“Every guest is going to be bringing their own personal bodyguard, some more than one,” she told him.
“All of the staff is trained and armed,” he assured her.
She watched as three sedans pulled up, and he trotted over to them. The cars stopped. Men and women in black slacks and white shirts got out of the cars. None of them looked like soldiers. They came up to her, along with Finn.
The front door opened, and Albert stepped out.
“Hello, I am Ms. Hessman. This is Mr. Liu. We are in charge of this event. You have all been chosen because of your impeccable references and discretion.” She looked closely, and could see no place where any of them could be concealing any weapons. What was Finn talking about?
“We will have one hundred eclectic guests. Thirty of them are VIPs who will be very demanding, another thirty are girls who have been brought in as entertainment. Their English is not always the best, and in some cases non-existent. There will be the personal bodyguards each of our VIPs have brought along with them. I am explaining the dynamics to you, because as our serving staff, I expect you to be able to deal with most situations that arise. If there is something that looks like a problem, immediately get the attention of Mr. Liu or myself. Am I clear?”
Everyone nodded. They went into the house, and Albert grabbed her arm in a punishing grip.
“I do not appreciate how you have sided with my uncle.”
“What do you expect me to do? He has all of the power, or have I misread the situation?”
“I am the one who brought you into this endeavor. I am the one who will make you rich beyond your wildest dreams.”
“He is the one who will take me even further, Albert.” She pulled his fingers off her arm. “Tell me, why do you allow him to treat you like this? You have yet to stand up for yourself. Instead, you wait to get me alone and berate me.” She watched him wilt. The door opened, and Jiang came out.
“What are you doing nephew?”
“Nothing.”
“I saw the staff. You have done well, Sylvia. I also introduced myself to Mr. Jarlson. He has sophisticated tastes. He likes hydrangeas, lilies, and rhododendrons.” Now she heard her method of bidding being used she had to force herself not to gag.
“I got a call from Brandon a couple of hours ago. He said your Mr. Lawrence was extremely agitated over the server problem down in San Diego. Brandon was going to take a seaplane to Victoria, and Lawrence was going to take one directly to Vancouver so he could catch a flight back to California. Brandon should be here within the hour.”
“I don’t like Brandon,” Jiang said baldly. “What do you think of him, Sylvia?”
“My opinion doesn’t matter. Just like your opinion of Dare doesn’t matter. As long as he makes me happy, then it shouldn’t concern either of you.”
“That’s where you are wrong. I judge you by the company you keep. Albert, your paramour, is a drunk and a junkie. I do not care about your sexuality. I do care you have chosen so poorly. It is one more reason to distrust your judgment. You, on the other hand, Sylvia, have chosen well.”
“Again, your opinion does not matter to me,” Rylie said haughtily.
“It should. I am going to have you take over my North American operation. Albert, you shall be coming home to China with me after this auction is complete.”
“Uncle–” Albert began to protest.
“Silence.” Albert shut his mouth. Jiang turned to go into the house, and Albert turned on her. He grabbed both of her arms and shook her. His grip shockingly painful.
“You bitch. I am going to see you dead.” A hand snaked around his throat and squeezed, pulling him backwards. She saw the fire in Finn’s eyes as he continued to squeeze, and Albert gasped, flailing, trying to pry off the hand that was choking him to death.
“Finn, no!” Rylie snapped her mouth shut. Fuck what’s his fake name?
“I’m done with him.”
Albert was close to passing out.
“Please,” she begged. There was such rage in Finn’s eyes. What was wrong? “I’m begging you, this will ruin everything.” Finally, he shook his head as if clearing it, and loosened his grip, and Albert collapsed to the ground, choking and wheezing. Finn kicked him.
“Get up.”
“I’m going to have you killed.”
“Don’t you get it, you dumb ass, I’m the one you’d ask to kill me, but I don’t like you. Get into the house, and don’t touch Ms. Hessman again.” Finn toed him in the ribs, forcing Albert to get up.
