Steffani laughed again.
“Yeah, I see that you’ve met him already,” she said, indicating the bruise on Hanna’s face. “He has his certain charms, that’s for sure. But I run this show. Me.” Steffani Loomis stepped forward, bringing the item that she’d been twirling in her hand into the moonlight. “You, on the other hand,” Steffani continued, spinning the metal chopstick over her thumb like some sort of magician's wand. “Are more subtle. As am I.”
Steffani reached out traced a line with the chopstick from Hanna's ear all the way down to beneath her chin. Hanna turned her face away, but when the point dug into the soft skin between her collarbones, she moved her head straight again. There was pure hatred in the woman’s eyes, and Hanna was tempted to believe her tale of deceit and deception.
“You and I are a lot alike, Hanna, and that’s a problem. There's only room in this world for one of us.”
She pressed the point of the chopstick deep enough to draw blood.
“You kill me,” Hanna said through clenched teeth, “and my people will hunt you down. You think that power is a motivating influence? How about revenge? Because I guarantee—”
The woman withdrew the chopstick and then thrust it upward. It pierced through the soft skin beneath her chin and pinned the underside of her tongue.
Blood instantly filled Hanna's mouth and she tried to turn her head away, to escape the horrible pain that radiated up ward. But Steffani reached out with her free hand and grabbed the back of her head and held it tight. Then she straddled Hanna and leaned so close that she could smell gin on the woman’s breath.
“You're right, Hanna: more people will come. Do you think that you're the first person to be strapped to this chair?” She shook her head. “Not even close. And you won't be the last.”
Hanna's eyes widened when she saw the woman's grip on the end of the chopstick tightened in her periphery. She knew that the end was near, but she didn’t plead, didn’t beg.
She just waited for the end.
But just before Steffani slid the spike up through her mouth and into her brain, there was a hard knock on the door above.
Steffani loosened her grip and turned her head around. There was another knock, and then the door handle started to jiggle.
“Fuck,” she grumbled, sliding off Hanna. She pulled the chopstick free and now, without it plugging the wound, blood spilled freely from Hanna’s mouth and soaked the front of her torn dress.
Steffani observed her for a moment, then cleaned the chopstick off on Hanna’s dress before hurrying back up the stairs.
Chapter 62
Screech wasn't really surprised that Veronica knew not one, but two of the guests that were attending the charity auction. What was surprising, however, was that Mandy also “knew” one of the guests.
Neither of them hesitated when Screech asked for their help; they were just happy to pay back the favor for what happened at the sex slave ring.
This is it, he thought, as he sat in his car and watched as Mandy and Veronica made their way across the street. Security had been increased after Leroy and Hanna had been found out, but that didn’t matter.
Veronica and Mandy were experts at getting inside, especially given the clientele that they knew intimately.
They no problem walking right through the gates with only a few short sentences, and then they hurried up the stairs and into the Estate.
Screech had insisted that he fit them with listening devices, but they’d refused. They’d claimed something about wanting to keep their industry secrets safe, but he had a sneaking suspicion that what they really wanted is to keep the identity of their Johns secret.
This made Screech anxious, but then he remembered just how tough these women were and, combined with the fact that Veronica had packed her trust Taser, helped to alleviate some of his concerns.
Still, as he sat in his car with the gun resting on his lap, Screech felt rather helpless. It didn’t help that Leroy was a bundle of nerves in the backseat. He was sweating bullets and kept twitching, which was driving Screech nuts. He didn’t want Leroy here; he’d promised Kinesha that he wouldn’t be in any danger. But there was no time to argue with the kid.
At least he knew well enough to stay quiet.
I should be in there, he thought. I should be the one to go in there and rescue Hanna. I sent her in, after all.
But he knew better; they knew who he was. As soon as Screech showed his face at the door, one of Loomis’ goons would throw him in the basement and then both he and Hanna would be fucked.
No, he had to wait.
Screech took a deep a breath and then took out his phone and stared at the screen.
Yasiv had told him that he couldn’t get involved in this, but that didn’t mean that everyone in law enforcement had to stay out of it.
After contacting Veronica, Screech had racked his brain for someone in the NYPD that he could trust. Yasiv being out meant that Detective Dunbar was also a no go, which left only Officer Kramer. He’d considered it but based on what Yasiv had said about the man’s unrelenting desire to see Drake in prison, Screech had quickly quashed the idea. But thinking about Kramer had reminded him of the conversation he’d had with Yasiv regarding Drake. About how the DA was desperate to keep his job. About how he was seeking jail time for the dirty cops, instead of trying to just sweep all of corruption under the rug.
With no other options, Screech had packaged the video of Captain Loomis assaulting Hanna and sent it anonymously to the DA. That had been a risk; threatening to go to the Times if the DA didn’t do anything about it ASAP was borderline reckless.
But he couldn’t wait—Hanna couldn’t wait—for them to go through the proper channels and chain of custody and all that bullshit.
She’d be dead long before the slow-moving wheel of bureaucracy made it to the Loomis Estate.
Screech had been so deep in thought that he didn’t even realize his phone had started ringing.
