But she also knew there was no way she could navigate the crowd on her own. Not with the heels she was being forced to wear. Certainly not under the control of whatever she’d been injected with.
Saying nothing, Elyse extended her opposite foot before her. As if searching for a solid spot to step, she placed her toe out gingerly, slowly planting her weight on it and moving forward.
“Little faster,” Paco murmured, pinching her fingers between his.
Drawing in a quick breath, Elyse felt her core pull tight. Doing as told, she put a third step out and then a fourth, finding her center of gravity, weaving her way through the crowd.
To either side, scads of people flowed past, none so much as glancing her way, all absorbed in their own libations and conversations. The oppressive sound around her fell back, her singular point of focus becoming Asai on the opposite side of the room and the man standing beside him.
Much older than Asai, or Paco, or even her father, the man looked to be fast approaching fifty. A liberal amount of dye had been applied to his thinning hair, though it did nothing to obscure the jowls hanging on either side of his face or the paunch protruded before him.
Openly leering at her, he seemed to barely be hearing whatever Asai was saying beside him, staring at her the way a predator might view a wounded animal.
Again, the urge to cry rippled through Elyse. To let the fear and emotion she felt spill out, cascading down her cheeks.
To at least throw her head back and scream, to call out for help, beseeching any of the people around her.
As if reading her thoughts, ripping them straight from her mind, she felt Paco squeeze tight on her hand. Not once did he look over, or say a word, but that didn’t keep the message from being any less forceful.
Continuing her pace, Elyse allowed herself to be led over, covering the last bit of open space before pulling to a stop.
“Mr. Matsui,” Paco said, putting a smile on his face as he lifted Elyse’s hand. Extending it before them, he waited as Matsui reached out, accepting her hand and lifting it to his lips. “May I please present Elyse.”
“Elyse, it is a pleasure,” Matsui replied, his eyes shining as he lowered her hand, keeping it clutched in his own.
So badly she wanted to jerk it away, to get the feel of the man and his kiss off her skin. Handfuls of thoughts and ideas pushed to the surface in her mind, each kept tamped down by the sedative in her system and the overriding sense of self-preservation pushing through her.
“The pleasure is all mine, Mr. Matsui,” she managed, her words sounding just slightly slurred.
If Matsui noticed in the slightest, he gave no indication, the smile never leaving his face.
Beside her, Paco reached into his jacket, extracting a cell phone and checking the screen. Looking at it no more than a moment, a single muscle twitched in his face before his attention rose back to the group, his mouth pulled into a tight line.
“If you’ll please excuse me, I am needed downstairs for a moment.”
His own face betraying nothing, Asai reached out a hand, clasping Matsui on the shoulder. “Actually, if you don’t mind, why don’t I step away as well, allow you two to get acquainted?”
Chapter Eighty-Five
Much like the pilot in the hangar, I had no intention of harming the blonde woman in the hallway. She was of no threat to me. Quite the opposite, in fact.
But I couldn’t let her know that just yet.
Rotating a quarter-turn at the waist, I kept the Browning at shoulder height, the barrel extended straight out, level with the bridge of her nose. A tendril of smoke still rose from it, the smell of gunpowder and blood thick in the air.
Keeping it there, I asked, “Where’s the girl?”
Her mouth sagged. Her eyes grew wider. She strained to breathe, the shock of what just happened plain on her features.
I moved an inch closer. “Where. Is. The girl?”
“Um,” she managed, her jaw flapping as she blinked rapidly. Shifting her focus from the gun to me, she closed her mouth, swallowing hard, the turtleneck she wore visibly shifting as she did so. “She’s not here.”
The true value wasn’t in what she said, but in what she didn’t.
I had already deduced that she was gone. The guard wouldn’t have been so lax in the hallway if a priority prisoner was nearby. The only thing that would allow him to assume such a stance was if there was absolutely zero chance of Paco or Asai coming by anytime soon.
More important was the fact that the woman hadn’t asked what girl I was referring to. She hadn’t given me a blank expression. Hadn’t needed a name.
“Where is she?”
“They came for her a few minutes ago,” she said, her voice no longer cracking, but still just as low.
Which meant she was upstairs. Any hope I had of extracting her from the basement was gone.
Things were going to get tricky, navigating a crowded house and a party of drunken revelers, some of them the most influential people in Nashville.
I lowered the weapon to my side, though I made no effort to widen the narrow gap between us. The threat of a firearm could be too much. It may keep the woman from speaking freely or cloud any potential responses.
Close proximity would be enough to impart a threat without overwhelming her.
“Show me.”
The woman’s eyes managed to grow wider again. A combination of fear and surprise, she stared at me, welded against the wall.
Releasing my grip on the sub gun, I shot a hand out. Wrapping it around the base of the woman’s neck, I pulled her toward me, shifting to the left so that we fell in side by side with one another.
“Now.”
A small gasp slid from her as she stumbled forward, barely keeping herself upright, her stride off-balance as we walked on.
