King's Reign (The Xander King Series Book 4)

by Bradley Wright

  “Just do a flyby, got it.”

  “Xander.”

  “I said I got it.”

  “You say that a lot, then come to find out, you do what you want anyway.”

  “Situations change, you know that. Anyway, we are all tied in through our earpieces, so you’ll know what’s happening.”

  “All right. And you’ll hear if I get a call from Marv.”

  They nodded to each other, then split off. Sam toward the stairs, Xander for the elevator.

  “I think it sounds like a dumb slogan too, Xander.” Kyle came through over their earpieces.

  “Oh, shut up, Kyle,” Sam said.

  Xander didn’t respond, he just smiled as he pressed the button, calling the elevator. The door shut in front of him, and he was left alone to his thoughts, and some god-awful elevator music. Probably Kenny G. Xander knew that Sam didn’t think this was a good idea. And even though he had been trained for war, and not covert investigations, he wasn’t an idiot. He knew that there was a high likelihood this could be a setup. But he still thought it better than roaming around Santa Monica without a clue. At least here, if Gabriela was lying, if he could get his hands on her, he could probably make her talk.

  “Anything unusual, Sammy,” Xander asked.

  “Nothing so far.”

  “No movement out here either,” Kyle said from the truck.

  The elevator approached the seventh floor. Xander’s hand instinctively slid to his Glock at the small of his back. After his shower on the plane, he had changed into something more Southern California casual. Jack made fun of how tight his jeans and navy-blue V-neck T-shirt were, but Jack in his consummate giddyup attire could hardly judge fashion. Besides, Zhanna said she liked it.

  The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open. Xander didn’t move. He just listened. He heard some laughter echo down the hallway. Then quiet. He took a step forward and leaned out beyond the elevator frame, quickly scanning both sides of the hall. He saw no one. He noticed the sign on the wall across from him pointing out that room 736 was to his right. He pressed the “door open” button and held it for a moment while he considered his next move.

  “Hallway is clear, Sam.”

  Xander heard nothing but silence in his earpiece.

  “Sam?”

  “Xander? Can you hear me?” Sam tried for the third time without a response. “Oh bugger off. Must be something in this bloody stairwell.” Her voice echoed.

  She picked up the pace, taking the stairwell two steps at a time now: then her phone rang. She stopped, and yet again it was an out-of-country number. But this time, she recognized it. Javier Romero. Seeing the number sent a chill down her spine. There was no way he could be calling with good news. She answered.

  “Make it quick, Romero, I’m in the middle of running down your degenerate son.”

  “Samantha, you have to stop right now.”

  “Apologies, we are too far down the road for that.”

  “I’ll tell you why you have to stop, but you have to promise not to kill my son. I’m not saying he isn’t guilty, but he isn’t the one in charge.”

  Sam froze midstride.

  “You’re talking about the American ex-military who is involved?”

  “Again, I’ll tell you, but you must promise not to kill my son.”

  This is where Sam and Xander were the most different. If Xander were on this call, he would absolutely promise not to kill Francisco, and he would mean it. His level of morality when it came to criminals was much higher than hers. Because she had been dealing with them far longer than Xander had. She decided long ago, after the first time she had been burned by a career baddie, that it would never happen again. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t still make the promise. Regardless of how little she meant to keep it.

  “All right, Romero. I’ll do all I can to spare him if you tell me something I don’t already know.”

  “That isn’t a promise.”

  “All right, I promise.”

  “Gabriela Cisneros is the brains of the operation.”

  Sam’s heart skipped a beat. Her lizard brain had sensed Gabriela was involved from the beginning. Now, here she was, separated from Xander as he walked right into a trap.

  “Why wouldn’t you tell us this at your mansion?” Sam asked him. Her voice was shaky as she began to sprint up the stairs.

  “You know of her?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. Why didn’t you just tell us?”

