Caught in the Surf

by Mark Stone

  “That was different,” Coin said. “We didn’t have a choice.”

  “All of it was a choice,” Natasha said. “Do you really think I don’t know what went on with him?” She scoffed loudly. “He owed you money, right? My guess is he owed you a lot of money. A man like that is oftentimes all brawn and no brain. Let me guess. Did you run the tables on him playing pool? How much did he owe you? How scared did you make him to get him to agree to allow you to take the woman he loved and then take the fall for it?”

  “Money is just money,” Coin answered as I listened to everything that had happened laid out in front of me. “I told him I’d kill her anyway. He has a daughter up in Jacksonville. Told him I’d drive there and kill him too.” Coin cleared his throat. “Didn’t seem to matter. Even at the outset, he was playing us. Otherwise, why would he get that out of town lawman to drive him home the minute he left? He wanted to clear his own name. He wanted to make sure the whole world knew he didn’t have anything to do with Tanya’s disappearance.”

  “And that’s why you killed him?” Natasha asked.

  “I worked so hard on that. I got him to go to that woman, got him to pretend to freak out at her.” He stopped for a beat. “I should have known he wasn’t going to go along with it. He took a knife in there, took a knife to the goddamned chief of police. You know why he did that? He knew it was on for later than night, and he wanted to get himself arrested. He wanted to skirt his responsibility even then. That’s how I knew he’d have to die. He could never be trustworthy. In a day, in a week, in a year; he’d have cracked. Sure, he’d have stayed strong for the life of his daughter at first, but I know men like him. They’re weak. When the chips are down, they’re selfish. A little while in prison, and he’d have given it all up. So I took away that opportunity. Lucky for me, I had a guard on the inside who owed me money too.” He chuckled. “I take care of business, Ms. Rayne.”

  “Is that what you think?” she asked. “Because, from where I’m sitting, you’re in a pickle.”

  “Anchor!” Cross shouted in a whisper.

  “Almost,” he answered, still working on the lock.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Coin asked.

  “You weren’t supposed to take this woman, were you?” Natasha asked. “I’ve studied what’s been going on here. The women you’ve taken up to this point, they were all under the radar. They were nobodies. You took it upon yourself to do this, didn’t you?” Natasha laughed herself. “What made you think this was a good idea anyway? What made you think kidnapping the daughter of the damned police chief would be anything more than the worst possible decision you could make?” She laughed again. “Did you think your boss would think of it as a feather in his cap? Did you think he’d look at what you did and be impressed that you were able to snatch up such a high profile woman and pin it on someone else?”

  “I thought—”

  “You were wrong,” she cut him off. “Whatever cache she might bring is completely outshined by the sheer amount of risk that goes along with this. Any criminal mastermind with a working brainstem would know that. Your boss certainly does, and I doubt he’s willing to throw his lot in with someone who obviously doesn’t. So, you see, even if everything goes to plan, you’re still screwed.” She sighed loudly. “I wonder if your boss will be more merciful to your indiscretions than you were to Mikey’s.”

  “Shut your filthy mouth!” Coin said.

  “I can,” Natasha said. “I probably should. It doesn’t matter to me. I’m getting my money anyway, just as soon as—”

  A phone rang.

  “As soon as that happens,” Natasha said.

  “Anchor!” Cross said, panic rising in her voice.

  “I got it!” he said, looking up and holding the door slightly ajar.

  “We can’t wait for backup anymore,” Cross said, looking over at me with wide eyes.

  “I know that,” I said, pulling away from the wall, grabbing my gun, and cocking it. “Let’s go to work.”

  Chapter 27

  I rushed out through the door, hoping there might have been a way to preserve our status as being an unknown factor in this horrible deal. As Cross and Anchor followed me, I soon found out that would absolutely not be the case.

  The door creaked loudly, almost screaming as I opened and, when I looked out, I saw the room the three of us was running into was an open studio. Filled with what looked to be dusty oil barrels lining the walls and scattered throughout the area, the policeman in me saw a lot of cover to be had here.