“I’ll get Huan to kill you.”
“Huan is scared of me. Just pick your sorry ass off the ground, and let’s have this party.” Rylie watched as Albert got up, and slunk inside.
“Finn, what the fuck?” she hissed out her question.
“He’s the one who hired the Klein fuck. He’s the one who’s behind all of this. He deserves some physical payback, especially when he’s hurting you, Rylie. These guys are going to pay. I’m going to see to it.” Rylie shuddered.
“You could have ruined everything.”
“Not likely.” Finn jerked his thumb to the balcony, and there stood Jiang standing with a satisfied smile on his face. The man couldn’t hear what was said, but he had definitely seen everything that had happened and approved.
“Dare is not going to be happy at you getting bruised. Let’s get some ice on your arms.” She heard more cars.
“Too late, I think the party is starting.”
He gave a resigned sigh. If they survived this, Rylie was going to talk to Darius about Finn, he was getting close to a breaking point.
***
Clint and Lydia had contacted him a half hour ago to let them know most of the guests had arrived at the party. Then they were going to take down the operation on this side of the island. Darius had seen two different women in one cabin and the one woman in the first cabin. He was still most concerned for the girl in the clinic.
He and Mason were one hundred yards from the clearing, keeping watch with binoculars. The personnel from Anacortes and Whidbey Island were less than two hours away, and ready to help. Everything was in position, but Darius still had a bad feeling.
“You okay?” Mason asked.
“No.”
“Is it about Rylie?”
“Just an itch on the back of my neck.”
“Fuck,” Mason said. The entire Midnight Delta team knew when he had a bad feeling, there was usually a goatfuck ready to happen.
“I know we have every contingency planned for, but I’m worried, Mase.”
“Do you think it’s because you’re in love with Rylie?”
“So everyone’s gossiping, huh?”
“Hell yeah. Come on, everyone gossiped about me and Sophia.” Mason grinned. Darius phone vibrated.
“Yeah?” he answered. It was Clint.
“The first few buyers arrived. You guys are good to go.”
“Thanks.”
He turned to Mason. “I say we leave the girls in the cabins until the teams from the bases arrive, and hit the clinic.”
“You think there’s only the man and the woman working there?”
“They also talked about a doctor so it could be three now,” Darius said.
“Got it. Let’s go.”
As they got to the backdoor of the clinic, they heard muffled screams.
“Fuck!”
Darius wanted to go in guns blazing, but they didn’t know what they would encounter. He opened the door using the emergency code key, and they snuck in. The screams were shrill and coming from that same surgical room he had scoped out. Was the girl in labor?
“Shut her up!”
“The doctor should have been here this morning,” the woman’s voice was damn near hysterical.
“Shut her up!” the man screamed. Then the shrieks stopped. Darius peeked inside the surgical room, and couldn’t believe his eyes. The woman had a pillow over the girls face, and the man was slicing open her belly with a scalpel. He di
dn’t want to do anything to make the man harm the patient, but what the fuck, the girl was being killed anyway.
He aimed his gun and shot the woman, and she slumped to the floor. The man started at the sound of the gun but continued cutting.
“Ginger? What happened?” he cried out, continuing to cut into the girl’s belly. Mason opened the door, and they both ran into the room. Dare pointed his gun at the man.
“Stop cutting,” he demanded.
“Put the gun down, or I kill the baby and the girl.”
“Either way and you’re dead, just like your friend.”
“Ginger?” The man looked to the floor. “You killed Ginger!” he accused.
“I’ll kill you too if you don’t back away from the table.” The girl began to regain consciousness and started to whimper. Hadn’t they given her any kind of anesthesia?
“I’ll kill them both, I’m not kidding.”
“And you’ll die, we’re not kidding,” Mason said, his voice a low growl. The man looked at him and backed up with his hands in the air.
