Command Indecision (Lexi Graves Mysteries)

by Camilla Chafer

  I glanced over at the warehouse, mentally placing a bet on the likelihood that Roxanne was inside. I would put money on a win.

  Aware that I might not have a lot of time, I moved around the back of the SUV and snapped the license plate, sending it to Lucas' email. Moving over to the car I followed, I snapped its plate too and emailed it in. Hopefully, Lucas would be able to tell me who owned the vehicles. Somper's car was absent, if the one I saw him in earlier was even his, but that didn't mean he wasn't there.

  Somper was muscular, his biceps like young trees, but when I saw him at the gym, he wasn’t one of the ones to tackle Solomon. Instead, he hugged the wall, watching while the others flunked out. But he watched every move carefully. He was a man who wanted to get it right first time. Whether he could was a different matter. All the same, he was bigger than I, and undoubtedly stronger. I thought about the man I’d followed. He was similar in height and build to Somper, perhaps more thickly set. I didn't want to run into either of them without an equalizer, which for my height and weight, meant a weapon. With that thought came the realization that I hadn't checked the secret compartment to see if Solomon had a weapon stashed. A rookie move if there was ever one.

  Edging away from the cars, I jogged back alongside the building, peeking around the side. Seeing it was clear, I slid around the corner, my back to the wall, and checked my cell phone. No messages from Lucas. Usually he was fast. Glancing at the clock on the screen, I pulled a face. Of course, he hadn't called back. He'd probably gone home. Funny, it never occurred to me that Lucas had a life. I'd yet to see him out of the office. He was there when I got in, and there when I left; but my hours were odder than his, and neither of ours strictly conformed to regular office hours. Unless Solomon had given him instructions to stay, there was no need for Lucas to be at work so late.

  My loss, his gain.

  Just a few minutes and I would leave. Sticking the phone back in my pocket, I crouched towards the windows that overlooked this side of the yard. Rising slowly, I peeked inside, but the window was so filthy, I couldn't see a thing. I moved to the second window, this time getting a better view of the interior. Like the yard, the warehouse had an abandoned air to it and weeds scratched at my jeans as I pressed myself against the building. I couldn't see much, but there did seem to be the faint glow of light now coming from the other end of the warehouse. I moved along to the next window, rolling my head to each side as I squinted through the grime. I didn't see any people. My best guess was that they were holed up in some side room across the building where I couldn't see them.

  Not being completely stupid, I decided storming the warehouse, alone, with who knows how many potential assailants inside, was a bad idea, especially given I was armed with only a cell phone. If my suspicions were correct, the people inside were Army men, all far more experienced than I when it came to hand-to-hand combat and weapons. My training extended to failing boot camp, a brochure in Krav Maga at the rec center from my mother, and being a fairly decent shot with the gun locked in a drawer in my apartment.

  My best move now would be to head back to the car, and return to the main road, then call Solomon, and ask him what to do. If he came, maybe with Fletcher and Delgado too, we could distract them long enough to scope the place out and look for Roxanne. If not, at least I had three new leads to follow: the two cars and the warehouse. Heck, there was no time like the present. I pulled out my phone again, my thumb hovering over the “speed dial.”

  I didn't even hear anyone behind me until there came the ominous click of a gun.

  "Don't move."

  It probably wasn’t the smartest idea for me to immediately stick my hands up.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I froze, my hands inches from the rotten windowsill as I stared inside the warehouse. Nothing reflected back from the grime. No face. No gun. But I felt it, hovering inches away from my head. At this distance, he couldn’t miss.

  I suppose it was too much to ask that he be a moron with no sense of aim?

  "Don't make a sound," came the man's voice. It was smooth and firm; he had no fear. He also showed no irritation at finding me, none that I could discern anyway. "Arms above your head and step back."

  I raised my arms, my heart pounding in a steady tempo, and stepped back. A hand reached forward, removing my cell phone then checking around my belt and under my arms for a weapon.

