Xander King BoxSet

by Bradley Wright

  The man coughed again, then held up six fingers. Sam reached down, grabbed the man’s radio, then stomped down on his head, knocking him unconscious.

  “You’re so mean.” Xander smirked as he followed Sam toward the opposite end of the room.

  Sam ignored him, and the two of them walked toward an open door in the middle of the concrete block wall. It was pitch black inside.

  “Looks like there is a tunnel after all. This must run directly under Saunier Street, right into the bottom of the church.”

  “I don’t like this, Xander.”

  “I’m scared of the dark too, Sam, but together we can overcome.”

  Sam didn’t acknowledge his statement. “Why would they ever want to involve you in this?”

  “I’m not sure they did. Allison is the one who called.”

  “But why?” Sam asked.

  Xander didn’t answer for a moment. He knew where Sam was going; he had thought it himself. The reason Allison had given for calling him was that she feared Sheriff Jerry was in over his head. Xander wasn’t going to get involved until she was taken.

  Sam read Xander’s face. “You’re sure you can trust this Allison?”

  “What reason would I have not to? It’s not like she has anything to gain by dragging me into something. Besides, what could she possibly have to do with Bowker and Brancati’s drug business?”

  “I have no clue. That’s why I’m asking. Something isn’t adding up. You know that. You think them taking Allison is just about revenge for her putting Bowker in prison? Why wouldn’t they just kill her?”

  Xander didn’t have an answer.

  “Christ, Xander. You don’t have many weaknesses, but women are definitely one. One day, you’re going to let one of them get you killed.”

  “Just don’t let it be you.”

  Sam took out her phone and turned on the flashlight. “I am the least of your worries.”

  As they made their way down the dark makeshift tunnel, Xander retraced everything in his mind. It made sense that Bowker would want revenge against the woman that put him in prison. Sam was right, though: why not just kill her at her home and move on? They were obviously here for the drugs. Not to steal them, but to make sure they couldn’t be sold, and to make sure Freeman and his business were gone for good. Hence the reason for causing a scene and making sure the cops were here. But why not just call in an anonymous tip? Why risk being caught? It wasn’t making sense to Xander, but nothing moronic drug dealers did ever made much sense to him. Then it hit him. He grabbed Sam’s arm and turned her toward him.

  “What about Freeman?” Xander whispered. His soft voice echoed in the tunnel.

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Where is he?”

  The white glow of the phone’s flashlight revealed confusion on Sam’s face. Nobody had considered him.

  Xander said, “That has to be why they came here tonight, right? They must have thought he would be here, and they must have been expecting a fight.”

  “Why would they do this while a church service was going on?”

  “Honestly? I think they are that stupid.”

  “All right, I agree with that.” Sam nodded. “Let’s just find Allison and get out of here before this Freeman and his men show up and we find ourselves in the middle of a turf war.”

  Xander took the lead and continued down the dark tunnel. Sam followed closely behind, shedding light as they went. The ground below them was packed dirt and there were wooden beams every few steps that helped keep the ceiling from caving in. Xander couldn’t hear anything ahead, but as the proverbial saying goes, he could now see a light at the end of the tunnel, literally. He approached with measured steps, his Glock at the ready down by his side. As they made it to the end of the tunnel, which was the basement of the church, there weren’t any sounds indicating anyone was there. The only sound was the roar of the furnace desperately trying to keep the chill of the winter night on the outside where it belonged. The light Xander had seen was coming from a door left ajar. Xander’s spidy senses were going off like mad, and apparently Sam’s were as well because she grabbed Xander’s arm and whispered for him to move slowly. Xander peeked through the door, making sure not to move it. He imagined the hinges would be more than squeaky if he did. His eyes searched the room. It was set up similarly to the one they had just left behind under the opera house. There were no signs of movement. He moved inside the large open room and ducked behind a tarp covering a pile of what Xander just assumed would be more drugs. The lights weren’t quite as bright as they were under the opera house, and as Sam followed in behind him, all he found were more piles and other miscellaneous items like chairs and candles and so on. No sign of—

  “There,” Sam whispered. She pointed the tip of her pistol toward the middle of the room.

