by BT Urruela
Shane immediately opens the door and steps out.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Shane yell-whispers and Jimmy just chuckles in response. “We thought you were them, dip shit.” I climb out as well and Rock follows.
“Well now,” Jimmy says, his voice entirely too loud. “Y’all didn’t think I’d miss out on all the fun, now did ya?” He motions to his truck. “Besides, I forgot about my silencers. Would do ya good to have,” he says, nodding.
“Fuck, Jimmy,” Shane says, shaking his head, but a grin tugs at his mouth. “You scared the shit outta me.”
“I do apologize. I didn’t think to wear my make-up,” Jimmy says and then motions to the wood line. “So, what in the hell y’all got going on?”
“Before you interrupted, we were about ready to push into the wood line and figure out how we’ll approach.”
Jimmy looks from Shane to the wood line and back, and then waves us on. “Well, let’s fuckin’ go then. Quit lollygagging.”
He continues forward, clunking about as he does, and we follow close behind, Shane looking from him to us and shaking his head.
We reach the clearing on the other side, spotting exactly what Shane had detailed to us beforehand. Just beyond the train tracks there’s a massive early twentieth century building, wood and brick blackened with age, and two dilapidated smokestacks behind it.
Shane puts a set of binos to his eyes and takes a moment to observe the area. He lowers them and looks to us. “Only one at the door. Fucker looks like he’s sleeping,” he whispers with a smirk. “Rock, what do you think… two around back, two from the side, and two on delay?”
Rock nods, a wrinkle in his brow. “But who’s got what?” he asks.
Shane looks around to each of us. “You and I take the lead. Hit the guy in the front while Xander and…” His voice trails as he looks over at me. “Xander and Paige clear the back. Is that cool?” he asks.
“Yeah, of course. Wherever you need us,” I respond.
Shane points to Jimmy. “And then Jimmy and Irish can come in after for the breach. Brandi will stay back with the vehicles.”
Rock nods. “I like it,” he says. “Positions then?”
My heart races as I read the hesitation in the faces of these war veterans. I feel like I can handle this. There’s no apprehension. But if they’re nervous, in all that they’ve done, I fear I may have taken all this far lighter than I should have. Beyond my own safety, I’m worried about Paige. If anything happened to her… it would truly be the end of me too.
“Positions,” Shane responds, leading us back out of the woods to the van.
Paige and I remain in frozen silence among bushes a hundred yards behind the old mill, waiting for word from Shane through our ear pieces. There are a few vehicles parked in the back, but no sign of people. I put a gloved hand to Paige’s bulletproof vest and she smiles, though the fear in her eyes overshadows all else.
“I love you, Paige,” I whisper. “Stay behind me. We’ll get through this together.”
She nods, a single tear falling down her cheek and I catch it with my finger, and then cradle her face with my hand.
“I promise you, baby. We will,” I whisper just as a fizzle comes over the line.
“Team two, move on target,” Shane says quietly followed by a click.
I walk, rifle at the ready, as Paige follows close behind me with her own rifle. It’s light enough out now to see the entire area. We reach the mill, our backs to the wall, and we creep our way to the front. Peeking around the corner, I spot Rock and Shane with their backs to the mill wall as well, just beside the front entrance. Off in the distance, I catch Jimmy and Irish barreling forward to our position.
“Teams two and three, stack against the door opposite of our position,” Shane says, and we oblige, slinking along the wall with Irish and Jimmy now close behind us. We stop just beside the wooden door. In a chair, just before me, is one of Javi’s men, slumped over with his throat slit and bleeding out onto the grass. I glance up and catch Shane looking back at me. He shoots me a cocky little brow wriggle and smiles, his hand reaching for his belt.
“I’ve got the keys from this fucker,” Shane whispers through the earpiece while motioning to the dead man. “I’ll unlock the door and open it, Rock hits it first, team three follows, team two after them, and I’ll get the rear. Nod if you roger.”
