Page 46 of Guarding Grace (Hawk Security #2)

Grace

I was at an intersection, waiting for the pedestrian light to come on. Mr. Evil had demanded that I get out of the taxi, and so far he’d had me walk three blocks without telling me where I was going.

“Now what?” I asked him as the light turned and I started across the intersection.

“Turn right. Go to the third building. Tell me when you reach the door in back labeled Montgomery Automotive.”

The third building was a creepy abandoned warehouse with fading paint and no windows at ground level—a movie-perfect bad guy’s lair.

As I walked by the second building, my stomach turned sour and my mouth went dry. This was it. Looking up, I didn’t see anybody hanging over the edge, so when I reached the side of the third building, I didn’t think he would be able to see me—or so I hoped.

Hugging the building wall as I walked, I pulled out the Pain Pen Terry had forced on me and checked the feel of the switches as I recalled Terry’s instructions on how to use it—turn on, jam into attacker, and press button. If it hurt half as much as the Taser barbs I’d gotten, this would do nicely.

A crow cawed at me from above. Was that a good omen or bad? I had no idea.

Feeling familiar with the weapon, I stuck it, along with a real pen, in my shirt pocket. It made me look dorky, but my vengeance would be handy when I met the sick fuck who’d taken Marci.

The knot in my stomach tightened when I reached the door. “I’m at the door,” I said into the phone

“Come on in.” Mr. Evil made it sound like a simple invitation.

I took in a deep breath before pulling on the handle of the large metal door.

It didn’t budge.

I pulled harder, and it creaked open. Inside was a dark hallway, with light spilling from a doorway near the end.

The door closed behind me with an ominous clank. Then, strong arms closed around me. “I got her,” a male voice said. His breath stank of anchovies.

“Then bring her here already.” Mr. Evil’s voice came from down the hall.

I struggled, but it was useless as the goon lifted me off my feet and pinned my arms against my sides to carry me down the dank hallway. I kicked and got his shin. It was the best I could do.

“Bitch.” He slammed my head against the wall as he walked.

Lucky for me, the wall was plasterboard and not cinder block. But I saw stars for a moment, then felt intense pain. This asshole was going to pay. It was now a toss-up which of these guys was going to get my Taser treatment first, but for now, struggling wasn’t going to help me or Marci.

Anchovy Breath carried me around the corner into the brighter space that was definitely a warehouse. There were a few rooms to the left and shelves on the right all the way to the end of the building with a ton of car parts on them, everything from motors and transmissions to seats and doors.

“Goron, put her down,” Mr. Evil said. “I want to see what I’m getting.” The man fit the name I’d given him—partially balding, with one droopy eyelid and a scar down the other cheek.

Goron yanked my purse away.

Marci sobbed in a chair behind him. Two other thugs stood behind her.

Mr. Evil turned around. “I told you to shut up.”

I stood tall. “I’m here. Now you have to let her go.”

He shook his head. “I don’t have to do anything. And she’s been making me mad.”

Goron rummaged through my purse, located the encrypted cell phone Terry had given me, and held it up. “She has another phone. It’s off.”

“Fix it,” Mr. Evil barked .

Goron dropped the phone and stomped on it with a sickening crunch. “Fixed.” He laughed.

Mr. Evil advanced on me. “I should kill her. I told you to leave your phone in the taxi.”

“You told me to leave my phone. I did. That’s my boyfriend’s phone. He wanted me to get a new battery for it.”

“Give me your watch.”

I tossed it toward him, not wanting to get close enough to hand it over.

He caught it and threw the watch to Goron, who happily crunched it under his boot.

Mr. Evil’s grin turned wicked. “I like this one.”

“Enough talk, Marku.” A slim Asian man I hadn’t noticed stepped forward into the light. He wasn’t a smiler. “We need the plates. Make the call.”

“Hold on, Mr. Kim. You’ll get your merchandise soon enough.”

“You and your partner said that days ago.” Kim labeled the Asian man as most likely Korean, and now I knew Mr. Evil was Marku, the Albanian gangster Elliot was supposed to deliver the case to.

My priority had to be Marci. “If you let her go, she won’t annoy you anymore.”

“I’m a businessman,” he countered. “And a pretty young thing like her is worth too much to just let slip through my fingers.”

“You’re no businessman.” Marku was a human trafficker, the worst kind of filth. I’d told Terry I didn’t like guns, but in this moment I couldn’t think of anything more appropriate than shooting this sick bastard between the eyes.

Marci looked horrified.

“I’ll buy her freedom then,” I blurted.

“You couldn’t afford her.” His grin said he was toying with me and enjoying it. “Besides, I already have a buyer who is interested in her.”

Marci slumped in the chair. This was becoming too much for her.

Marku lifted his chin toward me. “Turn her around.”

