Shawn pulled the knife from his back pocket, the six-inch switch butterfly fitting in his hand even better than it had when he had stolen it from a martial arts supply store when he was twelve. It flew open in his hand as Shawn met Ethan’s eyes levelly, before he closed it and then it slid back out of sight.
Dylan smirked. “Baby brother doesn’t likes guns, never has. But he has a fetish for sharp objects. And I wasn’t about to try to take them from him. He gets testy about that sort of thing.” He tossed Shawn a look that said behave before he said, “Well. We’re here to find some ladies. A redhead is prowling around is somewhere and if she gets hurt…”
“A redhead.” Ethan laughed. “I have your redhead. She’s...napping.” He paused before he said it, as though he was reflecting on that word. “Napping, dreaming hopefully sweet dreams, and not evil ones. But Kris is going to mighty pissed at me once she wakes up.”
Dylan couldn’t stop the rush of relief that swept through him. “Napping…courtesy of you?” he asked carefully, trying to keep his emotions off his face, out of his eyes. Safe…she was safe…
“Well, partly. I thought I was going to have to do something drastic for a minute there. Stubborn lady.” His storm cloud eyes met Dylan’s and he said, “She was about ready to drop just from the adrenaline crash. She must have been riding it a while. She finally fell asleep. I—helped the process along. She won’t be moving for a while.”
“Kris is going to have your ass. How long did you spend around her? But I guess she wasn’t nothing more than a fucking job to you,” Shawn said flatly. “She has a fucking right to be here.” Sliding his eyes to Dylan, he asked, “Was that your bright idea, brother?”
“No.” That, at least, was the truth. Not his idea, but he would be damned if he’d lie about being relieved she wasn’t going to be in the line of fire. If this got bad…clenching his jaw, he shoved it out of his head.
“She has a fucking right to see this through,” Shawn muttered, turning around and moving outside the tight knit circle of men. His eyes met Renee’s and she forced a tiny smile.
“If she’s a smart lady, she’ll see…” Ethan’s words died out. Cocking his head, he said, “We’ve got company coming. We need to figure out how to do this, Dylan. Or are we going to worry about what I did?”
“She’s gonna have his ass,” Shawn reiterated. Glancing at Dylan, he said quietly, “You’re breaking what you have here, buddy. She was just as lost as you were.” Then before anybody could say another thing, he moved away and turned his back on them.
“Look, I spent more than a year watching that woman. I like her,” Ethan said quietly, moving out of the circle and meeting Shawn’s eyes. “But she is not prepared for this. She’s too soft, too unprepared. Damn it, she grew up in a rich girl fantasy life. She got this far on luck alone and I’m not going to risk that luck running out.”
“Enough,” Dylan said flatly. Shawn’s word spun around in his head. She was just as lost as you were…Dylan shoved the sick feeling those words caused him aside, and wished to hell that his kid brother hadn’t gone and gotten so damned perceptive. “Ethan, head back to where Kris is. That’s what you have to do, just watch that area. Jerry, keep Renee with you. Luciano, hang with Jerry and Renee. She knows what’s up, more than I do, I bet, since Shawn isn’t telling me everything.” His grim eyes moved to his brother’s back and he shoved aside that niggling feeling. Breaking what you have…
He split the other four men up and sent them off, Davis and Collins heading down the ridge and Calhoun and Hobbes watching the trail up to the house. “We’re out of here,” Hobbes said, a grin splitting his square face. His Queens accent grew softer as they melted into the trees. “Good seein’ you again, man.”
And then Calhoun and Hobbes were gone from sight.
“Shawn, unless you plan on brooding all night, let’s get moving,” Dylan said, his voice clipped as he lifted his eyes to the faint sparkle of glass visible through the trees. Catching the set up that Jerry tossed him, he slid the radio gear on, feeling a little less blind now and then he tossed Shawn a questioning look.
Chapter Eleven
Kris couldn’t hardly think.
A thick, misty film enveloped everything and she could barely even recall her own name for the longest moments. When she finally left the darkness for the lighter sleep of dreams, she shrieked with rage.
