Hearts and Aces (Kelsey's Burden Series Book 7)

by Kaylie Hunter

  Wearing neon orange, hand cuffs, and ankle chains, Carl wailed as drool dripped from his lower lip. “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re in big trouble, Mr. Carl,” Beth scolded as Steve used his keys to unlock the cuffs. “You’re lucky Kelsey was able to get you released. If you pull something like this again—they’ll likely lock you up for good.”

  “I didn’t mean to break the law,” he cried, looking between us. “I’ll be good! I prom-mm-mise!”

  “From now on, if you want chemicals for one of your experiments, you tell me,” Beth continued. “I’ll decide if it’s legal and safe.”

  “I will. I will,” Carl said, sniffling and wiping his snot on his sleeve.

  Ugh, I thought. I’m so not doing Nicholas’ or Carl’s laundry ever again.

  My part of Carl’s punishment was the silent treatment. I marched out ahead of them, leaving the precinct. Carl shuffled after me. Beth stayed close on Carl’s heels, lecturing him the entire trip home.

  ~*~*~

  Dinner consisted of burnt chicken, undercooked potatoes, and slimy green beans. We were all grateful for the chocolate cake Tweedle had prepared for dessert. The guys moved down the hall into the family room to prepare for their poker game. The kids ran off to play in the field with Storm while Nightcrawler, Tyler, and a half dozen other men guarded them. Carl went to the basement to use the tunnel to hide in his bedroom at Alex’s house.

  “Well, ladies,” I said, putting the last of the dishes in the dishwasher. “Who’s working out tonight?”

  “Lisa and I want to work on your prostitute case,” Anne said. “We had more ideas to add to the list.”

  “I can help them,” Tech said. “I’m not in the mood to play poker.”

  “I feel guilty,” I admitted. “It’s my case. I should stay and help.”

  “Nonsense,” Lisa said, shooing me off. “You deal with this stuff every day, but this is an escape for us. Go burn some calories.”

  “I’m still working out,” Katie said, stretching her arms over her head.

  “Me too,” Bridget said. “I haven’t had a good workout this week.”

  “Can I go, too?” Tweedle asked.

  We all cringed.

  “Just to watch,” she added. “You can tie me to a chair if it makes you feel better.”

  Katie grinned at Tweedle before turning back to me. “We’ll work out at Headquarters. We only have one mat in the basement, but the gym at Headquarters has three mats. Tweedle can practice coordination exercises while we spar.”

  I shrugged. “Give me a minute to change and to let Tyler know I’m relocating.”

  I changed into the camo leggings Grady had bought me, a sports bra, a loose tank top, and a pair of comfortable running shoes. Stepping onto the back deck, I motioned to Tyler that I—pointing to myself—would be at Headquarters, pointing across the highway. Tyler gestured a thumbs up before his eyes flickered back to the kids and their surroundings.

  Heading outside, I met the girls who had also changed into workout clothes.

  “Okay, Tweedle,” Katie said, handing her a jump rope. “Your first task is to jump rope while we run a lap in the woodlands. Focus on the timing the jumps, not how fast you can jump.”

  Tweedle took the jump rope but looked a little nervous.

  “Best if you practice in the grass,” I said, pointing to the side yard. “Don’t worry about damaging the lawn. I’d rather lose some grass than find you bleeding when we get back.”

  Ryan laughed from the front porch.

  “Go play poker!” Tweedle yelled at him, fake glaring as she scowled.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ryan said, trying to restrain his laugh as he sauntered back inside.

  I nodded to the guard in the front yard to keep his eyes on Tweedle. He was one of the Devil’s Players. He nodded back, scanning the area as he stood in parade rest position.

  Beth, Katie, Bridget, and I crossed the side street and started jogging down the trail. By the time we looped back to the house, none of us were breathing heavy, including Beth. Tweedle was still struggling to complete two consecutive jumps and her guard was silently laughing. I led our group back into the woods to make another loop. They groaned but followed.

  After the second loop, we escorted Tweedle toward the highway. She tripped twice in the road, but with Bridget on one side and me on the other, we got her safely across without being hit by a car.

