?”
Denlo gave him the rundown. C4 and blasting caps with all the wiring he’d need.
Raider asked, “Where are the plans?”
Baker looked at Denlo but didn’t say anything.
Raider’s shoulders tightened. “You have plans, right? Blueprints? You’ve gotta have blueprints for a job like this.”
Baker cleared his throat. “Ah, the blueprints we have don’t seem to match what’s going on.”
“What?” Raider’s stomach dropped. “You can’t pull a job like this if you don’t have the right blueprints. Jesus, what is this? Amateur hour?” He glared at Piper. “What the fuck did you get me into, girl?” He had to play it right. If he didn’t Denlo would get suspicious. Piper didn’t meet his gaze. Another bad sign. This whole thing was a cluster fuck and he’d let her drag him into it.
Denlo pulled his gun out. “You need to fucking calm down. You said you can do the job so you’re gonna do the job.”
Raider looked at Baker and Wells. They were both staring at the table. What a shit show. “How do you know the blueprints don’t match up?” Maybe he could figure something out.”
“I’ve tried checking the walls but things aren’t where they should be. The power isn’t where it should be and neither is the plumbing. I should be able to detect the piping and the wiring when I run a Walabot over the walls and it’s not there.”
The advanced tool for seeing what was behind walls was great, but not nearly as good as some of the military’s top-secret tech. Raider grunted. “Let me see.”
Everyone remained silent as Baker left the room. He was back in under a minute with a messily folded set of blueprints. He laid them out on the bed. Raider leaned over to study them. “Show me what you’re talking about.”
Baker pointed out the shared wall with the store and talked about what he should be able to find there. “But none of it is there.”
Raider studied the plans. “Has anyone been inside? Do we know for sure that the vault is in the back corner?”
“Yes,” Denlo nodded, “I’ve been in and it’s in the back corner. The tellers are in front and there are offices off to the side.”
“But you can’t see this wall from the front of the bank, right?” Raider asked as he tapped a line on the prints.
Denlo conceded that it was blocked by the offices.
“Well, fuck me. We really don’t know what the hell is going on. Shit.” He stared at the blueprints some more.
“Can’t you just blow a hole here in the front and we can go up?” Denlo demanded.
Raider stared at him. “I can blow a hole here in the front,” he pointed to the plans but then you’re gonna be too close to the front window and even a small blast could shatter it. We need to come up behind the line of teller stations but over to this side.” He turned to Baker. “Let me see the basement blueprints.”
Baker put those on the other bed. Raider scanned them for a minute, then turned and looked at the bank’s blueprints once more. “We’ve got a serious problem.”
“No, we don’t,” Denlo growled as he stood up. “You need to blow a hole and make this fucking work.”
Raider straightened. “I can blow a hole but the storage space isn’t deep enough to do it where we’d be in the clear which means in order for me to blow the hole and not break the front window or make the vault door vibrate too much, I have to blow a hole here.” He pointed to an office space.
Baker bent over and looked at both sets of blueprints. “Shit, he’s right. The storage space isn’t deep enough. He’s gotta blow it in the office.” Baker blanched as he said the words.
“So blow it in the office. What’s the big deal?” Denlo argued.
“You ever been in a bank office?” Raider asked. “They’re fucking tiny usually. If I blow a hole in this one and there’re chairs or a desk or a filing cabinet above, it’s gonna come crashing down on top of us and make a hell of a noise.”
“He’s right,” Wells agreed. “It could also set off the vault door if it was a big enough piece of furniture.”
Denlo glowered. “I don’t give a shit what you have to do but you’re gonna get us into that bank tonight.” He gestured with his gun. “You two, back to your room.” Baker and Wells looked at each other and Baker gave a little shrug. They headed out the door.
Denlo turned to Piper. “He’s in here with you. If he does anything stupid or tries to leave, it’s on you and I’ll kill him and you. Understand?”
Piper nodded and Denlo went out the door. She turned and held up her hand to Raider to stop him from saying anything. She cocked her head. Raider listened. Denlo entered his room and turned the TV on and then it sounded like he was making a phone call because Raider could hear him talking but couldn’t hear what he was saying.
Piper sat down at the table. “I’m sorry for dragging you into this, Raider, but I didn’t have a choice.” She kept her voice low and barely glanced at him.
Raider remained anchored in the middle of the room between the double beds. “How come you didn’t have a choice? What happened to the original explosives guy? And where the hell is your backup? I didn’t see any in the pharmacy parking lot. They may be ATF but I can usually spot them a mile away.”
