Renner (In the Company of Snipers Book 19)

by Irish Winters

  “You’re another of Montego’s victims?” Renner asked as more men filed into the hall.

  “None of your business. I asked you a question. Are you in charge or not?”

  “Yes, I’m in charge,” Renner declared, since Mark had run Jed home to his penthouse. “And I asked you a question. Are you another of Montego’s victims?”

  Aaron was at his side by then, stretching his good hand to the stranger. “They’re not victims, Agent Graves. This man is a survivor like me. Hello, I’m Aaron Pope. We talked earlier today.”

  The stranger’s nostrils flared as he sneered at Aaron, who still held his hand out in friendship. “Did you kill her?”

  “I’ve got more tangos entering the rear exit,” Beckam advised. “Seth, where are you? Come in, Seth.”

  “Right up behind these guys,” Seth answered, nice and easy. “There’s eight altogether, Beck. Another one stayed with the vehicle they ditched three blocks south. That makes nine. We got a name yet, Boss?”

  “Working on it,” Renner replied as he eased back on his frustration. “I know you and your men don’t belong to Montego,” he told the stranger. “I’m sorry I misspoke. But right now, she’s got one of my people and—”

  “Fuckin’ asshole!” the pirate hissed. “You should’ve killed her on sight! What’d you do, invite her in for tea and crumpets, you sons of bitches?”

  Beckam stepped a foot back, aligning himself with Renner who was now in the center of the hall. By stepping out of Renner’s way, Beck revealed the rest of the stranger’s body. The metal knee-brace on his left leg. His black gloves, the left one with rigid curled fingers, the right gripping a nasty, blued, six-and-a-half-inch 44. Magnum, right out of “Dirty Harry.”

  Renner’s self-righteous attitude deflated at the atrocity Montego had committed against this man. At the degradation he’d suffered. “You’re right, sir, I should’ve killed Montego the second I saw her, because I sure as hell knew we were all going to be outplayed. Only there are laws about gunning down unarmed women just because you’ve got a feeling. And…”

  “She ain’t no woman.”

  “…now Montego’s taken one of our women who—”

  “You let her get someone? How long ago? When, damn you? When?”

  “I didn’t let her take anyone—”

  “An hour ago,” Kelsey interrupted, her head held high as she stepped around Renner and Beckam. “I’m Kelsey Stewart, and I run this—”

  “I know who you are, ma’am. You’re Alex’s wife.”

  “I am,” she said proudly. “May I know your name, sir?”

  He scowled. He growled. But at last the pirate brushed past Aaron’s hand and took hold of Kelsey’s. “Tom,” he said with a curt nod. “That’s all you need to know. I’m Tom, and these guys are my… my men. Our car ran out of gas or we would’ve been here sooner and… Hell, it don’t matter.” He turned on Renner. “You dumb fucks let her get away. We wasted the trip.”

  “Watch your mouth,” Renner snapped, ready to smack this guy for his atrocious language.

  Tom’s nostrils twitched. He cast a look at Kelsey, then muttered the most insincere apology Renner had ever heard. “She’s heard worse if she was dumb enough to marry a Marine.”

  “You’re right,” Kelsey snapped back. “I have heard worse, but this is my house, Tom. My rules. And the sewer doesn’t run through here, so there’ll be no more crass language, understood?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he grumbled, his nose still bent out of shape.

  Before he had time to toss another comment, Renner asked, “Do you know where Montego might have gone?”

  And off Tom went on another rampage. “Now how would I know? Haven’t seen that twisted bitch in months. You think we helped her? Is that what you’re accusing—”

  Despite his vulgarity, Kelsey had yet to let go of Tom’s hand. “We’re not accusing you of anything, but my friend risked her life to save me tonight, and I’m very worried…” Her voice cracked. “Tom, I’m scared Montego’s hurting Tara while we stand here and argue about whose is bigger. You know how cruel she is. Please. Won’t you help me?”

  Renner took a step back, giving Kelsey room to what she did best. When Tom growled and shook his head, she dropped his hand and covered her mouth. The muscles in her neck tightened, and Renner knew she was on the verge of tears again. Hell, he was, too. This was his fault, every last fuckin’ mistake of this entire fuckin’ night was his fault. But Tara was the one who would pay for it.

