As the SUV pulls away, the tail end flashes on the screen. “Can we get the license plate?” I ask, squinting to get a better look.
Tommy points to the screen. “There,” he says. “We got a partial.” Then he calls it into dispatch at the Thornbriar PD. Every officer in the county will have eyes out for that vehicle, which is great, but I hate waiting. I feel like an asshole just sitting around doing nothing when that man has my woman. But our hands are tied right now.
Before we leave, I shoot Chaos a text letting him know Tommy and I have a partial lead and for him to put the brothers on call. I’ll text when I know more. There are times when having my brothers at my back to make a statement is beneficial to the situation. Then there are times like today when going in with rumbling tailpipes will do nothing more than alert the enemy that we’re closing in. Men act crazy out of desperation. If Escalante gets desperate, I don’t want my woman in the crosshairs.
Just from the description of the vehicle and the partial, we find out that it’s a rental car through Enterprise Rentals. The closest one is a county over in Bell County. Tommy puts a call into the Bell County Sheriff’s Department before we take off, heading to his cruiser. They’re putting eyes out for the Escalade, too.
This is when it’s good to have a cop for a friend. We make the drive faster than I would’ve been able to on my own. Lights blazing but with no siren, we fly down the highway.
A cop and a biker walk into a rental agency. It sounds like the beginning to one of Boss’s cheesy jokes. But hey, they won him Elise, so maybe the man’s onto something. There’s a woman behind the desk. She looks up when the bell rings and I notice right away she stands a little straighter, plumps her chest out, rests her body weight on one hip, and lowers her lashes in a move that I’m sure works on a lot of men, just not me or Tommy. She doesn’t even notice the rings we’re both wearing.
“What can I help you boys with today?” the woman asks, biting on her bottom lip. “We’ve got a lot of nice cars to choose from.” She glances between me and Tommy, almost as if she’s waiting for her opening by seeing which one of us answers first. At this point, I don’t even think she cares, so long as her night ends with one of us moving inside her. Sorry, babe. Not my type. Hannah’s the only woman I’ve been with for the last seven years and I don’t plan on breaking that streak anytime soon.
“I need information on a black Cadillac Escalade we believe to be rented from this location,” Tommy says. He slides over his badge and credentials, and as she reaches for them, she glides her finger over his hand. Tommy’s the target.
“Yes, right away,” she says, breathily, but she begins typing. The woman knows her job. Her fingers move with lightning quickness across the keyboard. She doesn’t even wait for us to give her the partial license plate.
“What all do you need?” she asks.
“Who was it rented to? We believe he might be in trouble,” Tommy replies. She gives us the name and address of a Dennis Uribe. That’s too easy.
“Can I help you with anything else?” She glides her finger over Tommy’s hand a second time when giving him back his credentials.
“No, ma’am. You’ve been helpful.” As Tommy picks up his wallet, he makes sure to use his left hand, flashing his wedding ring, and the woman’s pretty face falls. She looks to me, hopeful, but I have to shut her down too by telling her that by helping with this investigation, she’s helping me find my wife.
On the way out to the cruiser, I phone Hero. “Brother. Need anything you can find on Dennis Uribe. Bell County.” Then I read him off the address. “Name came up. It all seems too easy.”
“Firing up my laptop now,” he answers.
“You back at the compound?”
“Took Brin home. I was in the kitchen, now I’m in the office. I’ll call as soon as I get anything.”
“Thanks, brother.”
An hour out of our way, an hour we don’t have to waste, wasted. Why? Because Dennis Uribe’s address isn’t a home. It’s a dilapidated barn in the middle of nowhere. And it’s abandoned. Fuck. I knew this was too easy. He used a fake I.D. to rent the car. I pound the dashboard out of frustration then grip my head. It’s that or break something. God knows if Dennis Uribe even exists. Our only lead is a goddamn dead end.
Tommy puts a call into BCSD to see if they’ve had any luck locating the truck. That’s when my phone rings.
Hero.
“What you got?” I ask.
