by Rachel Rust
A hail of gunfire splintered through the suite doors.
Chapter Twenty-One
Eddie’s body lay over mine, his arms and legs shielding my own. When the gunfire stopped, he whispered, “Stay down.” He moved off me, crouching low. Loud voices filled the room.
I scrunched my body as close to the furniture as possible, watching as Eddie crept toward the end of the sofa. I wanted to pull him back, but the gun firmly gripped in his hand reminded me that with his training, he was prepared for a moment like this in more ways than I could possibly fathom.
Someone rushed past the sofa, and Eddie froze, listening.
“Hands up! On the floor!” a voice yelled in the tech lair.
“Okay, okay,” I heard Toby say.
There was a loud shuffling noise and someone shouted, “Don’t even think about it!”
Toby yelled, “No, don’t!”
Two gun shots rang out, echoing through the entire suite. My face scrunched and my hands flew up to my ears, to keep the reverberating noise out. Eddie held out a hand behind him, telling me to stay down and be quiet. He moved an inch forward and then stopped. Then another inch and stopped.
In one swift move, he stood and raised his gun. “Don’t move.”
Another man chuckled softly. “All right then, I guess you win, huh?”
My eyes widened. I knew that voice. It was Brandon. Kick his ass, Eddie! I screamed in my head. Curiosity slowly overtook the fear coursing through my veins, and I got up onto my hands and knees.
“Gun on the ground,” Eddie said.
I peered over the back of the sofa in time to see Brandon place his gun on the floor, and then kick it over to Eddie. They were about the same height, but starkly different with Brandon’s clean cut short hair, and Eddie’s mop of hair.
“We only want the girl,” Brandon said. “I have no beef with you.”
“On your knees,” said Eddie.
Brandon smiled. “Is that what you say to all your dates?”
“Get down on your fucking knees!”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen.” Brandon nodded to the tech door as another man, this one dressed in all black, walked out with a gun to Toby’s head. Brandon looked back at Eddie and said, “Drop your gun, or your chubby friend here is dead.”
Eddie glanced over at Toby, and then back to Brandon, his jaw clenching with what appeared to be indecision. He was caught in an impossible choice. Me or Toby. Han was gone, leaving Eddie as the only gun in the suite, thanks to the sweep. I assumed Toby and the other tech guy had also been armed, but maybe they didn’t have the same level of field training as Eddie and Han, because Toby had definitely been disarmed quite quickly.
The man dressed in black pushed Toby forward. Toby fell to his knees, and the man pointed his gun to the back of his head.
Sweat ran down Toby’s red, blotchy face. “Don’t worry about me. Save her.” The man behind him bumped the back of his head with the gun, making Toby wince. The gun cocked.
“No!” I screamed, standing up from behind the sofa. “Leave him alone!”
Brandon smiled at me. “Ah, the little bitch. We meet again.”
“Go to hell.”
Past Brandon, through the tech door, the small body of the ‘gold tits’ tech guy lay slumped over in a chair, blood dripping down his arms, pooling on the carpet below. My stomach heaved, and it was all I could do to keep my half-eaten doughnut from re-emerging. They had shot him … real guns, real bullets. Real death.
Brandon turned his attention back to Eddie. “Here’s what’s gonna happen.” He pointed a finger at me. “I’m going to take her with me.” With his other hand, he pointed to Toby. “And I’m going to take him, too. And in exchange for handing them over, I let you live.”
“And how do you think you’re going to do all that?” Eddie asked, his forearm muscles tensed with the grip of his gun.
Brandon cleared his throat. From the suite doors came the barrel of another gun, followed by a large man, also dressed in black. The large man’s gun was pointed right at Eddie’s head.
“Drop it,” the gunman said. From his build and voice, he was definitely the same muscular man who had carried me into the lumber warehouse in Wyoming.
Eddie’s nostrils flared. He glanced from me to Toby and then back to the gun pointed at him. His hands separated. With his left hand raised, his right hand lowered his gun to the floor.