After everyone nods, Shane moves to the front of the door, readying the key as Rock prepares to enter, Irish and Jimmy lining up behind him. I breathe a sigh of relief as Paige will be near the very back. Shane looks back and forth, waiting for confirmation nods and then he unlocks the door. Just as he opens it, one of Javi’s men, sitting in a chair, begins to stand, fumbling with the pistol in his hand and with his face in an all-out cringe. Before he can do much else, Rock puts a round through his forehead, much quieter than anticipated through the silencer, and the man crumples to the ground. We file in, staying against the wall in the wide-open entryway, barren of anything other than dirt and dead leaves.
There are three doorways, one to the left and right upon entering, and one dead center. Just as Shane motions for us to split into groups, the door on the left opens, and our weapons instantly raise. One of Javi’s men steps out, not anticipating the firepower that would be facing him, and he launches his hands in the air to guard his face, his rifle clattering to the ground, and Shane puts two rounds through his chest. He then quickly moves toward the open door as gunfire erupts from the other side. He pulls a concussion grenade from his vest as the rest of us position ourselves behind him, and he removes the ring, throwing the grenade into the room. A few men run from the room and they’re taken down quickly with rifle fire before the grenade explodes. Shane motions for Paige and me to monitor the doors behind us as he, Rock, Chase and Jimmy storm the room. There’re several stifled shots and some yelling before they come slinking back out.
Shane proceeds to the door across from the one they just exited and motions for the others to join him. They line the wall just to the right of the door and Shane puts three fingers up. Lowering one finger at a time, when he runs out, he turns the knob and pushes it open. Rock, Chase and Jimmy follow immediately in after him. As soon as they disappear inside, the third door swings open and a blaze of gunfire erupts from it, bringing Paige against the wall. I instinctively block her with my body when I feel a heavy punch to my stomach that forces the breath out of my lungs completely. I crumple to the floor gasping for air when a blinding muzzle flash from Paige’s rifle pulls my attention. My eardrums scream.
There’s another shot, and then another, and then Paige drops to her knees in a panic, wrapping me in her arms. I lie, trying to catch my breath as I watch the slumped body of the man Paige just shot being pulled back into the room, the door slamming behind him. Shane and the other guys exit the room they were searching and rush to my side.
“Is he okay?” Shane asks, concern in his eyes.
“I’m fine. I’m fine,” I say, lifting myself and rubbing my hands down the front of my bulletproof vest until I feel it, the flattened round wedged in the plate protecting my gut. I shake my head, giving a nod to Jimmy. “Thank God Jimmy had these, huh?”
“Hey, motherfuckers,” a voice carries through the door, stealing our attention. Shane backs against the wall with Paige and me, and motions for the others to do the same. “We will fucking kill her right here and now if you come through this door.”
I sit up now, curling a finger for Shane to come to my level. He squats and leans in.
“What now?” I ask him in a whisper. He scans his vicinity, and then his eyes trail to Jimmy, Irish and Rock.
“Jimmy,” he whispers and waves him down. “Go get your truck. Have Brandi bring the van too. Ready them just outside the tree line and I’ll radio you when to get us.”
Jimmy nods. “Roger,” he says before hightailing it out the way we came. Shane looks back over to me. “If Javi isn’t in that room, they’re damn sure calling his ass.”
“If he’s still alive, is that not a problem too?” I ask and he nods slowly.
“Hopefully, he’s in there. If not, that’s a problem we’ll deal with once we get her out of here safely,” he says, straightening and leaning in to say something to Rock. I turn to Paige who has shed quite a few tears, her eyes puffy and red, but she has a wide smile on her face. She rubs a hand along my cheek, down my neck to my protected chest and stomach, shaking her head as she does.
“I thought I lost you,” she whispers, her voice cracking.
“Not a chance, baby,” I say, winking, as I go to stand up. “Somebody’s gotta look out for you.”
“Look out for me?” she asks, helping me up. “I just killed a man.” She nods confidently toward the closed door and smirks.
I roll my eyes and shake my head. “I would’ve had him,” I lie.
