by Mike Dagons
“You’ll never understand. Please, tell Melvin I’ll tell him everything he wants to know if he’ll save my brother, Jamal. He’s in Northwestern Hospital. The Russian is going to go after him if he can’t find me.”
“You’re going to tell him everything he wants to know regardless,” Blue growled. “You hear that, Ryan?”
“Yeah, tell her I’m sending for him now. Take the other one to lockup, and bring her to medical when you get here.”
Twenty minutes later, Blue drove down the alley behind headquarters and pulled up to the garage door. He scanned his print, and entered a code, and the steel door retracted, allowing him to pull SUV in, and then it closed. Immediately, the floor opened up revealing a winding ramp that led down to the underground docking station. Blue drove the truck down the narrow ramp slowly.
He parked in a carport, and then got out, and held a gun on Janie and her brother while Valow unshackled them from the truck’s restraint bar. “Carry your sister inside,” he ordered the big man.
Jamil scooped Janie up into his arms and carried her to the reinforced steel door, and then he stopped and waited for Blue to go through the necessary steps to open it.
When they stepped inside, Ryan was standing there waiting for them with a wheelchair for Janie.
Jamal sat her down in the chair, and then Valow took him to lockup. Ryan unlocked the wheels on the chair and started pushing Janie down the hall. “I’m sorry, Melvin,” she said.
“Spare me the apologies, Janie, and tell me how much the Russian knows about our operation.”
Chapter 6
Rayce waited in the van at the emergency room entrance while me and Charles ‘Chocolate’ Baltimore, or Choc as we called him, went inside to get Janie’s brother, Jamal.
Choc, who got his nickname because his complexion is a smooth dark chocolate, was a Harvard Law graduate before he joined Charter 6. He is thirty seven years old, very tall, and mannishly handsome. He has an imposing personality, and a commanding voice. And he always looked, talked, and walked like old money.
Choc was dressed in an expensive dark blue suit, and a crisp white shirt, and when he stepped into the room, people noticed. I followed behind him looking like a lowly nurse practitioner, wearing blue scrubs, a smock, and Jordan’s on my feet.
We walked up to the information desk, and Choc flashed his phony FBI creds “Where is this patient?” he shoved the phony transfer papers, that D’Agon had put together for us, at the desk clerk.
She picked them up and read the name, and then typed it in the computer. “He’s on eighteen, but you have to wait for the security chief’s release before you can transport him.”
Choc glared at her with amber brown eyes that made him look feral. “Then…get…him…down…here!” he shouted in a whisper.
“Yes,” she grabbed the phone up and made the call.
“Nurse Howard, you go on up and prepare the prisoner. I want him out of here as soon as possible. I’ll take care of the security chief.”
“Yes sir,” I turned and walked briskly to the elevators. I got off in a brightly painted alcove with a maze of corridors connected to it. I grabbed a passing nurse, and asked her where I could find Jamal Delores.
“Why you think he’s up here?” she asked in a snotty tone.
“I was told he was in recovery on this floor,” I responded with a smile. “Could you point me in that direction?”
She gave me a securitizing eye sweep before she said, “Follow me,” and then turned and started walking.
I followed her through the hall to a small room that actually looked smaller with Jamal, and the two big white men standing over him, crammed in it. “You allow patients to have visitors in recovery?” I asked her. We had our Voxer Walkies on live, so I knew Choc was listening to every word.
The way Jamal was sweating told me that they’d been torturing him. To his credit, he didn’t rat me out as the person who shot him to the nurse, or the Russians. Maybe he thought he had a better chance to continuing living with me, since I didn’t kill him when I had the chance in Steven’s hallway. It was a correct assumption. Ryan had told us to bring him in alive.
“We most certainly do not!” nurse snotty snapped. “I’m going to have to ask you gentlemen to leave. Your visit is clearly disturbing him. His blood pressure is dangerously elevated.”