“Now the other one,” Brandon said. “Slow and easy.”
Still bent down, Eddie lifted a pant leg and removed another smaller handgun, placing it on the floor.
“Step back.”
Eddie took two steps back, hands up. Brandon took his own gun back and then collected Eddie’s two. The muscular man holstered his gun and came around the sofa toward me. I screamed and ran the other direction, toward Eddie, but the man was too fast. And with Brandon’s gun now pointed at his head, Eddie had no ability to help me without landing in a bloody heap on the floor.
The man grabbed my hair and yanked me back so hard it momentarily choked the breath out of me. I fell back onto the floor with a thud, pain reverberating through my body. I screamed and wriggled as he dragged me across the carpet toward the door. He thumped a heavy black boot onto my shoulder, pressing down so hard I thought my collar bone would crack.
Tears ran down the sides of my face, pooling in my ears. But my screams were cut off by a strip of duct tape. Through blurry vision, I stared back at Eddie, whose eyes flared with anger and fear, watching as the man taped my wrists and ankles. Fear invaded every cell of my body, and I mentally begged Eddie—or anyone else—to free me. But deep inside I knew it was no use. Eddie was outgunned, Han was nowhere to be found, and one person was dead already. They wouldn’t hesitate to kill Eddie next. Or me. Or Toby.
“Grab her,” Brandon said and then motioned to Toby. “Get up.”
Toby’s wrists were duct taped, but not his legs. He walked toward me as the muscular man hoisted me over his shoulder. He had no problem subduing my wiggling while at the same time keeping a firm grip on his gun which was now pointed at Toby.
The man forced Toby ahead of us at gun point and then carried me out the door. I caught one last glimpse of Eddie’s vengeful eyes just before we slipped into the hallway.
Chapter Twenty-Two
In the hallway outside of the suite, the elevator door was ajar, unable to close because Han’s body lay half-in, half-out. A large puddle of blood had pooled around his lifeless form.
I squeezed my eyes closed and looked away as the metallic scent of blood filled my nose. Han had been a douchebag, but the sight of his dead body tore my insides to pieces. He had been in the suite alongside me only minutes ago—alive, breathing, moving. And now he was gone. Just like that.
The man in black forced Toby to open the stairwell doors. My body trembled in fear with each step the man took down the stairwell. It wasn’t just my own safety I feared—it was the overwhelming fear that we had just left Eddie back in the suite … with two guys with guns.
My entire body heaved with grief, realizing he was as good as dead. Hell, he was probably dead already, lying in a pool of blood like Han. Once alive, smiling and wrapping his arms around me … and now gone. A body-shaking sob tore through me.
Toby looked back at me, sorrow in his eyes, but said nothing.
By the time we reached the first floor, Toby was a sweaty mess from all the steps. The stairs exited near the kitchen, where we slipped into the small employee hallway where I had first entered the hotel last week. Outside the Employees Only door, we stepped into a muggy June day. A black van waited for us, similar to the one that had first snagged me in the mall parking lot.
Toby was told to sit behind the driver’s seat, and I was then dumped next to him. The door slammed shut, and we took off through the downtown streets. Except this time, Toby—the man who had found me via surveillance cameras the last time I had been kidnapped—was now taped up next to me. Common sense said th
e FBI had a lot of tech people who could find the van on cameras, but how long would that take? How long would it be before Thatcher or the other agents in the hotel went to the room to find Eddie and Han and the tech guy all dead? How long would it be before anyone realized that Toby and I had been taken?
The muscular man, seated in the back with Toby and me, produced a small knife from his pocket. I shirked back. He curled his lip at my reaction, revealing yellowed teeth. He leaned over and in two swipes, cut the tape from Toby’s wrists. Once free, Toby ripped the tape off his mouth. “Fucking hell that hurts.” He twitched his lips around.
I stared at Toby, unsure of what was happening. The man in black wasn’t stopping Toby. He wasn’t commanding him to sit still or be quiet or put the tape back over his mouth. It was as though he was … helping him.
