by Nick Thacker
Ben’s nostrils flared, his cheekbones grinding into each other over and over again.
No, Reggie thought. He squeezed his eyes shut. Please, no.
“Where is she? I would very much like to meet her.”
Chapter THIRTY-SEVEN
UNFORTUNATELY, JULIE COULD HEAR EVERY word of the transaction taking place outside her closet in the main hotel room. She was panicked, but she was able to force her breaths into steady, long increments.
Inhale, exhale.
She focused on the breaths, but the voices just on the other side of the door terrified her. She heard Reggie, apparently recognizing the man — The Hawk — who’d come for them. The man and his team was working for Daris, apparently, as some sort of security team.
But rather than security, Daris had hired them to find Julie’s group? It didn’t add up. If they were after Roger Derrick, they would have simply taken him and left the rest of them alone.
The Hawk told Joshua a little about the company, and still she focused on her breaths.
Inhale, exhale.
She waited, her heartbeat growing louder with each thump. She had control of her breathing, but there was nothing she could do about her heart.
Julie looked around the closet, hoping there was something there she might be able to use as a weapon. Through the light streaming through the crack between the two doors, she peered around the small, L-shaped room. Derrick’s shoes were on a shoe stand, a belt hanging from one of the wooden hangers. If he had a suitcase with him, it wasn’t in the closet.
A shoehorn hung from a small leather string that had been wound through a hole in its top, and in the opposite corner, an ironing board hung on the wall.
No iron.
The iron, she figured, would be in the bathroom, hidden in a small cabinet near the sink. The board itself could be useable as a crude weapon, but she had neither the strength nor the space to swing it wide enough and hard enough to do much damage.
Julie couldn’t easily justify the belt or the shoes as a weapon, either. What would she do? Throw the shoes at the first man to enter and try to choke the other?
Still, she felt she had to do something. She had to prepare. She had to —
The bathroom door crashed open, and she heard Ben’s footsteps thumping down on the floor as he barreled out of his hiding place. A fight ensued, but it was quiet, and she could barely hear the sounds of the grunting men as they wrestled.
She tried to peek through the crack in the doors, but the angle was wrong. All she could see was directly in front of her, the opposite wall and the coffee stand just around the corner near it.
Then the sounds stopped, and she sucked in a breath.
Who won?
Then the man’s voice, the one named Garza.
He spoke to Ben, Ben cursed, and Garza kept talking.
Inhale, exhale.
She forced the breaths, one after the other, until she felt her head wobbling and she had to stop. She was in full panic mode now, knowing that she would soon be discovered. There was no way out.
She wasn’t a trained soldier. Before she’d met Ben, she’d only fired a weapon a few times as a girl and twice as an adult. Her job at the Centers for Disease Control, leading a now-defunct group called Biological Threat Resistance, was a glorified desk job, and there was no weapons training for CDC personnel that she knew of.
She wasn’t a fighter, with her hands, feet, or anything else. She’d been fascinated by the idea of mixed-martial arts warriors she’d seen, and had even asked Ben if he had any interest in ever learning some of the throws and holds of Brazilian jujitsu. He’d shrugged it off, claiming that it wasn’t helpful for attack as much as defense, and that she should instead look into something like Krav Maga.
And yet here she was, in a closet, about to be discovered.
Garza’s voice cut through her subconscious. “Where is she? I would very much like to meet her.”
She wanted to scream, but she remained silent. She wanted to faint, but she stood strong. She wanted to fight back, but she held fast.
Waiting.
Footsteps, into the bathroom.
More, from another man, into the area in front of the closet. A flash of darkness as the man passed directly in front of the closet.
She sniffed, darting sideways, hoping he hadn’t seen her.
He’s going to check anyway, she knew.
He checked anyway.
The man yanked the doors open, blinding Julie with the brightness of the hotel room, and she blinked a few times in response.
He had his hands on her now, deeply gritted old things that felt worn and hardened. They were prying, grasping, trying to get a hold on her without his having to step into the closet.
She wasn’t going to allow it, but she still breathed and kept silent. She swatted his hands away, again and again, until he walked into the closet and pressed his huge, sweat-smelling body up against hers and grasped her wrists, pulling them hard down to her sides.
Then, at that moment, she screamed.
She couldn’t hold it in any longer.
Ben screamed in response, something vulgar, but she wasn’t paying attention to it.
The man was smiling, looking down at her with a strange expression on his face. He looked dirty, like the perfect match for his gritty hands, but all she could see in any detail were his eyes. His ugly, white eyes. They were slits in his head, barely open, contradicting his smile.
His nose hung to the left, longer than it should have been, and showing off far too many peaks and scars than one nose should host. She was revolted, disgusted, but more than that, she was terrified.
She screamed again, but he pulled her arms down harder, forcing her straight up against the wall, and then he pushed himself onto her, leaning in close to her ear.
Then he whispered. “I’m going to be ready, whenever The Hawk is done with you.”
