The ambulances had departed, taking Cletus and Cowboy – neither conscious – to the hospital. Everyone else had been patched up as best they could be and put to work in some fashion. Blue had brought in a wheelbarrow from one of the sheds and was making trips out with loads of busted sheetrock. Talis had righted the salvageable furniture and Catcher – lost, bereft without his twin, even more detached-seeming than normal – was carrying out the broken pieces. A pile was forming in the parking lot, she had no doubt.
Eden had swept all the cotton-candy pink insulation into piles, and she would have Nickel shop vac it up when he returned, then have him slap on an attachment and start getting up sheetrock dust. Pup, hobbling on a badly sprained ankle, was nailing plywood up over the hole in the wall.
Satisfied for the moment, Jenny turned to the two invalids who’d been dropped temporarily on the sofa. Both of them had IV bags attached to hospital issue, wheeled metal stands, and both wore gowns and were barefoot, Tenny with his bandaged throat, and Jinx holding himself like an old man, pale-faced and sweating from the pain.
“Look at the two of you,” she said, realizing too late that she’d put her hands on her cocked hips. “Whose stupid idea was it to take you out of the hospital?” They’d arrived just minutes ago, the sight of them hobbling across the dirty floor so ridiculous she’d thought she must have hit her head.
“Theirs,” the FBI agent, Maddox, who’d driven them all, said, sour and accusatory.
Gringo rolled his eyes. “You sure do complain a lot for a guy who willingly helped three one-percenters shoot their way out of a packed hospital.”
“You shot your way out?” Jenny asked.
“We dropped some cartel guys,” Jinx said, voice hoarse and tight.
Reese reached over, subtle and deft, and pressed the pump attacked to Jinx’s IV. A moment later, his lashes fluttered. Morphine pump, Jenny guessed.
She locked eyes with Reese and tipped her head. “Can I talk to you a sec?”
Gringo looked more than a little scandalized. “I was there, too.”
“I know, hon. Reese?”
He followed away a few paces, toward the mouth of the back hallway and out of the fray of busyness.
“What happened?”
The rundown he gave her was succinct, flatly delivered, and unemotional; a soldier reporting back to his CO. Ordinarily, she would have found it creepy and sad, but for the moment, she was glad of his eerily level head.
“Melanie was with him?” she asked. “Not being forced?”
“No signs of coercion, but I can’t know what she was thinking,” he said, and she glimpsed the first flicker of something like emotion, a brief spark of disquiet in his gaze.
She nodded. “Right.” Then: “You did a good job, Reese. Thanks for looking after everyone.”
His pale brows lifted the slightest fraction in what could only be surprise. Poor kid.
“Will you help me get Jinx and Tenny set up so they can rest? Then I could use you on security.”
He stiffened, stood up tall, heels coming together. “Ma’am.”
She felt the tug of a fleeting smile as he turned back toward the sofa. Under the strange veneer of child-soldier-grown-up, she could detect the makings of a spectacular Lean Dog in that guy. He already knew one of the most important words in the vocabulary: ma’am.
~*~
“Agent Maddox,” Eden called as she continued to sweep, and his head lifted. She thought he looked surprised, and wondered if it was the fact that she’d addressed him, or if her accent had thrown him. “Can I speak with you a moment?”
She noted that he’d rested a hand on the butt of the gun at his waist since entering the clubhouse, and he kept it there now as he came to stand in front of her. Smart man – annoying, but smart. He wore a huffy expression, but she could tell that it covered a barely-suppressed panic. This was a rule-follower; a straight-laced, uptight, by-the-book guy who’d probably had a parent or grandparent in law enforcement, one who’d grown up idolizing men and women in uniform, rather than fictional superheroes.
An assessment she made on the fly, her own law enforcement experience so deeply ingrained that she couldn’t fail to assess and deduce each new acquaintance.
“What were your orders?” she asked, flicking a few more stray clumps of insulation with the end of her broom. “Why were you stationed at the hospital?”