“Here’s the thing, not much out there on Dennis Uribe. But I found mention of the movements in the area of a guy named Moreno on a few dark web chats.”
“And how does that help?”
“After more digging, I found out Moreno is Dennis Uribe Moreno.”
Shit.
“What now?” I’m pissed and worried, but getting excited. “How does he relate to Escalante?”
“Moreno is the nephew of one Eduardo Juárez.”
Juárez? Like that doesn’t raise eyebrows. He’s a known associate of Escalante. “There it is,” I reply.
“Juárez has an estate in Bell County, man.”
“Give it to me,” I order. Finding out the man put down roots in Kentucky sickens me. His is the last kind of trouble we need around here.
We type the address of Eduardo Juárez into GPS on his cruiser and follow it the hour and a half until we reach a large estate. When I say large, I mean the paved drive runs at least a half an acre before it reaches the three-story blond brick home. Expensive wood trim. Several barns and stables on the property, all painted burgundy.
We stop at the front gate, ornately decorated with wrought-iron leaves and flowers painted gold. The gate is connected to a large twelve-foot wrought-iron fence that seems to go around the entirety of the property.
Tommy’s constricted by the law. He makes a call to the Bell County Sheriff’s Department. I have no such restrictions. We move past the entrance because there are cameras at the gate, which means there are others where we can’t see. And when he stops, I slip out. He keeps going, pulling a three-point U-turn, and heads back to where he’s going to meet the Bell County Sheriff.
I climb the wrought-iron fencing. The rough metal burns my hands, but they’re so callused that it won’t do much damage. I twist to flip my legs over the pointed arrows the way a pole vaulter flips over the bar, only with much less finesse, and drop down inside on the property.
There’s an expansive field between the fence and the house that I have to get through. Sneak’s our man when we need to go in and not be seen. I’m usually the man sniffing out the trails, but today I’ll do my best to not be seen.
Something’s not right; I feel it in my gut. Stooping low, I make for the treeline that surrounds the field. The new path takes me out of the way, but it’s the only way I can think of to get me to the house without being seen, considering the size of this property. I don’t know what I’m dealing with, and I’m going in alone.
The first thing I come up to is an entrance off the back of one of the horse stables. They’re expensive, good quality. Somebody certainly likes burgundy and gold. They’ve used enough of it around the property. I check the doorknob, turning it slowly to make as little noise as possible. When it pops, and the door creaks open, I sneak inside. What anyone expects to see in a stable is horses. Not here. The stalls are much smaller, and from looking at the debris left over—trays with crusting food, utensils, and torn clothing—I realize that people were kept in here.
Fuck me.
Trafficking? Right under our fucking noses.
I check each stall to make sure they’re all empty. It looks like the place was recently liquidated—goddammit.
From there, I leave out the back of the stable and make my way to the four others located on the property. They’ve all been liquidated. I need to get inside that house. At the rear of the home, I find what I’m looking for. The French doors off a massive stone patio surrounded by a lagoon swimming pool and waterfall provide the perfect entry spot. I use a lockpick that I
pull from my back pocket—yeah, I keep one on me at all times; you never know when it might come in handy—and go at the back door, letting myself inside.
Somebody lives here, but there’s no one home. No alarm for me to disarm. Which is odd because you’d at least expect to see some sort of servant, some sort of life happening.
I search the first floor until I find a locked door. Picking that lock, I walk into an office. Sitting on the desk in front of a stained-glass window, a computer. Right. These are usually passcode protected. To not leave any fingerprints of my own, I use my sleeve to turn the machine on. And just as I feared, a passcode prompt pops up.
Think. Think. An idea comes to me and I run from the office checking for some kind of supply closet where cleaning supplies are kept. In the back of the home I find exactly what I’m looking for. One shelf holds cleaning supplies. Another holds small open bins. And yet another holds trays. I dump out each bin and tray frantically searching for superglue. Everyone has superglue in their house somewhere. The last tray has several glue products, including superglue.
