Hustlers

by Chilton, Claire

  She reached out and grabbed the pipe as an explosion of murky water flooded into the room. She shivered as the icy water enveloped her, seeing the table crash against the wall before she closed her eyes and clung to the pipe as the room filled with water at high speed. The force of the water threatened to rip her away from the pipe and smash her against the wall too.

  She tucked her chin down, as the water pressure battered against her body, keeping her eyes firmly closed. The chair she’d been sitting on flew back and smashed against the wall, leaving only the legs taped to her ankles. The muscles in her arms ached as the water pressure tried to fling her back too. She gritted her teeth and hung on, waiting for the initial rush to be over.

  When the pressure abated, she opened her eyes. Murky water swirled around her. She glanced back, trying to see her father, but the dim lighting only revealed dark shapes. She quickly reached down to her ankles and untied the tape around them. Once free of any restraints, she kicked her way to the surface, holding onto crags in the slimy wall to ensure she wasn’t swept away by the current.

  She broke through the surface with her pulse racing and her lungs burning for oxygen. Did he make it? Is he okay? She shivered as cold, dirty water dribbled down her face.

  Inhaling a deep breath, she scanned the area. She was floating a few inches away from the roof, but other than an expanse of dirty water, there was no one else here.

  “Dad?” she cried.

  There was a splashing sound behind her, and she noticed a hand poke through the surface. She paddled over to it, pulling on it to help him rise, but he didn’t move. Trying not to swallow any of the water, she dived down. After scanning the inky depths, she found her father struggling under the surface. The tape around his ankles was caught on a hook that was sticking out of the wall.

  Pushing herself off the wall, she dived down deeper, reaching for the tape. She struggled to unwind the thick tape from his ankles, gasping out bubbles of air. Hold on. I’ve got you. She eventually untangled the twisted bindings and untied his feet, pushing him up toward the surface. Once she was certain he was free, she swam up after him.

  Bursting through the surface again, she gave him a hug. “Are you okay?”

  He gasped for a moment then nodded. “You’re right. We are taking out the Starling’s when this is over.” He narrowed his eyes.

  “How do we get out?” She glanced through the doorway at the fast moving water, which was shooting down the tunnel ahead of them.

  “We need to wait for it to drain out.”

  “What about Jimmy?”

  “Let’s just hope he wasn’t stupid enough to bring them the hard drive.” Her dad stared grimly at the tunnel.

  “I told him to get Riley. He might not be alone,” she said, hoping that Jimmy had done what he said he would do.

  “Detective Riley was sent to Scotland Yard a month ago. He won’t be able to help on this one.”

  “We need to get out of here now,” she said as she swam toward the exit.

  Jimmy nervously tightened his grip on the hard drive in his pocket as he stood at the hotel reception desk. This sucks. Where’s Ellie and Stewart?

  He scanned the lobby, but he couldn’t see Starling either. He jumped when there was a polite cough behind him, spinning around to find a hotel manager glaring at him.

  “What the fuck do you want?” he asked the manager.

  “Can I help you?” the manager asked.

  Jimmy looked the manager up and down, widening his eyes at the man’s checkered trousers. “Dude, you can’t even help yourself. What the fuck are you wearing? I’ve seen golfing pants with more panache.”

  “If you’re not a guest here, I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.” The manager scowled at him.

  “Relax, I got a meeting here. It’s all good.” Jimmy leaned against the reception desk and waved the man away. Then he picked up one of the hotel brochures and began picking his teeth with it while he scanned the room through narrowed eyes.

  “A meeting with whom?” The manager folded his arms.

  “Your mother. I picked her up on special at Poundland,” Jimmy muttered.

  “Right, that’s it. Out!” The manager gripped Jimmy’s arm, trying to drag him toward the doors. People milling around the lobby turned to watch as he tried to force Jimmy out of the hotel.

  “Child abuse!” Jimmy cried. “Dude, get your fucking hands off me, you flaming great pedo. I told you, I’ve got a meeting.”

