Redemption Key (A Dani Britton Thriller)

by S. G. Redling

  “Tell me where she is!”

  “How?” Oren asked. “I didn’t put a fucking bell on her. She comes and goes as she pleases. You’re the one who’s so tight with her. Aren’t you the one pulling her strings?”

  Bermingham stared at him for several beats before lowering his gun.

  “This is bullshit. Ned, keep an eye on these two. If either of them moves, shoot them. If anything moves, shoot it. If this deal turns to shit . . .”

  4:22pm, 107° F

  Dani stood over Joaquin’s bloody body. He labored to breathe, red bubbles popping on his nose and mouth. The cleat weighed a thousand pounds in her hand. She didn’t need to kill him. She needed to get out of there, to find a phone, to get someone who could get those kids off that boat. But Joaquin Wheeler still breathed and that meant he could still be a danger.

  And she wanted to kill him.

  She had to get to Choo-Choo, find some way to get him out of there too. If Bermingham realized the law was on its way, he’d kill everyone. He’d kill Mr. Randolph. She didn’t want to care about that but she did. The people she needed to worry about were herself, those kids, and Choo-Choo. Everyone else would have to take care of themselves.

  But the cleat felt so heavy in her hands.

  It felt so good smashing into Joaquin’s skin.

  “Put it down.”

  Bermingham stepped through the gap in the shrubbery, his gun trained on her. Dani knew the Canadian was far too savvy to fall for any adolescent seduction scene, especially now, standing over a bloody Wheeler. He kept the gun on her as he crouched, feeling for Joaquin’s pulse. “Shit,” he muttered, moving his fingers through the mess. “Shit.”

  “Dani, I swear to God . . .” He straightened and grabbed her by the arm, squeezing it until she had to drop the cleat. “If you have fucked this deal, I swear to God, Dani, I will blow a hole in you big enough to drive through.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You have no idea what you’re screwing with, what you’re risking.”

  “Fuck you.” She let him jerk her forward. “You fucking pedophile. You filthy panty raider. Get your rocks off on little boys’ tighty-whities. Is that it?”

  “Shut your mouth,” he hissed in her ear, but Dani wouldn’t keep it down.

  “You like ’em small, Bermie? Huh? Can’t push ’em around when they’re grown up, right?”

  She didn’t know what she said, she just knew it felt right to scream. It felt righteous. She barked at him, laughed at him. When he slapped her face, she spit blood on his shirt. When he jerked her forward she tilted her head back and screamed.

  “Tucker Bermingham buys little boys to fuck!”

  When he put his hand over her mouth, dragging her, she bit his fingers hard enough to break the skin until finally, when he slammed her head against the deck post of Jinky’s, she slid into blackness, crumpling onto the gravel.

  4:36pm, 107° F

  Oren heard footsteps coming up the stairs to the deck. The blond came through first, propelled by a kick from Bermingham. Oren couldn’t tell who looked angrier, the kid or the Canadian, and he didn’t care. All he could focus on was the limp body of Dani draped over Bermingham’s shoulder, blood dripping from her forehead. Ned hopped to attention, grabbing the blond and holding him at gunpoint. Bermingham lowered Dani to the floor. Oren didn’t miss the way he cradled her head.

  “Get Juan on the phone.” Bermingham yanked the screwdriver from around Dani’s neck, tossing it several feet away. “I don’t know who she’s working for. I don’t know what’s going on, but Joaquin is dead. If she’s fucked us, if Vincente sent her to fuck us, she’s going to regret drawing her next breath. Get him on the phone.”

  “I’ve been trying,” Ned said. “While you were gone. No answer.”

  “Shit!” Bermingham grabbed the blond. Although tall, the kid had none of the Canadian’s bulk. He also didn’t have a gun and so didn’t resist when Bermingham pressed the weapon underneath his jaw. “Who do you work for?”

  “Casper van Dosen.”

  “Who?”

  Oren shook his head. Did this kid have a death wish?

  “Casper van Dosen. I was supposed to start tonight on the sunset cruise.” He rolled his eyes toward the deck. “I suspect I’ve missed my launch. No chance you’re hiring, eh?”

