Ballistic (A Vigilantes Novel)

by Keri Lake

  I couldn’t let that happen.

  Nearly a year ago, the cops had busted an auction where Nicoleta had been sold to Tesarik, and retrieved about two-dozen missing girls. All but Nicoleta, who I’d later learned was the daughter of some supposed big time criminal and Tesarik’s long time rival.

  I’d become obsessed. Relentless and driven by some inexplicable need to save her. Every night, I’d go to sleep with her face soldered into my thoughts, and wake with nightmares of what she’d undoubtedly suffered over the months. I’d gathered what little information I could steal on her, and pieced the small bits together.

  The biggest question still remained, though.

  Was she even alive?

  Before I could ponder that for much longer, three figures rounded the corner. Two men dressed in jeans and T-shirts, with guns strapped over their shoulders, and one other big guy all decked out in camo shit like a military reject.

  No sign of Tesarik or his guards.

  The moment the big guy nodded and broke away, something told me to sit tight. The plan was in play.

  I lifted my cell and dialed the number already pulled up on my screen. Rhys answered on the first ring, and I spoke low. “Get ready.”

  “We’re in position.”

  Evander sat forward beside me and flicked the butt of his cigarette away. “Discourteous cocksuckers won’t even let a bastard finish his smoke.”

  Ignoring him, I popped my magazine and checked, for the tenth time, that it was full and ready to wreak havoc. An intense vibration hummed through my bones as adrenaline pumped through my veins with fervor.

  The two in jeans disappeared into the maze of storage units, walking off casually as though patrolling the grounds, while Camo boy jogged toward a white paneled van and backed the vehicle around the corner and out of sight.

  A sudden urgency tugged at my muscles. I couldn’t lose them again. “They’re moving. Let’s go.”

  Evander backed away, and after another moment’s pause, I followed. We both made our way down the steep slope toward the chain-link fence that lined the perimeter of the building, hidden by the overgrown brush. Barbed wire had been thrown at the foot of it, tangled in the links of the fence and over the top. I tugged metal snippers from my pocket and snipped out an arc about three feet off the ground—enough to clear the barbed wire below. Evander slipped through first, and I followed behind, flattening my body to the building in front of us that allowed less than a foot’s gap between it and the fence.

  “Rhys is on the south side. We corral them together, and I’ll go after the girl. Have Xavier check all the units for any others.”

  “Ten four, Chief.” Evander lifted his gun, sliding along the concrete surface toward the first row of storage units.

  I slinked back in the opposite direction, towards where Camo boy had gone earlier. We’d only seen three men, but who the hell knew how many more there were?

  The white van stood off, backed against one of the units whose door had been propped open. A bed rolled up to the back of the van, like a stretcher, and I could just make out Camo boy’s profile with a distinct red birthmark that covered his entire cheek, pushing it from behind. The bed’s wheels buckled, then folded, allowing it to slide into the back. A body lay on the stretcher, though from my distance, I couldn’t tell if it was male, or female.

  Shots crackled through the air. Rapid fire.

  Single shots volleyed back. One, two. Three, four, five.

  Hands set on each panel of the van’s back door, Camo boy paused, as if to listen.

  That’s when I charged forward.

  Barrel leading the way, I shot twice, and the bastard hid behind the door panel. Still jogging toward him, I aimed for another shot.

  A hum whizzed past me, and I could just make out the business end of his gun directed at my face.

  Ducking alongside the storage unit to the left, I dodged his next bullet that ricocheted off the concrete in front of me. He shot again.

  I fired back two more shots.

  In the pause that followed, I watched his feet move beneath the vehicle, and I charged again, darting across the space that separated us. At the rear of the vehicle, I peeked around the corner and found him crouched alongside the van’s front tire.

  I could’ve laughed my ass off at the sight of him, completely unaware I’d advanced on him. Instead, I stepped around the corner, lining up my next shot.

