CHAPTER NINETEEN
Byron
I knew things had gone very wrong when I heard the screams. I had just put the beautifully wrapped box from the jewelry store in my pocket when they started.
“Fuck.” My training immediately kicked in, and I sprinted to the spa. I barely slowed to evade cars as I crossed the street. I knew Reynolds was behind me because I could hear the car horns blaring. I reached for the door and swung it open without breaking stride.
I pulled my Glock from my waistband, ready to take out the perp.
I assumed it was Skeeter. What the actual fuck had happened to my agents?
I clocked all the women inside screaming, crying, and running around.
Nadine was sitting on the floor, clutching her throat.
It was obviously red and looked to be developing bruising.
But I didn’t see Jess. Anywhere. I searched the entire area quickly.
“Byron,” Nadine croaked from the floor when I made a second sweep. Reynolds sat on the floor holding her in his arms. “He’s gone. He took her. He took Jess.” She broke into tears. “I couldn’t stop him.”
“Shh. Honey, it’s okay. We’ll get her back,” Reynolds was saying as he cradled her.
I looked around. Nia’s eyes were wide and she was totally silent—no tears, nothing. I saw the signs of shock immediately. I swiveled until I saw Jelly. She was pissed. That’s who could help in this situation.
I pointed to Glory, who had also kept her head. “Call 9-1-1 and tell them we need at least one ambulance, possibly more. Tell them the mayor is involved.” I knew they’d get here quickly for that.
“Jelly—show me where they went.”
She nodded and ran towards the back, responding quickly, just as I thought she would.
“He took her and dragged her this way, but thought she was going too slow. He flung her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and walked out the back door. I… I went outside.” Her face, always on the pale side, was ghostly white now. “There’s a dead guy back there.”
I was still on the move, never stopping. “You’re sure he’s dead?” Too late, I remembered she was a physician’s assistant. Yeah, she knew if someone was dead or not.
She didn’t bother to answer that question. She barreled through the door after me and pointed at the skid marks. “From those and the sounds I could hear inside the spa, I think they went that way.” She pointed in the direction of the bay.
“Gotcha.” I concealed the Glock again and sprinted towards my car. I glanced from right to left and saw my other agent. He was down, too. From this distance, I couldn’t tell if he was alive or not. I looked over my shoulder to see Jelly running after me.
I pointed at the agent. “Help him,” I yelled, and she immediately switched directions.
I made it to my car. I was inside with the engine started and backing out of my parking space withing seconds.
And almost ran over Reynolds and Nadine. I slammed on the brakes. “What the hell are y’all doing?” I yelled as Reynolds got in the passenger seat and Nadine threw herself into the back seat as I put the car in drive and burst forward.
“We’re going with you,” Nadine croaked out.
“Don’t talk unless you have to. I don’t like the looks of your throat,” I said.
I assumed Skeeter would want to get as far away from West Bay as possible. I was about to ask Reynolds what the quickest way out of town was, when my phone buzzed. I tossed it to him.
He frowned at it. “It’s from Jess—it says, ‘don’t talk.’”
The phone started ringing.
“Answer it, put it on speaker, but say nothing. Don’t make a sound.”
He nodded and did as I asked.
At first, all we could hear was a lot of noise. Then I vaguely heard her saying something about her nose.
I frowned, slowed down, and pulled to the side of the road.
I saw Reynolds open his mouth to say something, but Nadine thunked him in the back of his head. He covered his mouth to hide his sound of pain. In case she hadn’t gotten the point across, I put a finger to my lips. He nodded.
That’s when she said something about caves being flooded. It was much clearer, like they were protected from the wind a bit or had slowed down.
Reynolds’ eyes opened wide and he pantomimed him taking over the driving.
We got out and ran around to the different sides quickly and then he pulled back into traffic going in the opposite direction.
It wasn’t long until he pulled down a side road and then stopped as it ended at the ocean.
