He stood between two rows of shipping containers talking to a grey-haired man, but not one like Wesley Falkner. This man looked shrunken and wizened, but not in a nice, comforting way. His black glinting eyes made Jo’s skin crawl.
“I got another call from my lawyer this morning, Mr. Kingston,” the old man breathed. “I don’t have to tell you how unnerving that is.”
Kingston spread both hands. “I understand and I assure you the situation is completely under control. We have the memory sticks now. It’s only a matter of time before we hack the security encryption and get the documents.”
“My fate is in your hands, Mr. Kingston,” the old man replied. “My people will get in touch with you to arrange payment as soon as you can assure me that you have the documents in question.”
He turned and walked away. He vanished into the maze of containers. Kingston stayed where he was and covered his eyes with his hand. For a moment, he actually looked vulnerable and human.
Jo took one more look. She put her foot behind her to sneak away when a deadly click vibrated the back of her skull. An icy voice growled in her ear, “Freeze.”
Jo’s stomach turned. She dared not turn around. Her invisible foe yanked her weapon out of her hand and jammed the gun barrel harder into her neck. “Move.”
She stepped forward. Kingston turned around and there wasn’t a shred of cover to stop him from seeing her. A hateful grin spread across his mouth and his deep black eyes lit up. “What have we here?”
That gun propelled her toward him against her will. She tried to struggle. Rough hands seized her from behind and hurled her against the nearest container. She slumped to the ground.
Another man pivoted around her and approached Kingston. One of the black-clad attackers whispered in his ear. “The others shot their way through the railroad crossing. We sent a few of our people beyond the fence, but they’re already on their way back to the Police Station.”
Kingston nodded. The guy retreated and Kingston turned his attention on Jo. “Well, my dear. Here you are. I bet you didn’t expect to be meeting me today, did you?”
His self-satisfied grin infuriated her. “Actually, we came here to meet you, Gabriel. I don’t think I need to remind you that your son is in custody for that deal in the graveyard last night. You’ll be joining him pretty soon if I’m not mistaken.”
The smirk evaporated off his face exactly the way she planned. “My son will be out of jail in a matter of hours. You, on the other hand, will never see the light of day again. You and your friends are done interfering in my business.”
He took a gun from under his jacket and waved it carelessly in no particular direction. Jo’s heart flipped. “You can’t avoid the law by killing me, Gabriel. My friends know all about you and how you started the Trenton Warehouse fire to kill Arthur Christensen. They’ll bring you to justice and you’ll be charged for killing me, too. You’re finished.”
His features hardened and all traces of humor and warmth left him. “So are you. Goodbye, Detective.”
He raised the gun and Jo found herself staring down the black barrel. Could this be the end? Was she really going to die as another victim of this criminal scumbag—one of hundreds of people he killed in his career?
He clenched his fingers around the trigger, but at that moment, a shadow dropped out of the clear blue sky and landed right on top of him. It flattened him and the gun skidded out of his hand. It skated across the asphalt and bumped into Jo’s knee.
She seized it and spun it around. She jumped to her feet, gripping the gun in both hands. She locked her elbows and aimed the weapon at.... him. The Dark Avenger crouched on Kingston’s back and he looked right at her. Piercing blue eyes bored to her soul.
He wore the same skin-tight black suit with the mask over his face. Gloves hid his hands. His wiry, muscular frame rippled under the fabric. Could this be Wesley Falkner? She couldn’t be sure.
For one eternal moment, she stared him down. She had a clear shot at his chest, his head—any of a dozen shots could take him down. He didn’t try to hide or get away.
Her heart stood still and she held her breath, but she knew then and there that she couldn’t shoot him. He saved her life.
The instant that thought entered her mind, he bent his knees and rocketed straight up. He fired thirty feet into the air and landed on top of the stack of containers. The next moment, he was gone without a trace.
Jo stared, first at the sky and then at the senseless form of Gabriel Kingston lying unconscious at her feet. Her heart ached from smashing into her ribs so hard, but there wasn’t a thing to threaten her now.