  “I didn’t know,” Romero said. “I told you I hadn’t spoken with my son in over a year, and it’s true. But after you left, I had to find out just how involved he was in this. Gabriela Cisneros is the daughter of Jorge Cisneros. One of the worst criminals in Mexico. He has been grooming her from birth to take over his empire. She must have seen weakness in my son and brought him in to use him.”

  “Why are you telling me this now?”

  “To spare my son. And maybe if I can get him away from Gabriela, I can bring him back into my life.”

  Sam opened the door leading to the hallway on the seventh floor.

  “I said I wouldn’t kill him, Romero. I didn’t say he would walk away a free man.”

  Sam ended the call and checked the room number on the first door. She was on the opposite side of the hotel from room 736. In front of her, the hallway broke off in a different direction so she couldn’t see its end. As she was about to call for Xander, a door opened and a woman walked out with a child. At the same time two men came around the bend of the hallway, and judging by the hard look they had to them, they weren’t there on vacation.

  36

  The Dynamic Duo Run Into Trouble

  Xander was a lot of things, but one thing he certainly was not was a patient man. He knew Sam would be along in a matter of minutes, so he decided to clear the room himself; that way they could move on. Every second they didn’t know where the young girl was, was a second they were closer to losing her forever.

  After checking the part of the hall he could see, he walked casually out of the elevator toward room 736. It was a large hotel and somewhat oddly shaped, so the hall bent in a couple of different directions. There was no one in his section of the seventh floor. He walked right up to room 736, pulled his Glock, kicked in the door, ready to fire.

  “Xander!” Gabriela called to him.

  She was tied to a chair at the far end of the room. There was a lamp on, but where he stood at the entrance was fairly dark. He held up a finger telling her to wait, his pistol still at the ready. First he checked the closet on his left.

  Clear.

  “There’s no one here,” she told him.

  He held his finger up once more, then pushed the bathroom door open on his right and stepped inside.

  “Xander, there is no one here! Please hurry and untie me. They left to get Francisco!”

  Xander heard her, but he didn’t trust her, so he continued to check the shower. He found nothing. He walked back out, checked the rest of the room, and once satisfied they were alone, he tucked his gun in the back of his jeans.

  “What happened in Mexico?”

  Gabriela wasn’t crying, but she did look disheveled.

  “Xander, they will be back any second. Please, untie me and let’s get out of here!”

  “If they come in, I’ll take care of them. For now, answer me, or I will leave you here.”

  Gabriela looked toward the door, then back to Xander.

  “There was a flight leaving Mazatlán for LA. I didn’t know if you would make it back to the airport alive or not when you left to go after the men in that van. I was afraid they would come for me, so I left. You have to understand.”

  “Why didn’t you answer your phone when we called for you?”

  “I was on the plane. What could I do?”

  Her eyes were pleading with him to believe her. And she was tied to a chair. As he walked over to untie her, Sam finally came back into his ear.

  “Xander, if you can hear me, it’s
a trap. Gabriela set us up!”

  Immediately after he heard Sam’s voice, he heard gunshots through the earpiece. Just as he went to retract his arms from Gabriela’s, her facial expression changed, and before he knew it, she lunged at him, jamming a needle into his shoulder. He fell back onto the bed behind him, and she stayed with him, climbing on top.

  Her hands weren’t tied after all.

  “You almost ruined this for me, Xander.”

  He reached for her throat, caught it, and began to squeeze. But she had already depressed the plunger. She fought his hand with both of hers, but after a couple of seconds, things began to blur.

  Gabriela removed his hands from her throat and leaned into him, her mouth grazing his ear as she spoke. “Maybe I have a career in Hollywood after all. You bought every whimpering word I told you. You men are all the same.”

  Xander tried to fight to stay conscious, but there was nothing he could do. With a chorus of gunshots still ringing in his earpiece, everything went black.

  Sam kicked in the hotel room door beside her, double-arm-tackled both the mother and the child, and dove inside the room, taking them both with her. She had gotten off a couple of shots to keep the men back, but they had been able to fire as well.