“What?” Distracted, impatient. When she glanced up, she found him surveying the room, and knew some of the disgust on his face had nothing to do with the truck that had come through the wall.
She set the broom bristles on the ground, and gripped the handle like a staff, staring at the side of his face. It was rather a nice face; he was handsome in a fine-boned, albeit generic way; the kind of man her mother would have said came from “good breeding stock.” Though nothing remarkable leapt out to her.
Then again, she’d grown very used to Charlie Fox, and she supposed she had ridiculous expectations.
“Agent Maddox,” she repeated, sharper this time.
When he turned to her, it was slowly, expression hardening. Shields going up, hackles lifting. He tipped his chin down, so he looked at her from beneath lowered brows. Trying so hard to look tough and inscrutable it was nearly cute.
“I asked about your orders,” she said. “Why were you at the hospital?”
What’s it to you? she read, plain as day in his gaze. He said, tightly, “To keep watch. Specifically over the one in the ICU.”
“Why him and not Jinx on the floor below?”
A muscle in his cheek flickered. “I don’t question my orders. I follow them.”
“Even when those orders come from half-dead bikers fresh out of the ICU?” Before he could respond, his mouth already opening in outrage, she said, “Jinx was on the same floor as Melanie Menendez, and unlike Tenny, they weren’t behind a locked glass door. They were far more vulnerable. Why were you stationed on Tenny?” she pressed.
The cheek muscle flexed again, lips whitening as he pressed them together.
“Why were you there at all? Neither Tenny nor Jinx could leave their beds unassisted.” She’d been wondering all of this from the moment the rag-tag group from the hospital first limped through the door, and she didn’t like the way the logic was unspooling. Hated the way it made lots of unwanted sense. “What were your exact orders? To keep the local police away from the Dogs?”
“No,” he snapped. And then she saw it start to hit him, the way his brows jumped. “No, I – I ran into them, in the parking lot. Sent them packing.”
“Were you there specifically as protection? In those words exactly?”
“No. But…” He trailed off, jaw tightening again. He didn’t want to tell her.
“I don’t know all the intricacies of the FBI,” Eden said, “but I spent enough years with MI6 to understand that all government security agencies operate on insubstantial budgets. No one wastes manpower for the hell of it. If you were the only agent who could be spared to watch the hospital, then it was for a reason, and they would have positioned you where you would be most useful.”
His eyes had widened on MI6, and stayed that way.
“Your superiors didn’t think the Dogs would flee – they’re working with them, why would it even matter if they left? But they thought someone might come for them. They should have had you on the floor with Jinx and Melanie. She’s an innocent in all this, after all.” She couldn’t help but snort, because as far as she was concerned, Melanie was as bad as the whole cartel at this point. “You could have secured the hospital sooner. You could have done the most good there. But you were upstairs in the ICU. Why?”
He glanced away from her, and took a deep breath in through his mouth. “No.”
“Think about it,” she said, the idea solidifying in her own mind, clicking into place with a doomsday snap. This whole scenario had been bugging her since she learned of it; she’d known there was a piece missing, something that would make the picture
whole. She knew in her gut, with a cold-dawning horror, that she’d finally found it. “You said so yourself that you’re a man who follows orders without questioning them. A good little soldier–”
“Don’t,” he started, turning back to her, eyes flashing.
“Who better to send into a trap?”
“A what?”
“The gunmen weren’t after you,” she said, thinking aloud, spit-balling; her brain felt full of static charge as she connected the dots. “You got up and interfered with one, right?”
“Two,” he said, sounding numb. His gaze had become withdrawn. He reached up to scratch absently at the back of his head, ruffling his carefully gelled hair. “They were gonna walk right past me, and I–”
“You did your job,” she said, injecting a soothing note into her voice. He was young, and obedient, and perhaps a little stupid – though she thought that was willful blindness and devotion. She was about to shatter his world, and she could do it gently. “Just as you were told. But you weren’t told very much at all.”
