A Heart's War (The Broken Men Chronicles Book 5) (17 page)

Paxton’s home had once again been designated as our command post.  The police cruisers were gone and only Shane, Dalton, Cade, Brycen and myself remained.  Kayla, Savannah, Mom, and Dad had all gone to meet with Paxton and Alissa at the hospital to be with Jasper.

The boy had a few minor scratches and bruises, but I feared for the psychological repercussions.  PTSD could wreak havoc on an adult, and I didn’t even want to fathom what it could do to a child.  Suffice to say, when everything blew over, when Morgan was in my arms again, and Rick where he should have been all of this time, which is six feet under, I’d be keeping a close watch on my nephew.  This was my fault.  I’d shoulder the blame, but I’d put things right again, or die trying.

Congregated around Paxton’s dining room table, Brycen blurts out, “I think I might be on to something.”

Shane spoke my thoughts aloud.  “I hope so.”

At this point, I was well on my way to wearing out the room’s hardwood flooring with my pacing.  Forty-five minutes earlier, when he’d evidently seen we’d gotten to Jasper, Rick began broadcasting a live feed of Morgan.

I damn well nearly lost my mind at what I saw.

Bound, gagged, and if the camera was recording anything other than a black and white coloring, I’d say she was pale.  Her makeup had run down her face, her eyes were puffy from tears, undoubtedly, but despite this, it was the split in her lip, not to mention the gash on her cheek that sent my emotions into a tailspin.  I wanted blood.  What was worse, I wanted to end every single motherfucker out there who was viewing this shit.  The sentiment only grew as the number of views climbed at a rapid rate.

“Gotcha!”  Brycen turns toward all of us after an hour of tapping away furiously at his laptop.

“Tell me you’ve got a location.”  I wasn’t above begging at this point.

“Not quite, but I’ve managed to trace the camera’s IP address.  Bastard didn’t even have the fucking thing encrypted,” Brycen explained.  Then his laptop chimed.  “What the-?”  The man chuckled.  Here I am, in the fight of my life, no knowledge of how to find my woman, and he’s busy laughing!

“So help me God, Bryce, but-” I started to say.

“Guys, I got our Little Helper on task, or so it seems.”

After a minute of tapping away at his keyboard, Brycen looked at me. “It’s Morgan.  She’s got a lead on Morgan.”

It took another twenty minutes of Brycen working with his new cohort to triangulate the camera’s signal.

I ran my hands through my hair, pulling at the tresses.  “What’s taking so long?”  I knew what it was since Brycen mentioned that despite the no encryption thingy, the camera’s signals were being pinged off of dummy towers, or something like that.  Sue me for not knowing the damn lingo, but I trusted the man to find my woman.

My phone rang.

“Morgan?”  I put the phone on speaker.

“Find me yet?”

“Listen, you sick sonofabitch-”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk…” Rick’s voice lost all humor.  “No,
you
listen!  If you want her back, you’re going to do as I ask, Lowell.”  The coppery flavor of blood came as I bit down on my lip too hard, waiting for him to continue.  “If you didn’t want me to know you found me, you should have told your boy to beef up his system.  Tell everyone to back off, Lowell, or you’ll be losing another team.  I’ll call in an hour with a meetup.”  The line went dead.

Brycen motioned for me to look at his screen.  I began to read.

YTh@tHussy:
Stop what ur doing

V@p0r:
?

YTh@tHussy:
Seconds away from…

V@p0r:
?

V@p0r:
Away from what?

YTh@tHussy:
GOT IT!

“Fuck!” Brycen slammed a fist on the tabletop. At this point, everyone was hovering over the man’s shoulders.  Brycen’s feed to the video had gone dark.  The only thing that seemed to be working was his chat screen.

V@p0r:
Everything’s gone black.

Brycen gripped his hair and groaned.  “I can’t believe I got made.”  Everyone waited for a response and got nothing, so Brycen began to type into the chat screen.

             
V@p0r:
Talk 2 me Huss

YTh@tHussy:
lol had to shut you down.

“
She
shut you down?” Dalton seemed surprised at this.  “Fuck, man, did you have to pick today for your skills to be lacking?”

I couldn’t have agreed more with my friend’s statement.

YTh@tHussy:
Hold on.  1 sec.

V@por:
Don’t have that.  Why’d you do that?

YTh@tHussy:
Richlands hwy, lot 5

Shane rattled off the address over his radio, demanding that cars be sent to check things out, without letting on that they were in the area, and get back to him.

YTh@tHussy:
HDW dirty

“What the fuck does that mean?” Dalton asked.

“It means I’ve been compromised,” Brycen said through gritted teeth.

