I put on my sirens and whipped around the corner, flying through the alley and hitting the same side street. But, by the time I arrived, the black car was gone. There were similar makes and colors all over the place, making it even harder for me to distinguish which one I was after.
Common sense told me there was no way Rocco would be able to get very far with the traffic in Chicago, but it seemed to me that the guy had just vanished. It didn’t make any sense. But he was simply gone.
I was driving around for nearly an hour before heading back to the station. The captain was far from happy with my decision to rush after the mobster alone, but I didn’t even care about his lecture. Sky was gone, and we had no way of knowing where she was.
Now, two days later, I was out looking for her again. They had recovered the wire and listened to the recording of what had really happened. It was a lot clearer that way, and I was horrified that he had tried to force her into giving him a favor.
It was the first time he had ever done such a thing, I was sure of it. Sky had told me more than once he never had before, so there wasn’t a reason in hell for us to think that he would now. But clearly, he had. He had asked her for the one thing that would have gotten her caught.
Captain Markel told me explicitly I wasn’t going to go after her alone. He was pissed that I had made the choices that I had, and he wasn’t going to let me endanger my life or Welsh’s by going after Rocco. We didn’t know how many there were with him, and we didn’t even know if she was still alive.
There were times I had to fight the tears that filed my eyes. I didn’t want to break down. I didn’t want to give up or think it possible she was gone. It seemed that way, but it was hard to accept.
I had promised her I would get her through it, and I’d let her down. There wasn’t any way we could track her, either. The only thing we could do was bargain with the man we’d taken into custody.
We’d thoroughly questioned the bouncer, and though the guy was an asshole, we released him, convinced he wasn’t part of the ring. The other man, however, the man from the hall, he was straight up mob muscle. We were doing what we could to get him to talk.
He was the one man who would know where Rocco was, and if we could just convince him it was in his best interest to tell us, we’d be able to go for Sky in a heartbeat.
But mobsters weren’t easy to break. They hated us as much as we hated them, and there wasn’t much we could do. Intimidation sure as hell didn’t work. They were more afraid of what the other mobsters would do to them if they talked than they were of what we’d do to them.
Hell, if I was allowed to do what I wanted to get that man to talk to me, he would have been singing hours ago. But no, that’s not how it worked. I had to sit through the process and hope to God he would rather not spend his life in prison. But it didn’t seem like that was going to get us anywhere.
I was off duty now. Driving around in my personal time and still looking. Captain Markel could tell me what to do when I was on the clock, but he didn’t have any control over my free time. At least, that’s how I looked at things. He might disagree, telling me that I had to honor the code no matter what time of day or day of the week it was, but the love of my life was on the line, and I wasn’t going to honor some code that required I sacrifice her because of it.
My cell phone rang, and I glance down. Welsh was the last person I wanted to talk to. He had been right there through all of it, but he was becoming annoying. I didn’t want more consolation or encouragement that we’d find her. I wanted her found.
I ignored the call at first, but he immediately called me back. When this happened a third time, I picked up the phone, ready to bite his head off.
“Look, Welsh!” I snapped.
“I know where she is!” he interrupted.
“What?” I said. “How? Where?”
“I’ve been working on this thug all afternoon. Finally, I convinced Cap to let me offer him immunity in exchange for telling us where she is, and that’s what I did. It took a while, but he gave me an address. It’s a warehouse on the North side of town. Northeast. He said that Rocco takes all his victims there,” Welsh said.
“Oh, my God!” I felt relief and anger run through me all at the same time. “Give me the address.”
“You can’t go there on your own,” Welsh tried, but I interrupted him.
“Give me the fucking address, now!” I snapped.
“You’re going to be outnumbered,” he warned, but he read off the address anyway. I punched it into my GPS and thanked him.
“I owe you one for this,” I said.
“You should wait for back –”
I hung up before he had the chance to finish his sentence and sped off. I wished I was in a cruiser and had lights to put on, but then, I’d be able to get there subtly this way. Sneak up on the bastard, take him by surprise.
My gun was in the dash, and I had adrenaline pumping through my veins.
Hang on, sweetheart. I’m coming for you. And God help the bastard when I get there.
22
Sky
I shivered in the closet, holding my knees close to my body. I wasn’t sure what time it was, or what day it was. The place was completely dark, and it was both cold and damp. My voice was hoarse from screaming, and I was freezing despite the fact I was wearing the hoodie.
It was hard for me to fathom what had happened. We’d been so sure the plan would work. Instead, I didn’t even know where I was, and I was scared half to death. All I knew was that Rocco had opened that door twice since he had shoved me in the cramped closet, and that was only to give me the shittiest food I’d ever put in my mouth.
I wouldn’t have eaten it. I was sure it was either wet dog or cat food. But I was hungry enough that I shoveled it in my mouth every time he opened the door. It felt like I had been in there for days. It could have been weeks. Maybe just hours. I lost all sense of time, and every second I couldn’t decide if death would be better.
