Stakeout

by Karen Raines

  “Not by my hand of course.” He offers a slimy grin and takes Nadia’s hand in his. “We are of course grateful for everything you’ve done here. But I think it’s time we handed things over to the proper authorities.”

  He glances at his watch and smiles when we hear a vehicle approaching. The van with the young women inside comes hurtling around the corner and stops mere inches from where we’re huddled. The door slings open and a figure dressed in black emerges. He removes his gloves and swaggers over to the Mayor, shucking his balaclava as he gets closer. Gomez grins… and Sydney sees red.

  “You sick son of a bitch,” Sydney spits, launching herself at the man before I manage to snag her around the waist.

  “It’s not worth it,” I whisper in her ear, ignoring the anger I can feel coming down the line from Cross.

  “Ah yes, I believe he owes you an apology,” Stephenson laughs, patting the would-be rapist on the back. “It would seem Gomez took his acting skills a little too far. I assure you, he wouldn’t have hurt the girl.”

  One look at the bastard’s face as he leers openly at Syd shows the lies for what they are. Gomez would have happily taken that woman against her will and I don’t, can’t think about what would have happened to Syd if we hadn’t gotten to her when we did.

  “You can’t honestly think you’re gonna get away with double homicide?”

  Stephenson gives a shrug and hands the revolver over to Gomez. “My dear boy, I don’t know what you mean!”

  He turns his back and just as I think it’s now or never, my knees are swiped out from under me. A trio of blacked out guards tackle us to the ground and we never even saw the bastards coming. I grit my teeth as they roughly yank the girls arms behind their backs, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. I’m shoved over onto my stomach, my hands getting the same treatment as Nadia giggles like a simpleton.

  “Get your fucking hands off me,” Bri warns as she kicks out at an approaching Gomez. I watch, helpless to do anything as the gun is forced into her hands, sealing her fate. Her eyes widen as she locks them with my own. We’re being framed.

  “Your turn lover boy,” the Mayor’s whore of a wife croons as she drops onto my back, straddling the tops of my thighs and making a show of feeling me up.

  “Enjoy it while you can bitch,” I mutter darkly. I daren’t look at Bri, I can practically feel the anger pulsating from her.

  She presses the gun into my hand, her nails digging into my skin as she squeezes my fingers around the trigger, just long enough to frame me as the suspect. I have to hand it to the duo, they’d thought this through.

  The Mayor starts to leave once his wife returns to his side, then stops. He snaps his fingers, shaking his head with a chuckle.

  “How silly of me, I almost forgot,” he says, pointing a finger at Gomez.

  The man grins evilly and lifts a walkie-talkie to his lips. “Take out the trash boys.”

  Loud bangs and shouts echo over the feed in our ears, the sounds of chaos deafening. Marcus and Cross are yelling, telling the girls to get down. A woman screams. Another shouts ‘No’… and then, nothing.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Briella

  They’re fine. They’re okay.

  I keep chanting this over and over in my head praying for it to be true. We haven’t heard back from our guys since the gun shots went off and looking at Colby I know he’s just as worried as I am.

  “I’m gonna kill you.” I growl causing the Mayor to laugh.

  He may think I’m kidding but nothing could be more truthful. Someday I’ll get him for all of this and he won’t know when to expect it. If he hurt one hair on any of their heads… I can’t think like that. Fuck!

  An expensive looking white SUV pulls up to the dock as Gomez starts unloading the women and walking them to the boat. This seems too simple. Something else has to be coming.

  “You will forget my name after this if you want to live your life… behind bars of course. I have friends everywhere, remember that Briella.”

  I glare at him as he grabs the filthy whores hand and walks her to their getaway car. As they pass Gomez, she exchanges the murder weapon careful not to move the fabric to get her own prints mingled with Colby’s. His guards follow, jumping into the large van that brought us here and following as the Mayor speeds away, leaving us bound and framed on the doc. I try wiggling my hands to break free of the ties but all I manage to do is cut my wrists pretty badly. I’m starting to tremble as the outcome of this situation becomes grim… but then I remember my knife.