“Please,” she whispered, her hands rising by her side, the muscles of her neck tense beneath my grip, “they just keep me here to do the hair and makeup.”
Pulling up short, I jerked her to a stop, her thin body twisting back toward me. My teeth gritted, I kept a hand on her shoulder, my thumb digging into the soft flesh beneath her collarbone.
“And that makes it better? You just sit down here and get them ready to fit into some sick monster’s fantasy? You only cook the meal, you don’t actually serve it?”
The woman’s shoulders rose and fell as she stared at me, breathing hard. Tears pooled at the corners of her eyes.
“Is that what you think?” she whispered.
Extending one hand down, she grasped at the thin material of her skirt. Drawing it up, she pulled it above her ankle, lifting the stub remains of her foot shoved into a shoe for me to see.
“I was the first one. Just like that girl – whoever she is to you – they took me from my family and brought me here. I tried to run. This is what I got for it.”
As she spoke, tears continued to form, running south down either cheek, streaks of mascara left in their wake. With each one that fell, her voice grew stronger, animosity underscoring them, providing credence to what she said.
This woman didn’t want to be here any more than I did.
It was just that neither one of us had a choice.
“Where did they take her?”
Extending one finger before her, she pointed in the opposite direction. Her mouth open to reply, all sound bled away, replaced by her eyes going wide.
In an instant, I knew, there being only one thing that could cause such a reaction.
Again, institutional knowledge.
Dropping straight to the floor, I rotated into the woman, spinning my body back in the opposite direction. Grasping the submachine gun in both hands, I snapped it up in front of me in time to see the first shots fired, a trio of orange blossoms erupting in the center of the hallway, so bright they shielded the shooter from view.
The first two rounds struck the woman square in the chest, heavy shots that cleaved small craters through her center mass. Chunks of flesh and blo
od spatter were expelled from her body, dripping into my hair, slapping against my shoulder.
The third struck her mid-thigh, her slight form no match for the round. Passing through her, the bullet punctured the left side of my torso, a hot iron poker jabbing into the space between my hip bone and lower ribcage.
Pain erupted through my body, bright lights flashing across my vision, as the momentum of the shots tossed the woman backward against me. Her coccyx smashed into my shoulder as she went, sending her top half backward over me, her body landing hard with a wet smack against the tile.
At the same time, I lifted the sub gun, squeezing the trigger, an unending surge of muzzle flash and smoke erupting from the end of it.
A split second later, the sound blasted through the narrow space, reverberating from the concrete walls, pulsating through my brain, ringing in my ears.
My body propped on a knee, my side spasming in pain, I kept the trigger pulled even long after the firing pin was drawing nothing but empty air.
Chapter Eighty-Six
Every sense in my body seemed to be firing at once. My eyes burned with the smoke and gunpowder hanging in the air. I could taste the coppery flavor of blood, whether it was mine or the woman behind me, I had no way of knowing.
My ears rang, even in the wake of the sounds of the firefight dying away.
But most of all I could feel the fiery spike in my side, my core squeezing tight. With each breath, a renewed jab rippled through my system, my teeth clenching tight.
Dropping the sub gun before me, I managed to push myself upright. I reached into my jacket pocket and extracted the Browning, holding it with my right hand, my left pressed tight against the wound on my side.
I’d been shot before. More than once. The fact that I’d been hit didn’t worry me as much as the location.
Shots to the core were known to be the worst kind, the abdomen full of vital organs and soft tissue, the slightest perforation to any of it being enough to bring about a slow and painful death.
Or worse, a fast bleed out.
One, I could handle. If it meant getting upstairs and finding Elyse, I wouldn’t complain. I’ve lived longer than I should have. At times, it seemed I lived longer than I even wanted to.
The other was unacceptable. No matter how much I missed my wife and daughter, how much I wanted to see them again, not before finishing what I’d come to do.
“Paco?”
The voice was male, coming in from the right, the same hallway I had just walked down after stepping in from outside.
“Paco?!”
The sound of the second call was louder, a tinge of concern in it. Footsteps underscored it, coming fast, the soles of dress shoes slapping against tile.
Shifting my weight to the side, I pressed my shoulder into the wall. Using it to support my uneven body, I waited, listening as the man drew closer, sprinting forward to aid in a situation he had no way of knowing was already past.
The biggest mistake the man made was calling out. Had he not, I likely would have eventually heard him, but not until much later. Not until I was out in the middle of the intersection, where the throbbing pain in my side might have delayed my reaction just enough for him to get to me.
As it was, he gave me a heads up. He made it so I was in position the instant he appeared from the opposite hallway, swinging his gaze my direction just long enough to register I wasn’t who he expected to see before I pulled the trigger.
A single shot, right through the bridge of his nose.
Four men down, and if the name the man was just calling out was to be believed, that included the one I was most concerned with, completely by accident.
Not enough to yet count victory as imminent, but a solid start.
Remaining in position, I paused a moment, making sure I was alone, before taking a step forward. I considered taking the man’s MK5 from him before thinking better of it, instead using my toe to slide it away from his body, pushing it across the intersection.