  “Bullshit, with who?” The manager clawed at his arm trying to drag him toward the door while nodding to the security guard near the entrance.

  “That would be with me.” A smooth voice said behind them.

  They both turned around to see a white-haired man in a tailored suit staring at them.

  “M-Mr. Starling!” The manager quickly released Jimmy and turned to face his boss with a red face. “I-I er, you have a meeting with this young man?”

  “Yes I do, Roger. I’ll take it from here.” Starling nodded, never taking his eyes off Jimmy.

  “Okay, sir.” The manager hurried away.

  Jimmy straightened his rumpled jacket. “That’s right Mr. Belvedere, you run that little bitch ass of yours back to your desk.” He called out after the manager.

  Then he turned to face Starling, noticing a blond man standing behind him. That must be Matt. Ignoring the shiver of fear that ran down his spine, he looked Starling in the eye. “I don’t think very highly of your warm fucking welcome.”

  “I am sorry about Roger. He’s a little protective at times.”

  Jimmy rolled his eyes. “Dude needs the broomstick pulling out of his ass.”

  “Quite. So, do you have the hard drive?” Starling asked.

  “Do you have my friends?” Jimmy countered.

  Starling glanced around. “Let’s discuss this somewhere more private, shall we?”

  Jimmy glanced around. At least here, there were witnesses. “I’m comfortable with right here.”

  “It’s not an ideal place to discuss business,” Starling said.

  “What’s to discuss? You give me back my family, and I won’t fuck up yours.” Jimmy gripped the hard drive in his pocket. He knew he was out of his league, but he had a backup plan. He hadn’t been able to find Detective Riley, so he’d recruited someone else for the job.

  He glanced around the lobby. He couldn’t see his backup plan, but the guy had promised to be here.

  Starling nodded at the bouncers near the door.

  Jimmy glanced back as they walked toward him. “What are you doing?”

  “We’re going to take a walk,” Starling said as his staff grabbed Jimmy from behind, holding his arms. “And you’re not going to make a scene if you want to see your family again.”

  “You don’t know me very well, do ya?” Jimmy muttered. “HELP!” he cried. “I’m only fifteen, and this perv’s a human trafficker!”

  He kicked out at the nearest man, who yelped and released him. He slipped out of his grip and leapt across the nearby couch, scrambling across it to put some distance between himself and Starling’s goons.

  He rolled off the couch and onto his feet before racing across the lobby.

  “Call the police!” he shouted at a nearby woman, who wore a fox-fur coat.

  She widened her eyes at him, jumping back as if he was some kind of bug. “Oh dear,” she muttered.

  “Are you fucking serious? Get out your goddamn phone and call the police!”

  She backed away from him as if he had a disease.

  Great.

  He headed for the windows, spinning around and backing up as he saw the security staff heading toward him. He helplessly glanced around the room.

  Matt Starling grinned at him while holding a gun in his hands. Jimmy recognized the gun. It was the same one Ellie had taken with her. Where was Ellie? Where was his backup plan?

  Ellie burst through the hotel windows like the swamp thing, soaking wet and dirty. Shattered glass fell around
her as she landed on the thick rug in a kneeling position. She glanced up at Matt ahead of her with narrowed eyes. Payback’s a bitch.

  “About fucking time.” She heard Jimmy mutter beside her. “Jesus, is that seaweed in your hair?”

  She flashed him a quick smile. Then in a blur of rage, she launched herself at Matt, leaping over the couch and slapping the gun out of his hands as she used her body weight to knock him to the ground. She rolled on top of him and repeatedly punched him in the face until his smile slipped, and his eyes closed. Her drenched clothes hung off her, and her loose hair hung down in dark tendrils, dripping water onto him.

  Curbing her rage, she glanced over her shoulder to find her father standing over an unconscious Jerry Starling, brushing down his drenched suit.

  Behind him, Jimmy struggled with the hotel security staff. A man appeared out of the shadows, wearing a black ski mask. He easily wrestled the guards off Jimmy, quickly restraining them with what looked like para cord.

