by Jack Hardin
With smooth, determined strides, she crossed the floor, and pinching at the skirts of her dress, she raised them a few inches. Cruz settled the gun into his grip and drew it up. He faced Ellie as he raised it toward her, blood now seeping down his cheek, oozing freely from the soulless eye Juanita had pierced. Ellie pivoted completely away from him, bringing her knee up high before leaning over and sending her foot plowing backward in a perfect back kick. The long, narrow heel of her shoe pierced upward through his shirt and his skin, striking high between his ribs and entering his heart. Cruz grunted as the force of the kick launched him backward off his feet, and he crashed into the bookcase, falling to the floor as Ellie snatched her leg back; the heel of her shoe now covered in a thick red sleeve of his blood.
Ellie found her balance, and as Cruz dropped the gun and gathered his hands around his chest, she grabbed his head and sent her knee into his nose. His body flopped to the side, hit the floor, and did not move. Blood bloomed wide against his shirt, and his mouth yawed back and forth like a dying fish as his heart began to shut down.
Ellie snatched up the gun and stepped over him. She moved quickly toward Juanita and kneeled before her. The girl was on her elbows now, wincing from the pain incurred at the hands of the man now lying dead at her feet. Ellie surveyed the room and the doorway. She saw no more immediate threats. “Come here,” she said, and then carefully helped Juanita to her feet. They stepped around Cruz’s limp body, and Ellie assisted her to the couch, where they sat, both of them catching their breath.
Seconds later, Major appeared in the doorway, his eyes full of worry and his body tense. “Ellie.” He came to her and squatted down. He looked at Juanita and his expression softened, but the concern was still there. He looked Ellie over.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
“Is this Juanita?”
Ellie nodded, and the girl’s face lifted, surprised to hear her name. Major turned to her. “You’re okay.” He sounded like a worry-sick father consoling his daughter. “We’re getting you out of here.” He looked around and nodded at the dead guard’s body. “Are there others?” he asked.
Juanita stared wide-eyed at the floor. Ellie spoke softly. “Juanita, honey. Are there others?”
She nodded quickly.
“How many?”
Her voice was no stronger than a whisper. “Eight.” She shook her head. “No… seven. There are seven.”
“Are they guards? Do they have guns?”
“No. No, it’s just...the men.” The bookcase door was open several inches, and she lifted a hand and pointed toward it. “Down there.”
Ellie locked eyes with Major. His jaw was set hard, his pupils wide, and if she had ever witnessed such rage in his eyes, she couldn’t remember. And she loved him for that. He extended an open hand to Ellie. She placed the gun in it. And without a word, he walked to the bookcase door, threw it open, and disappeared behind it.
Chapter Forty-Four
The police cruiser was only a few car lengths behind now, its horn blaring intermittently over the rumbler siren like an angry mother-in-law.
“So what do you want me to do?” Jet asked.
Alex cursed again. “Stop the car. Just stop the car. I’ll deal with this.” He scowled. “You really shouldn’t have done that.”
Red and blue lights pulsed across the Fusion’s interior, forcing Jet to squint against the visual assault. He removed his foot from the accelerator, and the vehicle started to slow as it shot down the highway on pure momentum.
He avoided the urge to tighten his seatbelt. If his plan worked properly, the seat belt retractor would automatically ratchet the belt in a couple more notches.
Alex’s forehead was glistening nervous sweat, and his eyes were wide and searching as he silently worked to formulate a new plan on the fly.
“Alex,” Jet said quietly. They were at 90 mph now.
“What!?”
“You’re going to pay for what you’ve done.”
80 mph.
“Shut up, Jet!”
“No. I won’t shut up, Alex. You prey on the weak. You kidnapped an innocent girl, and you asked the wrong man to find her.”
60 mph.
“Shut. Up!”
“Go ahead. Shoot me. You don’t intimidate me.” He turned and looked Alex dead in the eye. “Tonight, you lose.”
Alex didn’t get a chance to respond. Jet switched lanes and slammed the sole of his shoe into the brake pedal, sending brushstrokes of hot Firestone rubber streaking onto the pavement. The sudden loss of forward progress was enough for Alex’s arm to drift toward the windshield, bringing the gun clear of Jet’s body.
Jet moved with a swift and controlled finesse. He pressed his left knee hard into the steering wheel and shoved Alex’s weapon further toward the windshield. Then he shot his fingers down and slammed them into Alex’s seat belt release. The younger man cried out in a sudden burst of anger and panic as he drifted toward the dash.
Jet ignored him and, moving with lightning speed, crossed his hands over his own chest and grabbed his shoulders. He tucked his chin into his forearms as he flung his knee toward the center console, taking the steering wheel with it.
The car was still going forty when the front tires caught sideways on the pavement and two tons of American steel levitated off the ground and entered a ruthless spin across the grassy median.
Chapter Forty-Five
The lights from nearly two dozen emergency vehicles strobed across the Palm Rivers Country Club, and seven men in custom suits were sitting in the back seats of as many police cruisers. A crime scene unit was inside, collecting evidence in the girl’s prison while the medical examiner snapped pictures of Miguel Zedillo’s body.