  “Are you hit?” Sam asked the mother in between the small child’s screams.

  She pulled the mom to her feet and shuffled both of them into the bathroom. The mom couldn’t speak, but she managed to shake her head. It was the face the mother made after shaking her head that worried Sam. She looked horrified, and she was staring at Sam’s leg. When Sam looked down, she understood.

  The adrenaline in her system had kept her from feeling the gunshot wound. Sam had been shot before. It was kind of an occupational hazard. But she wasn’t sure she had ever seen that much of her own blood.

  “Get in the bathtub, don’t open the door, no matter what. If you have a phone, call the police.”

  Sam shut the bathroom door, then poked her head into the hallway. Gunshots blasted immediately; the men weren’t far away. She fired a couple of warning shots in an attempt to at least slow them. She was in a spot now. She didn’t want to draw the men into the room with the mother and child, but she couldn’t get them to another room. A burning pain began to radiate from her left thigh, but she couldn’t look at it. It would do her no good. She knew how bad it was already. No sense dwelling on it. She looked back inside the room and noticed there was an adjoining room door. She fired a couple more blind shots into the hallway, walked over to the adjoining door inside the room, and kicked it open with her good leg. She hurried back to the bathroom and ushered the mother and child over into the adjoining room.

  “When you hear more than sixty seconds of silence after the next round of gunshots, get the hell out of the hotel. Do you understand?”

  “Are you going to be okay?” the mother said, once again giving a horrified glance to Sam’s blood-soaked leg.

  “I’ve got a few friends close by. I’ll be fine.”

  Sam shut the door, crouched behind the dresser, and waited.

  “Kyle, if you can hear me, it has gone sideways in here. I can’t get ahold of Xander. We’ve been drawn into a trap, and I’ve been shot.”

  “Sam! Are you all right?” She heard Kyle in her earpiece.

  It was good to hear his voice. Calming. But judging by the ever-growing pool of blood at her left foot, she wasn’t sure how to answer him.

  “I’ve been properly nicked, I must say. But I’ll be fine. I don’t like not being able to hear Xander. Something is wrong. Worry about him first. We are on the—”

  The first of the two men peeked inside the room. Sam shot toward his head, but he managed to dodge her bullet. Meanwhile, Sam wasn’t feeling so good. Her body felt unnaturally weak. Her head was starting to spin. The men shot twice inside the room.

  “Sam!” Kyle shouted.

  “I’m all right.”

  One man charged the doorway. Sam shot his leg first, and when he dropped, the next man had no cover. She shot him in the arm. Her head swam, but she shot around where she figured a bulletproof vest would be. She shot the first man in the top of the head, but the second gunman was still able to fire. Two bullets blasted into the dresser just in front of her face. A black circle began to encompass the right side of her vision. The darkness was closing in.

  Come on, old girl, stay with it. You pass out, you’re dead.

  Two more shots hit the wall just above her head. Sam took a deep breath and did all she could to focus. She brought her pistol to eye level, and when she leaned out behind the dresser, she had perfectly placed the man’s forehead in her sights. She pulled the trigger and fell to the ground. She hit the floor at about the same time as the gunman, now dead himself. The darkness moved over one eye completely.

  “Sam!” Kyle continued to scream. “Sam, I’m coming! Just hold on!”

  She wanted to answer him, but she couldn’t spare the energy. If she was going to live through this, she was going to have to stop the blood from leaking out of her leg. She blinked her eyes several times, trying to clear the creeping blackness. It didn’t work. She was incredibly light-headed. Like a worm, she wiggled on her stomach, turning toward the two fallen gunmen. She extended her left hand out in front of her, dug her fingernails into the carpet, and pulled with all her might. Her body inched across the floor.

  “Sam! Talk to me! Are you there?”