He chewed his lip, staring down at the square toes of his shoes; she knew they’d cost him a pretty penny, more than a junior agent should have spent on footwear. “‘I want you on the hospital,’” he quoted. “‘With the one in the ICU.’ That was it.”
“No further instructions?”
His throat clicked when he swallowed. “No.”
She felt a little dizzy, suddenly, the headrush that always came with this sort of chase. “Your superior knew the cartel was coming. He didn’t tell you to stop them, because he didn’t want you to – the plan was to get Melanie Menendez out, and killing the Dogs was a bonus. You, though – you were there as a witness, to cover the Bureau’s ass.” It was an ugly sort of triumph that surged inside her, but undeniable.
Maddox looked sick. He swallowed a few more times with obvious difficulty. “Doug Cantrell is–”
“In on it,” Eden said, and pulled out her phone.
Forty-Six
“Hands behind your heads, gents. That’s right. Thank you kindly,” Fox said behind him, as Albie dug through the drawers of a tool chest until he found something that would work: a roll of duct tape.
He returned to the center of an open garage bay, where Fox already had all the cartel lackies in a line on the floor on their knees. One sported a fat lip, another a rapidly-swelling eye that would turn into an impressive shiner in a few hours. All their weapons lay a few paces away, out of reach, magazines ejected and bullets flicked out onto the concrete.
Albie would have been lying if he said it didn’t give him a dark pulse of satisfaction to move down the line and bind their hands together with tape, more roughly than was necessary; he twisted their arms until he heard little grunts of pain. As he bound them, he was close enough to smell the sour bloom of fresh fear-sweat.
Oh, you can kidnap girls, he thought, digging his fingers viciously into the tendons on a skinny forearm as he wound the tape as tight as it would go. But someone shoves a gun in your face and it’s all over. Fox kicks you in the head, and you’re ready to piss yourself.
That had been a good image, that kick. Only rarely, Albie let himself envy some of Fox’s more superhuman fighting tricks, the spins, and ballet moves, and kicks, and martial arts flourishes. He got by fine with his fists and his guns and his knives, but Fox could disarm a crowd with a few seconds and a bit of panache, and it never failed to impress.
“Okay, then,” Fox said, footfalls ringing across the concrete. “I’m going up to check those offices. Look after the kids, will you?”
Albie looked between his retreating brother and their captives. “By myself.”
Fox threw a wink over his shoulder. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” Then he started up the stairs two at a time, metal clanging loudly.
Albie realized that, in Fox’s own strange way, this was a sort of gift.
First, he double-checked that they were all bound at wrists and ankles, and couldn’t wriggle free or slide a knife loose. Then he went to look at the truck.
The cab was full of trash: fast food wrappers and empty drink cans, greasy- and stale-smelling, and full of prints and DNA for the lab people. So they could, what? Run tests, search for matches, eventually slap the results up on projector screens in a courtroom when it all went to trial? Leverage it for plea bargains, and cut all these goons sweet deals in an effort to get to the monster at the top of the food chain? He was an outlaw, and he knew how the law dealt with criminals like these.
He slammed the driver door and went around back to lower the tailgate. Shined his flashlight into the camper shell-covered bed. There was no bedliner, only dinged-up, cold metal. Clumps of earth, an old rake, a sledgehammer, a few crumpled beer cans.
Something caught the light, glinting faintly, a thread of gold.
Heart pounding through every inch of him, trying to punch through his temples and throat, Albie leaned forward and picked it up between two gloved fingers: a hair. Long, faintly curled, blonde. The girls had been in here. This was how they’d transported them, back here in the dark and cool, like disposable things.
He let the hair go, and then wished he hadn’t, stomach lurching as he watched it sift slowly down, feather-light, to land on the garage floor.
Then he dragged the sledgehammer out of the bed and stalked back to their captives.
All of their eyes widened gratifyingly.