  It looked like I was going to need it because, no sooner had the three of us cleared the noisy doorway, that everyone involved turned to see us.

  My eyes moved back and forth, moving like an old fashioned typewriter as I took in exactly what we were up against. The Scorpions, five in number including Coin- their bandanna wearing leader- stood on one side of the room. All of them, save for Coin himself, had guns in their hands. Something in me told me Coin was very likely armed too, though perhaps he fancied himself too much of a upper management type to actually show that he was packing in from of the competition.

  On the other side of the room, Natasha stood there like a silver-haired phantom. Her long, lithe body was contorted in that impossibly uncomfortable (but undeniably sexy) stance I had only ever seen her take. She had a gun in her hand too, though unlike the Scorpions weapons- which were pointed at her- Natasha’s gun was aimed straight for Tanya Harris’s head.

  I looked down at the woman, who crouched on the floor of the building with her back to Natasha. She had been looking at the Scorpions until the three of us loudly made the scene. Now that she was turned to us though, I could see the exhausted, weathered nature of her face. Her eyes, sunken in and glassy, were rimmed in red and half closed. Her skin looked pale and her hair was unbrushed and in clumps. She was a far cry away from the put together woman I saw back in Daisy’s beach house the day all of this started.

  “What the hell?!” I heard Coin shout. He had one ear to the phone, obviously speaking to his boss, who’d just called to give the go ahead in officially buying Tanya.

  Bile rose in my throat at the thought of it. These people were heartless. No. More than that. They were soulless. Anyone who could even fathom doing something like this to another human being, let alone an innocent woman, was less than a person. All of this needed to be stopped. The three of us just had to hope that we were enough to do it.

  “Freeze!” I shouted, pointing my gun at the group. Well, at part of the group. They were large in number and, in Natasha’s case, in a different part of the room. I had to hope that my new partners knew enough to cover where I hadn’t.

  “She set us up!” Coin screamed into the phone. “The bitch set us up! It’s the police!”

  “The hell I did!” Natasha answered, looking over, her eyes catching mine. “I had nothing to do with this!”

  “It’s over!” Cross said loudly. “We’ve got this building surrounded!” It was a lie, of course. As far as we knew, the backup hadn’t arrived yet. Still, as far as lies went, it was a good one. And hopefully, it would work.

  “Then we’ll have to blast our way through them,” Coin said. Motioning back to the rest of the Scorpions, he shouted loudly. “The boss says this ends here. Everybody in this place dies except for Tanya.” He looked down. “She’s coming with us.”

  “Dammit,” I muttered.

  I knew what was coming. We had three guns. They had five. We were bound by both common sense and the laws by which we were governed. These bastards had no sense (common or otherwise) and they obviously couldn’t have cared less about the law. They were going to try to take us out. We just had to be quick enough to get around them.

  “Get cover!” I screamed. Before I even had a chance to look and see if Cross and Anchor were taking my advice, I leapt behind a nearby barrel. It was a good thing I did too. The words barely escaped my lips when an explosion of gunfire fanned toward us.

  I hit hard against the
concrete floor, the barrels I was hiding behind shuddering as gunfire slammed into them.

  I took a deep breath, looking over at Cross and then at Anchor. They weren’t together, but they closer to one another than either one was to me. They had both managed to take cover too and, from the looks of them, neither was hurt. That was the smallest of blessings in what was an avalanche of bad news. The Scorpions were about to take Tanya to parts unknown. They were going to kill Cross, Anchor, and myself. They were theoretically going to kill Natasha too though, at this point, I really couldn’t have cared less about that.

  “You idiot!” I heard a familiar voice hiss from beside me.

  Looking over,” I saw Natasha. She was knelt down beside me, her alluring eyes and her silver hair close enough to touch. There was blood on her, splashed across her face and in her hair.

  “You’re hurt,” I said instinctively. I wasn’t sure why I said that. I didn’t care what happened to her. She was a horrible person. She was a monster, the epitome of what it meant to be a nightmare. So, why did I care if she was bleeding.

