Madness (Revenge Series Book 3)

by M. S. Brannon

  “I suppose you’ve been sitting there, thinking of the best way to follow them undetected,” Cubby cuts into my thoughts, reading them perfectly.

  I don’t acknowledge him. He knows he’s right.

  “Are you thinking what I am?”

  I turn my head to see a small smile perk up at the corner of his mouth. I can’t help feeling a sense of nostalgia when I look at Cubby. We have spent many days doing this very thing—observing and planning our next course of action. Years have passed, yet it still feels like yesterday.

  “Stow away,” I answer, and Cubby huffs an agreement.

  It’s cramped and uncomfortable, but it’s the best way to keep in step with the man you are tailing. More often than not, no one checks the cargo holds after they initially board the plane. Cubby and I can sneak in just before the aircraft takes off. It’s not an easy task, but being the professionals we are, we’ll be able to make it seem like it is.

  Light from the service door entrance slips through the crack as a man’s head peeks out from just inside. It’s one of the scouts. When he has determined the coast is clear, he holds the door open for the other scout to walk out with Josslyn slung over his shoulder. She’s not moving, so I assume she has been knocked out.

  “She’s a fighter,” Cubby says as he motions to the blood covering the first man’s shirt.

  I inwardly smile, knowing how tough she really is.

  “The third man is missing,” I point out.

  “Yep, your girl’s a fighter, all right.”

  My chest unpredictably twinges a little at Cubby’s reference to my girl. I never once thought of her as mine in that sense. Of course, she is mine when it comes to the game of revenge. She’s my pawn, but never in a sense that justifies my reaction.

  I swallow, erasing any thought from my head except getting on that damn plane and to the auction unseen.

  As the men pull out of the alley, I keep my lights off and follow them down the street. We drive about fifteen minutes north of the city before I can see the airplane getting prepped for takeoff in the distance.

  Cubby motions to a small nook where I can leave my car, and I quickly pull into the hiding place, parking in the depths of the trees as best as I can. Then I grab my briefcase from the back seat and start pulling out the items I will need. I can’t take it all with me, but there are a few things I never leave behind.

  I pull the Bowie knife from the pocket and tuck it inside my suit jacket. The opposite side has my pistol. Then I pull the syringes purchased before I went into Vlad’s restaurant and put them in the outside pocket of my jacket.

  I pull my spare clips and slip them into the opposite outside pocket, and then I hand Cubby my other nine-millimeter. He sits forward and tucks it in the back of his pants before we exit the car.

  The sound of the large engines covers our steps as we slowly make our way through the trees. The floodlights are lit up along the makeshift runway, lighting up the area the way a popular sporting event would.

  The men quickly exit their vehicle, their hands moving wildly through the air, as they appear to be explaining something to their comrades. Every animated gesture gets the rest of them focused on the conversation, which makes it the best time to make our move.

  I look across the airstrip and notice a small shed located on the opposite side from us. It’s near the airstrip but hidden in the shadows of the bright lights. The perfect place to hide.

  Not saying a word, I motion to Cubby then point out the shed. He nods in agreement, and then we both start moving through the wooded terrain.

  Cubby leads the way briskly through the inlet of trees. I scan back and forth, looking for the first sign of trouble. My muscles surge with adrenaline, my pistol drawn and ready to fire if needed.

  Every noise alerts me to be on the defensive. Every gust of wind sends a cool chill down my spine, reminding me I’m alive for a reason.

  Cubby freezes as we turn the corner, getting closer to the shed. He points in the direction of the car, and it’s then I see Josslyn’s limp body slung over a large man’s shoulders. She is still knocked out, and hopefully for her sake and mine, she will remain that way for the duration of the trip.

  Seeing her now sparks a protective instinct. I want to go to her. I want to snap the neck of the man who has her and then take the rest of them out with my Bowie knife. This might be the best way to get to Stravinsky, but it’s the worst way for Josslyn. And I think that’s what is truly bothering me.