I couldn’t help but replay over and over in my mind how it had happened to me. Not just what had happened in the room with the wire, but how he had gotten me there. I felt like I was living in a dreamworld; one that only existed in the movies.
Rocco had tied a blindfold over my eyes after duct taping my mouth closed and my hands behind my back. He still had the gun trained on me, and I knew he meant what he said when he told me he’d killed people.
After he put the blindfold on me, he walked me through the hall and back outside. He said something to the man who was standing guard, but once again, he spoke Italian. I was surprised that I never knew he spoke Italian before. He sounded so fluent.
Then again, I had a feeling there was a lot I didn’t know about Rocco. There was a ruckus coming from the other room, and I prayed to God it was the police coming to save me. I did my best to scream and fight him off, but with my hands behind my back, being unable to see what was going on, and the tape over my mouth, there wasn’t a chance in hell anyone would be able to hear me.
He kept pushing me out the door and into the alley, then toward what I assumed was his car. The hard point of the pistol was in my back the entire way, and he was muttering something I didn’t understand. I tried to drag my feet. I tried to fall down.
I was doing everything I could to slow him, but he hit me on the back of the head with the pistol, stunning me. I didn’t get knocked out, not entirely, but he did hit me hard enough that I was disoriented. I couldn’t fight him much, and he wasn’t bothering to be careful with my arms.
At one point, he yanked it so hard, I felt it was going to come right out of its socket. I knew I wasn’t going to stand a chance with a broken bone, so I stopped fighting quite so hard. I had to do what I could to stay on top of things. I had to be ready for whatever might happen next.
He shoved me into the back seat of a vehicle. Again, I tried to fight him, but he shoved my feet in and closed the door. It was hard for me to even reach a sitting position, let alone fight to f
ind the handle before he got in the front seat and turned on the damn thing.
We were moving in an instant. He was reckless, but still careful enough there wasn’t any reason for him to be pulled over by cops who weren’t in the area. I wished I’d managed to get his license plate number at some point. If I had that, I would have been able to give it to Jack.
Now, I could just hope that the description of the black car would be enough for him to track us down. Then again, with him back in the club and that man in the hall, I wasn’t even sure if he’d be able to get out of there. They all had guns, and I was sure they wouldn’t care if a shootout took place, even with the other girls and the customers in the lobby.
The ride seemed to take an awfully long time. I wasn’t sure how fast we were going, but I tried to keep track of how many turns he too. It was hard to know how far it was with each turn, but I made a mental note of going left, right, right, then left.
After several turns, I lost count.
All you can do now is stay alive and hope to God Jack is able to get to you before something else happens.
I wasn’t sure where he was taking me, or what he planned on doing when we got there. I just knew that I had to be obliging enough to keep him from killing me, but difficult enough I could stay wherever we were going for as long as I could. I didn’t want to be taken out of the state, and with Rocco, I knew anything was possible.
After what felt like an eternity, the car pulled onto gravel. I tried to count how long we were driving on the bumps when he suddenly pulled to the side and turned off the car.
Okay, that was less than a minute. You must be in a parking lot of some kind. Oh God! Either that or he’s taken you to a gravel pit and he’s going to shoot you and dump your body!
Panic started to take over. My heart raced and my mind was spinning when I told myself to take a deep breath. Difficult as it was through my nose, I knew I had to keep my wits about me. I had to get out of this, and panic was just going to make it worse.
No, he said that shooting you would be too good for you. Whatever he’s going to do, he’s not going to shoot you. So what then? Torture? Does he have the time to bring you all the way out to God knows where to torture you?
Rocco got out of the car and was gone for a few minutes, giving me time to feel around. I fought with the tape on my hands, trying to get them free so I could get to the door. I cursed the person who invented duct tape. Rocco soon returned and opened the passenger door. I tried kicking at him, but he wasn’t taking any of it.
“Do you want me to hit you with this again? We’re out in the middle of nowhere. I could do some real damage now and no one would be there to see,” he warned. I stopped fighting. I didn’t want to go with him, but he was right. If we really were in the middle of nowhere, then he did have the upper hand entirely.
The only hope I had was if someone were to see us. And knowing how sadistic and calculated Rocco was, I had a feeling he wouldn’t have taken me anywhere where we’d be found.
He put his hand on my upper arm, dragging me along with him. I knew it was pointless to try to drag my feet now. I couldn’t hear the sound of the city anymore. He must have driven us out of town. But he had taken so many turns along the way, I wasn’t even sure what direction we’d been heading.
I walked alongside him, glad I was unable to speak. He said nothing, either, and we suddenly stopped short. He opened a door that screeched, leaving a loud echo in its wake.
So, he’s brought me to an abandoned warehouse? How cliché.
I really was living in a movie. He walked me into the warehouse, his shoes clicking on the floor and mine leaving a dull slap. I wore flip flops to work, changing into the ridiculous high heels when I got there. I couldn’t tell if there was much in the room, or even how big it was.
All I knew was that there was a lot of echo, and it smelled of oil.
He stopped once more, and once again I heard the sound of a door squealing on its hinges. Then, he yanked the blindfold off my eyes, pulled the duct tape off my mouth, then whirled me around and freed my hands.