Two short minutes after Major had disappeared behind the bookcase, the first frightened girl had stepped timidly into the room. She had been wrapped in a blanket, and both Juanita and Ellie stood to receive her. The remaining girls followed behind in brief intervals.
Cami had been the last to come through. She was followed by Major, who was still holding the gun and clutching a handful of thick plastic key cards. The knuckles on both his hands were bloody and already beginning to swell.
He had helped Ellie shepherd the girls from the office just as they heard the sirens from the first responders arriving out front. Major set the gun on the floor and took up the rear of the procession.
Ellie had spent the last ten minutes standing in the parking lot fielding questions from a detective. When his attention was briefly diverted by an inquiring officer, Ellie asked for a couple of minutes and stepped away. She walked over to where an ambulance was parked near the fountain. Its back doors were open, and Juanita was sitting on the bumper. A blanket was draped around her, and she huddled beneath it as though it was her one security in the world.
Ellie smiled as she approached her.
“What will happen now?” Juanita asked.
“They’re going to take you to the hospital.” Ellie noted the concern in the girl’s eyes. “You’ll have a police escort. You’ll be safe.” She leaned in and drew Juanita’s gaze to hers. “You’re safe now. It’s over.”
Juanita nodded weakly like she was trying to believe it.
An EMT materialized from the side of the ambulance. “It’s time to go,” she said.
Juanita turned back to Ellie. “Can you come with me?” Her eyes were almost pleading. “Please.”
Ellie looked back toward the detective. He was waving her over. “I can’t,” she said. “The police have a lot of questions for me. I have to go with them for a few hours. But I’ll come to you as soon as they let me leave.”
“Why did you help me?”
Ellie placed a hand on her shoulder. “We’ve been looking for you.”
Juanita’s head lifted. “You were? For me?”
“Yes, sweetheart. For you.”
“Why?”
Ellie moved her hand to the girl’s cheek. “Because you’re worth it
. And no one should have to go through what you did. No one.” A hot tear slid into Ellie’s hand, and she smeared away the wet track with her thumb. “It’s over now. You’ll get to see your brother soon.”
Juanita smiled. Her first real smile of the evening. “Yes,” she said triumphantly. “I will.”
Chapter Forty-Six
The Fusion came to rest upside down, straddling the grass and the shoulder of the northbound lane where it lay like a crumpled soda can.
The windshield was splintered with thousands of milky cracks. The tempered glass of the rear and side windows had blown out, having shattered into thousands of small pebbles and strewn across the road, the median, and the inside of the car.
Jet heard a voice. It sounded far away, like he was underwater. He couldn’t make it out.
Pain ripped through every inch of his body, too much to decipher where exactly the damage was. He slowly opened his eyes, and as he waited for his blurred vision to clear, he realized he was hanging upside down.
He heard the voice again. Clearer this time, like he was out of the water but now wearing earplugs.
“Jet!”
He slowly licked his lips and tried to speak. But it only came out as a muted whisper.
“Jet!”
It took him several seconds to turn toward his door. He looked down. A face near the ground looking up at him. He knew that face. But from where?
“Can you hear me?” Yes. He could. And it was clear now.
He tried putting more into his voice. “Yes.” The face—it was an officer with the Ft. Myers PD. Jet couldn’t recall his name, but they had trained together at the gun range a couple of times.
“Okay. Good. We need to get you down from there but I have to wait for an EMT to get you a neck brace. Just hang tight.”
While sirens grew louder in the distance, Jet cautiously turned his head in the other direction. The cruiser’s floodlight lit up the inside of the car, and his vision started to clear. His eyes came to rest on Alex.
He was sprawled across his back against the inside canopy. He was unrecognizable. Blood covered his face, slicked across it like an overdone Halloween mask, and one of his arms was broken, twisted and turned back over his head. The entire right side of his chest was a wide delta of oozing blood. He wasn’t breathing.
As the Fusion had completed its second roll, it kicked into the air and descended onto a mile marker. The metal entered through Alex’s window and sliced into him, just missing Jet’s head as it came out the other side. As it rotated upright again, the metal withdrew and left his impaled body to bounce around the car like a broken lottery ball.
Jet turned his eyes away. He couldn’t feel his own face. There was too much pressure in it from hanging upside down. But he was fairly certain that, in spite of the gruesome pain pulsing through him, he was smiling.
Chapter Forty-Seven
One Week Later
The Salty Mangrove was humming with laughter and conversation, and live music completed the tropical atmosphere. Red Fish Blue Fish, a local island band, was covering Bob Seger and Jackson Browne from a makeshift stage at the edge of the boardwalk. It was dark, and a gentle breeze floated off the water while Edison lights intermixed with Christmas lights to provide the kind of tropical ambiance that you could only find in Southwest Florida.
Major was busy serving a crowded bar, and Ellie was standing next to Tyler and enjoying much-needed laughter with Nick and Tiffany.