  At first glance, all Xander saw was shelving. Then, a slight movement could be seen through one of the open slats.

  “Good eye,” he whispered back to her.

  Xander inched around a pile of assumed cocaine and in a crouch moved to another pile about ten feet closer. He was still too far away to make out what it was that had moved, so he duckwalked once again, this time coming to a stop behind a large pile of what looked like hymnals. This time, it was close enough for him to see.

  Sam whispered, “It’s her.”

  10

  Clarity in the Chaos

  Xander gave his surroundings another quick glance; then he stood. He held out a finger to Sam. Others would have needed an explanation, but he knew Sam would understand immediately that he was sensing something was off and to wait in the shadows just in case. As he walked around the mostly empty bookshelves, he saw that Sam was right: it was Allison. She was sitting in a folding chair in the middle of an open space in the room. Looking at her phone. Her phone?

  “Allison?” Xander called to her as he walked toward her.

  The look on Allison’s face as her head shot up and she saw Xander coming toward her wasn’t the look he had been expecting. In fact, it was the exact opposite. He had assumed there would be elation, or at least relief. Instead, she was shocked.

  “Xander, how—” She stopped. She was genuinely at a loss for words. It was almost as if he was the last person on earth she expected to see. But she had called him. She knew he would come for her. Yet her face read differently. Xander’s hair on the back of his neck stood on end, and he froze in his tracks.

  Something wasn’t right.

  Allison tried to recover. She shot to her feet and ran toward him, arms out, ready to embrace him. “Xander! You really came for me!” But she wasn’t even constrained. No sign of ropes around her limbs or duct tape over her mouth. It was as if she wasn’t being held against her will at all.

  Xander caught both of her outstretched arms by the wrist, turned her around, clasped them together behind her back and held her in place.

  “Allison, tell me what the hell is going on, right now.”

  She wriggled in attempt to get away, but Xander held firm. “Xander, what are you doing? You’re hurting me.”

  “Tell me what is going on right now, Allison. I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ve rescued my fair share of kidnap victims, and I can tell you beyond a shadow of doubt that not one of them were playing on their iPhone when I found them. Especially when they didn’t have their phone when they called me just a few minutes ago. Tell me what is really going on or I’m going to walk you upstairs right now and hand you over to the police.”

  She was silent for a moment; then her squirming stopped. “Okay, okay. Just let me go and I’ll explain.”

  Xander did as she asked. When Allison turned around, Xander saw her familiar face in the dim yellow light, but something was different. He had seen that look in people’s eyes before, just before they turned on him. She reached for something in the back of her black jeans, but her face turned to shock again when she found nothing.

  “Looking for this?” he asked her, her min
i pistol in his hand. He had felt it in the waistband of her jeans when he locked her wrists together behind her back. Allison was once again at a loss for words. “I’m not Jerry, remember? That’s why you called me to save you.” Xander lifted two fingers on each hand for air quotes. “Start talking right now, Allison.”

  Then a voice spoke from behind him. “That’s right, Xander, you aren’t me.” Xander whirled around. Sheriff Jerry Thompson continued, “You may have the skills, but not the brains.”

  Xander smiled. “You read that line in a comic book, Jerry?”

  By the way his jaw set, it was clear Jerry didn’t appreciate Xander’s sarcasm. Jerry racked the slide on his pistol. “Say something else, smart-ass,” Jerry challenged.

  “Hmm.” Xander looked up at the ceiling and tapped Allison’s compact Ruger LC9 pistol against his chin, exaggerating his pretense of trying to think of something clever. “Oh, I know.” He looked back down at Jerry. “Sam is just like American Express: I never leave home without her.”

  Jerry’s face turned from angry to confused.

