Two cameras in the front yard let him watch anything going on there, which was nothing at the moment. Two in the woods out back showed mostly darkness as the sun had gone down, but would switch over to night mode soon so they could watch the local raccoons walking around. Lastly, the two in the back yard let him watch the fat guy, Tommy, walk the dog around the perimeter while the captains sat on the rear patio smoking cigars.
Mikey G. stared at the monitor, watching Monte.
He didn’t particularly care for the man. He never worked for him, or with him, but knew him to be rough on his crew. He was selfish and thought with his dick and his wallet. Rosso was right, and Mikey knew it. Monte was not the man to lead the family, and if he was going to make waves, he had to be dealt with. Mikey just had to hammer out the details. It would take a couple of days, but it would be done, hopefully before the old man passed. Mikey wanted the satisfaction of his boss’s approval one last time.
The young man’s voice from behind startled Mikey out of his thoughts. “All set. Thanks, boss.”
Mikey stood up, his back to the monitors. “No problem. I’ll swing back in a few hours, OK?”
“Sounds good, sir. Thank you, again.” The young man got a concerned look as he finished speaking, and Mikey saw him looking over his shoulder at a monitor.
Mikey G. turned around to look. “What is it?”
“I don’t know, boss. I thought I saw something run by on the woods cam.”
Mikey studied it, not seeing anything. He joked at the young man’s expense, referencing an embarrassing incident from a few months back. “Probably just another opossum.”
The young man shook his head and laughed. “Those things are freaky looking. Don’t pretend you wouldn’t have lost your shit if one came running at you.”
“Well, yeah, but I would have taken out my gun and shot it, son—not screamed and ran like a little girl.” Mikey clapped him on the shoulder as he left. “I’m going to duck out back to check on Tommy and Pat. I’ll see you later. Stay sharp.”
Had Mikey G. not been blocking the view of the monitor, they might have both clearly seen Abby dart through the woods before hiding against the bottom of the stonewall.
***
Abby had been gone a couple of hours, grabbed some dinner, and made a fruitful trip to the shopping plaza before circling back and settling into the same spot about twenty feet up in the tree behind the Rosso estate just as dusk fell.
The same two guards patrolled the grounds. One circled the property with the dog while chugging his bottled water, and the other waited and watched, puffing on his cigarette. Then they would swap the dog and the other one would circle him around the perimeter. It was like clockwork. On her way back, she had driven by the front of the estate just slow enough to see that there were still two guards in front, looking bored, with no dog to keep them company.
On the left side of the patio—the family side as Abby had come to think of it—five men puffed on cigars and chatted in the dim light being cast from the open French doors. She peered through her monocular to get a better look.
Most of them looked familiar, but there was one in particular she knew: Monte. Her skin crawled just at the sight of him. He used to run with Bryce’s crew back before Abby disappeared. Abby was usually in the dark about Bryce’s dealings, but she was pretty sure Monte was his number two guy. He was essentially Bryce 2.0. All of Bryce’s worst qualities, amplified by a complete lack of awareness for consequence. She knew this all too well.
She wouldn’t be surprised if he had taken over Bryce’s crew when he disappeared. All five of them were the right age, late forties to early fifties, dressed in nice suits, and relaxing at Rosso’s estate. Abby figured it was reasonable to assume that these five men were on the inside. They must be fairly important in the family, and any one of them—if not all—could probably tell her where Bryce was. But her money was on Monte if no one else.
Abby had planned to go directly for Rosso, and intended to stick with that plan, but if the opportunity presented itself to isolate Monte, she would gladly extract the information from him.
Looking up at the center of the house, she could no longer see Rosso but assumed he was still upstairs. He wasn’t outside, or in the kitchen, and the flickering of the television in his bedroom was a giveaway.
Abby sat still, contemplating the men on the back porch. She could picture Bryce sitting there, relaxing on that very patio among those men. His men. He had been there, planning, colluding, and laughing... now roaming out there somewhere as a free man, while Eric was in the ground.
As darkness completely fell, there was only the glow of their cigars, until one by one they went inside to escape the slight fall chill in the air.
Abby felt calm. Confident. Unstoppable.
It’s time.
Abby checked down her list. The large zip ties and small roll of duct tape she purchased at the shopping center were ready to be used. She slid the roll of tape around her wrist and stuffed the zip ties into her back pocket. She then placed two small bottles of water inside the pockets of her black leather coat.
She secured the small canister of sedative to her belt. Ace said he got the idea after his fight in the airport last year trying to stop Abby from being abducted. The man following her put a powerful sedative in her coffee. Abby fortunately never drank the coffee, but the man did wind up throwing it in Ace’s face. Despite Ace’s large stature and the relatively small amount of coffee that hit him, he was incapacitated in minutes.
Ever resourceful, he had taken the idea and made it into a very effective weapon. The device operated much in the same way as an asthma inhaler. It even looked like one. The liquid sedative was under extreme pressure, and when released with the propellant, shot out and vaporized. It was so powerful that it wasn’t necessary to take it like an inhaler, though you did need to spray it directly in the victim’s face from no less than twelve inches away, and you’d better hold your breath. That was the tricky part.
