It seemed like hours until Beau and Gabe were told to stand back while the good guys slowly lifted Maverick, along with his rack of spikes, up from the hole. It had to be done. The spikes could only be removed once Maverick was in surgery with a team of skilled miracle workers. Thankfully, they weren’t part of the floor. Even now, it was like watching one of those horror movies where Frankenstein lay bound to a metal frame while being electrocuted. Shit, the things that go through a guy’s mind when it feels like he’s losing his whole world.
“Easy, damn it,” Alex growled when one corner of Maverick’s awkward contraption snagged the lip of the hole. The bizarre scene vanished when the medics carefully swung Maverick out of view, no doubt to a waiting gurney. Beau wasn’t worried with Alex up there running the show. He’d make sure everyone treated Maverick right.
At last, another team of eager firemen turned their efforts on the two men still in the hole. Beau allowed a hand up, make that a rope up, but only after they’d lifted Gabe to safety. Once on top, he was met with a horror show. What he’d thought was a stable floor had changed into a checkerboard labyrinth of solid floor panels mixed with gaping holes where the pressure plates had been. Some holes were traps, some were earthen pits where Montego had imprisoned her victims.
Scores of FBI SWAT, police officers, and various other emergency personnel were carefully scouring the building, setting up barriers over the dangerous traps, and triggering any other pressures plates they found. It looked like the entire National Guard was on site, too. By that time, portable floors, the kind the Army used when setting up remote camps, were laid out at intervals, providing a crisscross of stable walkways throughout the warehouse.
“Shit, you’ve been busy,” Beau told his boss.
Alex merely growled like that was a no-brainer. He jerked his head at the huddled mass of men who looked like concentration camp survivors seated in rows of fold up chairs near the office. All male. All gaunt and emaciated.
“Shit. Are they—? Were they—?”
Alex nodded grimly. “Montego’s victims? Yes. Aaron Pope’s the tall blond on the back row. The one who won’t look me in the eye.”
“Of course not. He’s not the same person he was the last time you saw him. Were they in the pits?”
“Yes. Watch your step. We’re not sure we’ve located all the pressure plates yet.”
“How’d she—?”
“There’s a trap door in the office floor. Stairs under the mat. The cells downstairs are connected.”
Beau couldn’t take his eyes off those poor men. “Damn, how many?”
“Nineteen,” Alex muttered darkly. “The FBI and paramedics are questioning them, trying to get a handle on the scope of Montego’s operation. They found her wood chipper. Another table. Another body. Body parts...”
Unbelievable. “How’d these guys survive?”
“They did what she told them to,” Alex replied, an odd pitch to his tone.
Beau quirked at sharper look at his boss. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Alex minced no words. “China called and—son-of-a-bitch, Beau. McKenna’s been taken.”
Beau took off running. He had one mission left. End Montego or die trying. Today!
Chapter Forty-Nine
She woke with her head spinning and a bright light in her face, blinding her. Restrained again, this time in a chair instead of on her bed, McKenna swallowed hard, the wires at her wrist and ankles biting with every move she made.
“You’re awake.”
That voice. Lifting her head, she came face to face with one of the few women McKenna had ever confided in. “Margo?”
The friendly office assistant was gone. A coldhearted person stared back at McKenna. “No. I’m Bambi. Your mother’s sister and your aunt, not that you ever cared.”
“I was a kid,” McKenna whispered. How could this be?
“No, you were a slut and a liar. And before you lie your way out of it again, let me tell you a few things about your mom.”
Until then, McKenna had never noticed how smooth the skin on Margo’s neck was, instead of thin and wrinkly like many women her age. How perfectly coifed her hair always was. And if those tiny lines around her hairline meant anything, how much plastic surgery she’d had done. “You don’t look like my mom.”
Margo traced her index finger along her eyebrow. “That was the plan. One of us had to get close enough to stop you. I volunteered and here I am.”
“Stop me from what?”
