Breaking Creed

by Alex Kava

  “I’ll be right back,” she said.

  He watched her walk across the waiting room and head directly to the woman behind the window. The one who guarded the RESTRICTED door, who had told Creed she couldn’t let him see Hannah, nor could she even give him any information about her current condition because he was not family. The woman was black and she must have known that Hannah was black because while she told him he wasn’t family, she looked him up and down as if she were giving him a warning not to try to get that one by her.

  Now he saw Maggie pulling out her wallet to show the woman something. No, it wasn’t her wallet—it was her badge. He couldn’t hear what she was saying. Maggie turned and pointed to him. The woman craned her neck, practically standing up to look out her protective window with the slot at the bottom. When she saw who Maggie was referring to, Creed saw her make a face. Maggie continued talking, and soon the woman was nodding, then she handed her something over the desk and through the open slot. He had no idea what it was.

  Maggie walked back and gave him the item. He looked at the laminated badge, fingering the lanyard that was attached.

  “You can see Hannah anytime you want. Just show that to whoever is at the reception window.”

  He stared at her.

  “The doctor overseeing her case will be in checking on her in the next hour. He’ll be sure to update you.”

  “Always good to have the FBI on your side. Thank you.”

  He didn’t want to ask for anything else, but there was one other thing he couldn’t do on his own.

  “Would you mind checking in on Amanda? I don’t want her to think I deserted her.”

  She made it easy on him. Didn’t even hesitate.

  “Sure, I can do that. I’m staying on Pensacola Beach while we finish working on the Bagleys’ property. You have my cell phone number. Call me. I can give you an update on Amanda and you can let me know how Hannah is doing.”

  He nodded.

  “I know you’re too stubborn to ask, but despite falling into scorpion pits, I actually might be able to help. I’m pretty good with a badge . . . and even a gun.”

  This time he smiled as he watched her leave. But he already knew he wasn’t going to let anyone else he cared about risk getting hurt.

  60

  PENSACOLA BEACH

  CREED HATED TO LEAVE HANNAH. She looked so fragile with all those tubes and needles poking into her. Thanks to Maggie, he had been able to sit by her side and hold her hand. The doctor had told him her condition was stabilized, but they were keeping her in ICU overnight. No matter what the doctor had said, nothing could have made Creed feel better except maybe Hannah opening her eyes or squeezing his hand. Neither of which she was able to do.

  He had promised Liz Bailey that he would meet her at Walter’s Canteen on Pensacola Beach.

  “I heard about your business partner. How is she doing?”

  “She’s a tough lady. Doctor said she’s stabilized.” He scooted his chair closer. The place was full and loud. He didn’t add that Hannah certainly didn’t look anywhere near stabilized.

  “Maybe this is how they intended to hurt you.”

  Liz Bailey said out loud what Creed already knew. He figured it was definitely part of their plan, although he didn’t think for a second it was over. More than anything, he didn’t want anyone else involved or concerned, so he told Bailey, “Yeah, maybe this was their strategy.”

  She filled him in on what she knew about the children they had rescued. All five had been returned home to their families. She said she had visited the little boy, whose name was Rudy, and he asked about Grace. Rudy’s parents had asked her to pass along their contact information.

  “They want to meet you. To say thank you.”

  “We were all just doing our jobs.”

  She slid a piece of paper over the table.

  “All I promised was that I’d make sure you got it. You can do with it what you want.”

  Bailey’s phone started vibrating and she grabbed it. She took one look at the text message and frowned.

  “I’m sorry. I gotta go. My night to be on-call and they’re calling.”

  “It’s okay,” Creed said.

  She started pulling out a twenty-dollar bill and he stopped her.

  “But I invited you,” she said.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he insisted. “Last time we were here, your dad picked up the tab. It’s my turn.”

  She shook her head as she grabbed back the piece of paper she had slid across the table and wrote a second number down.

