Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
EVERS
Ihad no idea what I was doing.
My plan was simple.
Trade me for Summer.
Get Summer somewhere safe.
Then get free, go after Tsepov, and alert the team it was time to move.
The first part was easy.
The rest was anything but.
They checked me for weapons and electronics. A wire, GPS tracker, anything that could give them away or come back to bite them in the ass. They found two of the tiny GPS trackers sewn into my clothes.
I wasn't wearing a wire, but they searched. Thoroughly. I couldn't help but imagine them searching Summer the same way. The thought of it made my blood boil.
I'd never had a problem keeping my head on the job. Summer was fucking with that big time.
She was safe, with my brothers and out of danger.
That should have been enough.
It wasn't.
I wouldn't be able to settle down until I saw her with my own eyes. Not a glimpse of her, hooded and in a torn nightgown. I needed to hold her in my arms, to look into her eyes and see all the way to her heart. I needed to know she was okay, know this disaster hadn't left permanent scars.
I'd never find out if I didn't get out of this fucking room.
So far, they'd searched me, hogtied me, and left me in a room on the second floor of Tsepov's temporary headquarters.
It might have been the same room where they'd held Summer.
I imagined I caught a faint trace of her lemon and flowers shampoo on the bedspread.
They hadn't bothered with a hood, shoving me face down in the back seat so I couldn't see where we were going. I got a glimpse of the neighborhood as the garage door closed behind us. Tightly packed McMansions on a cul-de-sac. Not exactly hidden away. Andrei Tsepov didn't do subtle.
Now that the first part of the plan was out of the way, on to the next step. Getting free. It had been a while since someone had restrained me, but in my line of business, it pays to be prepared. I could pick a set of handcuffs behind my back and break through zip tie cuffs in a flash.
They'd had a stroke of luck with that indestructible chair at Rycroft, especially considering the way they'd strapped me down, but they hadn't been as thorough here.
They'd used zip ties to secure my hands behind my back, then more to strap them to my ankles. Once that was done, they'd wrapped the whole mess with duct tape and waltzed out of the room thinking I wasn't a threat.
They were wrong about that. And they were wrong in thinking that a few zip ties and some duct tape would keep me immobilized.
First on the agenda, strip off the duct tape.
Duct tape is a funny thing. It's strong in its own way but designed to be torn easily. Ironically, the more expensive the brand of duct tape, the easier it is to tear a strip off the roll, making it very handy for jobs around the house but not a great option for securing someone's hands together.
Only people who watched too many movies thought duct tape worked like handcuffs. Fucking amateurs. Sergey Tsepov's crew never would have made this kind of mistake. Had Sergey's guys walked away when his far less competent nephew took over? That was a question for another day.
A little twisting and tugging on my wrists and I had a short tear in the tape. Once the duct tape was split, it was simply a matter of working at it until it fell apart. Strip by strip, I uncovered my wrists, then my ankles.
A few minutes later, I was surrounded by shreds of silver duct tape, leaving me the zip ties to deal with.
There are a few ways to break out of zip ties, and I'm an expert in all of them.
All of the methods boil down to one of two things: manipulating the connector of the zip tie or breaking the plastic itself.
I hadn't been able to do either when I was strapped to the chair at Rycroft. Not enough leverage to break the plastic, and my fingers had been too far from the ties to reach the connector. Here, hogtied on a bed, I had all the access I needed.
They'd been smart enough to trim the ends off the ties. If they'd left them, I could have bent them back, shoved them under the tab that held the zip tie closed, and stripped them open. It was a little harder to do with my fingernails but not impossible.
I went to work on my ankles first, freeing them easily. I couldn't reach the tab on the connector at my wrists, but now that my feet were free, I didn't need to. Rolling off the bed to stand, I leaned over, pushed my arms out behind me, and brought my bound wrists down hard on the small of my back.
The plastic zip ties cut into my already torn-up wrists but didn't break. I tried again, feeling the plastic strain but hold. It was a lot easier to do this from the front, but I was too impatient to take the time to work my wrists to the front of my body.