             
YTh@tHussy:
Found tracer app.  He’s tracking your efforts.  Whole system is rigged to ping him when his IPs are mapped.  Should have known to go through back door by now.

“How was I supposed to know that we were up against a maniac with computer skills?  Didn’t you say the man was a demolitions expert?”  Brycen looked at me.

I’m thinking there’s a lot more to Rick I never knew.
  All I did was nod.

             
YTh@tHussy:
Removed tracer.  Built up walls.  U should b good.

“How the fuck did she get in?” Brycen asked himself, typing the inquiry.

And that’s when Brycen’s laptop went dark entirely.  As in nothing to display.  No power.  Zilch!  Nada!  And my world fell from beneath me.

Brycen immediately began to hit buttons in hopes to power up again when Shane’s phone rang.  “If she fucked up my system, I swear,” he growled.  But it hadn’t been the case.  The damn thing fired up like it should and loaded just fine.  “Huh!”

“Detective Peters.”  The man’s eyebrows rose to his hairline as he pulled his phone from his ears, swiped his finger over the screen, then said, “You’re on.”

The voice was distorted to be unrecognizable, but the softness to the words, the way this person spoke, had me convinced that this was a woman, never mind the screen name.

“V@por?”

“Who’s this?” Brycen asked.

There came a soft, borderline shy laugh.  “I shut you down and you’ve already forgotten about me?  I must not be that good.”

My patience for formalities and wit was long gone.  “Look, whoever you are, my fiancée is the woman in that feed.  Tell me you can get Brycen’s shit up and running again.”  Everyone’s heads spun to look my way, arched brows questioning that one word I had uttered without a second thought.  Problem was, she wasn’t officially my fiancée as of yet.  Fuck, she might never be if we didn’t get to her back soon.  Why hadn’t I listened to my brother and put a ring on it?

“I know who you are, Lowell,” this mystery person said.  “I know what you’ve done.  What’s been done to you.  I even know about the scar you have on your left ass cheek because of a BB gun incident when you were twelve.”

“What the fuck?” came as a whisper while a few of the others chuckled.

“I shut Brycen down out of necessity,” Mystery Helper continued.  “This Rick guy is bating you, Lowell, and your guy Brycen walked right into his trap.  If you don’t listen up, Morgan’s as good as dead once he’s moved her.”

“She’s on the move?”

“No, but she’s about to be if you don’t pull your heads out of your asses.”

I wish I could say I was confident in this
White Hat Hussy
person’s assessment of things, but I refused to take any chances and had Shane pull his men back by two blocks, keeping them in wait, but far enough away for Rick to think that we were following his orders.  I did agree with our new cohort, though.  It was time to pull our heads out of our asses and treat Rick as if he were a complex mission, one we covered every bases on.  It was clear that thinking of him working alone had us underestimating his capabilities.  The man I used to know, or maybe I never did, had changed.

After Brycen’s system had failed, he opted to err on the side of caution and work with Hussy, as we’d dubbed her, to find some sort of resolution on getting Morgan back.  Suffice to say, I doubted that there was one without giving myself up.

True to his word, Rick contacted me exactly an hour after his last call.  “I see that you’ve listened.”  The man chuckled.  “I thought the law didn’t bargain with terrorists.”

I growled but quickly forced my ire back.  I had to stay rational…in control.  “Is that what you are, Rick?”

“Some would call me a peace maker, brother.”

“You’re no brother of mine.”  Shane urged me to get on with the conversation.

“You wound me, Theo.”

“What do you want, Rick?”

“Have you ever wondered why your country does what it does?”  I hadn’t missed his
your
.  And apparently neither had Dalton as he mouthed “fucking traitor,” all the while wringing his hands as he leaned onto the table, listening to the conversation.  “The United States of America, the land of the brave, the proud, the free!”  Fuck, did this man have a few screws loose.  Now why hadn’t I seen any of this before?  “It’s amazing the bullshit they feed their denizens.  I mean, fight for good ol’ Uncle Sam.  Be the pride and joy of God, man, and country!  Ha!  Did you not stop to think that maybe you were the terrorists?”

Dalton popped his knuckles, his rage starting to boil over as mine was about to be unleashed if he didn’t get to the point.

“You think you’re all perfect.  Every single raping and murdering one of you.”  Rick snorts his disgust.  “You pillage; you steal-”

I exploded.  “Don’t act all high and mighty about the sins of war, Donnelly.  You were there with us.  You’re just as guilty of what you accuse.  Now get to the fucking point, asshole!”

“You kiss your mother with that mouth?  Or better yet, our sweet Morgan?  You know I had her first, right?”  A pain-filled moan escaped me before I could snuff it out.  “She’s such a tiny little thing.  It’s no wonder so many want her, and who am I to deny them?”

