As Troy watched her study the lasting reminder of her stepfather, he noticed the corner of a piece of paper showing inside the band. He pointed to it.
“What’s this?” he asked.
Laura’s nose crinkled. “I have no idea.
She pulled the folded note out of the hat, which she handed to Troy.
“Why don’t you keep it?” she said. “It really looks good on you.”
Troy nodded, his attention still on the paper she held in her hand. She noticed his gaze as he unfolded it.
Her mouth fell open.“Seven… million…,” —she paused— “dollars…”
“Uh huh,” Troy said. “Ches was right. We had the check the whole time.”
She threw the check down on the table like it had burned her hand. “Rick died for that. I don’t want it anymore. Get rid of it. Burn it!”
“Now, hold on just a second, little lady.” Troy picked up the check. “The cops are gonna need this as evidence. I can void it if you want, but we can’t burn it.”
“I don’t care what you do with it,” she nearly growled, “I want it out of my sight, now!”
“Okay, okay,” he said and held up his left hand, “settle down, Laura.” With his right hand, he tucked the check into his shirt pocket.
“We’ll give it to Ches when he gets back,” —Troy looked up at the sliding glass door— “which should be soon.”
He was startled to see Debby Böhring standing at the door with a whole mess of children hanging on and around her. She raised her hand and knocked frantically on the glass.
Troy shoved the hat on his head and jumped up. He reached the door in two long strides.
Debby stuck her head in as if she was coming up for air. “The girl. I know where the girl is!”
“Huh?” Troy asked, as kids started to pour into his living room.
“The girl you’re missing,” She held her hands out, palms up. “I know where they’ve taken her!”
“Aw, dangit,” he said, looking back at Laura. “I need a car.”
Laura shook her head slowly and then snapped her eyes up to look at him. “Karah’s Rover. The keys are probably at my place next door. I think I dropped them when I was running away from the crazy guy with all the bandages!”
Debby spoke up. “I think that’s the guy who shot Victor. He was covered in blood-soaked bandages and smelled like shit. He called him Darren or Darrell or something like that.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Laura said, nodding vigorously, “that’s the guy.”
“Where did they take her?” Troy asked, putting both hands on Debby’s shoulders.
She licked her lips. “Do you know where Balls is?”
“Beg pardon?”
“You know, Balls,” —she held her hand up motioning vaguely north— “that cheesy beach t-shirt shop up the road.”
“Oh yeah.” Troy snapped his fingers. “The one with the two beach balls and the surfboard on the front in the shape of a—”
“Yes,” she interrupted him, “that’s the one. Victor owns a small self-storage building behind it. He calls it the apartments… I have no idea why. That’s where he said the girl was taken before he was shot.”
“Got it,” Troy said. He took a deep breath and exhaled as he stood. “Okay, you two sit tight.” He held up a hand to stop Laura as her mouth flew open. “No, you can’t go.”
“But—”
“Not a chance, little darlin’.” He shook his head as he moved to the door. “This is gonna get real dangerous and I don’t want you in harm’s way.”
“But she’s my cousin!”
“Yup, she is,” he said and opened the door, “and her parents are on their way. They’re gonna need you here. And Debby and the kids need you here.”
Laura slumped back down on the couch and crossed her arms.
“This here part of the story is mine,” he said. “Your part is to wait on the cops and the feds to get here and tell ‘em everything you know.”
He waited for her to retort, but she didn’t. She uncrossed her arms.
“Just be careful, Troy,” she said through her tears, not knowing what else to say. “And bring my cousin back to me.”
“That’s the plan,” Troy said.
“Hey.” Laura must’ve thought of something suddenly. “Take her phone. That other dude has mine. He’s probably got it turned off, but you never know.”
He tipped the cowboy hat toward them and closed the door.