She was stuck here.
Unable to hardly move, laying there like a stone, unmoving and still. The bastard had done something. The artificial blanket of sleep lay too heavy on her, and her thoughts were too cluttered. He had drugged her or something.
Wanting to scream, Kris resisted the pull of dreams and tried to focus. But it was so damn hard.
****
Ethan knelt beside the sleeping lady and laid a finger alongside the pulse in her neck. “Good girl,” he whispered. “Just keep resting. I know you’re gonna kick my ass when you wake up. But at least you’ll be alive and in one piece to do it. Something’s not right with this set up. This is too slick. Too pat for some small time op.”
A soft sigh reached his ears and he settled down next to her, his weapon held loosely in his hand as he listened and waited.
****
Dylan and Shawn waited.
Too fucking long.
Oh, Ethan had called it right. They were getting company. From their vantage point in the tree, they could see everything with too much clarity. So far seven men had come upon the place, four of them Dylan learned from Renee where the ones who had cornered Kris in the mall.
Three more men, then nothing for a good hour. More trickled in, at a steady pace, until more than thirty men were in the house. About a third of them left. The muscle. Going out to watch the grounds, patrol, and guard, and Mick Langes was among them. Dylan had recognized one face and thought he’d tear something apart with his hands. Vance Ralston, a well-known sportscaster who had been tried a few years ago for child molestation.
The buyers, then.
People here to buy young girls for sport, to break them.
Shit. What in the hell is this going on here for? Dylan thought, the bark of the branch under his hand cutting into his flesh as he flexed his hands. Here…home.
Hell, he knew realistically evil happened everywhere. It thrived on chaos, despair, need, things the young clamored to in droves. The bastard running this had locked into the teenager psyche and drew them out, compelling them.
But this was home.
Then there came a face that had him going blind with rage. Max Blessett came walking up those stone steps, side by side with an Arab man, their heads bent low, Max speaking to the gentleman in fluent Arabic, and as they passed close by where Hobbes and Calhoun were waiting, Dylan heard the soft hum of them talking. Once they were out of hearing range, Dylan whispered, “What did you hear, Evan?”
Evan’s flat voice said, “How in the fuck has he been hiding under our noses all this fucking time?”
“Forget that part. We deal with it, and we deal with him. What did he say?” Dylan asked quietly, speaking into the unit, keeping his voice flat and level, trying not to think of that day, to see Dom’s face, Dally’s face. If he did, then he was likely to leap out of the tree and go after Blessett himself. Rip his head with his bare hands. The jagged scar at his back seemed to ache, viciously, for a moment.
Then he heard Evan’s quiet sigh. “The Arab was making noises about how his boss wasn’t going to be pleased if Max didn’t provide a better girl this time. They had run out of patience. Max said he hadn’t ever failed to provide on time before and he had the perfect girl this time. He was getting ready to start making some changes in his organization, some people had made a few too many mistakes and this girl would be the last. The Arab said he understands, it is getting very hard to find good people these days, but that wouldn’t change the fact that the last butterfly had been sadly disappointing. That was why she was brought back.”
“Butterfly,” Dylan whispered,
his voice thick, his throat feeling tight.
Unaware of what all was going on, Shawn murmured, “You don’t really think we can take that fucking many people.” His eyes were locked on the house, narrowed as yet another walked under the ceiling of leaves.
“Yeah. We can take that many. More, if we had to. But don’t worry. You just have to look pretty, if you want the truth.” Dylan clicked into the comm and waited for Jerry and Ethan to come back. “We have…an interesting development.”
Jerry asked softly, “How interesting?”
As Dylan watched Max and the Arab disappear into the house, he answered, “It’s in the form of a rat.”
The silence on the line was deafening. Collins was the first to ask, “I only know of one rat that would interest me. Nobody has seen him in over a year.”
“I just saw him,” Dylan said.
Jerry said, “That is a development. And it ups the stakes. In a lot of ways. He sees your lady, Dylan, we got more problems. And he knows our games.”