  “It’s not my blood,” she answered, anger clear in her voice. “I told you to stay away from here! I told you not to get involved!”

  “Well, I am involved!” I shot back as bullets rang across the barrels. “That’s what happens. You try to buy and sell a person, and the cops get involved.” I huffed loudly. “If that girl dies because of this, I’m going to make sure you never see the outside of a jail cell again!”

  “You still have no idea what’s going on,” Natasha roared. She reached for her ear or, more aptly, for a communication piece inside her ear. “Things are sideways. Falcon is in limbo. I’m initiating smoke protocol.”

  “What the hell is that?” I asked, my heart jumping. “Who are you talking to?”

  She leaned closer. “That, Stormy, is classified.” She reached into her pocket, pulling something out of it. “Stay clear. I’ll take care of this.”

  I looked down at the thing in her hand. It was bomb. No. It was a smoke bomb.

  “Smoke protocol,” I muttered.

  “Damned right,” she said. She tossed the thing into the crowd and, as it sailed through the air, a stream of thick, gray smog filled the room.

  “Nat,” I stammered. “What are you—”

  I reached for her, but she was gone.

  Turning back to Cross and Anchor, who I could barely see through the quickly billowing smoke, I saw them run out into the fray.

  The bullets had stopped flying. Presumably, the Scorpions were too afraid that they would have shot each other to continue. That was a smart move. Natasha did good...for whatever reason.

  I ran out into the group as well, the smoke obscuring my view almost completely. Peering through as best I could, I saw blood on the floor and fists in the air.

  I slammed hard into one of the men, an obvious Scorpion. He fell to the ground and I kicked at a part of his body I could only assume (and hope) was his face. I spun quickly, turning back to whoever had been beside him. It was another Scorpion. He had a gun trained on me. Apparently, I was close enough for him to feel comfortable in killing me where I stood.

  I pulled up my gun too but, before I could, an agile foot rocked the man’s face. He fell backward, dropping his gun.

  Turning, I saw the person responsible for saving my life was none other than Tanya. She stood there, her body stretched out in some sort of martial pose.

  “Where is Natasha?” she asked me. “Is she okay?”

  “Is she okay?” I repeated, stunned at the idea that this woman would be concerned about the well-being of someone who was about to sell her.

  A fist slammed against Tanya’s hand. I watched blood, and maybe a tooth, spray from her mouth and she crumpled to the side.

  I ran toward the man responsible, seeing it was Coin himself.

  “You son of a bitch!” I yelled.

  “Whatever,” Coin said, grinning.

  I wasn’t sure why he was laughing but, as something hard hit the side of my head, it all became clear.

  There had been someone behind me, and he was about to take me out.

  I fell against the floor, my head spinning dizzily. I scrambled, trying to get to my feet.

  “Take her! Leave the rest. We don’t have time for this, not with sirens in the air.” Coin said.

  I didn’t hear the sirens, though that might have been a result of the ringing in my ears.

  I tried to stand again, but a foot to the face knocked me back down.

  I choked on the smoke, my lungs filling with it, my eyes heavy. Sleep took me, but it only held me for a second.

  *

  “I said get on the ground! Stop that!” Cross yelled, pulling me back to consciousness.

  I jutted upward, looking at the only slightly clearer room. Cross held a gun on Natasha and Anchor was right beside her.

  Natasha, for her part, was on her hands and knees scouring the ground.

  “Dammit!” she yelled, grabbing something. “I told you!” she roared, standing and turning her attention to me. “I told you that, if you didn’t stay out of the way, you’d ruin all of this, and that’s what you did!”

  “You- you tried to sell a wo—”

  “I did no such thing!” she shot back. “I’m FBI, you idiot! I’m a goddamned spy, and so is Tanya! We were working to take down the human trafficking ring that the Scorpions are involved in. Tanya was going to pretend to be taken by them, and we were going to track her to their base. We’d have had the entire organization dead to rights, and now, because of you, we have nothing.”

