Night Break

by Carey Decevito

  “Uh, Kip?”

  “Yeah, Huss?” I had reverted to her old nickname for this operation. It was easier to keep things platonic. Most of the guys called her that instead of using her first name or a variation of it anyway.

  “I’m running an infrared imaging software on the live satellite feed over here, and based on what I’m seeing, the two warehouse buildings you’re about to check out are empty,” she said. “The house, however…”

  “Okay, boys, you heard the lady,” I said. “T, Shane, Preacher, and Miguel, you guys are up on Building F. Cade, Tate, Brycen, and I will take Building H. Once you’ve cleared the outside, you may enter, but I want your eyes on everything. Huss, I want to know the second you think someone’s onto us. With what we’ve seen over the last fourteen hours, if anything looks unusual, I want to know about. Got it?”

  “Copy.”

  Half an hour later, I gave the all clear to move out.

  “All clear outside Building F,” Theo, the lead in his group, said ten minutes later. “Going in, now.”

  My team and I cleared the perimeter of our building a few minutes after Theo’s. “All clear outside H,” I declared.

  There were two points of entry on both buildings we were searching. I pulled up the schematics on my phone, the men huddling around me to study the floor plan. Tate picked the locks on the door facing the woods, then stood back.

  I entered first, my Glock drawn. My eyes began to water immediately, and my nose burned. I’d just walked into a lab.

  “Masks on,” I ordered, taking mine from my cargo’s thigh pocket, sliding the half mask on. We’d just have to deal with the stinging eyes for the time being.

  It didn’t take long to figure out that the place was deserted, but it left me surprised that it was. My gut started churning, my brain telling me that we needed to get the fuck out of there.

  “Theo, we’re out. All we have here is a lab. Meet at our rendezvous point.”

  “Check,” the man said. “Wish I could say the same, boss.”

  Him calling me boss had my hackles rising.

  “SITREP, T,” I told him.

  “There’s something wrong with the schematics Huss gave us for this building,” he explained. “I know walls can be torn and floor plans can change, but there seems to be missing a good fifty square feet to the back of this place.”

  “That’s impossible,” Devolin said. “I compared the satellite images to the floor plans. The measurements match.” She sighed. “Hold on.” Seconds later, we could hear her furiously tapping away at a keyboard. “Fuck.”

  “Talk to me, Huss,” I growled.

  “I just found another set of plans. Looks like Ortiz had some kind of underground bunker designed a few years back. I’m sending them to your phones right now,” she said.

  “T, we’re coming in,” I said. “We don’t know what you’re getting into, but a bunker doesn’t say anything good.”

  “I agree,” the man said.

  It turns out that the bunker was one of the cartel’s merchandise storage and packaging points. And I had been right in joining in the fun. Two men were standing guard. We wondered why Devolin’s infrared didn’t catch them, but she explained that the infrared was only good for surface heat. Apparently, if you’re far enough underground, you can’t pinpoint a heat location. Judging by the number of stairs we took down, I’d estimate that we were a solid fifteen feet below the floor above us.

  The two enforcers were taken down. This wasn’t a kill mission, since we were civilians, but when someone whips out a gun, you shoot first and ask questions later.

  Not wanting to give ourselves away, we brought the bodies with us, then dumped them outside of the compound, away from our rendezvous point.

  Day 2

  We spent the day much like the one before, scoping out Ortiz and his men. Suffice to say, Ortiz seemed to notice the absence of the two guys we took out last night. The boys and I were forced to move back, which put a wrench in our surveying plans, because he’d had men patrolling the compound perimeter.

  By nighttime, we were ready to take our last target—the large house.

  Ortiz was present tonight. Then again, so were dozens of others. It looked as if the man was having a party by all the high-end vehicles parked all around.

  “Huss, d’you manage to get any details on our guests here?” I asked her.

  “You’ve got some high-rollers in there tonight,” she said. “I’m talking police force officials, a U.S. Senator, most of the others are CEOs and business owners. A mix of Mexican and American.”