“We have passes to be here.” The one closest to the bed answered in a thick accent. “We are his brothers,” he flashed a creepy smile that revealed a badly decayed front tooth.
She reached around him, and grabbed the call button, and Choc’s mellow voice purred in my earpiece. “Severe, how many?”
“Hey!” she squealed when the Russian put a squeeze on her arm, and then pried the thing from her fingers.
“Please gentlemen, two big guys like you are making it difficult for us to move in here,” I responded to him.
“I’m on my way, hold tight.”
“You will go, and come back later, no?” the scary looking Russian holding her arm growled.
“No, I pulled the nurse out of his grasp, and pushed her behind me. I tilted my head way back so I could hold his gaze.
The other one grunted, “I have no patience for pesky little women.” He was a bruiser. He was as tall as Jamal, and had a barrel chest, and a neck almost as wide as his head. He glared down at me, his face harder and more menacing than his partner’s.
“You will leave, now!” I ordered in the most commanding voice I could muster in the face of doom.
He reached for me with both hands, but his size made his movements clumsy and slow. I nimbly dodged his grasp, and hopped up on the bed with Jamal, my feet landing between his spread legs so dangerously close to his prize possessions that he screamed inadvertently.
I bounced like I was on a trampoline, and jumped up around the Russian’s thick neck, wrapped my arms around his head, and held on like I was riding a bronco. Surprised to find my pussy in his face, he gripped my thighs, and spun around, stumbling like a drunk trying to walk a straight line.
If it’s true that pussy makes men weak then he would be toppling over in a second because I was smothering him with mine. When he found out he couldn’t lift me off his face, he mumbled something in Russian to his partner, who had been standing there gaping in shock. And he grabbed hold of my waist, and pulled me off his face.
He was holding me up in the air, and no doubt preparing to toss my ass, when we all heard the ominous sound of a bullet being chambered. I didn’t have to look to know it was Choc working the Internal Locking System in his chrome and gold plated Glock 18. It was his prize possession, and nobody was allowed to touch it. He even had the grip security coded, so it could only be fired by his hand. The tricked out Beauty, which was his name for it, had an amplified sound mechanism that got everybody’s attention quicker than firing a round into the ceiling. The big Russian froze with me dangling over his head like a rag doll.
“Put the cute little nurse down, nice and easy. Don’t hurt her,” Choc spoke quietly.
The man set me down on the floor like I was a package labeled fragile, and then he stepped away from me.
“I have got to get me one of those,” I grinned.
“Are you alright, girl?” Choc asked, keeping his eyes on the puffed up men.
“Yeah, I had it under control,” I straightened my scrubs and tried to look dignified.
“I’m here to transport him to a federal facility,” Choc announced. “Unless you gentlemen would like to accompany him, I suggest you leave now.”
Choc was the coolest man alive. I had never even seen him sweat. He stepped back to let the hulking men leave the room, and they eyed him meanly as they filed by him slowly.
When they were gone, Choc lowered his gun, and spoke to nurse snotty. “We’ll take it from here, nurse. Will we need a security pass to use the transport elevators?”
“Hey, what’s going on?” the security chief appeared in the doorway too late for the fight, as usual. �
�You can’t remove this man from here. He’s in CPD custody.”
“This man is a federal prisoner, and where the fuck was you when the two goons were in here attacking these nurses?”
“No one was on the door,” nurse snotty explained.
“I had a man posted,” he stuttered.
“Then I suggest you go look for him, and get the fuck outtá my way. Your paperwork is downstairs.”
I had already unlocked the wheels on Jamal’s bed, and transferred the IV pump to the pole attached to it. Choc holstered his Glock, and grabbed the foot of the bed and pulled while I pushed.
“Nurse, I need you to take us to the passenger transport elevators,” he ordered.
She glanced at the security chief, and he gave her a nod of approval. She raced out in front of us, fast walking to match Choc’s pace. She used her ID pass to call the patient transport elevator. When the doors opened, we crowded in with the bed, me first, my back against the wall, Choc in front. He pressed the button for the basement, and the doors slid closed, leaving nurse snotty standing there with a shocked expression on her face.