He got out and motioned for us to follow.
I grabbed the phone and hurried after him, making sure Nadine was between us.
I didn’t want her to suddenly pass out from her injury and us not realize it.
The whole time we were jogging, we were listening to Skeeter describe the cave. Reynolds gave a huge head nod, pointed, and quickened his pace. We were headed in the right direction.
Nadine and I followed Reynolds who kept turning around and making weird hand gestures, widening his eyes, and pointing to himself. Nadine and I exchanged a quick glance and she rolled her eyes.
We both knew he was trying to make sure we were aware that his boring stories about the West Bay pirates had come in handy.
He did it enough that Nadine finally made a sweeping arm gesture to get his attention and then drew a finger across her throat to get him to stop. She winced as she touched her bruised skin, and I wished there was something I could do for her.
But then we heard Skeeter asking Jess if she was into me because of the eyepatch. I shook my head as both Nadine and Reynolds had to stop walking a moment while they did everything they could to keep from bursting into laughter. It didn’t help that Jess then talked about having a thing for pirates.
I gave them a cold stare, but that did nothing to deter their huge smiles.
I shook my head and gave Reynolds a not-so-gentle push to get him to keep going so we could rescue my girlfriend. There’d be plenty of time to laugh when she wasn’t being held hostage by a murderous giant biker.
All of us picked up the pace when Skeeter said he and Jess wouldn’t be here long enough to use any gold if they found some.
And then I pushed Reynolds into a dead sprint when we heard yelling, a crash, more yelling, a much louder thudding sound… and then nothing.
My heart started pounding. Had he killed her? Had I just heard someone murder the woman I loved?
I picked up the pace, almost mowing Reynolds down in the process. I pushed him to the side as gently as possible and all out sprinted. There were only a couple of directions the path could lead, and I figured Reynolds would find a way to let me know if I went the wrong way.
Nadine had the presence of mind to turn her phone flashlight on and hold it up high so that it lit the path ahead of us.
And then I slowed down. I could see light from what had to be the cave area Skeeter had described. I turned and motioned for Nadine to turn off the light and for them to be as quiet as possible. I pulled my Glock out and approached slowly, listening for any all sounds.
“No, no, no!” a distant voice came. It echoed slightly off the walls. “Not like this. This isn’t what I wanted. Come on, Jess, wake up, baby.” I turned to Reynolds and motioned for him to end the call. I didn’t want Skeeter to hear anything as we got closer.
At least it sounded like he didn’t want her to die.
And then he said something that made my blood run cold.
“We’re going to die together. And I want you awake to know it. I need you to see how much you fucking hurt me when you left me. It’ll be epic—like fucking Romeo and Juliet except you don’t love me.” There was a pause. “Wake up, Jess! Dammit!”
He was getting frustrated. I had to get in there before he did something awful.
“Skeeter?”
Jess’ voice. I breathed a sigh of relief. She wasn’t dead.
“Yeah, it’s me. Come on. Stand up. Let me get you some water.”
“I don’t feel so good.”
“No shit. Your head hit the wall pretty fucking hard. You shouldn’t have pissed me off.”
She sucked in a breath, and I could tell she was remembering everything that had happened so far. “Oh God. Where’s…”
She stopped herself, but I closed my eyes. She was going to ask where I was. And if I knew it, he did, too.
“Where’s who? Your pirate? That guy? He’s probably with some other woman. Guy that looks like that can get anyone.” I heard him starting to pace the floor. “Is that why you left me? He was better-looking, so you ditched me?”
“Skeeter! What is wrong with you? I left you because you treated me like crap. I was constantly afraid that if I pissed you off, you’d sell me to human traffickers!”
He sighed loudly. “I told you I wouldn’t.”
“It’s not easy to believe that when I saw girls sold off almost every single week.”
He was quiet. “None of this matters,” he said quietly.
“Why?” her voice was nervous.