  "Let's go for a little walk," he said, nudging me with the gun.

  Feeling the barrel of a gun, I have to say, does nothing for me. "Where to?"

  "Did you not hear the bit about don't make a sound?"

  "I thought we'd already moved past that." I squeaked as something hard pressed into my back, a not particularly encouraging way of indicating I should start moving. Personally, I was more of a carrot than a stick sort of person. Somehow I don’t think my faceless captor cared one bit.

  "Move."

  Following his sharp instructions, we turned the corner of the building, with me first. By the time we reached the cars I photographed earlier, I started to shiver. One of two things was about to happen. I would enter the warehouse alive, though it wasn't a given I'd leave the same way. Or, I would be in a car trunk and my body dumped somewhere where raccoons would eat my face. Neither reassured me.

  "Move." Prod. We walked past the cars. I didn't dare heave a sigh of relief. Instead, I concentrated on my surroundings. There was a burnt-out shell of a car, some ramshackle outbuildings, their rooftops long gone, and rubbish spilling out of broken doors. Nowhere to hide. If I ran, I'd have a bullet in my back.

  "Inside." Prod, prod.

  "Where?"

  "The warehouse."

  We approached the entrance and the man reached around me to open the door. I didn’t want to go in there. I wanted to race back to Solomon’s car. Even if there wasn’t a weapon, I had the keys in my pocket. I could, theoretically—and it was a big theory—just drive the hell out of there until I got to a phone where I could call for backup. Hunching, I rammed my elbow back, putting all my power into the swing. I felt it connect with a squishy stomach, nothing like the hard six-pack I expected. Bonus! The man grunted, but didn't go down. Before I could right myself, a fist swung at me and connected with my cheek, sending me slamming into the side of the building. I rolled against the wall, and kicked out, my foot connecting with a knee. He yelped as he went down. I made to leap around him, but he caught me by the ankle, lifting it up behind me. My chin took a swan dive towards the dirt. Before I could lurch to my feet, the muzzle of the gun pressed into my forehead and a heavy weight settled over my back. I blinked, seeing stars.

  "Don't do that again," he growled.

  From under my lashes, and through the throbbing pain emanating from my chin and ankle, I got a look at the man. Somper's friend. The man I followed. Again, there was that same familiar feeling that I had earlier, but before I could process what it was, he pushed me inside the open door of the warehouse. I stumbled forward, but didn't fall, my hands flailing in the air for balance. Focus, I told myself because that could be the difference between life and death for me.

  "That way." The dark-haired man pushed me on and we walked in the direction of the window I'd been peering through.

  As far as silver linings went inside the gloomy abandoned space, this way, I hoped, was Roxanne Connor, frightened, but in a few steps, not alone.

  "I knew you were trouble," the man told me to the beat of our footsteps, "the moment you popped up in Home and Tool."

  I didn't answer.

  "That husband of yours is no gym instructor," he went on. "I don't know who the hell you are, but you aren't leaving. Open the door."

  I grabbed the mental handle, easing it open. It gave a low whine that echoed through the cavernous space.

  "Inside."

  I stepped in. Sitting hunched on the floor was Roxanne Connor, her arms behind her back. Her face was streaked with tears and grime and she shivered uncontrollably. She strained against the post as we entered,
her shoulders pulling backwards. She was handcuffed.

  "Sit." A sharp push had me sprawling on my hands and knees on the dirty floor. I winced at the contact with my grazed hands, waiting for the bullet with my eyes squeezed closed. It didn't come. Instead, only a sudden rush of stale air overtook me as the door opened. I shuffled into a sitting position, sliding closer to Roxanne, with a backwards glance to check if we were alone. We weren’t.

  "Stay here," he said, grinning like he'd just made a funny. "Not like you have any choice."

