She turned to me. “So, you and Nix, you get to decide to be whatever you are that makes money. That needs guns, that needs scary meetings, and I just get to reap the benefits of that?” She used air quotes around the word “reap”.
“Life isn’t fair.” I had no good response, really. It had to be this way, even if she was pissed about it.
Ember popped the door open and shook her head. “Leave me alone. I want out. I don’t need anyone.” She stomped up her aunt’s driveway. I watched as she knocked on the door. It took a while, but her aunt appeared and waved Ember inside.
She at least had a place to stay that Nix had wired with cameras.
T opened her door. She put her hand on my shoulder before appointing herself the job as Ember’s guardian. “That crew will be watching for her. Tonight wasn’t good.”
“Thanks, T. I’ll see if I can get out ahead of it and see if the assholes are talking about her. Stay safe.” I patted her hand once, and then she was gone.
T’s years as a homeless person gave her the heartbreaking knowledge of how to stay outside for extended periods of time. It couldn’t stay like this indefinitely. I needed T on bigger jobs and as my confidant.
Chapter 41
T
I was an insomniac. A hidden talent. When I was a teen, I was able to stay awake for days at a time. If I didn’t take anything to sleep, my eyes just wouldn’t close on their own. So watching Ember was as simple as skipping my dose of Benadryl and Melatonin.
As a kid, I’d lie awake watching my mother make horrible decisions. I knew now that it was her illness making her swing from one task to another without being able to focus. She’d start to bake a cake, then walk away from the oven to paint a mural on a wall.
I remembered burning myself on a black, smoking cake as I pulled it out of the oven with a bath towel. I forgot how old I was, but I ran my hand under cold water after dragging a chair over to the sink, and I knew then I was the adult in the situation. Not in those exact words, of course. But I realized that I was in charge. Not tall enough to reach the sink, but I knew not to walk away from a hot oven.
People who knew us would always exclaim that I was old for my age. There was a parade of neighbors and friends who helped. Their names would blend together. I should be thankful for the adults who stepped up when they saw my mother and I struggling, but I was just trying to survive and find good things to look forward to the next day. At night in my bed after Mom crashed, I would whisper out loud, “Tomorrow will be a better day.”
I shuffled my feet as I settled into the trees alongside of Ember and her aunt’s house. I wanted to make sure that none of the men who had been part of messing with Ember would follow her here.
I’d stay until morning or later if I had to.
Animal and Nix were men. In their eyes Ember had it all. A roof. No one hitting her. I was sure they pictured love.
But I had empathy for a girl who felt alone in a world full of adults making choices for her.
I watched as a light came on in Ember’s room. Her curtains were pulled back, and I felt a pang of empathy when she fell onto her bed crying.
Chapter 42
T
For days I watched her. Absorbing from a distance as she fought with her aunt. Judging from the body language, Aunt Dorothy didn’t have a lot of gumption in her gut. Ember was rebelling, maybe a late start on her teens. Maybe her brother’s alternative lifestyle had started a fire in her.
She had visitors. Jet had come by more than once. Her girlfriends came, and there were promises at the front door to stay in contact while they were away at college.
It’s where Ember should be now. At a college miles and miles away from this. From Nix, from Dorothy. From my prying eyes.
Nix would send me updates on Ember’s cyber searches. It was invasive and creepy, but it was how he maintained his illusion of control.
Nix had baggage—that much was obvious—but we all did. Hell, I was making do in the woods by Ember’s house because I loved a man who wouldn’t love me back in my lifetime. That was its very own season of a reality TV show.
Animal showed up with an earpiece and a listening device. A duffle bag of more clothes and food, too. He looked haunted and stayed to chat for a while. He missed me, I could tell. It messed with my head and my heart.
When night descended at Dorothy’s, I snuck in and installed the device in Ember’s room. Everyone had slept soundly through the break-in.
After I relayed that to Nix, Dorothy conveniently won an alarm system that he could control from his basement. We had both eyes and ears on her now, adding to the previous coverage.
Ember was getting restless, though. Her aunt was mentioning her getting a job at least once a day.
When Ember got the message that changed her world and ours, I had just finished texting Animal to check on Nix. He hadn’t responded to my messages, and usually texting with him was lightning fast. His brain was plugged into his computer and phone.
Ember started screaming, and I blew my cover and took off running.
Chapter 43
Animal
I knew what we did every day was dangerous. Shit, we’d been in enough fights that coming home alive wasn’t a guarantee. But this was too much. I never pictured this.
Overconfident, I guess I was. I figured we’d either kill or be killed. Seeing Nix being tortured rocked my core. Shook my brain. And it made me feel more helpless than I’d ever felt in my life.
The videotext that had come on Ember’s phone depicted Nix strapped to a chair. Electrodes were taped to his head and chest.
He was hit with voltage, and a scream ripped from his mouth that seemingly was sheer reflex.
Then the video cut out.
T’s jaw was tense, and her eyes had a wild gleam to them. She was worried.
I was worried.
“How’s Ember?”
I was trying to think of Nix’s girls because he’d want me to think of them.