  He couldn’t stand to see the rancid acceptance in this guy’s eye. Tom had clearly come here to kill Montego, not to rescue or help anybody. He was past the point of civility. Which happened. Some survivors had been through so much they became as cold as the person who’d tortured them. They’d had to. That was how they’d survived, by learning to live through the pain and wretchedness of being turned into a monster. Of having lost the person they once were.

  Tom wouldn’t help. He didn’t know how.

  Renner blinked. His throat closed. His heart broke. Jesus, he had to wipe his face when the first tears breached the dam and—

  “She might’ve taken her—there,” Tom told one of his men, the one standing behind him at his left. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  The gray-haired man’s head bobbed. “Maybe. If it’s still deserted.”

  “Where?” snapped out of Renner like a flash of lightning. “What’s deserted?”

  “I don’t want your help,” Tom spat, his eye on Renner again. “Understand? I don’t need it. We—us—we don’t need nothing from the likes of you. It’s too late. You didn’t come looking for us, not once. We don’t owe you nuthin’. Do we, men?”

  A growly smattering of agreement sounded from the group. Most of his men hadn’t come forward, but hung back like shadows who didn’t want to be seen, trapped between Seth at their rear, the people standing with Renner forward. Aaron. Kelsey. Beck. Some of Aaron’s men, Kelsey’s guys.

  “But we need you, sir,” Renner said as evenly as he could before he fell apart and outright begged. “Can you help us, just tonight? Where do you think Montego might be?”

  “Where she, umm, err, where she kept us,” Tom replied quietly. “There’s an old meat-packing plant off Interstate 495.”

  “The one by Joint Base Andrews?” Aaron asked.

  Renner didn’t like the tremor to Aaron’s tone.

  “That’d be the one,” Tom replied somberly. “Only you’d better run while there’s still something left of your girl to rescue. It takes sixty minutes to heat the boiler, and Montego likes to play with fire. She’s never had a woman at her place before.”

  “Seven men have gone missing since she returned from Cuba,” Aaron interjected. “You think they could be there?”

  Tom shrugged, but his eye tracked Renner like a hawk. “She only had two places I knew. The one Alex found last year and the one she kept us in.”

  Renner shoved past Tom’s group of wounded men and all but exploded past Seth and out the rear door. “I’m out of here.”

  “Wait!” Kelsey cried behind him. “I’m coming!”

  “No,” he called over his shoulder. “Not this time. Stay here where you’ll be safe!”

  “But I have a chopper.”

  That she did. Renner hit the skids, his hand already on his car’s door handle, his heart a throbbing beast of anguish at every passing second. “How long until it can be here?” he asked, the tears in his eyes turning Kelsey into a blinding cloud of glistening stars.

  She held up five fingers, her cell already at her ear. “Ben. I need you at Raymond’s Kids right now. Yes, it’s an emergency. Okay, I understand, but hurry, and please fly safe.”

  “Well?” Renner asked, trying to hold it together as Seth, Beckam, Aaron, Tom and his men formed a half-circle around him and Kelsey in the damp fog. Like it or not, Seth’s heavy hand came to rest on his shoulder. Renner shrugged Seth off. It was eithe
r that or break down.

  “Ben’s my pilot, err, Alex’s pilot. He said he’d be here in four. He had already refueled the chopper and filed a flight plan to take me home, so he just has to post an update and he’s good to go.”

  “How long’s that going to take?” Renner asked, icy fear creeping up his spine, counting down the seconds to each one of those long four minutes.

  “He’s on his way now, Renner,” Kelsey said pointedly. “Can someone please go inside and get my coat? Bring one for Tara, too. And some blankets. She might be cold.”

  “On it,” Seth and Beckam said simultaneously. Off they went. By the time they returned, Ben had touched down in the parking lot, the rotors kicking up a crystalized fog that stung like a thousand BBs.

  “How many can that chopper take?” Tom asked, scrubbing his scruffy jaw with his rigid fingers.

  “Twenty,” Kelsey answered brightly as she opened the door.