  “Shit!” Bermingham threw the kid toward the bar where Oren sat willing himself into invisibility. The kid stumbled, falling to one knee before straightening up and settling onto a barstool. It was an odd thing to see. The kid was graceful, the stumble out of place. It was then Oren saw what Bermingham didn’t.

  He’d kicked the screwdriver closer to Dani.

  Dani’s hand slid over the handle as Bermingham stood with his back to them all, scowling at Ned. The kid sat half-perched on the edge of the stool, his long fingers wrapped around the stool’s leg on his right side. Oren knew all the signs of a bar fight when he saw them.

  Oh shit.

  Caldwell huffed out a soft breath, a quiet protest, trying to get Oren’s attention. The agent obviously saw it too and thought it a bad idea. Oren tried to elbow the kid but he brushed off the gesture, adjusting his grip on the stool.

  Oren steadied his breathing. They were all going to get shot.

  4:27pm, 107° F

  Booker hated the water. He always had. He could swim; it wasn’t that. He hated the bottomlessness of it, the sensation of drifting with no solidity. He hated the sound of his pulse in his ears and the loud rush of breath when he broke the surface. Plus he hated getting his knives wet. Still, his dislike of the water paled in comparison to the eruption of loathing within him when Dani had told him what was on the boat.

  He saw her in his mind, wet and covered in another man’s blood. Her breast.

  The shiver that ran through him almost made him gulp water and Booker shut the thought down. There would be plenty of time to fully explore the memory later.

  He had a job to do.

  For obvious reasons Booker wasn’t a religious man or even a spiritual one, but he did have an animal’s faith in the rightness of life. He believed he was lucky, that more often than not he was in the right place at the right time for the right reasons. Take Florida, for example. He hated it. He hated wearing shorts; he hated seeing Dani being touched by another man; he hated swimming. A less optimistic man might feel that life conspired against him, throwing all those loathsome things at him at once, but not Booker. He understood the purpose of hate.

  When acknowledged and understood, there was no deadlier weapon.

  And of all the things he’d hated so far on this trip, nothing came close to how much he hated what was happening on that boat.

  Juan didn’t see him when he climbed off the ladder. Not at first. As Booker stepped around the clutter on deck to reach the wheelhouse, he saw why. Juan sat perched on the edge of the captain’s seat, his pants around his knees, talking on his phone to someone named Vincente, while his eyes roamed over a small girl standing in front of him. Booker assumed it was a girl. The dirty little shorts didn’t give much of a clue but one side of her black hair hung in a tattered pigtail.

  Juan smiled as he ended the call. He must have caught movement from the corner of his eye because he jumped to his feet, knocking the little girl down as he struggled to get his pants up. Booker held up his hands and smiled.

  “It’s okay! It’s okay! Don’t shoot.” He stepped closer and leaned against a deck chest, his arm draped over a thick coil of rope. “Dani sent me. About the kids.”

  He watched Juan scowl, thinking, and then relax. “What did she want?”

  “To give you this.”

  Juan never saw the metal hook that Booker pulled from the coil of rope.

  It didn’t take long to get him in place. Booker had been careful not to hit him in the temple. He just wanted to stun the little man, not kill him. Not yet. With both hands tied over his head on the canopy of the wheelhouse, his clothes stripped off and his filthy underwear shoved
into his mouth to silence his cries, Juan looked just about ready to be woken up.

  But first things first.

  Booker crouched down to be face-to-face with the dark-eyed girl. She didn’t look afraid. He wasn’t entirely sure she knew he was there.

  “Do you speak English?”

  She stared into his eyes and he saw her focus. She nodded.

  “Where are the others?”

  She turned to look at the trap door fastened with the open padlock. Booker nodded, removed the lock, and opened the hatch.

  He knew that smell. If it smelled less of salt water and more of dogs, it would have smelled exactly as he remembered it.

  “Come on out. Come on.”

  He helped one tiny person after another out of the hold. Some could barely walk. None spoke. Booker saw the way they clung to each other, holding each other up as they breathed in the hot, fresh air, squinting against the lowering sun. When the hold was empty, he shut the hatch. Twenty-five pairs of eyes stared at him.