Albie put his light away, and lifted the hammer in both hands, propped it on his shoulder. It was heavy, almost too heavy, but it felt good. This was why it had always been Mercy Lécuyer’s weapon of choice. He wished – fleetingly – for Mercy Lécuyer’s muscle mass, so he could swing it and keep swinging it, for as long as he wanted.
But he wouldn’t need it. He was strong enough. Even with the unhappy nerves firing in his bad arm.
“Tell me about the girls,” he said, drawing to a halt in front of them, weight swaying back and forth, hands tight on the hammer. Ready.
They darted looks to one another, faces paling; darted looks to the hammer.
“I know they came here in that truck. And they’re not in it now. Where are they?”
One man, the largest, shifted, testing his bonds. There were more darted looks, quick headshakes and tightly-pressed lips.
“Where are they?” he repeated, a growl in his voice.
Still no answer.
He was furious. He was glad of their silence. Adrenaline surged through him in a whipcrack; he swore he heard the snap of it as his fists tightened on the hammer, and he strode forward. One, two long steps, a tightening of all his core muscles, and the head of the hammer crashed down, down, onto the big one’s shoulder.
Albie heard it dislocate; the wet-chicken-bone snap of the joint popping loose. The blow was hard, perhaps harder than he’d meant to deliver thanks to the heaviness of the hammer, and the force of it juddered up the handle and into his arms. He felt it in his teeth.
The man screamed. A belly-deep scream that spoke of the brightness and heat of the pain. He retched, and pitched forward, spitting blood where he’d bitten his lip. Ugly wet sobs getting caught in his throat.
The bound men on either side of him tried to shuffle away from him on their knees, like a smashed shoulder might be catching.
The struck man didn’t lift his head again; his shoulders sat horribly lopsided.
“Where are they?” Albie repeated, and this time, there was a scramble to answer, voices overlapping and tangling, stuttering.
“They’re not here,” one of the captives, the youngest one, said, raising his voice to be heard, quavering and audibly terrified.
Albie shifted toward him, lifting the hammer again.
“Wait, wait!” the boy gasped. “Please. I just take out the trash. I sweep the floors! I didn’t do anything to them.”
“But you know where they are.”
“Not here,” he repeated. “They came in just a little while ago. Enrique opened the back of the truck, and I–”
He gulped, and shook his head. “They weren’t conscious. They looked dead.”
His hand slid up the hammer handle as his heart jumped up into his throat. “Were they dead?”
“No! No. One of them made a noise. The tall one.”
Axelle.
“Enrique and the guys put them in a van. They left about fifteen minutes ago.”
“Headed where?”
“I-I don’t–”
“The workshop,” one of the others spoke up, and was elbowed for it. He shot his friend a glare, and muttered angrily in Spanish. To Albie: “It’s outside the city. The place where” – a distant, different brand of fear flickered in his eyes, one that had nothing to do with this moment, and the hammer Albie held – “where the Holy Father practices.”
Albie had feared that – had been thinking about a dark room, and a robed figure, and two women he loved laid out on tables – from the first, but having it confirmed now sent a fresh chill down his spine, soured his stomach all over again. His pulse tripped erratically, but his voice was low, calm, threatening. “Tell me where. Tell me where exactly.”
The man wet his lips, and looked regretful, but another aborted half-swing with the hammer had him talking again, fast and frantic. An address. And old house beyond the city, beyond the suburbs. Out in the middle of nowhere. A driveway latticed with tangled mesquite trees, and the house, tumbledown, ugly, abandoned. Another driveway, behind it, down into a gulley, a small workshop with a heavy, padlocked door. Windowless, reeking of blood.
Albie memorized the address, and he envisioned the place all too well.
He surveyed the pitiful group before him, now that he had what he wanted, and he knew an urge to more violence. What could it hurt to break their skulls open like fresh eggs? Who would miss them if they were dead? How great would the satisfaction be, to know that he’d taken the breath from them?
Lone Star (Dartmoor Book 7) Page 41
