Jesse ignored his question. ‘I saw them take Evan away. In a van. I tried to stop them.’
Angel gave him a look that told him exactly how much of that he believed. ‘Yeah, right,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t lift a finger to help someone else as long as you’ve got a hole in your ass.’
Jesse gawped at him,
‘I don’t suppose you got the license number,’ Angel carried on.
Jesse stopped gawping and gave him a smug little smile. ‘Then you suppose wrong. Got a pencil, Detective?’
Angel vowed one day he’d find a justifiable reason to bury his fist into Jesse’s face up to the elbow.
***
‘THE VAN’S REGISTERED TO Tony’s Moving and Storage out near the airport,’ Angel said when he got off the phone.
‘Tony, as in Tony D’Amato?’ Destiny said.
He nodded. ‘Looks like it.’
‘Maybe that’s where they’ve got Gina too.’
Or what’s left of her.
He saw the hope in her face. ‘There’s a good chance.’ He knew it wasn’t true, but didn’t want to upset her further. It would have been too easy. Life didn’t work like that. Not his life, anyway. He put a hand on her arm. ‘Go home. You’ve done everything you can. I’ll ring you later.’
She tensed against his hand. ‘I’m coming with you—’
He shook his head. ‘No, you’re not. It’s too dangerous.’
‘But—’
‘If you want to do something useful—’
She nodded.
‘—take that idiot with you,’ he said looking over at where Jesse was standing. ‘Keep him out of my way.’
She pulled a face. ‘Take him home? I’d rather take my chances with the bad guys.’
He smiled. ‘Home. A hotel. Back to the airport.’ He looked at Jesse again and tried not to think about all the trouble he’d caused. ‘I don’t care. I’ll leave it up to you.’
‘Call me as soon as you find them,’ she called out to his back as he walked away. Suddenly she realized he couldn’t call her—she didn’t have her phone. She ran after him calling his name. He heard her and turned around, a smile splitting his face.
‘I know, I know, I forgot to kiss you goodbye.’
‘In your dreams,’ she said, her grin beating his by a country mile. He was closer to the truth than he realized. ‘I haven’t got my phone. Take his number’—she gestured towards Jesse—‘and give him yours just in case.’
Angel wiped all traces of the smile off his face before he called Jesse over and put his number in his phone. ‘So I don’t forget, I’m putting this in as a-s-s-h-o-l-e,’ he said, tapping it out.
‘Good idea,’ Jesse said. ‘I’m putting yours in as n-a-z-i.’
Angel stepped closer to him and put his face right in Jesse’s.
‘You better pray Gina’s okay,’ he spat, ‘or I’ll show you what a bunch of amateurs the Nazis really were.’
Chapter 60
EDDY PARKED THE VAN at the back of Tony’s Moving and Storage warehouse and switched the ignition off. The place was deserted as you’d expect at this time of night.
‘What now?’ Jimmy said. His voice was strained and he held his arm close to his body. ‘I need to get to a hospital.’
Eddy’s reply was drowned out by the roar of a jet coming in to land at the airport half a mile away. The whole van shook and rattled as it passed overhead.
‘What was that?’
‘We wait for Tony.’
Jimmy let out a long exhale. ‘I thought you had a key.’
‘I do but Tony said to wait for him.’
‘Things have changed. I gotta get this arm looked at.’
Eddy looked at his arm. It didn’t look too bad to him. Okay, his wrists were grazed and bleeding where Jesse had stamped on them and his thumb had swollen up from the kick that had bent it back on itself.
‘It’s my elbow, dummy,’ Jimmy said. ‘He broke my elbow.’
Eddy looked again. It was sitting at a pretty strange angle, now he mentioned it. ‘He busted my nose too.’
Jimmy didn’t bother gracing that with a reply. He rested his hand in his lap to take some of the pressure off.
‘We wait for Tony,’ Eddy said again, staring straight ahead. Discussion over.
Jimmy looked out the window and tried to concentrate on something other than the blinding pain coming from his whole arm. That was the trouble with Eddy. No initiative.
‘If I ever get hold of that bastard—’ he said.
