Chapter 7
CHAPTER 7
September 30th, 2024
Leighton Watts
I ’d prepared myself for this. Waking up alone in Beckett’s bed.
Since I had a built-in alarm clock that went off at four thirty every goddamn morning, that was when I’d woken up today too. I’d gotten up to take a leak and bring my phone over to his room, and then I’d fallen back asleep in his arms. But now…at seven fifteen, he was gone.
I sat up in bed and yawned?—
“Ouch!” Oh my God, yeah, pain. Wow. Fuck. I exhaled shakily and shifted. I was gonna have to be very careful with how I sat down at class today.
I scrubbed my hands over my face, and then I looked around the room.
Oh. He’d left a note on the nightstand? I leaned closer, and I grinned sleepily.
You look damn good in my bruises. See you soon.
Talk about motivation for getting up. I headed straight into his bathroom and checked myself out in the mirror.
Holy crap.
I should probably not shower with the other guys for a while. Blotchy bruises from Beckett’s fingers were all over my hips, and I had some shadowy marks over my neck and jaw too, from his tight grips. I leaned closer, and fuck me if I didn’t see the faint outline of his teeth in my shoulder.
This was so fucking hot.
Now to go about my day not looking like I’d won a million bucks.
* * *
October 2nd, 2024
“What’re you smirking for, sir? This was fucking horrible.” I huffed and returned the gun case to Coach. “I never wanna see that gun again.”
He laughed and walked the case over to their walk-in gun safe. “You’re in luck. You’d need to become state police in Delaware or Connecticut to use this on a regular basis—but we still wanted to know. And what’re you bitchin’ about? You aced it.”
I didn’t care. I didn’t like that one at all. It’d felt all wrong in my hand, and it was beyond stupid to have a sidearm that only carried ten rounds. Also, I much preferred a 9mm.
I walked back to my stall and returned my gun to my holster. The Glock 19 we’d been given by Hillcroft was slowly but surely turning into my favorite, which made me feel like a cheater. My trusty SIG had been with me for almost five years now, but I didn’t play with it anymore, or carry it.
“So what do you have on the list for next practice?” I asked. I patted the side pockets in my pants to make sure I had my phone. “Am I ready to start playing with cartel boomsticks?”
Coach chuckled and opened the door for me. “I haven’t decided yet. But you should focus on your next class. I’ve held you back long enough.”
Eh, I had time.
I wasn’t going to let Operator Rose and Coach turn me into their next weaponry expert, but I didn’t mind learning about the various guns commonly used by enemy outfits. Sometimes, that included old Russian toys. Sometimes, it was guns mostly used by American law enforcement that’d been stolen in large numbers.
Coach and I took the stairs to reach the cafeteria. We’d met up before target practice as well as staying afterward, so we’d cut our lunch short earlier. I grabbed an apple and a handful of carrot sticks from the salad bar, and Coach filled a to-go container with chicken and rice.
I waited for him by the doors, ’cause I wanted to ask him about Beckett.
I’d sent him a text the other morning, only to hear the buzz of his phone going off in the nightstand drawer. Understandably, he didn’t take that stuff on assignment.
Coach headed toward me and asked when my next class started.
“Five minutes,” I responded, following him.
He was a card swiper too. He opened the doors that shut off the big lobby and elevators from the rest of the floor, and he looked back at me in confusion. Probably because I didn’t need to use the elevators to get to the schoolhouse on this floor.
“A quick question, sir,” I said, clearing my throat. “Any news about Operator Beckett?”
He cocked his head. “Are you worried about him? It’s the second time you’ve asked.”
Well, shit.
“Um, no…but we have Operator Hyatt filling in for him this afternoon, and he hates us.” Nice save. Not to mention true. Hyatt did not like being around recruits.
Coach laughed and pressed the button for the elevators. “Consider it an endurance exercise. He needs to suck it up too. I can have a talk with him…” He trailed off and peered out into the lobby.
I glanced out there too, seeing a man talking to Gina behind the desk.
I didn’t know what was fascinating about it?—
Wait. I furrowed my brow. The man said something I couldn’t hear, and he was backing away from the desk. Gina was shaking her head, still speaking. Was it a confrontation of some sort? It kinda looked like it.
The even more confusing part was that the man was leaving behind a duffel bag on the floor, not because he was forgetting about it. I’d just watched him glance at it. Gina couldn’t see it due to the front desk blocking the view.
“The bag?—”
Coach cut me off with a hand signal, just a subtle halt , and it catapulted me into another mind-set. Something was wrong.
“His accent,” Coach said under his breath. “If he doesn’t pick up his bag within two seconds—” That wasn’t going to happen, and Coach realized it. The man spun around and stalked toward the exit, duffel abandoned, and it set Coach off. He tossed his food container aside and started running.
