Page 13 of Secrets Beneath the Waves (Beach Read Thrillers #2)
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
Ramon peered at the house, sitting in his car parked across the street. Just a few doors down, far enough that they shouldn’t be seen but not so far that they couldn’t tell what was going on inside.
Vinyl siding on a single-story structure.
One in a row that all looked almost identical, thanks to the economical builder this subdivision hired to create all their floor plans and construct houses that were great starter homes but had no personality.
Most of the houses had cars in the driveways this late at night, but Drew and his buddy had pulled all the way into the garage.
“Anything could be going on inside that house,” Zeyla said. “She might be dead already.”
“Why don’t you call Maizie and see if she can find out what the police have so far on the car?”
“You think they are just going to give that information out?”
Ramon said, “I don’t think she’ll call them.”
“It would be quicker to find out what was going on if we just kicked the door down and busted in there, guns blazing.”
“That’s also the fastest way to get them to kill her before we can get her back.”
He didn’t like not knowing the young woman’s name who had been kidnapped. But then, if they hadn’t been following Drew and his friend at the time, they wouldn’t even know she had been taken. Or that this newest victim of these people represented another crime connected to this wider conspiracy.
Zeyla bounced one knee up and down. “What are we waiting for?”
“Either Drew gets on his phone and does something that lets us know what’s going to happen next, or they leave, and we follow them somewhere else.” Ramon pointed at the house. “You really think this is their base of operations? It reads so much more like a safe house or some kind of holding spot.”
“We can’t let them take her anywhere else.” Her knee didn’t stop moving. “We have to get her back.”
Ramon reached over to squeeze her hand.
Zeyla drew hers away. “Don’t touch me right now. I don’t need to talk about it.”
Because she understood exactly what that young woman was going through right now. Every terrifying second of it was probably etched on her memory.
“I know what it feels like.”
Zeyla glanced at him. “You can’t possibly.”
“You aren’t the only one who’s ever been held against their will. Yeah, not many people in the world have had organs stolen from them or been through exactly what you went through. But being trapped? Unable to escape? It happens to be something I can sympathize with.”
She cleared her throat. “What happened?”
Ramon shifted in his seat. “I could tell you half a dozen stories of things that happened when I was a kid, with my stepdad. Or how my sister was murdered. But this one happened when I was part of the cartel. We were meeting with a rival group, trying to hash out a territory dispute between our bosses. They blew the building right after we arrived, and when we ran out, they knocked us out and took us to their compound. It took three weeks for my boss to arrange to get us out of there. Pretty sure he paid some serious money, or product, for our lives.”
“Heartwarming.”
“I’m just saying, I understand what it’s like to be held captive”—in a dank basement, chained to a wall—“and not know if at any second you might be killed or tortured in some way.”
“Fine, you ‘get’ me. And I’m not special. Thanks.”
“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m trying to explain—badly, apparently—that it’s the reason why I will always do what I can to rescue someone.
Because I don’t want to think that someone else had to go through that, and feel those feelings, without me doing everything I could to get them out. That I should’ve done more.”
“Some of us don’t have the luxury of choosing their mission because we already have one.
” She glanced at him, then looked back at the house.
“My whole life is about taking down Dominatus .” She swallowed.
“It’s the only thing I can think of, finding ways to cause damage to them and to figure out every single player so that I can shut down the whole operation. ”
A light in the window illuminated one of the front rooms, and he watched a shadow pass behind the blinds covering the window.
“Maybe in a world where there isn’t this great evil trying to control everything, I would be able to become a private investigator and take cases rescuing people in situations like I experienced. Sounds like a nice dream.”
Ramon said, “It isn’t a dream. It’s what we do at Banbury Investigations.
” He didn’t know how else to explain it.
“Fighting against Dominatus means that we are rescuing those victims. It’s part of taking them down, that we try and save whoever we can in the process, all those innocents caught in the crossfire. ”
“Yeah, by kicking the door in and shooting those two guys who thought they could take that girl and get away with it.”
The bravado was back. The armor she used to surround herself, protecting her broken heart from all the pain in the world. He did the same thing, in a way, by focusing on the present and trying as best as he could to put the past behind him. But like her armor, it was only a facade.
Her cell phone chimed.
Zeyla unlocked the screen. “Drew is doing something. He’s on a web browser I’ve never heard of, uploading files.”
“Can you see what they are?”
“The files are images and text documents. There is a number and a label stating Intake photos . The text file is called Stats and Measurements.”
“And if you try to open one?”
Zeyla said, “Drew will see what I’m doing on his phone.”
“Any way to copy those files to Maizie?”