“Hands off.” I slapped at Goron when he tried to manhandle me and turned completely around for Mr. Evil under my own power.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Pretty and spirited. A very good combination. You’ll fetch quite the price.”

Price? His words sent a shiver through me, but I refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing me afraid. “My boyfriend is going to make you wish we’d never met.”

“You Americans all think you are tough, but you are weak. How you Americans say? Bring it on.” He raised his arms high. “Chechens try to kill me. I spit on their graves. Russians try to kill me, yet I live. I ate the livers of the Spetsnaz men they sent for me.”

“You’re wasting time,” Kim said. “Make the call. My boat leaves tomorrow.”

Marku pulled out a phone.

He did it without argument. Interesting.

Terry

“Hey, Terry, you want to check this out and tell me if you think it’s her?”

I rushed over.

Winston and I were back at the Hawk offices, waiting for Jordy to give us something useful from his traffic camera search. He didn’t have coverage at the intersection mentioned by the cabbie, so the area to be scanned was large.

I leaned closer and squinted at the screen. “Can you sharpen it any?” The still image he had was incredibly grainy.

“This is the real world, not the make-believe shit that happens on TV. This shot is from a block away, and I can’t just press a button and create detail where none exists.

If the pixels aren’t there, they aren’t there.

Try this.” He ran the video forward and back a few times.

“What do you think?” We were looking for Grace getting into another car, taxi, or anything to track her movements further.

“Not her.” The clothing was close, but there was a problem. “This woman is opening the door with her left hand. Grace isn’t a lefty.”

My phone rang.

It was Constance. “I found Paul. The measuring visit was a setup. They were jumped right inside the door. They took Marci and left him tied up. And before you ask, no, he can’t describe them.”

“Why not?”

“They pepper-sprayed him. I’m washing out his eyes now.”

“Okay, thanks.” At least pepper-sprayed was a lot better than being shot.

“Jordy?” Lucas called. “Get a location on the call that just came in on my line?”

I rushed to the boss’s office, with Winston directly behind me .

“Marku just called. He has her and wants to trade her for Elliot and the case, plus fifty grand.”

“But we don’t have Elliot,” I pointed out. The fifty grand I could swing.

“He doesn’t know that.”

“So what did you tell him?” Winston asked.

“That it would take some time to get the money together. Have they located Marku yet?”

We’d heard from LAPD that the Marku gang had left their previous location, and nobody knew where the new hideout was yet.

“Not as of yesterday, but I’ll double-check,” Winston answered as he left the room, phone in hand.

“We could try the exchange without Elliot,” I suggested.

Lucas stood and shook his head. “Not a good play. We need their location to arrive unannounced and catch them unprepared. At an exchange, they’ll have all their soldiers and be on alert.”

“The phone is a burner,” Jordy yelled from his office. “Can’t get a location on it.”

“Fuck.” I felt like slamming my fist into something. The situation couldn’t get much worse. My woman was being held by a sicko. We only had one half of the ransom he wanted, and we had no way of knowing where she was being held.

“Lock that down, Marine,” Lucas scolded. “We’ll get her back.”

Grace’s last message haunted me— find me .

Winston reappeared. “LAPD doesn’t have a twenty on them yet.”

Failure was not an option. We had to find my woman. I marched back into Jordy’s lair—checking more video was all we had left.

“It’s quite a distance, but here’s another one,” Jordy said as he put another video up on the screen.

“Not her,” I said dejectedly. She wasn’t even close.

Less than a minute later, Jordy broke out laughing.

“What?”

“Check this out.” He put up a video showing a woman walking down the street with a baby in a front pack. “Ten to one it gets away and she loses it?”

“What are you talking about?”

He zoomed in. “The cat. Who the hell takes a cat on a walk?”

As he zoomed, I saw it—it wasn’t a baby in the carrier, but a fur baby, an orange tabby, a fucking cat.

Then, it hit me. “The cat tracker.”

Jordy spun around. “What? ”

“I changed the battery on one of Grace’s cat trackers and put it in her purse. If she didn’t take it out?—”

“What brand is it?”

I wracked my brain. “It was tacky. Kitty something, I think.”

His fingers flew across the keyboard. “HereKittyKitty, maybe?”

“It sounds right, but I can’t be sure.”

“I don’t suppose you know what the serial number is?”

“Not a clue.”

“Never mind. I’ll hack in and get it from her customer profile, but it’ll take some time.”

“She doesn’t have time,” I shot back.

“Hey, man, I get it. I’m going as fast as I can.”

Lucas’s voice came from behind me. “Terry, let him do his thing. You bellyaching will only slow him down.”

It sucked, but I left Jordy’s office, feeling completely helpless. I’d always hated the wait for a mission to start, but this was the most excruciating of all, because the stakes had never been higher. Grace needed me, and I was stuck sitting on my damned hands.