  “You’re lying!” Cross said in response.

  “I couldn’t care less what you think,” Natasha said. “The only thing that mattered to me was completing the mission, was tracking Tanya.” She shook her head and held a bloodied tooth toward me. Looking at it, I saw there was something on the tooth, something blinking. “And now, because of what you did, I can’t even track her. Tanya is gone again, and this time, it’s for real.”

  Chapter 28

  I stared at Natasha from across a table in the interrogation room in the Vero Beach Police Department. I had been in this room so many times over the last few days, the last of which was with Natasha herself. This was different though. She was shackled to the table, cuffs on her hands and around her ankles. She wouldn’t get the better of us this time.

  If that was even what she wanted.

  I kept looking at the woman, a million thoughts running through my mind, none of them making any sense, none of them working along with another. If what Natasha said was true, then both she and Tanya worked for the FBI. They were working toward bringing down a human trafficking syndicate that had (under the noses of so many) taken root in Vero Beach.

  I had to admit, it did make sense- albeit in a completely insane fashion. It would explain why Tanya and Natasha were seen together on the pier. It would explain why Tanya was so concerned about Natasha’s wellbeing when everything went down.

  Even with that though, could I really trust Natasha? She was a criminal. She was a thief, a liar, and a con woman. The last time I put any trust into that woman, it led to the lowest point in my entire life. I didn’t know what to think. I just needed someone to tell me.

  “Would you like to ask me a question? Because you look like you want to ask me a question?” Natasha asked, giving me the vaguest of looks. I had always had a hard time when it came to telling what this woman was thinking. Right now though, she made about as much sense as a damned impressionist painting.

  “I want to ask you a million questions conservatively,” I answered flatly. “But I wouldn’t know whether or not to believe any of the answers you’d give me. So, if it’s all the same, how about you shut the hell up until I get some confirmation on things?”

  She glared at me, blinking a few times quickly. “Not everything was a lie, Stormy,” she said.

  “I said shut your mouth,” I repeated, swallowing hard. My hands were wound together ti
ghtly, mostly because- if they hadn’t been- they’d have probably jittered off my damned body. I was as nervous as lobster in a tank near dinnertime. I needed to do something. I had to do something. The only thing keeping me in this chair right now was the knowledge that Cross and Anchor (along with many of Vero Beach’s finest) were out scouring the city for Tanya right now.

  The door swung open. I turned to find Marcus walking in, tired eyes fixed on Natasha.

  “Take the cuffs off,” he said quietly.

  I balked, my entire body jerking in shock. “You’re not serious,” I murmured.

  Marcus didn’t even bother looking to me when he answered. “I just got off the phone. Her story checks out. So, like I said, take the cuffs off Agent Rayne.”

  Agent Rayne. The words sounded strange rattling around my eardrums. They sounded wrong. They weren’t wrong though. Marcus had just verified it. Natasha Rayne was with the damned FBI. It’s like I was living in a dream.

  “Storm!” Marcus shouted when he saw I was just sitting there, slack jawed like some thunderstruck yokel.

  “Right,” I said. “Sorry.”

  I moved toward the woman, freeing the woman from her shackles. As I moved around her, close enough to catch the scent of the woman I was once going to marry, she gave me a look. I did my best not to return it, but I was so shocked, so shaken. All I could do was stare.

  “Thank you, Stormy,” Natasha said, rubbing her wrists as the cuffs fell to the table.

  “My daughter,” Marcus said, his voice cracking.

  “I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure she comes back to you,” Natasha said.

  “She’s in the FBI?” he asked, his eyes wide and glassy. “My baby girl is in the FBI? That’s what you’re telling me?”

  “A special government sponsored offshoot of the FBI, but yes,” Natasha said. “She was a new recruit, but yes.” The woman stood. “As you know, Chief Harris, your daughter is an extremely special person. She was an expert level surfer, she has a genius level IQ, and you should see her work her way through a firewall.” She nodded. “Not to mention her right hook.”