With the sound of stifled gunfire and a loud clatter, I’m crying tears of relief as three of Javi’s men release me, moments from breaking Javi’s rule and taking what they please, and they head to the door, setting their ears to it. And it’s then I know he’s come for me. This isn’t a dream. Shane has come to my rescue, and he’ll take me far away from here.
As the men are preoccupied, I pull my pants back up with cuffed hands and the only bit of strength I have left. The nub where my finger should be throbs with a relentless burn that has tortured me in this place. There’s more gunfire and the three of them move back from the door toward my cradled body on the floor. One of them, the tatted steroid freak who’s always holding me up, pulls a pistol from his waistband and sets the barrel against my head.
“Looks like you may not have much longer, sweetheart,” he growls with an evil laugh.
I force a smile, my bruised cheeks screaming back at me, and I mutter, “You either.”
He sneers at me and then motions toward his buddies. “Go check it out,” he orders and the men creep over to the door reluctantly.
“Go out blazing,” he demands, and one of the men takes a second, breathes in deep and then whips the door open, his rifle immediately spraying rounds. My heart breaks at the sound as I imagine Shane on the other side, lying in a pool of blood and being pumped full of more rounds.
Instead, fire comes back from the other direction, ricocheting off the concrete walls in this room, and the man falls, his rifle dropping to the ground. He’s shot a few more times before the man alongside him quickly grabs his arms and pulls him in, a trail of fresh blood trailing behind him, and he slams the door shut. He looks back with panic in his eyes.
“Stay fucking there,” steroid freak orders, squatting down beside me and taking a fistful of my hair as the barrel meets my head again.
Steroid freak’s buddy sets his ear to the door to listen, but there’s complete silence. The man turns to him and shrugs when, out of nowhere, there’s a deafening blast. Light and smoke pour from where the door once was, and pieces of the man whose ear was against it are strewn about in every direction.
My eardrums ring loudly as I fan the dust out of my face, some of it already stinging my eyes. Through clouded vision, I spot steroid freak sitting still, his eyes wide, and in a daze. After a few brief moments, he shakes it off, focusing his attention back to me as the smoke starts to clear. He grabs my arm and yanks me to him. I cry out as he scoops me up, and pulls me against the back wall with him, my neck in the crook of his elbow and the barrel of his pistol digging into my temple.
“Put your fucking weapon down! Right fucking now!” a voice cries out from the hole where the door once was.
Steroid freak presses the barrel into my head harder. “Not a fucking chance, pendejo. I’ll kill this bitch if you come any closer,” he yells.
“If you kill her, I promise you the worst death you could possibly imagine.” I can make out the voice now. It’s Shane’s. And instantly I squeeze my eyes shut, overwhelmed in knowing he did come for me. He truly did. Tears of relief squeeze out from my clenched eyelids. A new strength overtakes my body.
“Javi will be here soon, motherfuckers. And he’s bringing with him ten times what you got. You’re all fucking dead!” steroid freak screams, his massive arm clenching tighter around my neck.
“My friend,” Shane says, his voice carrying around the corner into the empty room. “I promise you, we have enough firepower to kill all of you five times over. Your best fucking bet is sending her out here right now and being done with it.”
Steroid freak chuckles. “He’ll do worse to me than you ever could if I let her go, bitch.”
I hear Shane laugh, and then say, “We keep hearing that, but I’m not quite believing it.” There’s a short pause and then he continues. “See, I’ll die for that woman. Are you willing to say the same about Javi?”
As a silence sits in the room, I’m hit with the inevitable outcome. My mind plays through it all, from steroid freak pulling the trigger and ending my life, Shane ending his, and then Javi’s crew coming in and killing everyone else. All of us will die and each and every one of their lives will be on me. I glance down at my cuffed hands, trying to come up with something.
I take a deep breath, spotting the shaking barrel in my peripheral and preparing my hands for what will be my only attempt. I’ll have one shot, and he’ll likely let a round fly no matter how I hit it. It must be smooth, it must be fast, and it can’t be even a centimeter off.
