Chapter 38
Elijah
Abbi and Abel are missing. Mom, too. Something is different about their homes.
There was a struggle and a mess at the bungalow.
At Mom and Abbi’s houses, the guys said it looked like they just got up and walked out.
Mom’s car is still at her house, but Abbi’s is gone.
Back at Abbi’s, a half-eaten lunch was still on the table.
It’s like they had been eating when they decided to just get up and walk through the door.
All except for my empty artillery room. That room alone housed enough ammo and weaponry to arm a small militia.
They didn’t just walk out with arms full of weapons, though.
The security cameras had been erased. Why would they do that?
I have the passwords to both, but all the footage had already been erased by the time I could check them.
There’s a blocker on them that kept me from checking while I was out of the country, but I looked as soon as I was in US airspace, and nothing.
It was all gone, and not just for today.
The last three days of footage had been deleted.
Someone wanted to cover their tracks. But why?
“What’s the move, BB?”
Big Bear. The nickname Eve gave me on day one has a calming effect that I really need in this moment.
Evie. My sweet little Evie. Turns out Evie isn’t all that sweet after all, though.
She took down two of the bad guys all by herself, from what I hear.
That’s not to mention the incident just last month, where she killed a couple of guys in the same house we’re standing in now.
There’s still more to Eve’s story, and I’m going to help her uncover it all when she’s ready, but first, we’re going to get back my wife and anyone else these assholes have taken from me.
“We’re going to get some answers out of this guy. Then, we’re going to kill the rest of these bastards. All of them.”
“Sounds like a plan, compadre. Problem is, the hostage doesn’t speak English. We have a pocket translator on the way. In the meantime, what do you need from us?” The biggest guy in the room asks this question. He’s one of the big and bigger duo that’s always with Adam. Cal’s his name.
“Jax says you’re good with computers.”
“That’s like saying Superman fights crime. He’s your guy. You name it. He can do it.” This is big. The deal maker. Cotton. He’s the one who seems to have friends everywhere and can talk his way out of a double homicide without so much as a phone call to his attorney. He’s someone to watch.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Tell him what you need. He’ll find it.”
“Okay. I need phone records on Ruth and Abigail Washington. John Whitley, too. And locations on them for the past twenty-four hours. If you can scrounge up any security video from either of their places, that could really help. Also, there’s an organization based in Latvia that deals mainly in human trafficking.
Some drug running and other crimes here and there, but the bulk of their operation is the skin trade. ”
“So, sex trafficking?” Cal asks the question, but everyone is listening for the answer.
Jax and Marshall were already here and getting along with everyone like a house on fire. They’d all met before today, but the twins hadn’t spent much time with any of them other than Eve.
“Anything. They deal in people. I’ve heard them use the phrase ‘procuring talent’.” In my peripheral, I see Adam, Cal, and Cotton all look back and forth between one another. “What? What is that?”
“Maybe nothing, but...” Cal looks back to Cotton for approval before continuing.
Cotton nods once. “Paul Hastings. The guy who attacked Eve the night you got home. He had some important friends who were looking for him for a while. Word is, Paul was good at ‘procuring talent’ for them, and they wanted him back.”
They won’t be getting him back. Cal having this information just confirms what I already suspected. These three killed Paul for daring to mess with Eve. I try so hard to dislike Adam, and he just keeps doing okay shit like murdering this guy for fucking with Eve. Damn it.
“I see.” Looking over to Adam as I say the words, I see that Eve’s legs are settled across his lap, and he’s playing with her hair.
He looks up at me briefly before barely shrugging one shoulder in a ‘it had to be done’ gesture.
This fucker is trying to force me to like him.
“Time to meet the unfortunate soul you’ve got chilling on ice. ”
Like it was planned before I got here, Adam stands from where he’s seated with Eve.
At the exact same time, Cotton is making his way over to them, and he takes the spot that Adam has vacated.
