by C. L. Stone
The apartment they’d kept us in was similar to the one Axel, Marc and Raven had lived in, just empty. There were two more rooms on the opposite side of where I’d been kept. Those doors were closed.
The central living area had a setup like an office: folding table, simple office chairs, computers that were monitoring the cameras. There were four people in here, one was the old Buble, now dressed and cleaned up. The others appeared Hispanic as well, two with similar enough features they could have been family.
The moment I was brought out, there were eyes on us, me specifically. Axel stood in front of me to give my nakedness some cover. I was given a simple T-shirt and a pair of black sweatpants.
“She’ll need to change again if she’s going with us,” Axel said. “Shoes and better fitting clothes.”
“We want this done quickly. Then she can wear whatever she wants,” Joe said. “She’s less likely to be trouble and run without shoes.”
The old Buble stood up from his computer and came around to us. “Hey, roommate.”
“Was that the real Buble?” I nodded behind me, toward the closed room.
“Yup,” he said. “My name’s Lupe. Thought you didn’t know him enough but might have heard of him.” He shook a long forefinger at me. “But you’re good. Ever want to work for us?”
“Who are you?” I asked.
“They’re cartel,” Axel said behind me. He was close enough I could feel his breath on my hair. “When Alice caught up with us in the car crash, I sent an emergency signal Blake gave to me in case we got caught.”
“What?” I asked, too stunned to put together a reason to call in a cartel.
At that moment, from the other room, Blake appeared. He was dressed, too. He had similar bruises around his arms but his face was clear of any harm. He looked confused seeing me and did a short finger wave. “What’s she doing out here?”
“Axel said to take her with us,” Joe said.
Blake rolled his eyes. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“She was going to find a way out,” Axel said. “I was listening. And she could figure this out with us.” He turned to the guard. “I keep telling you, none of this is helping you. It didn’t help Alice and she had us all captured longer. And leaving her behind is a mistake. She’s my best one. You wanted to trade our lives for the money and help us get Alice out of the way, right? I personally think that’s a fair trade. We don’t give a shit who gets the money.” He had one hand on my back but used the other one to wave in the direction of the rooms. “You still have every advantage with everyone locked up. She was going to be more trouble. She can’t be intimidated being naked in a room. It doesn’t work on her.”
“She has been really crazy,” the guard said to Lupe. I gathered Lupe was in charge, at least out of everyone here. “She broke the camera. She figured you out in like two seconds.”
“I know,” he said. “Okay, she goes.” He waved a finger in my direction. “But listen, I don’t like messing with dead bodies, but I will if I have to. We’ve got your brother. We’ve also got your husband. They’re ours until we’ve got the money. ¿Comprende?”
I glared at him. Axel implied to trust him. Did they trust this group? I got the gist now. When push came to shove, Blake called in some backup, promising them the large reward for getting us safe and taking care of Alice. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t lock us up or harm us if we tried to stop them. In the meantime, we were racing the clock if Alice had poisoned anyone else, and it sounded like Natalie, the pregnant one, was already in trouble and rushed to the hospital.
And if Alice thought we had Mr. Murdock, this could take a while. Since she didn’t have him and the Academy didn’t have him, someone else did.
The cartel…When we found Blake, he was getting involved in drugs throughout the city. There was something about a cartel then. Must have been the same people.
Blake combed his fingers through his blond hair. “Okay, okay,” he said. “No one wants anyone dead. We’re working together on this.”
“We get our money, we let our boss know, and we leave town with Alice and her crew, however many we can find,” the guard said. “No more trouble.” He pulled an empty chair around and offered it to me. “Have a seat. We’ll be on the road in a few.”
I sat down, sharing glances with Axel and Blake. Blake seemed sheepish, but then grinned at me with a wink.
It told me a lot. So far, no one was dead. We were just held hostage. If that was the case, it was in our best interest to find Murdock and his money so we had no more reason to be kept here.
Axel was stoic, as always. He stood beside me with his arms crossed, waiting. Unreadable.
The Academy was going to boot him for sure now, no matter how this went down. Bringing in cartel to steal stolen money and get rid of an enemy?
If it came down to desperation, what drove them to this decision?
Me.
Or maybe when they finally had us all together. If she got us all, it was game over. So he called during the car crash somehow. She might have brought us in, but at some point, they took over, found us.
But could they be trusted to keep their word?
YOUR ENEMIES ARE MINE
We were loaded into a black van just outside the main entrance of the Sargent Jasper as soon as the sun went down. No one had been in the lobby except one guard, and he only nodded once to us as we left. Apparently, he was a replacement provided by the new group. I understood the plan now. Even now, we passed by people coming in and out of the building, people who still lived here. Wait until late tonight, like they said, when everyone was mostly asleep, and move everyone out. Maybe if we got lucky, they wouldn’t move anyone if we got them what they wanted.
Inside the van, Axel, Blake and I sat together facing three men I didn’t know, part of the cartel team. Lupe was driving. The guard, Joe, had been left behind with several other people to keep watch over who was left.