I followed on autopilot. I threw my fruit and vegetables on the floor, and I automatically unfastened the top strap of my holster.
Coach swooped in and grabbed the duffel, at which point the man by the revolving door spotted him and widened his eyes.
I picked up the pace and sprinted across the lobby.
Considering the man was suddenly in a rush, I couldn’t help but wonder if the contents of that bag were about to blow the fuck up.
I pushed my way through the revolving door and saw Coach dart after the man.
“Everybody away from the plaza!” he yelled. Thankfully, there were only three suits walking across, and they acted fast.
A beat later, Coach flung the bag like a discus halfway across the plaza, and it thumped down mere feet away from the man running.
Holy shit, what was happ?—
A deafening roar blasted me backward several feet; I landed on my ass, and a large ball of fire erupted skyward. All the air was knocked out of my lungs, but instead of registering pain and being consumed by worry or panic, a familiar surge of adrenaline kept my mind sharp and focused. Coach was okay; he was out of the explosion zone. Same couldn’t be said for the owner of the bag. A couple of cars had crashed in Hobbs Circle, and people were taking out their phones. Fucking idiots.
I swallowed dryly, ears ringing, and scanned our surroundings.
It took me two seconds to see another man running toward the DoubleTree, and I didn’t hesitate.
“Coach!” I shouted, jumping to my feet.
He turned to me as I started running after. The man wasn’t out for a leisurely jog; he was wearing a leather jacket and jeans, and he ran as if his life depended on it. He also looked back over his shoulder every now and then, so I decided he was involved somehow. It was too suspect.
I had to push it. He was a solid hundred feet ahead of me, and I couldn’t allow myself to lose sight of him.
Coach was surprisingly fast for his age, ’cause he ran up next to me and inserted an earbud. “Seven-two-zero-four-four-one, this is Coach. Recruit Leighton Watts and I are in pursuit of a lone male, brown leather jacket, blue jeans, shaved head.” He started panting. “He’s running up South Eads toward the DoubleTree hotel, and we request immediate backup, over.”
The street was heavily trafficked, and judging by how the man kept looking for a way to cross, it was clear he had a destination in mind.
I sucked in a breath and pushed myself further, and Coach and I shifted closer to the edge of the sidewalk to prevent collisions with oblivious pedestrians.
Now.
I pointed as the man sprinted right into traffic, and we crossed at the same time farther down the road. But we were catching up. I estimated we had about fifty feet to go.
A truck honked at us, and we kept running.
“The dark blue van parked over there,” he panted, pointing toward a loading zone near the hotel. “Back doors are open—you see the guy?”
I saw the guy. He was in the back of the van, holding the doors open, and he wasn’t wearing any kind of worker’s clothes, uniform or whatever.
“We gotta go faster,” I said, my breathing becoming labored. “Any orders?”
“Just stay behind me when we get there.”
“Wilco.”
Our suspicions were confirmed when the guy in the van yelled for the runner, so they clearly knew each other. Additionally, he’d yelled in German, and it couldn’t be a coincidence. This was connected to Beckett’s case.
“They’re gonna give up on him,” Coach grunted. “Few more seconds. We go after the vehicle anyway.”
I didn’t have to ask what his plans were for the runner. He took out his gun and aimed without slowing down, and he fired three shots in quick succession. People around us screamed and scattered, and some cars skidded to a halt near the median of the road.
The runner went down with a loud cry, and blood poured from two wounds in his right leg.
I saw the gun tucked into his jeans, and I bent down and grabbed it as we ran past.
“Good job, kid.”
The man in the van slammed on the side, presumably to alert a driver to take off, but we were right there. A few more feet. The engine started, and Coach threw himself into the back of the van, with me following. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit . I gnashed my teeth as my knee hit the floor with too much force. We weren’t alone back here. One man shouted in German—Coach was fighting him—but what shocked me were the six—no, seven. Seven other people. Immigrant workers? They had uniforms. They looked like they all worked in maintenance or gardening. What the fuck was this? No actual seats, just two benches along the sides.
I tucked the German’s gun into my pants and registered fear and confusion in their faces, and there wasn’t a chance in hell they were the target here. They cowered away from us.
Coach let out a growling sound, grabbed the other German by his jacket, and literally kicked him out of the moving van.
As he managed to shut the doors, we were blanketed in darkness. There was no window into the driving cab; we couldn’t see if there was more than one guy up there. Hell, we couldn’t see shit.
I heaved a breath and dug out my pencil flashlight, and I turned it on and tested sticking it to the ceiling. Awesome, it actually worked. Most cars these days weren’t magnetic anywhere.
