Cold Snap

by Allison Brennan

  “I wasn’t trying to be discreet.”

  “You should. Everyone here is nervous. They know something’s going down. It’s fucked.”

  “I’ll tell you what’s fucked. Clark Grayson from Granny’s Kitchen kidnapped Elle and I have no idea where he took her.”

  Jazz didn’t say anything.

  “Did you know?” Patrick’s anger started to bubble to the surface.

  “No, but I know Clark works with Lorenzo.”

  “I need to find Lorenzo. Now.”

  “I can’t do that. I gotta live in this town.”

  “No one will know you told me.”

  Jazz snorted. “Right.”

  “I give you my word. Six armed thugs broke into Elle’s apartment this morning and tried to kill Kami.”

  “You found her?”

  “She found me. They’re selling girls, Jazz. Black, white, brown, don’t matter—if they’re young, they can sell them. Do you want that on your conscience?”

  “Not my problem. You think just ’cause I’m black I care about it?”

  “I think you pretend not to care. What if it was your sister? Your girl? You think you can just walk away and let them be sold as sex slaves? They’ll be dead before they turn twenty.”

  Jazz didn’t say anything.

  Patrick drove by Mia’s apartment building and slowed down.

  “What you doing, Special K? You think you can scare me into talking?”

  “Just give me an apartment number.”

  “He’ll take you out. You think he’s there alone?”

  “Three of his boys, including Ringo, are dead,” Patrick said. “One is in police custody.”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit.”

  “Drive around the block.”

  Patrick did.

  “Top floor.”

  “Number?”

  “No number. He moves around, no roots. If he’s in there, there’ll be a NO PARKING sign on the door.”

  “Tell me something,” Patrick said as he drove to drop Jazz off farther from the apartment. “Does Lorenzo care about anyone? Kami?”

  “He don’t care ’bout anyone but Richie. He don’t like girls, don’t much like boys, either. One thing about Richie you gotta know: he ain’t afraid of no one. You want him to help you, he only cares about one thing.” Jazz put his fingers together and rubbed. “I guarantee, Lee put a price on Ms. Elle’s head, and Richie wants to collect.”

  “He’s working for Clark.”

  “Clark works for Richie. Everyone does. Even Lee don’t control him.”

  Patrick let Jazz out of the car. “Keep your head low.”

  “Stay loose.” Jazz gave him the hang-ten sign and walked away, hands in his sagging pants. He didn’t look back.

  Patrick circled back to the Section 8 housing and checked Jack’s gun. Four bullets gone, but he had an extra clip. He didn’t want to shoot anyone else, but he knew this was risky. He still didn’t have a plan as he took the stairs up to the third floor. For a beautiful Sunday afternoon, there was no one out enjoying the day.

  Did everyone know something evil was happening in their neighborhood?

  Patrick found the door with the NO PARKING sign and listened. No sounds. Then he heard clicking on a keyboard, followed by silence.

  He tried the door. Locked. Without debating with himself, he drew his gun and kicked open the door.

  One lone man was sitting at a computer. A gun was within reach. Patrick recognized him as Richie Lorenzo.

  “Don’t,” he said, nodding toward the gun.

  Richie glared at him, but there was no fear in his eyes. Only an underlying humor. “Don’t you need a warrant?”

  Patrick closed the door, not taking his eyes off Richie. “I’m not a cop. Your pal Clark Grayson kidnapped Elle Santana, and I want her back.”

  “Clark’s not my pal, and neither is Santana. If you don’t want to be on a slab, get lost.”

  He turned back to his computer. He had no fear that Patrick would shoot him. And Patrick wouldn’t. He couldn’t kill a man in cold blood, not like this.