I was still in the T-shirt and sweatpants but barefoot. Everyone else was dressed in black, long sleeves and combat boots. Some had weapons, but they were small. Pocket knives and cell phones in their pockets. Only two had holsters with any sort of gun, and they had to be small caliber. Nothing exciting. Nothing pointed at anyone’s head.
Everyone else was ready for action. I was dressed to wait in the van.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Do you remember Mr. Smith?” Axel said.
I had a memory of a tall guy, looking like Lurch with a tan. “One of the guys with Nightingale, the nonprofit charity that the board members might have stolen money from.”
“He was looking for Murdock, too. Only he hasn’t been seen in weeks.”
“Checking out his place?”
“Alice claims she scared him off of looking, saying he won’t know where Murdock is.”
“But she lies.”
Axel nodded. “She lies. So we’re looking for proof.”
Lupe called from the front. “Just hang tight,” he said. “This will be over if we find him and we can get to Murdock.” He said this in an odd way, in a very odd tone.
Lying to me?
After he said it, Axel gave me a long look. I didn’t totally understand him, but he was signaling something.
After dark, Charleston’s roads were nearly clear. I wasn’t sure of the day anymore. It felt like months since this started.
Christmas lights were on in neighborhoods as we passed them. The sight of them was odd to me. They were too cheerful, too distant. How could the people inside have no idea what was happening in their city? Kidnappings. People starving, on the brink of being killed. A secret war between groups of people they never heard of. We were no one to them. We were invisible.
We could disappear, and no one would miss us.
It was hard to tell where we were going after a while, but I suspected we were in Mt. Pleasant, or close to it. The van turned into an upscale neighborhood, no security. The home we arrived at was void
of holiday décor. The house was dark. It could have been empty. No curtains, nothing.
“It’s his address,” one of the men said. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s home.”
“He might not be here,” Axel said, “but there might be clues. Some things are easily missed.”
“Search the grounds,” Lupe said. He pointed to two of his men in the back. “You two, ask the neighbors. Try not to scare them.” He twisted more to look at Axel. “You’re with me.” He pointed to me next. “You stay here.” He turned his pointer finger to Blake. “You stay with her. No funny business.”
I didn’t understand Axel encouraging them to search an empty house. Was there something I was missing?
Everyone got out of the vehicle until it was just Blake and me inside. We weren’t totally alone. One of the men stayed just outside the front of the van, keeping guard.
Even if we wanted to run, we didn’t have the keys, and they still had Axel.
Blake scooted over on the bench, touching my arm and looking me over. “Are you okay?” he whispered.
I gave him a sideways look. “Starving.”
“I know,” he said. He glanced out the front of the van, toward where the guard was. “We’ll get out of this soon.”
“Where’s Corey? And Marc and the others?”
“They’re in a different room back at the Sargent Jasper. They aren’t hurt. Raven was the only one I know got injured badly, and it was a fight just to get him to settle down enough they could drug him. He was so angry…” He looked back at me. His eyes were dim, with dark circles underneath. His face was covered in a short beard, darker than his natural hair color, shadowed in the dark. “They had to be called in, you know?”
I raised a brow. “Did they?”
“She almost had you two,” he said. “I told Axel, last resort, if the last of us get caught, one of us should make the call. Apparently, he felt he needed to.”
“Are they the cartel you interrupted their drug trade from before? The one that sent poison to this city?”
“Their rivals did that. Wanting to give them a bad reputation by killing off the clientele. You don’t kill off your buyers. It was a dumb move.” He leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees as he looked at his feet. “I didn’t believe them for a while, but they were pretty upset with my interfering already anyway but considered what I did was a favor to them --getting rid of the last of the bad drugs-- it’s what they would have wanted. So maybe we give them some cash for saving us? It’s not the worst deal. They went for it, at least.”
“I can’t believe they got us all,” I said, rocking my head back and gazing at the ceiling of the van. “Even my own brother. Alice…she…”
Blake pursed his lips. “It’s my fault.”
I picked up my head to look at him. “What do you mean?”
He pushed a hand to his cheek, rubbing at his scruff. “I’ve been looking for him, since you’ve been in the hospital. Like I promised.”
“You were?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Only, when I found him, he didn’t trust anything I said. I didn’t know why. It was like he thought he knew me. So I told him I knew you. I was trying to get him to you because you were worried about him.” He bit his lower lip. “He said he needed to think about it. And when I left him, my phone was gone out of my pocket…I hadn’t even noticed…”
My eyes widened in surprise. “He stole it?”
“Gave it to Alice, obviously. I swear I didn’t know she’d gotten to him. I don’t know how…”
My heart raced. My lungs filled with air and I held it until it started to hurt. My own brother. Wil. No wonder he was talking funny, surprised to see me.
What lies had she told him?
How long had Alice been sitting with that? Holding my brother to use against me at some point?
I rolled my head back, pressing it to the side of the van. “Are you sure they aren’t going to kill us? These cartel?”
“I pinkie swear.” He picked up my hand. “This time, it’s the lesser of two evils. Don’t shoot me again, okay?” He kissed the knuckles. “Why do we care where two billion dollars ends up? If we’re safe, it doesn’t matter.”