Darius rushed to the bleeding girl. It was a fucking mess. They had started a C-section. The fetus was exposed. He heard a thud and knew the man was now an unconscious heap and no longer a problem. Mason was beside him.
“What can I do to help?” The girl was making choked sounds.
“Soothe her. I’ve got to finish this fast.” Oh God, the baby, wasn’t moving. He ran over to the sink and scrubbed up. He found some gloves and was back in less than a minute. Thankfully no additional cutting was required. He reached into her belly and gently lifted out the infant. The baby girl was covered in blood and mucous, and she was blue. Now the mother was crying and shuddering with pain.
Mason washed up beside him, knowing sterilization was going to be crucial. “Mason, I need you to cut the umbilical cord.” Mason was there in a flash, completing the task. “Give the baby CPR, I’m going to find some morphine for Mom and sew her up.”
Darius shoved his elbow through the glass of the medication cabinet, and pulled out vials of morphine, and administered some to the now hysterical young woman. She was screaming in a Slavic language he didn’t understand. In under two minutes she was unconscious, thank the Lord.
Now for the hard part. He had to get the bleeding under control and sew her up. He looked at Mason, who was still performing CPR on the tiny infant. He wanted to drag his lieutenant away and take over. But Mason was as capable as he was, and he needed to concentrate on saving this woman’s life.
It was obvious the man who had made the incisions hadn’t cared if the woman lived because he had come close to nicking her intestine. Darius needed to close the wound so she would live, and a surgeon could come in and actually perform surgery. As he was working on sewing her flesh, while he worked out a plan. Mason would have to take the zodiac to the seaplane, and come back and fly them all to Vancouver, where she could get immediate medical attention. Then he and Mason could get their asses to Victoria, they might still be in time to be part of the take-down.
His head jerked, but not his hands, as he heard a soft mewl.
“Mase?”
“Yeah,” he heard his friend’s relieved voice and then he heard the most beautiful little cry from the baby girl.
“What can I do to help?”
“Pray.”
“Already on it.”
“Actually...” Darius started.
“Yep, I’m going over to get the seaplane. I’ll be back as quick as I can.” Darius loved that he and his teammates could read one another’s minds.
He continued to work on the young woman and had finished when he heard the sound of the plane. He had been distracted the entire time by the delightful sounds of an angry baby girl. It had been wonderful.
Chapter Fourteen
Rylie didn’t need a clipboard or a checklist. She knew every vile name by heart. A white limousine pulled up, and a husband and wife were handed out of the car by the chauffeur who could have been an MMA wrestler.
“That’s the last of them,” she whispered to Drake. “Let the games begin.”
She floated down the stairs, wearing a long sleeved gown with a high neckline. It wasn’t what she had originally planned, but she had bruises on her arms from Albert. The only consolation was he was wearing a stupid looking scarf around his neck and barely whispering.
“Coco. Barney. I am so glad to finally meet you in person,” she crooned.
Coco and she shared the obligatory air kisses.
“Sylvia, this place is beautiful. Is it for sale?” Coco asked.
“I don’t know about being for sale, they make so much money renting it out for events like this, why sell it?”
“Everything is for sale,” Barney shouted. “What’s your price, Sylvia? Can I bid on you?” Rylie took a deep breath, then another, and smiled at the man.
“Only if I can bid on you. I think if I had a chance to take a look at the goods I would want to clean out my bank account,” she teased. The man roared with laughter.
“I think she’s too feisty for what we have in mind, honeybear.” Coco ruffled her husband’s hair and bit the lobe of his ear. “So how does this work, Sylvia?”
“You’re the last to arrive. I’ll take you into the house. In the foyer, there are sixteen bouquets of flowers with books in front of them. Each bouquet has just one type of flower. Currently, our bouquet of hydrangeas has a bid of three and a half million dollars. When you go out onto the back patio, you will drink and mingle with the other guests and some lovely young women. Each woman is wearing a corsage with a flower that corresponds to the bouquet. If you want to bid on one of those women, go in and write a higher bid in the book by her bouquet. I think you should find a flower other than a hydrangea.”