  Which meant Tom and his men planned to ride along with Renner. He didn’t care who came until Kelsey put her foot on the two-step ladder to climb aboard.

  “No, stay!” he told her. “Please?”

  “But this was my idea,” she argued. “Tara needs me. It’s my fault she’s in trouble.”

  Renner shook his head no even as he shut the door in her face and told Ben, “Go, go, go!”

  “But she’s my boss,” Ben stalled.

  “And there’s a good chance she’ll die tonight if she comes with us, now go!”

  One woman in peril was enough.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Tara wiped the sweat from her brow, tired and frightened. After tying multiple tourniquets, she was fully aware of what she was now up against. Torture, depraved and gruesome. Bloody. Utterly, thoroughly frightening.

  Pete had no fingers on his right hand, just four lacerated, bleeding knuckles and a thumb, the same as Aaron’s hand. She couldn’t tie a tourniquet, so she’d fashioned a padded bandage.

  Because Montego had taken his toes, Antonio’s right foot was hot and swollen, his calf soft with infection. Tara had tied a tourniquet at his ankle even though she knew she’d hurt him when she did. But he’d kept telling her, “tighter, please, I can take it, tighter” until tears streamed down her face. What she’d suffered at Jorge’s hands was nothing compared to what these men were suffering tonight.

  Poor Gary Desmarais hadn’t been physically tortured yet, but he was definitely in shock and way too quiet. Probably drugged.

  The bandaging, tying off of so many tourniquets, and knowing where to put her hands and feet so she didn’t inadvertently hurt someone while she’d worked, made nursing difficult in the dark. Yet even those small victories spelled doom if she’d infected these poor men’s injuries more than they already were.

  From what Tara could tell, they were imprisoned inside a square concrete room without doors or windows. Instead of cold like a basement, this room was uncomfortably muggy. One wall was warm enough to make her believe there was a furnace behind it. Combine that with the wide range of body odors, the stink of excrement, and sweat pouring off five extremely sick men, and yeah. Taking a breath without throwing up was a challenge.

  Of the five, Antonio, aka Tony, the flirt from New York City—not the Bronx he’d informed her—was in the worst condition. Racked with a high fever, he fluctuated between shivering and sweating. Because she’d used her shirt and jacket for the tourniquets everyone needed, there was nothing left to fashion into a pillow for him. Just a worthless, lumpy pillow. That was all he needed to be a tiny bit more comfortable, and she couldn’t even offer that. Instead he’d thanked her for ‘torturing him’ with a tourniquet—her words, not his—then laid down and pressed his cheek to the filthy concrete floor in this hellhole. He said it was cool, that it helped him feel better. Tara doubted that.

  Roger leaned his back against the wall at her right, Samson beside him. Both men were breathing heavily. Pete, Gilbert, and Gary leaned against the opposite wall, while Tara sat cross-legged in the middle of the men, alongside Tony. Shy’s body now lay parallel to the wall between Gilbert and Samson. Roger had carefully shoved him there when he’d made room for Tara.

  Her lips were parched from the relentless heat and her throat was sore. A bottle of water would’ve been nice, but she refused to complain. Asking for anything seemed cruel, considering how long these men had been without water and food.

  “You okay, kid?” Roger asked wearily.

  “As good as I can be, but please call me—”

  “Stop. Don’t say it,” he ordered. “We don’t need to know your name. Kid will do.”

  “But I know who you all are.”

  “You only know first names. You can’t be sure we didn’t lie to you.”

  “I didn’t lie,” Tony murmured, his voice tight. “I’m Antonio D’Angelo, and my father’s Giuseppe. My mother’s Lenna Genova of the Milan Genovas, you know, in Milan, Italy? She and Papa own a vineyard north of West Point. Please don’t tell them how I died, ma’am. Make something up. Tell them I got shot or I drank myself to death. Anything but this.”

  Tara reached through the dark and found the back of his arm. “You’re not going to die,” she whispered, lying through her teeth.

  “Yeah, I am. All of us are.”