  “I’m not sure how I’m going to get you off this boat. I don’t see any reason to lie to you. We’ll look for life rafts in a minute. Maybe life preservers. We’ll figure that out, okay? But first there’s this.” He looked from face to face. “When you get to shore, when the police find you and send you home, you’re going to talk to counselors and doctors and people who will tell you how to feel about this. No matter what they say though, you’re going to wake up in the middle of the night frightened, remembering what’s happened to you up to now.”

  He stood and drew the serrated blade from his waistband. “I want you to watch this. All of it. Afterwards you can tell the police or not, whatever you feel comfortable with, but watch all of this. And months from now, when you wake up frightened, reliving all they’ve done to you, you tell yourself the rest of the story. You tell it all the way to the end, okay?”

  He turned to Juan, tapping him on the cheek to wake him. Juan blinked, shaking his head, trying to focus. When he saw Booker, saw that he was naked and tied, he panicked, twisting and screaming out from behind his filthy gag. When he saw the knife, his bladder gave way.

  Booker looked over his shoulder. Twenty-five sets of eyes saw everything.

  He smiled. “Let’s get started.”

  4:40pm, 107° F

  Oren couldn’t believe they were going to try something. He had to be misunderstanding what he saw. Bermingham and Ned were armed and nervous. Dani had a screwdriver, the kid a chair. Oren knew the shotgun sat loaded and ready on the other side of the bar but from where he sat, it might as well be across the inlet. He glanced down at Caldwell, who gave him a worried look.

  The two Canadians stood at the doorway to the deck, squinting into the setting sun. Oren had stared at that scene for twenty years. At this time of day, all they were going to get was retina burn.

  Ned shook his head. “You’re right. We’ve got to call it. It’s got to be over a hundred and ten on that boat. We’ve got to get them off.”

  Choo-Choo made a cluck of disapproval. “Don’t like your boy-ass baked?”

  “Shut up,” Bermingham snapped, but the blond ignored him.

  “I’d think the heat would keep them tender, make them more malleable. Let’s not pretend you like to diddle children because you like their feisty spirits.”

  Bermingham pointed his weapon at Choo-Choo. “Shut your fucking mouth.”

  Ned pushed his arm down. “Ignore him. We don’t have time for this. They’ve got no phones. If Vincente’s waiting for a signal from them, we’re running out of time. Let’s call it.”

  Bermingham swore again and pulled out his phone with his free hand. He walked while he dialed. “Yeah, Taxi Eight-Fourteen. Abort the minnow. Repeat, abort the minnow. We have word the target is hot, twenty-five souls still aboard. Go now. Use extreme caution. The target may be hot.” He banged the phone against his forehead. “And for fuck’s sake, hurry up.”

  He shoved his phone back into his pocket. Oren heard the kid suck in a breath and saw the instant Bermingham made his mistake. Without looking he stepped just inches away from Dani’s arm, his toe brushing the edge of the screwdriver. Oren didn’t think she even opened her eyes; she moved too quickly for him to tell. All he saw was the screwdriver disappearing into the top of the Canadian’s foot hard and fast, more of the long metal vanishing from sight than should have been possible. Oren knew what that meant.

  She had nailed his foot to the barroom floor.

  He screamed and jerked but she leveraged herself on the spike to snap her legs up and out, nailing Bermingham in the crotch. Dani was nothing but legs, kicking and swinging, hitting any inch of flesh she could reach as the blond kid swung the barstool hard and heavy, knocking the bigger man off his free foot, his trapped foot causing his knee to twist at an unnatural angle. Bermingham’s gun flew, Ned shouted, and Oren surprised himself with the revival of his old “leaping behind the bar” skills. He had the shotgun up and out and aimed at Ned. The kid had Bermingham’s gun pointed the same direction.

  The whole scene had taken only seconds.

  Bermingham clutched his leg, trying to right himself. Dani grabbed the barstool from the kid, swinging the heavy oak seat like it weighed nothing. Funny, Oren thought, adrenaline making his ears ring, he’d never noticed just how toned Dani’s arms were.

  “Put down your weapons.” Ned sounded calm, looking from Oren to the kid, keeping his gun trained on the old man with the shotgun. “Neither one of you is good enough to beat me. I can take you both out with a headshot before either of you gets me in your sights. Don’t test me.”

  Oren thought he probably spoke the truth. Oh well.