  The second his arm raised, I popped him twice, blowing a hole in the side of his face, nailing the stain on his cheek, and another through his neck. Blood spilled from his wounds as he scrambled across the dirt, as if that would save him. As if the panic in his eyes and the gape of his mouth would somehow reverse the damage. His gun lay just out of reach, but he had bigger concerns—ones that’d begun to sap the color from his face, turning his skin a pallid white, in spite of all that red.

  Leaving him to flop like a fish out of water, I climbed into the back of the van.

  Shots continued to fire, their intensity prodding my muscles to hurry and identify the girl. Tugging my cell from my back pocket, I flipped on the flashlight and angled the beam onto the body stretched across the bed, writhing and moaning. Bruises stained the pale white skin stretched over thin bones. Each arm lay strapped to the bed by thick leather cuffs, most of the body covered by a white sheet. The narrow face and long lashes told me she was a girl, despite the shaved head. She hardly stilled, as I stretched open her eyelids to find warm amber irises.

  It was her. I’d never forget those eyes or mistake them.

  ‘The fuck did they give her?

  “Please,” she slurred, grinding her heels against the mattress. “Ead … den. Eat… ten.”

  Confusion muddling my head, I leaned in closer. “What’re you trying to say?”

  Instead of answering, she rolled her head back and forth against the mattress, teeth clenched.

  I dragged my gaze back to her bruises, and some irrational rage burned in my muscles. Of course they’d done shit to her—I knew that much. I just hadn’t anticipated the way it would hit me once I found her. A total stranger, yet the sight of her suffering struck me the same as it had when I’d found the video of Livvie, my sister, abused on camera. The urge to kill had my fists flexing at my sides, and I clamped my eyes shut, taking in the gunshots off in the distance.

  A crash tensed my muscles, and I pushed to the front cab of the van, staring through the windshield. Smoke rose up from a black SUV that’d slammed into the brick exterior of the building ahead.

  Tesarik?

  I exited the van and jogged toward it, eyes scanning the damage.

  One of the guards lay half hanging out of the busted out windshield of the SUV. Another male lay off from the others, his face smashed and bloody. Still no sign of the bastard anywhere, though.

  Bullet holes decorated the adjacent steel door of the storage unit. Against the wall, Evander sat crouched, hunched over himself, and the sight of blood had me rushing toward him.

  “’The fuck happened?”

  “Ah, you know … shit.” Evander groaned, and I peeled back his bloodied shirt to see he’d taken two shots in his arm—one that looked like it’d blown right through an exit wound on his triceps. “Another guy came outta nowhere. Must’ve had the SUV hidden in one of the units.”

  “Where’s Rhys and Xavier?”

  “Rhys’s got one of ‘em. Xavier’s checking the units for any girls.”

  “I’m gonna get you to the hospital, man. Sit tight.”

  “I’m all right. You find the girl?”

  “Yeah. I did.”

  After months of searching, I’d finally found her. Hopped up on whatever drugs they’d given her. Hedonic, from the looks of it.

  One of the guards from earlier stumbled along, his eye swollen and bruised, and behind him, Rhys carried his gun over his shoulder, smoking a cigarette. He kicked the asshole forward, and the guard tumbled to his knees before quickly scrambling back to his feet.

&nbs
p; “Kneel, cocksucker.” Rhys stood about six-two, decked out in leathers like a biker. He owned Smoking Guns Tattoo Parlor and happened to be a pretty decent guy, but take a decent guy and tell him about a human trafficking ring happening in his backyard, and you got the look on Rhys’s face. Both disgusted and uncompromising, as he strolled up and flicked his cigarette, before sliding the gun off his shoulder to aim at the guard. “You answer any question incorrectly, and I’m gonna take a moment to study the splatter patterns when your brain hits that brick wall behind you.”

  “Where do I find Tesarik?” I stood over him, watching his eyes for any sign of bullshit.

  Jutting his chin, he sneered back at me. “Choď do pekla.”

  “’The fuck does that mean?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Dust kicked up in a cloud before the sound of gunfire reached my ear, and the little prick jerked in response.

  “I don’t know.” Not even his thick accent got in the way of his words that time.

  Another shot pinged off the cement beside him. “Don’t make me blow a hole through your head, man. It’s fucking gross.” Rhys lowered the gun and smiled. “Almost pissed himself that time, though, didn’t he?”