  I look and see Gomez disappear onto the boat with another woman from the van. The Mayor is so sure of his master plan, leaving here with only Gomez to watch over us. That was his first mistake.

  “Colby,” I whisper. “I have a knife attached to my thigh they didn’t check for. I’m gonna try and get it out to free your ties.”

  Determination and hope lights his eyes when they lock onto mine. “Syd, try to move in front of us so you can cover our hands and give us warning when they’re coming.” Colby directs her as I try to grab my knife. My shoulders ache from the odd angle, but that’s something I can deal with later. I can see a fucking chiropractor when I’m not dead.

  I groan through the pain as I finally get my hands on the base and pull it from the holster. “Turn around.” I Instruct Colby.

  We’re back to back and I gently guide the knife between his zip ties, trying not to cut him in the process. We don’t need any more negativity on the already over piling plate of shit we’re dealing with.

  “He’s coming.” Syd whispers and we turn to resume the positions we were in moments earlier. Gomez laughs as he walks by us carrying Colm’s lifeless body over his shoulder. I wish I could wipe that smug smile from his face.

  “Say goodbye to your dad.” He laughs as if he said the funniest joke in the world. What a sicko.

  When he disappears in the boat again we turn and get back to work.

  It takes Gomez three more trips to the boat to finally get Colby’s hands free. When he grabs the knife from my hands we hear sirens wailing in the background.

  “Shit, we have to get out of here.” Colby sounds anxious as he tries to turn me around.

  “No, untie your feet. You need to run.” I try to convince him.

  “What, no way. Turn the fuck around.” He roughly grabs my shoulder but I don’t budge.

  “She’s right. Colby get the hell out of here and go check on the guys. There’s no time and if the three of us get arrested who the fuck will help them? GO!”

  He looks at me with pain written all over his face when he finally frees his feet.

  Tears form in my eyes at the thought of possibly never seeing him again. “Be careful.” I whisper.

  “Always. I’ll come for you.” I nod my head knowing he can’t make that promise. He dips down and gives me a quick peck on the lips before disappearing into the night.

  “Showtime freaks... What the fuck?” Gomez looks around in anger. He walks to me and Syd and shoves us face first in the dirt. “He’s a dead man.” He growls.

  “Don’t you fucking touch him!”

  Gomez grabs a fistful of hair and pulls me towards his hulking form. I’m helpless as his fingers tug painfully on the roots causing me to yelp from the pain. “Damn, I wish we had more time so I could show you what a real man’s like.” He licks the side of my face before dropping me back to the ground. “Have fun in prison.” His laugh takes on a crazy air before he grips a knife from the waistband of his pants and crouches before me. For a second I’m terrified I’ll be leaving this scene in a body bag… until he starts cutting the restraints on my hands. He shoves me roughly to the ground making my mouth slam into the dirt. I lift my head sputtering the grit and debris from my mouth and look over to see Gomez dropping the murder weapon with our prints on it next to Calvin’s body. Then he gets into his getaway car.

  He never untied Syd.

  “Fuck, what are we going to do Bri?” Syd asks.<
br />
  “Pray Colby can find what he needs to help us.” I look around trying to figure out how I’m going cut the rest of our restraints. I notice my knife off to the side tucked away. Colby must have left it just in case… I could kill him. He ran to the aid of our team with no form of self-defense.

  She nods her head as the first of the police vehicles comes to a halt behind us.

  “If something happens to Cross… the last time I was with him I said…”

  “Don’t think about it. You can make it right when we see him again.” After grabbing the knife, I can’t seem to make my hands work fast enough as we hear heavy feet pounding against the gravel getting closer. I get the last knot untied when we realize it’s too late.

  “FREEZE… DON’T MOVE!”

