Break
Page 34
‘We’ll let you choose the wall,’ Difiore cracked.
Cops. They always had to get the last word.
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‘That’s close enough,’ the bearded man snapped.
Cutter stopped in the clearing and raised his hands as wide as he could.
‘I’m alone.’
‘Do you have the money?’
‘What do you think I’m carrying in this?’ he retorted. He dropped the heavy gym bag to his feet and massaged his fingers.
‘Piotr, count it.’
‘Not so fast,’ Cutter warned the gangbanger. ‘Where’s the girl?’
The thug nodded at another heavy, who disappeared into the darkness and returned with a teenage girl. Her eyes were wide with fright, her mouth was taped and her hands were bound behind her.
‘Amy?’ Cutter recognized her from her photographs. ‘This will be over soon. I’ll take you to your mom and dad.’
She nodded rapidly and sobbed in relief.
‘Count it,’ he told the leader of the kidnapping gang, at whose shoulder jerk two gunmen came forward with counting machines. They opened the bag and placed the bundles of used notes on their trays. For long moments, there was nothing but the sounds of the whirring devices and the girl’s dry heaves.
‘Three million,’ one shooter announced.
‘Just as we agreed. Let the girl go.’
‘I think not,’ the leader said with a smirk. ‘We have the money, the girl. You are alone. We’ll kill you here.’ He hefted his AR-15. ‘It’s a remote part of the Catskills. No one will hear a few shots. It’ll take days or weeks for your body to be discovered.’
‘You think you’ll get away?’
‘We know we’ll escape. It’s not the first time we’ve taken the money and run off with the girls. Who’ll stop us?’
Cutter clamped his lips tight as rage flared.
* * *
Abraham Zinov, a Russian gangster, had made a successful business of kidnapping the children of millionaires and escaping with the ransom money. In most instances, the victims weren’t seen again.
He was wanted by the FBI and by every law enforcement agency in the country, yet he had evaded capture.
Amy Sorkin was his latest victim. He had grabbed the eighteen-year-old as she was emerging from her upscale private school in Brooklyn Heights. He had sent the ransom demand to her father, Travis Sorkin, a multimillionaire hedge-fund owner, who had contacted Cutter.
‘No cops,’ the distraught father had insisted. ‘I know how it’s gone down before. More than half of the kids are still missing.’
‘You need to trust the FBI and the NYPD. I’m by myself. I’ll—’
‘No!’ the dad had yelled. ‘I’ll pay. Three million is nothing. I would give away thirty, everything I have, to get back Amy. Take it to them and get my daughter back.’
Cutter tried his best to convince the parent, but his arguments fell on deaf years.
‘You cannot go to the cops either,’ Sorkin told him. ‘You’ve got to promise.’
Cutter had given him his word and agreed to go to the drop-off in the Catskills.
* * *
‘You think I’m alone?’
‘That trick won’t work,’ Zinov boasted. ‘We followed you when you entered the forest. We’ve searched you. No phone, no tracker. You’re surrounded by thirteen men. Yeah, I think you’re alone. You’re bluffing, and you’ll die.’
Amy screamed when he raised his gun.
Her shriek turned to a startled gasp when the gangbanger holding her fell to the ground as his head exploded.
Cutter dived to his left and caught his left shoe as the rattle of guns burst the silence.
‘POLICE. GIVE YOURSELF UP,’ came the order from a loud-hailer.
Zinov grabbed the girl and fired wildly into the dark.
Cutter scrabbled away as the kidnapper turned on him. He tore the bottom of his shoe away and removed the composite 3D-printed gun and took aim.
He didn’t flinch when a bullet smacked into the ground next to his face, spraying him with dirt and leaves.
‘I’ll SHOOT HER,’ Zinov yelled as his men disappeared into the woods. He crouched behind Amy, holding her hostage.
Cutter could see the side of his face and was aware of voices and shouts as cops captured the escaping gang, and then he saw nothing but the gangbanger’s forehead beyond the sight of his gun.
‘No, you won’t,’ he whispered and triggered.
* * *
‘I told you, no cops,’ Travis Sorkin said as he hugged his daughter tight.
They were at the FBI’s perimeter, half a mile from the scene of the drop-off. The father’s face was streaked with tears and lines of worry.
‘I gave you an order,’ he bellowed.
‘I didn’t go to the cops, sir,’ Cutter replied.
He hadn’t. He had confided in Zeb, who had alerted the Feds who had worked with him to set up the trap. An ingestible GPS tracker that he swallowed had enabled the federal agents to track him down. The ceramic gun had been his improvisation.
‘How did they know?’
‘Dad!’ His daughter caught his lapels and shook him. ‘I’m safe. Alive. Mr. Grogan got me out. Isn’t that important?’
Her father burst into sobs at that and blindly reached out and squeezed Cutter’s shoulder.
* * *
‘You didn’t have to shoot him,’ Peyton Quindica, FBI Special Agent in Charge, told him with a frown.
‘I didn’t have to,’ he agreed. ‘I could have let him shoot Amy and me.’
‘We would have taken him down.’
‘I couldn’t risk it.’
‘I told you not to be a hero.’
‘I was trying to stay alive and keep Amy safe.’
She grinned wryly as she shook her head. ‘We’ll need that,’ she said, gesturing at his gun. ‘That escapes the detectors?’
‘Yeah, it’s made of a composite material that the NSA is testing. I wouldn’t be alive otherwise.’
‘You’ll keep that to yourself?’
He searched her eyes under the glare of flashlamps and nodded. If that gets out, every terrorist and criminal in the country will be printing guns.
He grinned as he searched over her shoulder. ‘I’m half-expecting to see Difiore.’
Gina Difiore, Detective First Grade with the NYPD, the FBI agent’s partner. He had come across them in a previous assignment, and the initial antagonistic relationship had turned into a kind of friendship.
Sort of, he told himself.
Cutter called himself a Fixer, someone who helped those whom the system couldn’t. The detective considered him to be a vigilante and treated him with disdain.
‘This is an FBI operation,’ Quindica said, smiling. ‘We aren’t joined at the hip.’
‘She knows I was involved in this?’
‘Yeah. She said the world would be a better place if I let you get shot.’
‘Sounds like her.’ He high-fived her and went to his SUV.
Leaned back wearily when his phone rang.
‘Yeah?’ he asked. That’s a West Coast number.
‘Is that Cutter Grogan?’
‘That’s me.’
‘Mr. Grogan, I’m Diego Cruz, detective with the LAPD.’
‘What’s this about?’
‘I have bad news. Arnedra Jones and her sister were killed in a gang shooting.’
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Books by Ty Patterson:
Most recent first
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Cutter Grogan Series (Zeb Carter Universe)
Two books in the series and counting
Zeb Carter Series
Seven books in the series and counting
Zeb Carter Short Stories
One book in the series and counting
Warriors Series (Zeb Carter Universe)
Twelve books in the series
Gemini Series (Zeb Carter Universe)
Four thrillers in the series
Warriors Series Shorts (Zeb Carter Universe)
Six novellas in the series
Cade Stryker Series
Two military sci-fi thrillers
About the Author
Ty has been a trench digger, loose tea vendor, leather goods salesman, marine lubricants salesman, diesel engine mechanic, and is now an action thriller author.
Ty is privileged that thriller readers love his books. ‘Unputdownable,’ ‘Turbocharged,’ ‘Ty sets the standard in thriller writing,’ are some of the reviews for his books.
Ty lives with his wife and son, who humor his ridiculous belief that he’s in charge.