  “I tell you the truth. Ve don’t know anything. He comes and he goes.”

  “Comes and goes from where?” I asked again, signaling Rhys to hold off on the next shot I could see him lining up in my periphery.

  “I don’t know. He doesn’t tell us. Nobody tells us. Ve just guard the units.”

  “And fuck the girls, right? You beat and fuck the girls, too, right?” At a flash of the girl’s bruised body, anger flared inside my muscles, and I hammered my boot in the bastard’s face. With a crunch of cartilage and a splash of blood, his head kicked back on a grunt. “How’s that feel, asshole?”

  “Please … I don’t—”

  “Shut the fuck up!” As I lurched toward him for another kick, he cowered, raising his trembling hands to block his already-bloodied face. “You’re nothing but a raping piece of shit.” I stuffed my hand down into his jean pockets and fished around for a pill bottle, finding one inside his coat. Little blue bottle with little pink pills inside. “This what you’ve been giving ‘em? Fucking them up on Hedonic? Keeping ‘em locked inside these units until they’re so fucking starved for touch and those pills, they’ll do whatever you tell them. Sound about right?”

  “Ve give pills ven they ask for them. It’s vot we’re told to do.”

  “Well, guess what, fuck-face? You’re under new management.” I stuffed the pill bottle into my coat pocket.

  Xavier strolled up, shaking his head as he shoved his hands into his sagging jeans. “All empty.”

  “Except one,” I clarified and glanced back to the van still parked where I’d left it.

  “What should I do with shithead, here?” Rhys asked, pointing the gun toward the guard again.

  I shoved my gun into my pocket and backed myself toward the van. “Lock him in one of the storage units. If he’s lucky, someone will give a shit and find him. If not, the fucking rats can eat ‘im.”

  The guy scrambled forward, as if to get to his feet, and another shot pinged beside his knee still on the ground.

  Rhys’s boisterous laughter echoed behind me as I jogged on ahead. “We’ll see you back at your place!”

  I raised a hand to acknowledge him but didn’t bother to look back.

  The girl was in for the worst night of her life, and I needed to get her somewhere safe.

  4

  Nicoleta

  “She fucking punched me.” A male’s rough and raspy voice sliced through the blackness, piercing my eardrums. “’The hell she take?”

  I arched, letting the wave of agony move through my muscles. Tiny prickles danced across my skin, like the patter of a million bugs crawling over me, the intensity twisting my stomach with nausea. My eyes felt as if they’d been glued shut, refusing to open at my will, and scratchy cotton dryness clung to the back of my throat.

  “Hedonic, from the looks of it.” A much deeper, richer voice answered the first, and the instinctive tightening of my muscles reminded me I’d grown wary of men with naturally threatening tones like his. “We’ll have to leave her strapped until she settles down a bit.”

  My hands balled into fists at my sides, the pressure against my wrists keeping me from striking out.

  As weak as I’d become, my body still found the strength to mount a fight.

  “Huh. Thought that shit made them all … cuddly and eager. Supposed to have a mild comedown.”

  “Maybe she mistook you for something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “Punching bag?”

  What felt like a barbed wrecking ball slammed into my stomach, and I arced up off the bed again. Every nerve in my body became a receptacle for pleasure, my clothes scratching across them, a torment. But the pain in my gut felt as if someone had shoveled out a hole and not bothered to fill it with anything, leaving me craving. “Ah, God!”

  I needed my pills. I’d never survive the withdrawals that I’d been told were worse than heroin, or the threat of sobriety on the other side. “Please! Vinco, please!”

  “Hey, relax, sweetheart.” It wasn’t Vinco who answered, but the deep, gravelly voice from before. Warm hands smoothed down my face, a path of tingles in their wake. The pressure in my sinuses felt like a watermelon on the verge of exploding. “I’m going to make the pain go away, okay?”

  That voice. Like an angel’s. So soothing, I didn’t trust that I hadn’t fallen into some wicked hallucination of death. It seduced my ears, and when he said, “Open your mouth, baby,” I arched again with the desire for those hands to touch me once more.