What the fuck is he talking about? 
“Rick, so help me God-”

“Forget Him, Lowell, He can’t get you out of this.  Now, let’s get down to business, since clearly you’ve lost your sense of fun over the years.” 
And you’ve lost your mind, buddy.
  “You’re going to leave your boys behind, get in a car, and drive.  You’ve got an hour to get to the address I’m about to text you.  A minute late, and well…” Rick’s voice dropped a few octaves.  “Let’s just say I’d hate to be Morgan.  She’s gotten mouthy over the years, and I’m sure you know as well as I do that that mouth of hers can be lethal.  It would be a shame to do away with that tongue considering I have a few clients that prefer that to…well, let’s just leave it to your imagination shall we?”

The contents of my stomach began to churn.  “I want a trade,” I uttered without a thought.  “Her for me.”

Everyone’s gaze was on me; heads shaking in refusal with my offer.

Rick’s laugh was maniacal.  “That’s very valiant of you, Theo, but it doesn’t work like that.”

“The hell it doesn’t.  This is between you and me.”  I was becoming desperate here.  “Just let her go.  You know you don’t need her.”

“I never thought I’d see the day Sergeant Theodore Lowell would beg,” the man said, then paused and I heard my phone chime.  “The text is sent.  An hour, Lowell, or you’ll be collecting pieces of her for the next year by the time I’m done with her.  Tick-tock!”

“Rick!” But all I got was a muffled scream of panic right before the line went dead.

My frustration came out in the form of a battle cry.  If I didn’t need my cell, I’d have smashed it against the wall by now.

Shane’s hand met my chest as soon as I turned for the door.  “You can’t go it alone, man.”

“Watch me,” I growled.  “You have no idea what this fucker is capable of, Shane.”

“Let me at least go with you,” Dalton pitched in.

As much as I knew it was stupid to go on my own, I wasn’t willing to risk Morgan’s life.  I could barely deal with the terror-filled scream I’d just heard.  There’s no way I could deal with what could happen between now and the time I reached her, not to mention if I didn’t reach her in time, or if I brought company along and Rick found out.

“You know as well as I do you’ll need backup.”  Dalton stood in my face, having pushed Shane back.  “It’s suicide-”

“It might be, but at least I’ll know that she’ll be free when I go,” I stated.

“No, son.” 
Dad.
  I hadn’t realized that he was back from the hospital.  The man pushed through the group of men surrounding me.

“Dad, I’ve got to go.”

“If you think I’m letting you out of this house only to lose you when your mother and I have just got you back, think again.”  The desperation in his eyes coincided with his tone.  “We’ve got unfinished business, you and I.  I don’t know about you, but I sure as hell would like to see things through.”

I gave him a curt nod.  “Fine. Dalton, pack up all the fire power we’ve got, then get in the truck.  The rest of you are staying put.  We’ll keep a line of communication open the entire time, but that’s as much as I’m allowing. This is my war.”  Dad’s posture relaxed a little.  “Tell Mom I love her.  I’ll be back.”

Before I knew it, my father’s arms were wrapped around my shoulders, pulling me in.  “I’m holding you to that.  Now go show that sonofabitch that no one fucks with us Lowell’s.”

It turns out the address Rick texted me belonged to a shipping and storage yard in Newport.  Dalton and I were loaded, speeding down the interstate when his phone chimed with a text he promptly opened, then showed me.

“How the hell does she get this stuff?” I asked no one in particular as I looked at an overhead satellite image of the location we were heading toward.

“It’s best that you don’t ask,” I heard Hussy’s mechanical voice through my phone, which was set to hands-free.

“Tell me again how you’re in this mess with us?” Dalton asked.

“Let’s just say I have a lot of time on my hands.”

Dalton chuckled.  “You do know that most people wouldn’t hack into shit to keep busy, right?  We hook up with friends, have a few drinks, shoot a game of pool or something.”

“I’m not most people, Kip, and for what it’s worth, I don’t have that luxury.”  Call me crazy, but I picked up a certain note of envy in her tone.

“Why?  You ugly?”

My head snapped in Dalton’s direction.  “What the fuck, man?”

“What?”

Still, this Hussy character didn’t seem aggrieved by my friend’s comment.  “I wouldn’t say that.”

“Then why would anyone choose a computer over-?”

“You wouldn’t understand.  I have my reasons, okay?”  Hussy’s voice grew softer.  “I count a total of fifteen cameras all over this yard, Lowell.”

Thank you, baby Jesus!
  We were back to the task at hand.  Not that I really minded the distraction my friend and our virtual assistant provided, but what with the lack of time, we needed to make sure we knew what the hell we were heading into.