  She frowned at Jimmy. Did he hire the SAS to help him?

  She yelped when the body beneath her lurched, and Matt rolled her over, pinning her down.

  His clammy hands wrapped around her throat as he stared down at her with crazy green eyes. “You bitch! You ruined everything,” he cried, squeezing her neck.

  Her heart pounded loudly in her chest as she tried to remove his hands.

  His iron grip on her throat tightened as he lowered his head.

  She gagged as his hot breath scorched her skin.

  “I’ve been dreaming of doing this to you all day.” His face creased into a nasty smile. Suddenly his eyes seemed too close together, and his face appeared pinched. Everything that she’d found attractive about him was marred and ugly.

  She bucked under him, trying to fight off the waves of dizziness that were assaulting her senses. She tried to call out for help, but she couldn’t make a sound. Someone help me!

  Matt jolted on top of her as a black-gloved hand punched him in the side of the head. He lost his grip on her neck, sliding sideways before slumping onto the floor beside her.

  Ellie peered up at the man hovering over her. He wore a black ski mask, so all she could make out were his bright blue eyes.

  “That’s no way to treat a lady,” the man said to an unconscious Matt before he offered her a hand.

  “I’m not a lady,” she muttered, in between gasping in air.

  “Bad date?” The man’s mouth curled up into a smile behind the mask, and she couldn’t help but smile back.

  “You have no idea,” she said, taking his offered hand as he pulled her up.

  “Are you okay?” Her father was there in an instant. “That little shit.” He aimed a kick at Matt, but stopped when the man in the ski mask put his hand on his shoulder.

  “It’s time for you to get out of here, Stewart. I’ll take it from here.”

  Ellie frowned as her father turned the face the man in the mask. “Don’t think I don’t know who you are. What’s the price?”

  “For old time’s sake,” the man said.

  Her father nodded. “And them?” He pointed to the Starlings.

  “The police will be here any minute.” The larger man held out his hand to Jimmy. “Time to pay up.”

  Ellie frowned. This man wasn’t Detective Riley or members of his team, but Jimmy and her father both knew him. She glanced at the man who’d helped her, but she didn’t recognize his big blue eyes. Who the fuck is he?

  She watched Jimmy hand over the hard drive to the masked man.

  “Who the fuck are you?” she asked.

  “Now is not the time.” Her father put his arm around her shoulders as he guided her and Jimmy toward the doors of the hotel. “We need to leave, now.”

  “What about the people who were kidnapped. We can’t just forget about them.” Ellie glanced back over her shoulder at the man who was watching them walk away.

  “Dad!”

  “It’s out of my hands.” He shook his head. “He’ll handle it.”

  “What’s out of your hands? Who is he, Jimmy?” She glanced at Jimmy, who seemed to find a sudden interest in his feet as they left the hotel and walked down the street.

  “Who else was I gunna call?” Jimmy muttered.

  “Bill!” her father cried. “Of all the tentative alliances, you called in the…” He trailed off as he glanced at Ellie. “Well, no matter. I’m sure the Starling’s will not be a problem anymore.”

  “Called in who?” Ellie asked.

  “Come on,” Jimmy mumbled. “The dude used to be Special Forces. He seemed like the best person to call.”

  “Who is he?” Ellie frowned.

  “Jimmy, you need to stop reading the old newspapers and start focusing on the future. That alliance is long since over.”

  “Him, who?” Ellie shouted. “What the fuck did we just get into?”

  “At least I didn’t call Meyer,” Jimmy muttered.

  “If you had called in Meyer, I’d have killed you myself! Enough from both of you, we’re not discussing this. Not now, not ever!” Her father flashed a look at them both that demanded silence.

  Ellie shifted uncomfortably in the black cocktail dress she wore. She glanced down at her rhinestone sandals and wobbled on the heels for a moment. Who can walk in this crap?

  “Stop fidgeting,” her father said. “You look beautiful.”