  Dani hefted the stool over Bermingham’s head. “Did you know?”

  The Canadian fell back on the ground. “Did I know what?”

  “Not you. Mr. Randolph. Did you know what was on that boat?”

  It took a second for Oren to realize she was speaking to him, another second to be able to take his eyes off of Ned’s gun. “No. I still don’t know.”

  “It’s little kids. They’re selling little kids.”

  “He knew,” Bermingham said. “He’s done business with the Wheelers for years.”

  “What?! I didn’t know, Dani.” Oren could see in her eyes that she needed to decide if he was telling the truth. The idea that she could doubt him about something like that made him forget about the gun, forget about the bleeding men in front of him. “Jesus, Dani, you think I knew? You think I’d allow that? What kind of man do you think—”

  He knew the instant he made his own mistake, letting the gun drop down toward the bar.

  Ned’s bullet threw him back against the mirror, glass and liquor exploding out behind him as his head smashed against the shelves. He couldn’t understand why he could see his feet until he realized the shot had blown him back onto the cooler, seating him in a puddle of blood and rum. Then he felt the pain.

  He couldn’t hear the screaming for a while. Time got funny, everyone moving but nobody leaving their spot.

  Holy shit, it hurt.

  Dani almost dropped the stool when Ned shot Mr. Randolph. Choo-Choo flinched and as he’d promised, Ned had his weapon trained on him in no time. She heard Caldwell shouting to his friend but Mr. Randolph didn’t say anything. He just panted, clutching his bloody shoulder, staring wide-eyed at nothing.

  “Stop! Stop!” Bermingham held up his hands, screaming at Ned. He pointed to Choo-Choo. “Put your weapon down.”

  Dani saw that high color on Choo-Choo’s face. He’d told her the next time he got shot would be the last time. He obviously meant it because he didn’t turn away from Ned.

  Bermingham sat back on his elbows, his face sweaty with pain and effort. She knew that leg had to be alive with agony, the twist of his knee getting no relief with his foot nailed to the floor. But he looked at her like he controlled the room, like she was the one trapped. She wanted to kick him.

  “Don’t do this, Dani. Put the chair down. Tell y
our buddy to put down the gun.”

  “Fuck you, Bermingham. You have no idea what I can do.”

  “Is that right?” He smiled at her. “You think you’re protected? Huh? Let me tell you something. Whoever is pulling your strings, whoever’s keeping your secret, they won’t be able to help you here. If you’re the reason twenty-five stolen kids die on that boat, nobody will be able to protect you.”

  “Protect me?” She laughed. “You think someone’s protecting me?”

  “I do. I don’t know who they are but they don’t have enough juice for this. Not this.”

  Choo-Choo spit on the floor. “Oh look, Dani,” he said with a sneer. “Another big shot on the field. Another all-powerful force. Gee, I hope we don’t get in trouble for this.”

  She held her friend’s stare long enough to see he shared her rage. He was willing to go all the way with this. Ned could shoot her or he could shoot Choo-Choo but he couldn’t get them both at once. She reared back with the stool. “You’re nothing but a two-bit child-molesting thug.”

  “No, Dani, no!” Bermingham held his hands out to block the blow. “I’m with the FBI. I’m with the FBI!”

  “Bullshit!” Mr. Randolph sputtered, making Dani jump. His voice was reedy with pain. “He shot Caldwell. I saw him. He shot him.”

  “If I hadn’t, Juan would have done it for me. I grazed him, a flesh wound.” Bermingham looked from Dani to Caldwell. “You think I couldn’t have killed him? I was a foot away. It was the only way to keep him alive.”

  Caldwell pounded on the floor with his fist. “It’s true, Dani. It’s true. Bermingham . . . he told me.” He tried to sit up but failed. “He said I’d feel it on the Richter scale. My boss, my SAC, is Tomblin Richter. That’s when I knew. Dani,” his voice trembled. “Don’t.”

  Bermingham looked up at her. “I swear to you, Dani. I’m here with the FBI. Joint task force. We’ve been trying to get Vincente on human trafficking and this was it. We need the Wheelers alive to turn state’s evidence against Vincente. Without them, the case falls apart. We need the Wheelers alive. You already killed Joaquin. Don’t make this any worse.”