Whiskey: A Reed Security Romance (Reed Security Series Book 7)

by Giulia Lagomarsino

  Ice swung the door open and I entered first, moving silently through the large building. Ice and Jules were at my back as we descended the steps toward the basement. That was most likely where the girls were being held. We heard a creak behind us and spun around, but it was already too late. There was a man at the top of the stairs with a gun trained on us. If he fired, our location would be given away and we’d be fucked. I slipped my hand down my leg to the strap where my knife was housed. I almost had it out when a figure jumped out and broke the man’s neck in one swift movement.

  He gently laid the man down so he didn’t make any noise and then walked toward us. Knight. Of course. The man was as lethal as they came and you never knew where he would be. He moved as swiftly and silently as you’d expect from any assassin. He paused on the stairs next to me with a quirked eyebrow.

  “You didn’t seriously think I would let you have all the fun?”

  I shook my head and started back down the stairs with Knight beside me. There was a hallway with a series of doors. I could hear someone speaking in Spanish, but it was muffled. I nodded for the first door. We needed to clear all the rooms no matter where the voices were coming from. We couldn’t afford to miss anything.

  I swung the first door open and scanned the room, but there was nothing there. We moved down the hall to the next room and did the same. Movement from the corner had Knight and I aiming our weapons over there. Knight was running over the next second, huddled down next to Kate. I could see Vanessa on the floor, unconscious and pale. Her hands were behind her back, chained to the wall. Ice and Jules were keeping watch outside the room.

  “Cap, come in.”

  “What do you have?”

  “We’ve got Kate and Vanessa. Kate appears okay, but Vanessa is out. We need Hunter down here now. Basement level, second door. No sign of Maggie yet. There are voices down the hall. We’ll need a few more teams down here.”

  “10-4.”

  I glanced over at Knight and saw that he had cutters on him that he was using to remove Kate’s cuffs. Kate wasn’t saying anything, just trembling and staring at Knight. When her cuffs were removed, she flung herself into Knights arms as he handed me the cutters. I quickly cut through Vanessa cuffs and pulled her arms out from behind her back. I could see now that she had blood all down her legs. There were no open wounds to see, which meant that she was most likely miscarrying. I didn’t want to say anything over coms. If Cazzo heard that, it could put everyone in danger.

  A few minutes later, Hunter and Cole ran into the room. Cole went over to Kate, yanking her from Knight’s arms and wrapping her in a tight hug. Hunter was by my side looking over Vanessa with a grim look on his face. “She needs a hospital. We need to get her out of here now.”

  “Anyone found Maggie yet?”

  He shook his head.

  “We still have more rooms to clear down here, but we need to get her out of here.”

  Hunter nodded. “Cap, we’re taking Cole and Knight to get Kate and Vanessa out of here. We need to get to the hospital. Cazzo, you need to come too, man.”

  “I’ll meet you at the south exit,” he said gruffly. I could hear in his voice that he was trying to hold it together.

  “We’re clear up here. I’m heading down to you. Alec, your team takes watch around the building,” Cap said.

  “Copy that,” Alec’s voice came through the line.

  The rest of us took up posts in the hallway of the basement as Knight, Cole, and Hunter silently made their way out with Kate and Vanessa. Cap was downstairs moments later with Sinner and Burg, ready to finish clearing the building. We cleared the remaining rooms on the sides of the hallway, which left one at the very end. I could see the look of terror on Cap’s face, knowing that what was beyond this door would tell us almost everything we needed to know.

  We listened outside the door for a moment, hearing two voices. Cap nodded and I slowly turned the knob on the door, flinging it open as Cap stormed the room, followed by Sinner, Burg and myself. The men were surprised and didn’t react right away. Neither did Cap. He was staring down at his wife, lying lifelessly on the floor, too stunned to move.