  Cubby crouches down. We are merely ten meters from the shed. I follow suit, pushing the emotions of Josslyn out of my head. I won’t keep myself alive if she is constantly locked in my brain. Instead, I tap into the cold, calculating side of myself, the side I am most comfortable with, and swallow down the rest of the useless thoughts.

  I am the man who will get to Stravinsky. I am the man who will stand in his blood before it’s all said and done.

  I crouch alongside Cubby and take the lead. The men are back to hustling around, getting the plane prepped for takeoff. It’s larger than I expected, which reassures me it can handle the flight to Bangladesh. We will definitely have to stop and refuel, but with a plane this size, it should only need to be once.

  “It’s time to go,” I tell Cubby as I point to the fuel truck behind the plane.

  He nods and nudges his head in the direction of the wheel located at the back of the plane. It will be our entry point. It will be a tight squeeze, and we will need to work fast, but it can be done. I know this. We have done it before.

  I look left then off to the right. The path is clear, so I motion with my hand to move, and Cubby takes the first step out of the cover of the shed. Suddenly, the cold steel of a gun is pressed against my head. The man seemingly came out of nowhere.

  The loud roar of the engines consumes all other noise around me as Cubby gets farther and farther away.

  I drop my gun on the ground and slowly rise to my feet. The man tells me to move, to walk out and stand in front of the rest of his crew, but I can’t expose myself like that, and I won’t allow this jerk to ruin my plan.

  I pivot on the ball of my foot and drop to my knee, flying my fist up in a raging fury and landing it directly into his gut. Jarred, he stumbles back, desperately trying to regain his footing. However, I don’t give him time to recover.

  I lunge forward like the predator I am and tackle him to the ground. I latch on to his neck and lift his head up before slamming it back down. The force in my palms and fingers strains tighter and tighter. I squeeze until my knuckles almost break through the skin, Stravinsky my only motivator for killing this man. I see his face—Stravinsky’s blood-covered face—as I remove the light from his eyes and the thudding heartbeat from his chest.

  The man passes out, but he’s not dead. The heavy rise and fall of his chest betrays him. Not having time to waste, I get behind him and wrap my hands around his neck then jerk, snapping it.

  Cubby’s made it to the wheels, and now it’s my turn. I quickly check for other men and determine it’s clear enough for me to run across the field. Most of them are inside the plane, awaiting takeoff.

  As I make it to the landing gear, the aircraft starts to make its first signs of movement. I quickly climb the landing gear like a makeshift ladder, inching my way up and inside. I look over, and Cubby is doing the same on the other set of wheels.

  As I get fully inside the plane, it starts to pick up speed. It isn’t long before we are airborne, and the wheels are secured inside.

  The underbelly of an airplane is like a maze. You can move through it stealthily if you know where to find the right areas.

  Cubby locates a small trap door leading to the cargo area. It takes us to a safe part of the aircraft. The space is low, prohibiting you from standing up, but for a man Cubby’s size, he’s nearly crawling to move through the area. He’s surprisingly agile for a man his size, though.

  We find small pallets of crates, shrink-wrapped and ready for transport. My gut tells
me there are weapons in them, confirming our earlier thought that our layover stop will be in Kabul. The weapons and sex trade are huge moneymakers for the criminal underworld, and, with all the strife happening in the Middle East, the weapons market is a very lucrative business. We manage to tuck ourselves in a small, blocked-off section of the main cargo area and wait out the remainder of our travel.

  I can feel the plane ascend with every passing minute as I follow Cubby’s lead, sitting down and getting situated for the long trip to Bangladesh. Now is the time to relax, because once I’m inside the auction, I don’t think I will take a single breath until I get Stravinsky’s buyer in my sights and Josslyn’s back safely by my side.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Josslyn

  August 22, 2015 5:57 p.m.

