She had to move. Right now. She bent down and picked up the baseball bat. Her head darted from side to side looking for somewhere to go but it was too dark to see anything. She couldn’t run blindly into the dark space. She might trip. Who knows what might be piled up in the middle of the floor? Another key was being inserted into the lock. It went in a lot easier than the other one. She stepped sideways and pushed herself into the wall at the side of the doors and held her breath, the bat gripped in her shaking hands.
The doors were pulled open. Light from the security lighting outside flooded in and lit up the room. It wasn’t very big and it was completely empty. If she’d run blindly into the darkness she’d be a sitting duck against the back wall with nowhere to hide. She pressed herself tighter into the dark corner and waited.
The guy didn’t come in. She let out her breath. He was walking away. But he wasn’t going far. She heard him stop and grunt and start dragging something heavy back towards the open doors. Should she make a run for it now, while he was busy? Her legs were like Jell-O, they wouldn’t move. It was too late anyway. The guy was almost at the doors now. He’d see her as soon as he was through them. She raised the bat above her head. She’d smash him over the head with it as soon as his head came into sight and worry about it afterwards.
He backed all the way into the room. He was bent over dragging a body along the ground by its legs. His head was six feet away from her. One small step, bring the bat down onto the back of his head and then run. She couldn’t do it. She froze, the bat poised in mid-air above her head. Her arms trembled. The bat was so heavy. Any second now he’d turn his head to the side and see her. Just do it.
He got the guy all the way in, dropped the legs then straightened up and walked back out. He hadn’t seen her. She dropped her aching arms and leaned forward and looked quickly round the door. There was a blue and white pickup truck right outside the doors and a van parked a little further away. The guy was walking towards the van. At the back of it another guy was lying on the ground. He grabbed the legs and started dragging him too. Gina ducked back into the corner and looked down at the first guy lying on the floor in front of her. She gasped and pushed herself away from him. There was a neat hole in his forehead. His eyes were rolled up so only the bottom half of the irises showed. On the floor a bloody smear led away from his head and disappeared outside, like somebody had spilled a can of red paint and a giant slug had made its way through it. Her stomach heaved and she clamped a hand over her mouth. It was one of D’Amato’s men; one of the guys who’d kidnapped her. He looked so different now.
The guy outside was almost at the doors with what she knew now was another corpse. She knew what the sounds she’d heard under the noise of the jet were now. But what had he dumped in the back of the pickup truck she’d just seen outside? Why hide two bodies and take the third away as a souvenir? But there’d only been two shots. She couldn’t worry about that now. Time slowed to a crawl. The guy shuffled backwards into the warehouse, his upper back first as he stooped over the body he was dragging, then his neck and finally the back of his head came into view. She lifted the bat above her head and brought it down as hard as she could onto his skull. He let out a sharp cry of pain and dropped to his knees between the legs of the body he’d been dragging.
Gina dropped the bat and ran.
The problem was Gina was petite, she barely weighed a hundred pounds, which doesn’t help any when it comes to braining someone with a baseball bat. Destiny would have done a much better job. So, instead of taking the guy’s head clean off, Gina merely stunned him. And annoyed the hell out of him.
All the pent-up terror of the previous eighteen hours mixed with the adrenalin coursing through her and gave Gina’s legs almost super-human power and stamina. She was young and fit and healthy and her legs pumped up and down like well-oiled pistons, her whole body moving with a fluid grace as she virtually flew across the ground, her lungs filling and emptying and filling again with the cool night air, her hair streaming out behind her as she put twenty, thirty, fifty yards between her and the madman behind her.
But what’s fifty yards to a man in a car, even if it’s only a pickup truck and not some fancy, performance job. The guy picked himself up, shook his head to clear it, then ran to the pickup. He took his gun out of his pocket, laid it carefully on the passenger seat, then took off after Gina. Why the hell hadn’t she taken the pickup? He shook his head again, in amazement this time. Her loss was his gain; life’s a zero-sum game after all.