Eddy looked across at him. ‘Your ear’s bleeding too.’
Jimmy put his good hand to his ear and winced. There was blood on his fingers when he brought them away.
‘Lucky he kicked you in the head,’ Eddy said, ‘and not anywhere important.’
‘Up yours, Eddy. You think we should take a look at the guy in the back?’
Eddy shook his head. ‘No need. He’ll be out for a couple of hours at least. He’s not going anywhere.’ He cocked his ear. ‘Hang on, I think that’s Tony now.’
They both got out of the van and walked around to the back. A blue and white Dodge Ram had pulled into the loading bay behind the warehouse and parked in the shadows.
‘That’s not Tony’s car,’ Jimmy said.
‘Maybe he bought a new one.’
Jimmy shook his head. ‘A pickup’s not his style.’
Nothing happened. The ticking of the pickup’s motor as it cooled was the only sound. Apart from that everything was quiet, waiting for the next jet to shatter the silence.
‘What’s he doing just sitting there?’ Jimmy said. He was getting a bad feeling about this. Even if Tony was finishing a call or something he’d get out or at least open the door, not just sit there in the dark.
The door of the pickup opened in answer and a guy climbed out. His face was hidden in the shadows, but they could see his shape well enough. Not nearly fat enough.
‘That’s not Tony,’ Jimmy said. He tried to get a look at the guy’s face, but it was no good. He suddenly felt very vulnerable and held his arm closer to his body. The beating he’d taken had shaken him badly.
‘Help you with something?’ Eddy said taking a step towards the guy.
The guy took a step forward into the light. He had his hands buried deep in his coat pockets, but he was smiling a friendly smile.
Eddy saw who it was and relaxed. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said. ‘You had us worried for a moment there.’ He turned to Jimmy. ‘It’s okay, I know this guy.’
Jimmy nodded as he recognized him and stepped forward so that he was standing next to Eddy. Like ducks in a row you might say. ‘How’s it going,’ he said, just to say something, because, despite Eddy’s words, he still felt vaguely nervous. Okay, they knew the guy—but what was he doing here? At this time of night?
His words were drowned out as another plane came in to land. Inside the van it had been loud—outside it was deafening. It was so low it almost made him crouch down like you do in your car when you go under a height restriction. Stupid.
The guy still hadn’t said anything. He was just standing there staring at them, still smiling.
‘You meeting Tony?’ Eddy said when the noise of the plane had quietened enough to talk. Jimmy thought even he sounded a little less confident now.
‘No,’ the guy said. He stepped forward again and pulled a Glock 19 nine millimeter pistol out of his pocket. They both stared at it. The most common handgun in America, maybe even the world. Inexpensive too. Eddy and Jimmy both had one just like it. Unfortunately for them, theirs were still safely tucked away in their pockets. Only seconds away, if you were fast—which Jimmy wasn’t at the moment due to his shattered arm—but they might as well have called the gun store to order two new ones for all the good it did them.
The guy took another step forward as he raised his arm and put a bullet in the middle of Eddy’s forehead and another one in Jimmy’s. It was all so fast they dropped to the ground like they were joined at the hip.
Their mouths fell open and their eyes rolled up into their heads in unison, like somebody had choreographed it. By the time the noise of the plane had completely faded into the distance, the gun was back in the guy’s coat pocket and everything was silent again, waiting for the next one to come in.
He walked to his pickup and folded back the aluminum tonneau cover. Then he went across to the back of Eddy and Jimmy’s van, stepped around the two bodies making sure he didn’t tread in the pooling blood and opened the doors. He pulled Evan out by his legs and then threw him over his shoulder. Evan was heavy but the guy was used to hard work—despite what everyone thought—and he carried him easily back to the pickup where he dumped him in the truck bed. He folded back the tonneau cover, climbed into the cab and fired up the ignition.