  My body feels heavy, my arms weighted and sluggish, which is similar to how it felt coming out of anesthesia when I had my tonsils removed. Except, I feel the pain flood in. My ribs ache, and there is an intense pain coming from my back. I search my memory bank, recalling the last moment I was awake, and then it floods in like a tidal wave. I was in the hotel in Grozny, on the phone with Gabe, when three men rushed me. One died, one bled, but the third …? I don’t know. That is when it all went black.

  I shake my head, trying to open my eyes, but it seems impossible. I can hear everything, feel everything, but I can’t open my damn eyes. I want to move. I want to stand and run until my legs collapse from exhaustion, yet I can’t get my eyelids to function properly. Maybe I’m blind. Maybe my eyes are open, but I can’t see.

  I try to lift my arm, but it’s trapped. The clanking metal sound is very familiar, and as I clear my head of the fogginess, I can feel the cold steel cinched around my wrists. I’m handcuffed.

  I have no idea where I’m at or who has me. I want to cry. I have never felt this terrified in my life. And I haven’t spoken to Nikolai in so long. For all I know, he’s dead.

  As the thought passes through my brain, a chill simultaneously surges down my spine. He can’t be dead. He’s the only person who is capable of rescuing me. If he can’t save me, then what?

  Just as the tears start to build, the sound of someone coming through the door causes me to freeze. There are two people speaking in a dialect I don’t recognize, and they are women. There are sounds of running water and drawers opening and closing on my left. Something is happening. Are they going to drown me? Are they here to save me? What the hell is going on?

  A small hand taps my cheek, startling me straight to the core. I shiver, but I can’t open my eyes. They feel like they’re stapled shut, and I am still very lethargic.

  “Come on. Up, up, up,” the lady’s voice sounds as she taps my cheek hard.

  I twitch, awakening as she keeps tapping my face.

  “Up, up, up,” she says again. Then ice cold water runs over my limbs.

  I pop my heavy eyes open and finally connect my sights on my current situation. A small Asian woman stands next to me, holding a soaked rag and dragging it across my arm.

  I shake my head back and forth, finally getting through the drug-induced cloud. I snap my head to the side as I feel the other woman wash down my legs. I go to speak, but my mouth is taped shut, and only muffled sounds escape.

  My breaths start working overtime as I pant rapidly from the panic. I don’t know where I’m at, but I know exactly what’s happening. The close call I escaped in Moscow has finally caught up with me. Nikolai warned me how easy it would be for someone to break into my hotel room, and part of me didn’t believe him. Part of me thought he was being dramatic because he was battling with other stresses of the day.

  I need to get my wits together. I can’t panic or lose control of my sanity right now. I need to get acclimated to my surroundings, find the best way to get my hands free, and then get the fuck out of this place. I inhale deeply. Calming my frayed nerves, I look around.

  First, I study the women. Both of them are small and appear to be weathered. They don’t look old, but they give off the appearance of having a horrible life. They are slaves, no doubt, working for the man in charge of this horrible place. My heart breaks because it’s probably all they know. More often than not, young girls are snatched from their homes to live the rest of their lives in an inhumane manner.

  I choke back the emotion for the women. If it comes down to them or me, I won’t hesitate to kill them to get myself out of here.

  I look around the space and notice I’m in a small room. There is a sink off to the side and a small dresser on the other. I appear to be lying on a bed and cuffed by my ankles and wrists to the frame. There is a door opposite the bed and no window.

  As my brain continues to wake up from the fogginess, the smells of the room flood in. Urine, blood, and agony cover every surface of this place. My gut lurches, wondering just how many girls have been where I’m at.

  My eyes snap back down when the younger of the two women runs a bar of soap over my legs, lathering it up before she washes them. The other woman follows suit, washing the other side of my body. It’s then I look down and see I am completely naked. Nothing is covering me. Every inch of me is exposed for the world to see.

  I see a small woman’s razor come out of the drawer, and then I feel it as it connects with my skin. It glides up my legs, feeling ragged and dull. They are prepping me for the sale.

