by Brent Towns
Kane walked off, and Ferrero filled his void. “Is everything OK, Mary?”
“It will be,” she said abruptly. “Listen, Luis, take over. I’m going to Washington to have a chat to Hank. Fill him in on what we know. I’ll be back the day after tomorrow.”
“Sure, no problems.”
“And keep an eye on Kane. I know he’s pissed about this. We all are, but I don’t want him doing something stupid. Again.”
“I’ll keep an eye on him.”
“Thank you.”
Black Shield Industries
Washington DC
A cell phone rang on the hardwood desk of a large office and was picked up by a man wearing an Armani suit.
“Yes?”
“It’s done.”
“Are they going to be a problem?”
“Maybe.”
“We’ll have to keep an eye on them. If there’s a problem, we’ll have to take care of it.”
“Exactly.”
Pentagon, Washington DC
The next day
“You were told to leave this alone, Mary,” General Hank Jones, chairman of the Joint Chiefs growled in his deep voice.
Thurston stared at Jones. He was a big man in his late sixties. He reminded her of the former general, Norman Schwarzkopf. His office was a traditional wood-paneled affair with a small American flag on a staff in the right rear corner next to a large window.
“What I’m telling you is what my people found out before Horn and his team came banging on our door.”
Jones raised his eyebrows. “Horn was there?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then this is serious.”
“Yes, sir. I’m just worried that Kane might have pushed him too far. Do you know who the order came from about us handing over what we had?”
“It came from the vice-president.”
“Do you think he’s involved?”
“I don’t know. I’ll look into it on the quiet.”
“Be careful, General. I don’t like this at all.”
Chapter 3
The Sunshine Club
Los Angeles, California
The bass beat seemed to pound through the skulls of the dancers; it was so loud. More than half of them were in a drug-induced fugue as they jumped up and down with the music. The heat in the room was almost unbearable, resulting in the majority of dancers, men and women, discarding their outer garments.
Sweat-lathered bodies glistened under the strobe lights while the DJ turned the volume up another notch.
Remy Burton breasted the bar and took a bottle of water offered to her by the young man on the other side. He leaned forward and shouted to be heard, “Looking good tonight, Remy!”
She looked down impulsively at her sweat-sheened body. She was lithe, toned, her stomach muscles well-defined. Her round breasts were held up by a white bikini top while her lower parts were covered by tight, denim cutoffs.
Remy was in her mid-twenties, her long dark hair tied back in a ponytail that hung down her back. She smiled at the guy behind the bar and leaned across and grasped his T-shirt. She pulled him close and kissed him on the lips. His parted and her tongue darted fleetingly inside his mouth. He drew back and said, “Hey, I’m working here.”
She smiled seductively and said, “I’ll see you when you’re finished, Tom?”
“You bet. You want something other than water?”
“Sure. Give me a beer.”
Tom came back with her beer and took the money she offered. Remy took a sip and placed it back on the bar.
“Hey, bitch, we’ve been looking for you everywhere!”
Remy turned to see Lara and Beth smiling at her. “Where have you been?” Remy shouted above the noise of the quickened bass.
“What?” Lara yelled.
“I said, where have you been?”
They shook their heads and signaled her to follow them. Remy started to but remembered her beer. She turned back and scooped it off the bar, then followed her friends. They found a table surrounded by low chairs in a secluded corner and sat down. With two hefty swigs, Remy rid herself of the beer.
They sat and talked, or rather yelled at each other for the next five or so minutes. They were soon approached by a young man dressed in white pants and a white singlet top. He sat down and shouted, “Hello!”
The three girls stared at him and giggled.
“What is so funny?” he asked with the hint of an accent.
Remy leaned forward. “You look like Don Johnson.”
Remy’s friends giggled some more because he actually did look like the eighties’ television star.
“Who is Don Johnson?” he asked.
“Miami Vice?”
The young man gave her a blank expression.
Remy took out her I-Phone and tapped the screen. After a couple of moments, she turned it around and showed him who Don Johnson was.
“That is Don Johnson?”
“Yes.”
“I must be very good looking then.”
This brought forth more chuckles.
“Let me buy you all a drink,” he said.
Remy shook her head. “No, thanks.”
“Come on, Remy. Another one won’t hurt,” Lara urged her. Then she looked at the young man and asked, “What’s your name?”
“Dominik.”
“We’ll all have a drink, Dominik,” Lara said. “It can’t hurt.”
Remy didn’t notice the increased temperature at first. She just thought it was the heat from the crush of bodies on the dance floor. But when she sat down, it didn’t stop. In fact, her temperature seemed to increase. She swallowed a bottle of water in two gulps. However, it wasn’t enough, and she wanted more.
“Are you OK?” Beth asked her friend.
“I don’t know. I’m so hot. I want some more water.”
“I’ll get it,” Dominik told her.
“It’s OK. I’ll …” Remy tried to stand but felt faint and sat back down.
“Stay here,” Dominik told her.
