He nodded and glanced at his phone. “Already trouble with your new man, Tara. Human trafficking slime I’ve been watching just took his kid.”
Hopping up from the bench, I reached for my giant handbag. Fishing out my phone, there were three missed calls, two voicemails, and a gazillion texts from Shawn.
“No! Shit. I need to go.”
“Let’s go then,” he said, picking up his hat and dropping it on his head.
I hadn’t even bothered to tell my jerk of a boss I was leaving. Instead, I climbed into the passenger’s seat of my father’s giant pickup truck. “Just like old times,” he said with a smile.
“I could do without the adrenaline of old times.”
“Ah, Tara, stop living life so careful. You did go from one criminal to another, by the way.”
“They are nothing alike.”
“Good. I’d hate to kill them both.”
He turned up some George Strait song, clearly ending our conversation. My father knew my objection to his plan to kill my ex husband. It was more than a plan, really. It was like a mandate – he’d do it the second my little brother, Tommy, crossed the state line.
Shawn had been wrong about me. Despite the outward appearance funded by Hank’s dirty money, I wasn’t raised anything near wealth or Ivy League colleges. I’d squeaked through UNLV, barely. Not because I wasn’t bright, but because I had no idea what I wanted to do.
The daughter of the police chief and his supposedly con-woman turned respectable citizen wife, we were middle class at best. But, like Hank, Daddy’s ethics were various shades of gray. Although beloved for years as the Robin Hood style hero of Las Vegas Metro, times changed and eventually he was brought down by deep-seated enemies in the county.
But, as he always did, he landed on his feet. A legend in law enforcement, the much mellower suburb of Phoenix, Scottsdale, was more than happy to have John Drake take the helm.
When things went south in Vegas, Hank was a trusted friend and supposedly made sure my father didn’t face charges. Since then, we’ve all questioned that. Especially when Hank arrested my brother Tommy for drug dealing on a much larger scale than he was mentally capable of.
“Now isn’t the time,” he said, interrupting my thoughts. “But later we need to talk about your mother’s accident. Some new info has emerged.”
He pointed to the trailer park. “Which one?”
“The one with the blue Volvo over there.”
Daddy laughed. “I didn’t take MacKenzie for a Volvo driver.”
“He sold his bike for a child-safe car,” I said absently, reaching for the door handle.
Inside, he was pacing the floor. One glance at his face and I nearly lost it. Shawn was bloody, bruised, and frantic.
Mack
I paced back and forth across my worn-out carpet. Think, think, think!
That morning, I’d made a massive mistake – an error in judgment that might have cost me everything. Somehow, I’d let my guard down.
Hours earlier, my mother arrived at my door as planned, holding two cups of Starbucks.
“Need money, Joan?” She always needed money, and her favors were never free.
“So gruff,” she said. “I’m good cash-wise, Mack.”
Yes, even my mother called me Mack and I think preferred it when I called her Joan. Such a warm family I had.
I reached for the coffee, because it was coffee. “So you’ve emerged from your coven and you’re back in Vegas and our lives why?”
“Michael is a nice man I met up in Reno.”
“Recent widower?”
“Of course,” she said with a smile. “He’s a podiatrist over on the base.”
“Ninety?”
“Don’t be silly. I’m not doing that anymore.”
I stared at her until she finally shrugged. “He’s near retirement, yes, but I love him.”
“Love?”
“People change. Look at you.”
“We’ll see. Anyway, thanks for doing this. I wrote out the instructions because I’m kind of in a hurry.”
She reached to hug me, but I wasn’t quite there yet so I awkwardly brushed by her.
“You sure you’ve got this?”
My mother could be very good or very bad. Today, it seemed like she was on the good side. That, or having Grace around was softening me.
“Of course I do.” She smiled warmly, and Grace seemed content as they sat down in the rocking chair I’d just ordered the day prior.
“She likes the bouncy thing, keep her inside, she can only sleep on her back with no blankets, and um, what else… Oh, milk in the fridge, heat it up in that warmer thing on the counter not the microwave.”
My mother shot me a wink. “I’ve had babies, Mack.”
“I raised your babies, Joan, while you were out drinking, gambling, and slutting at Sam’s Town every night. Don’t fuck this up.”
Of course, she fucked it up.
The boxing gym I trained at was five minutes away. I rolled in late and not dressed, but Oliver was in a good mood. “Hey, Mack, heard you a daddy now and shit!”
Relieved he wasn’t pissed, I pulled out my phone. “Yeah, look.”
Like my mother, Oliver was either very good or very bad. Today his mood was good, which meant he was getting along with his lady.
“She’s gorgeous, man! She’s gonna be a heartbreaker, though.”
“Sorry I’m late. You want an hour still? I just need to hit my locker and change.”
“Sure, let’s spar, Bro. I got that thing with Dion Alvarez in a few weeks, ya know.”
Oliver Martinez was one of the best young MMA fighters coming up through the ranks, and whenever he was in town he paid me to train with him. I didn’t do the competitive shit, but I was one of the best sparring partners in town.
Afterward, bloody and bruised, he gave me a fist pump. “Mack, though, seriously if you ever want to move to San Fran, I could use you on staff.”