Piper refused to hold his gaze. Raider’s chest knotted. “You don’t have backup, do you?”
She shook her head once.
Raider swore. “Does your boss at the ATF even know you’re here?”
“I told him before I got on the plane but there was no time for him to do anything. I’ve only been here a day. I’m assuming he’s putting things in place but…” she shrugged.
“You’ve got no idea and no way to check.” Raider wanted to put his fist through the wall. This whole op was impulsive and reckless, not like the Piper he knew. She was a great agent. Solid, knew when to push and when to back off. Yeah, she might have pushed a little hard sometimes, but she had never been one to risk her life. He stared at her.
It would be so easy to yell at her, tell her how stupid this all was, that their lives were in danger because of her stupidity and her ego. But he held back. Being out of control now wasn’t gonna help either of them. In his gut, he knew there had to be more to the story, a lot more.
He crossed his arms over his chest and took a steadying breath. “Why did you get on the plane?” There had to be a reason. Piper might be impulsive, but he could not recall a time when she’d been totally reckless. There was always a method to her madness.
“The Snake.”
“What?” Raider asked completely confused.
“The guy who’s running this job. I call him the Snake,” she said with a sigh. “He has a Snake tattoo on his arm. I’ve never seen his face, but I’ve seen the tattoo.”
Raider frowned. This was personal for her. “Out with it, Piper.”
She bit her lip and swallowed. “My unit was on a stake-out, watching this warehouse. We knew guns were coming in, a big shipment and we knew that the son of a bitch running the op was going to be there to oversee the deal. There had been some issues and he wanted to reassure the buyers that everything would run smoothly. At least that’s what our guy on the inside said. He was one of the buyers. He’d raised a fuss since the last deal had gone south so the Snake was going to be there, and we were finally going to be able to put a face on this guy.”
She glanced down at the table and then back at Raider. “They were late. Our guy was there with the buyer but no guns and no shot caller. It didn’t help that Assistant Director Fielding was there. I have no idea why he thought it was a good idea for him to be in on the raid but there was not much anyone could do about it. Added pressure on everyone you know? Anyway, the buyers were thinking of leaving when a van arrived. They drove directly into the warehouse, and we lost visual.”
She stopped talking again and Raider’s stomach sank to his knees. He knew what was coming. “My partner, Marta, and I infiltrated the warehouse to try to get a visual. We were hiding behind some pallets and trying to establish a line of sight when shots were fired. I went left to another set of pallets and peeked around. The van’s back door was open and the shooter was hunkered down with an assault weapon. The buyers and our guy didn’t stand a chance.
“The van door closed, and they started out. I stood up and fired until I was empty. Marta did the same thing except someone started shooting back from somewhere inside the warehouse. I took cover behind the pallets again and made my way towards Marta. I was about twenty feet away when I saw her. She was crouched down behind a stack of lumber. This guy came out of nowhere. He was wearing a jacket with a hoodie underneath like the dockworkers do and he had the hood up. He stood in front of Marta and said, ‘Tell your people to stop harassing me or I’m gonna kill you all one by one.’ Then he shot her in the stomach. The sleeve of his jacket rode up a couple of inches and I saw the snake tattoo.”
She swallowed hard again. “There was nothing I could do since I was out of ammo so I just held Marta until help arrived. They were there so fast, but not fast enough. She died in my arms.” Piper finally met Raider’s gaze straight on. “I want him, Raider. I want his fucking head on a platter. He killed Marta. He needs to go down.”
Raider cursed up a storm in his head. This had been a fool’s errand from the beginning. Remembered hurt and pain were etched in his ex-wife’s face and her expression made his chest tighten even more. He moved involuntarily, like he wanted to go over and hug her. Tell her it was all going to be okay. That they’d get this Snake and that would make it all better, but the truth was, it wouldn’t.
He stayed put between the beds. “Nothing will bring Marta back and you getting yourself killed won’t fix it either. I know you know this so why did you get on the plane?”
“It’s my fault Marta is dead. I said we should try and get a visual on the inside of the warehouse. If we’d stayed outside, Marta would still be alive.”
And there it was. The real reason Piper got on the airplane. It was still unlike her though. He couldn’t shake his belief that there was still a missing piece of the puzzle. Why did she push to go into the warehouse in the first place? “You don’t know that,” he said finally. “Did Marta fight you on going in?”