  He walked behind him. Richie reached for his gun, but Patrick grabbed his wrist first and slammed it on the table so hard he heard a bone crack. He pocketed his own gun and pressed his thumb on a pressure point in the back of Richie’s neck. “I don’t give a fuck what you’re doing, Lorenzo. I only care about Elle. And you’re a smart guy to have gotten away with selling shit on the street for so long, so you know that Grayson kidnapping a do-gooder attorney who’s been married to one of the top prosecutors in the city is going to bring down the law so swift and hard that you won’t be able to slip away. And if anything happens to Elle, my brothers and I will make your life hell. We’ll dry up every one of your suppliers. We’ll make sure the word on the street is you sell little girls to perverts. Then, when you get tossed in prison, and I know you will be, I’ll hack into the Department of Corrections files and alter your records so everyone there thinks you’re in jail for being a pedophile. Pedophiles don’t do well in prison.”

  “You don’t scare me.”

  “Then you’re stupid.”

  Lorenzo attempted to get out of Patrick’s grip, but he pressed his thumb harder on the pressure point and Lorenzo involuntarily moaned. “If you’ll help me, give me a location, I’ll hack into the Department of Corrections right now and give you a clean slate. Your file will disappear. If you keep your nose clean, it stays disappeared.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  True, but Sean could.

  “Watch me.”

  “I want to see it.”

  Patrick let him go, but told him to sit. He called Sean and put Sean on speaker.

  “Rogan.”

  “It’s Patrick. I have a pal here, who doesn’t believe that I can make his criminal record disappear.”

  “Plug me in, buddy.”

  Patrick plugged his phone into Lorenzo’s computer and at the same time launched an app that would allow the phone to be a conduit and clone Lorenzo’s hard drive onto an external server that Patrick could later access.

  “Set it up, but don’t delete it until he realizes I am serious.”

  “Got it.”

  Sean was working on his laptop, but mirroring what he was doing on Lorenzo’s screen. Watching how fast Sean worked always amazed Patrick, but he’d stopped praising him because it only served to grow his already inflated ego.

  “I’m in. Social.”

  “Give him your Social Security number,” Patrick told Lorenzo.

  The kid was glued to the screen, impressed. He told Sean.

  Sean plugged it in and almost immediately Lorenzo’s lengthy record was displayed. Assault, possession with intent to sell, assault, assault, possession. He’d done time in prison when he was eighteen. He was only twenty-three now.

  “Ready to purge,” Sean said.

  “Do it,” Lorenzo said.

  “Hold it,” Patrick said. “Give me the address.”

  “How do I know you’ll really delete it after I tell you?”

  “How do I know you’ll give me the right address?”

  Lorenzo thought on that a moment.

  Over the phone, Sean said, “Watch.”

  The first assault charge disappeared. The screen refreshed and it was gone.

  Lorenzo grinned. “I wish you worked for me.”

  Sean laughed. “I don’t work for anyone, and I like it that way.”

  “I gotta tell you, I had nothing to do with Grayson’s stupid-ass plan. That was all Grayson and the Chink.”

  “Would ‘the Chink’ be Lee?”

  “Bastard.”

  “You sold him that blond girl.”

  “Me? Fuck, no. Is that what he said? Fucking prick. That’s all Clark. I might have known about it, but I wasn’t involved. I stay out of that shit.”

  Patrick wasn’t certain he believed him.

  “Address.”

  “Okay. I’ll do you one right. I
heard that Lee was moving a shipment tonight out of the old food processing plant.”

  “We were already there. They’re gone.”

  “They had to change plans because Kami ran. Gotta love that girl. She’s a hard-ass bitch. They’d planned on moving them out at nine tonight, but moved it up to three this afternoon.”

  It was already after two.

  “Where?”

  “An abandoned warehouse near Candlestick Park. It’s owned by the city so you’d never find it just looking at the Chink. It’s one building surrounded by an empty parking lot. One large trucking bay with three doors. Lots of tags. Ask any pig, they’ll know where it is.”

  “And Elle?”

  “Don’t know why she wouldn’t be there with them. Clark wants to get rid of her, he’ll turn her over to Lee.” Lorenzo pointed at the computer screen. “Now do it.”

  “Go ahead, bro,” Patrick said to Sean.

  Lorenzo’s record disappeared. He grinned widely. “That’s cool.”

