“Thanks for breakfast,” I called as I headed for the door. “I’m going to the surface to check my phone, then I’ll be back so you can tell me what you found out.” Maybe Nishi had tried to call while I’d been in bed. Maybe she’d left me a message…
Noah nodded. “Sure thing.”
“What’s his problem?” Ryan mumbled as I went out, pulling the door shut behind me.
I went up the escape hatch in the gym, rather than the maze, since it was faster.
Then I checked my phone.
There was a text from the same unknown number that had come in not long after we’d gone underground yesterday.
We know you are a dreg. We know you helped Nishi. Your days are limited. Soon, we will find you. Soon, you will die.
I snorted. Whatever. If they were trying to scare me, it didn’t work. It was probably a good thing I hadn’t called that number back yesterday. Not responding would make them wonder if they had the right number.
There were also three texts from a different number.
Three texts that made my heart race. All from Nishi. I ran back to the escape hatch, stumbling down the ladder, and sprinted for Noah’s apartment.
The Dragons were marrying her off to Malik of the Rapsters on Friday night. She’d begged me to save her. For a moment, I almost believed it was a set-up. Until I read her last text.
I enjoyed our time together the other night. I meant what I said. You are special. I miss you. Please don’t leave me here. Please come for me.
That last text had come from the heart. It was real. I had no doubt she needed my help.
Shoving open the door to Noah’s apartment, I shouted, “She texted me, man. She needs help. Can you track the number the text came from?”
Ryan and Luke were now gone, but Noah was just closing the refrigerator, having cleaned up the rest of the breakfast.
“Yeah, you know I can. I can trace the number, pinpoint the phone’s location. Come on, let’s go to my room.”
Moments later, we were in his tech room. I handed him my phone.
Yeah, my dreg partner was the best. He could type in the phone number that Nishi had texted me from and track its current location through the special program he had, which would help us find Nishi.
Noah had some kind of fancy tech tracking system. I had no idea what it was called or how he’d obtained it. He may have even created it himself for all I knew. The guy was that smart. I was just glad I had him to help me.
I pulled up a chair next to him at his tech station and waited while he typed something into his computer.
“Once I get a read on that phone, I can also hack into it, and pull up any calls and texts that might be helpful.”
That was good. It would give us insider information into the Black Dragons. Noah was awesome. I started fidgeting, my anxiousness making me restless as I waited.
Noah glanced at me. “You really like this girl, don’t you?”
“Yeah. I do. She’s…amazing.”
He chuckled softly. “I just hope she’s not fooling you, man. Or it could be the end for all of us.”
“I know. But I don’t think she would do that to me. She had plenty of time to bring the Dragons here if she wanted to, but she didn’t. She and I, we just…I don’t know. We hit it off almost instantly. We just…clicked.”
A knowing smile split his face. His eyes twinkled. “That’s good, man. I’m happy for you.” He slapped me on the back. “I hope it all works out.”
I cleared my throat. “Me, too.”
A little red bleeping light flashed across Noah’s monitor. “Ah, here we are.” He clicked his mouse, zooming in on the light. “Brenau University in south Augusta. That’s where the phone currently is, and I’d guess it’s also where your girl is. I will tell you that it is also where I tracked the other number to yesterday. What was her name again?”
“Nishi.”
He studied me more closely, and I wanted to squirm. He was the only one who knew about Himari and my vow of celibacy. What did he think of me falling for another woman after I’d vowed never to do so? Would he think it was too soon? That I was blinded by my attraction to Nishi and her pull over me?
“I like her a lot,” I explained. “She makes me happy for the first time in years. She’s special. She’s a fighter, a martial arts expert. She’s strong and courageous. But she’s also got an innocence about her, a purity, a naivety, and she’s unlike any woman I’ve ever met before.”
Noah’s lips twitched. “Hey, I get it. I’m not judging. I don’t care who or what she is, as long as she doesn’t betray you. Because if she does betray you, then I’m taking her down, got it?”