Piper shook her head. “No, she was game. Marta was always up for anything.”
“Then she knew what she was getting into and the only one responsible for her death was the guy who shot her.” A thought hit him and he froze. “You’re not on suspension, are you?” Jesus, did the ATF decide she was responsible? They’d investigate for sure in that situation.
“No. They said what we’d done was within the parameters of the op. There was no way we could’ve known there was a shooter inside the warehouse. We had it under surveillance and somehow he got by us. They’re still investigating that part.”
Piper ran a hand over her face and Raider instantly felt his groin tighten. He’d always been a sucker for a woman in trouble, but Piper was another class all together. She was so strong in her own right that when she showed vulnerability it was like someone turned up the wattage on his protective instincts by a thousand percent. She was still his kryptonite. He still wanted her so badly his balls ached.
“Alright. Okay. What happened to the other explosives guy,” Raider instructed as he quietly searched the drawers.
“Vardis. That’s the only name I knew him by. He apparently had asthma. The ash seemed to trigger some kind of attack that his inhaler couldn’t control. His breathing got really labored. Last night when we were leaving the store and I bumped into you, Vardis was in the van semi-conscious. When we left, Denlo made me drive into the rainforest area until I couldn’t go any further and then he and Wells and Baker carried Vardis into the woods. I have no idea what they did with him. They came back maybe fifteen minutes later without him, and we left.”
Raider nodded. “Do you know where you were?”
Piper hesitated. “Sort of? I can guess an area. If I had a map, I might be able to find it or at least narrow it down but at this point…” she shrugged.
Raider bent down and pulled a cell out of his boot.
“Seriously? You might have mentioned that,” Piper chided.
He ignored her comment as he walked over and turned on the TV. Then he powered up the cell and strode into the bathroom. The window was on the small side and they might have been able to get out except some asswipe had nailed it shut. Opening it would make a lot of noise which would alert Denlo. He put the option on the back burner. He’d found nothing else in the room that would be useful but at least he had the knife in his boot.
He punched in a number. “Kian,” Raider said softly as the other man answered.
“Dude, I heard you ran into your ex. Tough break and just when I was starting to like the Big Island,” his friend commented.
“Yeah,” Raider said as he ran a hand through his hair. “Listen, I need you to do something. There’s a guy in the rainforest and he needs medical help. I’m not even sure he’s alive but you gotta go find him.”
“Shit man, what the hell does Piper have you mixed up in?”
“It’s a long story and I can’t talk much.”
Kian whistled. “That bad? Do you need us to pull you out?”
Raider stared at Piper. He wanted her to get out, to be safe but he knew if he blew this op now she’d just go put herself into some other wild situation that would be just as bad or worse, and he might not be there to help her. He gritted his teeth. “Not just yet.”
“Raider, man, are you sure? Your head’s not so good around that woman. Me and Waylen can come save your ass like we always do.”
“Funny.” Raider shook his head. Even now Kian was giving him a hard time. “I just need you to find the guy.”
“Seriously,” Kian said, “if you need help or whatnot, just say the word. I don’t like that she’s got you mixed up on something we don’t know shit about.”
“Thanks, I’ll reach out if I need you.”
“Fine. Where the hell am I going? And what was wrong with this guy?” Kian asked.
“Asthma that the ash set off.”
Kian grunted. “Lot of that going around.”
“Here’s Piper. She’s gonna tell you where she thinks the guy is.”
Piper took the phone and immediately launched into the description of the route she took. When she finished, Kian must have asked some questions because she repeated some things and tried to add more detail. Then there was a long silence at which point her face flushed and then lost all its color. She handed the phone back to Raider and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.
“What did you say to her?” Raider demanded.
“Shit that needed saying. I’ve got this. I’ll see if I can find the guy. You call if you need help. If none of us hear from you in twenty-four hours, we’re coming for you.”
“Deal.” Raider hung up.
He handed the phone to Piper. “Call your people. If we’re gonna break into a bank, I’d like to not go to jail.”
Piper reluctantly took the phone and then went into the bathroom. She turned on the shower and closed the door.
Raider shook his head. Twenty-four hours and this should all be over...if Denlo didn’t decide to kill them all first. This job gave him all kinds of the willies. The whole thing didn’t quite add up. Twenty-four hours and he’d be back to enjoying retirement. Or he’d be six feet under. Neither choice appealed to him but bored was a hell of a lot better than dead.