  “That was interesting,” Beth said, chuckling. “How can you be so coordinated with your hands and so out of touch with your feet?” she asked Tweedle.

  “I was born this way,” Tweedle said on a long sigh.

  Beth turned, her back to Headquarters as she jogged in place. “Maybe we should get a soccer ball.”

  Tweedle tripped over an invisible object and landed on all fours in the grass.

  “Better invest in safety pads first,” Bridget laughed, helping Tweedle up.

  “That reminds me,” I said, turning to Beth. “Carl wants to learn skateboarding—”

  Beth’s eyes widened and her jaw dropped as she looked at something behind us. I turned, reaching for my gun, but my hand grasped air as three men jumped out of a van and pounced. Another batch of men leapt out after them.

  “Run!” I yelled as I attacked the first man. I punched him in the throat, taking him down as another man grabbed me from behind. Reaching up and behind me, I locked his head with my arm as I squatted and pulled him forward. He landed hard but was already rolling out of range when I stomped my foot forward. Bridget was closest to me, kicking her assailant like her life depended on it. I could hear Katie grunting somewhere behind me as a third man leapt toward me. A sidekick to his family jewels, followed by a knee to the face, had him falling into the grass.

  A gun being discharged caused both sides to freeze and look toward the van. A man stood holding Tweedle tightly with one hand while he used the other to point a gun at her head.

  We slowly raised our hands in surrender. The men grabbed us by the biceps and shoved us toward the van.

  “You were supposed to run,” I said to Beth as I was pushed inside.

  “Sorry. Fight or flight never kicked in. I sort of got stuck in the frozen phase,” she said as she waited her turn to be loaded.

  “We’ll have to work on that,” Katie said as she laughed at Beth.

  The guard holding Katie roughly shoved her inside. She stumbled knees first onto the floor next to me.

  “Careful, asshole,” I yelled at him.

  “It’s fine, Kel,” Katie said, adjusting her legs under her and placing her back against the van’s inside wall. “I can handle it.”

  The man holding Tweedle moved into the van next, still holding a gun to her head. At least he was being gentle and not abrasive with her. Bridget was shoved in next, followed by her captor climbing inside.

  The last man placed his foot on the van floor as he dragged Beth behind him.

  In what appeared to be a mirage, Storm came out of nowhere, snarling and leaping on top of the man who held Beth. Beth fell backward into the grass as Storm dug his fangs into the man’s shoulder. Storm and the man struggled, rolling several feet away from the van.

  “Run! Get Tyler!” I yelled at Beth as the van door closed, leaving her behind.

  ~*~*~

  The van sped down the highway for only a minute or two, moving toward the west, before it turned north, then east. I knew I wasn’t the only one in the van tracking the turns and how long we traveled. By the time we stopped, I was guessing we were in the mostly deserted industrial area north of downtown. The aging, oversized buildings were no longer cost effective for manufacturing companies. A few closer to downtown were converted to lofts or offices, but the ones farther to the north were left to decay, surrounded by weed-filled, crumbling parking lots. Near twenty or thirty buildings, varying in sizes, occupied a five-block stretch. Taxpayers had wanted the buildings torn down but were unwilling to allocate their tax dollars toward the endeavor.

 
“No funny business,” the man holding a gun to Tweedle said as the van door slid open.

  “Whatever,” Bridget said, stepping out of the van.

  I carefully followed after Bridget. During our trip, they’d handcuffed our hands behind our backs. “You’re American,” I said, to the man holding the gun. “None of you have accents. You’re either American, or you’ve been in the country a long time.”

  “What’s your point?” the man with the gun asked.

  “Why are you working for the cartel?”

  “Pays well,” one of the other men said as he dragged Katie out by her hair.

  She landed on her ass on the asphalt. I went to move toward her but she gave me a quick jerk of her head to stay back. Frustrated, I stepped away and scanned the area as two other men helped Katie to her feet. We were parked next to what I believed was the old bread factory. I scanned the outer perimeter before I swept my eyes to the building. Down the lot, at the furthest end, I saw a head peek out from behind a loading dock ramp.