Dylan said, “I want to pin them in a room away from the girls. Up front?”
Ethan answered, “Yep. The girls are in the back western room, along the rock wall. Scared to death. There’s a great room, down the hall from the girls, with window facing every direction but the western. You’re going to have to wait for nightfall for cover.”
“Fuck that,” Dylan muttered, shaking his head. “I’m ready as soon as we think everybody who is coming is here. I want them all to pay. Longer we wait, with the rat in the game, the more we risk him knowing something is up. You tampered with the cameras, but a good eye will see something wrong. He’s got a good eye.”
The breeze came by, caressing his cheek, blowing his hair into his eyes as he kept his eyes on the house. Soon. A muscle jerked in his jaw as he thought of being able to get his hands on Max.
Kris would be safe. Finally, completely safe.
Dylan dropped from the tree sometime later, saying quietly, “Time to take care of the guards.” He looked up at Shawn and said, “Wait here. Keep your eye out.”
The sound of the guards’ radios were ringing through the forest at a low level hum. That and their shuffling footsteps, their talking, the smell of cigarette smoke and body sweat filling the air.
Jerry grinned as he replied, “Guards? Is that what they call them? Radio silence, boys. We’re playing with a rat now. New rules.”
Dylan snorted in silence as he moved up behind two who were standing smoking and discussing a returned pet.
Like a fucking dog…Dylan came out of the shadows behind one and grabbed him, taking his neck and digging his fingers in roughly, one hand muffling the man’s startled exclamation as he sent the bastard in dreamland even as the second guard was turning around to take a piss.
By the time he had finished, Dylan was lowering the unconscious man to the ground. He moved out of sight, circling around to come up behind the second one as he shoved his dick back inside his pants, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.
“Gus?”
“He’s taking a nap,” Dylan growled, reaching out, grabbing the second one and flinging him against the trunk of a tree, his hands fisted in the collar of his jean jacket. “Want to join him? Or die?”
Without waiting for an answer, he drove his knee into the shorter man’s genitals and when he collapsed over, gasping, Dylan brought his hand down across the back of his neck.
He gagged and bound them both, one to a tree, and then he moved on, flashing Shawn a grin before he moved out of sight.
He clicked into the radio as he moved on, signaling he had taken two down.
“No. Four,” Luciano breathed into the radio. “This is too easy.”
“Luc, silence,” Jerry reminded.
When it had been quiet for nearly a half an hour, they all rose slowly and moved in.
“We’re going in, Ethan,” he whispered almost soundless.
“All cool back here,” Ethan said. “I’ve got this part.”
So it was thirty something against the world. Shaking his head, Dylan hoped their luck held.
Drawing the gun, he moved behind a tree, keeping his eyes focused on the house, working slowly around the perimeter. “Relax, Sergeant. She’s sleeping now. But if she wakes up, I’ll know,” Ethan said when Dylan cast the ridge where they were hiding a glance.
“You got a good vantage point there, Raintree?” he quipped, not sure what to think of how easily they were reading him.
“Excellent. All the way around. And beautiful scenery,” he smirked.
“Keep your eyes on the landscape, Ethan.”
The Native American chuckled and said, “I am. Mostly. Chief just took down another. You got one getting worried. I can’t see anybody else, but I’ve got their radios jammed.”
“You’re a handy bastard to have on hand,” Dylan muttered, sliding through the trees as the one Ethan mentioned started to call out on his radio. “Mick? Gus?”
“They aren’t around any more,” Dylan said.
From the other side of the trees, Luciano and said, “I hope you don’t mean permanently. We gonna have to do clean up?”
The man, his eyes a little more sharp, his hands a little quicker, lifted his gun. “Who the fuck are you?”
Dylan grinned. “Not the one you need to worry about,” he said, lifting his hands, smiling easily at the gun three feet from his face.