I grab a spray bottle containing some sort of blue cleaning product and run back to the kitchen. There, I dump the blue liquid out and fill the bottle with maybe a half an inch of water. Then I cut off the superglue tip and squeeze it into the water. The water keeps the glue from drying too quickly. From there, I run back into the office and mist the keypad with the water-glue mixture. Then I pick up the keyboard and walk to one of the regular windows. I spend the next five minutes attempting to find the correct angle to hopefully see any fingerprints the glue might have stuck to. It’s always a long shot, but it’s what I have to work with.
Paydirt. The passcode is four numbers, but there appear to be five highlighted by the glue. It might not mean these are the passcode numbers, but they’re the numbers most touched. I shoot a little prayer to the universe and type in the first combination. It doesn’t work.
I try a second combination. Again, nothing. But an alert pops up on the screen. One try left. If I don’t get it right this time, I’m screwed. I take a deep breath, let it out slowly and type the final combination—what I hope to all that’s holy is the correct combination. To my utter shock, a screen pops up. I click on the desktop’s email icon, opening up his emails to see he’s been in contact with not only a man who goes by the name Sanchez, but C. Escalante, himself. Short messages like: Shipment sent. Car procured. Plane waiting.
Shipment sent? Could that mean Hannah or the people imprisoned here? Plane waiting? That means he must have an airport close by.
Without the time to read them all, I print off the emails to read later. They might contain useful information. Then I close the computer down and get the hell out of there. I take the same route along the treeline back to the fence, where I climb over and wait on the public side for Tommy to pick me up. He doesn’t make me wait long. As I slide inside the cruiser, I shove the papers his way.
“Fuck me,” Tommy says, running a hand through his short-cropped hair as he reads the printouts. Yeah, this shit just got real, and it’d already been fucking real.
The private airfield has to be close. We just have to find it.
As we’re rolling away the Bell County Sheriff’s Department shows up. Tommy’s obligated to stop and fill them in on what’s been happening in their county, what we’ve found, well, except for the illegal parts. I suppose they have to get a warrant to search the place. Tommy and I leave that portion in their capable hands, taking off to search out an airstrip.
Another fifteen minutes of searching the surrounding property passes before we roll up on what looks to be the landing field.
Tommy and I go in lights and siren blazing. While he makes it look official, I slip from the vehicle, hoping to go in unseen. She’s already gone. There’s no plane in the open hangar, though Eduardo Juarez left a man in the air traffic control tower and as quiet as I can, hopefully with his eyes on Tommy, I slip inside.
One man in the tower stands between me and finding out where they’re taking my woman. If he doesn’t tell me what I need to know, he’ll damn well be wishing they’d left him backup. I pull my switchblade, flipping it open, and before he even knows what’s hit him, I’ve got the steel pressed against his throat, the blade so sharp, it’s already cutting through the skin.
“Fucking tell me what I need to know or die right here.” I’m not messing around.
The man stutters, “Wha-Wha-What do you need to know?” I can smell his fear.
“Who was on that plane, and where the fuck is it headed?”
“L-Logs,” he stutters. “It’s all there.” Stupid me, I think from all his stuttering and tears rolling down his face that I’m gonna give him a chance. I should’ve known better. The moment I drop my hand and the knife from his throat, the stupid fuck has the idea, the audacity, to try to attack me.
I put a stop to that real quick by capturing his wrist to twist his arm unnaturally behind his back. Then flipping around, I take him by surprise, gripping the back of his neck and slamming his head face-first into the desk. The first crack doesn’t knock him out, but the second one does. There’s blood everywhere. My boots are a mess, dammit.
Before leaving, I check his pulse to make sure I didn’t kill the bastard, then snap off pictures of the logbook with my phone, hoping that when this guy eventually wakes up, he doesn’t remember a goddamn thing. And then I make my way down to Tommy.
We know where he’s heading now. The club has to call in reinforcements again because Escalante’s on the way to Texas, and from there, probably Mexico. I call Duke.
“Brother, where the fuck are you?” Duke screams into the line instead of answering.
