Ryker (Hope City Book 5)

by Kris Michaels

  “You know, I don’t think that’s how it is at the firehouse.” She knew Blay worked hard. What he did all day if there wasn’t a call she wasn’t sure, but she couldn’t picture Blay with his feet kicked up watching television along with the rest of the station.

  “Whatever. He needs to call me back.” Bekki snorted the reply.

  “And when did you call him?”

  “About… ten minutes ago.”

  She snorted at Bekki’s impatience. “Give him a half-hour before you call him again. He might be doing something important.”

  “Again, whatever. Doesn’t he know that his world rotates around me?” Bekki cackled an evil laugh.

  “You’re horrible.”

  “Nah, I’m perfect. Look, I got to go. My Uber is pulling up. Send me that email and I’ll look into it. Don’t engage with these guys, just find a workaround until I get answers.”

  “We’ve done that.” Or rather, Roger had done that.

  “Okay. I’ll call as soon as I have anything. Got to fly. Bye.” The line went dead.

  She shifted the phone away from her ear. “Bye.” Her sister personified perpetual energy that seemed wound just a bit too tight. She was a wonderful person but a lot to take if you didn’t know her. Well, even if you knew her, she was a lot to handle. With a chuckle, she grabbed the orders that her vendors didn’t fill and scanned them into the computer. She needed to get through the paperwork so she could meet Ryker at home tonight. A smile filled her heart. She had a reason to leave work. Damn, could life get any better?

  Chapter 15

  Ryker sat down in the rehab facility’s intake room. The need to speak with Mouse privately put them in the small room. He looked up when the door opened.

  “What happened to you?” Mouse froze just inside the door. She looked better. Her skin held a pink tint instead of the grey pallor she’d had the last time they’d met. Her hair was clean and secured in a ponytail, her eyes were clear, but there were still dark rings under them.

  “A bullet.” He would not pull any punches with her.

  “Because of me?” She leaned against the wall instead of sitting down across from him.

  “I think so. Care to fill me in?”

  She looked down at her fingers she’d knotted in the hem of her hospital scrub top. “They couldn’t have found you through me. I was careful.”

  “You used your friend Alice to reach out to me. They found Alice floating. They knew my number. Anyone with any connections can find the name to go with a telephone number. Peña and Rubio have many, many connections.” He shifted in the chair so he was facing her.

  Tears welled in her eyes and then traveled down her cheeks. “Alice didn’t deserve that. She only sent a text.”

  “Why are they after you, Mouse?”

  “Don’t call me that.” Mouse snapped before she sniffed and wiped her nose on the long T-shirt she wore under her scrubs. “My name is Sarah.”

  He nodded. “Why are they after you, Sarah?”

  “They paid off Dexter. They own me.” She shrugged.

  “Dexter was your pimp?” He clicked his pen and started writing before he pushed the chair across from him with his foot and nodded to it.

  Sarah moved across the room and sat down. “Pimp, drug supplier. Yeah. I didn’t lie to you. Peña and Rubio bought four of us for that party. That was sometime last summer.” She sobbed and closed her eyes. “I was the lucky one. They chose me to stay. The others… Peña gave Lacey to his guards. I could hear her screaming and crying. That went on for days and then… it didn’t.”

  “They kill her?” Ryker stared at his informant.

  She nodded. “They carried her out. She was dead. OD or they did it. I don’t know which.”

  “The others?” He waited for an answer.

  “I don’t know. Didn’t see them after that.” Sarah wiped her nose with her sleeve again.

  “Tell me what happened to you.” He leaned back in his chair.

  “When you get picked, you get new clothes. They give you prime drugs. But man, the shit I did. I let them fuck me whenever they wanted. Rubio is into that sadistic shit. He liked it when I cried and begged, but only when he said I could. Peña liked to watch, or he liked to fuck me at the same time Rubio did.” She sniffed again. “Peña and Rubio are together.”

  “You mean like a couple?” Ryker leaned forward.

