Page 15 of Secrets Beneath the Waves (Beach Read Thrillers #2)
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
The back door to the house turned out to be a patio slider. Thankfully, it wasn’t locked, so Ramon eased it open slowly, praying it didn’t creak—and that there wasn’t a dog inside the house. He waited a couple of seconds, and nothing happened, so he stepped inside.
Zeyla entered right behind him, both of them with their weapons drawn.
Two against one were pretty good odds, as far as he was concerned.
The house had no furniture in the kitchen, but plenty of paper plates overflowed the trash, along with stacked pizza boxes.
These guys hadn’t only been using this place since the night before.
They had been here far longer. Perhaps even involved with this operation from the beginning.
Or at least long enough for the garbage to start to stink.
The low drone of the TV came from the next room, the flicker of the image on-screen flashing lights against the wall. Ramon stopped at the entry between the kitchen and living room and tucked against the wall out of sight. He peered around the corner.
“Clear.” He spoke the word low, barely audible.
Zeyla tapped his shoulder.
Ramon stepped into the living room, looking around. Maybe the guy was in the bathroom. Or doing something he shouldn’t be doing with the victim.
He opened the first door in the hallway, but the tiny linen closet was empty.
The third door had a padlock on it. Probably where they were holding the girl.
Ramon eased open the second door and went in, gun first. In the center of a room was a hospital bed, the kind probably used when a patient came home for end-of-life hospice care.
Beside it were several machines overlaid with a cover that suggested they were no longer required on a regular basis. Beside those was an ultrasound machine.
No kidnapper.
Ramon slid his gun into the holster on his hip. “I’ll pick the lock if you cover me.”
“I’d feel better if I knew where this guy was.” She glanced in both directions down the hallway. “And if I thought this house wasn’t going to blow up any second now.”
But was Miguel anywhere near this? Or involved?
Zeyla stood guard while he drew his lock-picking kit from his pocket. If the kidnapper was inside the room, then it wouldn’t have been padlocked. It was more likely that he had seen them coming and chosen to hide rather than face them down.
Maybe he had even run.
Ramon worked the pick around until the padlock keyhole clicked and the arm sprung free. He twisted the handle and eased the door open, checking all angles with his gun drawn before he even stepped inside. But the room was empty except for a single female, naked and huddled in the corner.
He turned back to Zeyla. “I need to get the blanket from the other room.”
Ramon didn’t waste any time stripping it from the bed. Halfway back to the door of the medical room, a dark figure rushed past the opening. Zeyla’s gun went off, and he heard her and the man crash to the ground.
When he stepped out of the bedroom with his gun aimed at the other man, he didn’t squeeze the trigger.
On the floor, the kidnapper had Zeyla’s gun pointed at the underside of her throat.
The second Ramon put a bullet in this man, that gun was going to go off, and another round would enter her throat and exit through the top of her head.
“Let her go. It’s over.” He kept his aim on the man, but there was nothing he could do while the guy was so close to shooting her. He couldn’t even pistol-whip the man without risk.
Far too much risk.
Kenna wanted to know her sister, and if tonight cost Zeyla her life, that wasn’t going to happen. Ever.
Zeyla pushed against the man, dislodging the gun from the underside of her chin. Before he could squeeze his trigger, she got the gun around and pointed at the man’s chest. It went off.
The man’s body jerked, and he slumped to the side.
Zeyla rolled him off her onto the floor, where he lay, leaking blood on the fake wood planks.
Ramon held up one hand, and she clasped it, so he pulled her to her feet. “You good?”
She let out a long breath, pulling herself together. The second he noticed she had managed to do it, Ramon went to the room and approached the girl slowly. She couldn’t be more than a high school kid.
“It’s okay,” he said softly and gently. Approaching her with the need to get her out of here but knowing he couldn’t rush it. “I’m not going to hurt you, and neither is my friend.” He crouched in front of her. “Let’s get this blanket around you so you can get out of here and go home.”
She shifted, sucking in a breath and lifting her head. Wide eyes, with a bruise high on her cheekbone. Her blonde hair fell beneath her shoulders, mussed and dirty.
Ramon wrapped the blanket around her as best he could and lifted her in his arms. Zeyla finished adjusting the material to cover her, and they headed for the door.
Halfway down the hallway, the front door banged open, and more than one person rushed in. “Spokane PD!”
“Put your weapons down and get your hands up!”
Zeyla lifted her hands, the pistol still in one but without her finger on the trigger.
Ramon said, “This girl needs an ambulance. And I’m not putting her down.”
The two detectives lowered their weapons.
In business suits and shiny shoes, they were both at least fifty.
One had shaved his head a long time ago, and the other was completely gray.
If they weren’t involved with the Count of Shadows, that meant they might have been around Spokane long enough to have learned something about what was going on.
