“Will you just say it?”
“He offered to fund me,” Cord murmured. “Me. My work. Do you believe that? Some guy he doesn’t even know. He offered to fund what I do down here in the Keys. Said he was proud of me, but that I’m a dumbass for thinking I could take on the world and do this all by myself. Said a Marine should know better than to do stupid shit like that, but he also said he’d ante up enough money that I could pay my guys and buy my own building and… Jesus Christ, McCray. He said if I came to work for him, he’d support me every step of the way.”
Which was why Seth worked for Alex Stewart. There was no better boss in the world.
By then the scenery had changed from strip malls and residential to backwoods and gravel roads. “I’ve got twenty-four hours to give him an answer, and, get this. He said it better be the right one.”
Seth nearly smiled, but they’d just passed a derelict motel. Damned if there weren’t two vehicles parked there, a sleek silver Maserati and a beat-up POS economy car. “Pull over. Now.”
Cord parked the Chevelle in the tall reeds and swamp grass, not that Seth minded having to climb out and fight his way through the brush to get to the road. Cord joined him at the rear of the Chevy, his weapon in his hand. “How do you want to do this?”
“Quickly,” Seth murmured as he scanned the various points of egress and started forward. The clapboard building faced west, its rear wall against twelve-foot high grass, weeds, and shrubbery. The asphalt parking lot to the front of it was cracked and full of weeds, though these were shorter and worn from travel. The faded sign over the one main door at the south end of the building indicated what might have been the office, but Seth headed for the single door/window combination of the next thirteen rooms. With those two vehicles parked where they were, he bet Sly and Bagani were in the fourth room north of the office.
“Can you believe these guys parking out in the open like this?” Cord whispered as he racked his piece. “Damn, they’ve got nerve. You think she’s here?”
Which was why most people never recognized human trafficking when they saw it. The perpetrators had a helluva lot of nerve and they conducted much of their business in broad daylight.
“One way to find out,” Seth muttered, his entire being on high alert, his senses drawing all elements in his surroundings to him. The direction of the slight breeze coming from the north. The angle of the early morning sun to his left. The birdsong from every leaf and branch, and Lordy, Lordy. He’d almost forgotten how much and how loud birds chattered, sang, and chirped at the first glimmer of dawn.
Cocking his head, he tuned his ears on the weathered building ahead, no longer sure he’d heard voices coming from there. Stealthy now, he sidled up to the nearest corner of the building and looked down the length of what had once been a long wooden porch. Straggly tufts of gray Spanish moss clung to the underside of the decrepit overhanging roof. Something rustled in the bushes at his rear, but that something was smaller than a human, so he disregarded it as negligible. Mankind didn’t scurry.
“Think you can get past the rear of this motel without being seen?”
“On it,” Cord said as he stepped into the weeds.
“We’ll go in once you’re at the opposite end of this porch, understood? We’ll meet in the middle.”
“You bet,” Cord replied as he rounded the corner and disappeared.
“Hurry,” Seth murmured, more to himself than at Cord. “Devereaux’s here. I can sense her.” And my gut’s churning up a storm.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Sweating and in tears, Dev bit her lip in anticipation of another sting from the cruel weapon in Bagani’s hand. He struck without warning, and it didn’t matter if she’d been paying rapt attention or not. He kept hitting her left breast until the poor swollen mound of flesh twitched and burned as if he’d set it on fire. What was he going to do next?
She tried not to scream and cry, but this was all a game, a contest with him. With each snap of his wrist, she writhed in bitter agony, while he stared and studied her like an insect. There was no escape. Bagani was the big scary cat, and she was the tiny little mouse, caught in a trap from which there was only one way out. Where once she’d prayed for one more chance to see Scottie, now she prayed for the quick death she knew wasn’t in her future, not with the other tools Bagani had yet to use.
God! Kill me now, just kill me! Yet simultaneously she prayed, I’m too young to die!
Joachim had moved to the heavily curtained window, the edge of it barely pushed aside, watching for someone, hopefully the police. Occasionally, he’d glance over his shoulder at her, but there was no remorse in his eyes and no kindness. Only an odd excitement that made Dev’s skin crawl, while she shivered and trembled beneath Bagani’s skilled touch. The asses!