He caught her in moments, slowed as she ran for her life in front of him, mere inches separating her from the pickup’s bumper. He hit the horn for fun. Terrified, she found something extra, deep inside her, some hidden reserve. It brought a lump to his throat. He wished he had more time—time to have some real fun, the sort he hadn’t had in such a long time—but the police would be here any minute. He watched her hair streaming out behind her. Such lovely hair. He wanted to stroke it, gently at first, then wind his fingers tightly into it, lift her off the ground by it, feel her legs kick uselessly against his. He swallowed thickly, the back of his head throbbing, an insistent ache in his lower belly.
Bitch.
Her perfectly rounded butt mesmerized him as it moved within the denim constraints of her tight jeans. He envied those jeans, tried to ignore the hot tears pricking at the back of his eyes. It wasn’t meant to happen like this. What a god-awful waste. But what choice did he have? It was all D’Amato’s stupid fault.
Picking his gun up off the passenger seat, he leaned out of the window and got a bead on her slim back. He wished he was lying on top of it, his face buried in her sweet-smelling hair, as she writhed in pleasure underneath him. He hesitated for a split second too long and pulled the trigger just as his front wheel went down a massive pothole in the road. The pickup bucked to the right and the bullet pinged away harmlessly into the darkness.
She screamed and brought her arms up around her ears as if that would make any difference. She stopped abruptly, like she’d hit a brick wall. She turned and met his eyes. With a look full of defiance behind the panic and the fear, she set off running again, back towards the relative safety of the open warehouse doors, a hundred and fifty yards away.
He stomped on the brakes, swung the pickup around in a tight arc, the tires squealing in protest. He hit the gas again, the rear end fishtailing as he closed the gap on her. She was still a good hundred yards out from the warehouse, zig-zagging wildly from side to side as if that would help her, when he caught her again.
He leaned out and steadied his arm. The cool night air was in his hair, in his eyes, pricking them, making them stream with tears. His finger tightened on the trigger.
Why had she made him do this?
Under the pickup’s tires, the asphalt was flat and silky smooth. He wouldn’t miss this time.
Chapter 63
ANGEL STOOD AND STARED dumbly into the interior of the warehouse, empty apart from the two dead bodies lying in a heap just inside the door, matching trails of blood snaking across the floor, leading him to them, in case he couldn’t find them on his own.
What the hell had been going on out here? First, the two thugs dead in the entrance to the warehouse—D’Amato’s thugs in D’Amato’s warehouse—and then a third one from the same mold still alive and tied up in the small office next door. But no sign of Evan anywhere. The van he’d been abducted in, empty, its back doors hanging open. It looked like some third party had wanted Evan worse than they did. But who? And why?
And what about Gina? Up-ended on the floor next to the guy in the office was a chair that looked a lot like the one Evan had described, the one they tied Jesse to, with the seat pad kicked out. Gina must have been held prisoner here, strapped to that chair, Lord only knows what done to her until she told them what they wanted to know. If that was the case, what was one of D’Amato’s men doing tied up with the tape that had bound her? He was a big, fit-looking guy. Gina could never have overpowered him.
>
It got worse. Sitting on a desk in the office, already bagged-up and labeled, was a butane blowtorch. Angel picked it up, felt the weight of it, shook it. He wasn’t an expert, but he’d have said the canister was almost empty. It had been used. Maybe not today, maybe not on Gina. Maybe there’d been some soldering needed doing around the place. Or maybe some of the worst rumors about D’Amato were true after all.
Then that awful feeling, right down in the pit of his stomach, as he saw one of his men waving at him from down the street. Waving in a way that said: I gotta let you know, but I don’t really want you to see me waving. He couldn’t blame the guy. He didn’t even want to be in his own company.