Coach grabbed on to a handlebar and squatted at the middle of the floor, and he faced the seven men trying to move away from us.
“Do you speak English? Are you here willingly? Spanish?”
One of the men nodded cautiously. He was older, around fifty or so. “Only a little English. No nos deporte, por favor. El senor Schulz les va a mandar dinero a nuestras familias .”
I had no clue what was being said, and Coach didn’t make it easier for me when he switched to Spanish too.
“ No estamos aquí para lastimarlos ni deportarlos. Sobre el dinero, no creo que el senor Schulz vaya a mandar nada a nadie. ?Se saben la dirección del lugar donde se están quedando? ?Saben quién está manejando? ”
Needing to feel useful, I pulled out my phone and scrolled till I found the number to Hillcroft’s dispatch, and I hit call. First day of training, we’d received all the “important contact information,” and I’d never thought I’d need to use it for as long as I was a recruit.
“Hillcroft dispatch, please state your operator number and name.”
Oh shit. “Uh, I don’t have an operator number,” I said, turning away from Coach and the others, a feeble attempt to tune them out. “I’m recruit Leighton Watts, and I’m stuck in a van with Coach.”
“I understand,” the woman said on the phone. “How can we help? Can we speak to Coach?”
“Not at the moment—he’s busy,” I replied. “I just wanna relay some information. We’re traveling in a dark blue van, a Mercedes Sprinter. I don’t recall seeing the license plate, but there’s a white logo on the side. Don’t remember those details either. We headed up South Eads, and I think we just turned right on Army Navy Drive. Over.”
“Thank you, recruit Watts,” she said. “We are tracking Coach’s phone, and we have operators on the way.”
“Okay, copy that. Just so you know, we left two targets behind on the road, and both should be injured,” I added. “The first was shot in the leg, and the other was pushed out of the vehicle when it moved.”
I felt kinda awkward. Had this been the Army, I would’ve known how to phrase myself. This was… Like, did I treat this like a regular fucking phone call, or did radio comm terminology apply?
Coach tapped me on the shoulder to get my attention. I ended the call and turned around, and he switched on his flashlight too, but kept it downcast. My light wasn’t as bright.
“It’s gonna be a shoot-first, ask-later situation the minute the van comes to a full stop, not counting turns and stoplights,” he said. “How many rounds do you have?”
“Fifteen plus one, and an extra mag,” I replied. “And whatever’s in the gun I lifted from that guy. What’ve you learned?”
“Gimme the other gun.” He held out a hand, and I handed over the gun. “Immigrants tricked into working for scraps,” he said. “They’re staying—or more like being held—in a house near Fredericksburg, but I’m not sure that’s where they wanna take us now that we’ve joined the ride.”
“So, it’s close to where Beckett is,” I blurted out. It had to be connected, all of it.
Coach shot me a look. “How do you know that?”
Oh crap.
“Um.”
He shook his head quickly. “Never mind. They’re likely gonna drive someplace secluded to get rid of us, so I need your help. Are you up for it?”
“Absolutely, sir.” Finally, someone letting me play. Because he literally had no other options. “Tell me what to do. How many are there?”
“Two.” He cleared his throat and glanced over at some of the others, and he asked something in Spanish. A moment later, he looked back at me. “ If we make it to their house, there will be three or four others to worry about—but it doesn’t make sense to me that they’d wanna expose their business. Chances are they have stateside operations in making money off the vulnerable.”
I shook my head grimly. “Do I have to aim for shoulders and knees or, you know…can we go for the head?”
“You eliminate threats,” he told me firmly. “Sometimes, that’s done by shootin’ them in the shoulder. Sometimes, that’s not enough. Use your head, recruit.”
Fair enough.
The way we picked up speed made it clear we were heading outside the city, so Coach and I sat down on the far ends of the benches. Because this would probably take a while. Coach reported to dispatch too, and he told backup to stand down and merely follow.
“They’re improvising this,” I noted. “The targets, I mean.”
“Without a doubt,” he muttered. “They’re not bright either. Everyone has a cell phone that can be traced, and I’m guessin’ they’re at a loss for how to remove ours.”
Exactly. I mean, they couldn’t have done anything earlier, but wherever they went now, they risked being followed. In addition, they had to know who they were dealing with since they’d targeted Hillcroft.
“The bomb that went off,” I said quietly. “Do you think it was supposed to be a warning?”