She summoned all her strength to draw air into her lungs. She had to move. She had to act. Her friends were already safe outside the fence. She would be there soon, too.
She walked around Kingston and jammed her knee into his spine. She wrenched his arm behind his back and zip-tied his wrists together. She got him trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey before he reared back roaring. “Let me go! You’re making a big mistake. I’ll have your job.”
“Not today.” She grabbed him by the collar and wrenched him to his feet. She stabbed her weapon into his skull. “March.”
She shoved him at gunpoint back to the dock where the workers gaped at her in amazement. She pulled her badge out of her pocket and pushed Kingston toward the security gate.
The gunmen aimed their weapons at her when she approached, but she hid behind Kingston and flashed her badge. “Open that gate before you wind up wearing your boss’s brains as a jacket.”
Kingston tried to twist out of her grasp and failed. “Do it. Open the gate.”
The gate purred aside. She rotated Kingston around as she inched through it backward. She kept his body between her and his men. She backed onto the sidewalk outside the gate. “Now shut it. If I see any of you outside the yard, he’s a dead man.”
He nodded to the guard in the booth and the gate shut again with all those guys inside. Jo swallowed down a lump in her throat. She did it. She was free.
She swung away hauling Gabriel Kingston to the Police Station, but before she turned the corner, she cast one last glance back toward the docks. He was out there somewhere. This wasn’t the last she’d seen of the Dark Avenger.
Chapter 6
Jo McGee jabbed her husband and partner Nate Fricks in the shoulder. “Rise and shine. They’re on the move.”
He put his phone down and straightened up in the driver’s seat of his restored Ford Mustang. Both Detectives watched from the shadows behind the Post Office as a glossy black moving van glided out of a nearby alley.
Jo took out her high-powered camera and snapped a picture of the license plate while Nate clipped his seatbelt, but he didn’t start the motor. Jo put the camera into the backseat and checked her watch. It was two-thirty in the morning.
The van eased down the street in no particular hurry. It turned a corner at the far intersection. Nate counted on his fingers.....8....9....10. Only then did he turn the ignition. The car gave its usual grumbling roar firing to life. He waited another ten seconds before he dropped it into first gear.
He took even longer putting the car in motion. Even at this hour—especially at this hour—the Mustang’s characteristic rumble echoed far and wide. Jo tried more than once to make Nate bring an unmarked Police car on this stakeout—or any other stakeout, for that matter—but Nate wouldn’t hear of it. No logic in the known universe would convince him to drive any other car, unless it was an even more souped-up muscle car, preferably one from his personal collection.
The engine noise thumped against the buildings of sleepy old Soledad. When the pair reached the intersection, Jo pointed to the right where the van was just disappearing onto the highway.
Once they merged with the rest of traffic, other cars hid the Mustang, but Nate still didn’t take the chance of moving too close. The van exited four miles away. Nate tailed it down several winding country roads to a deserted old farm far out of town.
Nate braked behind some trees and Jo peered through her camera lens beyond the split-rail fence. “What can you see?” he asked.
She didn’t have to tell him. A sliding door pulled back to reveal brilliant fluorescent light pouring from a large barn. Men scurried back and forth when the van pulled inside, but they didn’t shut the door.
In front of God and everyone, they unsnapped the truck’s cargo gate and pushed it up. Inside, hundreds of Army-green crates piled to the ceiling. Men hopped into the compartment and started handing the containers down to their comrades on the ground, who stacked them to one side. Through the open door, Jo could see mountains of similar crates all towering one on top of the other.
“You bad, bad boys,” Nate murmured under his breath. “Santa won’t be bringing you kids any new Legos this year.”
Jo snapped hundreds of pictures with her camera. “Those are Israeli serial numbers stamped on the crates. The labels are all printed in Hebrew lettering. I’m getting as many of the serial numbers as I can. Maybe we can match them from international shipping databases.”