“Spreading lies about Aurora, what else?”
“Let me get this straight. You, Daisy, Minnie, Alice, and Wendy—all my mother’s sisters—my aunts—are in on this?” She dreaded the answer. “Is my grandmother, too? Does she know what you’re doing?”
That earned her another coldblooded sneer, and for an instant, Margo looked just like Daisy. All she needed was a thick, heavy braid and a snakeskin tattoo. “Your grandmother died a long time ago. Did you think we’d let you and that bastard you call Daddy get away with hurting our sister?”
What on earth was this woman talking about? “Get away with what? Trying to help Mom?”
CRACK! Margo’s right hand flashed out, knocking McKenna’s head to the side with a vicious slap. “You call what you did help? You killed her!”
Now you sound just like Mom. McKenna shook the blow off and spat a mouthful of blood to the side. That was an unexpectedly harsh response to an innocent question, but lesson learned. Dad’s right. Mom’s sisters are crazy.
Margo leaned forward. “I loved Aurora. We all did, and we were happy before she left, Mom, me, and the girls. But Aurora had to marry that… that animal, and then we lost her. We tried to tell her he was no good for her, but she stopped calling after they eloped. We never knew where she was. He kept moving her from state to state and—”
“Uh-uh. Mom and Dad never eloped. They had a nice wedding and a reception. I’ve seen the dress Dad bought for her and the wedding album with all their pictures. Mom showed it to me all the time. She said Dad was her prince and she was his princess. We never lived anywhere but on Fig Street.” McKenna forced herself to breathe evenly as she struggled to keep up with the wild story she was hearing for the first time. “We never moved when I was a kid. Not once. Even after Mom went into the hospital, Dad wouldn’t ever leave her. Ask him.”
“It wasn’t a hospital!” Spit flew off Margo’s lips, she shrieked so loud. “It was an insane asylum, and you’re the one who put her there!”
“No, I didn’t.” McKenna swallowed hard. Of all the family history she’d just shared, the only takeaway Margo heard was about the hospital. She was Aurora all over again. She had selective hearing, too.
McKenna kept an eye on her one-time friend’s quick hands and her large rings. Margo’s hands were much larger now that she had time to notice. Those were why McKenna felt as if she’d been hit with a brick.
“You’re right,” she said softly. “It wasn’t a hospital. It was an assisted living home for the criminally insane. After the way Mom abused me, and after her psych tests, the state put her somewhere safe where she couldn’t hurt herself.” Or me. “Dad took me to visit Mom until she screamed at him and made him stop.” Because like you, she also called me a liar and a slut—before she beat the shit out of me and locked me in a closet. “But there were no bars on any of her windows, and she had the best rooms Dad could afford. A nice living room. A walkout patio. The best medical help. Counseling.”
True, there was a fence to keep the residents from walking away from the private facility, and the staff made certain Aurora couldn’t leave the premises. But Sanders sold everything he’d owned back then to make sure she received the best care. If anyone suffered, it was him and the daughter Aurora had assaulted. They were the ones who’d lived in a two-bedroom flat.
“Liar!” Margo spat, her cheeks flushed bright red. “He killed her for the insurance! Anyone with half a brain knows that!”
“So what now?” McKenna asked quietly. “Are you going to cut me up with a wire like Daisy did? Is that all my family’s good for, killing each other?”
Jumping to her feet, Margo leaned into McKenna, one hand on each armrest until they were nose to nose. “No, child,” she whispered, her lips so close and her breath so noxious that McKenna turned her face to escape it. “This isn’t about killing you. This is about revenge. An eye for an eye. A pound of flesh for a pound of flesh. I’m here to finish what Daisy and Minnie started.”
So I am going to die. Yet even as that truth registered, McKenna recalled a lost detail from her night of terror. Like Daisy’s breath, Margo’s breath smelled of anise. Though McKenna doubted that distinct odor had less to do with black licorice and more with paregoric, the camphorated tincture of opium. Just. Like. Aurora’s.