“No. That would be me,” Jerry whispered, only seconds before the gun went flying off into the distance. The man went down, with Jerry at his back, digging his face into the muck. “I want to know how many guns we’re likely to find in there. Might be handy to know…”
The guards were left bound and gagged. With the exception of one. He had seen Luciano take down the ninth man and was lifting his gun, too slowly, too shakily, as though he couldn’t believe they had been caught. But his finger tightened on the trigger. Luciano has drawn his own weapon, the man now had a neat little bullet hole between his eyes, his body off in the woods, away from anybody who might step out of the house.
Dylan moved ever slower, hoping.
Praying.
Nessa, sweetheart, he thought. Are you ready to go home?
They burst into the house like wildfire, Dylan raising his gun and the browridge of the slick, cool man who had been circulating through the rooms, a smile on his face. In one hand, he held a fucking leash. And it was connected to a diamond collar that was wrapped around the neck of a tiny, sobbing creature who fought to keep from letting Ralston touch her.
The round, youthful face was that of a baby, and Dylan felt the rage tear through him.
Waited too damn long, Dylan thought furiously, leveling the gun at Ralston’s face, a cold hard-edged look in his eyes as he said, “Let. Her. Go.”
****
Ethan checked Kris one last time.
They were outnumbered. Too badly and he would be damned if he just sat there. Four men had already tried to flee and Ethan had dissuaded them via a hole through the leg. One had tripped, falling down and hitting hit head with a sickening thud on a rock.
“Oops,” Ethan murmured, sliding his eyes back to the house. Too many guns. Only seven good guys in there. Well, nine if he counted the cop and the kid with butterfly knife.
****
Shawn dropped out of the tree, swearing. “Bastards.” They thought they were going to leave him behind? With Dylan in there? Kris? Renee?
Not to mention the kids…
He took the gun that had dropped when Dylan had taken the first out. “I can do that,” he muttered. “I can make a man unconscious.” Granted, he couldn’t do it silently.
Then he moved towards the lit windows.
“They left us out,” Renee said from the path. She tossed him a narrow look and said, “’Bout damn time you got here. Let’s go.”
“Ya know, if I wanted to be bossed around, I could have gone and joined the army,” Shawn said, shaking his head. But he fell in step behind her, listening to the roar co
ming from the house. He grabbed Renee and thrust her against a tree as one man came hurtling toward them, his eyes wild, a gun in his hand.
Odd, muffled popping sounds came through the air, and he prayed whoever in the hell was shooting had good nightsight. It was getting dark.
Then he lunged for the man who reached after Renee, wrapping his fingers around the man’s wrist and slamming it into the ground. The gun fell and the man hissed, “Get off me you bastard. Bunch of cop bastards, gonna kill you all—”
Shawn swore as a knife came slashing at him. He struggled to wrap his hand around the man’s wrist with one hand.
In the other, he pulled his own blade, flipping the butterfly open, grunting as his hand slipped and the knife came closer to his face. “Stupid fuck,” he whispered, using his weight to slam the knife down. “Stop it already. You want to fucking die?”
The fallen one swore and swung out and Shawn jerked back, and then he backpedaled as his opponent’s hand closed around the gun again. “That’s it,” he muttered as the gun swung around to face him. Diving low, he caught the weapon hand in his left as he struck out with the knife he held in his right. Bile tore through him, bubbled up his throat as he felt it slide through flesh, as he felt the hot wash of blood on his hand.
The man went limp, his eyes wide, a trickle of blood spilling from his mouth. His blade pulled from the chest with a wet, sucking sound and Shawn jerked away, still holding his knife as he watched the man crumple.
“I killed him,” he said in a tight rusty voice.
****
Dylan held the girl against his chest, crouched behind the bar. Yeah, there was some serious firepower in the room.
The girl was sobbing, crying, and scrambling to tear the collar away, pathetic mewling sobs coming from her mouth. “Get me out of here,” she shrieked, clapping her hands over her ears and crying.
“Jerry?”
“Here, Sergeant.” More muffled firepower in. Another body fell. “Luciano?”
ALWAYS YOURS Page 22