  I shook my head slightly, and the head disappeared. The man hiding appeared to be homeless. Hopefully he wasn’t one of the mentally ill individuals who graced the streets, but statistics weren’t in our favor. Almost half the homeless were plagued with anxiety disorders, depression, bipolar disease, or schizophrenia. It was a complexity that the city faced every day.

  “Move,” my escort said, jerking my arm as he turned me toward the building.

  “You know these places are filled with rats,” I said, yanking my arm away.

  “Good. Maybe I’ll get to watch them chew off your toes.” He shoved me hard in the back and through the doorway.

  It took a minute for my eyes to adjust. It wasn’t pitch black inside, but the lights were off and the windows were closer to the ceiling than they were to the floor and caked with years of dirt and grime. The floor was cement and cluttered with trash.

  I chose my steps carefully as I was led across the factory to a corner room. The space had served as an office at some point. An old desk, covered in layers of dust, sat facing forward with a chair leaning to one side between the desk and a row of file cabinets along the back wall. I looked up at the windows, but they were too high to see through. The wall that held the office door had an observation window that started about waist high and ran the length of the wall from the corner to the door. I watched the others as they were dragged one at a time into the room.

  Katie’s disgust for the lack of cleanliness was apparent when she walked inside. “Can we at least get clean chairs to sit on?”

  Her silent answer was to be thrown face first to the floor.

  “How’s that for comfort, bitch?” the man asked as he leaned over the top of her, hissing in her ear.

  “You need to brush your teeth, dude,” Katie said. “Your breath reeks. Did you have sauerkraut? Ugh. Gross.”

  “Mouthy bitch,” he said as he slapped her across the back of the head and stood. He turned toward me, but I sat willingly before he did anything. Bridget and Tweedle followed my lead and sat as well.

  A minute later the door slammed shut, but two of the men stayed outside the window.

  “Now what?” Katie asked, shifting to the side with one leg extended to counterbalance her weight so she could to sit up.

  I glanced over at Bridget. “How’d you do?”

  “I got a pen,” she shrugged.

  “I got a small knife,” I said. “I win.”

  “Not so fast,” Katie said. “You think I was letting them throw me around for the fun of it?” She turned her back to us and dropped a small set of keys.

  “You win,” Bridget said as she scooted closer to Katie to snag the keys.

  “Do I get a prize?” Katie asked.

  “If there’s a handcuff key on that ring, I’ll buy you a hot fudge sundae,” I said.

  “Oh, there’s a handcuff key all right,” Bridget said, unlocking her cuffs.

  I watched and alerted Bridget when the guards turned to glance in the window. She uncuffed Katie next. They kept their hands mostly behind their backs, securing both ends of the bracelets to one wrist so the cuff wouldn’t make noise. There was a long wait while a guard moved to stand facing us until he finally turned his back again. Bridget unlocked Tweedle’s cuffs.

  “Why do you still have the jump rope?” Bridget asked Tweedle, tossing the rope next to me.

  “Everything happened so quick, I never thought to drop it.”

  I was sitting furthest from the door, my back to the desk. Bridget slid the keys toward me right before one of the guards turned around to check on us. I shifted my leg on top of the keys to hide them.

  “What’s the plan?” Katie asked.

  “You’ll use the desk to climb on top of the filing cabinet and slip out the window. You and Bridget escort Tweedle out. We’re four blocks northwest of a McDonalds. That’s the safest location to stop and call for help.”

  “Where will you be?”

  “Right here. Causing a distraction.”

  “Bad plan,” Bridget said. “You can’t take on seven guys alone.”

  “I don’t have to. I only need to distract them long enough for the three of you to get away, then I’ll surrender.” I twisted my body, lifted my leg, and snagged the keys, before turning back into my original position. “They’ll split into two teams, half staying to guard me and the others will leave to search for you guys.”

  “What if they just shoot you?” Tweedle asked.

  “Doubtful. If they wanted us dead, they’d have shot us already.”

