by JA Huss
Unfortunately, all the t-shirts I had got burned up with Chocolate Thunder, and the only other stuff I have in the sack is, like, rope, a couple of MREs, a flashlight—you know, survival shit. I had some gauze in the car, but I forgot to pull it out and now it’s burned up too. And then I realize… I do have the perfect thing to stuff in his ugly maw.
I pull Maddie’s panties out of my pocket, grab up the duct tape and get right in Logan’s face again. “Honestly, man, you don’t even deserve the privilege of having Maddie’s dried pussy juice in your mouth, but since it’s Christmas and all…”
Once Maddie’s panties are safely taped up inside Logan’s cake-hole and I’m sure that the gagging and snuffling he’s doing is just him being a baby and not him actually choking to death (although I could give a shit really, but Ricky’s being a bitch about it), I turn to Ricky and say, “I’ll fuck you up later. Where is she?”
“She’s likely with Carlos. And you need to calm the fuck down. Jesus. You two are exactly alike.”
“Again, I’ll take that as a compliment. And calm the fuck down? Dude, I know that you set Maddie up!”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’ve been using her this whole time?”
“I’ve… what?” Ricky asks. Either genuinely confused or genuinely faking it.
“What dick-sniffer said!” I point at Logan, in case there was any ambiguity about who “dick-sniffer” is. “You fuckers were selling drones and shit and you roped her in?”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Doesn’t it?” (Does it? Shit. Now he’s got me confused.)
“Brother,” Ricky says, which again ruffles my feathers, but whatever, “yeah, we were trying to get intel from setting up the drone op, but the fact that Maddie happened to be drone shopping while we were running it is just bad luck.”
“She was working for Castillo when she stumbled in there.”
“I know, man. But that’s just the way it goes. That wasn’t us.”
“She started working at Pete’s because she saw a flyer IN THE FUCKING DRONE PLACE.”
“Again, man. I know. Probably some intel about Carlos’s history with Pete. That’s a lead we were following. But, also again, just a coincidence.”
“So when the fuck did you find out about her?”
“First time I ever heard about Maddie Clayton was the night you and I met. That was the first time I got sent on a run with him.” He lifts his chin to Logan. “That was when I knew I had finally earned some fuckin’ trust in the organization. But honestly? Now that I’ve met you and Maddie? I wish it had taken me a little longer. Because then I might still be able to do my job instead of having the last year and a half of work blown the fuck up.”
Yeah. Well. That’s what I do. I make shit explode. Ironically.
I shake my head a little. “No. No. There’s no way that—”
“That all this shit that’s happening is just fucked-up, bad luck?” He takes a deep breath. Lets it out. “I know. But it is. I dunno what to tell you, man. Not everything always happens for a reason. Sometimes things just… happen.”
I don’t know how many times and in how many different ways the universe is going to conspire to teach me the same damn lesson. But it sure keeps fucking trying.
“C’mon, man,” he says after a beat. “Let’s go get Maddie.”
I snap out of my brief stupor, nod, and head for the door. He stops me. “Hold up.” He grabs me and pulls me to his side. “It needs to look like I’m bringing you to Carlos or we won’t make it five feet.”
I nod and let him take me by the arm. And then it occurs to me to say, “Hey.” He looks at me. “I’m sorry I blew your cover.”
He laughs a little and shakes his head. “You didn’t. I did. I had to. I knew you’d let Logan fucking beat you to death before you’d say anything.”
“Yeah, well. What can I tell ya? I’m kinda stupid.”
He opens the door and pushes me out into the hall as he laughs and says, “Yeah. I know… Everybody says so.”
Chapter Twenty-Four - Maddie
I’m shaking. Physically. I don’t know if it’s anger or terror, but it’s probably both. Carlos is touching my chin, moving my mouth up and down.
“Yes, that’s right. Chew. Chew every bite. Don’t want you to choke.”
Fucking sadist.