  “He’s having a sale,” Tate stated, disgust heavy in his words.

  “Could be a sampling,” Cade surmised.

  A pain-filled cry by a female rented the air.

  “Girls,” was Shane’s hypothesis.

  I concurred.

  “What’s our infrared look like, Huss?” I asked.

  “Looks to be groupings of two to four in various rooms. I have a large grouping with weak signatures. I’d be willing to bet that those are coming from a shallow basement,” she said.

  I bit my lip, then asked my next question. “Any available entry points?”

  “Front door only,” she said. “I’m sending you an image of what I’m seeing right now.”

  Seconds later, my phone chimed with Devolin’s text. One look said that it would be possible, but there’d be no way we’d get out of there without being found.

  My hand was forced. “Pull back,” I gritted through my teeth.

  “We could––” Brycen started, but with one look from me, he halted.

  “Pull back,” I repeated. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”

  Day 3

  A complete clusterfuck. We were forced to sit back and wait again.

  Day 4

  It seemed that the inside of the house was always bursting at the seams with people at night, so in the interest of getting the fuck back home with our mark in tow, I sent Shane and Theo to check things out during the day. That large heat signature—the weak one—that Devolin had found had not once moved or cleared from her screen since our arrival.

  “We’re in,” Shane whispered over the line.

  “Found the basement,” Theo added. “Going in.”

  A few minutes later, I heard all hell break loose. At first, I heard some guy yell out what sounded like “What the fuck!” in Spanish, then two other males joined the fray. The distinct sound of a gun going off with a silencer on it could be heard, just moments before a regular gunshot rented the air.

  “Leave one of them alive, guys,” I said. “We need to ask them about Ms. Alvarez.”

  Then everything went silent.

  “T? Shane?” I asked through the grunting noise.

  No answer.

  “T? Shane, do you copy?” I repeated.

  “We’re gonna need backup,” Shane said. “I’m counting eighteen women here. The fucker’s got them in a large cell.”

  Caged like animals.

  My blood boiled. “Any sign of Alvarez?”

  “Nothing,” the two men said at the same time.

  “Get those women to talk, T,” I said. “I’m coming in. We need to get this done before the shift change.”

  Day 5

  Leaving those women behind had been the hardest thing I ever had to do. Eighteen women sharing a single toilet. No beds, just a pillow and blanket each. A single meal a day—usually bread and water. There wasn’t even enough room for them to lay down all at once. They’d been held captive ranging from three months to ten days for the most recent arrival. What made me sick was that they’d all stated that a woman had played a part in their capture—Nadia Alvarez to be more precise.

  As to whether our mark was a partner, or she’d been coerced and threatened to cooperate with Ortiz, remained to be seen. Devolin was now tasked in digging into Nadia’s past to see if we’d missed something. Until she came up with concrete
proof, we were treating this operation as it originally was: a kidnapping rescue. That also meant that we were sitting back yet again and evaluating which ones of our options was still viable, and which ones to scrap due to this new turn of events. The waiting also allowed us to come up with some new contingencies as well.

  Day 6

  It took most of the night before Devolin could find concrete proof that Nadia Alvarez had ties to the Juan Cartel. Turns out, her father had been an arresting officer during a raid of the compound back when she was in the States, living with an aunt and uncle, while in college. The pageant world sure as hell had worked out for her.

  The aunt and uncle had passed, a little over two years ago in a carjacking, while visiting family in their native country.

  The more Devolin dug up, the more Nadia appeared as a woman scorned in search of revenge. The pieces of the grand puzzle were coming together and it was becoming clear quite quickly that Minister Wentworth and his son had both been used––at least initially––as peons in Alvarez’s quest to get to Ortiz.

  Rustling in the trees behind me had me freeze. The distinct sound of a hammer cocking back on a pistol had my blood turning to ice.