Adam and Cal come together in the center of the room and nod their heads down the hall. Did anyone else see that?
Looking around, I confirm that Jax and Marshall saw it and are equally perplexed. They’re the only two guys I’ve ever seen in sync like this. Correction. They’re the only two guys still living that I’ve seen in sync like this. Abel and I were twins in every sense of the word.
They weren’t kidding about having this guy on ice. He’s bound and gagged like a trussed-up turkey. Dude can barely move a pinky, and he’s lying in a large tub filled with ice and water. He’s definitely already been in there too long to leave here with all his appendages intact.
“His body temperature is already critically low. If we want to question him, we’ll have to remove him from the tub first. So far, we’ve been getting him out when his core temp gets below 92 and putting him back in when his lips turn pink.”
Adam says this like we’re talking about when he moves his tomato plants in and out of the sun.
“Huh. Okay. Let’s pull him out.”
Cal is the first to move. He grabs the mostly blue man by the hair and pulls him out of the tub like he weighs no more than a sheet of printer paper.
“It could be helpful to know everyone’s skill set. I know Cal is the tech guy.”
“And the muscle.” Adam doles out information like he’s speaking to a door-to-door vacuum salesman instead of sitting in a room with a half dead man who just yesterday tried to kill him and everyone he cares about.
“Okay. So Cal, you’re the muscle and the hacker. What about Cotton? He any help?” Adam and Cal share a look before Adam speaks again.
“The most help, possibly. Cotton...gets things. Or people. Just...whatever you need, Cotton can get it. He can get people to do things, too. Someone always owes him a favor, and he always has a plan. I guess you’d say he’s the fixer or the brains or something.
” Adam explains this like even he doesn’t know what Cotton does, but he knows that Cotton gets things done.
“He can shoot, too. We all can. Not shoot like Adam, but we can aim and pull the trigger.”
“And you? What do you do?”
Adam starts to shake the question off like he doesn’t have a skillset, but Cal chimes in again instead.
“He’s an expert in torture.” Cal is the exact opposite of Adam when he speaks. He’s smiling and appears jovial. Even when he pulled the half dead man from the tub. He freaking winked at the guy.
“Expert in torture?”
“Yeah. He’s good. You’ll see. He can inflict pain that you wouldn’t imagine a person could survive, but they do.
He knows exactly when to stop to keep from going too far.
” He shrugs his shoulders and bobs his eyebrows in a ‘you really gotta see this’ expression before continuing.
“You’ll see. Some people count cards. Adam counts the breaths left in your lungs.
” He seems to be finished and then remembers something.
“Oh yeah, and he can fight. Not like crush skulls but anticipate moves and just...kick ass.”
Who the hell are these guys? What situations have they even been in that they know these things about each other?
“What about you? We already know you’re a Navy SEAL. Eve’s dad and that other piece of shit were pissing their pants when they thought you were here. What is it about you though? What do you bring to the table?”
It’s possible that Adam has more balls than is strictly safe. I’m already on edge because they have my fucking wife, and then he wants to ask what I bring to the table?
“Hmm. Well, I’m a pretty good shot. I can make a weapon out of just about anything. I’m shit with an axe but aces with a knife. I can make bombs, rig traps, and I, too, can anticipate moves, but I can also smash skulls.”
Cal’s mouth turns down, and he nods with an appreciative ‘not too bad’ look on his face before he speaks again. “So, you’re the guy.”
“The guy?”
“The one we need to get your girl back and make sure there’s no one left to be so damn stupid as to come looking for Belle again?”
“Belle?”
“Eve.”
“I’m the guy.”
Adam’s actions prove that he does indeed know how to torture.
First, he rouses the guy with a heating pad and warm compresses.
Once he’s sentient enough, he gives him warm liquids to drink.
He’s obviously done this to him before because the guy starts crying when he brings him the coffee, like he knows exactly what’s going to happen next.
He’s wrong, however. He won’t be going back on the ice this time.