I nodded. He was my dreg partner. My best friend. He would go after anyone who tried to harm me, and I’d do the same for him.
“She won’t,” I promised, but the truth was, I really didn’t know that. I didn’t know Nishi. I had only been around her for a short time. All I had to go on was my gut. And my gut told me she would never betray me. We had hit it off. She was special. We’d bonded. And I was indeed falling for her. Hard.
I was going after her. I was going to intercept that wedding somehow.
“Let me show you what I found out about the Black Dragons.” Noah clicked something with his mouse and pulled up something on the monitor. “I saved this in my favorites yesterday. Established ten years ago, the Black Dragons are run by a Japanese American man named Katashi Yamamoto. He is a powerful shinobi, a ninja here in the states. He is wanted for numerous crimes, including murder. Yamamoto is a shadow warrior, a ghost, who has eluded law enforcement for years.”
“We know where he’s at,” I pointed out. “Why don’t we just call the FBI and tell them where to find him?”
Noah contemplated that for a moment. “We could, but then your girl would likely be hurt or killed in any takedown. And that’s assuming the FBI actually shows up. With the state that Augusta is in at the moment, it’s highly unlikely the FBI will even step foot inside the city right now.”
True. We probably had a better chance of getting Nishi out of there alive than the FBI, who likely wouldn’t care about any casualties in their attempt to take down a notorious criminal gang. But it would be dangerous.
“Nishi’s text said her father was making her marry Malik from the Rapsters gang. I’m guessing that means her father is this Yamamoto guy.”
Noah nodded. “Sounds like it. This is some serious shit, man. This guy’s dangerous.”
Nishi had told me she’d escaped from the Black Dragons. Had she been a prisoner of her father for the past eight years? What kind of father kept his daughter locked up like a prisoner? My blood boiled at that piece of information. I’d been a prisoner myself. For thirteen years. I knew how it felt. I certainly wouldn’t wish that upon anyone else.
Shit. And I’d turned her away, taken her to a hotel instead of letting her stay here. Because I’d been too afraid to trust her. It was because of me that they’d captured her again.
I rubbed a hand roughly over my face. “What can you find out about this Malik of the Rapsters?”
“Let’s see…” Noah typed on his keyboard. “I’m doing a search right now…”
I fidgeted in my chair again. I was generally a patient guy, but worrying about Nishi was making me uncharacteristically anxious. That girl had gotten to me, and I couldn’t get her out of my head.
“Hmmm.” Noah pulled up another page on his monitor. “It looks like Malik was appointed the new leader of the Rapsters after his older brother, Gunner, passed away a few months ago.” He smirked. We’d taken Gunner out after his gang had killed Tracker’s dreg partner, Gordon. Now it seemed the ugly younger brother was running the gang. Noah enlarged the photo of Malik, and I was easily able to see why Nishi didn’t want to marry the guy. From a woman’s perspective, he was probably terrifying. But the brute didn’t scare me. He resembled his deceased brother, Gunner. A huge African American man with bulging muscles, tattoos crawling up his arms and ne
ck, and a mean stare. Calculating. Cruel. I had no doubt he would be a worthy opponent. But I wasn’t letting him hurt Nishi. I wasn’t letting him touch her at all.
Noah cleared his throat and squeezed my arm. “Hey, man. Relax. We’ll get her out of there before she has to marry him. I’m thinking we can crash the wedding.”
My brow shot up. Crash the wedding? “Are you serious? How are we going to pull that off?”
Noah typed something else on his keyboard, then turned to me with a smirk. “Texts from the phone Nishi stole. Look here…” he scrolled down the touchscreen monitor and tapped on a text. “…Pastor Michael Smith will be officiating at the wedding.” He sent me “the look”, which meant I was supposed to know what he was thinking. Usually, I did. Usually, we pretty much knew what the other was thinking, but right now, I wasn’t sure what he was getting at.
“Pastor Smith?” I repeated. “Sounds like a false alias.”