  I look one last time at Syd, unable to wrap my mind around how we got here. We’re the best of the best. Anyone who needs our line of work knows to go with one of our companies. They come to us because they know our reputation precedes us. How dare the Mayor use my family against me to frame us. How dare he tarnish the name we’ve worked so hard for by playing us this entire time.

  When I meet up with him again, and make no qualms about it, we’ll meet up again, I’m going to annihilate him.

  The police pull us to our feet and we let them escort us to the police cruiser. It’d be stupid on our part to fight them.

  “Really, you think you can go around murdering people on my island and get away with it?” A detective is the first to talk to us throughout the whole ordeal.

  “We didn’t do anything and we’re not talking until we have a lawyer.” Sydney states.

  “If you want to play that game… fine by me. We’ll talk at the station.”

  “Jones…” One of the cops comes over to talk to the detective. “Only one alive.”

  I can’t help but gasp. What the actual fuck? Only one alive, did Gomez really kill all of them? I search for the nearest officer and inquire about the women needing to know without a doubt whether they were all dead. Those women were sisters, mothers, wives… FUCK!

  “What women?” The officer looks at me like I’m crazy but I got the answer I needed. The only question left is where did they go after Gomez took them on the boat? I look over towards the boat willing it to be a lie when a man comes down the dock covered in a blanket escorted by an officer. They make their way towards us and I can’t help but watch their every move. Before he gets to us, me and Syd are roughly thrown into the back of a cruiser.

  “He’s the only witness.” The officer states and I can finally get a good look at the man. It’s weird because I don’t remember any men being on that van other than Colby. I wonder if he was already in the boat before it was loaded.

  The cops are talking amongst themselves when the man looks at me and I gasp. The resemblance is uncanny… it’s like looking into a mirror.

  “Fuck.” Syd whispers next to me clearly on my level of thinking.

  He leans against the car feigning exhaustion, but his mouths right next to the open window.

  “I’ll get you out… sis.”

  I know now to trust no one. I’ve made that mistake and I don’t plan on repeating it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Colby

  My feet are pounding the dirt and for the first time I feel grateful to Cross for all his insisting we be in top physical condition. I will never balk at a 6am Sunday morning Krav Maga class again.

  That’s if he’s even alive…

  I growl into the night and push my body faster. I refuse to believe we won’t get out of here, all of us, in one piece. How the fuck had it all gone to shit so badly? I can’t stop to take it all in but one thing I know for sure. Some fucker will pay.

  My pace slows as I near the cabin. I can faintly make out the sounds of sobbing but it’s so muted, I can’t tell who it is. I duck down in the undergrowth as a man armed with a semi-automatic does a sweep around the hut. Shit, this isn’t good. How am I supposed to get near?

  Tires pound the path and I scramble back further to keep myself out of view. A blacked-out van pulls up and out jumps Gomez, looking like the smug bastard he is. The guards rush to him and he preens under the attention. I use the moment to sneak up so I can hear what is happening without being detected.

  “All has gone to plan boys, and I got to have a little sample of those ripe PI bitches,” he laughs, slapping one of the men on the back.

  I hold myself in check, knowing there hadn’t been time for anything like that to happen but someone inside the cabin obviously didn’t get the memo.

  “Son of a fucking bitch, I’ll kill you, you hear me? You’re fucking dead!”

  Cross was alive. It would be music to my ears if he hadn’t angered the hell out of the two guards and the idiot. Gomez shakes his head and begins to walk towards the cabin, and away from me. Shit, I need to get closer.

  “I thought you got rid of the men? He doesn’t sound dead to me.”

  “We thought he was, neither of them moved after we put holes in the bodies.”

  “Save your bullets, we have another problem,” Gomez instructs, peeking through the doorway and licking his lips. “The girls are unharmed?”

  One of the knuckleheads stands to attention and I roll my eyes. “Just as you commanded Sir.”