He jogged, legs heavy, refusing to take him as if they knew something he didn’t. The man was hunkered down, looking at something on the ground, his body obstructing Angel’s view. In his mind he imagined Gina’s pathetic body lying crumpled on the asphalt like some dog that had been run over and left to die in the gutter. He pictured ugly burns from the blowtorch scarring her perfect skin …
Please God don’t let it be true.
His man—he couldn’t even think what his name was—stood up as he got there and Angel saw what he’d been looking at.
‘Looks like blood.’
Angel nodded, his heart slipping back down into his chest.
‘And there are nine mil cartridges on the ground over there.’
Angel looked over to where he was pointing, not that he could see anything. ‘Same as the two in the warehouse?’
‘Reckon so. It makes sense.’
Angel wanted to scream at him. Sense? What sort of sick sense does any of this make? ‘You mean it’s consistent,’ he said instead, and headed back to his car without waiting for a reply.
He had to let the others know. He had no idea where they might have gone so he got someone to check with all the downtown and airport hotels, starting cheap and working up. It didn’t take long; they’d checked into a place out by the airport. It couldn’t be more than a mile away from where he was now. A plane came in overhead. It seemed to just hang there, massive in the night sky, the noise of its jet engines deafening. He looked up. It was low enough for him to see the faces of the passengers in the windows, looking out at the rapidly approaching return to their boring, everyday lives after a week of freedom someplace else—some place that was anywhere but here.
He walked slowly back to his car, his eyes on the ground. No-one said anything. He got in and drove around to the hotel.
***
DESTINY ANSWERED THE DOOR and let him in. Her hair was wet and she had a towel wrapped around her. In other circumstances he’d have been hoping that she hadn’t tied it up properly.
He looked around. ‘Where’s the dickhead?’
‘He’s gone.’
‘Gone?’
She nodded. ‘The creep on reception said he called a taxi for him. He doesn’t know where he went.’
Angel sat on the bed and ran a hand through his hair. It was probably a good thing that Jesse wasn’t there. One inappropriate comment slipping out of the idiot’s filthy mouth and he didn’t know what he might do. He did, actually, and it was better all-round if he didn’t do it—better for Jesse’s face, better for the hotel carpet, better for his career.
Destiny sat on the bed next to him. She smelled fresh and clean. The towel fell open as she sat revealing her smooth thighs. He didn’t even notice. She put a hand on his arm. He felt her shaking. Or was that him?
‘What happened?’
He looked into her eyes and looked away again. Don’t look at me like that. He shrugged and shook his head.
She shook his arm. ‘Tell me.’
‘Who knows?’ He told her what they’d found out at the airport.
‘You think one of them’s been shot?’
‘That’s what it looks like, and it’s likely to be Gina. Evan wouldn’t have been in any state to try to run away or do anything at all for that matter, so why bother shooting him. My guess is Gina somehow got away from them—that’s why D’Amato’s man was tied up—and she was shot.’
‘But we don’t know how badly.’
Angel shook his head. ‘Or where she is now. And if you’d seen the two guys he killed at the warehouse ... this guy knows how to use a gun. I can’t see how he can put two perfect shots in those goons’ heads and then mess up.’
He pushed himself off the bed, took a couple of impatient strides and punched a hole clean through the bathroom door. It might as well have been made of wet toilet paper for all the pain he felt. He pulled his hand back through the hole catching it on the splintered wood and breaking the skin. It felt good.
‘What about Evan?’
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Wasn’t that supposed to calm you down? Well, he was here to tell you, it doesn’t work. ‘No idea,’ he said again.
The look of confusion on her face was sweet. Life wasn’t meant to be so difficult and full of grief at her age. Plenty of time for that later. Trouble was, he was meant to have the make-it-all-better answers. He hunkered down beside her so his face was level with hers.
‘It looks like whoever shot Gina and the two goons kidnapped him.’
‘Are you serious?’