And all of the sudden I’m thinking about his daughter. Where is she? Why isn’t she here? Why wasn’t she at his other house? It’s Christmas. And I realize that when I asked him if he killed her because of the way she betrayed his trust, he never answered me. And although it’s almost unthinkable, I am. Thinking it.
Oh, Jesus Christ.
“Madison, Madison, Madison,” he says, now moving back to the table. “What are we going to do?” I don’t respond. “I mean, on the one hand, I do like you. I like you very, very much. I appreciated that you were—I thought—truthful with me. You did not throw yourself into my arms and profess to love me. You made it… what’s the word? Plausible. Yes. It was plausible. I believed that you were here because you wanted a chance to escape your life. That terrible life of yours.” He stands by the champagne glass that may or may not have a dissolved knockout drug in it. “Your brother, dead. Your family, gone. Your every attempt at a success, nothing but failure. A twenty-five-year-old girl taking off her clothes for money and still not able to get by. It seemed that no matter what you tried, you could not help yourself. So it made sense to me that you would want someone strong who could take care of you.”
He picks up the flute. Oh, shit. Is he going to drink it? Is the pill dissolved in it? Will it knock him out? Shit. I guess I’ll find out soon.
“But the truth is, you were just allowing yourself to be used as a pawn in another way. Honestly, that would not have bothered me. If I had found out that you had been manipulated by the DEA, that would not surprise me. Despite your show of strength, you are weak. And they are powerful. It is not your fault. You are a woman. Women are simply weaker than men. And it is so easy to bend a weak woman’s will. So if it was only that you had been cooperating with the DEA all this time—”
“But I wasn—”
“SHUT! UP!” When someone who is generally quiet screams… it’s not nice. In this brief time with him, it’s easy to see how he became as powerful as he is. He’s unpredictable. And if unpredictability doesn’t get you killed, it makes you strong. Which is why I’m not even attempting to correct him with all the “weak woman” shit. Because he should think that as much as he likes.
I am confused about the DEA thing, however. He obviously doesn’t know what he thinks he knows or Ricky would be dead right now. And then I realize… I don’t know that he’s not. I don’t know that Tyler’s not either. And I have no idea what’s going to happen next, but I know for sure that someone in this room is going to die tonight. And I plan to do everything in my power to see to it that it’s not me.
“But it is not just that you were lying to me.” He stands in front of me with the glass of champagne. “It’s that you… fucked… someone else. As you said. Here. At my home. Under my nose, while I waited for you to come to me. I will be honest with you…” He pokes me in the forehead with his index finger to punctuate each word of the following. “That. Does. Not. Sit. Well.” He grabs my face and squeezes my cheeks. Again. “Not well at all.” And then he lifts the glass of champagne…
And he drinks it.
Jesus Christ.
Well, I’m going to go ahead and assume the pill dissolved and didn’t magically rescue itself from the champagne glass. We’ll find out, I suppose.
He throws the empty champagne flute onto the floor and it smashes at my feet. I don’t jump. “So! What are we to do now?” he asks, walking away, turning back to look at me when I don’t immediately answer.
“About what?”
“About you and me. The truth is that we have your boyfriend.” He says it pointedly. “The drone pilot. He is the one w
e want the information from, so I don’t really need you, do I?” I say nothing. “I mean… I could see what it is you might be able to tell me, but… Truthfully, knowing you as I do, I would have to torture you to get anything out of you. And I don’t want to do that…” He comes back toward me, bends down and lifts my dress, drawing his hand up my leg and along my thigh as he does. And again, I’m still not wearing fucking underwear.
He stands and lands his cheek against mine, putting his mouth by my ear. The base of his palm is resting against the edge of my pussy.
“Everything I have said to you, I have meant. I have not felt about a woman the way I feel about you in thirty-five years. If we can get the information we need from your Tyler, then it is possible that you and I can discuss options that allow you to live. Otherwise, I’m afraid that, even though I don’t want to hurt you, you may force me to. Isn’t it funny? You and I are always having to negotiate new terms when our original contracts are broken.”
