Damaged Goods

by Dane, Cynthia

  Apparently, she had never been so happy to see him too.

  “Joseph!” A high-pitched voice that he didn’t recognize attempted to break his eardrums. Genevieve rushed to his side, but only one hand was reserved for the top of his head. The other was on Sylvia’s shoulder in a futile attempt to calm her down. “Are you okay? Did they hurt you? We’ve got a medic downstairs.”

  He shook out his arms as soon as they were free. The first thing he did afterward was topple Sylvia over with the roughest bear hug he could manage. She clung to him, crying into his shirt. As tears wetted his chest and more agents spilled into the small storeroom, Joseph said, “We’re fine. What about Stella? She was shot.”

  Genevieve stood back to give them air. “We found her. She’ll be fine, I think.”

  Joseph stood up as soon as he was sure that Sylvia wouldn’t crumble without him. “Mother,” he said in a near-whisper. That instantly got her attention again. “Did you get Sheen? He… he has Reina.”

  Panic settled in Genevieve’s frosty blue eyes. Her face didn’t fare much better. If Joseph thought his mother was losing her mind over him? Hearing that about her son’s little sister – the youngest child of a man she once fancied enough to have a baby with – only made matters worse.

  “Are you sure?” she asked in a hush.

  “Yeah.” Joseph couldn’t peel Sylvia off of him if he wanted, but at some point a paramedic needed to take a look at her. One coaxed her to come over now, insisting that she would be fine away from Joseph for two minutes. She refused to budge. I’m not letting her go right now anyway. Reina was already in danger. Rattled logic told Joseph that letting go of Sylvia would put her in danger as well. “I saw her. I know it’s her. We have got to find that truck before it goes out. Where the hell is Sheen?”

  “He and the last of his bodyguards got away as we arrived. We’re turning the building inside out as we speak.”

  It might be too late. “Have you checked the roof? It connects to the building next door.”

  “We’ve got agents on either side of this building.”

  “He’s smarter than that.” Joseph pushed Sylvia toward the paramedic. “Go with her, Sylv. I have to find Reina.”

  She looked back at him, a dark, painful blur in the midst of more dark and desperate people running around. Joseph counted more rifles than he did heads of common sense.

  Genevieve pulled her Glock out of its holster and held it out to her son. “Take it. Give the bastard a swift kick in the face if you find him. I want this wrapped up tonight.”

  Joseph didn’t hesitate or question his mother’s breach of protocol. As soon as the gun was in his hands, he was whistling for two agents to follow him up to the roof. The last thing he saw before bounding up the stairs was Sylvia’s despondent demeanor.

  ***

  The jaunt up to the roof was littered with fellow agents, all of whom claimed there was no sign of Alexander Sheen. That was preposterous. How could a man, regardless of how much money he had, disappear out of thin air? Let alone with two huge bodyguards in tow?

  He was hiding somewhere. Joseph would find him, so help him God.

  Reina. That was the driving force sending him up to the roof to begin his manhunt. He has Reina. He’s going to… Joseph wouldn’t let the words form in his head. He had enough images to send him into a rage. Sylvia. How many times had Sheen traumatized his beloved? This was beyond enforcing the law. It was personal.

  At least Sylvia was safe for now. Joseph trusted that neither his mother nor the agents closest to him would allow his girlfriend out of their collective sight. Still, he never should have let her go undercover one last time. What was he thinking? Of course Sheen would have found her out. Somehow, someway. Men like him always got away with their crimes.

  Until now.

  “Clear!” one agent called from the far corner of the roof. They were five stories above Morrison Street, red and blue police lights flashing in both lanes and obstructing the late night traffic. Buses were diverted to other streets. Taxis drove in circles. Pedestrians, homeless, and even the midnight joggers were ushered off the sidewalks while a hundred police radios lit up with APBs. Not a single officer was getting a wink of sleep that night.

  The other agent lowered his gun after doing a sweep in his corner. “Clear!”

  Joseph led the agents to a door built into another building. He stood to the side before twisting the handle and opening the door with ease. Whether opened by Sheen or another agent, it had remained unlocked.