  “And if you lied to me, we’ll put it right back. And more.”

  Lorenzo tapped the digital clock in the corner of the terminal. “Better hurry. It’s nearly three.”

  Patrick unplugged his phone and left. Once he was out of Lorenzo’s hearing, he said to Sean, “Thanks.”

  “I saw you copied his hard drive.”

  “Do you have time to go through it? I want everything he has, and if he’s lying—”

  “I’m on it. And you really did mean for me to delete his record.”

  “Yes. I gave him my word. But you have a copy, right?”

  “You didn’t even have to ask. Be careful, buddy.”

  “Always.”

  * * *

  Patrick filled Jack in on the details he learned from Lorenzo, and hung up when Jack started chastising him for confronting the drug dealer alone. Then Patrick called Dwight Bishop and described the structure.

  “I know exactly where that is,” Dwight said. “I’ll send directions. Do you want me to call the police in on this?”

  “ICE is taking the lead. It sounds like the facility is isolated and easy to defend.”

  “They’ll be able to see from any direction. It used to be an off-site storage warehouse for events at Candlestick. The city owns the property and leases it out when they can, but it’s been vacant for months.”

  “Could Lee have gotten a lease?”

  Dwight considered. “Very possible. I’ll dig around and see if we can tie him to the facility. Elle’s okay, right?”

  “I’ll do everything to ensure that.”

  He hung up and sent Jack the information, then drove to check it out.

  Dwight was right; it was not only exposed, but the road was closed off. Lee’s people would be able to see them coming at any angle. That put Elle and the other women in even greater danger.

  If Elle was inside. There was no reason to think that she was, but no reason to think she wasn’t. Unless Clark Grayson already killed her, Patrick didn’t have any other option at this point except to keep moving.

  He went back to his car, which he’d hidden among a bunch of abandoned cars in the lot next to the warehouse, then called Jack.

  “We have a problem. There’s no tactical way to approach the building without being seen.”

  “Our ETA is four minutes.”

  Patrick heard rumbling on the street leading up to the warehouse. “Four minutes?”

  Using the old cars for cover, he got as close to the street as he dared. Three identical big rigs lumbered up the street. Three? The girls they had could fit into one. It wasn’t like Lee and Soldare cared if they were comfortable. But at night they would blend together, providing cover for each other, decoys.

  “Jack, I see the trucks. There’s three.” They were early. He eyed a cluster of trees by the side of the road, several with branches that jutted out into the street. He could make it. “I’m going in. Trojan-horse style. You need someone to disable their eyes and ears.”

  “N—”

  Patrick cut his brother off. He pocketed his phone and scaled the tree before the trucks rounded the bend. He crawled out to the end of the smallest branch that he thought could hold his weight. The leaves were sharp and scratched his skin, but he slid forward and prayed this would work, or he’d be splattered all over the broken pavement.

  He had to wait for the first two trucks to pass to minimize the chance of the drivers seeing him.

  The first truck hit the branch immediately beneath him, causing it to crack. As the tree shuddered, Patrick dipped precariously. He held on tight. The second truck went through, so close he could have reached out and touched the top of the container.

  His heart raced and he wasn’t certain he’d be able to do this. He hoped the scratching of the tree branches against the top of the big rig would mask the sound of his body falling onto the roof.

  He didn’t have time to think about it. The third truck moved into position.

  Patrick jumped as lightly as he could, only two feet from the tree to the container. He flattened himself onto the top, put his head down, and closed his eyes against the dust and bugs that flew into his face.

  When they turned into the lot, the truck hit another clump of leaves and it was all Patrick could do to stay on the roof.

  The truck slowed and soon stopped. Patrick ventured a look, but couldn’t see much.

  Then he heard a rumbling, and a large metal door rolled up. Patrick couldn’t see anything inside; he was the last truck. The other two maneuvered so they could back up. Though there appeared to be only one truck bay, the door was so wide that the three trucks could be lined up side by side. Once the first truck was inside, the second truck backed in.