What the hell turned men into animals like these guys? What pleasure was there in tormenting another human being? In torturing a defenseless woman?
“Mr. Valentine’s here,” Joachim said calmly as he walked to the door and opened it.
The last thing Dev needed. Another Inquisitor.
Sly ducked into the room with a hurried, “Sorry I’m late, your Highness.” He came to stand behind Bagani, the same freakish glitter in his eyes that gleamed in Joachim’s. “I had a little problem at the club last night. One of the girls, you understand,” he said as he rolled his long sleeves up to his elbows. “We can start now.”
“N-no,” Dev whimpered. “Please, s-s-stop. I’ll be good. Just don’t—” Whip! “No! Ahh! Stop!”
But Bagani struck again, and she didn’t know how much more pain she could take.
“But you’re already a good girl,” he purred, as he dragged the hook over the mesh bra and tugged the cup down, exposing her. “In fact, you’re perfect. Look, my friend,” he said, glancing up at Sly who all but drooled at the sight of her tortured breast. “All I have to do is this…” Whip! He struck again, hitting her naked skin, and this time, Bagani chuckled when she shrieked. “You were right, she is a responsive one, and she knows my real name.” Whip!
“Master!” Dev screamed. “Why are you doing this to me?”
Brushing past Bagani, Sly rounded the bed to stand at her other side. “Because women like you need men like me,” he growled as he leaned into her face and squeezed her poor, battered breast.
“Stop!” she squealed, writhing, her wrists and ankles raw and bleeding. She could smell her own blood and sweat, yet this nightmare would not end!
Sly laughed. “Oh, just wait, my lovely, spoiled prima donna. I’ve been watching since you moved into my turf. Playtime’s just beginning. You live for the pain, and I’m here to make sure you get what you like.”
BLAM! What was that? It sounded like someone had just kicked the door in.
Dev jerked her head around at that noise, but she couldn’t see past Bagani to know for sure. Suddenly as still as a stone, he’d crossed his arms, a weird, detached smile on his face.
Sly pressed a knife under her chin just as someone fired a shot, and Joachim fell to the floor behind the prince. Sly pricked her neck with the tip of the blade and bellowed, “Stop or she dies!”
“Don’t listen to him! Help me!” she screamed at whoever’d come to her rescue.
A beat of silence, then a tortured, “Dev? Is that you?”
“Cord? Yes!” she screamed even as Sly pricked her again. “Get me out of here!”
Bagani sat there as silent as a schoolboy, the bloody weapon of choice still in his clean hands.
“Let her up,” Cord snapped from somewhere beyond Dev’s visual range.
“Not happening,” Sly bit out, his dark hair dangling into his face. “Get your ass out of here, Shepherd, or I’ll stick her. I swear I will. She’ll bleed out before you get to her.”
“You think I can’t hit you from here?”
“You think I can’t cut her throat if you’re stupid enough to try?” Sly shot back at him. “Are you willing to
take that risk, Shepherd? Are you ready to watch your sister die?”
“No. He’s not,” a strange woman’s voice rang out.
“What the fuck?” Cord growled.
No, no, no! Dev craned her neck to see what was happening. Bagani finally shifted to his left and Dev saw Cord then. He had both hands over his head as the shorthaired woman with the gun in his neck stripped the pistol from his fingers.
“Inside, Mr. Shepherd,” she ordered. “I’m not opposed to wasting a good man but trust me. I will.”
“Dev, I’m sorry,” he bit out as the woman walked him over to the chair Joachim had been sitting in.
This cannot be happening!
“Stab his sister if he makes one move,” the woman told Sly while she holstered her pistol, handed Cord a set of metal cuffs, and said, “You know what to do.”
Cord sneered at her, but cuffed himself. “Now what?” he asked as he towered over her. Hissing and his teeth chattering, he dropped to the floor. The woman had hit him in the chest with the taser she’d pulled from beneath her jacket.
“Who are you?” Dev asked, her last hope gone, and her heart broken for Cord. This was all her fault.