  Right away he saw policemen checking rooms on the fifth floor of the neighboring building. Joseph’s mother had been right. Every available department was scouring the neighborhood for Sheen and his three bodyguards.

  To the roof they went anyway. Joseph ran into another group of agents and barked at them to check the boiler room, in case Sheen was trying to make an escape via car.

  No matter what, he wouldn’t get very far. That’s what Joseph told himself as he raced up seven flights of stairs to the rooftop. He’ll try to fly somewhere. Hopefully he doesn’t think Mexico is going to harbor him after word gets out he has Horatio Montoya’s daughter. There were rumors that some of Joseph’s more unscrupulous great uncles ran with a few powerful gangs. Blood ran deep with them. More so than a billionaire’s money.

  The air was colder, fiercer up on this particular rooftop. The lights of Portland twinkled around them, but it wasn’t enough to illuminate Alexander Sheen and his associates, if they were up there. Down below on the street, dogs barked and howled. They must have had something of Sheen’s for the dogs to sniff.

  But he’s mine.

  If Joseph were a billionaire suddenly on the run, how the hell would he escape when law enforcement came crashing down? The man was not a magician. He could not disappear into thin air. No cars had been seen coming from the parking garages. Borders were posted in a two block radius in either direction. Sheen’s only hope was to bunker down somewhere and hope that nobody found him. Someplace that even dogs couldn’t sniff him out, for he had to have known that they would be brought out.

  “Montoya!” The older agent picked something up with a gloved hand. “Wouldn’t happen to need an embroidered handkerchief, would you?”

  Joseph glanced at the silk handkerchief stitched with the initials AS. “I knew he came through here.” The question now was where the hell had he gone?

  The man had been spooked enough coming here. There was no way he didn’t have an escape plan developed far ahead of time.

  “I’ve got blood over here!”

  The other agent waved Joseph over to see a small trail of blood leading from the middle of the roof to a flat wall. It was fresh, too. Fresh enough that one of the agents could bend down and pick some up on his finger.

  “Could one of them be injured?”

  “Stella… I mean Agent Moore… had fired at one of the bodyguards before she was hit.”

  “Took him this long to bleed?”

  “More like he finally bled through his bandages like a squashed tomato.”

  Joseph motioned to the wall. “How the hell did he get into a wall?”

  The agent who found the blood reported it into his radio. Genevieve’s garbled voice came over the line, telling the three agents to hold their positions until backup arrived. All fine and dandy, except Joseph wasn’t about to let this mystery go unsolved.

  “How old is this building?” Joseph asked. “Either of you got any idea?”

  They both shrugged. “Almost a hundred years old? This part of town has been here as long as my grandfather has been. A lot of these buildings are from the early 20th century.”

  “So… prohibition era?”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  Joseph motioned to the wall where the blood trail ended. “How much you want to bet this building used to be on the prohibition runners’ route?”

  “Oh, shit.” The agent who found the blood looked something up on his phone. “I think there used t
o be a speakeasy or two around here.”

  “Most likely. Can’t exactly separate a Portlander from his booze.”

  “So, what say you two?” Joseph asked. “Where would a speakeasy store their goods?”

  “Behind a false wall, obviously.”

  “If you put it outside, it’s all the easier for runners to get to.”

  “I like the way you think, Montoya.”

  Someone’s voice came over a radio announcing a diversion of men from the stairwells to the rooftops. An agent responded by announcing where they thought Sheen might be. By then, Joseph was already searching the wall for a latch.

  He found it in a groove between bricks. Wear and tear my ass. This was left here on purpose. The building’s owner probably thought it a clever trick worth keeping up with the times. Perhaps the office on the other side of this hidden storeroom used it for supplies or for mistress rendezvous. Joseph had a feeling that wasn’t what it was being used for right now.

  “Get ready, guys.” Joseph loosened the latch. “I have no idea what’s coming.” And he wasn’t going to wait for backup. That truck could leave at any time.