And he wraps his mouth around my earlobe as his fingers clumsily fumble between my legs. Shit. I close my eyes and stiffen up my entire body as tautly as I can in preparation for engaging in the deadly martial art known as being Maddie Clayton.
And then…
Wham!
Carlos’s body hits the floor.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
It worked. Thank you, Ricky double-oh-seven! Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. OK. OK. Now think. Think. I can’t just waltz out of here. I had one shot to do that and they found me and brought me back. No doubt this whole fucking mini-city is going to be on the lookout for me. Think. What to do? What to do?
On the other side of the room is a fireplace. It’s all lit up and roaring. All holiday festive. And as I stare into the fire, I think of Pete. And I think of firefighter Jeff.
And I think of Scotty.
And I also think this may be my one shot to get out of here.
I snap into action, pulling the tablecloth off the table and letting all the dishes go crashing to the floor. Shit. I should be more careful. But this place is so massive, presumably nobody can hear me. Or maybe they’ll just think it’s reindeer or something.
Grabbing up the cloth, I dip it into the fire and it goes up almost immediately. Must be silk or some shit. Keeping the flame as far from me as possible, I run to touch it to the area rugs and the tapestries hanging from the walls. Anything I can find that’s flammable. Fuck, I hope this works.
And just as I toss the burning cloth onto one of the lush, upholstered side chairs, the door creaks open and I hear, “Jefe?” Goddamn it.
“Help! Help!” I shout. “Someone’s here! Someone came in and—Tyler?”
“Hey, Mads,” he says, poking his head in. “Um. Looks like you got a little fire in here.”
Ricky pushes Tyler into the room. He’s holding a gun. He looks around and says, “Je. Sus. Christ. What the fuck did you do?”
“I dunno! I was trying to get the place evacuated. Or create a distraction. Or. I thought… I dunno! I’m a little freaked out. And honestly? WHO FUCKING CARES? CAN WE GO??”
Tyler looks down and sees Carlos. “Is that Castillo? What did you do to him, babe? Did you fuck him up?” He asks this with far too much glee, I think.
“He”—I nod at Ricky—“gave me some kind of partially insoluble fucking knockout drug. Thanks for that, by the way. Woulda been nice to have a heads up that the shit would take like a month to dissolve.”
“Jesus,” says Ricky. “OK. Look. Grab him and let’s just get the fuck out of here.”
“Fuck that,” says Tyler. “Leave him. Let the fucker burn.”
“My job is to bring the bad guys in, not burn them the fuck up.”
I reach out and touch Tyler’s arm. “Ty…” He looks at me. “He’s right. We can’t. Not like this.” I gesture to the spreading flames. Which are really spreading now. We seriously need to get the hell out of here.
Tyler still seems unsure. Ricky says, “Hey, if it makes you feel better, I’ll never get you two past the gate without him. At this point, our best shot is to use him to keep us safe.”
“You mean a human shield,” Tyler says.
“I was thinking more like a negotiating tool, but sure. Know what? Let’s just at least get the hell out this burning room!”
Ricky goes to lift Carlos, but Tyler pushes him away and grabs Carlos up over his shoulders into a fireman’s carry. And then he does something I’ve never seen him do. He winces. Like he’s in pain. One hand grabs at his ribs.
“Babe?” I say. “You okay?”
“Yep,” he grunts. “Too good.” Then he winks and says to Ricky, “Lead the way.”
Chapte Twenty-Five - Tyler
Either this son of a bitch is heavier than he looks, or else Logan really did manage to put some work in on my ribs. Shit hurts. But no rest for the weary, as some asshole once said.
I feel like old Saint Nick himself, carrying a present for all the good girls and boys of the DEA. I realize that Maddie has yet to get any active intel that helps shut down the operation, but if Carlos is in custody, then that leaves Logan to run things and with that taint-griddler in charge, I imagine they can bring down this show in about five minutes.
Saint Nick. Hm. I wonder if that makes me Saint Tyler. I like the ring of that, but the Claus notwithstanding, most motherfuckers only achieve sainthood posthumously, so I don’t know if I should be gunning for it so enthusiastically.