  In what felt like a lifetime, but was only seconds, a muffled woman’s squeal made me jump into action, only to find our mark held against Tate’s chest, his hand over her mouth, his other arm wrapped tight around her torso.

  The man wore a shit-eating grin. “Mark secured, boss.”

  Chapter 36

  Dalton

  “Miguel?” Nadia whispered as the man came into view. “Oh no! No, no, no, no, no! Take me back,” she demanded, her Spanish accent quite thick. “If he finds out that I’m in with the cops, I’m as good as dead.”

  She tried to get up off the hotel bed, but I halted her movement. “When he finds out you’ve been playing him this entire time, you’ll be good as dead too,” I told her.

  “He’s right, you know,” Miguel chimed in, her shoulders tensing under my hand. “Your best chance at survival here is to give us what you have on Ortiz and his operation. Dalton,” he motioned toward me with a tilt of his head, “is only here to take you back to Wentworth.”

  Her eyes rounded. “I’m not going back there!”

  “We’ll talk about that later,” I said. “First, you’re going to give Miguel all the information he needs, then we’ll talk about returning you to your fiancé.”

  “What about the women?” she shrieked.

  “We’ll get to that in a bit,” Miguel reassured her. “Right now, I need to know about your affiliation with Ortiz. How deep are you in with him, Ms. Alvarez?”

  Nadia had gone quiet after copping to being the lure for the women Ortiz had kidnapped, by acting like the damsel in distress, a perfect act to prey on her fellow womankind. She’d provided Miguel with Ortiz’s associates, as well as various ports he’d used to ship the women out to their buyers. Unfortunately, she was unable to provide us with buyer information, but mentioned that Ortiz carried his laptop with him everywhere he went, and that she was sure that he had buyer history stored on the device. As much as Ortiz loved having her around, she was never allowed to mix and mingle with the rich men that would come to sample the ‘product.’

  “I love him, you know,” she whispered. “Max. I’d seen him with Ortiz a few times, and I knew that he’d be an easy in. He came off as a pompous self-serving jerk at first, but he isn’t that kind of man.” She pressed her lips together before continuing. “I didn’t know that Scott was in with Ortiz though. That’s why I can’t go back. Ortiz will know that I double-crossed him. Scott will tell him. He hates his father, so it won’t take much for him to turn. I can’t risk Max’s life by going back there.”

  “That won’t matter when Enrique Ortiz ends up in jail,” Theo supplied as he entered the room with food.

  The woman looked at Theo as if he had three heads.

  “That man can get to anyone and everyone when he wants to.”

  “Wentworth will be in his own cell by the end of this too, Nadia,” Miguel stated. “And I’m not going to lie, once they’re done with you in Canada, since you’re crimes are here, you’ll be brought back. You’ve been cooperative, and that’ll help you out, but I make no promises that you won’t see the inside of a cell yourself.”

  The woman nodded. “I knew that might happen. I’m okay with it. I’m just sad that it all had to lead to Max’s career being finished. I didn’t mean to—”

  “You didn’t do this to him.” Theo crouched down in front of her, a sympathetic expression on his face, then reached into the brown paper bag in his hand and pulled out a sandwich, handing it to her. “He did this to himself by being involved with a known cartel head.”

  Her nod was curt as she fiddled with her lunch’s wrapping.

  “There’s no way Max can hide from this when the authorities go in. It’s not going to be tonight, but I expect that he’ll be apprehended within the next few days,” Miguel explained to her.

  Setting her sandwich down, she got up and walked toward the hotel room’s only window. Releasing a sigh filled with defeat, she said, “I know.”

  Giving the woman time, I turned to Theo, then asked, “The guys get off okay?” as I dug into my lunch.

  Preacher had taken Shane, Cade, Brycen, and Tate back stateside so they could fly home, before coming back for myself and Nadia, who wasn’t done with Miguel’s debrief. Theo had stuck around, not only of his own volition but Morgan had served to enforce this decision.