I scooted forward and peeked around the wall. I could see them. Jess had blood on the side of her head, and pure rage flowed through me. I wanted to kill Skeeter. I wanted to make him suffer like he’d made her suffer all those years.
“Because we’re going to do one of those murder-suicides. It’ll be romantic. Someday, people will find our skeletons holding hands and laying here. They’ll think we had the greatest love story of all time.”
“I think the gun they find next to your dead body might give things away, don’t you?”
“Shut up, Jess.” His voice was cold. “Don’t make this ugly.” He walked towards her. “I’ll take one more kiss, then I’ll shoot you and then myself.” He put his hands on either side of her face, making her wince with pain. He didn’t seem to care that she’d just gotten over being thrown at a wall.
This was perfect. He had both hands on Jess, so he wasn’t holding his gun. He bent down and was just about to kiss her when I made my move.
I moved around the wall quietly.
“Hello, Skeeter,” I said softly, calmly. “I’m going to need you to take your hands off her and step away.” I had my Glock pointed right at him.
He jerked around and gave me a nasty look. “Oh, look. Eyepatch has joined the party. Did you want to die, too?” I frowned. Why was he acting like he had the upper hand?
He reached out and grabbed Jess’ arm, squeezing until she let out a yelp of pain. I stepped forward to try to help her.
That’s when it happened. I felt my leg trip some sort of almost invisible wire stretched across the opening to the room. When it did, a gun shot rang out, causing everyone to duck and cover their heads for a moment.
That’s all Skeeter needed. He grabbed his gun, pulled Jess into a headlock, and held the gun to her temple. “You’ll get to watch, you pirate freak,” he hissed out. “Drop your fucking gun.”
I dropped my gun. “Don’t hurt her. Please.”
Reynolds came up beside me. “I’m the mayor of West Bay. If you let us have Jess, I’ll make sure the police go easy on you for the charges against you.”
“Right,” Skeeter scoffed. “And as soon as you had Jess, I’d be booked and sentenced to even worse than I deserve.”
“I swear that’s not true.”
“No.” He let Jess go and pushed her towards a wall. “Stand there, pretty girl, and smile for me one more time.” He held up his gun, ready to shoot.
Jess’ smile looked more like a grimace, and her lips were shaking.
“I’ll see you in the afterlife,” he aimed the gun and shot.
Nadine came out of nowhere and went airborne, slamming her whole body into his. The surprise attack, much more than her size, is what did it. “Oof,” he uttered as he went down.
Nadine rolled over on top of him and sat on his chest. He lifted his neck. “Guess you want to die, too, girly.”
She took the heel of her hand and slammed it into his nose, pushing upwards as hard as she could.
We all heard the sickening crack of bone as his nose broke. He started screaming and threw Nadine off him.
I scrambled for my gun at the same time Nadine shot off the ground and did some kind of badass roundhouse kick to his head. “That’s for her head, you son of a bitch!”
He went down again. She attacked him more, kicking him in the ribs a few times. Then she grabbed one of the flashlights he had standing around and slammed it down on his crotch. He screamed and rolled into a ball trying to protect himself. But it didn’t work.
“Who the hell are you?” He bellowed.
Nadine already had the heavy flashlight above her head ready to strike. She got closer. “I’m her big sister, you disgusting slime worm.” Then she slammed the flashlight as hard as she could on his head.
“And that’s for knocking her unconscious.”
Then she stood up and ran to Jess, who collapsed in her arms.
She was crying, and Nadine just held her, stroking her hair and telling her everything was going to be okay.
“I’m… I’m not sure that it is,” Jess said.
We all looked at her in confusion. “He, um, shot me.”
Nadine shook her head. “No, baby. I pushed him and he missed.”
“It didn’t miss,” Jess said so softly we barely heard her. Then she toppled over in a dead faint.
“Oh. Oh God, no!” Nadine cried out and turned around. She was covered in blood. Jess’ blood.