Behind Tyler, Ellie saw Jet hobble up the ramp from the parking lot. He went to the front of the bar, and when Major saw him, they exchanged handshakes. Ellie excused herself and walked over to him. Major was handing over a Red Stripe, and she heard him tell Jet that his money wasn’t any good here.
“Hey,” Ellie said.
Jet turned to her, and like she had every time she’d seen him in the last week, she wanted to wince. His left arm was resting in a sling, and deep abrasions were still healing on his cheek, forehead, and elbows. His neck was wrapped in a foam neck brace. “How do I look?” he asked.
“Major has a no lying policy around the bar, so…” She smiled apprehensively.
“Yeah. I scare my wife a little bit too. You have a minute?”
They stepped away from the bar and the music and sat at one of the picnic tables on the boardwalk. “Well,” he began, “as bad cops go, they’ve arrested three so far. Gomez and one other from the Ft. Myers PD. And one in Miami. It seems that Zedillo had Cruz keep backups of all the video surveillance. So far they have over sixty different men. And get this, all of them are international businessmen. None of them are U.S. citizens.”
Ellie sighed deeply and looked off toward the docks. The day after Ellie followed Cruz and found the girls, the FBI decided they had enough to move on Blake Duprey. They went to his house and took him away in front of a confused wife and crying little daughter.
It seemed that everything was over now. It was all wrapped up in a pretty little bow. They had not only found Juanita, but seven other missing girls too. Ellie knew that should feel like a win. And it did. The girls were safe now; they were no longer slaves, no longer someone’s else property. But the darker lining: Ellie knew those girls would never be the same. They would wrestle with the effects of their trauma for the rest of their lives; they were all facing a very long road ahead. She could only hope that with the right care from the right people the girls would one day overcome it.
“Carlos came by yesterday,” Ellie said. “He’s going to make sure all the girls get sent through a recovery program with Florida Abolitionist. When they’re done with that, he’s going to pay for ongoing counseling for them. If they want to go to college, he’s going to fund it and pay for their all living expenses.”
“He’s a good man,” Jet said. “Did he tell you about Hope House?”
“No. What about it?”
“Carlos is sending someone from one of his companies to run it.” Jet winced a little as he brought out his phone. “I just got this from the caseworker. She was kind enough to send it along.” He turned his phone toward her. The screen displayed a picture of a smiling Juanita clutching a happy little boy.
“That’s Junior?” Ellie asked.
“It is. She turns eighteen next week, and she’ll get custody of him.”
“Let’s go visit her together when you don’t look like you just came out of a blender.”
“Hey, now.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she studied him. “Jet, you know I’m good at reading people.”
“Sure.”
“So something else is on your mind.”
He chuckled. “Okay. I’ll get to it. You’ve got a gift, Ellie. You have a knack for sniffing out the bad guys. But more than that. Your personal sense of justice is, I think, what makes you exceptional.”
She said nothing, waited for the substance.
“I know you’re not fully sold on becoming a private investigator. That said, since I used to work with you at the DEA, the Department of Homeland Security reached out to me and asked what I thought of you.”
She arched an eyebrow but said nothing.
“They’re forming an interagency task force. Several actually. They will be focused on pushing back crime in key areas of the country: Chicago, L.A., Houston, and most of South Florida, given our coastline. I’m staying in my role as a PI, but they’ve also asked me to consider coming aboard in a supportive role as needed. They’re interested in you in the same capacity. I said I’d have a chat with you about it.”
Ellie sighed. There was a part of her that enjoyed the freedom of just helping Major around the bar and being able to go fishing and shooting as her whims dictated. But there was also the satisfaction of seeing a picture of a young lady hugging her little brother and realizing that you had something to do with that. “What do you mean by interagency?” she asked.
“Homeland, of course. ICE, some Coast Guard, and perhaps the FBI and DEA. It will depend on the threat and the concerns of the moment. They
’re trying to shore up some gaps in their counter-terrorism policies and practices.”
“That’s a lot to think about,” she said. She stood up. “Are you sticking around?”
“For a little while. Want to hear the band.”
“Don’t leave without letting me know,” she said.
Gloria was planted back on her bar stool, she and Fu having returned from their cruise two days before, and Ellie listened as Gloria recounted stories of a trip no one thought they would ever take.
“We were walking through the rain forest in Belize to get to where we started the cave tubing. And on the way, I look off to my right and see this huge, and I mean huge, snake working its way up a rubber tree. The guide said it was some kind of python but that unless they’re basically starving they stay away from people. And he said that a full-size python can actually eat a small mammal? A small human even, if they’re hungry enough.” Gloria’s face contorted into a look of disgust. “A snake eating a person. Can you imagine that?”
Major’s eyes narrowed. “Yes,” he said slowly. “I think I’ve heard a story like that.”
“You have any pictures of the trip?” Tyler asked.
“Oh, pictures. Of course! Come over here.” Gloria retrieved her phone from the top of her swimsuit, where it lay tucked in against a heavy breast.
Ellie heard a sound behind her and turned to see Fu smiling up at them, his head bobbing a hello on his thick neck. Next to her, Tyler said, “What the…”