“Wardon is with Ember. I have two on Christina and three on Becca.”
“Okay. That’s out of the way. Do we know where this is? Who is doing this?”
I tried to make a clear thought happen. My mind screamed.
T pulled on my forearm and led me to the basement. She went to Nix’s computer and brought up an application. She had the password. While she worked, she informed.
“Nix and I have been following Albany and Breston Pharmaceuticals. Recently, he found a split between the father and brother and Albany. Nix tapped into a warehouse that he thought belonged to her. We talked about it the other day. The place is outside of town, by the river. It has an inordinate amount of cameras.”
She pulled up the feeds that she had, but most of them were dark.
“We need to get Van over here to see if he can get these going. See if we can get a location, at least.”
Van was one of our tech guys. He’d apprenticed under Nix a time or two. Not nearly enough for me to trust him with Nix’s life, but this was what we had to deal with.
I fired off a text demanding that he show up.
“I’ve got to go. I need to leave now.” I didn’t have a plan and was too worried to make one.
“We have to make sure there’s a way to get him out. You both dead helps no one.” T had her hands on my shoulders, the fingers biting into the muscles there.
T forced me to sit in front of the other computer. She pulled up a still shot of Nix taken from Ember’s phone. “Tell me how you would get out of this. Clear your mind. How would you find him? Look at the picture. Look past Nix, see what the room has, what they are doing to him.”
I did look. And my mind crumpled. T was on the phone and typing on two other computers on the opposite side of the room. She was able to put one foot in front of the other.
But to lose Nix. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I knew he was counting on me. Even if he didn’t admit it to himself, his heart was hoping I would know what to do. I was big. I was strong. I fix
ed all his stuff.
T was onto a new conversation, using Google Translate to talk to a foreign person on the phone. It all seemed like a nightmare.
She pointed at my computer, and new video was air dropped in.
Okay. I had to contribute. Panicking like a little old lady wasn’t helping. I looked from the blueprints to the room and back. They had access to water. They were using some sort of mask to drown him almost to death.
I felt the pain in my lungs—sympathy pain. It would hurt so much.
Focus. They had electrodes hooked to his head, his chest. They needed to have a feeder for that. It would be specially wired. Being shocked was inhumane. Horrible.
“Tell us about Havoc?” I played the audio. There was no accent from the inquisitor.
Nix answered with a smirk, “Fuck You in the Asshole with a Cactus.”
They strapped the mask on him again. I raged at the image of the fear in his eyes. He was scared.
I made my hands into fists and slammed them on either side of the computer. I felt her hand on my shoulder, comforting me.
“We’ll get him out. You know we will.”
Sure. She was so sure. She believed in me. Refused to do anything but, actually.
She concluded the two conversations and pulled a chair up next to mine.
“I think we can do it this way. We have to get in. We don’t have time to educate an army. We’ll have them on standby. We have to sneak inside. Do we have some fuses for some timed bombs or explosives? Can you make me some that have a stretch of time on the fuse?”
I faced the blueprints and the picture again. Nix needed me to get him out. That much was for sure.
And I could do it. Implement some of the things that T was suggesting. I could maybe—maybe defeat the men in the room and get him out. I could get Nix out of the compound. The plan clicked in my mind like it had been in there the whole time.
Maybe that’s why I had to come to terms with putting it together. I could get Nix out, but when I saved him, I would be taking his place.
And that’s exactly what I had to do. I turned to this beautiful, badass woman, and I laid out my plan. She listened without judgment. She knew me that well. That I would die to save this man was a given.
I respected her more for not fighting me on it. My T. I started making a few calls of my own. I knew a guy who could get me the fuses T suggested in no time.
All I needed was a Trojan horse to get me in the front door and T in a boat out in the river behind the compound.
I’d come by water, and Nix and T would leave by it. Breston would be thrilled to have me—after I’d killed as many of those pharma heads as I could—that they would drop their interest in Nix long enough for T to get Becca, Ember, her mother, and Merck out of town. Between all of us, we had enough money to live two very lovely lifetimes. I mean, they had enough.
I would not live through the night. T nodded somberly when I told her how it was all going to go down.
The preparations took four hours. Every minute made me angsty. I had to explain to Becca that she needed to be ready to get Nix to the hospital. I had my guy drive her in my fastest car. T double-checked they both had each other’s burner numbers.
If everything went as planned, it would take me about forty-five minutes to walk through the room they were torturing Nix in. He had to make it. I had to believe in his inherent toughness. He’d taken more shit than anyone. His father had prepped him his whole childhood to handle pain.
T and I set up everything we needed. I made sure she knew where my Will was. Where my hidden funds were. The closer we got to go time, I was ready. I wanted to save my boy. I texted the attackers on Ember’s phone, after they would not pick up a phone call.
Me: I need proof of life.
I wasn’t sure they would comply. They weren’t asking for a ransom. Yet. Which was good. They’d need him alive to ask for that. Unless the entire reason they took him was to break me. They were already succeeding there.