  I hated that my body moved on command, doing as he said. Baby, he’d called me. I focused on that, as he set the salty object onto my tongue. A bubbly sensation popped against my taste buds, and warmth flooded my muscles, casting off the chaos in them from a moment ago.

  “You’re giving her drugs? Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose?” the first voice asked.

  “You don’t quit Hedonic cold turkey. It would kill her. Cut the dose in half each time, until it levels out.” Something soft brushed against the base of my nose. “Looks like she’s had a little nose candy, too.”

  “What are you, Doctor Feelgood?”

  “Been through the withdrawals. Shit’s not pretty. Used to be just a vape juice the college yuppies would smoke. Pills made it more convenient to sell. Mixed with other shit that make it hard to kick.”

  “Whyn’t you take her to a hospital? That cut on her leg looks pretty nasty.”

  I’d forgotten about the cut on my thigh, where the metal door of the storage unit had scraped across it in my failed attempt to escape. Vinco had caught me, of course, and the drugs I’d been given afterward had dulled the pain.

  “Don’t trust the hospitals, or the cops right now. Tesarik’s going to come after her, I have no doubt about that. I got someone I know. She can check her out.”

  A moan leaked past my lips as I settled into the cool softness that welcomed me like clouds. I smiled, stretching like a cat sprawled in the sunshine, the heat warming my cheeks.

  “That’s better, yeah?”

  His deep voice rippled down my spine along with the drugs, only adding to the bliss of my high. Eyes still closed, I purred in response, and rubbed my knees together, the smooth cotton fabric between them creating just enough friction to feel something.

  “That’s it, baby. Just relax.” A warm hand drifted down my temple, and I turned toward it, savoring the scent of his skin, delicious citrus with notes of something woodsy and masculine.

  “Look at her. She’s like a little kitten now. Should’ve given her that shit about a half hour ago. Before she popped me in the goddamn nose.”

  “You need a tampon, Rhys? Quit being a pussy. I’ve hit you harder than that just fucking around.”

  “Fucker’s been broke twice. Someone so much as t
aps it, hurts like a bitch.”

  Their voices began to fade in and out as the drugs pulled me deeper and deeper into the blackness. I could feel my body drifting, as if I’d been placed on a raft in the middle of the ocean, sitting atop smooth, billowing waves.

  Nicoleta. The young girl’s voice broke through the clouds, reaching to yank me back, but failed to latch onto my high. What’s your purpose? Remember.

  A hiccup of laughter slipped out as I imagined the girl grasping for strings, while I floated away.

  “I’m gonna bounce outta here, Dax. You need anything, you know where to find me.”

  “Thanks again, Brother. I’ll let you know if anything comes up,” the one who’d called me baby answered back.

  Dax.

  The monster inside my belly retreated, and that name followed me back into the void.

  I awoke in what felt like minutes. My body shuddered as another wave struck my stomach, and against the restraints at my wrists, I curled into myself as much as I could, hoping if I made myself smaller, the pain might shrink, too.

  The hard plank surface beneath me prodded my muscles, and the once cool sheet had become too hot against my skin, like sandpaper scraping across it with a chasing burn. Every sensation had intensified, and the pressure in my belly felt as if it might explode, pop my insides open.

  Branches of ice snaked across my bones and vibrated with the kind of chill that tickled the chest. The kind no amount of blankets could smother. Acids gurgled somewhere deep inside of me, a volcano of sickness ready to erupt, and I turned my head in time to expel it from my body. A burning torrent that fell into a black hole set beside the bed. Through a sleepy haze, I focused on the shine around the rim of it, and realized I was staring down into a trash bin.

  After I’d emptied my stomach, I lay back on the pillow and stared up at the white stucco ceiling above me, muscles tense as the creeping threat of withdrawals settled over me. The words of my mother rattled inside my head, like noise bubbling inside a hot kettle. Prayers she’d whispered while slung over a dirty toilet, or lying passed out in bed on nights she’d gotten so drunk she couldn’t even remember her own damn name.