“Giselle Montego,” the blonde replied as she stuck the taser in her waistband.
“You’re… you’re Roland Montego’s wife?”
Giselle winked. “I’m one of many women that he, shall we say, plays with? And now you can be, too.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Seth had walked halfway along the porch when he’d caught sight of the black sedan rolling toward the motel. Ducking into the first available room, he’d watched while Sly had climbed out of that sedan and entered the same room Seth was headed for.
But once Cord hit the other end of the boardwalk, their plan to meet in the middle went ape shit. He’d seen Sly drive up, too. Fired up and stupid, he’d closed in on door four without coordinating with Seth. Before Seth could get his attention, Cord had entered room four alone, the dumbass. He’d no more than crossed the doorjamb when a shot rang out, but Jesus H. Christ! Yet another car had advanced on the motel by then, this one a sleek silver BMW. What was this place? Fuckin’ Grand Central Station?
It was Giselle, the dominatrix from the bar, who had unfolded her long legs from the second car. Smoothing her hands over her short black skirt, she’d drawn a pistol from beneath her creamy white suit jacket, and like the rabid dominatrix she was, Giselle followed Cord’s dumb ass into room four.
Seth waited, certain Cord had to have fired that shot, that he’d put up a decent fight and that he’d come busting out of that door with Devereaux before Giselle got to him. But when the door closed without so much as a whimper… When things went incredibly quiet…
Damn that Marine! He’d just made everything ten times worse with that pigheaded stunt! Who’d he think he was, John Wayne? Seth would’ve given anything if a different former Marine had his six at that moment, but the guy he needed was in far-off Virginia, and Shit! Seth was stuck with Cord.
Down to one man, this operation was seriously compromised, but that meant squat. Seth wasn’t leaving without Devereaux. Not without Cord now, either.
“Why the hell couldn’t you listen? Just once, you pig-headed Marine? Would it have killed you?” Seth muttered as he advanced on room four, his eye on the road in case anyone else decided to show up. Why not? Everyone else had. “I said we’d meet in the middle, but noooooooooo…”
Shit! He was pissed that Cord had just blown their one and only advantage—surprise. Sucking up a breath of patience and fortitude, Seth steeled himself at room four’s door, his weapon ready, his heart locked and loaded.
He’d been down this road more times than he cared to remember. People would die the second he breached the entry. The slightest error at his hand could and would change everything. Things could still go terribly wrong. He could die. Worse, Devereaux could die. He had to time this precisely or—
Devereaux screamed, and to hell with last second strategizing. Cocking his knee, Seth kicked the door open and charged inside. Cord lay flat on his back at Seth’s right. Out cold. Bagani looked up from his chair in surprise. Sly and Giselle stood to the right of the bed with Giselle leaning over Devereaux with, of all damned things, a taser in her hand.
No way! Seth asked no questions as—BLAM!—muscle training took over. Down Giselle went, one to the head.
The blade in Sly’s hand flashed, but only once. Seth made sure of that, firing automatically as Sly joined the dominatrix beside the bed where Devereaux lay crying.
The poor thing was spread-eagled, bloodied, and half-dressed in metal underwear on the plastic-covered bed at his right. Her one breast was a mound of bloody hamburger. Both wrists and her ankles bled profusely. God, what’d they do to her?
“Seth,” she begged, her face mottled red and tearstained, her pretty white hair clumped with sweat and blood.
“I’m here, babe,” he told her.
At her side the olive-skinned, arrogant prick of a man in a pristine white dress shirt sat on a wooden chair, one ankle crossed over his knee, and his nose in the air. Had to be his royal bastard highness, Prince Bagani.
Seth wanted to shoot the guy’s head off, and he would have if Alex hadn’t warned him that the world was watching. Would’ve shot this dirtbag and walked over his dead body to get to Devereaux. Instead, Seth zeroed down on the asshole behind this dirty business and roared, “Get down! On the floor! Do it! Now! Now! Now!” like he’d done when breaching Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan.