“Exactly. It sounds like they are having an official wedding to make it legal. Or at least, they want to make it look legal. I’ve got an idea.” He typed something else on his keyboard and pulled up a photo of “Michael Smith.”
A tall, lean, African American man.
“Check that out.” Noah grinned. “He could almost be me.”
Now he’d really lost me. “Huh?”
“Darken my skin and hair, and he and I could be twins.”
I stared at Pastor Smith, then looked at Noah and imagined Noah with dark skin and an afro. Yeah, maybe…kind of…
“You’re not seriously thinking…”
He smirked. “I am. I can pose as Pastor Smith. We find him and incapacitate him until after the wedding. I can study his mannerisms so that I talk and act like him. No one will know I’m a fraud.”
Did I mention that Noah was a genius?
My heart pounded with excitement. “That will be dangerous,” I pointed out unnecessarily.
He shrugged. “We’re dregs. Everything we do is dangerous. It’s what we were trained for. Besides, it’s for you, man. And your girl. You’ll be there, too. You should call Tony. You know he’ll want to help. And if we can recruit Ryan and Luke, too, we’ll have five of us to figure out how to get her out of there.”
As if Luke and Ryan had overheard our conversation, the door to Noah’s tech room suddenly burst open and in they strolled. Luke crunched loudly on pork rinds as he moved up behind us at the work station. He held out the bag toward me and Noah. “Want one?”
I shook my head. “No, thanks.”
Ryan leaned next to the desktop beside Noah. “Sup, guys?”
Noah snagged a pork rind from the bag and crunched on it as he turned to face them. “How do you guys feel about crashing a wedding?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Nishi
My father never mentioned the phone that I’d stolen from Cho. In fact, I didn’t see my father again until the night of the wedding. Instead of allowing me the “freedom” he’d mentioned, he’d kept me locked in my room, guards waiting out in the hallway day and night, for the past two days. There was no escape.
And now, the wedding was only minutes away.
At this point, I had no idea if Logan had gotten my texts. I had no idea if—or even what—he might be able to do with them, anyway. The Black Dragons and the Rapsters were both powerful gangs. They would all be congregating here tonight for the wedding. A mass of criminals. How would Logan possibly be able to get inside to free me? Not only was he not Asian or African American, he was blond. He would stand out. He would shine like a beacon on a dark night. I feared nothing would save me from this wedding. That I was doomed to be Malik’s bride.
Logan is a dreg. That means he’s a soldier. A warrior. Don’t give up yet, Nishi.
Malik had insisted on a formal, legal wedding, so he’d called in his family pastor. My father had agreed to allow Pastor Smith to officiate over the nuptials. Though I seriously doubted Pastor Smith was a true pastor, the presence of a man of the cloth only made this wedding more real. I was growing more and more terrified by the moment.
Malik had insisted that I wear white. He’d even sent over the wedding gown he wanted me to wear. The chest was too busty and the skirt too long, so my father had a seamstress take it in as much as possible so that it fit me better. Still, I felt like a child dressing in her mother’s clothes, as the fit wasn’t perfect, still too large. But who cared, really? This wedding was a farce. Nothing more than an alliance of two criminal gangs.
And I was the prized bride. The virgin. The pure, untouched beauty that my father had bragged about to Malik.
It wasn’t as cold out tonight as it had been the night I’d stowed away in my father’s truck. The horrid dress with its long sleeves kept me plenty warm. I was also scared and nervous, so my body temperature was higher than normal, and I didn’t need a jacket.
As my father walked me down the aisle, past the many hordes of criminals who leered at me as we moved forward, I trembled in terror. The campus grounds were minimally decorated, just fold-up chairs that had been set up, and a small trail of flower petals leading to an arch that was loosely decorated with plastic vines and cut flowers. A row of lights had been strewn along either side of the aisle. The rest of the campus grounds were dark. My father had not wanted to expend much money on this event, and it was obvious by the lack of decorations that his minions had put in very little effort, probably not to draw too much attention to the area. Malik waited at the end beneath the flower-covered arch, dressed in a black tux with a white shirt and black bowtie, eyeing me lasciviously.
