Rain (David Wolf Book 11)

by Jeff Carson

  Tong walked to Earnshaw and stood with folded arms, studying his captor.

  Earnshaw leaned forward, grunting furiously behind the duct tape.

  “Someone kidnapped Mr. Earnshaw’s daughter ten years ago from a south-Seattle neighborhood. Not exactly kidnapped, I would say. She was, shall we say, assimilated into the sex-trade culture by the men she’d chosen to associate with.”

  Tong stepped close to Earnshaw. “Your anger is misplaced, Special Agent Earnshaw. Your daughter spent those three years of her life with the Ang Geng Tiga. The AGT was a Malaysian gang from another era. I was on the streets of Hong Kong, pleasuring white American businessmen back then, living in a filthy fishing warehouse, eating the leftover scraps and guts to survive, when I wasn’t getting beaten with a leather strap.”

  Tong’s lips quivered and peeled back into a strained smile. “I had nothing to do with that most difficult time of your life. And I would like to point out how lucky you and your wife were that you got her back.”

  Tong inhaled rhythmically, and Wolf assumed it was his version of a laugh.

  “How lucky, indeed. Sure, your wife took your daughter, left you, and went back to, where was it?”

  “Sioux City, Iowa,” the man at the computer said, revealing a high-pitched and feminine voice with good American pronunciation.

  Tong stared into Earnshaw’s eyes. “I know what it’s like to lose somebody, Special Agent Earnshaw. I had a brother. When we were children, he and I were taken by a roving army of men. We kept each other alive for years, when the desire to live only barely outweighed the desire to die. We read each other books and told each other stories of lives as masters and not as slaves.”

  Tong stepped sideways to Nackley. “And you killed him.”

  Without a flicker of emotion, Tong pulled out a gun, put it to Nackley’s head, and pulled the trigger.

  Wolf closed his eyes just as the blast smothered his hearing.

  Heat swirled against his face, then the scent of gunpowder and blood.

  Only after the moving air had settled did Wolf dare open his eyes. There was no sense in running away from the sight of death—he was surely about to join Nackley—so he looked.

  Nackley slumped toward him. The contents of his head spilled onto the plastic. The tape wrapped around his chest slowly ripped and snapped, and he lolled sideways. Then the chair tipped and his lifeless body collided with the rear leg of Wolf’s seat.

  He closed his eyes and turned away.

  “Mr. Wolf. The personal stories of each of these men are equally pathetic. They evoke little sympathy from men like us, who have been through much worse. For instance, Special Agent Staten here.”

  Tong moved in front of Staten.

  Staten grunted and jutted his chin toward Tong. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

  “Mr. Staten here, as far as I can tell, simply drinks his life away. He lost his wife to divorce. His two children moved with their mother to California, where they live happily with a different father. He has no purpose, nothing to live for, so he kills in his spare time with these men, calling it justice, I’m sure. But he is a sick, sick man.”

  Staten grunted again.

  Tong stepped forward and ripped the tape off his mouth.

  “Your brother shit his pants the second he was shot.” Staten laughed hysterically.

  Tong shot him.

  Staten lurched backward against the chair and fell onto the plastic sheet.

  Wolf turned away, and saw that the two guards had returned. Cattle Prod stared at Wolf with excitement in his eyes.

  Wolf prayed to God for the strength to live, trying to ignore the fresh scent of death permeating the room.

  “So, Mr. Wolf, now you have the entire story, all the clues.”

  Wolf stared into Tong’s black pupils. “How do you live with yourself?”

  “Very easily.” Tong put the gun into the rear of his pants, showed his empty hands, and crossed his arms. “Please, Mr. Wolf, that is not the game. Either entertain my curiosity or I will end this right now. It’s your choice.”

  “I don’t understand. You want me to tell you what happened? They came in and killed your men. That’s what happened.”

  “And how did I find them?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they used each other’s names in the audio.”

  “No. That is not it.” Tong looked deeply disappointed. His face reddened as if he were embarrassed and he pulled out his gun. “I must have been wrong. Never mind, Mr. Wolf.”

