by Sweet, Izzy
A triple-burst of fire comes from the living room, the rounds narrowly missing my head.
Ducking down, I look back at the cop I just knifed. Waddling back to the body, I yank the flashbang grenades from his tactical vest.
These will liven the party up a bit.
Pulling the pins from both grenades, I toss one into the living room then I quickly turn my head and put my arm over my eyes.
Shielding myself just before the grenade blows.
There’s some yelling after the explosion, but if I’m judging it right, they were expecting something like that.
Grinning, I release the handle on the second grenade, wait a moment, then toss it into the living room.
This time they scream in annoyance and pain.
Yeah, they weren’t expecting the second one.
Moving into the living room, I throw my knife with pinpoint accuracy and watch as it lodges in the throat of the fucker closest to me. His hands jump up from his assault rifle and go for his throat. Rushing up to him, I grab his body and spin it around.
Dropping my Glock, I reach around him and take hold of the rifle he has dangling in front of him.
Lifting the rifle, I peek over his shoulder and see his own guys trying to figure out what to do.
That’s tough shit for them.
Pulling the trigger, I let out a quick three-round burst at the next person in line.
Accuracy from this angle is almost impossible, but hitting the guy in his knee, his nuts, and his helmet seems to work.
He falls to the floor, either dead or wishing he was dead.
Movement to my right instantly draws my attention. Another man lifts his arm to fire at me. I guess he’s past the whole not shooting at a friend issue.
Bullets tear into the corpse I’ve been using as a shield, and one rips through the arm, punching into my chest like a sledgehammer.
Fuck.
Getting hit with a vest on is a feeling I’ll never get used to.
Grunting, I fall back slightly as the man shoots another round at me.
Bullets tear through the corpse’s unarmored sections, ripping at my clothes.
One bullet manages to lance through my calf and the nasty graze lights up, erupting in fire.
Shit.
This body isn’t going to hold up for much longer.
Screaming in anger, I can feel the rage in me begging for release.
Hoisting the body up, I start to jog toward the fucker firing at me. With each step I take, I pull the trigger on the rifle I’m trying to use.
I may as well be shooting blanks though for all the damage it doesn’t do to the asshole in front of me.
My shots, however, cause just enough distraction for me to get in close and topple all three of us to the ground in a pile of limbs.
I’ve lost my knife somewhere and the rifle I was firing has run dry.
“You motherfucker!” I scream at the man beneath me as I pull the pin attached to a flashbang on the dead cop’s vest.
Rolling as far away as I can, I cringe when the flashbang goes off in our mess of shit.
For the next minute, I regret my very existence. Especially as I struggle to shake off the screaming whistles in my ears and head while I check to see if the fucker is still alive.
When I see him roll away from the dead body, I groan.
“Why don’t you fucking die!” I bellow and slowly stand up, using my now fucked-up beyond all repair couch as support.
He pushes up on his hands and knees and I hobble over to him. Grabbing him by the helmet, I yank and drag his ass toward the front of the living room.
I’m happy as fuck I’ve kept up my cardio because he’s making it a bitch to drag his ass over to my fucking iron skillet.
Pulling the helmet off the fucker’s head, I grab the skillet and look into his dazed eyes.
“You got something on your mind?” I ask then slam the skillet into his unprotected head.
It takes me exactly four hard hits before I’ve completely caved in his head and splattered blood and brain bits all over me.
19
Sophia
Dumped face-first into the backseat of a police SUV, I immediately try to push myself up, struggling with my hands cuffed behind my back.
“Go, go, go!” someone shouts as the doors open and slam shut.
One man squeezes into the seat in front of me and another pushes in from the back. Cramming me between them.
“This is a stupid idea,” Dickers growls as the SUV lurches forward, the tires squealing against pavement.
The motion pushes me against the seat and throws me off balance.
“What’s so stupid about it?” Trent asks angrily from somewhere around my feet.
Focused on trying to slide my knees forward so I can get some leverage to push up, I twist my head enough to see that he is indeed in the back with me.
Noticing my attention, Trent glances at me then scowls. “Here, let me help you.”
“All of it!” Dickers bellows from the driver’s seat as Trent grabs me by the arm and helps me sit up. “This whole plan of yours is fucking stupid!”
“It fucking worked!” Trent shouts back.
“That remains to be seen,” Dickers snarls and then I feel his eyes on me.
Glancing up as I get situated on the edge of the seat, I see him glaring at me through the rearview mirror with murder in his eyes.
A cold shiver travels down my spine.
He wants to kill me and he’s not even trying to hide it.
Trent looks between Dickers and me. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“It means exactly that,” Dickers snaps. “We don’t know if it worked because you’re making a lot of fucking assumptions.”
“Assumptions about what?” Trent snaps back, keeping his grip firmly on my arm.
My skin crawls beneath his touch, and I want to yank away from him. I want to yell at him to get his fucking hand off me. He doesn’t have a right to touch me. I’m not his.
But I’m not stupid.
I’m trapped in a car full of men who may or may not want to kill me. Two of them, at least, have already had a part in killing my father.