  “Really, Xander? That wasn’t your best.” Sam walked around the bookshelf, her pistol trained on Jerry’s head.

  Jerry swung his pistol toward Sam, startled at seeing her come out of the shadows. He moved it back and forth from Sam to Xander.

  “Really, Jerry?” Xander tucked Allison’s pistol in the back of his jeans. “Your man who tried to trap us in the stairwell with the tear gas didn’t radio you that there were two of us? What kind of show are you running here? You saw Sam and me together at Allison’s. You still thought I’d come alone?”

  Xander took a step toward Jerry, but before he could reach him to take his pistol, he heard yet another voice from the opposite end of the basement.

  “Not another step. Who the hell are you?”

  Xander turned toward the voice and found five men in ski masks coming down the stairs. All of them had guns, and all of them were pointed at Sam and Xander. Xander turned his gun on the man in the front wearing the suit, but he addressed Allison. “Allison, what the hell is going on?”

  Before she answered him, she walked over and removed her gun from Xander’s waistline. “Well, Xander, this was supposed to be the beginning of my new business here in Lexington. But I was stupid. I let Jerry talk me into mixing business with pleasure.”

  “Oh, I’m not going to sleep with you again.” Xander couldn’t help himself.

  Allison laughed. “You always did think you were funnier than you really are. And this is really no time for jokes. I should have never involved you in this. I should have known involving you would screw everything up.”

  “Let me guess,” Xander said, no fear in his voice. “The DA wasn’t making enough money, and Brancati over here made you”—Xander did his best Brando impression—“an offer you couldn’t refuse.”

  “Maybe you aren’t as dumb as I thought you were,” Allison said.

  The man in the suit at the bottom of the stairs removed his mask, and it was exactly who Xander expected to see: Brancati.

  “Okay, Bowker, you next,” said Xander.

  The man next to Brancati removed his mask.

  “That was a real shocker, given the orange jumpsuit. This isn’t exactly a game of Clue. You couldn’t even bring him a change of clothes?” Xander asked Allison.

  Jerry screamed from behind Xander, “Shut the fuck up, Xander! Shut your smart mouth!”

  “Calm down, Jerry, it’s your fault he’s here in the first place,” said Allison. “I told you we should deal with him later. He almost ruined everything. Not to mention how easily he dispatched your goons outside my neighborhood.”

  “I see,” said Xander. “The both of you banded together for some petty revenge against me, but you completely underestimated me. Tsk, tsk. So, now what? The two of you are going to join forces with these thugs and become drug dealers?” He turned to Jerry. “Jesus, Jer, it was just a lousy footrace.” Then he turned back to Allison. “And I thought we left what we were doing amicably. Why didn’t you just tell me you wanted more?”

  Before anyone else could speak, they all heard a loud bang from somewhere in the church above them, followed by screams from the hostages. Xander figured the police had decided to make a move and bust in the front doors of the church.

  Brancati shouted, “I thought you told your men to stand down, Jerry? To wait for your signal?” Then he motioned for his men to go find out what was going on upstairs. “Hold them off for as long as you can.”

  “There weren’t supposed to be hostages, Brancati, remember? There’s nothing I could do once they called in SWAT.”

  “No, you got distracted by whoever the hell this pretty-boy smart-ass is.” Brancati nodded to Xander. “And so did you, Allison. Is this what I can expect going forward? It helps to have the cooperation of the sheriff and the DA, but I can do this without you.”

  Allison turned toward Brancati as she raised her pistol. “And I can do this without you.” Then she pulled the trigger. As Brancati’s brains blew back against the gray cinder-block wall behind him, Xander took advantage and once again disarmed Allison, subduing her by wrapping his arms around hers.

  “Jesus, Allison, who are you?” Xander asked her as he held her, taking her gun and once again placing it at the back of his belt line.

  A man’s voice came from the stairwell. “She’s my partner.”