He looked over at the two bodies lying on the ground at the back of the van. Should he try to hide them? Buy himself some time. He looked at the warehouse. Surely, they must have keys to the place. He got out of the cab and went and crouched down by Eddy who was nearest and patted him down. Eddy was still warm, a look of surprise on his stupid face, dried blood crusted in his broken nose. No loss to the human race, the guy thought. There was a ring of keys in Eddy’s pants pocket. He took them and went through them in the light from his pickup’s headlights. There were only really two that looked like they might fit the padlock on the loading bay doors. He tried the first one. He pushed it in the lock and tried to turn it but it wouldn’t move. Not that one. He went to pull it out again but it was stuck fast in the padlock. It wouldn’t come out. He took hold of the lock in one hand and the key in the other and pulled and twisted at the same time. It popped out unexpectedly and he staggered backwards, dropping the whole bunch on the floor. Cussing, he picked them up and tried the other one. The key turned smoothly and the padlock fell open. He lifted it free of the hasp, pulled the doors open and turned back to the two dead bodies.
Chapter 61
DESTINY SURE AS HELL wasn’t taking Jesse back to her place. Trouble followed the guy like a shadow that never left him. He said he wasn’t going to catch a plane home at this time of night either so she took him to a cheap hotel out near the airport. She would have liked to just drop him off—pushing him out of the door as she drove past at forty miles per hour would have been even better—but she needed to stick with him for when Angel called.
If someone had been stupid enough to take the bet, she’d have made a lot of money betting on the reception they got at the hotel. Jesse looked like a tramp who’d been sleeping rough and she looked like a different type of tramp altogether. The night clerk didn’t look like a tramp, he looked like a rat that’d just got its tail caught in a trap. His eyes were too big for his small face and gave him a look of perpetual surprise, although the only surprise that registered in them was when Destiny said they wanted a room for the night. She could see his nasty little mind thinking A night? Surely you mean an hour.
They got to the room and she told Jesse she was going to take a shower. It had been a long and stressful night and it wasn’t over yet. Jesse had kindly offered to soap her back—by which she understood him to mean her tits and ass—and she’d declined the offer. The guy was such a slimeball. He deserved to have his wife leave him. If it had been Evan—or even Angel—it would have been a different matter. She left him sitting on the bed and went in the bathroom and made sure she locked the door. Made sure she made a lot of noise doing it too, so he knew exactly where he stood.
On the other side of the door Jesse pulled a face and looked around the room. He couldn’t see a mini bar so he lay down on top of the covers, his arms behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. He heard the shower start up next door. She sure was one hell of a snooty little madam for a stripper. She’d even looked embarrassed when they were checking in. Luckily for her she hadn’t seen the night clerk wink at him. The guy was such a creep. It wouldn’t have surprised him if he’d installed secret cameras in the shower stall.
Things weren’t panning out like he’d expected. He didn’t know what he’d expected but it wasn’t this. It looked like the shit was going to hit the fan in a big way. He’d see fecal gravity at work like never before. The scam would be exposed and there’d be a ton of publicity. Some nosey bastard reporter might dig up a list of all the people who’d got taken. Including him. He couldn’t rule it out. He was confident that Diane was onboard now—so long as he went home with a story about the vital contribution he’d made to the operation, she’d be fine.
Work was a different matter. Scandal was scandal. They were big picture people; didn’t care about the details, just get the problem out of sight. Which meant out of their employment. He needed to talk to Forrest, work out some kind of damage limitation plan. If Forrest told them he’d take his business away if they fired Jesse, they’d think twice. Forrest owed it to him. It was Forrest who got him into the mess in the first place, so Forrest was going to damn well help put it right.
But that wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have over the phone. No, he wanted to put Forrest on the spot, make him feel bad about what had happened. It was too easy for him on the phone. He’d just hang up and not answer his phone. There was an added benefit of going to see him in person—he wouldn’t be around when the detective, Angel, found—or didn’t find—the girl. That was definitely a meeting he would rather avoid. Even a hundred miles didn’t sound like enough distance between them if it all went south. The guy clearly held him responsible for what had happened to her. They all seemed to be forgetting that the girl had been sticking her nose in where it wasn’t wanted long before he showed up. It was always the way—people believed what they wanted to believe and made the facts fit afterwards. The police were the worst culprits.