Which begged the question, why? At one time, paregoric was commonly sold over the counter. Lazy mothers used it on their children for outright sedation when they wanted to spend a peaceful day at the club. Its overuse and misuse led to stricter controls, and today most physicians avoided prescribing it. Had Grandmother Lynch relied on this drug while raising her daughters? It made sense, especially if they’d all inherited the same mental issues as Sanders believed they had. What mother wouldn’t sedate a house full of unstable children?
Yet McKenna was no longer sure just mental illness plagued these women. She’d been a child when her mother died. She’d believed everything Sanders said. For the first time, McKenna wanted to know more about her mother’s family. Were they so poor that they couldn’t afford psychiatric help? Who was giving them paregoric? But mostly, how could they be unstable while she, Aurora’s child, was not?
“But I believed in you, Margo.” McKenna purposely used the name of her friend instead of her would-be killer. “I’ve worked with you for months. We went to lunch together. I thought we connected. I even requested that you handle all my patients. I thought we were friends.”
“Which was exactly what I wanted you to think, child.” Margo stroked the cheek she’d slapped, then gritted her teeth and pinched it. Hard. “Don’t ever call me Margo again.”
McKenna held her breath as her eyes watered, conditioned now to expect only the worst from her mother’s siblings. And to think this insane person had been around tender little babies and toddlers all this time. Another memory intruded. Where’s Shelby? “The woman with me. You didn’t hurt her, did you?” McKenna asked as she shook her aunt’s cruel grip off.
Wiping her fingers on her pants as if she’d soiled them by touching McKenna, Bambi scoffed. “Don’t worry. That blonde bimbo didn’t feel a thing.”
For the first time, McKenna noticed the holster on Bambi’s hip. “You killed her?”
“Just stunned her. I don’t need anyone else to deal with.”
“But how’d you get on Maverick’s ranch?” Where were China’s hired hands, X and Z? Were they dead too?
“Stop with the questions!” Bambi yelled. “I have a job to do.”
“And that is…?” McKenna prompted, hoping whatever lay in store for her, it would go quicker than what Daisy had done.
Her aunt rolled her eyes and shook her head as if she were dealing with an idiot. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.” A sinister chuckle growled out of her, like one of those hellhounds in the movies right before it jumped out of its skin and ate you alive.
“Wait,” McKenna asked before things got more out of hand, her poor heart pounding in her chest. “D-don’t you want to know what Mom used to say about you?”
Bambi cocked her head, one brow spiked. “What?”
“She told me...” Think fast, McKenna, and it had better be good. “She told me that... that of all her sisters, she liked you best. That you were the smart one. That you were different. Kind and loving. Was she wrong?”
A truly evil smile slithered over Bambi’s cold, harsh features. “Liar. Aurora wasn’t that nice.”
True.
Chapter Fifty
By the time Beau made it back across the highway to the helicopter, he knew Shelby had gone down while trying to protect McKenna, and that Shelby had only been tasered. She’d survive. He knew because Alex dogged him every step of the way, barking at Gabe to stay with Maverick while Alex had another of his pilots fly their wives into the District hospital where Maverick was being taken.
“Hurry,” Alex growled as he jerked the chopper’s side door open and climbed inside, “and tell me where the hell we’re going.”
“On it, Boss,” Beau said as he jumped on board, fastened his safety harness, then snapped open McKenna’s laptop and hacked into Maverick’s security system as he adeptly secured his headphones. Whoever’d taken McKenna would soon be revealed. That was the plan. Find the woman Shelby vaguely remembered talking with McKenna before she’d gone down. Had to be Montego. Then waste her ass. Up close and personal, that was how Beau saw this going down. He’d show that bitch no mercy. With a double tap, she’d be on her way to Hell where she belonged, and at last this nightmare would be over.