  “Special Agent Hooper got shot and killed,” Wolf said quickly, “and they had to somehow explain his death. They didn’t want to show that they were here—at the massacre in that video—so they couldn’t just leave his body here.

  “So they knocked out one of your men and took him and Special Agent Hooper to the beach. They must have taken the weapon from your man who’d shot Hooper. They propped Special Agent Hooper up, put his service gun in his hand, aimed it at your man’s heart, and pulled the trigger.

  “They dropped Hooper, a gunshot wound in his head, and your man with the heart-wound, and left them on the sand to look like they’d killed one another.”

  Wolf kept talking, watching the barrel of Tong’s gun rise.

  “The next day, the FBI had a massacre of your men downtown, the calling card of a rival gang found at the scene, and one of their own special agents found with one of your men dead on the beach—an apparent informant meeting gone wrong.

  “It would have stumped everyone on all sides for a very long time—you and the feds. It would have likely gone unsolved, or, at worst, led to a renewed resolve to take you and the rival gang down.”

  Wolf nodded at the man sitting at the computer. “But you have yourself a tech-man, which they obviously didn’t know. They had no clue there was a network of security cameras hidden in the ceiling of the place, capturing their every move.” Wolf turned to Earnshaw. “Which was moronic.” He turned back to Tong. “Anyone with half a brain, or even a quarter, would have one or two security cameras set up in such a business.”

  Tong lowered his weapon and his mouth sprung open in a smile. He looked like a child who’d just been praised for cleaning his room.

  “You must have seen the news like everyone else,” Wolf said. “You heard that an FBI special agent had been killed on the beach with one of your men. You saw the security footage here, and you suspected these men in that video were FBI.”

  Tong sat on the edge of the desk and folded his arms.

  “So you watched the FBI building in Everett. To see if you could observe anything. I’m sure your tech-man here did some research into Special Agent Hooper’s partner, and maybe he got a match on one of the men in the video. But you needed to figure out more.”

  Wolf nodded over his shoulder.

  “That witness was watching the building, too. And you saw him approach Special Agent Luke. At that point, you knew the kid was somehow special, so you took him. You interrogated him and learned all about the other men involved—namely, Special Agent Swain with his lip scar, which eventually led you to Earnshaw and Nackley. You already suspected Staten, being the dead agent’s partner.” Wolf shrugged. “What else? I don’t know what else to say.”

  Tong smiled wide and inhaled rhythmically again. “You are good, Detective Wolf.” He looked at him with something resembling admiration. “I could have used a good man like you in my army.”

  “Good men don’t join forces with men like you.”

  Tong’s face dropped. “Right, yes. Good men, like Special Agent Earnshaw here and his partners. They even tried to kill your friend back there. She came running to you and …” He spread his arms. “And here you both are now, tangled in their web of fate.”

  Tong walked to Earnshaw and pulled the tape from his mouth. “What do you have to say to Detective Wolf about your actions?”

  Earnshaw looked at Wolf and a single tear streamed down his cheek. “I’m sorry.”

  “What was that?” T
ong asked. “You’re sorry? For what? Not being competent enough to finish the job of killing two of your own special agents—whom you’ve sworn to protect—without being caught?”

  “We weren’t supposed to hurt anyone but these assholes.”

  Tong walked back to Wolf. “Did you hear that, Detective? You two were not supposed to be hurt.” He stepped back to Earnshaw. “And shooting Special Agent Swain in the face was a mistake? Were you going to make it seem like Special Agent Swain had killed Special Agent Luke?”

  Earnshaw turned to the front of the room and dropped his head.

  Tong looked at Wolf. “I would not accept his apology if I were you.”

  Wolf said nothing.

  “What shall I do? Shall I allow you to shoot him?” Tong asked.

  Wolf nodded. “Yes. Give me the gun and I’ll shoot him.”

  Tong smiled and laughed again. “No. I think it’s all over. It’s time to kill you two and get on with rebuilding my business. To get on with life.”