Decision made. He swung his feet off the bed and sat up. The shower was still going next door. He closed his eyes and imagined her all soapy and slippery, the lubricating suds dripping off her body. He pictured himself coming up behind her, his hands squeezing her slippery breasts ... what a sour puss. The other one they were looking for was probably just the same.
He picked up the phone and called the night clerk and got him to order him a taxi. Then he slipped quietly out of the room and headed for reception. He saw the clerk in the back room, facing out towards the reception area, his face lit up by the light from the computer screen in front of him. The screen was turned away from Jesse, but, from the look on the clerk’s face, he was sure he watching CCTV footage of Destiny showering. The clerk looked up, suddenly aware that he was being watched. Jesse waved and went outside to wait. When the taxi picked him up five minutes later he told the driver to take him to the nearest car rental desk at the airport.
Chapter 62
GINA SAT WITH HER back against the loading bay doors. Apart from the one in the office, these were the only doors. She’d walked a couple of laps of the whole warehouse and this was definitely the only way out. And it was locked from the outside, more than likely with a padlock. Then the batteries in the flashlight had given up the ghost and she was left in total darkness. She didn’t want to turn the lights back on in the office—it would immediately alert anyone coming to get her that she’d got free. She’d lose the small element of surprise that she had. Not only that, she didn’t want to see the guy she’d tied up, she was nervous enough without being reminded of what she’d so narrowly escaped.
Apart from the planes coming in to land overhead, it was completely silent inside and out. Well, not completely. During her first lap of the warehouse she’d heard some scratching over in the corner. It sounded like rats. There was still some life left in the flashlight and she’d shone it where the sounds were coming from. She wished she hadn’t. It wasn’t rats, plural, it was a single rat, but big enough to get a saddle on. It was eating something. She couldn’t see what it was, but it wouldn’t have surprised her if it had been a cat. It had looked at her with its red eyes and carried on eating. She was sure it had belched when it finished. She’d thought about throwing the baseball bat
at it, but what good would that have done apart from losing the bat in the darkness? So she’d left it alone but the sounds of its nails on the hard floor followed her around the room, making her skin crawl.
Something made her jump and she gripped the bat tighter. She must have dozed off. A car had just pulled up outside. They’d turned off the ignition but no one had got out yet. Maybe it was just two kids making out. Then, a couple of minutes later, another vehicle had driven up and parked right on the other side of the door she was leaning on. She stood up and put her ear to the door. She heard both doors of the first vehicle open and two people get out. There was the low sound of men’s conversation but she couldn’t make anything out.
Then the driver’s door of the second vehicle opened and somebody got out. Just the one person. Somebody said something. It wasn’t the guy just outside the door. The voice sounded threatening and aggressive at first, but then the tone changed. It seemed they knew each other. Even from behind the door she felt the tension in the voices relax.
Another plane came in to land. She couldn’t count how many had come in since she’d been locked up in here. She’d started out counting them but had given up. What was the point? The noise was deafening. The glass in the window between the office and the warehouse rattled in its frame. But this time the noise was different. Underneath it all there was another sound. Two distinct pops, so fast they could almost have been one, the sound just about smothered by the noise of the jet overhead, but not quite.
She heard what sounded like somebody opening the trunk of a car. Then something heavy dropped into the trunk. What the hell was going on out there? If she’d had to guess she’d have said somebody just got shot and had been dumped in the trunk of the killer’s car. She pushed her ear closer to the door and tried to make out what was happening. The car engine started up, making her jump, but then she heard the door open again and the driver get out.
Nothing happened for what felt like hours but in reality wasn’t even minutes. Footsteps approached outside. Just one person. Then she heard a noise that sent icy shivers up her spine. A key in the padlock. She heard it clear as day, just inches away from her on the other side of the door. But the lock didn’t open. Wrong key? The doors rattled as he pulled impatiently at the lock. There were only seconds to go before he found the right one. The key popped out of the lock and she heard him cuss as he dropped the whole bunch on the floor.
The Evan Buckley Thrillers: Books 1 - 4 (Evan Buckley Thrillers Boxsets) Page 49