I calm my trembling hands, muster all the strength I can, and I shoot them straight up with the cuffs pulled tightly apart. The rigid chain catches the barrel and pulls it off my head as my hands continue up until my elbows lock out. As expected, he lets a round go and it carries just over my head, so close I can hear the whir of the speeding bullet. He loosens his grip just enough during the commotion to allow me to work my chin down into the crook of his elbow. Without hesitation, I open my mouth as wide as I can before clamping my jaw shut like a bear trap against his flesh. Screaming out in pain, he flails his arms in the air, firing a few errant rounds in the process. I take the opportunity to turn around and face him, spitting the hunk of bloody flesh back at him. I can hear footsteps come up from behind me and voices shouting, fusing together in a chorus of chaos. Before steroid freak can retaliate, I lift my cuffed hands and drive them down toward his face, thrusting both my thumbs into his eyes, pressing until I feel his eyeballs cave in. I pull my thumbs back from the messy sockets and he drops the gun, batting as his face as his body writhes on the ground.
The tears begin to flow as I grab the gun and crawl with it to the wall, setting my back against it. I look up to see Shane walking over to me, tears in his eyes and a smile on his face. He drops to a knee and takes my head against his chest.
“I thought I lost you,” He says, through a shaky voice.
I force a smile, my focus remaining on him as a gunshot erupts, and steroid freak’s whimpering ceases. I set a hand to his cheek. “You can’t get rid of me that easy,” I say, the pain in my entire body starting to return as the adrenaline wears off.
Helping me to my feet, Shane takes the gun from my bloodied hand and slips it in his waistband. His head tilts and he smiles as he takes me in. “I love you, Gabi,” he says.
“I love you too, Shane,” I whisper. “I always have.”
“What now, brother?” I ask Shane. “Javi will be here in no time.” He glances over at me as he continues helping Paige out through the tattered hole in the wall.
He stops once we hit the entryway on the other side and the rest of us come together around him. “Brandi, let’s go! Have Jimmy back his truck up to the door,” he says into the headset before focusing his attention back on the rest of us, his hand still gripping Gabi’s arm. “There’re about twenty cases of cash in that other room,” he says pointing to the second room they searched. “I’m gonna get Gabriela in the van. Everyone else help load up the cases. And we need to move fast.”
He takes Gabi by the elbow and leads her to the front door as the sound of idling engines comes through from the oth
er side. As he disappears out the front door with Gabi, the rest of us pile into the second room.
Once all the cases are loaded up and Gabi is comfortably seated in the van, the rest of us follow suit, hopping into the van as morning comes to full swing. Racing toward the rear entry of the old mill, we take a two-lane country road and drive away as quickly as the van will allow.
“How long before Javi discovers it, you think?” I ask, breaking the silence.
Shane shrugs, his brows drawing close. “I don’t know… ten, maybe fifteen minutes. I’m not sure how far he stays from the mill, but I imagine it’s not much.”
“He knows where Gabi lives,” I remind everyone.
“We accounted for that. I packed most of our shit last night. The shit that’s coming with us, at least. Most of it will unfortunately have to be left behind,” Shane says, slipping his arm behind Gabi’s neck and pulling her in. Her head falls onto his shoulder.
“Where do we go from here?” Paige asks, and there’s an uneasy silence that sits in the van after.
“Fuck if I know,” Shane finally says. “As far away from here as we can go.”
“Truman Valley,” Irish blurts out, grabbing our attention. “Just as a stop off. It’s in the middle of nowhere in Missouri. You guys can hide out at our place for a bit and figure out what’s next.”
I nod my head, the plan sounding like our best bet.
“Sounds good to me,” Shane says, his eyes trailing down to Gabi. “You?” Gabi nods and Shane slaps a hand against the first bench seat where Rock sits. “Rock?”
Rock looks back and waves a shaka. “I’m in. Y’all know that.”
Irish sets a hand to Brandi’s lap as she drives. “Is that alright, babe?”
“Of course,” she says.
“I guess, Truman Valley it is,” I say, kissing the side of Paige’s head.
From there… who knows?
Six Months Later