  “Yeah. I was wasted most of the time, but they were lovers. They only fucked me when Rubio wanted to get his freak on or when others were around. It was a secret. I was their cover.” She shoved her finger in her mouth and started chewing on her nail. “I knew I had to get out of there. I started acting like I was high, but I did less and less. Man, I fucking wanted it. Needed it, but I knew that one day I was going to take flight and not land, you know? They were getting careless around me. Talking business. Naming names. There was another party scheduled. They were talking about buying some new girls. They were going to kill me. They didn't say it, but I knew.” She shrugged. “I waited until they started fucking. The guards didn’t pay me any mind anymore. I floated around like I was high and went into the bathroom. I opened the window, slid down the outside of the house and I ran. I hid at the Cottages, but they went there looking for me. I found Alice. I knew her from before. She was still with Dexter.”

  “What names did you hear? I’ll need everything, Sarah. Everything.”

  “Did they shoot you?”

  “Yeah, we think so.”

  “Because I reached out to you?” She stared at him, and the desolation in her eyes begged him to say no. He nodded, and she closed her eyes. “I’m fucking poison.”

  “No, you are the person who is going to stop these two men from hurting more people. You are the only person who can do it. Work with me, Sarah, and help me take down this organization.” Ryker leaned forward and placed his hand on her arm. “You deserve justice for what they did to you, and to Lacey, and to Alice, and so many more. Help us take them down.”

  Sarah opened her eyes. “What if what I have isn’t enough?”

  “It’s enough, and on the off chance it isn’t, it will start the ball rolling. You’re listed as a CI. Mouse is the only name in my documentation. No one is going to know your actual name, and when they learn it in court, it will be too late because we can get you into the Witness Protection Program and no one will ever find you. No one is going to know where you are going. You can make a difference and then live a life outside what these fuckers did to you. No one needs to know. You can go back to school and become whatever you want to be.”

  “It can’t be that simple.” Her words were a thin whisper.

  “Oh, I didn’t say it was going to be simple. You need to kick the drug demon riding you. That won't be easy, and you’ll have to deal with that every day. You need to make an investment in yourself. No, life isn’t easy Sarah, but it can be so damn good.”

  “Yeah?” She looked up at him, desperate to cling to any hope.

  “Yeah. That I promise.”

  “Okay. What do you want to know?”

  “First off, I want to bring in my lieutenant so he can write while we talk. I don’t want any distractions when we talk. Also, can I record our conversation?”

  Sarah glanced at his phone and then at the door. “Yeah, okay.”

  Ryker stood and went to the door opposite of where Mouse had walked in and called in Terrence. “Sarah, you remember Lieutenant Terrence Theron.” He put his phone on the charging cord and plugged it in, starting the voice recording app. He introduced himself and Terrence again and asked Sarah on the recording if he could record the conversation. She agreed, and they began.

  Eight hours later, Ryker and Terrence shut themselves into Terrence’s SUV. “Holy fuck, Ry. She gave us everything we need to take down both of those bastards.”

  “Several of his key people, too. Hell, she listed names we’d never suspected and tied them to the operation.” Ryker turned and looked at his lieutenant. “I’ll call t
he Deputy Commissioner. Based on Sarah's information, we can get a search warrant for Pena's hit squad's location, the warehouse, and the cash counting operation.”

  “That’s why they went after you. They’d fucked up and let Mouse slip through their fingers. They’d scheduled her replacement. Who knows how long she would have lasted if she hadn’t run?” Terrence put the truck into reverse and pulled from the parking space.

  He nodded and called up the Deputy Commissioner’s home telephone number. It was dark already. He’d call Brie after he reported in. He glanced at his watch. After a week gone, he’d probably beat her home even with the three-hour drive and countless telephone calls he’d need to make to arrange his team’s responses. Check that. With the information he had, they might have warrants issued by the time they got back. It would be at least twenty-four hours before he’d be able to pull away from the operation. Hell, if push came to shove, he’d sleep at the team building in one of the holding cells. They’d all done that before at one time or another. He’d be lucky to see her in a week. But she knew what life with a cop was like. Damn, he was fucking lucky to have the woman he loved and a job that mattered. He nodded to himself as he called his new boss. He wasn’t lying when he told Sarah life could be damn good.