I didn’t want to say it, because I wanted to say it didn’t matter, like them. Only it did bother me. “Because if it lands in with a cartel, it’s not going back where it belongs. Are we going to end up with more drugs because now they are well funded? Or worse? What if they do kill people? If they’re just as bad, we might as well let Alice have it. They are holding us hostage. They wouldn’t let the pregnant woman go until it was critical.”
He made a face. “But they did let her go. And it was Alice that made her that sick. Trying to get people to tell her where Murdock was. This group just wants us to sit quietly so no one can go to the police and stop them.”
“We can’t support a group that’s slightly better than Alice and her team. We’re just funneling the money from one set of bad guys to another.”
He sighed with his mouth still on my skin. “Sometimes I hate your damn moral sense.” He picked up his head and looked at me. “Especially coming from a thief.”
“I only ever took what I needed,” I said. “I’ll pay it back every day for the rest of my life. But who am I to just give stolen money to someone else?” I grumbled. “Just like I can’t kill anyone. Even Alice.”
“You were thinking about it?”
I pressed my lips together, grinding my teeth. “I’ve thought about it a lot. But I keep thinking about Corey holding a gun. About that look he gave me when I asked about it. We can’t turn into murderers. Our lives are on the line here. We’re taking a risk they won’t kill us after anyway.”
He pressed a palm against my back. “What do you want to do?”
“I don’t want to sit here.” I got up, bent over to slide into the front passenger seat.
This immediately got the attention of the guard. He came around to the window. “No funny business.”
“I’m not,” I said. “I want to help find Mr. Smith.”
“You should stay in the van.”
“He’s not here,” I said. I motioned to the house. “The inside is empty, and there’s no mail piled up in the box, the landscaping is bare. It might be in his name, but he doesn’t live here.” The more I spoke, the more I realized why Axel was here, and why we were still here. It wasn’t to scope out an empty house. It was a distraction. He was too smart to look at an empty house.
The guard lifted a brow. “You think you know where he’s at?”
“No, but there’s people who probably do. The rest of Nightingale. Some of them might even live in this neighborhood and might actually be home.” I motioned to the house. “You can tell the others. We’ll wait.”
He seemed skeptical but he walked around, heading inside the house.
These were street thugs. Newbies at best. How they managed to overtake Alice…that was beyond me. They must have surprised her. They had the numbers, and if Axel sent out a signal, knowing everyone was still at the Sargent Jasper, that was all they needed to bombard them and take over.
Which meant anyone in Alice’s group that wasn’t already captured, they might come back for her. We had less time to get out of this mess.
I scooted over to the driver’s side to start the van.
“What the hell are you doing, sugar?” Blake asked. He slid into the passenger seat. “You’re going to get us killed.”
“I’m not waiting for anyone else to save us,” I said. I broke open the steering column, looking for the right wires. “Get your seatbelt on.” I looked around. “Have a screwdriver or…”
He popped open the glove compartment and rummaged, finding a pocketknife. “Okay, that’s just stupid. They left us with a weapon in the car.”
I opened the pocketknife and I had the engine going, but the steering wheel locked up. I ignored it for now, using force to be able to back up out of the drive.
There were shouts coming from the h
ouse, but I ignored it all, jamming the knife into the key slot to break the steering lock. Once I could steer, I pushed the gas, peeling out of the neighborhood as fast as I could go.
Blake whipped around, watching behind us. “They’re going to be pissed. And we just left Axel.”
“It’s okay, they didn’t have any real guns. Axel can handle them.” I looked at him. “I think he wanted this. He knew. What kind of cartel are they? So far, they’re more amateur than me.”
He shrugged. “Might be just some locals ahead of the main team. It all happened pretty quickly. They didn’t need anything but a location and enough numbers to swarm the place.” He kept checking the rearview mirror. “Sweetie, I’m all for hitting the road, but they’ve got people. Your brother…”
“I know,” I said. “If they want this done, quickly, we can’t wait on the amateurs. Street druggies probably aren’t going to kill our people, but they definitely aren’t going to get to the bottom of this in a hurry.”
“More are probably on the way,” he said. “People a bit more…professional.”
“So we have to figure this out before they get here. But we’ve got a chance now to get our people out…my brother…” I wasn’t exactly sure where we were, but I just tried heading south and hoped we ended up on a main road back to Charleston. “They’ll have to steal another vehicle or find another way to get around. That’s if Axel doesn’t disable all of them somehow.”
Blake rolled his head back, shaking it. “What if I just give them my money? All of it. Think they’ll let us all go for… less than two billion?”
I threw him a sideways glare. “Maybe before someone told them there was two billion at stake.”
He held his hands up, palms open, showing me his hands. “You can’t blame me for trying. Where are we heading, anyway?”
“We’re going to call Avery,” I said. “He said before they were close to finding Mr. Murdock. Let’s find out if they’re any closer.”
♠♠♠♠♠♠
It was harder to find a phonebooth than I thought. We ended up not far from downtown, which was a problem for us if we wanted to avoid being picked up by police and questioned. We crept up to the edge of the city in the van but ditched it before we got to the tourist districts.