Troy jogged/limped the short distance down Myrtle Avenue and headed into the carport where Karah’s Land Rover sat behind a green Volkswagen Jetta. He’d been too preoccupied to notice his gun bounce out of the waistband of his shorts and fall to the soft, pea gravel of the driveway. After just a few seconds, he found the Rover keys lying on the stairs leading up under Laura’s beach house. The SUV fired up in the smooth, powerful way that only a Land Rover can, and he urged it quickly out onto the road. Once he got off the island, he gunned the car, and it leapt forward hungrily. He didn’t care much how fast he was going as all the cops in the area were probably at Victor’s house right now. The wheels ate up Ocean Highway swiftly as he raced toward the Balls beach shop, a touristy dive selling t-shirts, magnets, conch shells and a whole raft of other crap. He barely noticed the ding trying to inform him that he was dangerously low on gas.
Man’ti sucked a toothpick as he stared at the girl sitting in the broken recliner. A crusty pool of blood under the chair reminded him of how that dumb-arse Darren had cut off his damn toes in this storage unit. Fookin’ idiot, he thought, grinning.
Her wrists and ankles were bound tightly with heavy, plastic zip-ties and her mouth was covered with a piece of duct tape that wrapped around her whole head. She was crying, and muffled sounds came through the tape as she tried to yell.
He was at a mild crossroads here. He wasn’t really a rapist, but this girl was fine. She was only wearing a tiny little bikini and looked to be college aged. Her body was the body of a girl who hadn’t been through any shit yet to screw it up. Not like the girls he’d been with before. The only girls who’d pay him any mind were the kind that worked for twenty-five or fifty bucks an hour.
The way she looked at him turned him on. It was fear, or more accurately, terror. She knew he was going to kill her, but right now, she might be realizing that he was going to play with her before he did it.
He stood up and walked toward her. She flinched back and he was more turned on than ever. He grinned. Grabbing the back of her hair to keep her head still, he jerked the duct tape off her face.
She screamed, and he slapped her hard on the cheek.
Her scream turned into gasps of pain. “Don’t kill me,” she cried, “please, God, don’t kill me.”
Man’ti licked his lips. “If ya can’t find me this Troy fella, I got no use fa ya.” He laughed and tugged on his belt. “Actually, I do have one use ah’m gonna try out real soon.”
Her eyes went wide as she realized what he meant. She scooted back into the chair as much as she could, shrinking away from him. “No, no, no…” she whimpered.
He unbuttoned his pants and slid the zipper down.
Karah started screaming again.
“Shit,” he muttered. He leaned down beside the recliner and picked up the duct tape. He stretched off a piece and stuck it over her mouth. “Shut the fook up,” he barked and smacked her hard again on the same cheek.
She whimpered, but she stopped screaming. He went back to undoing his pants and slid them down around his ankles. As his pants hit the ground, a cell phone popped out of the back pocket.
The girl’s eyes went even wider. She struggled and tried to speak from behind the tape. Her head bobbed quickly in the direction of the phone.
“What?” Man’ti picked it up. “This? Yeah, it’s ya cousin’s, so fookin’ what?”
She tried desperately to say something again. Man’ti peeled the tape off her mouth.
“Call Laura!” Karah yelled, “she’s got my phone
and I’m sure she’s with Troy!”
Man’ti considered this for a second. The girl had a point. If he could get to Troy, he could blackmail him with the girl. He’d have the check before nightfall. He turned the phone on and waited for it to boot up. “What’s her number?”
“She’s in the contacts under SexiCuz2.”
Man’ti slapped the tape back over her mouth. He clicked the number and waited for the dial tone. It rang twice and someone picked up.
“Yeah?” the voice said on the other end.
It wasn’t a girl’s voice. It was a man. Could it be? “Troy?” Man’ti asked.
“Speakin’.”
34
Break A Leg
The metal room they were in suddenly became a cacophony of banging and clanging. Karah jumped uncontrollably and the huge man who’d been hovering over her about to rape her was startled too. The cell phone he’d been holding to his ear popped out of his hand like a bar of wet soap and crashed to the ground. The decorative case with the picture of Laura’s dog, Tyson, cracked on the corner and the phone’s screen shattered and went dark.