  Xander first saw a pair of heels stepping down toward them, which were immediately followed by a pair of cowboy boots, their owners’ faces hidden by the basement ceiling. They stopped, and then there was another gunshot and the sound of the woman’s scream. This time it was Bowker’s head that exploded. The woman continued to whimper as her heels and the man’s boots descended the rest of the stairs. Finally, the two of them were fully revealed. The dark-haired woman was being held by her hair, her face wet with tears falling from her fear-filled eyes. The man held the gun to her head, and his face held a smile.

  “Hello, Xander.”

  Xander couldn’t believe it. There in front of him was the other SEAL trainee whom he had inadvertently embarrassed the day he ran backward to put Jerry out of the SEAL program. “What is this, the revenge brigade? How long have the two of you been planning this one?” Xander looked at Jerry, then back to the man whose name he didn’t remember. “Seriously, you two, this is embarrassing.”

  “Shut the hell up, Xander,” Jerry said.

  “Sam, just shoot him, will you?”

  Allison cut in and addressed the man holding a gun to the woman’s head. “Why did you go and shoot Bowker? He kept Brancati completely in the dark.”

  Before the man could answer, gunfire erupted upstairs in the cathedral. The man holding the woman looked up at the ceiling, then back at Xander. “Looks like there’s no time for pleasantries.”

  At that moment, something in the way the man made that statement once again jogged something in Xander’s memory.

  Xander said, “Freeman. Jonathan Freeman. I knew that name sounded familiar when Kyle texted it earlier.”

  This operation, all of it, had obviously been in the works for a while. Jerry and Freeman must have been plotting this for a long time. He still couldn’t figure out why Allison would get involved. Other than the fact that she said she was dating Jerry. He just didn’t think that would have been enough to turn her into all of this. Then another revelation hit him. It wasn’t Jerry who got Allison involved at all.

  It was her brother.

  “Allison Freeman,” Xander said out loud, almost in disbelief.

  “What did you ever see in this guy, sis?” Jonathan Freeman gave Allison Freeman a disappointed look.

  Sam broke in, “Am I the only one lost here?”

  More gunfire continued above them.

  “Enough with the reunion,” Freeman said. “Both of you, let them go or I will shoot this bitch in the head. Jerry, go get us a patrol car from one of your men and meet us on the other side of the opera house.”
/>   Sam continued to hold her gun on Jerry. Freeman violently readjusted his grip on the woman and jabbed her head with his gun. “I said, let him go!”

  “Sam, just let him go,” Xander said.

  Sam backed away, leaving a path for Jerry to get to the opening of the tunnel. He sprinted for the exit. She then shifted her gun, pointing it toward Freeman’s head.

  Sam said, “Leave the girl and we’ll let the two of you leave with Jerry.”

  “You are in no position to be making demands, sweetheart,” Freeman told Sam. Then to Xander he said, “Let Allison go.”

  “You do realize that I’m going to catch you, right?” Xander told him.

  “You aren’t going to win this time, King. This isn’t SEAL training anymore. I make the rules out here,” he said, and he began to move the girl past Xander and toward the entrance to the tunnel. He tapped the woman’s head with his pistol. “I’ll take this one with me, just in case you get any bright ideas.”

  The look in the woman’s eyes was pleading. Without words, she begged Xander to help her. Xander’s heart dropped, and at the same time his adrenaline surged. Rage coursed through his veins as he watched Freeman’s smug face as he backed into the entrance of the tunnel.

  “We’ll see about that, Freeman.”

  “Yes, we will.”

  He disappeared from view but continued to make demands. “If my sister doesn’t come out of this tunnel in the next sixty seconds, and if I see your face before I leave here with them, this unlucky lady is going to die.”

  Xander didn’t say anything. He just continued to hold on to Allison as the woman being taken by Freeman squealed in fear.

  “Oh, and Xander?” Freeman spoke once more, his voice echoing from deeper inside the tunnel. “Merry Christmas!”

  11

  You Break It, You Buy It

  Allison squirmed in Xander’s grip. “Let me go, Xander.”