  She peered at her father with narrowed eyes, who appeared at ease in his fitted tux, but then he wasn’t wearing ridiculous heels. “These things make me useless. I can’t even run in them.”

  “You don’t need to run anywhere tonight. You’re supposed to be enjoying yourself.” He nodded at the busy ballroom surrounding them. “You wanted to feel like a girl, right?”

  She grabbed a glass of champagne off the tray of a passing waiter and then downed it in one swig. After a long conversation with her father and Jimmy, she’d finally managed to explain that she was a girl, and girls needed to do things that weren’t high-risk jobs sometimes. “This really isn’t what I had in mind. I was thinking rock concerts or going on a date. This isn’t my kinda place.”

  He shook his head. “Yeah, I’m guessing Oxford isn’t your kind of place either.”

  She glanced up as applause broke out around the room, smiling at the stage as the Special Forces team were awarded medals by the people they had rescued from Starling’s human trafficking ring. It had taken the SAS and the police in multiple countries working together to hunt down the captives and bring them home. Starling and his son had been thrown in jail for it.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Ellie said with as much innocence as she could muster.

  “Apparently, the course you were supposed to go on filled up really quickly, and unfortunately someone else got your place there. I don’t suppose you and Jimmy know anything about that?”

  She flashed her dad a grin. “I have no idea how that happened.”

  “I bet you don’t,” he muttered.

  She peered at her feet. It was cheating. She’d lost the bet. She wasn’t good enough to manage anything, especially not a job with her father, but she really didn’t want to go to university. She loved her life with her father and Jimmy.

  She glanced at him. “I know I failed, but that’s the last time it happens.” She narrowed her eyes with determination. “I’m never dating again. Nothing is going to get in my way. I mean it dad, I…” She trailed off as a tall man with dark hair strolled past them. He was a couple of years older than she was. His handsome face and big brown eyes caused her skin to tingle. Like a magnet, she was drawn to him. He winked at her as he passed by, and she found herself admiring his broad shoulders as he walked away.

  She jumped when her father laughed. “Sure you will. You did okay on that last job, kiddo. You adapted and dealt with an unplanned situation. It wasn’t the date that got you into trouble. You didn’t do your research. Dating is fine. Just make sure that the person you choose is good enough for you.”

&nb
sp; “No, I’m not dating ever again, unless it’s that guy.” She nodded at the dark-haired man who had stopped a few feet away from them. She tilted her head to the side as she studied his muscular body.

  Her father laughed again. “That’s not the kind of research I mean.”

  “Mr. Hawkins! How wonderful to see you here,” an older woman cried as she hurried across the dance floor toward the man that Ellie had begun to think of as Mr. Nice-Ass in her mind.

  She frowned and glanced at her father when he gripped her arm.

  “We need to get going,” he said as he guided her toward the exit.

  “Aren’t we sticking around for the end of the awards thing?” she asked, glancing back over her shoulder at the tall, dark stranger.

  “What, and leave Jimmy all alone? Lord knows what kind of trouble he’ll get into.” Her father shook his head.

  She narrowed her eyes as a waiter brushed by, dropping an envelope into her father hand. “What are we really doing here?”

  “I don’t know what you’re implying.” There was a sparkle of mischief in her father’s eyes as he pocketed the envelope.

  She faced forward and tried to master walking on heels at her father’s hurried pace. “You’re unbelievable,” she muttered.

  After waiting a beat, she decided to sort out her future once and for all. “So, I don’t have to go to university, and I can date now?”

  He frowned at her. “You don’t have to go to university yet, and we’ll discuss the dating.”

  She shook his arm away from hers. “What’s to discuss?”

  “Your selection process,” he muttered as he put an arm around her waist and guided her toward the exit.

  “There’s nothing wrong with my selection process.”

  “When your only criteria is a nice ass, there is something missing from the process.”

  “I really don’t want to discuss nice asses with my father,” she grumbled.

  “Good. Then hopefully you’ll stop trying to date them.”

  She rolled her eyes. She’d only dated one guy who was an ass, so far.