  Since the door opened in his direction, Joseph didn’t immediately see what happened. But one moment there was the wailing of police sirens, and the next came a barrage of bullets exploding in the cold autumn air. One of the agents Joseph brought with him went down. The other managed to leap behind a half wall in time for a bullet to graze his ear. Joseph readied his weapon and cautiously stepped out from behind the brick door.

  The rooftop was chaos. A huge man dressed in black made for the fire escape. Another ran in the opposite direction. At first, Joseph half-expected the third to come out with more guns blazing, but by the time he rounded the door, he saw the bodyguard Stella had shot sprawled out on the concrete.

  That only left Alexander Sheen… and Reina.

  Half of Sheen’s pant leg was covered in his bodyguard’s blood. He also held a gun that he appeared completely competent of using. That was a huge misfortune for Joseph, for the gun was pointed at Reina’s temple.

  “Stand back!” Sheen shouted, and yet Reina was the one screaming in terror, her sandals slipping against the concrete roof as Alexander hauled her toward the edge. Joseph kept his weapon at the ready. Behind him, the one agent who hadn’t been shot kept his position. Bullets flew down on the sidewalk. Footsteps pounded in the stairwell leading up to the roof. The agent who was currently unconscious and bleeding on the floor? His radio was popping with orders from Commander Stone.

  Who appeared shortly thereafter, brandishing her backup weapon. “Fall back, Montoya!” she cried the moment she saw who was being held hostage. “I said fall back!”

  “It’s over, Sheen!” Like fucking hell Joseph was falling back! That’s my sister, thank you very much. It couldn’t have been training that kept him so levelheaded in this moment. No way. After all, that was his sister crying, struggling to breathe, beaten and bleeding from the cuts lining her bare arms and legs. Sheen was not going to let go of her unless her brother shot her or they both toppled over the edge of the twelve-story building. I have to stay calm. Pretend you’re a full-blooded Stone for a moment. Would Genevieve have backed down if she came up here and saw her son being held hostage? Hell no. She would have calmly stood there like a cold statue, even if she was a hurricane inside. Joseph also didn’t doubt that his mother would put a bullet right between Sheen’s eyes.

  As much as Joseph wanted to do that, he knew it seriously risked his sister’s life. A sister who was crying until tears fell down the arm keeping her in a choke hold. Her chipped nails pulled futilely at Sheen’s sleeve.

  It was an image that would remain with Joseph for the rest of his life.

  “I said it’s over!” Joseph kept his weapon as even as he could, although his arm threatened to tremble in rage. Don’t fuck this up. Don’t be the reason your sister dies. “Tell us where the truck is!”

  “Fuck that!” The barrel of Sheen’s handgun dug into Reina’s temple. Her flat, greasy hair whipped pitifully in the wind. “Why the hell would I let go of my last paycheck?”

  “Let me handle this, Montoya!” Genevieve’s arms were certainly more leveled than her son’s, but that didn’t say much. Joseph was on the verge of firing if he wasn’t careful. “Sheen! It’s over! We have you completely surrounded! Your bodyguards aren’t here anymore! You’ve got the blood of at least two agents on your hands already! Don’t have more added to that record!”

  “And what am I going to do, huh?” Alexander’s laugh was as unusual as it was caustic. “Go to jail? Lose everything? Be like Xavier Crow and spend the rest of my life rotting in a low-security cell?”

  If this guy thought he was getting anything but max security after tonight…

  “We can work with you, Sheen!” Genevieve insisted. “Give us the girl, tell us where the truck is, give us all the information you have about your business, and we’ll make sure you’re nice and comfortable while you’re away at prison!”

  “Or what?”

  “Or you either die here or spend the rest of your life sharing a cell with five other guys who are a lot worse than you, Sheen! It’s up to you!”

  The man’s face ran a nasty gamut. Was he afraid? Calculating? Determined to make these people feel the most amount of pain possible? Why am I even looking at him? Reina was the one killing him inside. There was no way his little sister was coming out of this situation the way she used to be. Joseph could already see the innocence burning right out of her scared, bewildered eyes.

  “If it were really up to me, you would all be dead right now.” The gun smashed into Reina’s temple with renewed vigor.