  She managed a moan, or at least she thought she had. She extended her right arm forward, dug her nails into the carpet, and pulled. Her breathing was much too heavy, her body drenched in sweat. The blackness was almost total. She reached out her hand and grasped for something, anything. The last man she had shot, when he fell to the ground, had rolled over the man on the floor in front of him. If he hadn’t, Sam wouldn’t have had a chance, because he would have been too far away from her. As it were, her hand scavenged his body and found what felt like the smooth leather of a belt. Or for her purposes, a tourniquet.

  Come on! You’ve got to do this. You don’t cut off the blood flow, you are dead. You are better than this. You will not die alone on the floor of a hotel room.

  She continued her internal pep talk. It did nothing to keep the weakness from settling into her bones. Then her finger found a buckle. She felt a slight tingle of adrenaline at the discovery. She worked her fingers until the belt was undone, then pulled as hard as she could as she rolled over onto her back. The belt came free of the man. With the very last drops of her energy, and her consciousness, she managed to tie the belt above the wound in her thigh and collapsed onto her back. The darkness finally pulling her under.

  37

  A Dry Clean Getaway

  The next twenty minutes of Kyle’s life almost gave him a heart attack. Hearing Sam tell him she had been shot was hard. Hearing gunshots going off around her and not getting confirmation that she was okay after that nearly broke him. Not to mention how Xander had gone quiet. Once again it had become painfully obvious that he had not been properly trained for this sort of thing. Luckily, he had Zhanna and Jack. Zhanna took the lead as they hurried into the Fairmont Hotel. Jack broke off for just a second and informed the front desk that help was on the way and that they needed to evacuate the building. But it was too late for that. Someone had pulled the fire alarm.

  Kyle heard Zhanna say that it was probably whoever was shooting at Sam who had pulled it. It would provide them some cover as they exited the hotel. She said soon the whole of Santa Monica was going to be on lockdown. After about another half hour, if anyone moved on the streets everyone would know it. She said that meant that Tarter, Gabriela, Francisco, or whoever the hell else was involved would be in a serious hurry to get where they were going.

  Apparently they were, because they were nowhere to be found. By the time the three of them made it to the seventh floor, there was no sign of any of them. Not Xander King, not Sam Harrison, and not even one of the bad guys. Only two dead men lying on top of each other in a r
oom where the door had been kicked in. But Kyle did find something. And it was the reason the last twenty minutes had gone from bad to horrific.

  Just beyond the two dead men were two pools of blood and a generous smear of it in between. Lying just above the last puddle was a gun.

  Sam’s gun.

  “Where the hell is she, Zhanna? Jack?”

  Panic had a tight hold on Kyle’s voice. They didn’t have an answer for Kyle. The three of them searched the adjoining room and found nothing. Kyle’s phone began to ring. It was Marv. Kyle hit speaker and handed the phone to Zhanna. He wasn’t sure he would be able to retain what Marv was saying.

  “Marv, Xander and Sam are gone.”

  “Zhanna? What do you mean, gone?” Marv’s voice was worried.

  “I mean gone. Nyet. They came into hotel to find Gabriela. Now they are both missing.”

  “Gabriela?” Marv didn’t know that name.

  “She is girlfriend of Francisco Romero. Said she was being held hostage here at Fairmont hotel. Apparently she was lying.”

  “Damn it. Wait, what? I thought you were looking for David Tarter?”

  “We were, but you had no info, so Xander moved on.”

  “How could they be missing?”

  “We heard gunshots. We heard Sam trying to tell Xander about a trap, that Gabriela was in charge.”

  “A woman named Gabriela is in charge? And you said she is Romero’s girlfriend?”

  “This is what Xander said. Marv, we need to know what to do next. Xander, Sam, and girl are all missing. What do you know? Did you find this Tarter’s Hummer?”

  “Better than that. You won’t believe this, but David Tarter’s brother called the police. Said Tarter killed his own sister—foster sister. But he let his brother, Tommy, go. Tommy was so pissed that he ratted his brother out. Talk about a family feud.”

  Jack spoke up. “Marv, we ain’t got time for the long version. Our friends are in trouble.”