“What do we want to know?” Adam holds a scalpel in his left hand and asks the question without taking his eyes off the hostage.
There’s a table set up next to the cot the guy is laying on, and it has all manner of torture devices neatly organized atop it.
Covering the entire floor of the room we’re in is a large, thick sheet of clear plastic.
These guys do not intend to fuck around.
“Does he know where they’re keeping Vaughn?”
The guy hears the question and looks at me for the first time. His eyes widen. He almost seems to recognize me, but I know I’ve never seen him before. His eyes roam my face and then down the length of me before he appears to change his mind.
“Es nerunāju angliski” I wonder how many times he’s told them he doesn’t speak English and how many tortures he endured before they believed him.
“Kur ir mana sieva?” Something tells me that he doesn’t know where Vaughn is, but I ask anyway.
At the sound of my near perfect Latvian, Adam looks to Cal and tells him, “We won’t be needing the translator”. He then looks to me with a bored expression and says, “You could’ve mentioned this earlier.”
I don’t bother responding, as I did in fact hold this tidbit about myself back just to irritate him.
Turning my attention back to the hostage, I ask again “Kur ir mana sieva?”.
“Es nezinu, kur vina ir.” Just as I thought. He doesn’t know.
“Care to share this experience with us English speaking peasants?”
Cal says pretty much everything with a smile.
He actually reminds me a lot of myself. Come to think of it, the whole dynamic between these two, reminds me of me and Abel.
The jovial easy-going younger brother and the stern, no bullshit older brother.
The pang in my heart makes me wonder when it’ll ever start to hurt less. It’s been a year.
“I asked, ‘where is my wife’. He says he doesn’t know.”
I continue to pelt the popsicle with questions while Adam carves out chunks of the man’s flesh anytime he is slow to respond. He really is good at this. He knows where to cut to inflict the maximum amount of pain without costing us answers by spilling too much blood.
Ultimately, we learn that the hostage has no truly useful information.
All he can tell us is when he got here and who he came with.
It appears that each group of men wasn’t aware of what any other group was tasked with.
This was definitely intended to keep important information secret in the event that one of them was caught and tortured.
“He telling the truth?” I like that Cal seems to be ready to defer to my assessment of the situation.
“Yeah. He is. He is also still the guy who broke into your home with the intent of taking Eve and using her against me. Adam, he’s all yours. Cal and I have things to get to.”
Adam gives a lackadaisical wave of the scalpel over his shoulder. As much as I’d love to stay and continue watching him in what is clearly his zone, every minute my people, especially my wife, are missing is another fraying string of my tenuous sanity snapped.
“Recently, the two heads of the organization were killed. Their names were Edgars Krūmi?? and Aivars Balodis. They trafficked people all over the world. Some smaller gun running and drug smuggling, but their biggest profits were in people. Apparently, they named successors. Four successors.”
Cal is typing so quickly on the keyboard that it feels like the keys should be smoking, but he’s looking intently at the screen.
“Do we know who the successors are?”
“That’s what I need you to find out, but prioritize finding what you can on my mom, Abbi, and John.
I just...I need to know they got out alive.
Chances are, they have them and plan to use them to get to me.
It’s just...it’s not like guys like this to go through all this trouble for one problem.
There’s something I’m missing, and we can’t fuck this up. ”
My words are choppy, the more I think about what could be happening to them...to my wife. Cal turns to look at me now.
“She’s Belle’s people, too. That makes her our people. You’ll see. It’s good to be our people.”
“Find my family, and I’ll be whatever you want.”
“On it, Post Man.”
My steps halt on the way to the door, and I briskly turn back to face the big man at the computer. How does he know that name? I know Jax and Marshall wouldn’t spill my secrets.
“Took you a while to get here. I got bored. Oh, and I’m good.”
“Hmmpf.” My answering smile causes his to widen. This guy. Damn it. They’re cornering me. Trying to suck me into their vortex of male weirdness. Fuck. It’s working.