It makes me sick. But with the way Dickers is already looking at me like he’d rather stomp me under his boot like a bug than see me breathing, I know Trent may be my only chance of making it out of this in one piece.
For now, I have to play nice with him and use him to get out of this. Use him to find a way to help James.
Fuck… James…
“You’re assuming she’s—” Dickers starts to say before Trent cuts him off.
“Sophia, are you okay?” Trent asks, his brow pinched with concern as he takes in the tears in my eyes and the sad, crumbled expression on my face.
I shake my head and let my tears fall freely.
“I don’t know what’s going on…” I sniffle, not even needing to play it up.
My emotion, my sadness is very real. But not because of what’s happening to me. I’m fucking terrified for James. I’m terrified that he’s going to be hurt or worse…
I might lose him too.
Lose the little family we’ve been building with him, me, Fluffers, and Mitzy.
If that happens… if he leaves me…
I think it will be the final nail in my coffin. I will truly have no reason to live or go on.
Letting go of my hand, Trent reaches for my face, like he wants to brush my tears away, but I flinch away from him.
“We’re rescuing you,” he frowns at me.
Dickers snorts. “Rescuing, yeah. I guess that’s what we’re calling it.”
Trent whips his head in Dickers’s direction, opening his mouth to tell him off some more.
But a new voice cuts in from up front.
“That’s enough,” Jacob, Trent’s father, says firmly, trying to take control of the situation. “We can argue about these things later. Right now, we still have a mission to accomplish.�
�
Hearing Jacob Morrison’s voice… My father’s best friend. The man he trusted the most in this world, who ultimately stabbed him in the back, turns my entire body cold.
I want to launch myself forward. I want to wrap my hands around his throat and choke the life out of him. I want to scream in his face and demand why.
Why did he turn on my father?
Was his friendship all a lie? A scheme?
All those years… was he merely keeping his enemy close?
But I can’t because I still have my hands zip-tied behind me, and it might get me killed.
So I bite the inside of my cheek and dig my nails into my palms to keep some of the rage and hatred at bay.
When Trent looks at me strangely, like he doesn’t understand the new expression on my face, I say, “My arms and wrists hurt. Can you take the cuffs off?”
Trent nods. “Of course.”
Then he reaches down to his belt to grab a utility knife.
“Don’t you fucking dare!” Dickers warns.
Trent’s face turns bright red with his own anger as he yanks the knife out and works to open it one-handed. “Fuck you, don’t tell me what to do! You’re not my fucking TO anymore, so stop trying to boss me around like a bitch!”
He’s probably going to cut the cuffs off me out of sheer spite.
“If you’d stop acting like a little pussy-whipped bitch, I wouldn’t have to treat you like a pussy-whipped bitch!” Dickers yells back.
“I’m not a fucking pussy-whipped bitch!” Trent snarls then he glares down at the knife, unable to get it open with just one hand.
Looking between the both of them and the hatred they’re showing for each other, I start to hope that they’ll kill each other and save me the trouble.
“You being a pussy-whipped bitch is what got us in this mess!” Dickers yells some more then pounds his hands on the steering wheel. “You’ve fucking ruined all of our lives! For pussy! Pussy you haven’t even hit!”
“Don’t you fucking talk about her like that!” Trent yells right back, so angry, the veins on his neck are bulging and spit is flying out of his mouth. “Take it back!”
“Dickers,” Jacob says calmly, and it’s jarring compared to the two raging men.
“What?!” Dickers snaps at him like he’s ready to bite his head off too.
Jacob nods to the rearview mirror. “We’re being tailed.”
Dickers looks up at the rearview mirror, his eyes meeting mine for a split second and still smoldering with murder, before he sees whatever Jacob is pointing out. Then he hits the steering wheel again. “Fuck.”
“Who is it?” Trent asks with a hint of worry.
Is he worried that James is behind us? Fuck, I really hope James is behind us. I hope he made it out okay…
Squinting his eyes into the mirror, it takes Dickers a full minute to answer. “I think it’s the neighbor.”
Jacob nods and leans back in his seat, out of eyesight. “That’s what I think as well. Maybe he’s simply heading in the same direction.”
“Or maybe he’s in with them,” Dickers counters. “Doesn’t matter though. Ain’t shit he can do once we reach the station.”
Dickers’s eyes meet mine again in the mirror and it’s takes everything inside me to hide my disappointment.
Grinning at me, Dickers says, “I’ll check in with the team. Have them cut him off with the truck on their way out.”
Dickers pulls his phone out of his pocket and punches in some numbers before hitting speakerphone. His eyes find mine once more in the mirror. He wants me to hear what’s happening.
He wants to torture me and watch me crack.
But I still have hope that James made it into the safe room, and all those guys they left behind won’t be able to do shit.
A deep voice comes through the phone. “Yo?”
“How’s it going? What’s your status?” Dickers asks.
“We just finished sweeping the house,” the guy on the other end responds. “Didn’t find shit. We’re thinking he might be in the basement. Probably trapped down there. Hold on.”
Muffled voices come through the line, as if the phone is being covered or pressed against something, but it’s easy to tell they’re talking strategy.