As T and I made our final choices in the weapons room in the basement, I saw my man. The video had a man in a hazmat suit holding up an iPad with the time prominently displayed.
It was current. Nix was bruised and battered. Alive, but hanging from rubber chains. The video bounced around on purpose. I was still taking notes mentally of what I would face when I got there.
My first thought was that we were being attacked when I felt the needle slide into my neck. I swatted at it and turned. The only thing that stopped me from throwing a punch was T’s determined face. She was just finishing up pressing the plunger and pulled out the syringe.
She helped me to the floor as best she could, but I was a lot of man at the whims of gravity.
She was taking me out of the picture. As she handcuffed me, I tried to talk, but I knew the fast-acting bullshit we kept in those needles had already started their process.
I was a hostage in my body and in Nix’s house.
I wanted to holler at her. That she was going to get killed. That she was going to get Nix killed.
But she already knew that. She didn’t need my words. I watched her through a hazy focus as she pressed a kiss to my lips.
No speech. No hype up. My T was low-key going out on my suicide mission.
She threw a sniper rifle over her shoulder and walked out the door.
Then I fell into the deepest sleep of my life, filled with concern.
Chapter 44
Nix
These bastards were better than the average assholes I’d dealt with in the past. They were intelligent. They had thought about the ways I could get out of their grasp. I was still working on an exit plan, but the small cement room that I was being held in was windowless. I was hanging from the ceiling. They had thick rubber worked into a chain. These chains were around my wrists in such an elaborate way, my double-jointed fingers were no use.
They were using electricity and water alternately as the method of torture. They knew what they were doing on a molecular level. These fuckers were industrial.
I was coming to terms that I wasn’t going to make it out of here. They wanted me to flip on Animal. Turn on Animal.
Not in a million years.
Not even for Becca.
I’d been in a ton of shitty situations in my life, and I’d gotten out of all of them pretty much on my own.
I was under my bed watching when my father killed my mother when I was a child. I’d been captured on purpose as an adult and had to get out of that, too. It made me think—obviously erroneously. They were going for the water again.
The system for drowning me looked very similar to an oxygen mask, but did the exact opposite.
My shoulders were stretched way past the point of use. The muscles were like warm taffy. I realized that they were having trouble getting the water mask on me because I was heaving out groans. The pain was incredible. Tears were sliding down my face and insultingly going up my nose when I sucked in precious oxygen. I was being gluttonous with the air because soon it would be gone. Getting any extra moisture up my nose pissed me off.
I wondered where Animal was. I knew Ember was safe with him. I had to believe that. And that he would get her far away.
The men were in white zip-up jumpsuits, like I was hazardous waste. They were the kind of professionals who knew exactly how to kill a man because they read it in a textbook and performed it on cadavers before ever implementing the torture on a living person.
There was a knock on the door.
I watched as the tallest of the four pulled off his safety glasses. “What’s this?”
He met the gaze of all the others in the room. Everyone shrugged.
The tall one hit the intercom on the wall, but there was no response.
The soft knock sounded again. The shorter man walked over and looked through the peephole. “It’s a chick.”
I kept my eyes on the tallest one. He had the contraption it took to get my arms out of the elaborate rubber chains that were hanging
me from the ceiling. Just the tips of my toes were touching the cement floor.
The shorter one swung open the latch and pushed open the lock.
The door swung out, and the girl was admitted. I tried to get my eyes to focus on her. I fully expected it to be Albany, Animal’s nemesis.
The black heels were ankle cracking-ly tall. The legs were nice. The black dress was painted on. Her face was classically stunning, the makeup obviously professionally applied. Her hair was swept up off the back of her neck. I looked at the face for a few beats before I placed her. I made sure not to show my surprise.
T.
T looked like a mix of a model and royalty. She had a thick silver band as a necklace and a matching one on her wrist.
“I’m sorry? I think I came into the wrong room? I was with Mr. Feybi and just wanted to pop into the powder room.”
She put one hand out, fingers in the air like she was offended by the obvious stench and sweat in the small room.
“You went the wrong way, gorgeous. Or maybe the right way. Feybi treating you right?”
My captors were smart, but they were still thugs and assholes.
T put her other hand on her chest, emphasizing her cleavage with her deep breaths.
I was slapped across the face and admonished. “Don’t look at the lady, you freak.”
“Is everything okay? Is he all right?” T playing dumb.
“He’s one of the bad guys. He’s done evil things. To children. And pregnant women. The worst of the worst. Deserves everything he’s gotten and more.”
“I feel so safe knowing you guys are here taking care of this kind of thing. Thank you.”
I glanced up. I wasn’t sure what the hell she was planning on. She wasn’t armed, and I didn’t see Animal.
I trusted her. I didn’t doubt she was completely on my side. She needed me to be at the top of my game, and I was as close to dead as I’d ever been. I didn’t even know if I could use my arms.
I swallowed the gag of sadness that hit me. Thinking of Becca, that we’d had so little time together. Thinking of Animal. He would take the loss deeply. Of me. Ember as well. What T was doing, I wasn’t sure.
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