He tipped his head, weighing his answer. “It’s a possibility. On the other hand, it’s tough to cause a significant amount of destruction to our building, and they can’t get in. Blowing up the lobby or the delivery bay are the two options at ground level. One will guarantee a single loss of life, and the other might result in three or four casualties if you arrive at the time of a supply delivery.” He checked his watch, and I saw the seconds tick. It was a timer. I should’ve thought of that. He was keeping track of how long we’d driven. “I just know Gina’s gonna hand in her resignation now.”
“And that bothers you greatly,” I guessed. I had no idea why, but he looked really annoyed.
“You could say that.”
“Is she your girlfriend?”
He furrowed his brow and glanced at me. “No? She’s just good at her job. She doesn’t leave much of an impression, she’s not overly nice?—”
I snorted. “She’s flirted with Beckett.”
I remembered that from orientation day.
Coach blew out a breath and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Jesus Christ. Can you at least try to be subtle?”
Huh?
He stared at me. “How long have you and Beckett been fucking?”
Whoa! I-I…I… What did I say? How did he know? How had I not been subtle? I hadn’t said anything! Oh fuck, could this get Beckett into trouble? The fraternization policy at Hillcroft was so vague. Intimate relationships weren’t forbidden between operators and other employees, but HR needed to be involved at some point, and then there were special rules for recruits, and maybe I had skimmed that section.
“We will discuss this later,” Coach told me.
I swallowed and shifted in my seat.
Wonderful.
Next, he held up a finger and adjusted his earbud. “Yeah, speak.”
I looked over at the immigrants and mustered a polite smile. Hopefully, they found it reassuring. We weren’t going to turn them over to the authorities or anything. But I wanted to make sure they ended up in a better place than with the German fuckers who were exploiting them.
“I didn’t know he was on the East Coast,” Coach was saying. “In that case, can we put Squeezy on this? She’ll talk to him.”
Well, this was an interesting change of plans for my day. Safe to say, I wasn’t bored or dreading the rest of the week. This was actually fun. To be part of the action, to do something that mattered.
“ Me no habla Espanol , sorry,” I said apologetically. “But we will help you, okay? We will help.”
They exchanged a couple glances in amusement and confusion, though they stayed on edge for the most part. Coach, on the other hand, gave me a look that said I was an idiot.
“Sorry,” I mouthed.
There was something wrong with me.
It was just…for the first time, nothing hurt. Maybe I should be more worried? A lot was going on, especially if Coach knew about Beckett and me, but I had faith that things would work out.
It was the strangest fucking feeling.
I brushed my hands together and eyed the cuts and scrapes I had—from when the explosion had catapulted me backward. They didn’t hurt either.
With a slight turn, I understood we were taking an exit somewhere, and I looked around to see if I could find anything useful. Coach wrapped up his conversation and spoke to the workers in Spanish, and he gestured to the floor.
Then he patted them down, maybe looking for guns…?
Wait, why wasn’t there anything useful in the van? No tools, no cleaning supplies, no gardening stuff, no nothing. It was empty. Yet, the workers were so clearly dressed to blend in with blue-collar people. Cleaners, maintenance, handymen, gardeners, plumbers…
I’d cleaned offices before, and we didn’t arrive empty-handed. The company car my coworker and I had had access to had been filled with shit.
“What are you telling them?” I asked.
Coach eyed me briefly. “To get down on the floor as soon as we stop.”
Okay, good to know. “Can you ask them what they do for a living? Because, look around. There’s nothing here. Shouldn’t they have, like, hoses and rakes or mops and cleaning supplies?”
He frowned and directed his flashlight into the darkest nooks and crannies. Then he faced the workers once more and asked a question in a more demanding voice.
Some of them showed their palms and shook their heads, claiming innocence or that they didn’t know anything, but one lone man had another response. He spoke to Coach and slowly retrieved something from a chest pocket in his coveralls, and my eyebrows flew up.
Small, transparent baggies of white powder.
Fuck me twice.
Coach and I exchanged a look.
Drugs changed everything. Drugs meant higher stakes. Drugs were protected by criminals “by any means necessary.”
This was a cocaine operation.
The man spoke again, to which Coach nodded and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“What did he say?” I asked.
He sighed heavily. “It’s a goddamn delivery system of coke to politicians, law enforcement, bankers, and whoever needs a quick fix before the next meeting.”
The man hadn’t said that many words, but I could venture a guess and say Coach was good at putting two and two together.
Jesus Christ. I eyed the workers in their dirty coveralls. Talk about blending in. Looking for a couple of lines? Go see the janitor in the courtyard that nobody pays attention to. But today, of all days, the men in charge of these workers had accepted a second job, to blow up the lobby of the Hillcroft Group.
“Whatever. It doesn’t change much in our case,” Coach said. “When we stop, we run out, guns first, and we take care of anyone trying to shoot us. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
* * *