“Okay,” the man says, sounding clear again. “We’re going to breach the—”
The roar of an explosion suddenly drowns out the man.
My heart seizes in my chest. Just like when I was tased, I can’t breathe, I can’t think. I’m utterly stunned and paralyzed with terror.
“What the fuck is going on?!” Dickers yells into the phone when the sound of the explosion fades away.
No one answers Dickers directly. There’s a couple of groans and quite a few curses.
Then there’s another booming explosion.
A man screams somewhere near the phone as if he’s in absolute agony.
I squeeze my eyes shut and tell myself it’s not James. That’s not his voice. It’s totally not James.
He’s not the one screaming. He’s the one making them scream.
“What the fuck is going on, Harris? Fucking talk to me!” Dickers practically screams into the phone.
Coughing, the man comes back on the line. “Explosions.”
“Yeah, I fucking heard that,” Dickers snipes.
The man coughs some more, like he’s trying to cough a lung up. “The first one must have been planted. The second… I think he hit the gas line. Stupid fuck probably blew himself up.”
“You think or you’re sure?” Dickers questions.
“Yeah, pretty sure he did. Kitchen is gone. So’s all the shit in front of the basement. I think Wallace might be dead. I doubt that fucker down there survived.”
“No,” I groan out, unable to stop myself as my heart literally shreds to pieces. “No, no, no!”
James can’t be dead.
He can’t…
God wouldn’t do this to me. He wouldn’t take him like that…
Not when I haven’t even had a chance to tell him how much I need him and care about him. Not when we’ve only had such a short time together.
He wouldn’t take yet another person I love from me. Would he?
Would he?!
“Shut her the fuck up,” Dickers mutters to Trent. Then he snaps into the phone, “I believe you, but check to be sure. Then get your asses out of there. We’ll meet up at the station. Call me if anything else happens.”
“Roger that,” the man says before hanging up.
“Sophia,” Trent says, his face blurring in front of my eyes. “Sophia, calm down. Everything is going to be okay now. It’s all over now. I’ll take care of you.”
I didn’t even realize I was crying, I hurt so bad.
I’m gripped by agonizing, unbearable pain.
James is dead. Fucking dead. And… it’s my fault. All my fault.
I practically killed him with my own hands.
I rock back and forth on the edge of the seat, and it feels like my entire being has been shredded, then folded, and ripped into tiny pieces.
Over and over again.
“Well, ain’t this a fucking shitshow,” Dickers mutters. “Wallace might be dead. Don’t know how we’re going to explain that.”
“The warrant might still come through,” Jacob sighs, sounding just as put out.
“Fucking doubt it,” Dickers says. “Somehow those fuckers own all the judges. We’ll be fucking lucky if none of this blows back on us.”
“Sophia, please, calm down,” Trent pleads and grabs my shoulder to get me to stop rocking.
Unable to stand his touch, I rip myself out of his grip and try to scoot away from him. Only to realize there’s another fucking man beside me. Some patrolman I don’t recognize who’s been quiet the entire time.
“And that little bitch is back there, crying her eyes out over fucking scum and showing her true colors,” Dickers says.
“Shut the fuck up, Dickers,” Trent snaps at hi
m, but there’s not nearly as much anger behind it this time around. In fact, he sounds a little worried.
“Shut the fuck up? Why should I shut the fuck up? Because you don’t like all your mistakes getting called out?”
“Fuck you,” Trent grumbles quietly.
“No, fuck you, boy. Fuck you and your stupid fucking white knight bullshit!” Dickers roars, back to yelling and pounding on the steering wheel. “Chasing after and saving a girl that doesn’t even want your ass! If you would have just let her go. If you would have just accepted that shit happens and let her be sold off, none of this shit would have happened!”
Getting angry again, Trent curls his hand into a fist and yells back, “I couldn’t just let them sell her!”
“Why? Why not? Stupid whore put herself in the position in the first place. You know she got grabbed down in the wrong part of town? Probably whoring herself out with her friends while you were out on the beat, protecting people. It was her own damn fault!” Dickers says with disgust.
Trent shakes his head in denial. “I couldn’t let it happen. She didn’t deserve it.”
“You didn’t care about any of the other girls, did ya?” Dickers counters. “Or the kids. You knew the shit that was going down, and you knew what you signed up for. We all did before we sold our souls to fatten our bank accounts. You didn’t give a shit about any of the others, but you just had to screw everything up for her. And for what? You didn’t even get to ride in on your white steed and save her. That other fucker did. And she don’t want you, boy. She wants him. We’d all be better off if we just fucking got rid of her.”
As hurt as I am, some of what Dickers is yelling is piercing through the pain-filled fog that wants to swallow me up.
I knew from what I read on my father’s laptop that Trent was involved with the Russians. But I didn’t think for a moment he actually knew about the Russians grabbing women and children.
The fact that he did…. That he and Dickers both knew what was going on and fucking profited off it, starts to make me so angry, my grief is starting to fade away. Replaced by the burning desire to make them pay for what they did before I leave this earth.
Make them pay before I take my last breath and join James.
Trent’s face turns blood red. “We are not getting rid of her!”