If that didn’t work, her Taser was sure to do the trick. It was strapped to the other side of her belt. If that didn’t work, her .45, .22, and knife were all at the ready, though she had decided those were her absolute last resort.
Maybe the men in the compound deserved to die, and maybe some of them would, but Abby was only looking for one man to die at her hands, and he was not here. She would not become a heartless killing machine like Bryce, even if the men inside deserved it. She only intended to get her daughter back. How much force she used was up to the men inside.
Abby scurried down the tree and sprinted fifty yards through the woods to the left corner of the rear wall, quickly pressing herself against the bottom of the wall to hide. She was sure there were cameras in these woods, and just hoped that her head-to-toe black attire did enough to mask her mad dash.
On her shopping trip, she had grabbed a small package of meat, cut and prepared to make a stew or find its way onto a kabob, but she had other plans for it. Turning her head away, she gave it a couple of sprays with the sedative then tossed it over the wall. She wasn’t sure it would work, but hoped for the best.
Despite the chill in the air, a bead of sweat ran down her temple as she held her crouched position, waiting. Finally, almost exactly fifteen minutes later, she heard it: the jingle of the dog collar on the other side of the wall.
“What’s that, Maxi?” the guard asked.
The dog started barking right on the other side of the wall. Did it even see the meat? As the barking intensified, Abby began to panic a bit. Did it know she was here? Had she been found out before she even breached the wall?
As she braced to run, she heard the guard again. “Come on, Maxi. What the hell is wrong with you?”
The barking stopped, but the dog’s heavy breathing and slobbering indicated they were still there on the other side of the wall.
“What the hell are you eating? Are you eating your own shit again? Come on, that’s fuckin’ gross. Let’s go.”
Finally, Abby breathed a sigh of relief and started counting down the minutes slowly.
A few minutes later, satisfied that enough time had passed, she braced herself.
Now or never.
Abby leapt from her squatted position to grab the top of the six-foot wall with her fingertips. The toes of her boots found traction between some of the larger stones, and she hoisted herself up to the top to see the dog moving very slowly behind the guard near the patio stairs.
Being a few hundred feet away, Abby never would have heard them, save for the fact that they spoke in such loud and stereotypical Italian fashion.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” the guard said. “He was fine two minutes ago, but I had to practically drag him back here.”
The guard stood at the top of the steps, leash in hand, pulling on the dog. For his part, the dog didn’t seem to care. It lay comfortably at the bottom of the steps already fast asleep.
“Must be tired,” the other guard said. “It’s getting late, let him sleep. I’m gonna walk.”
As he descended the stairs, Abby momentarily stripped her black leather coat from her shoulders and laid it over the barbed wire to swing over it, then lowered herself to the ground, crouching behind some ancient overgrown shrubbery.
Abby waited patiently in the cramped space behind the shrubbery and was thankful for all of the time she had spent in awkward yoga positions at the rehab. Were it not for that, her uncomfortable squatted position would have been unbearable after a few moments. In this case, the burning sensation in her quads was almost a welcomed reminder of her training.
She heard his footsteps before she could see him, the soles of his feet crunching the leaves underfoot. She didn’t dare turn her head for fear he would see the movement. Abby held her station, knowing that his path would take him directly past her position.
As he walked by unaware of her presence, she silently eased from her hiding spot and hit him in the solar plexus with the Taser. There was a short yelp as he dropped to the ground and twitched for a moment. When Abby tried to roll him over, she regretted not having waited for the skinny one to come back. The big man was a challenge but by squatting low and using the strength of her legs to push, she was finally able to flip him over. She quickly bound his wrists and feet with the zip ties, and sealed his mouth with a strip of duct tape. She hadn’t been timing herself, but no more than a minute could have passed.
Sitting back in the grass, she slowed her breathing and thought a moment. That was fine for one man, but how many could she take down like that? She thought about retreating and re-evaluating, but it was too late now. With the guard hogtied in front of her, she had committed herself to getting to Rosso.
Do I run in, guns blazing? She reached for her big gun, the .45, and wrapped her fingers around the handle. A frontal assault like that was suicide. These men were trained killers. She would pick them off one by one, or a couple at a time if she had to. It was the easiest way. It would increase her chance of being detected, but it also increased her chances of surviving this fight. Having spent so much time at the range with JJ, she was a great shot.
There had to be another seven or eight men in the house. One on one, she could probably take each of them, but real fights don’t happen like they do in the movies. They weren’t going to line up and wait their turns to fight her. She would be quickly overwhelmed by large men out for blood. Out to protect Rosso and Bryce.
So let’s not allow that to happen.
She knew what she had to do, and the time was now.
Abby set out on a sprint up the left side of the property, sticking to the shadows along the large stone wall. Reaching the patio opposite the guard smoking his cigarette, she jumped up on the side of the patio in the darkness, hidden by the shrubs lining the center of the patio, and willed her breathing to get under control as she pressed her body against the house just to the left of the doors leading to the kitchen.