Screaming tended to disorient civilians. Not this guy. The prince dared to stay seated and that just wasn’t going to fly. Seth jerked the bastard off the chair by his collar and shoved him to his knees. “I said down!” he roared at the pompous ass.
“I think not,” Bagani answered calmly as he sat on his haunches and dusted the single strand of hair that had fallen out of place, off his brow. “You’re an American. You have no power over me.”
“Like hell I don’t! I’ll show you power!” Seth spat as he pressed the business end of his pistol to the man’s forehead, aching to end this bastard once and for all. “I own your ass, Bagani, don’t think I don’t. You’re a known rapist and murderer. Stay the fuck down!”
“You own nothing,” the prince chided, his tone rife with pithy tolerance that Seth had no patience for. “I am royalty, and as such, I have diplomatic immunity. Check with my embassy. Better yet, check with yours. They’ll tell you. I. Am. Untouchable.” He lifted to his feet, still too damned calm, but, shit—right.
Seth huffed through his nose, pissed at the politics that let this bastard roam free. “Sit your worthless ass down, or so help me—”
“No,” Bagani stated, his chin up, his shoulders and back stiff. “My work is done here. Get out of my way. I have a plane to catch.”
“Your work!” Seth jerked his head at the bed. “You call that work, you asshat?” It took all of his control to not knock Bagani to the floor and kick his ass. He’d hurt Devereaux. He needed to pay and pay hard. In blood!
But when she whimpered from that frightful bed of horrors, and Cord moaned from the floor, the law of triage demanded Seth get his head back in the game. They needed to live more than Bagani needed to die.
If not for that and Alex’s warning, Bagani would never see the light of day. He’d just cleared the doorway on his way to freedom. Seth still had him in his sights, and his heart ached to put the son-of-a-bitch down like the cur he was. But Bagani kept walking, his head held high as if he knew damned well he’d just gotten away with kidnapping, torture, and attempted murder.
Seth kept his red laser dot square on the back of Bagani’s skull until the man slid into the Maserati. This was the hardest thing Seth had ever done. The asshole was getting away.
“Seth,” Devereaux cried, and Seth lost the war between doing what he knew was right and what he wanted to do. He sent the son-of-a-bitch Bagani one last hate-filled gl
are before he holstered his weapon and went to her. In no time at all, he jimmied the locked cuffs and pulled her off the disgusting sticky plastic.
“Ow, ow,” she cried, cradling one arm over her poor savaged breast.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured as she collapsed against him, crying and shaking so hard that it broke his heart. “Hey, it’s over. I’ve got you and we’re going home.”
“Scottie,” she whimpered. “They said they’d hurt Scottie if I didn’t…”
“Shush,” he soothed even as he avoided telling her that he had no idea where Scottie was at the moment. First things first.
Seth carried her into the bathroom, where it appeared one helluva fight had taken place. Blood smeared the floor and the walls near the doorjamb. The shower curtain lay half in the toilet, half in the tub. The mirror over the sink was shattered and glass shards were everywhere. Jerking what looked like a clean hand towel off the towel bar, he soaked it in cold water, wrung it out one-handed, then carefully, so as not to hurt her any worse, laid it over her breast.
She shuddered as the cloth met her poor mangled flesh.
“Hang on,” he murmured, stepping through the glass and back into the bedroom. The scene in the bathroom explained Devereaux’s bloodied feet. “You fought those guys, didn’t you?”
Her head bumped under his chin. “Y-yeah. I-I wasn’t going easy,” she said, shivering so much she could barely speak.
It took a second to dial 9-1-1, give them his location, tell dispatch he needed an ambulance and to step on it. Just then Bagani’s vehicle started up. The asshat was getting away and none of this was fair, but Seth had hold of what he treasured most. Let Alex have Bagani. He was welcome to the bastard.
Next, Seth called his boss, thankful this day was almost over. “I’ve got her,” he breathed into the satphone, even as he nuzzled the top of Devereaux’s damp head while she clung to him, weeping and hurt and so damned sad that Seth could’ve cried with her.
“How is she?” Alex asked, his voice soft with uncharacteristic tenderness.
Seth (In the Company of Snipers Book 17) Page 29