“We’re coming out through the loading dock on St. Clair, Rayce. Be there.”
“Roger that,” she responded in our earpieces.
“Are you two really with the FBI?” Jamal spoke for the first time.
“Well, no,” I answered, and he turned his eyes up, and looked back over his head to see me. “I’m the chick you tried to kill this morning, remember?” I smiled down at him.
“I never tried to kill you,” he protested.
“Oh, so you never intended for me to drink the poisoned Cognac?”
“Hell nah…I told my brother that you didn’t drink that shit. We were only trying to kill Steven.”
I had heard him say otherwise, so I knew he was lying, but I couldn’t blame him for that. It was natural for him to try to lie his way out of what was clearly a bad situation.
The elevator doors opened, and I said, “Let’s continue this conversation in the van.”
“I ain’t gon’ let y’all torture me. Kill me now, gotdammit!” he sat up, and started to get off the bed.
Choc stopped pulling, and had his Glock pressed to his head before he could swing his feet off the side of the bed. “The man your sister works for sent us for you. Now, he told us to bring you back alive, but I ain’t going to wrestle wit’ your big ass. I’m going to kill you if I have to,” he stated calmly.
Jamal nodded his head up and down, and then lay back down slowly. “Let’s go, Severe.” Choc started pulling the bed again.
We pushed Jamal through the halls to the loading dock. The van was already there with the rear door open. Rayce was behind the wheel, and the engine was idling.
We pushed the bed down the ramp, and had started moving towards the van when I saw them—the two Russians, armed and preparing to fire on us. “Get down!” I shouted.
Choc moved in sync with me instinctively. He pulled the bed over on its side, dumping the big man on the ground, so we could use the steel bottom for cover.
Jamal cried out in pain when he hit the ground, but he did not tarry. He tore the IV needle from his arm, and crawled up close behind us, keeping his head down.
The Russians opened up on us, and the dock came to life with the sound of automatic gunfire. Bullets were pinging off the bed’s steel bottom so fast I didn’t dare raise my head to sneak a peek.
They were forcing us to keep our heads down, but I could tell that they were moving in closer.
Then Rayce surprised them by blasting the van’s horn. It gave them the bright idea to redirect their gunfire, and pump lead into the vehicle. Sparks flew off the armored frame, the noise level deafening.
While they were preoccupied with killing the van, Choc sprang up from behind the bed. He hit one man with a single head shot, and then switched the Glock to automatic so fast, I didn’t actually see it. He started unloading parabellum rounds in the big man’s barrel chest, sending his body into jolting spasms that made him look like a puppet dancing on strings. He was literally dead on his feet, and when Choc stopped firing, he dropped to the ground like his strings had been cut.
“Move, Severe!” he shouted as he loaded a new clip.
I took off running, and he grabbed Jamal and hoisted him up over his shoulders like he weighed nothing, and ran for the van after me.
Rayce was already under the wheel, and as soon as Choc dumped Jamal on the floor, and hopped in, she punched it, barreling out the docking area and into traffic.
Choc pulled the back panel door closed, and then sat down on the bench. He still wasn’t sweating, even after carrying Jamal.
Rayce turned off Saint Clair onto Huron, and then took it to Michigan. Surprisingly, the downtown mid-morning traffic was light, and we were moving steadily. “Would you like to tell me why you killed Steven, Jamal?” I asked.
“I was following orders,” he grimaced, and then clutched his leg when Rayce hit a pothole. The back of the van was not a smooth ride, and I was sure the jostling around made his injury more uncomfortable.
“Following whose orders, Janie’s?”
“I don’t know what you talkin’ ‘bout,” he growled, clearly not wanting to give up his sister’s name.
The sudden sound of bullets punching the van interrupted my interrogation. “We got company,” Rayce said, and floored it, knocking me over on Jamal’s thigh, and making him cry out in pain.
