Page 201 of Caught in the Crossfire

“Ready?” I asked them.

“Ready,ángel.”

“The plan is set.”

“Max and his men are incoming. They’ll meet us there.”

“I’m ready to fuck you right here, if that’s what you’re asking.”

I rolled my eyes. “It was not, Ryu, but thank you for your input.”

He snickered while Cas smacked his chest.

Quickly, I introduced my guys to the rest of the girls. Penny remembered them from the boat, but Ximena and Ludmila had only heard stories. Wynn blushed again when Claire thanked him again for what he did when he set her free. Meanwhile, Ryuji teased Zoya and promised not to tell Konstantin and Kolya what we were doing tonight. Fallon’s brother, Colin Byrne, swooped into the room with a charming smile and swooned, clutching his heart, after seeing Willow. She blushed all the way to her ears and did her best to ignore him.

After a few more minutes of chaos, Fallon shouted, “Listen up! The cars are outside. Everyone is assigned. Girls are riding together. Guys are following and staying behind until we get inside the club. This only works if you men let us do what we need to do, understood?”

Despite their grumbles, our men agreed.

“Comms are in-ear for the men,” she continued. “The girls are flying blind until we get the cameras up. Keep the channels free unless there is an emergency. Ciel and Finn will work on getting eyes inside the club and video footage of the customers. Freeing the victims and capturing Arion Vokshi are priorities. If we need to abort, we abort. Got it?”

A chorus of affirmatives went through Fallon’s foyer. I took a deep breath and made sure my weapons were secure on my thigh. We had our sedative pills stuck in the special pockets sewn inside the breast cups of our dresses.

Arion Vokshi wasmytarget.

This time, the Albanians would not get away.

66

LEONA

Before we left Fallon’s house, I kissed each of my guys and gave them the fiercest of hugs. They looked physically pained at the idea of separating, but this was the better plan.

I’d asked them to trust me, and this was the first step.

We drove to The Obsidian in separate cars. All the girls piled into a van that looked like the vehicles used to transport the victims to the club every night, approved by the men Fallon had casing the club and also Ximena herself. The guys were in our armored SUVs and, along with Fallon’s men and Max’s men, going to place themselves strategically around the club and the surrounding area.

The girls weren’t wearing earpieces tonight. Ximena thought it would be too obvious and too dangerous if someone got close enough to see it, and she warned us all that the club’s customers would do anything they could to get close. But Ciel and Finn had instructed each of us how to set up our individual cameras for our basement rooms, and they could connect to them. Before that, though, we were flying blind.

The van pulled up in the back alley of a black brick building.It loomed two stories into the sky, looking sinister in the darkness. There were barely any windows, and the windows it had were covered by panels and painted with a giant white O. The Obsidian. I could hear the thumping music from the alleyway almost immediately.

The eight of us exited the van, keeping our chatter to a minimum. We had to get inside without being seen, and then we had to hand off the girls we rescued to Wynn with no one noticing the switch. He’d get them to Willow’s crew. It would be tricky, so we had to time everything right.

“Here,” Ximena whispered. She waved at a Black man with braids who poked his head out of the back door entrance. He waved back, and we hurried over. “This is Justin, my bartender friend.”

Justin ushered us all inside to a small employee break room—thankfully empty—while giving us an overview of the night so far. There were ten girls brought in about twenty minutes ago. They were mingling around the private lobby on the second floor right now, spending time amongst the high-priority guests that had already gathered there for the evening’s festivities. He’d been pouring drinks extra strong tonight to loosen them up and blur their memories, so we could make the switch easier.

“This is Brian,” Justin said as he introduced us to a white man with short-cropped hair, wearing an all black suit with a concealed gun in the holster on his belt. “He’s a security guard. We can trust him.”

Ximena gave him a once over and when she nodded, the rest of us decided us followed her lead. If she trusted him and Justin, we’d have to as well.

“Brian will distract anyone who looks like they’re catching on,” Justin said. “He’ll also make sure that you girls get placed in the right rooms in the basement.”

I nodded. That was the second phase of the plan. Once we got all the regular girls out, we’d have to take their places in theprivate rooms in the basement. We were going to put the cameras there to record video evidence of each customer, which we’d use to later blackmail them. We knew the MTA director was going to be here tonight, along with some other powerful businessmen, and each of them could provide us with something specific in the future.

“What about the liquor we requested?” Fallon asked.

“I put the bottles of wine in each room, along with a glass,” Justin answered. “They’re high in alcohol content.”