If there was time, Ramon wanted to pick their brains about this case they were working.
The detective to the left lowered his gun but didn’t put it away. “I want both of you to hand over your weapons until we’re done talking.”
The other detective approached Zeyla.
Before she could back up, Ramon said to her, “Hand it over.”
Zeyla stiffened but turned the gun so the barrel pointed down and allowed the detective to take it from her.
Ramon said, “Give him mine. It’s in my holster.”
She took it from his belt and did the same thing.
Ramon nodded to the girl in his arms. “This young lady needs an ambulance.”
Isabella hadn’t said anything or even lifted her head since he’d picked her up. She huddled against him now with her face tucked into his shirt.
The other detective lifted his chin. “I’ll call it in.”
Zeyla said, “There’s a dead guy in the hallway. He’s the one who kidnapped her in the first place.” He could tell she almost added You’re welcome on the end of that, but thankfully, she held her tongue.
Ramon followed one of the detectives and Zeyla to the door, where they stepped outside.
The detective said, “Why don’t you set her down?”
Ramon heard the girl’s sharp intake of breath and shook his head. “I’m good. At least until the ambulance gets here.”
Zeyla turned on the front walk, her hands on her hips. “Do you know who she is?” She jerked her chin in the direction of the girl. “Because we can find out how to get her parents here if you don’t. Or they can meet us at the hospital.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” The detective eyed them both with more than a small amount of suspicion.
Ramon wasn’t exactly unaccustomed to being looked at that way. But that didn’t mean he had to like it.
The other detective stepped out of the house. “I called in and asked for the medical examiner and crime scene investigators. An ambulance will be here in a second. They were just around the corner, wrapping something up.”
Ramon could already hear the sirens, and a second later, the ambulance pulled onto the street.
The detective started to say something, but Ramon stepped off the concrete porch onto the path and passed Zeyla on the way to the curb. As soon as the ambulance pulled up, the EMTs got out, and he walked with them to the back door of the vehicle.
He quietly explained her state of dress and what had happened to her.
“We can take it from here. Just set her down.” The EMT had dark brown hair pulled back into a bun. She patted the gurney. “Nice and easy.”
Ramon did as she instructed. The girl clasped a handful of his shirt. He dipped his head and looked in her eyes. “Everything is going to be okay now. You’re safe.”
The EMT touched her shoulder with a gloved hand. “Let’s get you taken care of.”
The girl’s fingers let go of his shirt, and he stepped back, turning to find one of the detectives immediately in front of him.
“You know her?” The detective nodded in the direction of the ambulance.
Ramon shook his head. “I’ve never met her in my life. What’s her name?”
Maizie had told him, but right now, he didn’t need them to know that. Hopefully, that would be enough to convince the detective that he wasn’t mixed up in this somehow. Apart from being the one who’d rescued the girl.
“Her name is Bella Sanchez.” The detective held his gaze with a steady stare.
“Who are these guys?”
“How about you tell me how you knew where to find her when she’s only been missing a matter of hours? That seems like a more pertinent question right now.”
“I’m a private investigator, and I’ve been on this case barely three days. How long have you been working it, and you haven’t been able to stop these young women from being taken?”
The detective didn’t back down. “That’s the kind of accusation that will get you put in a jail cell overnight. Just until we make sure that everything you say is true, and all your credentials are intact.”
Okay, so that might cause him some problems unless Maizie could do some magic before they ran his private investigator’s license.
Maybe he shouldn’t have told them that he was a licensed investigator.
But the fact was that one of the men who had kidnapped this girl was now in custody, and the other was dead.
Which meant plenty of forensic evidence, and if they could get Drew to flip, they would also have testimony that could lead them to the suspect.
“You wouldn’t know where she was if it wasn’t for us,” he pointed out. “And Bella would still be in that house, naked and scared out of her mind.”
“That’s why we’re going to talk about everything.”
Ramon glanced at Zeyla, who was talking to the other detective.
He had no clue what she was saying. Hopefully, she was handling the conversation better than he was handling this one.
“I’m happy to tell you whatever you need to know.
We’ve been working with Pioneer Forensics, and I believe you’ve been given every report that they produced from what we gave them. ”
“I’ll be sure to follow up on that.”
Ramon said, “You do that. Because there’s a firefighter in police custody who is one of this girl’s kidnappers, and he should be able to tell you even more than I can.”
Not for the first time, he hoped that justice would be done in a situation where otherwise it might not be. After all, things hadn’t been going on for this long without someone in the police department covering up evidence or testimony.
“Maybe he can even take you to who he was working for when he took her.”
But Ramon still wasn’t going to leave it alone, even when the police had everything they needed to solve the case.
He was also going to do everything he could to ensure that justice was done.