Chapter 7
Melvin was standing in medical looking down at Janie who was cuffed to the bed she was sitting upright in. “If you tell me what I want to know, I’ll have the Doc remove the bullet from your leg. If you don’t cooperate, I’ll have him remove it before you’re anesthetized. The choice is yours.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Who else have you been reporting to besides Yeltsin?”
“No one, I only made a deal with the Russian mob for information about the card. They want to bid on it.”
“So knowing how important this thing is, you sold me out for money?”
“No, Ryan, I didn’t just do it for the money. I did it because you never appreciated me or my talent,” she hissed.
“I never appreciated you?” he looked puzzled. “I pay you top dollar. Twice as much as you earned at the Bureau—”
“It’s not about the money, dammit!” she screamed. “It’s about me and you, and how you fucked me one weekend and got married the next!”
“I never did that,” he lowered his voice, and moved closer to her bed.
“You never told me that you were dating Samantha Jawlins while you were dating me. What? You didn’t think it was information you should have shared?”
“We were never serious, Janie, and the thing with me and Sam just happened.”
“You’re a selfish user, Melvin Ryan. You fucked with my emotions, and you dumped me. Then you had the nerve to ask me to work for you. Hell, I was no more to you than D’Agon, or Bender. We shared a bed for two years, and you dropped me like it meant nothing to you!”
“So, this is about being a scorned woman?” Valow turned to Blue. Ryan hadn’t disengaged his communication link, so he was still transmitting, and they could hear every word being said.
“I can’t believe she is serious. I knew Ryan dated her while we were at the Bureau, but I didn’t think it was serious. I knew it wasn’t after he met Sam,” Blue said.
“Well, evidently the bitch thinks that it was. Did Ryan fuck her the weekend before he got married?”
“If my memory serves me right, it was two weekends before he got married. She showed up at his bachelor party. He was wasted, and she insisted on driving him home. He told me he woke up in her bed with her next to him.”
“Damn, does Sam know that?” Valow chuckled.
“I don’t think he mentioned it to her…ever,” Blue started laughing with him.
“Janie, I can’t believe you would risk national security, and your brothers’ lives to get pay
back for what was obviously a misunderstanding,” Ryan sighed. He was clearly not just angry, but disappointed as well. “You deserve to die for this shit,” he growled.
“I have your child, Melvin Ryan,” she stated flatly.
“Oh damn!” Blue exclaimed. “Maybe we should get in there.”
“No way, my brotha, we need to hear where the bitch is going with this. If they’re planning to use his kid as leverage, then it’s probably something they don’t want him to share with his team. We can’t let her know we overheard them.”
Ryan glared at Janie, and struggled to control the flash of anger that threatened to make him react foolishly. “You have my child?” he repeated, his mind already filling with images of his son, Kendall, being dragged from school by strangers. “You kidnapped him from school?”
“What?” she looked confused. “No, I don’t have him—”
“Then who has him?” he shouted. “If you people hurt my kid, I swear—”
“I’m not talking about Kendall. You got me pregnant, and you have a daughter,” she answered sarcastically. “Kendall is not your only child. You have a child with me, also.”
“Don’t fucking lie to me!” His hand automatically went to her throat. She had risked the most important job of his career, and now she was playing bullshit games. He was fed up, and prepared to choke the life out of her for real.
“I’m not lying, Ryan. Her name is Melvina, and she is eleven months older than Kendall,” she answered in a rush of words. “I didn’t tell you about her because you were already married when I found out I was pregnant.”
“So why the fuck you telling me now?” he was pissed, and confused, and oddly relieved. His son was safe.
“Because if you kill me and my brothers, she’ll have no more family, and no one to take care of her,” she started to cry.
Melvin released his hold on her throat, and ran his hand back over his head. Feeling despondent and overwhelmed by the news, and conflicting emotions, he could only shake his head in despair.