  There was a black tarp on the floor and Maggie was lying next to it on her stomach. Blood smeared her back and her left hand was missing two fingers that were laying just inches from her body. Cap’s eyes slowly lifted until he was looking directly at the men in front of him. He moved so fast that I didn’t have time to try and stop him, not that I would have. His knife sliced across one man’s throat before lodging in the other man’s eye. He pulled it out and started stabbing them repeatedly until blood was pouring from their bodies and covering his. Sinner had to pull him off them.

  “Cap, enough. Maggie needs you.”

  That seemed to get through to him and he slowly stood, wiping the blood from his face with his shirt. He turned around and swallowed hard as he knelt down beside Maggie. I placed my fingers on her neck and felt a pulse. It was faint, but it was there.

  “Cap, she’s alive. We need to get her to the hospital.”

  He just stared at her, tears in his eyes and heartbreak on his face. He was on the verge of losing it and that couldn’t happen if we were going to save Maggie.

  “Burg, I need your med kit.”

  Burg grabbed the kit out of one of his pockets. It wasn’t much, but we all carried a little something just in case of an emergency. I pulled out my own and so did the others. I quickly wrapped Maggie’s hand tightly with gauze to try and slow the bleeding. Her back was a different story. She had deep gouges that looked like letters, but there was so much blood that I couldn’t make out what it said. I wasn’t a medic. I didn’t know what to do, but I knew that putting something dirty on her could cause infection. The alternative was to carry her out with open wounds and I didn’t think that was too much better.

  “Here,” Sinner said, whipping off his shirt and handing it to me. “I have a few gauze pads we can put over the worst of it and then we’ll put this shirt on her to protect the rest.”

  I nodded in agreement and took the pads from him, gently placing them over the worst of the cuts. Although, all the cuts were bad. I was at a total loss what to do, as was everyone else in the room. Cap was still standing there staring down at her.

  Hunter rushed into the room and I breathed a sigh of relief. “I sent Vanessa and Kate to the hospital and came back. We need another team there ASAP.”

  “We’re on it,” Sinner said as he and Burg left the room.

  Hunter knelt down on the other side of Maggie and assessed her injuries. His eyes flicked to her fingers on the floor and he quickly pulled out a baggie and gauze.

  “Chris, put her fingers in the gauze and then in the baggie.”

  I did as he asked, picking up the two digits with the gauze and placing them in the bag. When I picked up her ring finger, her wedding band fell to the floor and made a dinging noise that echoed throughout the room. Cap finally snapped out of his haze and looked at the ring on the floor. He bent over and picked it up, slipping it on his pinky finger. Taking a deep breath, he knelt down next to Maggie and pushed her strawberry blonde hair from her face.

  “Alright, I’m going to clean up these cuts the best I can and then we’ll get out of here. Chris, I need you to call ahead to the hospital and let them know we’re on our way and the extent of her injuries. We’re out of here in five,” Hunter demanded.

  I placed the baggies in his medical bag as he finished pouring something over her cuts. As the blood washed away, I heard Cap suck in a deep breath. I looked over to see Night Kings carved into her back. Hunter quickly threw on some patches and covered her body. I ran up the stairs to get reception and called the hospital, relaying all the information Hunter had asked me to. When he emerged from the building carrying Maggie, we rushed to our vehicles and raced off to the hospital. I wanted to get back to Ali, but I needed to be sure first that Maggie, Vanessa, and Kate would be alright.

  We made it to the hospital in no time
and the girls were brought back to be checked out. Knight had to be physically held back from going with Kate. The staff was on the verge of having him thrown out. I chuckled to myself, wishing I could see them try.

  I looked around the waiting room, thinking we should have some sort of plan for what we were going to do next, but Cap was too out of it to make any decisions. I looked to Cazzo and he looked equally devastated. I walked over to Derek and motioned for him to follow me. I waited for a nurse to pass in the hallway and then leaned in close to Derek.

  “We need a plan and you’re all we’ve got right now. Cap and Cazzo are out of their fucking minds and we have to be prepared.”

  He nodded his agreement. “I know. Something wasn’t right back there. Where was everyone? There should have been more people in that building.”