“Good luck with that,” Nate returned. “Even if the Israeli government manufactured these weapons, they wouldn’t admit they sold them to anyone overseas.”
“It’s worth a shot. It’s better than nothing and we’ll need some proof of what we found.”
“Jesus, look at it all!” Nate exclaimed in an undertone. “I didn’t think Gabriel Kingstone dealt in this kind of hardware. I thought he was more of an extortion and drugs man.”
“Unless he’s using these weapons to arm his dealers,” Jo pointed out. “Maybe he plans to expand his operation and this is his first move.”
“Either way, we’ll need to....”
A menacing click killed the words on Nate’s lips. Someone rotated around his window and jammed a rifle barrel into the car. “Don’t move.”
Jo froze with her finger suspended over the camera button. Her heart leaped into her throat. Another gun poked through the passenger window and stabbed into her neck. A throaty male voice growled low, “Hand over your weapon.”
Nate pulled his service pistol out of his shoulder holster and passed it through the window. His assailant snatched it. The man standing next to Jo stuffed his hand between her and the door. He grasped her weapon from its holster behind her back.
Her spirits plummeted as it slipped away. When would she ever see it again? The guy yanked the camera from her grasp and the door creaked open. “Get out. March.”
She kept her hands displayed in plain view and pivoted out of the car. The two shadowy gunmen shoved her and Nate around the car. They started marching them toward the barn. The bright opening got closer and closer. The unloading process drew into plain view. The guys didn’t even stop what they were doing. This was bad. This was really bad.
A gun speared her in the ribs. “Stop right here.”
The enemy pushed Nate and Jo together. She bumped into his back. He felt good and strong and solid behind her, but he was just as helpless as she was.
When they rotated around, they came face to face with their captors. Four men surrounded the pair. Jo didn’t recognize them. They reminded her of cardboard cut-outs of dozens of men who worked for the criminal overlord Gabriel Kingston.
In front of her eyes, one of them took hold of her camera and slammed it down on the ground. He wound back his heel and crushed the lens in one stamp of his foot. He smashed the housing to smithereens.
Jo held herself back from lunging forward to stop him, but her heart and soul shrieked against this outrage. Getting caught by these assholes was bad enough. Now they destroyed the evidence of their crimes. She would never be able to prove now that Kingston was importing weapons and storing them in this out-of-the-way barn.
The guy propped his automatic rifle on his hip. The others covered the two Detectives while he bent over, rummaged in the destroyed shards, and retrieved the memory stick. He picked it up, examined it with exaggerated care, and then held it up where Jo couldn’t fail to see it.
“I’ll just take this on down to Mr. Kingston’s office.” He cracked a wicked grin at Jo and then at Nate.
Jo swallowed hard. She wanted that memory stick. It was hers. She needed it, but those guns stopped her. Nate slipped his hand back and his fingers gave her wrist a quick squeeze. That brief touch sent her a message loud and clear. Don’t do anything stupid. He who fights and walks away lives to fight another day.
Catching Gabriel Kingston and putting him away for good was a marathon, not a sprint. If Jo didn’t learn that in the last seven years of working as a Detective, she wouldn’t last long.
The guy stuffed the stick into his pocket and took out his phone. He didn’t pay any attention to the two Police Detectives anymore. He didn’t have to with his buddies holding them at gunpoint.
Jo and Nate could see everything going on through the rolling barn door. Another man stood to one side holding a clipboard. He marked crate numbers off a shipping manifest while the men inside the truck called them out. He repeated them back to double-check the numbers. No one made any effort to hide what they were doing. The situation went from bad to worse every second.
The guy who pocketed the camera stick pressed his phone to his ear. “Yes, Sir. You asked me to report if anything out of the ordinary went down on the transport job. Yes, Sir. We found a car prowling around on the road and we got.....”
A deafening crash interrupted him. Everybody whipped around. Jo’s jaw dropped when a black-clad figure dropped out of the barn rafters and landed in a catlike crouch on the truck roof. The blow echoed through the building and out into the night.