  One bullet went off.

  Chapter 35

  Sylvia

  “You’ve gotta hurry up, okay?” Sylvia wrenched herself away from another paramedic trying to tend to some scratch on her leg. “Tell your boyfriend to get his ass moving!”

  Reception was spotty in that building. Sylvia was en route to the roof of the small brick office building, the stairwell now devoid of agents since they all ran to the neighboring mid-rise. I have no idea what’s going on. One moment everyone was looking for Sheen, and the next? Crackling static on the radios had men and women racing to another location. Sylvia had barely seen the commander’s dark brown bun moving through the huddle before she was alone with the paramedics.

  Apparently there was plenty of carnage going on outside. Gunfire was exchanged on the sidewalk, and someone’s radio announced that one of the bodyguards was down. They found him. They found Sheen. That didn’t mean they found the truck. Based on their brief conversation about his business earlier? It was bound to leave Portland at any moment. Sylvia didn’t doubt that there were patrols on the freeways and highways, but would it be enough? Had Sheen learned his lesson from the crash and changed vehicles?

  Sylvia popped out on the roof. Her cell phone reception instantly went up. Thank God I got my phone back when they handed me my purse. She had left her purse with Genevieve before coming to Sheen’s office. Now she was making one of the most urgent phone calls of her life.

  “Anything yet?”

  The feminine voice on the other end of the line was not helpful. “He’s searching as fast as he can, okay? A man can only hack so quickly! Do you know how long it took him to find that shit last time?”

  “I don’t care! Do it faster!”

  “You don’t know anything about computers, do you?”

  “Neither do you!”

  Sylvia sighed into her phone the moment she stepped out onto the roof. Immediately a uniformed police officer put his hand up to her. Another grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her down to the ground.

  “Holy…!” Sylvia had no idea that a standoff was happening on the neighboring roof. She arrived in time to crane her head back and see Alexander Sheen holding a gun to Reina’s head. He was surrounded by agents and more uniformed police.

  “Hey… Sylvia?” Nala suddenly soun
ded more concerned than before. “What’s going on there? Are you in trouble? Should I call the police?”

  “Uh.” Genevieve’s voice boomed down in Sylvia’s direction, but she couldn’t make sense of anything the commander said. “No. I’m good. Plenty of police here already. Find out where the hell that truck is for me, okay?”

  “If Vincent doesn’t get carpal tunnel first. He’s typing like a fucking maniac and it’s all Greek to me.”

  Where is Joseph? Was he up there in that standoff with Sheen? Was he in immediate danger? Sylvia’s chest tightened with worry. She knew her boyfriend wasn’t stupid, but his sister was involved – and Sheen had gone after his girlfriend, too. An emotionally charged man like Joseph was not going to react well. No wonder Genevieve was shouting so much!

  Everyone had slippery trigger fingers the moment a gun went off.

  A police officer hauled Sylvia away from the scene so quickly that she almost dropped her phone. More officers broke position and re-aimed their handguns. Sylvia craned her head around in the hopes of seeing what had happened. Shouts erupted from the neighboring rooftop.

  Once the dust settled, Sylvia caught a head of black, greasy hair running from the edge of the roof to Joseph’s arms.

  “He’s down!” The radio attached to the police officer holding Sylvia went off like another gun. “Repeat, Sheen is down. We need paramedics. Suspect down, agent down, and one more suspect seems to be bleeding out.”

  Sylvia broke free of the officer’s arms and ran back into the other building. “What’s going on over there?” Nala said into her ear. This was when Sylvia was not pumping her arms to carry her up the stairs faster. “Are those bullets I hear?”

  “Just… hack faster!” Sylvia was almost completely out of breath by the time she reached the other rooftop. Officers spilled through the door and made way for the paramedics right behind Sylvia. She deferred only to them. As soon as the last paramedic zoomed by, Sylvia followed them, slipping in behind a tanned EMT with a mullet before any distracted agent could spot and stop her. Sometimes it really paid to be so petite – and not when she was breaking into her boyfriend’s apartment, either.