With the Browning raised, I moved past him, coming up on the man that I could only assume to be Paco.
Lying flat on his back, he stared up through unseeing eyes, no less than a half-dozen red blotches dotting the front of his suit and staining his white dress shirt. A seventh had cleaved a hole through his cheek, my wild firing having struck home far more than I had any right to expect.
With dark hair and tan skin, he certainly could pass for Hispanic, though in today's melting pot, that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Just like going through his pockets, hoping to find a valid ID, would be a fool’s errand.
All that did matter was that he was gone, the expanding pool of blood beneath him proving as much.
By his side rested a Walther PPQ, a noise suppressor screwed down onto the end of it, the reason I hadn’t heard the shots fired earlier.
Much like the MP5, I considered taking it too before opting against it.
Where I was headed next, I wanted the extra sound provided by the Browning. Odds were, very few of the people upstairs had ever heard a gunshot in person before. They would be inebriated, likely in a drug-induced stupor, the place a powder keg for hysteria.
The last thing I did before heading out was turn to regard the blonde woman lying on the opposite end of the hall. Still folded in half from flipping backward over me, she lay unmoving, no person alive being able to withstand three Walther rounds at such short distance.
Like so much about this entire undertaking, it was tragic, more collateral damage so some rich bastards could play out their fantasies.
No more.
Chapter Eighty-Seven
There were only a few things in the world that Paco would have set his phone to alert him about during one of their galas. Of those, less than half would he leave himself to go oversee personally.
The moment it happened, Sirr Asai had played the part. He’d kept the smile in place, pretending to finish the handoff between Matsui and the girl, before excusing himself as well.
Only unlike what he’d have had them believe, he wasn’t headed off to glad-hand other guests. He wasn’t going to check on the food situation or ensure that the bar had everything it needed.
Instead, he went straight to the rear staircase, taking the steps three at a time, ascending to his office.
From there, he had planted himself in front of the security monitors, arriving just in time to see the mess in the basement.
Paco firing. Tracee serving as an unintentional shield. Tracee taking multiple rounds and flying backward as the man she stood in front of unloaded an entire clip.
An unknown number of them striking Paco, his body gyrating under contact, continuing to fire through the first couple before the combined effect of them was too much, his body succumbing to the damage.
A full five minutes had passed since the scene happened, and still Asai could barely believe it, his mind fighting to process what his eyes witnessed.
Paco was far and away the toughest man he knew. Someone that had ascended through the Mexican Armed Forces, would no doubt be a general or higher by now if he had stayed on. Had once completed a marathon a week after fracturing his ankle in a hiking accident.
He was a partner, the missing piece that had come into Asai’s life at the exact moment he was most needed, allowing their enterprise to grow in ways that had previously seemed impossible. Without his expertise, Asai would likely be nothing more than the person he pretended to be, able to throw a hell of a party, but little more.
And most importantly, he was the closest thing to family Asai had left, the final connection to his old self.
In short order, a litany of emotions rippled through him. Beginning as shock, he stared at the unmoving form of his friend, the man a veritable starfish, his limbs extended outward, his gaze leveled at the ceiling.
Next up was sorrow, the reality of the situation setting in, the repercussions it would have needling beneath the surface, striking Asai with complete clarity.
Which t
hen led to rage. Pure, unadulterated, white-hot wrath, all of it aimed at the bearded man moving through the underbelly of the building he now stood in, responsible for the deaths of at least three of his employees, if not more.
Drawing the camera view up to full size, allowing it to encompass all sixteen screens at once, Asai clenched his jaw, his hands drawing into tight fists.
Never before had he seen the man in the cheap suit and the terrible haircut. Why he was there or who he worked for, Asai could only speculate on.
What he knew for sure was that there was no way the man left alive. No matter what it took, regardless of the spectacle that was made.
His gaze never leaving the screens, Asai took a step back. His hip touching against the edge of the desk, he extended a hand, drawing up his cell phone and pressing a single button, rendering the device into a walkie-talkie.
“All guards to the main house immediately. We have an intruder. White male, black suit, beard, mid-thirties. Armed and extremely dangerous.
“Fire at will.”
Chapter Eighty-Eight
I didn’t bother with the elevator. It was too limiting, making it too easy for Asai and his goons to surround the door, mowing me down or bunching in around me the moment it opened.
Instead, I took the stairs, a decision the wound in my side hated me for, but I knew to be the most prudent.
Browning in hand, I ascended as fast as I could, gritting my teeth and moving in short choppy steps up the stairs, taking them one at a time.
By this point, there was no way they didn’t know I was present. The fact that Paco and the other guard had both showed up when they did proved that. Moving slow, being patient, listening for every little sound, no longer worked. All that did was keep me in the basement, away from the crowd.
Which right now, as odd as it might sound, was my best friend.
Home Fire: A Suspense Thriller (A Hawk Tate Novel Book 5) Page 30