  "What a charmer," I said to Roxanne when he closed the door, his footsteps beating a retreat. I looked around. At some point, this room must have been an office, but now appeared to have been unoccupied for a long time. A desk and chairs remained, along with a couple of flimsy bookcases. The windows, disappointingly, were nailed shut. I could see the iron heads bent over as if they'd been shoddily knocked into place quickly. "Hi," I said as Roxanne continued to stare at me. "You must be Roxanne. I'm Lexi. I'm here to rescue you."

  "Awesome," said Roxanne. "You had me fooled completely. I thought you'd just been captured."

  The corners of my mouth pulled down. "A kink in the plan."

  She narrowed her eyes, appraising me. "I recognize you," she said. "You work at Fort Charles."

  "Sort of," I admitted. Now was probably a good time to get honest. "I was hired to look into your sister's murder."

  "Nathaniel didn't do it," she said, immediately. “He didn’t kill Jillian.”

  "You're not the only one who thinks that," I told her. "Not that Tate's helping himself."

  "He's just protecting me," she said, sniffing. She leaned forward and rubbed her eyes against the knees of her jeans, not quite succeeding in moving the stray hair stuck to her cheeks. "They said they'd kill me too if he told them what really happened." She fell silent. Though her cheeks were streaked, her eyes were dry, like she was all cried out.

  "Does Tate know who killed your sister?" I asked softly, keeping one eye on the door.

  Roxanne nodded. "Yes. So do I."

  "Why didn't you come forward?"

  "Did you see what they did to my sister?" I nodded. "I was scared," she added. "I thought if I got them what they wanted, they'd leave us alone, but they're not going to, are they? Not with the shipment coming in."

  I thought about it. With Tate in the hospital under guard, and still not talking, and Roxanne prisoner, I couldn't see how they would ever risk letting the two of them go. If the block of drugs in Roxanne's room was just a taster, there was a lot of money at stake. Too much cash to let us get in the way. There would be another attempt on Tate, I was sure. As for Roxanne and me… things definitely weren’t looking good. "No," I decided. "I don't think so."

  "Is Nathaniel okay?"

  "He's in hospital. He was stabbed this morning."

  "Ohmigod." Fresh tears slid down her face.

  "Hey, hey," I said, patting her shoulder. "You've got to stay calm. We're going to get out of this, I swear."

  "How? Are you armed?"

  "Um..." The gun I hoped Fletcher had replaced in Solomon's car was still a promising thought, if it was there at all. Though, now that I’d just been found, I could hardly count on the great lump of a Lexus remaining concealed for long.

  "Jesus!"

  "On our own there, too." I crept over to the door, raising myself just enough to see through the window. With a grimace, I stuck two fingers into my mouth, wetted them and rubbed a circle clean in the grime, enough to press one germ-phobic eye. A few meters away stood two men, my captor and someone else, his face hidden in the shadow. Nevertheless, I recognized the stance, even if the man wore dark clothing instead of Army issue. I crawled back to Roxanne. "You need to tell me what's going on. Who is Tate, uh, Nathaniel, protecting?"

  Her shoulders slumped. "Me. Nathaniel is my boyfriend. I met him one night when he came to pick up Jillian. I know what everyone’s saying but they were never more than friends. It started off as a date, but there wasn't that spark for either of them, however, there was for Nathaniel and me. Right from the moment I met him."

  "And he and Jillian stayed friends? That's why she called him that day?" I didn’t need to spell out which day I meant. The way Roxanne nodded told me she knew.

  "She was afraid of something, but she wouldn't tell me the whole story. Only that she was in trouble and they would make it look she was a part of it. They put thousands of dollars into her account so it looked like she was in on it and she didn’t know who to turn to. I said Nate would know what to do, that she should call him. So, she did. But he got there too late." Roxanne started sniffing again, but this time she gulped back the sobs. "He tried to help her, but she was already dead. He called me in a panic. He said they would think it was him. Later, they said that's what they'd tell the military police. They said he had to shut up, let them finish the job, or they'd kill me too. He didn't know what to do. Next thing I heard was he'd been arrested."