The banging started again, more insistently.
“Come out, come out, wherevah ya are,” a voice yelled from behind the steel, roll-up style garage door.
“Shit,” the big man said, and reached down to try and pull his pants up.
Karah started screaming, but the duct tape muffled most of the sound. She had no idea who was at the door, but he couldn’t be as bad as this dude. She would realize only later how wrong she had been about that.
Suddenly, the door flew up and painfully bright sunlight flooded into the storage compartment. Karah squinted her eyes to see, but the figure in the doorway was just a silhouette.
“Bluddy fookin’ hell,” spat her massive captor, “what the fook are you doin’ ‘ere?”
The man standing in the doorway walked… or actually… he limped into the room. He was wrapped in bandages and his face was swollen and pulpy. Blood oozed from several different places and he smelled like vinegar… and almonds.
Her first thought was that she’d been held captive long enough for the zombie outbreak to happen. Her second was that she was no longer the center of attention. She looked around the room for something to help her escape, the first order of business being to cut the zip-ties on her wrists and ankles.
Nothing. There was absolutely nothing in this room except for the two men, the recliner, the broken cell phone and her. She looked down at the phone and wondered if she could slide it closer to her with her foot. The two men were still yelling at each other, so she slowly stretched out her legs. Her big toe touched the phone and she almost gasped with relief. She was able to drag it inch by inch closer to the recliner. She had no idea how she’d be able to use it, but at least she was doing something and not sitting around waiting to be raped and killed. As the phone edged closer to the recliner, she dragged one last time and something sharp bit into her heel. She couldn’t help but yelp in pain. Luckily, the duct tape muffled the sound so much, the two men never heard her.
A trickle of blood dripped down onto her foot and she saw what had happened. The recliner’s leg was missing its rubber edge protector and the metal was exposed. It looked like a knife edge sticking out from under the chair. An idea jumped into her head. She carefully swung her legs so the sharp edge was between them. She lowered them until the zip-tie was touching the metal. She gently moved her legs up and down. After just a few scrapes, a notch began to form in the plastic binding. She looked back up at the two men as she worked.
The zombie guy had a gun pointed at the big guy, and he spoke in crazy, slurred speech. The big guy had his hands up, but he didn’t look scared.
“Who’s got the fookin’ uppa hand na’ow, mate?” the little guy cackled.
“Ya ain’t got one full hand between the two of ‘em, ya shit.”
“Yeah, keep talkin’,” the little guy said, “caught ya with ya fookin’ pants down.”
“Ah’m gonna fookin’ murder ya if ya don’t put that silly little pop-gun down, Darren.”
Darren laughed a low, rasping laugh. He wobbled a little and inhaled to steady himself.
“Pop-gun or nah,” he said, and lowered it to point at the bigger man’s crotch, “it’ll blow a hole right through ya wanka, Man’ti.”
Darren and Man’ti, Karah thought, the two guys who’d been running out of Drunken Jack’s the other night. The same two guys who’d been harassing Laura on that night. She had no idea why they wanted Troy, but she knew it was something worth killing her over. She worked her legs a little faster. These two weirdoes weren’t paying attention to her at all. She glanced down at the zip-tie around her ankles. It was a third of the way cut. She was beginning to sweat and it was making it hard to keep the plastic up against the sharp edge. Several times it slipped off and jabbed her in the heel. Her foot was starting to slick with blood, but she didn’t stop.
“Keep ya fookin’ hands up,” the guy called Darren growled at the other man.
He’d been trying to get his hands down to pull his pants up, but Darren wasn’t having any of that.
“It’s time we settled this once and fa all,” Darren said, pulling the hammer back on his gun, “so say ya prayers, ya tattooed ass.”