She quickly peered through one of the glass panes, then just as quickly backed away. There were three men in the kitchen, backs to the door. Not wasting any time, she dashed past the door toward the other side of the patio. As quiet as she tried to be, the guard must have heard her footsteps.
“Who’s there?” he asked the darkness, reaching for his gun.
Abby froze behind the shrubbery separating the two sides of the patio, waiting for him to come to her.
“Who’s there?” his voice came again, getting closer.
The sound of his loafers on the pavement grew louder as his pace picked up.
“Monte, is that you?” he asked.
As he turned the corner around the shrubbery, Abby sprayed him directly in the face with the small canister of sedative from her belt.
“What the fuck?” he was momentarily disoriented and staggered to wipe his face with his sleeve.
Abby used this to her advantage and deftly grabbed the gun from his hand and smashed the butt end down on the back of his head, sending him crumpling to the ground. The sedative gave her about an hour to work with, but Ace warned her it could take thirty seconds to a minute to take effect, and she wasn’t about to get into a fistfight when she didn’t need to.
Looking back at the French doors, she confirmed that no one inside heard the brief scuffle. At least no one was looking outside. If they had, they could not miss the incapacitated guard lying on the ground. Abby had to act quickly.
Taking the water bottles from her coat pockets, she checked to see that each still had a plastic disc attached securely to the bottom before placing one in a large shrub in the center of the patio. Then, making sure no one was watching out the doors, she sprinted across the opening again to place the other on the coffee table in the middle of the outdoor living room set.
Going back to her position pressed against the house just to the left of the French doors, she pulled her .22 from its holster and unscrewed the silencer. She wanted them to hear the gunshots. Hopefully, they would run in the other direction, seeking safety. With her left hand, Abby slid a cell phone from her pocket and typed in a three-digit code.
She took a deep breath. She was at least twenty feet from each bottle, and was fairly confident that was sufficient, but still crouched down and enveloped herself as best she could in her thigh-length leather coat.
God, I hope this works.
She hit the send button on her phone, exploding the plastic discs on the bottom of the gasoline-filled bottles.
8
SHE HAD BEEN SURPRISED the first time Ace had shown her this little trick. A gasoline explosion doesn’t have much of a shockwave, like the bigger bang of dynamite or plastic explosives, but it sure does put on one hell of a show, she had thought.
The way Ace had explained it, in slow motion you would first see the small explosive disc destroy the bottle, quickly followed by the gasoline droplets expanding into a cloud until just the right mixture of air and fuel was reached, at which point the gasoline erupts into a fireball. While survivable to anyone not right on top of the explosive, it would look very imposing to anyone who saw it. A perfect attention getter.
Of course it was not slow motion; it all happened in a split second and a bright golden flash lit up the patio and yard. The fire rose in two perfect mushroom clouds, with a loud whoosh that momentarily sucked all of the surrounding air into the erupting fireballs. Flames enveloped everything – shrubs, furniture, etc. – on the porch.
Just in case that wasn’t enough to get the attention of everyone inside, Abby started screaming at the top of her lungs.
Within seconds, the men from inside were running out of the French doors just a few feet to her left, guns drawn, searching for a target. In the shadows, dressed in black, they never saw her coming.
Abby dropped the first two with one shot each to the meaty part of their upper leg, just below their buttocks. Her small caliber gun meant neither of
her targets should suffer the same leg damage that she had. The third gunman figured out what was happening and dove to the ground, causing her to miss. The last two out the door stumbled backward and fell over each other trying to scramble into the kitchen and take cover behind the island.
“We’re under attack!” one of them screamed.
In the confusion, Abby leaped onto the one she had missed just as he was trying to stand up. In the orange glow of the firelight she saw the bewilderment in his eyes as they toppled backward onto the patio, his gun went clattering off the edge. He landed on his back, the wind knocked out of him momentarily, and as he gasped for air, she shot him in the face with a quick spray from her canister.
She turned to the other two, who were clutching their backsides in pain. As she did, the man she was on top of grabbed a handful of her hair to yank her off. He climbed to his knees but wobbled, weakened by the sedative. Abby rose with him to avoid injury to herself, knowing the man couldn’t have more than a few seconds until... wow, that was quick.
He teetered just for a moment on his knees before falling back to the ground. To her shock, he never let go of her hair, and as he tumbled to the ground unconscious he took her with him, her face smacking into the paving stones under them. She tugged her head to free herself, but the unconscious man had a fistful of her hair in a death grip and wasn’t letting go.
Neither of the two men whom she had shot was having any luck getting to their feet, but they were starting to figure out what had happened. The one just a few feet to her right raised his gun, but before he could get off a shot, Abby twisted around and kicked it from his hand, sending it flying to the other end of the patio. Managing to get to his knees, he lunged toward her. At the same time, she produced her knife from its sheath and slashed across his face, gashing his left cheek.
As he tumbled backward she continued to struggle to release her hair from the unconscious man’s grip, but it was a losing battle. It was laced through all of his fingers and his clenched fist was not coming undone, it would take forever to untangle the mess and get herself free.
Escape, Dead End Page 5