  “If I can help, let me know. Or if you just want to talk.”

  He couldn’t tell if she meant it flirtatiously or just as a colleague. She left as he tucked the paper into his wallet.

  He finished his drink and zigzagged through the crowded bar. He was almost to the door when he noticed a commotion at the other end of the packed room. He recognized Jason in the middle of the mess, but he didn’t know the four men who had just started to shove Jason around.

  61

  IN ANOTHER LIFETIME—pre-Afghanistan—Jason would have enjoyed exchanging punches with these assholes. Most likely they were college boys on summer break with their perfect white teeth and all of their suntanned limbs still in place. Among the four of them there was enough bulk and brawn to cause some serious damage. So maybe he should have let it go when the one who looked like their leader for the night bumped into their table.

  The guy was drunk. That was obvious. The place was crowded, wall to wall, standing room only. He probably didn’t mean to knock into them and topple their beer glasses, but Jason was drunk, too, and thought the guy owed them an apology.

  “Hey, watch where you’re going,” Jason told him.

  The guy saw the spilled beer and smirked at him. “Tough break.”

  Jason knew the type—the guy probably wasn’t used to anyone telling him what to do. He wore cargo shorts and a crisp new tank top with PENSACOLA BEACH emblazoned across the front. Sunglasses hung from the shirt’s crew neck, and Jason could make out GUCCI on the side. He recognized the designer flip-flops, too. He didn’t know why it made him mad, but it did.

  That’s when Jason stood up and shoved him.

  Immediately he saw his mistake. The guy had three friends at the bar who saw what had happened and came pushing their way through to his defense. Jason had Colfax and Benny, who stared into their empty beer glasses. They looked completely miserable. He could see that they didn’t want to do this. They probably thought they couldn’t do this. And maybe that was another reason why Jason needed to do this. But tonight Tony wasn’t even here to give them a fighting chance.

  “Come on, Mike, don’t bother with those losers.” One of his friends tried coaxing him away.

  He didn’t listen to his friend.

  “Don’t shove me, asshole.” And he gave Jason a shove.

  “You owe us an apology.”

  Instead of an apology, Mike pushed him again, this time harder, sending Jason slamming into one of his buddies. Before Jason could regain his balance, he was being shoved back the other way.

  Mike was in Jason’s face, about to yell something when he winced suddenly and jerked backward. Ryder Creed had the guy by the back of the neck. He stood several inches taller than Mike and was able to pull him not only back but also up. The grip reminded Jason of the way Creed might hold a dog by the scruff of the neck.

  “What the hell?”

  “I thought I might join the fun,” Creed said. “Since it was a bit uneven. Four against three.” He let go of the guy and stood between them, glancing around and waiting.

  “Nobody grabs me like that, man.”

  “Nobody shoves my friends around. So why don’t we call it even and go home.” Creed shifted his weight, and Jason couldn’t believe he tho
ught it was that easy. That it was all over.

  Mike’s face had gone crimson, a combination of anger and humiliation. His friends were watching him, ready to move if and when he gave the word. Jason balled up his fist. He could still hit and kick, and he wanted to hit this guy more than ever.

  Then Mike made his move. He reached his hand up to shove Creed the same way he had shoved Jason. Only his hand didn’t even make it to Creed’s chest. In less than a second his fingers disappeared in Creed’s palm. Suddenly the guy was on his knees, screaming in pain. Creed had his hand twisted and locked at an unnatural angle. It looked as though one more ounce of pressure and bones would snap.

  His friends didn’t move. They stared at him and Creed as if they couldn’t believe what was happening. And all the noise seemed to get sucked out of the room, the vortex starting in the radius surrounding them.

  Jason recognized a couple of the bartenders. They separated the crowd for the gray-haired man who was making his way into the inner circle as others backed away. Mike’s scream had been reduced to a whine, then almost a whimper. The old man looked at Creed, and that’s when Creed finally let go.