Toby stared at me with a deadened expression and then reached under the driver’s seat behind him. Velcro ripped away and Toby turned around with a handgun.
I shook my head, wide-eyed, not believing what I was seeing. No way. Not Toby. Not the pizza sauce tech boy who had made me laugh and provided much needed levity during my week-long stint at hotel hell.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” he said with a blunt tone. “It’s just the way it’s gotta be.”
Rage flowed through me. I was taped up, once again in the back of a van because of Toby? And Eddie was probably dead because of him. You stupid fuck! I screamed against the tape and flung my taped legs around, kicking him in the thigh.
The muscular man grabbed me and dragged me away from Toby. His elbow came flying toward my face, but I ducked my head and it caught me in the shoulder instead. I cried out and coughed in pain.
“Leave her be,” a voice called out.
But not just any voice. A gravelly voice with a thick accent. From the passenger seat, Sergei Romanov had turned to look at us in the back of the van.
He smiled at me. “Natalie Mancini, we meet again. Or shall I call you Theresa Roberts? I must say, the blonde wig was a nice touch. You should consider lightening your hair. It suits you.”
Heavy thoughts crashed in around me. Sergei had known that was me at the gala? I stared at Toby. Oh shit. Of course, Sergei had known who I was in that ballroom. Toby had told him. Toby had been telling him everything.
Toby was his inside man.
My head grew faint, realizing that Sergei had known everything this whole time. He and his men had always known I was in that hotel suite. For the past week, he had known exactly where I was. He had never believed I was on that plane to Denver, nor had he ever thought that Agent Baker was me down in that shitty hotel.
But if they knew where I was, why didn’t they come get me earlier? They could’ve grabbed me at the gala. Why had he knowingly let me sit in that hotel room suite for a week?
Something wasn’t adding up.
I inhaled a ragged breath through my stuffy nose. There was something else going on. Eddie and Thatcher had said that Sergei wasn’t a human trafficker, he dealt in weapons and guns. I didn’t understand why he had bothered trying to sell me at all. I would never have gotten all his money back.
As the floor of the van vibrated under me, occasionally jostling my body with a pot hole or railroad tracks, my mind spun to make sense of it all. And the longer I stewed on the situation, the more I began to realize Sergei didn’t want me for the money. He wanted me for a different reason.
The same reason he had set me up with Eddie for that school assignment.
If only I knew what the hell that reason was.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sergei and his men brought me to an enormous warehouse on the north edge of town. An expansive concrete pad surrounded the gray building, with yellow construction vehicles lining the perimeter. Sergei ordered Toby to zip-tie me to a large piece of equipment that was parked in the middle of the lot. It had a big scoop in front—a front loader, if my memory of Josh’s childhood toys served me correctly. He used to build and bulldoze makeshift construction sites all around the house, using sticks he had collected from outside. My dad would step on them with his bare feet, cursing and making empty threats to throw away all the toys in house.
And now there I was, tied to one of Josh’s favorite childhood toys.
Alone.
Sergei and the other guys all disappeared into the warehouse, though chances were good that there were still eyes on me. Even if I somehow managed to snap the thick plastic around my wrists, I wouldn’t get two steps without a bullet finding me.
In the open, the wind whipped at me, sending my hair into my face, and without the use of my hands, there it stayed, cutting into my vision. The day grew hot as the sun rose directly overhead. My skin tanned easily, but after hours in the direct sun, it grew hot and raw. Sweat coated my body, making my clothes and hair cling to me.
A black SUV pulled up and parked near the building. Brandon exited the passenger side, gun in hand. He glimpsed at me in the middle of the lot, sun beating down on me, and then headed into the building. I wondered if the gun in his hand was his or one that he had taken from Eddie. Had he used it to kill Eddie? Had Eddie been killed by his own gun? I couldn’t imagine a more fuck you way to kill a law enforcement agent.