Drawing on every last bit of patience he possessed—which wasn’t much on a good day—Beau worked the keyboard, wishing he had all ten digits instead of five and a bandaged hammer. That was all his left hand was good for. His once severed finger no longer throbbed, and he wasn’t sure he needed it anymore. Like the sewer rat he was and always would be, he’d already adapted.
Focusing on the security camera views from the rear of the ranch house where the abduction went down, Beau zeroed in on the face of the woman who’d confronted McKenna. “Who the hell is this?” He held the laptop up so Alex could see the monitor. “You know her?”
Alex barely glanced at the screen. “No. Send it to all TEAM agents and Howie Prince. Maybe one of them knows.”
Beau hadn’t thought of that. Seconds after he forwarded the image, Alex’s cell buzzed. He activated the radio link between his phone and the headsets. “Stewart. Speak.”
“Alex, that’s Margo Heller’s picture,” Kelsey informed him. “Doc Fitz’s assistant. What’s going on?”
Alex spared Beau an evil brow. “Want to bet Heller’s the Lynch sister Howie can’t find?”
“Let me check.” Securing the data he’d already collected on the women, Beau ran a facial scan and came up with twelve markers that matched Heller to Minnie and Daisy despite their apparent dissimilarities. Plastic surgery couldn’t conceal everything. “Bambi Lynch. She’s been working with McKenna all this time?” How was that even possible?
“Find her,” Alex ordered curtly, then as nice as you please, told Kelsey, “I’ll be home late tonight, sweetheart.”
“You’d better be,” Kelsey answered. “I just heard about Maverick.”
Alex grunted, but by then, Beau was circumventing yet another secure city system and hooking into every available traffic camera within a ten-mile radius of Maverick’s ranch. Zeroing down on those with the strongest signals, he backed the pre-recorded coverage to the approximate timeframe of McKenna’s abduction. From there, he zoned in on a cream-colored Toyota sedan that had recently approached the ranch. There was no way to enhance the footage enough to be certain McKenna was in the car when it left the ranch, so he tracked the vehicle until it turned onto a road, unfortunately, without cam coverage.
Bringing up a satellite view of the area, he mapped the long dirt road to the only structure at the end of it. Impatiently, he passed the coordinates to Alex and told him, “Get those to the pilot. Do it now! He needs to land the second we arrive, or he’ll be looking for a new job.”
Alex spared him an evil look e
ven as he passed the information forward. “When this is over, Junior Agent, you and I will discuss how the chain of command works in my team.”
Beau licked his upper lip. Oh yeah. Your team. He swallowed hard and nodded. Where once he would’ve argued, or worse, come back swinging, now he accepted the rebuke and offered a reluctant, “Sorry, Boss. I, um, get carried away.”
Alex huffed. “Forget it. Just wish we were hunting Montego instead of the Lynch sisters.”
“Me, too,” Beau said, his foot tapping out every lost second that he wasn’t watching this new threat unfold behind a rifle scope. Two holsters on a one-armed man still meant squat. “We’ve been looking for the wrong woman from the start.”
“Not true. The real Catalina’s still out there. You’ve just been preoccupied.”
The view of the District at this altitude was tremendous, but Beau’s mind was on McKenna. All this time, there’d been six women he should’ve been targeting. If not for his failed intelligence gathering and lousy memory, which everyone seemed to have forgiven him for, everyone that is, but him, McKenna would be safe. This was his fault.
Preoccupied with his cell, Alex said, “Lee and Adam have a lead on Montego.”
“The real Montego? Where the f-f-f-f… I mean…” Shit. “Where is she?”
“Back in my neighborhood like you predicted. They’ve got her holed up in one of the new homes near the bridge over the river.”
Finally. But damn. Beau wanted to be the one to take her in. Make that, kill her.
“Is she alone?” Or is she busy hacking off another guy’s finger?
“Don’t know. They haven’t gotten inside yet. Sheriff Prince is on the scene. She’s armed but she’s not getting away this time.”
Beau (In the Company of Snipers Book 18) Page 34