He nodded, a sad, tight smile on his face. ‘Pulled him out of their van and transferred him to his own vehicle. No other explanation.’
‘But why?’
He gave a small shrug. ‘You tell me,’ he said, so he didn’t have to say no idea again.
‘What are we going to do?’
He suddenly noticed her voice had taken on an irritating, whiny tone. She looked so forlorn sitting on the bed. But, despite the irritating tone of voice, he wished he had an answer for her. He wished he had an answer. Period. She started to cry. Deep, uncontrollable sobs squeezing the breath from her lungs interspersed with a dry, staccato wheezing as she fought to get her breath back. He sat back down next to her and put his arm around her shoulders. Like that’s going to make things better. She buried her head in his chest. It made him feel like he had some purpose, at least.
‘I know what I’m going to do when I catch the bastard,’ he said softly, resting his chin on the top of her head, but she didn’t hear him.
Chapter 64
EVAN WOKE WITH A start. It was pitch black. He didn’t know where the hell he was. He tried to sit up and banged his head with a loud metallic clang on some kind of low roof above him. There was a strong smell of hay and horse manure. He was in a moving vehicle, the gentle motion rocking him, the tires gently hissing on the smooth asphalt. He wasn’t in the trunk of a car, there was far too much room, even though he couldn’t stretch his arms and legs out fully. Factor in the hard metal roof less than a foot above his head, and he must be in the back of a pickup truck, one with a metal tonneau cover. One that had recently been used to transport horse shit around. He wondered why anyone would want to move horse shit around. Like somebody said: Hey, we haven’t got enough horse shit over here. The thought made him giggle.
He put the palms of his hands on the roof above him and pushed hard. It didn’t budge. It must be clipped on. He squirmed around on his back, but there wasn’t enough height for him to get his knees up over his chest and try to push with his feet. He settled back down and closed his eyes. With the remnants of the drug still sloshing around in his system and the soothing, swaying motion of the vehicle as it rode the undulating rises and dips and floated around each gentle curve he was soon out cold again.
Next thing he knew somebody was unclipping the fasteners holding down the cover and then part of the roof was folded back. He had no idea how long he’d been out or how long they’d been parked. Above him he saw the clear night sky, and all around him there was complete and utter silence. A familiar face leaned over and looked down at him, blocking the beautiful view. He knew what babies in a pram felt like.
It was Forrest.
‘Come on Evan, out you get.’ He folded another section of the cover back a
nd offered him his hand. Evan took it and climbed out, looked around. They were in the driveway outside Forrest’s house. Forrest started walking towards the front door.
‘What’s going on?’ Evan said to his back. ‘What are we doing here?’
Forrest stopped and turned around, a frown wrinkling his forehead. ‘You really don’t remember?’
That was an understatement if ever he’d heard one. He remembered going into the club with Destiny. He remembered a couple of girls dancing on stage. He seemed to remember he’d enjoyed watching them. But that was it. ‘No,’ he said.
Forrest walked back to him, his eyes drilling into his own. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Uh-huh. Deadly serious.’
‘What’s the last thing you remember?’
‘Going into the club with Destiny. Drinking champagne. Some girls dancing on stage.’ He closed his eyes and tried to make more come. ‘Talking to the older woman, Samantha.’ There was nothing else.
‘That’s it?’ His tone was incredulous.
He nodded again. He didn’t like the look on Forrest’s face. A look of barely concealed horror. He looked like he might cry. What else had happened? This wasn’t part of the plan. Where were the others?
‘Damn,’ Forrest said and kicked the tire of the pickup.
Forrest’s agitation was starting to rub off on Evan. A vague dread was gnawing away at him way down inside. ‘Tell me what’s going on. What happened?’
Forrest took a deep breath through his nose, his lips tightly closed. ‘Come inside. I’ll tell you there.’
The Evan Buckley Thrillers: Books 1 - 4 (Evan Buckley Thrillers Boxsets) Page 50