“I can try to do it when he’s not using his phone, but if he’s looking at the screen at all, he’ll see that someone is messing with his cell. It will be too obvious that something’s up.”
Ramon wanted to bounce his knee, but it would be entirely too obvious why he was doing that. Because he was trying to encourage Zeyla to treat this one kidnapping as part of the wider mission. Seeing one terrified girl as the best kind of reason to take down the whole operation.
But he could completely understand her need to kick the door in and rescue the victim.
The man he was now wanted to do exactly that.
But the guy who lived in gray areas, and didn’t always do the right thing, would be at least willing to sacrifice one life for a shot at doing so much good in the world.
Most of the time, he tended to decide where he was on that continuum in the heat of the moment.
Or he worked with Kenna often enough that he wasn’t the one calling the shots.
Being out on his own like this, the one looking out for Zeyla, put the whole thing in a different perspective. Giving it a weight it didn’t usually have.
Victory or failure, it was ultimately going to be up to him.
“He’s uploading ultrasound pictures. Gross.”
“What is the website?”
“It’s just a bunch of numbers and letters. Almost like a passcode, and something you would never be able to guess yourself.”
Ramon figured that meant it was part of the dark web. “Read it off to me, and I will have Maizie look into it.”
“Now he’s leaving a message.” Zeyla didn’t look up from the phone, so Ramon kept an eye on the house. She said, “First thing tomorrow, there will be a pickup.”
“So nothing is going to happen tonight.” And he had been right that this was a holding spot. A way to hide out until the first few hours of the police investigation had died down.
“But we’re staying out here all night, right?”
Ramon nodded. “We can check in with Maizie in the morning since she’s an hour ahead of us.”
“Anything happening in the house?”
He scanned all the windows. “Not right now.”
“He’s checking his socials, so there’s not much going on, apparently.” Zeyla’s tone dripped with sarcasm. “Oh, wait. He’s getting a message. Someone with an unregistered number, texting him. Great, now he knows that the police have his DNA on file from the severed hand.”
“Someone’s giving him a heads up?”
She read off their number. “Tell Maizie to run it.”
Ramon initiated a basic web search for the phone number and found out it was unregistered. “I’ll text it to her.”
Zeyla said, “They told him to fix it. He texted, I will .”
A few seconds later, the garage door rolled up. Ramon spotted another car next to the one the two men had brought. “It’s looks like he’s pulling out.”
The other car—the one not used for the kidnapping—bumped down onto the street.
“I’m not leaving that girl here to who knows what.” She nudged his arm. “I’ll get out and stay here. Keep an eye on the place to make sure nothing happens to her, and you follow him to wherever he’s going.”
“Do I have to tell you what’s at stake here if you save her?” Even calling the police because of some kind of disturbance didn’t necessarily mean the guy inside wouldn’t talk his way out of it, and whatever cops showed up might never even see the young woman.
“Do I have to tell you what’s at stake if I don’t?”
Ramon wasn’t sure they were going to agree, and they didn’t have time to hash it out. “Okay, I’m going after him before he gets out of sight.”
She pushed the door open, and Ramon turned off the dome light. Seconds later, the door clicked shut, and she was gone. He followed Drew out of the neighborhood in a different direction from the way he’d come in.
“What are you up to?” Ramon muttered to himself.
This was what Drew Chamberlain had decided to do when someone told him to fix the mess of the police having his DNA. The guy couldn’t go into police lockup and destroy evidence. If it was even there. The samples might still be at Pioneer Forensics Labs, or they could be in transit.
Given Drew’s MO and the way he liked to snatch young women from their cars, it was likely going to happen in transit.
A short distance from Pioneer Forensics, Drew ran a stop sign and plowed into the passenger side of a shiny black Mercedes-Benz.
Ramon jerked the wheel of his car to the side and got out, as if he was a private citizen intending to render aid.
Drew got out at the same time, so Ramon grabbed a ball cap from the duffel on the back seat of his car. Whatever this guy was about to do, hopefully, Ramon could stop it without the man seeing his face.
The firefighter pulled open the driver’s door of the Mercedes and pointed a gun in the man’s face.
A woman who had also stopped, screamed. She backed away so fast that she tripped and landed on her behind on the asphalt. Another car swerved to avoid her and wound up slamming into the back corner of Drew’s car. Traffic backed up, and someone honked their horn.
Ramon couldn’t hear whatever Drew was saying to the driver of the car. When he got close enough, he realized the man in the front seat was Dr. Swanson. Swanson looked at Ramon, terror in his gaze. A brown bag marked “Evidence” on his back seat.
Hopefully, the use of his name would add to the surprise and catch Drew off guard.
“Chamberlain, put your gun down now.”