Fear clenched at my gut.
Be brave, Nishi.
I jerked my gaze away, carefully scanning the area, searching for Logan. Was he here somewhere? Had he managed to get inside? Or was that all just foolish thinking?
The pastor smiled at me as my father and I halted next to Malik. The pastor seemed friendly enough, a lighter-skinned African American man who didn’t ogle or leer at me like some of the other people present. His hair wasn’t as curly as most black people I’d met, so it was possible he was mixed race. And there was something wrong with his right eye. It always pointed straight ahead, and didn’t follow the other eye when he glanced to the side. I only noticed this because I studied him intently. Any friend of Malik’s was an enemy of mine. I would remember that eye in the event I could somehow use it against him in the future.
Malik was bigger up close like this, a hulking giant next to my tiny frame. I glanced briefly up into his eyes, terror wrapping around my heart at the purely lustful look he sent me.
The pastor cleared his throat. “Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Pastor Smith. I will be officiating here on this lovely night.” He glanced around, waiting for everyone to quiet, then went on, “As you are aware, we are gathered here today—er, ahem, tonight to unite this man and this woman in holy matrimony.” He nodded at my father. “Mr. Yamamoto, you may take your seat now.”
My father hesitated, as if he didn’t trust Malik not to try something. Then, he turned and went to his seat in the front row of chairs that had been hastily set up for the event.
I eyed Pastor Smith. Something else about him seemed off. Almost comical. Modern day pastors probably weren’t as official as the ones of the past, and nowadays, just about anyone could become licensed to marry people. But still, he seemed almost…fake.
And then, Pastor Smith winked at me. He actually winked. With the right eye. The one that never moved. A smile tugged at my lips in response. Who was this guy?
Malik grumbled something beside me and reached for my hand. “Get on with it, Pastor. Let’s get this over with so I can take my bride home and fuck her.”
Snickers and gales of laughter floated up from the spectators. My hand shook violently as Malik held it fiercely in his large grip. “Never fear, little one,” he murmured. “I’ll take good care of you.” He waggled his bushy brows suggestively, causing another round of lewd laughter from the crowd.
Another wave of fe
ar washed over me.
Little one. That phrase sounded vile coming from Malik’s lips, while it had sounded more like an endearment coming from Logan. Malik didn’t get to call me that. Only Logan did. I wanted to be Logan’s “little one”, but certainly not Malik’s. Never Malik’s.
Keep it together, Nishi. You can do this.
“Settle down, Malik.” Pastor Smith chastised. “I understand you are anxious to get your lovely bride alone, but we must get through the formalities first.”
A few more snickers from the crowd, then everyone grew silent.
And the ceremony began.
My father believed in Shinto, the indigenous faith of the Japanese people, while my mother believed in Hinduism, the oldest religion in the world. I was knowledgeable in both religions, though I didn’t have a particular preference or belief in any single one.
I was actually surprised that my father was letting Malik’s American pastor conduct the wedding in his own Christian faith. That just showed how heartless my father was, how little I actually meant to him. He didn’t care how I was married, who I married, or what happened to me after I was married. All he cared about was making an alliance with the Rapsters and using me to do so.
Pastor Smith’s voice droned on about the duties of a being a good wife and the role that the husband should play.
Never. I would not be a good wife. Not to Malik. Never to Malik.
Malik tensed beside me, his entire body stiffening at something Pastor Smith said. Or maybe it was something that happened out in the crowd. I wasn’t sure. It was dark beyond the row of lights, and I was too busy tuning it all out, wanting it to be over. I was too busy imagining Logan coming to the rescue, taking out my father and his men, and fighting back the Rapsters…
Pure fantasy.
The Trainer (military romantic suspense) (The Dregs Book 5) Page 8