“Scream all you want, or don’t. It makes no difference,” he said. I wanted to ask what he was going to do, but he didn’t give me the chance. With another rough shove, I was in the dark closet. I heard the latch slide through the door on the outside, and the room went completely black.
I felt around, screaming for help and trying to find some way out. The only thing I managed to find was a nail sticking out of the wall. It jabbed my hand, and I was sure I’d get tetanus from it. I screamed and shouted, banging on the door and pleading with him.
But there was nothing. My voice felt loud in this closet, but I was sure it was next to nothing on the outside. I didn’t know what he had planned, but I was starting to wonder if he was just going to leave me there forever. Maybe he was going to let me slowly starve to death.
Maybe he was just feeding me a little bit every few days to prolong the suffering. The water he gave me smelled terrible and tasted even worse, and the food was bad enough. Should I just give up and refuse to eat or drink? That would put me back in control.
No. Jack is out there, and you know he’s going to do anything it takes to find you. He’s not giving up, and neither should you. He promised, and you know he’s going to make good on that.
I had to remind myself often, but I believed Jack was out there, and he was going to find me. He was on his way, I was sure of it. As shitty as it was, I gave myself hope telling myself he was going to be the one to open that door next, taking me in his arms and carrying me back home.
Rocco would be gone, and it would be just the two of us forever.
It was such a nice dream, it gave me the strength to keep going. For once in my life, I refused to let the negative take over. He wouldn’t give up or move on until he found me. Dead or alive, I was sure of it. Jack was out there, and that was all the hope I needed.
23
Jack
Adrenaline continued to pump through my veins as I flew through the streets. I’d honk my horn at pedestrians and others on the road, not caring that they flipped me off or yelled obscenities at me. I had to get to Sky as soon as possible. If that thug back at the jail wasn’t lying, I’d be tempted to buy him a beer after this.
All I could think about was taking her in my arms. I knew Rocco wasn’t going to give her up without a fight, but I didn’t care. I’d fight him right to the death if I had to. I would win, and I’d get her out of there, wherever ‘there’ happened to be.
Finally, I pulled out of the city and onto the freeway, driving along the route the GPS had put me on. I hoped I was going to the right place. I damn well better be. On the other hand, if the muscle had lied and sent me on a wild goose chase, there wasn’t a force in hell that would be able to stop me from killing him with my bare hands.
Welsh had tried to call me back a couple times, but I was too keyed up to talk to him. It wasn’t that I didn’t care what he had to say, it was that I already knew. He was going to warn me again about going alone. He was probably going to tell me that there were reinforcements on the way.
Either way, it was all the same to me. I was going to get to that warehouse, and I was going to save my girl. I didn’t even care if it cost me my job. Saving Sky and taking her home would be worth it. As long as she was out of there and okay, I would be happy.
I pulled off the road into a gravel parking lot. A large warehouse was standing on the far side, and the same black car from the other day was parked near the door. There was a second SUV I didn’t recognize. It was white and looked to be brand new.
The windows were tinted, and there was something about it that gave me chills. I didn’t want to think about what kind of things had taken place in the back of that car. Or the things that that SUV had hauled. I was sure there was some kind of business going on inside that warehouse, and I was going to put an end to it right the fuck now. Of course, I knew it was the worst idea on the planet to go in there alone. Any offi
cer should wait for backup before rushing into a situation like that.
But then, if anyone else knew that their loved one was behind that door, and God only knew what was going on, they would do the same thing. I knew that without a doubt. I wasn’t going to be the one to hold back, even if it was risky.
“There you are, you prick,” I muttered. I slowed my pace. I couldn’t get too close without the sound of a vehicle pulling up filling the air. I slowly pulled into the far end of the lot, closest to the road. No doubt when the rest of my team showed up they would be blaring their sirens, and that was fine with me. By then, I’d have Sky with me.
“I’m coming, baby,” I said. I grabbed my gun and held it, ready to shoot at any moment. I was never a trigger-happy officer. I was sure of my target.
But feeling as I was right then, I knew I would be happy to shoot without much provocation. It was a volatile situation, and there was a hostage in there. I had to make sure she was safe first and foremost, and if that meant I had to shoot it out with those assholes, then so be it.
I walked as silently as I could on the gravel right up to the warehouse, searching for a way to look inside. I didn’t want to risk the door. Not right away, anyway. I had to make sure I had the upper hand before I went in there and got myself, or Sky, killed.
The window on the side of the warehouse had a large hole in the bottom pane. Perfect for what I needed. I stayed low, avoiding being in either of the windows leading up to that one. Then, I slowly eased myself up to listen in on any conversations that were taking place on the inside.
I knew this put my back to the door, but I didn’t mind taking the risk. If I could see what was going on inside the building, then I’d know if someone was going to leave.
I carefully peered around the edge of the pane, looking inside. The sun was in front of me, giving me the advantage. I wouldn’t cast any shadows.
Men in Charge: A Contemporary Romance Box Set Page 71