I leaned over again, bent my knees and pushed my arms back, hard, as far as I could. I brought them down in a sharp strike against the small of my back. With an audible crack, the plastic zip ties popped open, and my hands were free.
This was where things got tricky. I was alone in the enemy stronghold without a weapon, surrounded by armed men who wouldn't hesitate to shoot me.
I had two choices. I could escape the house undetected, get to Cooper, and go home. Or, I could get a weapon, find Tsepov, and hold him until the FBI was able to breach the house and take him in.
Guess which one I was going for.
I had to.
I wasn't my father.
Maxwell had gone into the family business for the money and the glory.
I like money. Who doesn't? And glory, well, glory is nice when it's deserved.
I wasn't here for money or glory.
At the heart of it, I like helping people. Doing the right thing. It means something to me. I joined the Army because I wanted to serve my country. I joined the Rangers because I wanted to learn how much I had to give. The answer was a hell of a lot.
I could no more walk out of this house and leave Tsepov behind than I could have left Summer in the hands of that monster. This wasn't about my family anymore. This was about the women who hadn't escaped him and his uncle before him. The children.
Fuck, I didn't like to think about what he was doing with the kids. I knew, I just didn't want to think about it. The guns and drugs were bad enough, but I might have let that slide. Not forever. Long enough to let us regroup and figure out where my father was.
The trafficking put things on a whole other level. None of us could walk away from that.
I had to get a weapon and find Tsepov. I had to signal Cooper. All simple things in theory, none easy to execute in reality. Tsepov's muscle wasn't overly bright, but they were strong, and fast, and armed. Very well armed.
At Rycroft, I'd noticed that aside from the semiautomatic rifles they'd held—overkill in a fucking living room—they'd all had a second handgun visible, and I would bet at least one more hidden away.
I leaned against the door to the room breathing steadily, clearing my mind until I could find my focus. The next few minutes would determine whether I lived or died.
Unless I was incredibly lucky, there was no way through the next step of the plan without loss of life.
None of these guys would let me disarm them.
They'd fight to the death to protect their boss.
If I wanted to walk out alive and help bring down Tsepov, I'd have to be willing to take this all the way.
I was. I didn't like killing. I didn't get off on having power over human life.
If I thought I could shoot to maim, I'd do it, but that only works in the movies.
In real life, if you pull your weapon, you'd better be prepared to use it.
Leaving the enemy alive is a great way to get yourself killed. I had no intention of dying. Not today.
Hands steady, breath even, mind clear, I crossed the room and opened the window opposite the door. I paused, waiting for an alarm to sound. Nothing. Even the rich cheap out on their alarms, rarely putting sensors on second-floor windows. Their mistake.
Leaving the window open, I crossed the room and eased open the door. The hall was empty. Several hours had passed since we'd made the trade. Plenty of time for Cooper and agent Holley to get set up. They'd be waiting for my signal.
They might have seen the window open, but without knowing their position, I couldn't depend on it. I had to get my hands on a phone. Voices drifted up the stairs at the far end of the hall. I stood completely still and listened.
There was no trace of movement on the second floor. No creak of the floorboards, no voices, no shift of a body in a chair. No murmur of television or radio.
I was the only one up here. That was inconvenient.
I could go back to the room and wait for someone to come check on me.
Possibly the smartest approach. It would give me time to get in position, and whoever came up wouldn't expect me to be free.
It also meant waiting for God knows how long, leaving Cooper and the FBI in limbo. Leaving Summer to worry.
Or, I could draw attention to the room and hope that only one or two of them came up to investigate. That still gave me the upper hand, but it put them on alert, and it could leave me too outnumbered to take control.
I'm good, but going empty-handed against two or more heavily-armed bodyguards is not my kind of odds.
Then there was the action hero option—go down the stairs and disarm the first goon I saw before going straight for Tsepov. Crazy, reckless, and almost guaranteed to get me killed.
Option number two it was.