  “You’re a monster,” Wolf said. “You should stop living the life you’re leading. You should kill yourself.”

  Tong’s nostrils flared. “Let me tell you something about life, Detective Wolf. You either take or you get taken. That is what life is. I have been taken before. I will never be again. I am a taker. My purpose in life, the only purpose worth living for, is to take what is mine.”

  Wolf stared at him through blurry eyes. “No.”

  “No?” Tong stepped toward him.

  “You love.”

  Tong snorted and his face twisted with revulsion.

  Wolf lifted his chin, waiting for a bullet to the head.

  Tong gave the man on the computer a command.

  The man clicked some keys and the pictures of Wolf, Lauren, and Ella came back up.

  Wolf’s eyes filled with tears.

  Tong pulled his gun and walked to the screen with Lauren and Ella smiling in the meadow in Wolf’s front yard. He pointed the barrel until it ticked against the glass and scraped a circle around Ella’s face.

  “You take,” he said. Then he circled Lauren’s face. “You take.”

  A tear fell down Wolf’s cheek as he closed his eyes. His heart thumped inside his ribs.

  “That woman in the other room.” Tong’s face lit up. “You take something like that.”

  Tong came close and clamped Wolf’s face between his thumb and fingers. “Love is not what keeps my business thriving, Detective Wolf. It is the desire to take. I supply the demand for taking. And the demand is higher than I can supply.”

  Wolf clenched his eyes, feeling like he was drowning in the despair coming off the man. He refused to listen, to be sucked into the dark. He leaned forward. Felt the duct tape stretch tight.

  “I will take all that you love,” Tong said. “That woman in the cage back there: mine. These two, if I choose: mine.”

  Wolf opened his eyes and looked at the man at the computer. “No, you won’t. What time is it?”

  The man looked at his boss.

  Tong put it to Wolf’s temple. The barrel was still warm.

  “You can’t see the problem with the cards?” Wolf smiled and closed his eyes, expecting death at any second.

  Tong pressed the gun harder into his skin. “What problem with the cards?”

  Wolf allowed his chest to convulse as he laughed. Endorphins flooded through his system. “You won’t be taking anyone I love.”

  “Why?”

  Wolf said nothing.

  “Speak!” Tong jabbed the gun repeatedly into his skull. “Tell me! What about the cards?”

  “I’ll never tell you.” Wolf snapped his eyes open and glared. “Shoot me. Then start counting down the minutes. Because I figure you only have a few of them before fifty feds come barging in.”

  Panic flashed in Tong’s eyes. He stared through Wolf, then shook his head. “No.” He laughed, this time a full guttural chuckle that made his cohort at the computer smile and ask him a question in their native tongue.

  Tong’s reply smothered the smile on the other man’s face.

  “You don’t see it,” Wolf said, closing his eyes again. “Good.”

  Wolf concentrated on the evenness of his breathing as he stared at the light on the backs of his eyelids.

  Please, God, forgive me for everything I’ve done, he thought, just in case Tong decided to shoot him then and there.

  Tong snapped his fingers and barked a command. Footsteps crunched over the plastic. A door squealed open and slammed shut like a baseball bat on a trashcan.

  Wolf opened his eyes. The two guards were gone.

  “What are you doing?”

  Tong smiled.

  Chapter 44

  Wolf eyed the door in the silence.

  Tong paced in front of him again, this time faster. His earlier amusement had gone.

  Wolf studied the ceiling. A row of thin windows had been painted over at some point in the past. Paint had flaked off, revealing dark gray where there’d once been black.

  “Looks like it’s almost dawn,” he said. “I’d say you have about fifteen minutes.”

  Tong said something to the computer guy.

  The man shook his head and pointed at the screens on the wall.

  The pictures of him, Lauren, and Ella had been replaced by live feeds from the security cameras. Computer guy gestured to a camera showing a street.

  Wolf sat forward, snapping the duct tape around his chest, and stood. Then he bent, raised his arms behind his back, straightened, and slammed his hands toward his sides.

  The tape ripped open. His hands were free.

  He lunged toward Tong.