  “That bastard almost broke my hand.”

  He held it up for everyone to see. Jason didn’t think it was broken, but it was already starting to swell and turn blue.

  Jason glanced over at Colfax and Benny, who looked even more miserable, if that was possible. He couldn’t help noticing that Ryder Creed didn’t look the least bit remorseful, and the old guy seemed to take note of that, too.

  “I want the police called.” Still on his knees and cradling his wounded fingers, Mike was still giving orders.

  That’s all Jason needed, a police report. The military would never give him a new hand now.

  “Did you four come over to buy these veterans a drink and thank them for their service?” the old guy asked, surprising all of them with his casual tone.

  “What? What the hell are you talking about, old man? He broke my hand!” Mike pointed at Creed.

  “I may look like an old man, son, but I own this establishment. If you’d like to file a police report, you’re welcome to do that. You might want to put some ice on that hand.” He shook his head as he looked at it for the first time. “Probably should be soon. That doesn’t look too good.”

  Then he turned to one of the bartenders. “Help these fellas find a place out on the patio, Carl.”

  “Wait! You’re kicking us out?”

  “Just putting you outside to get some fresh air.”

  “But you’re kicking them out, right?” Mike asked.

  Jason watched the old man’s eyes go from Creed to Colfax and Benny, and then they stopped at his. Something told Jason the old guy knew he deserved to be thrown out. But then he said something that floored Jason: “Hell no, I’m buying these veterans a round on the house.”

  Saturday

  62

  O’DELL WALKED ACROSS PENSACOLA BEACH from her hotel room to Howard’s Deep Sea Fishing Marina. It was still early and the beach was already crowded and the sun already hot. She carried her flip-flops in her hand for the part of her trek that was sand. It reminded her that she could use a few days of sand between her toes and the sound of breaking waves. Maybe when all this was over, she’d come back.

  The two-story shop was whitewashed with a marlin painted on the sign below the orange and blue letters. A boardwalk ran the width of the shop and connected to a long pier where boats of all sizes occupied some of the slips. On the boardwalk were bistro tables with umbrellas and chairs. She noticed the small oyster shack attached to the far side of the shop. It had its own sign: BOBBYE’S OYSTER BAR. It was closed but the chalkboard out front already advertised that night’s specials.

  O’Dell stopped and watched the pelican sitting on one of the posts. Seagulls screeched overhead in a blue sky that didn’t show a hint of clouds. From somewhere she could smell the heavenly aroma of food on an open grill, and her eyes started looking for the café or restaurant before she reminded herself why she was here.

  The man behind the counter had to be six-foot-five. His broad shoulders and chest filled the lime-green and yellow boat shirt with a marlin across the front that matched his sign out front. He wore white linen pants, as white as his mustache and the thick mass of hair on his head.

  The first thing she noticed was the shelf that ran along the walls, about a foot from the ceiling. Miniature model boats were displayed, tightly packed end-to-end. There had to be hundreds of them.

  “A hobby that has become an obsession,” the man said in a rich baritone that could have been intimidating if it wasn’t accompanied by the crinkles around his brilliant blue eyes.

  “They’re beautiful.”

  “Thanks. What can I do for you?” he asked.

  “Ellie Delanor sent me.”

  She watched his smile come slow and easy as he said, “I’ll get something cold to drink.” Without hesitation, he flipped the sign in the window to CLOSED.

  They spent the next hour at one of the bistro tables on the boardwalk. O’Dell sipped raspberry tea and listened to Howard Johnson tell her what he knew. It was hard to believe that this mild-mannered gentleman had once been a top drug dealer for the Gulf cartel back in the 1990s. When Senator Delanor had asked O’Dell to talk to Howard, she said that he knew more about George Ramos than anyone. The two had been best friends twenty years ago, before they both decided to go straight and clean. Only, Howard didn’t realize at the time that George wasn’t serious, never even attempted it.