“Screech, your phone,” Leroy informed him from the backseat.
Screech shook his head and focused on the screen. With a furrowed brow, he answered it.
“Sgt. Yasiv? What’s going on?”
There was no answer.
“Yasiv? Everything okay?”
Screech initially thought that the line was dead, but when he listened closely, he realized that he could hear voices on the other end.
People barking commands.
And then, louder than the others, Yasiv’s voice broke through.
“Yeah, DA says we’re a go; arrest warrant for Captain Brandon Loomis. Intel has him at his Estate on the Upper East Side.”
“Yasiv? Are you—”
“Ten, maybe fifteen minutes out.”
“Are we going in hot?” another voice asked. It was then that Screech realized that Yasiv wasn’t speaking to him.
And then he smiled. Yasiv couldn’t update him directly, of course, but this ‘accidental’ phone call was just as good.
“Hot?” Yasiv shouted. “No, not hot. We’re going in blazing. Strap up boys, it’s gonna be a long night.”
Chapter 63
Drake felt as if he’d stepped back in time to a place he’d never been.
Somehow, he’d transposed himself into the photograph that he’d seen in the Times, the one that showed a much younger Ken Smith in army fatigues, his arm wrapped around Raul’s shoulder. In the background, he could see the sign for the Iglesia de Liberacion, complete with the symbol for ANGUIS Holdings.
Nothing had changed. More than thirty years had passed, and yet the sign was still there, as was the hut. Drake had to a double-take to make sure that he hadn’t somehow become Ken Smith.
Drake opened his eyes as wide as he could, trying to force away the exhaustion. It didn’t work.
Dane suddenly turned to look at him. Then he nodded. There was no need for words now, the words had all been said.
Now was the time for action. Dane reached into the bottom of his backpack and
pulled out two items. He handed one to Drake and took the other for himself.
Drake didn’t know how many times he’d held a gun in his life. Dozens, probably even a hundred. But for some reason, this pistol felt different in his hand. Heavier, warmer, some how even more deadly.
He swallowed hard. It wasn’t the gun that was different, it was him.
Distracted as he was, Drake barely noticed when his brother rose out of his crouch started to work his way around back of the hut.
“No!” Drake hissed. He was suddenly struck with a dual sense of Deja vu that was so disorienting that he needed to shut his eyes for a moment.
He was torn between two worlds; part of his brain thought that he was back at Diego’s hut, while the other half thought he was back in nineteen-eighty-four.
When Drake finally managed to shake this bizarre sensation and opened his eyes, his brother was gone.
“Fuck.”
He ran his tongue across his blistered and cracked lips. He tasted blood, and this seemed to root him in the present.
By pressing his body as flat as possible by the edge of the clearing, Drake realized that he could almost render himself invisible. It wasn’t such a bad thing, not being seen. Not being seen meant that you couldn’t fuck up other people’s lives up.
Time flexed and bowed as he lay there. Drake existed in the uncomfortable space between waking and sleep, the space where dreams could come but you could never quite wake up from.
Mental purgatory, he thought. That’s what I suffer from. Mental purgatory.
Shadows crossed the sun, tiny birds at first—hundreds of them, maybe even thousands—until they coalesced into larger forms. Two forms.
Two men, standing in front of the hut.
Drake blinked rapidly and forced his muscles to wake.
“Drake? I know you’re out there,” a voice hollered.
Dane? Is that Dane?
He still couldn’t focus on the two figures. One was standing in front of the other, that much he could make out, but for some reason, his brain seemed incapable of separating the men into two discreet images.
“Drake, show yourself, or I’ll kill him right here, right now.”
It wasn’t the words, but the cocking of a gun that finally helped clear Drake’s mind.
His brother was standing in front, his head hung low. Behind him, a silver-haired man in fatigues pressed a gun to the back of Dane’s head.
All his training, all his instincts, all his common sense told Drake to stay down, to stay out sight.
But he’d gone thirty-five plus years not listening to his common sense, and even though that approach to life had gotten him here, to this place, old habits died hard.
“Dane!” Drake shouted as he rose to his feet.
Ken Smith turned in his direction and then nudged Dane forward several feet with the muzzle of the gun.
Drake raised his own pistol and aimed it at Ken.
“I’ll kill you,” he said hoarsely. “I’ll fucking kill you.”
Ken smirked.
“I knew you’d come,” he said.
Drake tried desperately to line Ken’s head up with the barrel of his gun, but it was hopeless. His hand kept moving, and the man’s face continually drifting in and out of focus. Under the best of circumstance, Drake would have had a hard time making the shot.
Under these circumstances? After not sleeping for two days, drinking only a teaspoon of water in the sweltering, and having the shakes from alcohol withdrawal?
Impossible. I’d hit Drake before I hit Ken.
And yet rage continued to build inside him. A rage so powerful that it caused his index finger to tighten on the trigger.
“I knew both of you would come.”
Dane’s own gun, which he’d been gripping this entire time, slipped from his hand and landed in the dirt by his feet.
“Predictable. Relentless, sure, but predictable.”
The trees to Drake’s right suddenly shook and a man stepped into the clearing.