  As soon as his truck began to move, Patrick sent Jack a text letting him know he was inside and he would have the security system disabled in ten minutes.

  He hoped he could do it in time.

  CHAPTER 14

  Elle had been separated from the other women shortly after Clark brought her to the old event warehouse near Candlestick Park. Elle remembered driving by this place many times, taking the back way home after baseball games, before they opened AT&T Park. She never paid it much attention. There would be boat shows here, RV shows, used-car discounts, and once a craft fair that didn’t do well with the sudden gusts of wind from the Bay. Now the pavement was broken with weeds growing in the cracks, and while the city might maintain it, they were rarely here. This particular back road had been shut down for well over a year.

  It was a perfect place for criminal bastards like Christopher Lee.

  And Clark.

  She was still furious with herself for trusting him, but more than that, she was angry with Clark for being a two-faced bastard himself. The kids trusted him, and he used them. Buying and selling people? Kids? It was as horrid as it was cruel. Elle had never wanted to hurt anyone, but right now if she’d had a gun—and knew how to use it—she would shoot Clark. She didn’t want to kill him, she wanted to make him suffer.

  What did that make her? Just as bad as they were? Because she had this driving need to hurt Clark?

  She closed her eyes and listened to the young women murmuring and sobbing quietly in a walled-off room in the back of the warehouse. No windows, one door, crammed in like cattle. Clark had wanted to put her with them, but some creep named Jonny grabbed her and tied her up in a small office to the side. She couldn’t see anything, either, but she could hear. Their voices, how they planned to move the Chinese girls to Los Angeles, where they would be forced into the sex industry. The other girls, the ones Clark and Lorenzo had brought to Lee, were being taken farther south, to a Central American country where they were already sold to a brothel owner who only wanted blondes.

  That she’d overheard all this information meant for certain that they planned to kill her. She had to find a way to escape and get help.

  The large, metal door rolled open, making the entire structure rattle. Elle tensed, fighting her ropes, t
hen winced in pain as her already chafed wrists burned.

  She heard idling trucks slowly driving in, drowning out all other noise.

  The office door opened and a gust of diesel exhaust filled the room. Clark entered with the big thug named Jonny.

  “Showtime.” Clark was smiling. “Finally things are going right. Trucks ahead of schedule, we’ll be out of here before your boyfriend knows you’re missing.”

  Jonny glared at Clark. “The whole job is fucked. You’ll be lucky to walk away with your head.”

  Clark swallowed uneasily, his Adam’s apple bobbing, but he didn’t sound scared when he said, “Without me, you’d have nothing, so shut the fuck up.”

  Jonny didn’t say anything. If Elle had to choose, she’d rather stick with Clark. Jonny scared the hell out of her.

  A cry in the small room next to theirs made Elle jump. “What are you doing to those girls?”

  The men ignored her and walked out. The cry hadn’t come from the main holding pen, but from the other side of the wall. Elle didn’t want to think about what these barbarians were doing; she kicked at the ropes around her ankles, but couldn’t get those off, either.

  “Dammit, Clark!” Elle shouted.

  Nothing. She surveyed her surroundings again and eyed the desk. Maybe she could open the drawer and use the edge to cut through the nylon ropes. It was worth a shot.

  The trucks masked the sound of her sliding her chair back two feet until she reached the desk. She ignored the pain and maneuvered her fingers to pull open the heavy metal drawer. She didn’t know if this would work, but she had to try something.

  The trucks all shut down, one by one, until her ears rang in the silence. She moved her wrists, which were tied behind her back, back and forth against the metal edge, but didn’t know if she was making any progress. The heavy main door slid closed. The cargo doors of the trucks opened.

  The sobs started up again. They were moving the girls. It was now or never.

  She pulled at the ropes. Nothing. They didn’t break; they didn’t even loosen.

  Tears of anger burning her eyes, Elle kept sawing.

  She had to get help. Somehow.

  * * *

  Jack was angry with Patrick for going into an unknown situation alone and without backup. Tucker wasn’t happy about it either, but he also saw the potential.