Regardless, these are the thoughts running through my head to keep my mind off the amount of unexpected pain I’m in at the moment.
We approach the first corner in the hallway and Ricky peeks around to make sure the coast is clear. Just as a fire alarm goes off loud as fuck from wherever.
“Shit,” says Ricky. And looking back, I see smoke billowing out of the room Maddie lit up. I’m half-stunned that she did it and half-super proud of her. But both of those feelings are overtaken by a much stronger one. Paralysis.
Something about the smoke and the alarm and hauling this body…
Nadir.
The explosion that killed Nadir and the other guys wasn’t the one that got me. I mean, it was, but not exactly. It was like a chain event. Nadir and the other guys caught the first blast, and when I grabbed him and threw him over my shoulders to haul him out of the combat zone to a dustoff location, that’s when I triggered the blast that nailed me.
No one has ever come right out and said it, but I know that the reason I survived is because I was carrying him. His body acted as a mini-blast wall and absorbed enough of the discharge that no heavy shrapnel hit my vital organs. I just know it. I was pinned down though. Held there for however long. I don’t know. Just what they told me. It wasn’t the blast itself that fucked me up so much as the fire, I guess. Nadir’s charred body and whatever other burning shit was lying on me.
I don’t plan to ever tell Maddie that stuff.
And then, as if waking from a deep sleep, I hear the far-off sound of, “Tyler?” Maddie’s voice. And I blink myself back.
“Are you OK?” she asks. The concerned look on her face breaks my heart.
“Yeah. Yeah, fucking killing it. Locked, cocked, and ready to rock. Where’s the party?” And shit like that. I’m not sure how many tired, macho, war-time clichés I spew, but finally she just smiles, stands on her toes and kisses my cheek.
And then we’re on the move again.
Once we round the corner, Ricky throws his fist up. I am more than familiar with the signal to halt progress. Maddie, not so much, and because she’s glancing worriedly back at me, she kind of rams into Ricky.
“Why are we—?” she starts, but stops when she sees what Ricky sees. Four armed guards up ahead, all talking in Spanish and pointing in different directions. They haven’t seen us yet. The alarm is blaring all over the place, but the fire appears to still be contained to the room. Although, at the rate it was spreading, that won’t be true for long. Fuck, Carlos is getting heavy. I bounce to adjust him over my shoulders and
I can feel my ribs pinch. I try not to let it show on my face.
The house/hotel/village/wherever-the-fuck-we-are looks like a Mediterranean architect partied too hard with a Spanish-style interior designer and they threw up everywhere. So there’s arches and alcoves and shit all over the place. Ricky pushes us inside one such alcove and says, “Stay here.”
We step back, just out of eyesight from the hallway, and when Maddie presses against me, it makes me forget for a second about all the pain, and the weight of carrying Carlos, and all of it… And Chuckie Stiff says hi.
“Are you kidding me right now?” Maddie asks in response to the sensation of feeling my throbbing hard-on pressing against her ass. I shrug a “what’re you gonna do?” shrug, and she rolls her eyes. Fuck, I love her so much.
I slide past her so I can peer around the edge of the alcove and down the hall, and what I see is… well. It’s some shit all right.
Ricky approaches the four dudes, speaking Spanish to them, and then points back to where we are. I pull my head back into the shadows as they all look this way but manage to keep one eye on the five of them. And what that one eye sees is some fucking next-level super-soldier nonsense.
Ricky laughs and bends down like he’s tying his boots, and when he pops back up, he’s holding a fucking bush knife he pulled from an ankle sheath. He slices the throats of the two dudes standing next to him with one sweeping motion, stabs the next guy in the chest—twice—before he can move, then breaks the fourth dude’s arm, pins him to the ground, and steps on his neck and snaps it.
I can’t believe I fucking knocked this guy out. Holy shit.
He looks back, giving me the sign for “don’t fuckin’ move,” runs out of sight for like twenty seconds, and then comes running back down the hall to where we are.