“That’s bullshit. I don’t know what kind of fucking flower a hydrangea is, but obviously, that’s the one I want,” Barney said belligerently. “Let’s go doll face.” He grabbed Coco’s hand and glanced over his shoulder at his chauffeur.
“Rance, go park this rig and meet us in the back. Do you know what a hydrangea flower looks like?” The big man shrugged.
All of these men had put money into an escrow fund. That was how they were going to be prosecuted, since bidding on bouquets of flowers would hardly be punishable offenses. She also had multiple e-mails and taped phone conversations with the bastards, and in this case, bitch, telling her their preferences in women. Rylie had worked damn hard to make sure the cases against them would be airtight.
“What are you frowning about?” Finn asked.
“That was our last guest.”
“Wonderful. Everyone who isn’t part of the operation is off the estate.”
“I wish we could have gotten the bodyguards to have given up their weapons,” Rylie said in a depressed tone.
“I don’t.” Finn was smiling.
“Why not?” Rylie was shocked.
“Prison is too good for some of these people. I want some of them to die.”
“What is going on with you? I’ve read your files. You’re talking like Drake.” Finn gave a bitter laugh.
“Rylie, I let those girls down when I was at the house. I didn’t stop them torturing Penelope.”
“Mike was going to rape her, right?”
“Yes.”
“You stopped that.”
“Damn straight.”
“Did you know she tried to escape again earlier today?” He brightened.
“She did?”
“Yes, she did. She might have had to drink and throw up hot sauce, but her spirit wasn’t broken. You saved her Finn. But I don’t think this is only about Penelope is it?”
He stared at her, and it was kind of scary. She definitely needed to talk to Darius.
“Sylvia,” Jiang’s voice rang out.
“Duty calls.” She walked up the stairs to the front entrance. “Yes Uncle Jiang, what did you want to discuss?”
“Now that everyone is here how much longer before we c
lose the bidding?”
“Coco and Barney will be fast. We will bring the bidders into the foyer with the bouquets at eleven p.m. for a toast. They will understand that means that the bidding is coming to a close.”
“Wonderful.”
“The girls are to stay on the patio,” Rylie explained.
“That makes no sense, they should mingle.”
“If they get an inkling as to what is going on, they will get frightened, and we will have a mess on our hands. The girls might actually struggle or try to run. While that might appeal to some of our buyers, it will make things more difficult to coordinate. It will definitely make it harder to determine who the highest bidders are.”
“You are correct, my dear.” Jiang smiled.
“I will have the servers begin to serve the champagne in forty-five minutes, and direct them to the foyer. Excuse me while I go and see to some of our guests.”
Rylie was stopped every few steps by different people who commented on the lovely party, but they would then whisper obscene questions about different girls. She would answer as Sylvia and then extricate herself so she could get closer to the patio and fresh air.
“There you are, Sylvia. I need to talk to you.”
“Mr. Jarlson.” Rylie smiled.
“Call me Terrance.”
He pulled her close, and curled her hand around his arm, guiding her out the back doors. “You looked like you could use a breather,” he whispered.
“They’re monsters,” she said as she gave a bright smile to a man who walked past. Ophelia rushed up to her, she was wearing a hydrangea corsage. She had tears in her eyes.
“We will be sold tonight. We’re going away with some man, aren’t we?”
“Ophelia, calm yourself. You are mistaken.” She spied Ekaterina talking to a younger man who was pulling at the top of her dress and grasping her buttocks.
“Ekatarina,” Rylie called out. She looked at her gratefully. “Come here.” When Ekatarina stood before her and Aiden, she gestured to Ophelia.
Her Daring SEAL (Midnight Delta Book 5) Page 19