  Satisfied, Gomez tells the men to sweep the area. They’re looking for me. This is just the chance I was waiting for. One of them comes straight for me, so I settle back as far as I can, trying to blend into the night. The other guard disappears around the back of the cabana while Gomez walks inside. That worries me more than anything, I need to get to my guys.

  I hang back, just waiting for the guard to turn his back to me before I pounce. As much as I would like to stab the bastard, one murder charge was enough for one night, so I lock his head in a choke hold and hold on for dear life until he passes out. It takes a lot longer than I expect but finally his flailing body loses steam. I drag his unconscious form over to a thicket and hide him from view while I wait for his friend to join him.

  It doesn’t take long. Brains are obviously not at the top of the list of qualifications for this job, I think to myself as I manage to dispose of douchebag number two in exactly the same way. I’m a little disappointed. I get over that when I load up with their guns and sprint for the cabin door.

  I don’t know what to expect when I enter the hut… but Sky and Chantel hogtying Gomez wasn’t it.

  “Are you meant to be cavalry? You’re kinda late,” Sky sniffs.

  She jumps off Gomez and delivers a swift kick to his ribs on her way. “That’s for Syd, you sick piece of shit.”

  A growl catches my attention and then horror kicks in as I take in the scene. Cross is sat up against the cabin wall, blood covering his clothes and a hand clutching at his thigh. He has a sticky sheen over his face and his normally dark complexion looks pale. I run over and drop to my knees. “Fuck man, you need an ambulance.”

  “On it,” Chantel calls from somewhere behind me.

  Shaking my head, I glance over his sorry state. “Jesus Cross, okay you win. I won’t put you in the field again.”

  He chuckles quietly and gives a small nod. “And I want a raise motherfucker.”

  “Don’t go crazy now,” I joke, the relief pouring out of me. “It’s good to see you man.”

  “Where’s Bri and Syd?”

  “I had to…”

  “Come on Marcus, stay with me,” Skylar yells, breaking into my sentence. I glance around and see her huddled over a broken body near the bed and my heart begins to pound in my chest.

  The closer I get, the more incensed I become. If he’s dead… if he is fucking dead… I glare at Gomez and he visibly pales under the weight of the accusation and promise of retribution my eyes hold.

  “He’s fine, just a shoulder wound but I expect he has one hell of a concussion. He hit his head pretty hard when we went down and now we can’t keep him awake,” Chantel informs me as she walks around the room, tapp
ing her earpiece and turning a dial on a walkie-talkie that looks like it’s on steroids.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “This is our way out of this nightmare,” she mumbles, her face the picture of concentration. Cross pipes up with a series of technical jargon that may as well be Swahili, so I leave them to it and see to Marcus.

  “What happened here?”

  “They caught us unaware, all our equipment went down intermittently.” Chantel grits out.

  I scrunch my nose up and share a look with Cross. “How is that even possible?”

  “No fucking clue Maitland,” she sighs. “It was like someone knew where all our feeds were and were just playing with us.”

  I don’t like that thought one little bit, but it was all just a little too convenient. The way the lines reopened so they could find me… the way the boys managed to get back to the cabin and the girls… I feel like we’re all puppets, and someone is pulling our strings but who? The only player left is the Mayor, and something tells me he isn’t the only shark in the water.

  “Bri and Syd are fine, but they’ve been arrested,” Chantel calls out. She hurries over to us and shows us the text that had just come through on her super-duper walkie-talkie thing.

  “Fuck! What the hell are we supposed to do now?”

  “Well,” Chantel sighs, getting to her feet and stopping next to Gomez in the middle of the room. “I can promise you that help is on the way, but we need to remember something first.”

  Jesus, this woman is talking in riddles. “And what the hell is that?”

  The door slams inwards as floods of uniformed Feds come charging into the room, guns drawn and yelling at us to get down. Those of us that could, put their hands in the air and as I hit the deck and lock eyes with Chantel, she shrugs and mouths...

  “We have the right to remain silent.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Briella