  My gut is brewing with an onslaught of emotions. Terror is number one, and closely following is blind fury. I’m pissed. And that is what I need to keep my senses tapped into to stay alive. I have to push the frightened side away if I’m going to get out of here on my own.

  The women say nothing while they continue to make me over for this fucked up auction. The more I think about what’s happening, the more I tap into my furious side. I cannot rely on Nikolai to save me. For all I know, he could be dead. There is no one left to help me. But I have to remember how he would be in this kind of situation.

  Nikolai wouldn’t freak out or even say anything. He would lie here and wait.

  He once told me patience is key, that it is one of his best attributes as a killer. It’s how he survived for so long. He has incredible patience and a side so mean and so vicious it would scare the devil himself. That is who I need to be. I need to be him. I have to channel his energy and tap into that newly formed part of myself. I can feel it deep inside. I just need to submit to it and allow the darkness to take over.

  I’m not a victim. I’m a survivor. And if I’m going to walk out of here on my own two feet, then it will take the dark side to get me there.

  .*.*.*.

  August 22, 2015 9:34 p.m.

  The two Asian women preparing me for the auction left hours ago. Once they finished, they tied my hair in a tight bun and gave me a pair of black panties to dress in with high heels for my feet. I was placed in a chair where I remained gagged and blindfolded. And this is where I have been.

  There is a lot of noise coming from beyond the door, and I can hear several different voices—men mostly—and so many different languages I lost count. However, the worst sounds are the screams and pleas for help. I don’t know how many there are, but it’s far too many to count. Most of them sound young, school-aged. My heart breaks into thousands of pieces because what I went through when I was fourteen was horrible, but what these young girls are experiencing is tragic. They may never walk out of here, and if they do, they will be subjected to torture beyond their comprehension. My ordeal only lasted an hour at the most, maybe shorter. These girls will experience this for months—years.

  The lump forming at the base of my throat starts to work its way up. I want to cry. I am scared, but I’m mostly terrified for those girls. They don’t have any idea what is happening or how they can survive it.

  I inhale the deepest of breaths then swallow the lump down, tucking it away with the fear and focusing on slaying anyone who comes in my path. I think about Nikolai the night he held me captive, how cold and menacing he was. I think about how frightened I was and
how furious he can become.

  The door slams open, startling me. My shoulders jump when two sets of hands grab my wrists and free them.

  Patience, Josslyn, patience, I remind myself. I can’t act unruly, not when I don’t know where they are taking me or what lies beyond that door.

  I am forced out of my chair, and a cold, metal collar is fastened around my neck. It’s heavy and smells like rust. There is a slight clicking sound, which I assume is a lock of some sort being put in place.

  As one person locks the collar around my neck, another handcuffs my wrist behind my back. I stumble on my spiky heels when I’m pulled by a leash I felt fastened to the collar and dragged from the room. I don’t fight; I simply follow the man pulling me down the hallway like a dog.

  My eyes are still blindfolded, though my other senses are in operating order. My hearing is acute. Aside from the metal clanking on the collar, I can hear voices as they pass me in the hall. The cries are still all around me, and as one cry fades, a louder, different one assaults me.

  I’m picturing a hallway with doors on both sides and young girls held prisoner inside. The air around me is humid, making my skin sweaty and sticky. Finally, stagnant in the air is the smell of evil. I’m quite certain, if Hell existed, it would smell just like this: musty, rancid, metallic, and soulless.

  I am brought to an abrupt halt as the man leading me down the hallway stops. There is a fumbling sound, and then my hand restraints are removed. I shake my arms out as I place them by my sides.

  The creak of rusty hinges passes, and then I am ushered into a hot room. The floor underneath my shoes is different. Before, I was walking on concrete, the grit from the hallway crackling under my high heels. However, now the floor is softer and creaks. Perhaps wood? Then my eyes are shocked as extremely bright lights slice through my lids. I flutter them open, trying like hell to adjust to the lighting.