Remy started to shake. Not much at first, then it grew in intensity until she was having a full-blown seizure.
“Remy!” Beth screamed. “Remy!”
Her eyes rolled back into her head, leaving only the whites visible and she lost consciousness. Lara jumped to her feet and screamed, “Help us! Somebody, help us!”
The music was too loud. Nobody came. Not even Dominik.
Ten minutes later, Remy Burton was dead.
Team Reaper HQ
El Paso Texas
Thurston replaced the phone handset as though it were made of fragile glass and let her hand linger on it while she processed what she’d just been told. Dread filled her heart at the thought of what she had to do. But before she did, she picked the phone up and punched in a memorized number.
The general waited and then said, “Come into my office for a moment.”
A few minutes later the door opened, and Kane walked in.
“Close the door,” she said to him.
He did so and stood at ease in front of her desk. “What’s up?”
“I just got off the phone to a detective in the LAPD. Did you know Axe had a sister?”
“Sure. He never talks about her though. Keeps his family stuff to himself. His parents are dead. Been so for a while now.” Kane frowned. “Has something happened to her?”
Thurston nodded. “She was DOA at UCLA Medical Center last night.”
The shock registered on Kane’s face. “Christ, what happened?”
“Bad reaction to MDMA.”
“Drugs? Really?”
“That’s what the detective said.”
“Axe is going to crack. He despises drugs and to hear that his sister died of an overdose, that’s going to near enough kill him.”
“I was hoping you’d be there when I tell him. You being his friend.”
Kane nodded. “I can tell him if you like. Might be better coming from me.”
Thur
ston shook her head. “No. I’m his commander. I’ll do it.”
They left the office and found Axe in the team’s makeshift gym. He was stripped down to his shorts, lifting weights. His muscles rippled each time he moved. Watching them enter, he said jokingly, “You all come to see how a real man does it?”
He gave them a broad smile which disappeared as soon as the grin wasn’t returned. “What’s up?” he asked.
Thurston’s pained expression just added to his angst. “Come on, guys, it can’t be that bad.”
But it was.
UCLA Medical Center
Los Angeles
The lift to the second floor seemed to take the longest time. The presence of the detective made the ride ten times worse.
Kane and Axe stood at the back of the elevator, their mood a somber one. On the other side of Axe stood Cara. Beside the detective was Thurston.
The elevator stopped, and the doors slid open. Everyone except Axe stepped out into the sterile-smelling hall. He hesitated. Maybe he thought that if he didn’t see Remy, it would be less real, not true.
“Axe,” Kane said in a soft voice.
“Hmmm?”
“It’s time to go, dude.”
With tears in his eyes, Axe looked at his friend. “I don’t know if I can, Reaper.”
Kane stepped back onto the lift and pressed the button for the top floor. The others watched as the doors closed, and they disappeared.
“Where are they going?” the detective asked.
Thurston said, “Give them some time. They’ll be back.
The lift went halfway between floors before Kane hit the stop button. Then he and Axe sat on the floor of the elevator and talked about nothing particular. Just shooting the shit. About the Corps, different ops they’d been on, friends they’d lost along the way. Eventually, the conversation came around to Remy.
“I can’t believe she’s gone, man,” Axe said. “Not this way. Remy didn’t do drugs. Sure, she liked to have a drink every now and then. Who doesn’t? But not drugs. I won’t believe it.”
Axe talked some more about her while Kane listened. Of times when they were growing up when their parents had died. One from cancer, the other had had a stroke. It had been Remy who’d moved in with them to take care of them both. Axe had been on deployment. Hell, he was always on deployment back then.
The big man went silent, and Kane said, “You ready, buddy?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
Kane started the elevator again, and they went back to the second floor. When they stepped off, they found the others still there waiting for them. “We all good?” Thurston asked.
Kane nodded.
Cara looped her arm through Axe’s and held him close as they took the journey toward the morgue together. Once there, the attendant already had Remy laid out for identification. Axe had seen dead people before, some in the most horrible, disfigured ways possible, but none of them had been his sister.
When Remy was covered back up, Axe’s gaze settled on the detective. “What are you doing about this?”
The detective, whose name was Rogers said, “What do you mean?”
“My sister didn’t do drugs.”
“That’s what her friends said,” he allowed.
“So, how did it get into her system?”
“We think her drink was spiked.”
“By who?”
“We’re not sure. We think it was by a young man she met at The Sunshine Club.”
“You think?”
Rogers moved uncomfortably. “We haven’t been able to locate him for questioning.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Axe hissed. He turned to Thurston. “Ma’am, request permission for leave?”
“If it’s for what I think it’s for, Axel, then no.”
Axe wasn’t about to let it go. “This is what we do, ma’am. We find the bad guys with the drugs and put them down.”
“No.”
“I just want to talk to her friends is all.”
“I can go with him, ma’am,” Kane put in.
“Me too,” said Cara.
“We’ll all go,” Thurston stated after giving it some thought.