  Brie stretched her back and glanced at the clock. Her conversation with Lola and Roger hadn’t gone as expected. It had gone better.

  “It’s about time, Brie. You can’t keep living at this place.” Lola smiled. “Oh, can I make a suggestion?”

  She blinked back her surprise. “Sure.”

  “Let’s get an assistant hostess to work the lunch crowd and the start of the dinner service. I'll take over from her and deal with the receipts like I did last week. I’ll put the cash drawer into the safe after service and Roger can give me any information he has on vendors and deliveries. You can come in the next morning and work until I get here, and we can do a changeover.”

  She narrowed her eyes at both of them. “You’ve been giving this some thought, haven’t you?”

  Roger smiled. “Yeah, we’ve been talking. And that idea about another restaurant, I’ve put that on hold. I don’t see Matthew much as it is. If it is all right with you, we’ll just start using more of the product I want to use.”

  "All right, that’s fine with me. I didn’t want to let either of you down.”

  Roger chuckled. “Yeah, that’s why we figured this out. Your heart is so big that if we didn’t have a plan or said one negative word, you would have shelved the idea to have a life for yourself, wouldn’t you?”

  She considered his question for a moment. “Probably.”

  Brie chuckled to herself and glanced at her watch. It was only seven. She stood up and grabbed her purse. She would get home first and make dinner. Okay, well, she’d take some of Roger’s bolognese sauce and make some pasta and a salad. They could have a glass of wine and watch the boats in the harbor.

  After locking her office door, she wandered through the busy dinner service, snagging the quart of the bolognese sauce she’d asked Roger to hold for her from the walk-in fridge. She made sure Lola saw her and waved at both her and Roger before she headed to the back door.

  She stood on the top steps and drew a deep breath of the cool air. The alley light was broken again, but the light above the door to the restaurant cast a glow for quite a distance. She stared at the parking spots and chided herself for worrying. Glancing up at the small camera above the door, she mentally thanked Roger once again for installing the equipment. Regardless, she put her hand in her purse and wrapped her finger around the butt of her gun. Her finger was not on the trigger, but she was ready to defend herself should she need to do so. Her mom and dad didn’t raise a fool.

  The crunch of rocks under her shoes made her jump. Damn, she was wound tight. There was nothing and no one around. She laughed at herself and let go of the gun, fishing for her keys.

  “Welcome back, bitch.”

  Brie spun, grabbing for the gun in her purse. She knew that voice. Blondie. Fuck, fuck, fuck!

  “It would seem you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, my friend.” Another voice spun her again. A man with slicked back black hair and a diamond earring the size of her fist stared at Blondie but moved his arm suddenly. She gasped and pushed herself back into the truck. The end of a nasty-looking suppressor was pointed directly at her.

  “Who the fuck are you?” the blond man snarled. He held a gun, one he hadn’t had before. Blondie lifted it and pointed it at the man who held a gun on her.

  “None of your business.” A third man said from the darkness beyond the one who was pointing a gun toward her. Two muffled pops knocked Blondie into the wall. He seemed to lose the ability to stand and slowly slid down the brick wall while staring in the direction of the man who shot him. Blondie tried to lift the gun again, and the shadow man who shot him moved forward and put a bullet between Blondie's eyes.

  She gasped, but the muzzle of that suppressor pushed against her head.

  “Shut up.” The snarled command from Earring Dude registered when almost nothing else was making sense. Fear gripped her in its claws, and she froze. Froze. She didn’t move, couldn’t move. Her gun was in her purse. All she had to do was move her hand.

  A scraping noise and then rapid footsteps sounded in the darkness. The second man bolted down the darkened alley. The first man gripped her bicep in a crushing hold. She heard a strangled cry and then a startled plea before those horrendous pops punctuated the alley. Three. One after the other. She slid her hand in her purse and found her gun and thumbed the safety. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Shut up!” The man holding her jerked her toward him and shook her so hard her head snapped back painfully. There was no decision. No debate, and no doubt when he yanked her in close. She acted.