“Leave Vegas?” It’s exactly what I needed to do, and yet the idea was terrifying. Unlike ninety-percent of the city, I was born there and rarely left. And to ask Tara to go with me would be a massive display of commitment.
“Get away from Saints and Sinners, Mack. For the sake of your daughter, make that break bigger.”
“Right now I’m just at day by day, Oliver. But I’d consider it after everything settles out with custody and all.”
“Do that, and fast.” He turned to leave, wrapped in three bodyguards as he headed toward his limo waiting at the door.
My phone buzzed before I was even out of the shower. “Yeah, what’s going on?”
All I could hear was sobbing.
“Ma? What’s up?” Panic set in as I threw on a towel and rushed to get dressed.
“Some guys came to the door with a package. They…” More sobs.
“They what?” I screamed.
“They took the baby. Your fucking pussy of a dog did nothing, and they—”
I hung up on her and rushed home, my entire focus on not losing my shit completely so I could get my daughter back.
“Why the fuck did you open the door?” I was frantic.
“It was just a routine delivery,” she sobbed.
I looked out the window at Jake’s. He should have seen something.
“Why aren’t you bloody? You didn’t fight?”
“What was I supposed to do?”
“You were supposed to do anything and everything to not let them take my kid. Go, and don’t tell anyone.”
After kicking Joan out, almost literally, I called Tara. And then, I called Mo and my best contact in the department, Detective Fritz Kennedy.
“Do I call 911?” I’d asked Fritz. “Issue an Amber Alert? I’m terrified they’ll never let me keep her if that happens, but what if I don’t?”
“Uh, let me work it from here, okay? I’ll gather the boys. The Evil One is out of town this week at some DEA conference and you’d probably rather him not hear about this.
”
“Fact. But hurry.”
Tara and the silver-haired cowboy arrived before the others. “You got here fast,” I said, pacing the floor.
“Dad and I were at the department and traffic was good. Who took her? What happened?”
“I’m gonna kill whatever motherfucker has my kid.”
“Of course you are,” the cowboy said.
“Shawn, this is my father, John.”
“I know your father, Tara. I have for years.” Fuck, I thought. She isn’t just a Drake, she’s one of the Drakes.
“Bygones?” Her father extended his right hand to me. “And I’ll help you with this current issue.”
Tara stared at us in open-mouthed shock as I let his hand hang in the air. He wasn’t the worst cop I’d ever dealt with, but he hadn’t exactly made my life any easier over the years.
“You need all the help you can get right now, son.”
“Don’t ever fucking call me son again,” I snapped. But I shook his hand, for her, and for Grace. Chief John Drake was still plenty powerful, even in exile.
“Okay then Mack, where’s your daughter?”
“I’m pretty sure it was the Russians who are pimping her mother out. They’ve made some threats that I ignored. The main guy is Druski or something.”
“Drugov?”
I nodded. “Yeah, that’s him.”
“What do they want?” He pulled off his hat and walked around my tiny trailer as if looking for evidence. I followed him nervously.
“Cash, I hope.”
“Or a beautiful white baby to sell. They’re sex traffickers. Grace is worth far more to them than some dime-a-dozen street whore mother. And now, they feel justified to take her.”
I felt the blood drain from me as I collapsed into a chair.
“Let me make some calls,” he said as he walked outside.
Tara sat next to me, forcing her hand into mine. “If you didn’t see them, who beat you up?”
“No one.” I was in no mood for chit-chat.
“Shawn, your face?”
“Oh, that.” I realized my nose was dripping blood again. “Oliver got some good shots in. Fuck, Tara, what if they hurt her?” I was about to lose my mind.
“She’s more valuable to them alive and healthy. Dad seems to know this organization.”
“Why is he in town? He has to know there are at least twenty hits out on him.”
“He came to see my brother, Tommy. Hank is still out of town, so he paid off the guards to get a visit.”
“I can’t believe you’re John Drake’s daughter. Fuck my life.”
Drake burst back in, the bright light of the Vegas afternoon sun blinding us. “Okay, yeah, they’ve got her. Who else knows about this?”
“Saints and Sinners and my buddy at Metro, Fritz Kennedy.”
“Kennedy is a decent guy. Can you call him and get them to watch departures at McCarran?”
“You think they’d try taking her through the regular airport?”
“Yeah, babies are easy to pass. Private jets are pricey, plus the customs entanglements.”
“Then why aren’t we headed there?”
“Because I know where Drugov is. Have a few Saints and Sinners meet us up north by the Cannery. We’ll give them the address on the way.”
“I’m going with you.” Tara stood up and grabbed her massive purse.
“No, we need you at the airport. If Grace does show, Fritz isn’t going to recognize her. Besides, you have the authority to quietly take her.”
She tried to argue, but knew I was right. “Please be careful, both of you. Neither of you can afford legal entanglements, and if anything happened to the two men I …”
Thank God she paused right before the word. I leaned in and kissed her, giving zero fucks that her father was watching. “You know this can’t go unpunished. Get our girl, and I’ll take care of your elderly dear ol’ dad here.”