  Tong was focusing on the monitors but turned quickly and sidestepped Wolf’s attack.

  The chair was still taped to Wolf’s ankles. He whiffed a vicious grab, only catching a finger on Tong’s leather jacket, and landed hard on the floor.

  Tong pointed the gun at Wolf’s head. The man’s all-business expression told him he had milliseconds to live, but then Tong smiled and staggered back.

  “My God, you are a real dragon.” He shook his head, losing the smile, and raised the gun again.

  The door clacked and squealed.

  Tong’s eyes glazed over and he lowered the gun. “Let’s have some fun, shall we?”

  The two guards saw Wolf on the ground and their boss’s defensive stance. One of them asked a question, and Tong answered in a flurry of words.

  The two guards pulled Luke into the room and pushed her forward.

  She stumbled but caught herself before falling. The filthy blanket was still draped over her shoulders. Her hair fell over her face like a veil.

  The guard with the prod lifted the edge of the blanket with his torture toy, revealing Luke’s naked legs and white underwear.

  An electric snick echoed through the room and she arched her back. The blanket fell, revealing her upper body clad in a tiny T-shirt.

  “You dick-suck!” She spasmed as more curses flew from her mouth.

  Tong said something, and the guard held the prod against her skin for another long moment.

  She collapsed to her knees, then her stomach. Her hair parted to reveal a hard glare locked on Wolf.

  And Wolf knew that Luke had punched her way through the drug fugue, if only for a second.

  Tong barked another command at his guard, and Cattle Prod stepped aside. The larger man gripped the back of Luke’s T-shirt and pulled. He wrenched her to her feet then ripped the flimsy fabric from her skin. Luke crossed her arms in front of her bare torso.

  Tong said something else, and the other guard came in, his prod leveled.

  Wolf reached for Tong and slapped both his hands on the ground a full yard away from his shiny black boots.

  “This man—”

  Wolf clawed his fingers into the plastic, gripped, and pulled as hard as he could on the tarp.

  Tong’s feet shot toward him a few inches, enough to knock him off balance.

  W
olf twisted and let go, then rolled toward the two guards.

  At the same instant, Tong fired into the floor inches from where Wolf’s head had been.

  Wolf saw the bigger guard aim his gun down, and he raised his feet to block the shot. The chair split into shards, the impact jarring the muscles in both legs. He pulled them together and kicked, catching the big guard’s knee with one of the chair legs.

  Tong fired again and a window in the ceiling shattered.

  Luke’s animal grunts echoed off the walls.

  Wolf rolled onto his stomach and twisted to dodge an impending hail of bullets. But none came.

  He got to his feet. Luke elbowed Tong in the throat, then landed a vicious kick to his knee that bent it sideways.

  Cattle Prod poked his stick into the mayhem, catching Luke in the side.

  The bigger guard had split his attention between Wolf and the attack on his boss. Wolf took advantage of the confusion and lunged shoulder first. The wood of the split chair tripped him, sending him low into the attack. He grabbed the guard’s shins and twisted hard. The man was big but forced to turn or have both bones snap under Wolf’s vice-grip. The guard twisted and fell back, smashing his head against the metal door.

  Wolf crawled up his body and blocked the gun with the side of his hand just as it went off, bathing his face in hot fragments. He took hold of the weapon with both hands and wrenched.

  The man punched Wolf hard in the chin with his free hand.

  Before the blow had fully registered, Wolf launched his head down and head-butted into the guard square in the face.

  More gunshots popped. A bullet ricocheted off the wall with the sound of a zipper being opened at a hundred feet per second.

  The man’s grip on the gun loosened. Wolf plucked it away and aimed.

  The orange tip of the cattle prod came toward him and zapped against his chest. Electricity shot through his body, his hand closed in a spasm, and he fired three involuntary shots into the floor next to the guard underneath him.

  Cattle Prod dropped his toy and pulled his own gun from the rear of his pants. Wolf shot him in the chest, then the man beneath him in the head. He swiveled, and shot twice into the back of the man running away from the computer console.