  “Unless they got what they wanted. Maggie was pretty torn up.”

  “We need to figure out what they were after,” Derek nodded. “They could have been after Reed Security codes, but Maggie wouldn’t know the most recent ones.”

  “No, they aren’t after intelligence. If they’re working for the Blood Devils, they want to know where Ali and Axel are.”

  “Maggie knows that location,” Derek said grimly.

  “But she doesn’t know the codes to get in.”

  “She knows one,” Derek said cryptically.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Alison

  I WALKED OUT of the bedroom, unable to sleep. Axel could sleep through practically anything, but I was too worried about Chris to even close my eyes. Every time I tried, I saw him lying on the ground, bleeding out. I went downstairs to the living room where the girls were all sitting. I felt awkward, not knowing any of them, but they were all related to someone at Reed Security, so they were Chris’s friends.

  “Hi, I’m Claire,” a woman said as she walked over to me.

  “Alison. I’m…uh, well, my son is Chris’s son.”

  “Chris has a son?” she asked incredulously.

  “Well, he didn’t know. It’s a long story,” I said anxiously. Would she want me to go into all the details now? I didn’t know if I was ready for that.

  “I bet it would make a good book,” she grinned. At my confused expression, her smile widened. “Sorry. I’m a librarian and I love a good story. Not that I expect you to tell me your whole life story right now, or at all if you don’t want to. I was just saying that I like to read and by the sounds of it, your story would be quite interesting.”

  “Um….”

  “Don’t mind her. She rambles. Hi, I’m Lucy, her sister. I’m engaged to Hunter and she’s engaged to Derek.” I shook her hand and gave a tentative smile. “Come on. I’ll introduce you to everyone else.”

  We walked into the living room and all eyes turned on me. None of them were judging me from what I could tell, which I didn’t understand.

  “This is Cara. She’s Sinner’s wife. That’s Lillian, Sean’s wife, but Sean isn’t here. He’s a detective with the police department. Cara is Lillian’s sister-in-law.” I nodded along, trying to catalogue that information for later.

  “I have two kids, but they’re upstairs sleeping right now,” Lillian said with a smile.

  “I didn’t see them come in.”

  “They were pretty out of it,” she said sweetly. “Rebecca is four and Caleb is three.”

  “Uh, well, I’m Alison and I have a son, Axel. He’s almost sixteen and he’s Chris’s son.” A few eyebrows went up and I didn’t want them thinking badly of Chris. “It’s a really long story, but basically, Chris and I were high school sweethearts and circumstances tore us apart. He went off to the military and I was…I was taken by a gang. It was safer for my son if everyone believed he belonged to this guy, Slasher. But Slasher wanted to initiate Axel into the gang, so we ran. I’m afraid that all this chaos is because of me.”

  I expected some outrage or at least some critical looks, but everyone just looked at me with sympathy, which was almost worse.

  “How did you get away?” Cara asked. I could see in her eyes a kind of familiarity. Like she had lived this life before. I didn’t want to push, especially since I didn’t want to talk about my own life.

  “I made Slasher angry enough to beat the crap out of me. I knew he was having a party and he would forget about me if I was out of commission. When they started partying, Axel and I slipped out.”

  “You purposely had a gangster beat the crap out of you?” Claire spluttered.

  “I had to get away. It was my only chance.”

  “Wow,” she whispered in awe. “You’re like, way better than Lois Lane.”

  I tilted my head in confusion, not sure how to respond to that.

  “I mean, she was always being rescued by Superman. You saved yourself. That’s the best kind of heroine.”

  “Well, I had a son to take care of. I was determined,” I said with a shrug.

  “So, what was it like being part of a gang?” Claire asked excitedly. My eyes flicked to Lucy, who just rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. We all know I have no filter. Sorry about that,” she said, not so apologetically. “It’s just, I’ve read all these romance books about women being rescued from the grips of an evil drug dealer who is determined to keep her shackled to his side for the rest of her life or until she succumbs to her tragic fate. How realistic is that?”