“Fuck you, MacKenzie,” the gruff voice said from behind us.
After Tara left, I went to the safe hidden under my bed and armed up. “You don’t see this,” I said behind me to John.
“Not a damn thing do I see, gangster. Let’s go get bloody.”
In the dim light of the warehouse, I had Drugov isolated. The rest had been taken down, but this vengeance was mine. He’d already given up that Grace was indeed at the airport.
He lay on the dirty floor beneath me, tied with razor wire and covered in his own filth.
“Who went into my home?”
“No one!”
I knew he was lying, so I made a nice painful cut along his forearm.
When he finished howling like a little bitch he said, “One of my guys! Sergei I think his name is.”
“Did my mother fight?”
“He said she ran.”
Rage flowed through my veins. I wanted to kill everyone at that second.
“There was blood in my kitchen. Where did that come from?”
“I don’t know!”
Another slash on the other arm. More howling, and then came the truth. “Stupid old lady ran in, tried to fight them and take the baby. They killed her and tossed her in a dumpster out back.”
The tip of my knife hovered above his wrist. “Dark haired guy? Was he there?”
I pushed the knife in a little further until the blood flowed and he screamed more truth. “In his shitty trailer. He ran out with a gun so they shot him before he could get out of the door. That’s when the old lady came running over.”
“You killed my friends, mother fucker.”
“Please don’t kill me, I can help you get your daughter back. If I’m gone, they’ll take her to Syria and you’ll never see her again.”
Just then John Drake poked his head in the door. “They’ve got her, Mack, she’s safe.”
And then, it was over. Drugov turned white like he’d seen death. Appropriate, because he was about to.
“I’m gonna make one cut for everyone you hurt today.”
He shook underneath me, terrified like the coward that he was. “It was not me, it was the whore.”
“Call the mother of my child that one more time and I’ll start with your limp, useless dick. The one that just pissed all over yourself in fear.”
“Please let me go. I’ll move on, somewhere else.”
“And hurt more little girls, enslave more women?”
There was no answer from the filth that he was.
“So first, you harmed Melissa. Her fucking name is Melissa – the woman you discarded as a useless whore. She had hopes, dreams, and a family. You pumped her full of shit and turned her out into the street – that was her name. Say it.”
“Melissa.” His tone was gurgled, pathetic.
With an easy slice, I castrated him as he howled.
“And then, my neighbor Ethel Godwin. She was a friend of my grandmother’s. You killed her for no fucking reason. Say her name.”
“Ethel,” he howled as the blood covered the concrete floor.
Another slice removed the rest of the remnants of his maleness.
“More? Or are you ready to pay for daring to harm my daughter?”
“I did not…I-I-I…”
“Where is the rest of your human shipment?”
“All already transported!” he screamed, his voice so high I was sure the coyotes heard him.
“Unfortunate,” I said, my knife plowing into his ribs.
I left his carcass on the floor and walked out to the rest of the carnage.
“Grace? Tara?”
Drake shifted from one cowboy boot to the other. “Done. Tara has her and they’re both fine.”
I breathed for what seemed like the first time since she’d been taken.
Seventeen
A Sam’s Town Gangster Wandering Around Guys With Bats In Summerlin
Tara
“She’s safe, Shawn. And Dad confirmed that Hank had nothing to do with any of it. You have to stop blaming yourself.”
> “Never,” he said. Nothing had been the same since Grace had been kidnapped three days prior.
“I heard Jake’s doing well. Cassidy Lane was next door getting some clothes for him. I must admit I was a bit star struck – just last week Maddie and I went to see her newest romcom. We should go see him before he’s released. He’s over at Sunrise.”
“See who?”
“Come on, Shawn, snap out of this funk. It’s not productive. Let’s go visit Jake and then maybe go out.”
“Yeah, well, Grace is never leaving my side again.”
“We’ll take her.”
He took a deep breath and finally reached for my hand. “I just feel so fucking responsible for all of it. Holy shit, look what they did to Ethel.”
“You paid for her cremation. What else can you really do to atone?”
“No such thing,” he said.
“I didn’t tell you this because I didn’t know how you’d take it, but weeks ago Ethel approached me as I was leaving. She told me that she commanded her cancer not to progress until she’d served her purpose.”
He looked at me, perplexed. “What the hell?”
“Yeah, well, it’s weirder than that. Ethel then said she would sacrifice for ‘the precious baby’ of June’s.”
“Holy fuck.”
“Does it makes sense to you? Who is June?”
“My grandmother.” He looked up toward the ceiling. “Protecting me from the grave.”
“Listen, Shawn, Jake’s fine, Ethel was tough but they paid for that. Can we please get back to normal?”
“I don’t even know what normal is, Tara.”
“Life, us. Stuff like going out on a date.”
“What do people do on dates?”
“Let’s take Grace and go out to dinner. Maybe go to an Aviators game at the new ballpark.”
“Baseball in Summerlin,” he said with a chuckle. “A Sam’s Town gangster wandering around guys with bats in Summerlin.”
And then, thank god, the tension broke and we laughed for the first time in what seemed like forever.
Redemption Page 11