She swallowed, nearly vomiting, but her desire to faint won out. She fell forward, her wrists still locked in his hands, and the man swung her left arm behind her back. He let her continue forward, stepping out of her way, and Julie felt him wrench her right wrist up and onto the area between her shoulder blades.
It hurt, and she let out a sharp sigh. The man laughed, a guttural grunting sound that made her sick all over again, and he pushed her out of the closet. Her left wrist hung behind her back, held in place by his large, leathery hand, and her right wrist was pinned up on her back by his other hand. She had no choice but to lean forward at the waist to relieve some of the pressure.
In this way, she walked out of the closet. Ben was the first person she saw.
She cried, unable to speak.
He glared, likely dumbstruck as well.
Then she saw the rest of them — Reggie, Derrick, Joshua — all stunned into silence at the end of guns, each weapon held by a man dressed similarly to Julie’s captor.
“Wh — why?” she stammered. “What are you going to do?”
The man who stood in the middle of the room, pointing a gun at Ben, turned to her and smiled. His lips were thin, and his eyes gave her the impression that he wasn’t truly happy about anything. “Hello, Juliette. I hope you’ve enjoyed the accommodations here. We have another place we’d like to take you, now, so say goodbye to your friends.”
The man holding her pushed her upper body farther down, bending her forward even more at the waist. She grunted in pain, but tried to hold her head up.
“Jules,” Reggie said. “Stay calm. We’ll come for you. I promise.”
She wasn’t sure if she was angry or terrified, or both. Or neither. She didn’t know what she thought.
Reggie’s expression was pained, and Joshua was clearly upset. His eyes were hard, as they always were, but he seemed to be looking through her. Studying her, as if trying to decipher how she’d hold up.
And then she saw Ben.
Still staring up at her, his eyes lost in some trance. There were tears in them, and he wasn’t
trying to hide them. She cried more, not sure what she could possibly say.
“Ben,” she finally muttered. The man swung her around so she was face-to-face with him. “Ben, I —”
The Hawk turned and began walking out of the room, and the others backed away from their posts a few steps, still pointing their weapons at the group. One of the men gathered the handguns from Derrick’s bag that had been dropped on the floor and collected them, carrying them out of the room.
Finally, in a leapfrogged way, the soldiers took turns moving backwards toward the door, guarding their teammates methodically, anticipating any movement from Julie’s group.
Julie’s man had her side pushed up against the wall, and he held her there as they walked out of the room and into the hallway. The Hawk was waiting there with handcuffs, and he placed one shackle around her right wrist.
He leaned down and spoke to her, making sure she was looking at him. “Juliette, I am only going to tell you this once,” he said. “If you try to run, we will simply make the proceedings later much more difficult for you. If you try to scream, I will have my men walk back into that room and put a bullet through each of your teammate’s heads.
“And if you attempt to call out to anyone, or try to explain what’s happening, I will personally drown your fiancé in the bathtub, while you watch.”
She swallowed.
“Do you understand?”
She nodded.
He leaned back up and had one of his men walk around with badges, handing one to each of the soldiers. Only then did she realize what their plan was — on the back of the man’s shirt as he passed, printed in large, gold block letters, was a single word:
SWAT.
They were attempting to extract Julie right out from under the hotel’s watchful eye, likely with a story already in place. They would be able to proceed uninhibited, right out the back door and into a vehicle and onto the Philadelphia streets.
The door closed behind them. Garza turned and nodded, and they started off down the hall. A room opened on her left side, near the elevator, and an elderly woman’s face popped out from the open doorway.
The Hawk held up his badge. “Ma’am, everything’s under control. We’re sorry for the inconvenience, but everything should be back to normal shortly.”
She saw him force a smile in the woman’s direction, and then she disappeared back into the safety of her room. Julie wanted to scream.
“Don’t forget what I told you, Juliette,” Garza said. “The length of your stay with us is directly related to how cooperative you are with my men.”
Her shoulders sagged, and her head dropped. Still, her stubborn internal strength forced her to put her feet forward, one step at a time.
Inhale. Exhale.
Chapter THIRTY-EIGHT
“BEN — BEN!” REGGIE YELLED. “ARE you okay?”
Ben was looking around the room, dazed. He felt tired, worn, exhausted even. A strange thing to feel, considering he hadn’t worked out or run or fought or done anything warranting feeling tired.
“Ben — “
He shot a glance toward Reggie.
“Ben, I —”
“Save it, Red,” Ben said. Reggie’s chin rose just a bit, but he kept his gaze on Ben.
Ben understood what was happening now. Julie had been taken, his Julie, and Reggie was trying to make sure he was okay.
But he wasn’t okay. He hadn’t been okay with any of this, even before they’d landed in Philadelphia. It wasn’t the flights, it wasn’t the car travel, and it wasn’t even Daris herself.
It was something else — something he knew the others felt as well. This whole mess had been started as a simple sleuthing project, something Mr. E wanted them to ‘check in on,’ to use his words. He’d thought it might be something more serious than a simple murder and two related break-ins and thefts, but he hadn’t said what.
Ben also thought it sounded suspiciously simple. He had been prepared for more, for Daris to fight back the way she had, and even for something like an FBI agent to walk in on them and suddenly ask them to be part of his team.
