So he didn’t.
Enter me, posing as a madam of sorts on the buy for new talent. It had taken weeks and lots of work to build my false reputation as a viable buyer. Now that was done, I was to meet the contact tonight and he would take me to where they held their stock of available humans. I would confirm the girl was there, make the deal and skedaddle then Hawk and the boys would swoop in and recover the girl.
Easy.
I hoped.
“Visual. Front. Street. Mercedes parking three cars down from door,” Mo grunted into his microphone.
“Go time,” Hawk growled.
I sucked in a breath then lifted my glass to take a sip. My eyes slid back down the bar to the mirror where I could see Creed. His eyes were on me, intent, burning into my back.
He jerked up his chin.
I tipped my lips up slightly.
His eyes went to the door.
I put my glass to the bar and discreetly plucked the bud out of my ear, reached in my cleavage and grabbed my microphone, ripping it and the tape off and away.
I set them beside me on the bar and instantly, a waitress Hawk primed slid by, hand out. She covered the apparatus, walked behind me and it was gone.
I put my fingers to the slim, gold watch at my wrist, flipped a tiny switch on the side and the microphone engaged. Hawk had given me that watch. It had a microphone and GPS.
They’d pat me down, definitely. I had to go in unwired, no communications but I had Creed as a tail and the watch Hawk gave me. They could hear what was happening with me and they would know where I was at all times. I could not hear what they were up to nor know where they were.
I impatiently started to tap the toe of the foot hanging from my crossed leg and studied the watch.
Two minutes later, I heard, “Collette?”
My head turned and my eyes hit the man who acted as a middle man to sell humans.
Motherfucker.
I buried my sneer, smiled a small smile and extended my hand.
It was go time.
* * * * *
The minute I hit the warehouse, I knew I was fucked.
This was because I was meeting the principals and amongst them was Nick Fucking Sebring.
Shit, shit,
fuck.
His eyes came to me and they widened momentarily as I braced, mentally preparing to run and about to scan the environs for a makeshift weapon or cover I could use until I could get my lips to my watch and alert Creed and Hawk to the situation.
But as I thought this, I saw his face go blank. He didn’t call attention to me and stared at me like he’d never met me before when he had, numerous times. I’d been working for Knight for years and Nick used to work for him too so our paths had crossed.
Fuck, how had Creed and I not clocked this?
Fuck,
fuck.
Creed said Nick didn’t keep good company but seriously, these were nasty motherfuckers and we’d been all over his ass, Creed for over a month.
Seriously. How had we not clocked this?
“I take it you’re Collette?” one of the other dudes said to me on his approach.
I took a step back, surveying him, cold shoulder. There was no rule saying I had to be a friendly flesh peddler. I also did a quick head count. With the middle man, the leader of the gang who was approaching and Nick, there were three other men.
Too many.
Fuck.
When I didn’t offer mine, he dropped his hand, my mind scrambled for some code to tell Creed and Hawk there was a possibility I’d be made and my eyes went to Nick.
“How many people need to be here for us to make this deal?” I asked, giving Creed and Hawk the information that the bad guys were fully staffed.
“That gentleman is a new recruit, he’s in training,” the dude answered and my eyes cut to him.
“If you were using this transaction for training purposes, I should have been informed.”
“From the background check we did on you, you’re aware we’re exceedingly cautious. We’ve done an equally exhaustive check on him. You have nothing to be concerned about,” he replied.
“I’m exceedingly cautious as well and I don’t like surprises,” I fired back.
He inclined his head. “That’s understandable. Would you like to terminate now?”
Shit, shit,
fuck.
If I didn’t see those girls, Hawk’s entire operation was a bust or he had to follow through, maybe not get his girl but definitely get a lot of shit from the Feds and possibly fuck
their
operation.
I decided to call his bluff, held his eyes, lifted my chin slightly in an affirmative and replied, “Thank you for your time.”