The muscular man walked out of the building, water bottle in hand. He tore the tape from my mouth, and I gulped in a deep breath. With a calloused hand, he swiped my hair away from my face, and then grabbed my chin. Water poured from the bottle, gurgling in my mouth faster than I could swallow it. The deluge ticked my throat and cut off my breath. I coughed and gagged until the entire contents had been poured out. Half of it had run down the front of my shirt. It was a cool relief from the blaze of the sun, though my lips were still dry and cracked despite the water.
The man went back inside the warehouse, once again leaving me to fester alone in the sunlight in the middle of the concrete pad. But he hadn’t replaced the duct tape on my mouth. I thought about screaming for help, but I knew that would immediately bring him back out to slap the tape back over my mouth. So I stayed quiet. I liked breathing normally.
The sun settled over the top of the building, creating long shadows from the bulky construction equipment. My head grew tired and heavy, leaning against the metal for support.
A low buzz caught my sagging attention. It was far away but getting closer. A helicopter.
It also caught the attention of the men inside the building, several of whom stepped outside to see the black form in the sky, growing in size as it got closer, from a small speck to a large craft circling the warehouse. I expected it to land … assuming it was my next unwelcomed mode of transportation. But it didn’t land. In fact, by the hurried steps of Sergei’s men, it was clearly not a friend of theirs. Which meant that maybe it was a friend of mine.
After circling a couple of times, the chopper left.
Brandon walked out of the warehouse with fast, determined steps my direction. But he only made it halfway to me when a bullet blew out his knee, sending him screaming into the concrete.
My head whipped around the direction of the shot, to see Thatcher step out from behind an enormous earth-mover, gun raised. She fired again, and one of the men in black up near the warehouse dropped. And then another one dropped right behind the first one, courtesy of another bullet from Thatcher’s gun.
A shot rang out our direction from the warehouse and Thatcher somersaulted to me, seeking protection from the large front loader I was tied to. She was nimble for an old lady.
“You okay?” she asked.
Another bullet pinged against the metal just over our heads before I could answer. “I’m fine—” Another bullet, another ping of metal. “But Eddie, he’s…”
Thatcher reached around the yellow frame and fired five bullets, and then sunk back down next to me. “What about Eddie?”
“He’s…” I couldn’t get the next word out. Dead.
A hail of bullets pinged against the front loader, making both of us cower. But the gunfire coming at us wa
s cut off by another round of gunfire coming from somewhere else. To our left was the sound of several guns, countless bullets.
Through a gap in the yellow metal, I watched as Eddie stepped out from behind a bulldozer, wearing a Kevlar FBI vest with his gun raised, firing back at the men who were firing at Thatcher and me.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the sight of him. I didn’t know how he managed to get out of that hotel suite alive, but he had—and he was here. He showed up just on time. Like always.
Flanking Eddie were more FBI agents. A dozen or more that I could see. Maybe more that I couldn’t see. There were also Rapid City police offers flanking the FBI agents. There must’ve been twenty or thirty people total.
One of Eddie’s hands flew up. “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!”
Guns ceased. Eddie and the others, including Thatcher, slowly made their way to the warehouse where Sergei stood with his hands up.
“I give up,” Sergei said with a laugh. “You FBI, you are too much for an old man like me.”
“Kick your weapon over,” Thatcher said.
Sergei did as instructed, kicking the gun, which skidded about ten feet to Thatcher. “My name is Jack Chenko. I have business in this warehouse.”
Thatcher nodded at me. “And what business do you have tying up a young woman?”
“She is a trespasser. Causing trouble. We were about to call the police.”
Thatcher’s jaw clenched. “Sergei Romanov, you and I both know who you are. Let’s drop the façade and speak on real terms.”
Sergei shrugged. “I do not know this Sergei Romanov of whom you speak.”
“Cut the shit,” Thatcher said. “And tell me where Agent McCoy is.”
Sergei smiled, transforming his pleasant Jack Chenko face into the face of an inhumane monster with dark eyes and an angular grin. He pointed a thumb to the warehouse behind him. “Mister Toby is inside.” He looked back at Thatcher. “He is a little tied up at the moment.”