  "And you've been helping them?"

  "I didn't have a choice. They promised if I helped them, all this would be over and Tate would get out of jail."

  "So Tate kept quiet to protect you and you helped them to protect him?"

  Roxanne nodded. "Look where that got us! I was just so scared. Jillian's dead and I keep thinking, what if I had done something different? What if I had gone to the police and told them…? But they'd just think I was lying to get my boyfriend out of jail. They'd think we were having an affair and he killed her! They could twist it any which way they liked."

  "You can't know what would have happened," I told her.

  "I should have done something." She sniffed loudly.

  "Hey, calm down, okay? This isn't your fault." More importantly, we needed to move past the ‘should have.’ "This is all about drugs, right? Are they trafficking?"

  Roxanne blinked. "Yeah. How did you know?"

  I told her about the drugs I found in her room and the money.

  "When they made Jillian help get the first shipment passed through, she thought she could go to the police. She took a little bit of the heroin and money as evidence, and when Captain McAuley came to say she'd been murdered, I went to get it from her place. She’d told me about it one night. Jillian wasn't a drug smuggler, I swear. She hated that they made her do it. She didn't even know at first that it was drugs they were smuggling. She thought it might have been currency, or that they’d been looting, but when she confronted them, they said they'd kill me and Mom and Dad too, and if they got sent to prison, so would my parents."

  "Why?"

  "My father is the maintenance manager here. They'd say he was in on it. This is where they store the drugs, see? It's so out of the way, no one ever comes here. My dad broke his leg four months ago and can't get around much, so Jillian used to drive out here and check the place over, so my dad wouldn't lose his paycheck." Roxanne gave a worried glance at the door. "She must have mentioned it to him."

  "Who?" Footsteps sounded, the footfalls heavier as they approached the office. I counted two sets of feet.

  "They're going to kill us." She choked back a sob.

  "No thanks, didn't sign up for that."

  "There's something else," she said quickly. "The next shipment is coming in early tomorrow morning. When they get it off base, they'll bring it here. More heroin. Millions."

  "I think I know how it's getting here," I said. "And it's not getting off base."

  Roxanne started to say something, but at that moment, the door creaked open and my captor stepped inside. He moved to one side, allowing the second man to step into the light. Which was right about when my mouth dropped open. “Kevin?”

  "In the flesh," my now least favorite bartender said as he raised his gun.

  I shrank back. Beside me, Roxanne did the same when he pointed the gun towards her. Then he laughed and lowered it. "I'm not going to shoot you," he said, his bright smile at odds with the nasty look in his eyes. "Not if you're good girls anyway."

  "You'd ha
ve a hard time explaining two dead women killed with your gun," I told him.

  He shrugged. "This isn't my gun. Borrowed it. Second, I'll be having a real hard time on the beach in Brazil. If it comes to it, I'll have a Mojito in your memory. I might even have a moment of remorse. Then I'm going to get over it."

  "Charming."

  "It's business." Kevin shrugged.

  "You're calling drugs a business?"

  "It's supply and demand. I've got the supply on the way and the demand has always been there. All I need is to keep you two out of the way until I get what I want."

  "And then you'll let us go?" Roxanne asked, still hopeful.

  Kevin smiled, but it wasn't a nice one. Somewhere behind him, a sound I couldn’t quite place started up. "Sure," he said. I didn't believe him for a minute. "But I need some information. And Lexi here is going to give it to me."

  "What information?"

  "Who are you?"

  There was no way I was giggling this time. "Lexi Solomon," I said.

  Kevin shook his head, frowning. "See, I don't think so. You and that guy who's supposed to be your husband have been doing a lot of snooping lately. It's almost funny watching you poke around, but you've kind of been getting in my way. And him? He's so damn stubborn. Doesn’t give up, even after a friendly warning."

  "You're the one who jumped him?"