“I hope you all aren’t about to interfere in an ongoing police investigation?” Rogers protested.
Thurston took out her identification and showed him. “See this? It’s what gives me the authority to do just that.”
“What the hell is The Worldwide Drug Initiative?”
“That’s us,” Thurston informed him.
“And what is it you do exactly?”
Cara stared at him without blinking. “We kill bad guys.”
Culver City
Lara and Beth lived on the bottom floor of a three-story brick apartment block in Culver City. It was after dark when the four team members arrived and knocked on the door. Lara was the one who opened it, and her shock was evident when she saw Axe and the others standing before her.
“Axel …I …I’m so, so sorry,” she said and then fell apart.
The big man took her slight frame in his arms and held her. In the entryway, Beth appeared. “Axel? Is that you?”
Then he was holding two young women in his bear of an embrace.
After a minute or so, he said in a soft voice, “Can we come in please, girls?”
They stepped back, wiped at their eyes, and then nodded, admitting the team to their small but comfortable apartment.
Axe introduced everybody once they were inside. After that was done, he said, “We need to know about what happened.”
“Are you going to try and figure out why Remy is dead?”
Nodding, Axe said, “Maybe.”
“She never took drugs, Axel,” Lara said adamantly. “There’s no way in hell she’d knowingly do so. It’s my fault.”
“Whoa,” said Axe. “Where’s this coming from?”
“A guy offered to buy us all drinks. Remy didn’t want one. I told her it couldn’t …hurt.”
“That’s not your fault,” Cara said. “You weren’t to know her drink was going to get spiked. It could have been any one of you.”
“She’s right,” Thurston added. “The only one to blame in all of this is the one who did it.”
Lara lost it again, and Thurston moved in beside her as a mother would try to comfort her daughter.
“Who was the guy that bought the drinks?” Axe asked Beth.
“He said his name was Dominik.”
“Have you ever seen him before?” Kane asked.
Beth shook her head. “No. I don’t even think he was American?”
Kane glanced at Cara. The latter asked, “Why do you think that?”
“He had no idea who Don Johnson was or Miami Vice when we joked about what he was wearing.”
“Do they have CCTV at the club you were at?”
“I think so. Tom would know.”
“Who’s Tom?” Axe asked.
Lara looked up at him. “He’s Remy’s part-time boyfriend.”
The big man was confused. “Part-time? I didn’t know she was seeing anyone.”
“It was an on again, off again type of relationship. But lately, it was more on than off.”
A picture on the far wall caught Axe’s eye. He walked across to it and stared. The photo showed Lara, Beth, and Remy, arms across each other’s shoulders. The three amigos. She …they all looked so happy.
“That was taken down in Baja last year,” Beth told him. “We had such a great time.”
He remembered the first time he’d taken Remy down there after both of their parents were gone. It was like a giant release for his sister and because he’d been away so much, a getting to know you again trip for Axe.
Truth be told, it was the greatest week of his life. He’d learned so much about her, and now she was gone. It wasn’t fair. He turned to face Beth. “Can you do me a favor?”
“Sure.”
“Can you and Lara pack up all of Remy’s stuff for me?”
“Don�
�t you want to do it? What about stuff that you want to keep?”
“Just box it up, and I can look through it later.”
“OK. But what about her service. When will that be?”
Oh shit! He had no idea. “I’ll let you know.” His gaze turned to Thurston who saw the look of utter fear etched on his face. It was all starting to sink in. He could fight men who wanted to kill him in hand-to-hand combat and not flinch. But he had no idea how to deal with this. The general gave him a knowing nod.
Axe cleared his throat. “Can I use your bathroom?”
“Sure, it’s through there,” Beth told him.
Axe disappeared, and Kane caught Thurston’s eye. She nodded, and he and Cara walked toward the front door.
“Where you going, buddy?” Kane asked a startled Axe as he appeared around the side of the building.
“Fuck, Reaper, you just about gave me a damned heart attack,” Axe gasped.
“You didn’t answer the question. Where?”
A car flashed past under the orange lights on the street. The night was cool, yet Axe was sweating. He was angry and needed someone to blame for the death of his sister. The only way to do that was to find the young man named Dominik. He said, “I’m going to the club.”
Kane shook his head. “Bad idea. The general only agreed to come and talk to the girls. Not to go off chasing after our tails.”
“I don’t care. I need to find this fucker who’s responsible for Remy’s death.”
“You can’t do it this way, Axe,” Cara said to him. “Not running off on your own.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“But that’s not what the team is about,” said Thurston, adding her voice to the conversation. “So, you either do like I say, or you’re out.”
Anger flashed through Axe at the ultimatum. “Then what do you suggest …ma’am?”
“You, Kane, and Cara go to the club and see if you can look at the CCTV. I’m going to get things moving with your sister’s service.”
Axe’s jaw dropped. “Ma’am …”
“It’s fine. I can do it. I really don’t mind, but I may need you to answer any questions which arise.”