  “Yeah.”

  It was eight the next morning by the time Nadia and I awaited our transfer that would take us from Washington to Ottawa. We’d left at three in the morning, hopping on Preacher’s bird, which took us to Houston, barely making it on the next flight out.

  Theo was already up in the air, on his way back home.

  Home.

  I so badly wanted to be there. With Devolin. In bed.

  I didn’t care if we were naked or clothed, I just wanted her in my arms. I’d missed that woman something fierce, despite having her voice at my constant disposal this entire week. Not having spoken to her in nearly twenty-four hours, I was going crazy trying to get ahold of her at this very moment, and she wasn’t answering. Considering it was early in the morning for her to be out and about, I immediately hung up, then dialed Rex’s number.

  “She’s fine,” he answered. “We’re at that lady, Morgan’s, place again. Call me crazy, bro, but playing in the dirt at the ass crack of dawn is not my idea of a good Sunday morning.”

  It wasn’t one of mine either, but I couldn’t help imagining what Devolin would look like in Morgan’s gardens, smudges of dirt on her cheeks, smelling of earth and the sweetness that came from the flowers.

  Trying to keep my musings for when I was traveling alone, I cleared my throat, sticking to the business at hand.

  “Anything else since we last talked?” That had been more than a couple of days ago now.

  “She had me fix the vent above her shower,” he said. “It must have slid a bit after I removed the camera, and she noticed it.”

  “And?”

  “When the guys got back last night, Devolin was still working on her computers. Brycen came in and dropped an envelope on her desk.” I had a feeling of where this was heading and I knew it wasn’t going to be good. “She opened it.”

  “And?”

  “I think this is why we’re here so early this morning,” Rex said. “She told me she was concerned about Morgan being out here alone during her pregnancy. She doesn’t know I read the letter after she thought she’d tucked it away in her desk. The other woman and her husband have both been mentioned.”

  “Theo?”

  “Yeah,” he confirmed.

  “Fuck!” I punched my thigh, garnering attention from a few passengers milling about, along with Nadia’s concerned gaze meeting mine. I shook my head, giving her a wave of my hand to let her know I was fine. “I
’ll be there as soon as I can. Letting you go now. I need to get a message to Theo before he lands so he knows what to expect.”

  “Got it,” he said. “Later.”

  I disconnected.

  Chapter 37

  Devolin

  An ear-piercing shriek rented the air, making me jump from my Dalton-induced-daze.

  Next thing I knew, Morgan sent her shears flying and was up and running through the backyard in her too-big-for-her-small-feet rubber boots, gardening gloves and all, the imagery so comical that I forgot about my panic, and started laughing.

  That’s when I noticed the truck coming to a halt in the driveway next to my car.

  Theo was home.

  My heart beat at a staccato pace at the sheer excitement that the moment exuded.

  The second the man’s feet hit gravel, he sprinted toward his wife, catching her as she leapt with another shriek into his arms, their lips meeting in a fierce welcome home that made me feel like an interloper.

  Pausing to grab my and Morgan’s baskets, as well as the shears my friend had chucked ten feet away, I proceeded toward the reuniting couple, noticing Rex leaning against the front porch, taking in the scene just like I was.

  “Oh, God, you reek!” Morgan gagged, but her arms were still firmly wrapped around his neck, her legs around his waist. “Where the hell have you been? Why didn’t you call when you landed? I would have—”

  Theo slammed his lips back onto Morgan’s then pulled away. “Shut up, woman,” he growled. “Please tell me that you’re done for the day. I haven’t seen or spoken to my wife in a week. I’ve barely slept because I worried about her and our baby. I’ve been told I smell bad, which means I need to hose myself down before thinking about going into my house to take a shower and spend the rest of the day sinking myself deep inside my wife to remind her of how much I love her.”

  Thinking it best to announce my presence, least I heard something more they didn’t mean for me to hear, I cleared my throat. “I guess we’re done here for today?”