  “George was convinced,” Howard said, “that I had kept millions of dollars of the cartel’s money. He even told the DEA. I had one agent hounding me for years. The guy started out in immigration as an ICE agent. That’s how George got his ear in the first place. Tried hard to destroy me. I always figured he tried to destroy George, too.”

  “And Senator Delanor?”

  “Oh jeez, we were all in love with Ellie. But she chose George.” He looked at O’Dell, waited for her eyes. “And now George is going to destroy her completely, isn’t he?”

  63

  CREED HAD GIVEN EVERYONE the weekend off. If Jason was right, Choque Azul’s hit squad would be coming for him either tonight or tomorrow night.

  After his friends Colfax and Benny had left the bar last night and it was just the two of them, Jason told Creed about Tony. A guy named Falco had convinced Tony to leave the bananas on Hannah’s kitchen counter. Somehow Falco knew that Tony had been hired to go out and check the electricity at Creed’s facility. He swore he didn’t know about the spiders, and Jason said he believed him.

  He also said his friend was still pretending to be interested in doing more work for Falco. That’s how he knew about the raid. From what Tony had shared with Jason, Choque Azul was used to hiring ex-military members to do quite a bit of their dirty work. And unfortunately, many of them were lured in, just like Tony had been, by the large amounts of cash they were paid and the promise of much more. Jason offered to help. Creed declined. He told him not to take it personally. He simply did not want anyone else to get hurt. The information he had given was more than enough.

  Creed took the entire day to prepare, and needed every minute. Then he waited for darkness. He knew they wouldn’t come until they had the cover of night.

  In some strange way—and Hannah would probably add “some sick way”—Creed was impressed with the show of force that Choque Azul thought was necessary to bring him down. On his iPad he watched the men approaching—which made it look like he was playing a bad video game. The infrared cameras he had placed on the dogs’ collars jerked a bit more than he’d like, even though the dogs were doing their best stealth tracking of the men who were now invading his property.

  All three dogs were war dogs. Two male, one female. Cheyenne was a muscular pit bull mix; Diesel, a sleek, bronze boxer;
and Nuru was a blue-eyed husky mix. They had been trained for military work and could track independently behind enemy lines without constant instruction and with little guidance from their master.

  The cameras on their collars were accompanied by a GPS and another device that emitted a series of high-pitched signals. Only the dogs could hear and react to the signals. Creed was able to give them directions by punching in commands using special apps on his iPad and his cell phone.

  The dogs understood they were to track the intruders while remaining unseen and unheard. It looked like quite the challenge, because from what Creed could see, the men were equipped with infrared goggles. So far, the dogs were following behind or alongside in the trees and brush and keeping low to the ground.

  Suddenly one man stopped to listen. He spun around to look behind them.

  Creed held his breath as he watched.

  The guy called out something to the other two men with him, and they stopped up ahead. Creed couldn’t make out what was said. For all the wonderful technology of the camera, it had a crappy microphone that filled Creed’s ears with only his dog’s sniffs and pants.

  The man swung his gun and his bandanna head with goggle eyes from side to side, looking up at the branches and into the trees. For some reason he didn’t bother examining the tall grass or anything closer to the ground. Thank goodness, because from the angle of Cheyenne’s camera, Creed knew the dog had dropped to its belly.

  The man decided there wasn’t anything, and he waved to his buddies. They continued to sneak through the trees.

  Again, with another app, Creed pulled up a map of his property. Three lights were blinking within the borders—one green, one yellow, and one red. Each light identified a dog and his or her location. Cheyenne was the green light, tracking the group that came in from the road.

  Creed could also access the other cameras he had planted around the property. A touch of his iPad screen and he could choose to see in real time what was in each camera’s viewfinder. Of course, he couldn’t monitor the entire acreage, but he had views of almost every possible approach to any of the buildings on the property, especially the one with the dog kennels and his apartment.