I turned, again lifted my chin to the middle man and began to make my departure, hoping like all fuck they needed a buyer and bad. I didn’t know the market for human trafficking. It could be a buyer’s market. If my luck was bad, it could be a seller’s.
“Collette,” he called.
Thank God.
I turned and leveled my eyes on him.
“Would you be more comfortable if Mr. Cardinal wasn’t here?” he asked, indicating Nick.
Mr. Cardinal?
What the fuck?
“Or,” the man went on, “would you be more comfortable, considering we’re aware that Mr. Cardinal is a confidential informant for the FBI, that we dispatch him in your presence rather than after our deal is done as we’d planned to do?”
Terrific.
My eyes moved to Nick who had gone pale, which probably partially had to do with his obviously having been made but mostly it had to do with the man standing behind him with a gun held to the back of his head.
Shit.
Shit.
Fuck!
God, please, please, God, let Creed and Hawk have heard that in the microphone.
“I’m not fond of mess,” I told the man.
He inclined his head again. “Then we’ll take him away while we see to business.”
To that, hurriedly but trying not to sound hurried, I stated, “I’m also not fond of something happening I can’t see nor being involved even remotely in felonies that have nothing to do with me. I have a business. I’m seeing to business. We conduct our business, we’re done. I don’t want to be dragged into your mess. When I’m not here, do what you wish. That’s
your
business but I’ll ask you to put a hold on it while we complete our transaction.”
He inclined his head yet again and that was beginning to grate on my nerves but I couldn’t concentrate on that.
I had to buy Nick time and I had to hope that first, Hawk, Creed and the boys were adjusting the operation not only to recover the girl but to extract Nick. And second, that Nick was somehow wired so whoever he was working with knew he was in jeopardy because he sure as fuck needed the cavalry.
“So you’d like him to witness the transaction?” the man asked and I arched my brows.
“I’d like to stop talking about your problems, complete the transaction and be on my way,” I answered.
“As you wish,” he muttered and his whole gentlemanly act when selling humans made my gut clench which was no good since it was already in knots because this shit was fucked. There were more of them than I expected, I had no weapon and I had no way to communicate to Nick that I would have his back.
Instead, I gave him a blank look as I followed the head honcho speaker of the group deeper into the warehouse.
“It’s surprising you’d come here alone, Collette,” the man remarked as we walked and I felt the others following us.
“Perhaps you can also refrain from commenting on how I conduct my business,” I suggested, not liking the darkness we were moving into.
“A small woman like you, all heels and hair, it seems foolhardy to me,” he noted.
This was not good.
“What I’ve learned is foolhardy is men who see all heels, hair and stature, make assumptions and thus underestimate the situation,” I retorted.
He was silent a moment as he led me into the shadows before he muttered, “Indeed.” Then, “You weren’t followed, no one at your back, patted down and no weapon. I think you can understand how assumptions could be made.”
There it was. Creed, again, genius. He wasn’t made but I knew he was out there.
“What I understand,” I returned, “is that it would be bad business to whack a potential good customer.”
There was a smile in his voice when he repeated his, “Indeed.”
Asshole.
He stopped, so I stopped as did everyone else.
“Flashlight,” he ordered and I saw movement then I saw the beam hitting a massive, wooden, freight crate.
God, they had them in a crate.
A fucking
crate.
How did people like this sleep at night? How did they stop themselves from jumping off bridges? How did they not spontaneously combust with guilt and shame?
The middle man I met at the bar scurried forward, lifted the latch and swung the big door open. The seller moved in and trained his flashlight inside.
I got as close to him as I could stomach and looked. I clocked her immediately. I also clocked there were at least two dozen of them. They were barely clothed, clearly not allowed to bathe, had nothing but a few ragged blankets to make that crate even slightly comfortable and all appeared underfed.
They looked beyond miserable. They looked lost, terrified out of their minds and totally beaten.
Blood roared in my ears and it took everything I had to check it and carry out the game.
Therefore, I uttered the code words that would mean the team should proceed with the extraction. “I’ll take two. That one, right side, third in and the one at the back in the middle. The others are too skinny.”