“Tommy and I had a lead and we had to follow it. Was in touch with Chaos and Hero--this shit is bad, man. It’s bad.”
“How bad?” Duke asks.
“Trafficking. Right under our goddamn noses. He got Hannah—headed for Texas.”
“The Outcasts’re at the clubhouse; I’m hangin’ up. Callin’ Mad Man. See what he can do. He’s got to have connections.”
I don’t even say goodbye, just take off. Hannah has one shot. If we don’t get her this time, she’s most likely gone for good. Forever. And I will not accept that.
Tommy speeds back to Thornbriar. The whole way, I’m getting updates from the brothers while Tommy tries to get us back to the clubhouse as fast as possible. Before we reach the compound, though, we reroute. They’ve made arrangements for us to fly out at another airfield.
My brothers are already there when Tommy and I roll up. This is as far as he can go. As the brothers load onto the plane, Boss stops me, face serious. “We got more brothers movin’ out tonight along with the Outcasts. They’re meetin’ us soon as they can. Gonna get her back, brother. We’re gonna get her back.”
We sure as hell are because there is no other option. We get my wife back or I die trying.
The flight takes a couple hours and again it feels like I’m sitting around with my thumb shoved up my ass. I hate waiting. I especially hate waiting now. What the hell am I supposed to do, though? Feeling useless sucks.
Once we land, we’re met by the Outcasts, the Police and the FBI.
They forced a landing before Escalante’s plane could make it out of US airspace crossing over into Mexico. But by the time officers reached the plane, the pilot was dead with a bullet to his brain and Hannah was nowhere to be seen.
15.
Hannah
Oh, God. My head feels like it’s been set on fire, then run over by a cement truck, and then, I don’t know, crushed on a railway track under a train car, kind of all jumbled together.
I find it hard to even open my eyes. For a moment, I don’t remember anything until I do. When I open my eyes, I have to shield them from the bright sun shining down on me—not doing a thing to help my headache. It’s warm—blisteringly, blazingly warm. And I know in an instant I’m back in Texas. I’m a Texas girl born and bred; I’d know Texas sun anywhere.
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We’ve already landed, and I’m sitting in the back of the car. The windows are tinted—well, the back ones are to keep the sun from shining in, but not to disguise anything. Which means I’m on Escalante’s home ground, where he doesn’t have to fear anyone or anything. Not the police. Not the Lords.
My door is ripped open by a massively large, brutish man, startling me. This is not the henchman who originally took me. This man looks angry and mean and hateful all rolled into one. He rips me from the car. He’s a soldier or at least dressed like one, wearing cargo pants and a T-shirt and boots—all gray. Escalante’s signature color for his staff with the exception of the driver of the car in Kentucky.
The man is heavily armed with some kind of automatic rifle, and a belt where he carries his grenades—yeah, grenades on a belt. Who carries grenades on a belt?
He doesn’t march me to the main house, he marches me out back to what looks like a horse stable. Inside the stable there’s a thick wall of plexiglass covering the opening to each of the stalls. Inside each stall is a young woman. They cringe and shrink into the corners as he passes. Even seeing me, they look fearful, which means he’s probably the man who takes them and leads them to wherever they’re being sold to. I’d bet my life on it.
At the end of the stable, he unlocks one of the walls of glass and shoves me inside. I fall down face-first into hay or straw, I don’t really know, using my hands to brace myself.
He waits, staring down at me, as if he’s waiting to see me cry. He’s not going to see me cry. I refuse to cry for him. After waiting a few beats, maybe three, and he doesn’t get the reaction that he wants, he glares his beady eyes at me and then turns away abruptly but not before locking the glass again. I think I just made an enemy.
The stalls remain silent until he leaves out the door that we came in through. Once it clicks shut, there’s a collective sigh. All of the women collectively let loose the breaths they’d been holding. Then I hear the whimpers, the cries. These women are petrified.
Blood Revealed (Brimstone Lords MC Book 6) Page 20