  Brie pulled the trigger.

  Twice.

  She didn’t hear her weapon fire, but she felt the buck of the gun in her hand. Her arm freed instantly, and she stumbled but scrambled from the man at her feet and ran. She sprinted toward the back door of the restaurant, to people and to safety. She heard the steps behind her and felt a massive weight force her forward and off-balance. Her hand flew from her purse and the entire thing went flying as she tried to stop her crash to the asphalt. She braced for it. The pavement jarred her knees. She twisted to avoid hitting her head, but it was hopeless. A smack of stabbing pain plummeted her into oblivion.

  Chapter 16

  Brie regained consciousness in stages. The pain registered first. Her face hurt like a bitch and her neck was so damn sore. She tried to lift her hand to her head. A tug brought her fully awake. Someone had tied her hands together with wide leather cuffs and attached the cuffs to a bar that spread her legs at her ankles. She laid on her side on a carpeted floor.

  They had shoved a hard ball of some sort between her teeth. The wide stretch of her jaw hurt, or perhaps it was the way the strap pulled tight, keeping the ball in her mouth. She blinked to clear her vision. There was a sliver of light creeping under the door across from her. She heard a door slam and yelling. What language was that? She strained to hear more. The voices were indistinct, but one thing was clear—the man doing most of the yelling was mad. She panted through the feeling of nausea and tried desperately to remember…

  She groaned and closed her eyes. She’d shot someone. Oh, God. Had she killed him? Tears formed and creeped over her nose, dripping to the carpet. Laying on her side, she couldn’t wipe them away, but it didn’t matter. The people who’d killed those two men in the alley had her. She closed her eyes and tried to calm down. When Ryker discovered she wasn’t home, he’d come looking for her. Wait. Roger! Roger would see her truck was still there. He’d see the dead bodies, he’d sound the alarm, but when? What time was it now? How long before she could expect help, and would anyone know where to find her? The tears rolled faster.

  A streak of clarity split her terror-filled thoughts. She’d witnessed that man kill Blondie and heard
him kill the other man. She’d seen his face. Reality clipped her on the chin with the power of a right hook.

  She wasn’t getting out of this.

  The men’s voices got louder. The light under the door modulated as the men, now directly outside the door, argued. The door slammed open. The sudden light blinded her. She blinked wildly to regain her vision. The two men shouted at each other and gestured to her. They switched to English when the tall one noticed she was conscious.

  “Fucking bitch.” He yelled at her, spittle flying from his mouth as he raged. “You’re very lucky you didn’t kill him, otherwise I’d flay the skin off you, inch by inch.”

  Oh, God. The man she’d shot. She tried to push away from the man as he advanced. “We are going to find her, and when we do, we are going to kill you both!”

  Another man jogged to them. “The doctor, he’s here.” The man screaming at her turned and ran from the room. The one who remained stared at her and then went back to the door and shut it but turned on the light in the room.

  A bed, dresser, and nightstands were the reason for the shadows she’d seen before they turned the light on. He sat down on the end of the bed and dropped his elbows to his knees, still staring at her. His sculptured features were a bit too narrow to be handsome, but he wasn’t what she expected. His clothes were nice. He wore slacks, leather slip-on shoes, was cleanly shaved, and his hair was swept back from his forehead, held with gel. She spent as much time examining him as he did her. Finally, he spoke. “It seems I am now in the center of a very messy situation. The men who have taken you have made critical errors. I don't plan on paying the price these errors will cost. You are my ticket away from their impending demise.” He chuckled when her eyebrows drew tight in confusion. “A simple snatch-and-grab. Stupid. They’ve been doing too much of their product. They had it in their mind that they could get Terrell to give up that whore by holding you for ransom. You blew that out of the water when you shot Peña. I can’t blame you, but I wish you had better aim. Now I must kill both of them. That will be… difficult as they have loyal followers. Your captain will have a choice to make. I wonder what he’ll do.”