Jo caught a single glimpse of a lean, lithe body covered in black from head to toe. The shoulders angled with chiseled muscle and a tight mask covered the head. It left only a pair of crystal-blue eyes squinted out.
All the men holding Jo and Nate at gunpoint whipped around fast. They shouldered their weapons, but the stranger moved way too fast. He charged the edge of the truck roof and took a flying leap straight into those guns.
The men on the ground reared back and dropped their crates, but not fast enough. The stranger pounced right on top of them. He sailed into perfect wide splits and flattened two of the criminals with matched kicks on either side.
He landed in a crouch, whipped around, and seized another two who rushed him from right and left. He grabbed them by the backs of their necks and used their own momentum to smash them together. He cracked their heads and dropped them in a pile with their friends.
The four outside the building recovered and advanced on the stranger. They leveled their guns at him. Fueled by pure adrenaline, Jo dove for the nearest guy and flung out her arm. She caught his weapon and knocked the barrel down just as he pulled the trigger.
It discharged into the ground. The ear-splitting bang startled all the others. They saw Jo attacking their friend. The reprieve gave the black-suited stranger a moment’s grace. He flexed his powerful knees and rocketed straight up. He vanished into the rafters where Jo couldn’t see him, but now she had a much bigger problem.
The man she attacked rounded on her bellowing in rage. He hoisted his rifle to smash her face in, but she was too far gone to stop. She shot both arms into the air and grabbed the weapon. With a mighty jerk, she folded her knees, rolled onto her back, and yanked the guy over her head.
In a fraction of a second, she jammed her hand into his pocket. Her fingers closed around her own service piece. She heaved the dude down hard on the ground and pivoted onto her feet brandishing her own weapon.
She didn’t hesitate a second. She squeezed the trigger blasting bullets everywhere. She ducked under her arms and broke for the dark trees not far away, but before she made it two steps, she spotted Nate engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle with one of the other gunmen.
She locked her elbow and fired. The bullet punched through the attacker’s ear and sprayed out the other side in a cloud of blood and brain. Nate hurled the gu
y off and the couple sprinted for the woods.
Under the shelter of the trees, Jo maintained an unbreakable grip on Nate’s sleeve while she gasped to regain her breath. “Are you all right?”
“Fuckers!” Nate hissed. “I’ll kill ‘em for this!”
“Not likely,” Jo spluttered. “They’re all running for it.”
He shot a fierce glare through the bushes. “Those shitheads took my favorite piece! I want revenge.”
Jo shot him a grin. “Easy, big fella. At least all our brains are still in our heads. I can buy you a new piece for your next birthday. I’ll even get your name engraved in gold on the stock.”
“Are you crazy? I scored my personal best at the firing range with that gun. Nothing can ever replace it.”
Jo patted his shoulder. “The Mustang’s okay, though. Let’s get back to the car and call in the cavalry.”
He didn’t move. He squinted at the now-deserted building shining in the distance. “The scumbag got away with the memory stick. Sorry, sweetheart.”
“Kingston, fifty. Police, zero.” She clicked the safety on her weapon, but she didn’t holster it. She kept scanning the area for any of those crooks lurking around. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 7
Jo did her best to focus on her paperwork, but the TV on the wall blared the news too loud to ignore. “Millionaire businessman Gabriel Kingston and his son Julian were released on bail this morning after an extended hearing in the Superior Court of Soledad County. The proceedings set a new record of three days in which the Police presented considerable evidence related to Mr. Kingston’s business dealings. The District Attorney argued in favor of Mr. Kingston being denied bail and asked the judge to declare him a threat to public safety, but in the end, Mr. Kingston’s defense convinced the judge to release him with an unheard-of bail of seven million dollars. Julian Kingston was released on five million dollars bail.”
Jo dropped her arms onto her desk and smacked her lips. “Do we really have to listen to this shit? Turn it off.”
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