But what Ben hadn’t been prepared for — what none of them had been prepared for — was what was happening now. Julie was gone, they had just been left in a hotel room without weapons, and none of them had any idea what to do next.
In a situation like this, Ben’s first reaction was to start hunting. To begin tracking down the men who’d done this and start walking deliberately in the direction he thought they’d gone. He had done it before in the Amazon rainforest, and he had done it in Antarctica.
Find the threat, eliminate the threat. There was no red tape, no budget meeting, no planning session. He wanted to just start moving. He wanted to find them, and he wanted to kill them.
The others did as well, but they would prefer to plan it out first.
Ben’s conscious mind knew the stupidity and risks of barging out the door and just walking aimlessly until he had a lead, but his emotions were currently winning the battle.
He stood up, looked at each of the other three men, one at a time, then started toward the door.
“Ben,” Reggie said again. “What are you doing? Where are you going?”
“I’m going to find her, Reggie. It’s not that hard to understand.”
Joshua walked up behind him. “Harvey, it’s not a good idea. You have no idea where you’re —”
“Neither do you!” Ben yelled, whirling around to face them. “Neither do you. Do you?”
Neither man spoke.
“That’s what I thought. So tell me why I shouldn’t just start? Why shouldn’t I just start moving and figure it out from there? It’s always worked for me in the past. Why not now?”
He started to turn around again but Reggie stopped him.
“Ben, please. Think about it.”
Ben’s head dropped, and a tear fell from his left eye and landed on his boot. He didn’t care about hiding it, and he knew they wouldn’t care he was crying. He sniffed.
“It’s — I could have… I should —”
“Ben, come on. There’s nothing you could have done. They got her, and we’re going to get her back. I promised her that already, and I’m promising you that now.”
“But what are they going to do to her?” Ben asked. “You saw the way that guy was looking at her, like she was a side of beef or something. Reggie, I have to get her back.”
“And we will, man. Just come back in here and let’s plan it out.”
Ben stood there, silently, for a half a minute. Then he turned, slowly, and walked to the center of the room. Stood where The Hawk — Vicente Garza — had stood. He walked over to the closet, where Julie had been hiding.
Where I should have been, protecting her, he thought.
He shook his head, anger now mixing with the tears. He clenched his fists and turned back to the room.
Derrick, Reggie, and Joshua were standing around the chairs, all watching him. Waiting for him.
“What do you want from me?” Ben asked. “I’m useless. You’ve got the United States backing you, and you all have training and experience. I’m just a fatass park ranger who’s out of work.”
Reggie shook his head. “No, Ben. You’re wrong. That’s all I’m going to say about that. Get over here and let’s figure out how to get Julie back.”
He walked over, sat down, and stared at Reggie. He had nothing to offer, nothing to say. He would sit there, as long as they forced him to, and he would wait. He’d nod along, shake his head, whatever they wanted from him.
Eventually, when they decided it had been long enough and they had the right direction, he would start moving, start looking for her.
Then, when it was time, he would fight.
He would kill them all.
Chapter THIRTY-NINE
THERE WASN’T A LOT REGGIE could think about at the moment. Normally his mind raced, ready to throw in a detail or an idea or a thought. But now, in this moment, his mind was empty
.
He wanted to find Julie more than anything, but he knew he would find Garza and his men as well. He would find them, and he would kill them.
If Ben doesn’t kill them first.
Reggie had seen Ben do amazing things, things normal men couldn’t dream of, and things his own soldiers had trouble performing. Ben’s mind may not be filled with facts and brilliant revelations, but he was an animal when it came to brutal physical effectiveness.
Reggie needed that now, and Joshua needed both of them. They needed Joshua too, but Ben was the key to it all. He was the one they had to worry about, the one who was closest to the edge.
He’d seen it before, in the line of duty. Men would fall, and others would notice. They’d let it affect them, in a way that affected them more than it affected everyone else. They’d get attached to it, hold on to it, and it would hold them down.
Ben was close to being held down. Julie was gone, and he was in shock. He was a strong man, but this was something no one but Reggie himself had gone through. Joshua Jefferson had lost his father earlier this year, but to Joshua, the man had been gone for far longer.
Reggie knew how Ben felt right now, and he knew there was little he could do to help. No words would comfort him, and no false promises would hold him over. Ben was a man of action, so the only thing Reggie could do was invite Ben in and put him to work.
“We’re going to need to know everything,” Reggie said, looking at the FBI agent sitting across from him.
Derrick nodded. “I know, but not here. The police will be here in a few minutes, the SWAT team in another few. Those windows out, the gunshots? The hotel staff is probably already corralling everyone off of our floor.”
Reggie nodded. “Which means we’ve got a few minutes to get out of here unseen. Can we take the stairs?”
“Probably — that’d be my preferred option. Let’s head out; if we get separated, we’ll meet up behind the hotel. There’s a yogurt shop on 20th street that shares an alley with the Rittenhouse. Get there and wait for the rest of us.”