  Tara would’ve argued if she hadn’t still had these men’s blood on her hands and arms, probably on her face, too. The longer she’d worked to stop their bleeding, the more she knew she could never withstand the depraved tortures they’d suffered. What kind of animal cut off another person’s fingers and toes? A foot? An ear! There’d been nothing to be done for Gilbert, no way to apply a tourniquet. Montego had taken his left ear. Even now, he moaned while he rocked and bled into a piece of Tara’s shirt, trying to soothe himself. It wasn’t working.

  “Stop it,” Roger said. “Just stop. Don’t make things worse.”

  Gilbert moaned. “Not like things can get worse.”

  “It can if we know her name. It can when—if she gets hurt,” Roger snapped. “So stop already. Just shut the fuck up.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Gilbert sighed. “That would be worse.”

  “Umm,” Tara said, her mind spinning at the awful implication of—worse. “Pain’s pretty much the same for every—”

  “No, it’s not,” Roger ground out. “It’s... it’s different when females c-c-cry. T-trust me. It’s bad enough being tied down and made to watch a guy getting cut or sawed on, but a w-w-woman…” A thump sounded from his general area. Might have been his head hitting the wall behind him. “God, just get this shit over.”

  “How’d you get so unlucky?” Samson asked quietly. He sounded younger than the others but trying to be tough. “I mean, to end up here with us?”

  Tara huffed through her nostrils. “I had a different plan than this tonight, trust me. I work at a halfway house for runaway kids. Do you guys know who Jed McCormack is?”

  A couple grunts came back to her. Roger said, “Yeah. Went to Iraq with Brady, his son.”

  “Well, tonight he paid us a visit. He made a big donation, and he wanted to do it in public, but he brought his girlfriend with him and—”

  “He’s got a girlfriend?” Roger asked. “Since when?”

  “Yes. Ever since his wife died, he—”

  “Lois is dead? No. How’d that happen? When? Jesus Christ!”

  Tara stilled, not sure how much to tell this man. He’d been in Montego’s clutches a long time if he didn’t know Mrs. McCormack had died. “How long have you been here?” she asked instead of answering.

  “Forever,” he replied, his voice tired and dry as if his soul were already dead and simply waiting around for his body to get the message.

  “As in months?”

  “Yeah. Months.”

  “I hate to tell you, Roger, but Lois McCormack died six months ago.”

  He made an odd, sad sound, a choking, growling, grinding sound that broke Tara’s hea
rt.

  “How’d she get to you?” Roger sounded like a big guy.

  “We just got back from the Philippines. Went out for drinks and dancing. Guess I got a little crazy with the wrong bitch. Woke up strapped to a... her… table. That’s when she took my first toe.”

  Tara could hear him trying to swallow. It sounded like Roger couldn’t make his throat work.

  “You never finished telling us how you ended up here, ma’am,” Samson reminded her quietly.

  Tara wiped a hand over her head, wishing she had an elastic to keep her hair out of her sweaty face. She drew in a belly full of air and told them about Jorge and her marriage, about his terrorist link, running away and divorcing him. She told them about her prescription drug habit, about wandering into that halfway house in DC one particularly dark night. About being saved. She told them how she’d never had a sister, but she’d found one that night. By the time she was through, poor Tony was snoring, but the rest of the guys knew Montego not only had her hooks in Jed, but that Tara had intentionally walked into Montego’s trap in order to save Kelsey.

  “You’re shittin’ me,” Gilbert hissed. “You decided it’d be better to let that bitch torture you instead of someone else? What are you, stupid?”

  And that was okay. Gilbert was in pain, and that gaping, oozing hole on the side of his poor head where his ear used to be was badly infected. He didn’t mean what he said.

  “Guess I’m as stupid as men who go off to war or combat then,” she murmured, rubbing the back of Tony’s arm, wishing he were awake. Wishing he were Renner. “I’d rather Montego hurt me than my sister, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I would,” Gilbert answered somberly. “Sorry, ma’am. I’ve got two sisters. One’s older, one’s younger. You’re right. I’m sure as hell glad they’re not here.”

  “Me too,” Tara whispered as she wiped a new batch of tears. “Just wish we weren’t here either, guys. I mean, I don’t even know what you look like, but I—”

  CRASH!