I barely got out the word “skinny” when an alarm sounded and I saw flashing red lights throughout the warehouse. A nanosecond later, I was suddenly blinded when all the lights in the warehouse were switched on, bright and overpowering.
Fuck, shit, fuck.
Too soon. They wouldn’t breach now. Not until I was clear. No way. No fucking way.
Something was wrong.
I braced on an aching foot in order to whirl and run but was hooked by the seller with an arm around my waist. I heard the door to the crate swing shut, pinning in the girls even as I saw Nick turn on the man who had a gun on him and grab the gun.
They started grappling as the seller tugged me back and another henchman turned on Nick and the man he was struggling with and opened fire.
Shit, fuck, shit, fucking fuck, fuck,
fuck!
I whirled in my captor’s arm, hand up, and clawed his neck. He let out a howl of pain, his arm loosened, I lifted a knee high, suddenly thankful for my short skirt that gave me range of motion, and caught him sharp in the gonads. He yowled, I tore free and fucking
ran.
In these bare seconds, all hell had broken loose in the warehouse. Clearly, there were more bad guys lurking and it was equally clear an operation had been launched to seize the warehouse. There was gunfire coming from everywhere, shouts, boots hitting the concrete floors, pandemonium.
The man Nick had been grappling with was down and bleeding from a wound in his chest.
Nick had disappeared.
Not surprising he didn’t take my back. He might for some reason be acting as a CI to the Feds but he’d always been all about himself.
But I was fucked. I had no weapon. There were operatives in play who may or may not know I was a plant. And I had to find my way out of this warehouse so I could have the future I’d waited sixteen years for.
So I ran, using crates for cover and checking that the coast was clear before making my way to the next one, doing this making a mental note actually to add the line in my contract doubling my hourly rate if I had to wear heels.
This and escape were my thoughts when I was caught around the chest and hauled back into a man’s body.
Fuck.
Before I could begin to execute maneuvers to get free, my heart stopped beating, my stomach plummeted and my world rocked when Creed appeared in front of me, gun raised just as I felt the muzzle of a gun against my temple.
Fuck!
One second after that, Creed’s gun discharged, the arm around my chest loosened and the gun at my head went away as the man behind me shouted in pain when the bullet ripped through his thigh.
One second after that, I cleared him and started running to Creed.
And one second after that, my world exploded.
This was because two shots were fired not from the man Creed brought down but from another one who hit our scene from behind. They whizzed by me and hit Creed. Blood sprayed in a hideous cloud from his neck and his chest jerked back before he fell back, landing heavy without even attempting to break his fall.
“
No!
” I shrieked, still running toward him.
More bullets flew and I dropped to the side of my hip, sliding toward Creed like I was stealing a base. I yanked the gun out of his motionless hand, twisted, lifted, aimed and fired two kill shots. One directly in the face of the man who shot Creed, one through the throat of the man who grabbed me and was on the ground, recovering and aiming his weapon at me.
Two lives extinguished, two more lives taken by me.
I didn’t give it a thought.
I turned, pulled myself up on my knees, dropped the gun with a clatter and bent over Creed.
My Creed. My beautiful, beautiful Creed, on his back, eyes closed, not breathing, blood pooling from the wound in his neck.
I covered the wound, put pressure on and shouted, my voice a piercing screech, “
Man down! Man down! Man down!
”
I stopped screaming and bent over Creed, my face in his face, my hand not engaged in putting pressure on his neck running over his chest, searching for another wound as my heart pounded in my chest, my pulse beating so hard in my neck, it felt like it would tear through, my throat burning, my world ending.
“Tonight’s not my night to lose you, partner,” I told him. “Tomorrow’s not my day to lose you, either.” I lifted my hand from his chest and brought it down in a fist over his heart, my voice now shouting, “Never, never, never again will there be a time when it’s my time to lose you!”
Creed said nothing and his blood flowed warm against my hand.
Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me.
I knew that feeling. I’d seen it before. That blood, all that blood.