“They’re all on some kind of loop.  I can tell you that Rick’s hacked into the system.  He’s definitely watching.”

“Any activity over at our initial location?” I asked.

Shane came on the line.  “There’s nothing going on.  I think we were duped, bro.  I wish I could tell you for sure, but our one guy got caught by one of the neighbors as he peeked through the window and called it in.”

And this is why I wanted to do this alone.
  “Seriously?  You can’t get your men to do things right?”

Shane chuckled.  “Hey, I work with them, I don’t train them, T.”

“Alright, Huss,” Dalton said, “wave that magic mouse of yours around – what else you got for us?”

“I like you, Kip.”  She laughed.  “You’ll be interested to know that the place seems to be somewhat deserted right now.  I’ve got eyes on Warehouse 10, and according to…” Hussy’s voice trailed off.

“What?” I urged her.  “What’s-?”

“Fuck!”

“Huss, talk to me,” I ordered.

“You’ll have company.”

“Details,” Dalton demanded as Shane said, “I’m sending some guys in.”

“No!”  I’m not sure who was loudest, but Dalton, Hussy, and I spoke up before Hussy added, “Let me work!  I know how this Rick guy works.  I’ve been inside his system all night now and I can guarantee you that he’ll know the minute you set someone else on his tail.  He knew about the cops right away.”

“So you’re saying there might be a snitch on the inside?” I asked.

“That, or he’s tapping into the radio feeds,” she said.  “I’ve got access to his phone records and I’m running a biometric search for keywords based on what information we have on him.”

“What about his email?” I heard Brycen ask.

“Thanks, Captain Obvious, but I’ve already tackled that route.  If it were anywhere on his computer, I would have found it by now, and you would know.  I’m not an idiot.”

Brycen grumbled.  “No need to get pissy.”

Dalton laughed at this.

I groaned.  “Huss, I need the details on everyone, like yesterday.”

“Coming up.”

Within minutes, Dalton’s phone went crazy with alerts.  “Shit, T, you’re not going to like this.”

“Give it to me,” I told him.

“Antonio Bandini, also known as the owner to the yard we’re heading to.”

“Also known as an alleged terrorist and human trafficker with ties to the Middle East,” I added.  “We’ve met briefly before on one of my ops.  Is there more?”

“The other guy appears to be muscle according to his DMV shot,” Dalton states.  “Name is Atal Khalil, also known as-”

“Shanks,” Shane provided through my phone.

“Yeah, how’d you know?” Dalton asked.

“I’ve had my fair share of run-ins with that idiot.”  Shane chuckled.  “He’s got enough muscle to take a few men down at once, but for all the brawn, he lacks the brain power to go with it.  I’ll tell you one thing, though, if he gets anywhere near Morgan with a knife-”

Fuck me, but she didn’t need a souvenir from that sadist any more than I ever deserved one from my capture.  “He’ll be wishing he was never born,” I growled.  “We’re ten minutes out.  Hussy, anything else I need to know?”  Dalton got out of his seat and hunkered down into the floorboards in an effort to remain inconspicuous.

“It’s all I’ve got for you right now.  We don’t have the luxury of time, so I’m sorry, but if I find anything more, I’ll feed it your way.”

“Alright.”  I turned right, onto the Coastal Storage yard drive.  “I’m a few minutes out from Warehouse 10.  I’m going in silent.”

“Don’t have to,” Dalton said as he rustled into the backpack he had with him and pulled out a tiny black box with a silver latch and grinned.  “I’ve been itching for a good reason to use this shit.  Haven’t had a mission where I needed to until now.” He deposited one of the items in my hand and shoved another one into his right ear.  “Com unit,” he explained.  “Hussy, you think you can tap into this system since you’ve put our man Brycen out of commission?”  Brycen muttered a few choice words.

“Give me the code and we’ll be up and running in seconds.”  Dalton rattled off a series of numbers intermingled with letters.  “We’re live,” she said.  “Go ahead and hang up, you’ll be able to talk to every one of us.”

Disconnecting the call, I hurried to shove the unit in my ear with only fifteen minutes to go on my hour timeline, noticing that it’s as if I had nothing in there at all.  “We all good?”

“All good, Mr. T.”  I groaned as Hussy giggled.  Dalton’s chuckle was halted by a, “You too, Kip.”

The man rolled his eyes at me.  “I wish she wouldn’t call me that.”

“I heard that!”

I rolled the truck to a stop by the warehouse, thankful of the load of crates that would work to conceal Dalton’s exit, and at the same time, allow me to get out facing the entryway to my final destination.  “It’s go time.”