The big guy, Man’ti, lunged at Darren, but his pants were still around his ankles so he fell forward to his knees. He ended up eye-level with Darren’s feet. He reached out and grabbed Darren’s right leg with both hands. The disgustingly brown and gooey bandages on the man’s leg squished like there wasn’t a leg inside. Darren howled in pain and slammed the butt of his pistol down hard on Man’ti’s head, but the big guy held on tight.
Man’ti’s grip tightened more, and with a grunt, he jerked his hands downward like a chef breaking spaghetti to fit better in a boiling pot. Falling to the ground, Darren screamed again and shot Man’ti straight in the mouth. The back of the man’s neck exploded in a bloody mess, but he didn’t seem to want to die. The shot pinged against the back of the room and whizzed back at Darren… a ricochet. He heard a bang and sizzle behind him, as the bullet found a new target out the door of the storage unit.
Man’ti was in full panic now, his eyes bulging out of his head. He released Darren’s ruined right leg and clutched his throat. Ragged breaths wheezed in and out of him. He worked his mouth like he wanted to say something, but all that came out was the sound of a broken kazoo.
“Look what ya did to mah fookin’ leg!!” Darren shouted in a rage, with spittle flying from his lips.
His right foot dangled at an awkward angle. It looked like a hanging sock with a potato in it.
Karah gagged at the sight of all the gore as suddenly the plastic zip-tie broke, freeing her legs. She shot up out of the recliner, but slipped on the puddle of her own blood beneath her feet, and she fell down, right next to Darren.
He grabbed her hair in a fist. “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, sweet tits.”
Man’ti lurched up onto his knees, but he was still grasping at his neck and trying to fix the damage done to his head. Blood streamed down all around his shoulders.
Without a word, Darren raised the pistol. He put a bullet right in between Man’ti’s eyes. The back of his head exploded out and he slumped forward.
Darren spit on the bloody mess of the hulking man. “Fook you!”
He pulled Karah’s head up and tapped her forehead with the gun. “Gimme a sec ta catch mah breath. You’re gonna tell me wheyah Troy is, or you’re next.”
35
Trade Route
That was odd. The guy on the other end of the phone just hung up after he had said, “Speakin’.”
Had to have been the guy who’d kidnapped Karah. Troy swung the Rover into the parking lot of the Balls beach store. The car sputtered and died just as he pulled in… out of gas. Dangit, he thought, no turnin’ back now.
He coasted in next to a brand new, fire engine red, jacked up, decked out Jeep Wrangler Unlimited idlin
g in the lot. The back windows were so dark that he never noticed the girl sitting in the back seat nursing the baby. As he got out of the Land Rover, he reached behind his back under his shirt to discover that his gun was gone. Dangit. Heading into enemy territory… unarmed. Not good.
Remembering his time in Afghanistan, patrolling sketchy neighborhoods, came in handy sometimes. Just like back on the dusty roads of Kabul, he eased around the side of the building until he could see the storage units. Clear. Most of the units were closed and quiet. As he walked back along the rows of rooms, he would peek around the edge, crouching down to lower his profile. Row after row, there was nothing. Clear. Finally, on the last row, he edged around the corner to see a gold Toyota spewing steam from under its hood. It was parked facing a unit with its door rolled up. Listening closely, Troy could hear the faint sound of a male voice coming from inside. He put his back against the row of doors and inched his way toward the open unit.
As he got closer, he crouched again. That’s when he finally heard the girl’s voice.
“I promise, mister,” she said, “I don’t know where he is and I don’t know anything about a check or whatever.”
Karah. Had to be her. Troy heard the sound of a smack and then a squeal from Karah. He flinched, wanting to run in to help, but he knew the guy was probably armed and extremely dangerous. Had to play this right. He took the Outback Tea Stained straw cowboy hat off his head and started to pull the check out. Gone. He was momentarily in shock, but then remembered he’d stuck it in his shirt pocket. He replaced his hat and pulled the check out. Unfolding it, he edged around the corner. He raised his hands high, holding the check in his left hand.
The Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller Series Boxset Page 19