  Katie snorted. “That’s what your inner profiler instincts are telling you? That it’s doubtful they’ll shoot you?”

  “I’m thinking Kelsey’s odds are better than ours,” Bridget said as she studied the windows. “Even if we manage to get Tweedle out the window without getting caught, she’s prone to injuries. If she hurts herself, no way will we make it four blocks before they catch us.”

  Tweedle tipped her head and looked up at the windows. “I’m not so good with climbing. Or running.”

  “Shit. Fine. Let’s see.” I scanned the room again. “How are you at hiding?” I asked Tweedle.

  “I’m spectacular at hiding.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Juan—” one of the men yelled from across the factory. “Move the van inside!”

  The guard in front of the window walked away. The other guard glanced briefly at us over his shoulder before turning his back to us again.

  “Tweedle, move behind the desk and hide under it.”

  She scurried on all fours past me. I grabbed her wrist and uncuffed the handcuffs, before nodding for her to continue.

  “Bridget, shift to your left and sit where Tweedle had been sitting.”

  Bridget scooched over several feet.

  “When the guard comes in, I’ll take him down, but Bridget, I’ll need you to jump up and open the window, then get back into place. We want them to think Tweedle escaped.”

  Tweedle giggled from behind the desk.

  “Tweedle, your job is to stay absolutely silent and out of sight. Understood.”

  “Got it.”

  “Silent. I mean it.”

  “Yup.”

  I rolled my eyes, and Katie snorted.

  “What’s my job?” Katie asked.

  “Trip the bastard if you can. Make him land toward me.”

  “No problem.”

  The guard glanced over his shoulder briefly, then turned back to the main room.

  “Get ready,” I whispered.

  The guard stiffened, then turned his entire body toward the window, practically pressing his nose to the glass as he stared into the room, counting the number of bodies. When he realized there were only three of us, he grabbed the door handle and rushed inside.

  Katie tripped him, successfully landing him face and hands first into my lap. I already had my hands on the jump rope, double layering the rope around his throat and rolling and twisting to the side as I tigh
tened the noose. He thrashed for near two minutes before he passed out. Bridget tossed me a set of cuffs and I secured his hands.

  Katie helped me drag him into the corner beneath the window where he’d be out of sight if anyone peered into the room. I searched the shelves and found a roll of packaging tape. It wasn’t ideal, but it would work to keep him from being able to yell if he woke. I tossed the roll to Katie who caught it deftly, tore a section off, and pressed it firmly over his mouth. We all moved back to our positions, with our hands behind our backs.

  “That went well,” Katie said. “Now what?”

  “That Juan guy will be back any minute,” I answered as I looked up at the open window. A fresh breeze was blowing down on me. “He’s armed. If we can take him down quietly, we’ll have the advantage.”

  “There are two other armed men out there,” Bridget said.

  “Not to mention the other three men who aren’t,” Katie said.

  “Please,” I said, grinning. “As if badass bitches like us couldn’t handle five to three odds. Hell, get a gun in my hand, and I’ll take them down myself.”

  Bridget and Katie laughed.

  Tweedle sneezed. “Sorry,” she whispered.

  “You’re supposed to be spectacular at hiding, remember?” Bridget said, giggling.

  “The wind is blowing the dust around back here.”

  “Quiet. I hear someone coming,” I said.

  Juan came barreling through the door and looked around. He spotted the open window and jumped on top of the desk. Before he had a chance to look outside Tweedle sneezed again. Katie dove across the floor to close the door as I stood, clasped my hands together, and swung my arms like a hunk of lumber against the back of his knees. The force threw his feet forward and his head and body weight backward. On his way down, he slammed his head on a filing cabinet before landing on top of Bridget.

  “Nice,” Bridget said, rolling his body off her.

  “Hurry,” I whispered, snagging his phone and gun before they dragged him to the corner and piled him on top of the other guy.

  I called Tyler.

  “Hello?”

  “Greetings,” I said, smiling. “I don’t have much time. Were you planning a rescue mission any time soon?”