  “Well, I haven’t actually read any of those kinds of books. In fact, the only books I tend to read are medical journals.”

  “Wait, are you a doctor?” Lillian asked.

  “No, I’m a nurse. I was able to go back to school and get my nursing license.”

  “He let you do that? Oh my gosh. Is he like one of those evil men that you hate to love?” Claire was a little too giddy about this whole conversation, but I found her light attitude about the whole thing kind of endearing.

  “He’s definitely not someone you hate to love. Or love to hate for that matter. He was just pure evil. I convinced him that I could be helpful to him.”

  “So, what happened when you ran? Was it an easy escape or was there danger lurking in every corner?”

  I smiled at Claire’s enthusiasm. “Well, considering that he had just beaten me up, I was in a lot of pain and I guess I wasn’t as stealthy as I thought I was. They caught up to us in Pittsburgh.”

  Claire put a hand to her chest as she let out an audible gasp. “No, way.”

  “Be careful, Alison. Claire’s about to have a book-gasm over here,” Lucy shook her head.

  I chuckled, not able to keep in the hilarity of the situation I found myself in. “Yes, way. It was pretty intense. Chris found us just in time, but so had the Blood Devils. Chris was carrying me back to his vehicle when they started shooting at us.”

  “Holy Cannoli,” Lillian whispered. “Then what happened?”

  “I’m not sure. I remember being jostled around a lot and I remember intense pain, but that’s about it. I woke up in his bed later with a chest tube in. I guess I had a collapsed lung and he had to put one in not long after we got on the road. Axel told me a little bit about it. He said it was pretty intense.”

  Claire nudged Lucy and whisper hissed, “See? I told you there was something strange about the men of Reed Security. They all have like these awesome super powers.”

  “Just ignore her,” Lucy said. “She has this weird obsession with superheroes and at one time thought that all the men from Reed Security had super powers.”

  “Hey, don’t make fun of me,” Claire pouted. “It could have happened.”

  “Claire lives in a fantasy world that is part book and part reality. You never really know what you’re going to get with her.”

  I nodded to Lucy, but deep down, I thought Claire was pretty awesome. Living in your own little reality sounded really appealing at the moment. Now that I got to know Claire a little better, I was really interested in knowing the rest of them.

  “So, Lillian. You’re married to a detective?”

  “Yes. He works
with the police department back home.”

  “Did he not want to join Reed Security?”

  She glanced at Cara. “Well, Cara went missing for a while and when the guy who took her wasn’t caught, he decided to join the police force. He was determined to find the guy.”

  I looked over at Cara in disbelief, which was a little strange considering my own story. “Did they catch him?”

  She nodded and grinned. “Yes, but I was a basket case. Technically, I still am. Sinner is kind of like my therapist.”

  “Wait, Sinner’s a therapist? I thought he was a member of Reed Security.”

  “He is. I met him when I passed out in a restaurant. He helped me overcome my fears.”

  “How did he do that?”

  She blushed furiously as she ducked her head. “Let’s call it sexual healing.”

  I bit my lip, not sure if this was some kind of new kink that I hadn’t heard of yet. And did I want to know about it? Yes. Yes, I did. I cleared my throat and tried to find the best way to ask her more, but Claire beat me to it.

  “Did he throw you down on a restaurant table and ravage your body?”

  “Uh, there was a restaurant one time,” Cara grinned.

  “Okay, so is it just me or are the men of Reed Security all pretty…large?” Lucy asked.

  I thought about it and all the men I had seen were rather large. But then they were all former military and probably had to keep up their bodies.

  “Definitely large,” Claire said with a grin. “I would say super sized.”

  “Overwhelmingly so,” Cara smiled.

  “Oh, dear. I’m not sure this is appropriate to talk about,” Lillian said primly.

  “It’s just us girls,” Claire giggled. “It’s not like they’re standing right in front of us.”

  “But,” Lillian stuttered for a moment. “Doesn’t it feel like we’re objectifying them?”