The man’s eyes darted from Ken to Dane, to Drake, and then back again.
What the fuck?
It was Raul.
Drake didn’t know how this was possible, but it was Raul. The impish man was shirtless, his deeply tanned skin dripping with sweat and glistening in the sun. Over one shoulder was a large parcel wrapped in brown paper. The ends were sealed with red tape covered in the familiar snake eating an eyeball symbol.
The symbol for the Church of Liberation.
For ANGUIS Holdings.
Drake turning his head in the man’s direction and blinked several times.
“Raul?” he barely managed to whisper. “How is this possible? How—”
And then Drake felt something cold press up against his temple and the blood in his arteries that fury had boiled froze in his veins.
Chapter 64
“Robert Eakin the Third I know you're here!” Mandy shouted the second she stepped into the auction room. All eyes were suddenly on her, which was exactly what she wanted. “Where's Robert Eakin?”
People exchanged uncomfortable glances, all wondering who the feisty brunette in the sexy dress was.
When nobody gave Robert up, Mandy made her way directly to the center of the room.
“Where's Robert? Where's Robert Eakin?”
When once again nobody replied, she grabbed for the nearest man, a wiry fellow with dark hair, and pulled him close.
“You know Robert? Robert Eakin?”
The man was so startled that he didn’t even bother pushing her away.
“Yeah, he's h-h-here somewhere,” the man blubbered.
“Take me to them, take me to him now,” Mandy demanded. In her periphery, she saw Veronica sneaking around to the other side of the room, moving seamlessly through the crowd whose eyes were all focused on her.
Moving toward the basement.
A man suddenly stepped into the room from the other side, nearly knocking into Veronica in the process. She slid just out of his path just before they collided.
“Robert,” Mandy said with a grin. “We have some business to discuss.”
The man looked confused and his thick, bushy eyebrows rose up his forehead. But when he noticed that everyone's eyes were now on him, his face started turning red.
“Do I—do I know you? He stammered, stepping into the room. Mandy let go of the man she'd interrogated and stepped toward Robert. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “M-M-Mandy? “What the hell—what the hell are you doing here?”
“We’ve got some business to discuss,” she reiterated, placing her hands on her hips.
Robert’s face transition from red to purple.
He mumbled something else, something incoherent, and was about to step forward when a large man with gray hair pushed by him.
“What the hell is going on here?”
Mandy smirked. She knew by the man’s air of authority that this was the person in charge.
That this was Captain Brandon Loomis.
“I came here for Robert. He—”
Loomis snapped his fingers, interrupting her.
“Security, get this woman out of here,” he ordered.
The security seemed to materialize out of thin air. They grabbed her arms and bent them behind her back, but Mandy didn't resist.
In fact, when she saw Veronica sliding behind Captain Loomis and make her way out of the room, her smile grew.
Chapter 65
“Or should I say, we knew you’d come. Now, be a good boy, Drake, and put down your gun.”
Drake's mind was swimming. He didn't need to see who was holding the gun to his temple to know who it was.
After all, it could only be one person. And that person was Wesley Smith.
It took him another moment to realize that this must have been Ken and Wesley’s plan all along. Everything from putting Drake lockup, to having Diego tell them where they were.
It was all to get both him and Dane together.
K
en must've seen something on his face change because his smirk grew into a full-fledged smile.
“Yeah, I knew you'd come after me, and I knew that when you got into trouble, Dane would come to the rescue. Just like he did at the Reynolds farm. Dane was supposed to die on that stupid yacht, but, in the end, I’m glad he didn’t. This is better.”
Movement out of the corner of his eye drew Drake's attention.
It was Raul—or, more appropriately, the man he thought was Raul. But while the man looked like Raul, he lacked his bristly mustache and the deep lines around his mouth. He was younger, was more fit.
It was Raul’s son.
And with this realization, everything suddenly came into focus for Drake and he was met with a clarity that he hadn’t felt since Clay’s murder.
This was why Raul was so indebted to Ken, not because he rescued him from the drug lords who’d forced him to make their product, but because he’d saved his son.
“Put down the gun, Drake,” Wesley Smith ordered.
But Drake didn't listen. He knew that the moment he lowered his weapon, both he and his brother were as good as dead.
Ken sighed heavily.
“I've grown tired of you, Drake. There was a time when I thought we could work together, that I could bring you into the fold, into ANGUIS like I did with Clay all those years ago. We could have used someone like you. If only you hadn’t been so goddamn stubborn, maybe neither of us would have ended up here.”
Clay… just the mention of his late friend’s name caused Drake’s entire body to thrum.
All of this was because of Clay.
“But here’s the thing, Drake. Only one of us is getting out of this jungle. And it ain’t gonna be you. It’ll take some time to build up what you destroyed in New York, but rest assured, I will. After all, not all rats went down with the ship. I still have people there, people who owe me. But most of all, I have the product.”
Drake wasn’t listening to Ken anymore. His mind was flipping forward from the time of Clay’s murder. He’d gone rogue for a while, but then he’d been assigned a new partner, one who kept him grounded. And their first case…
Drug Lord- Part II Page 17