Hellfire Drop (Brimstone Cycle Book 2)(13)
Her words spark the flame of anger that’s been waiting inside me ever since I’d gained back my memories in the diner. I remember my sister, her body broken, crumpled next to a jagged hole in a wall. That and the mercenaries, friends of these people, standing next to her body.
“I’m not a monster.” I say, feeling my rage grow until it’s practically a taste in my mouth. “Just a person trying to do right by my family.”
I hear the driver sigh, still out of focus behind the light.
“I can say the same for all of us, ma’am. Those boys that you took are our people. Our family. Name me a man worth his salt who wouldn’t kill for his family?”
The muted boom of a shotgun in the darkness outside shuts the conversation down. From the sound of it, the gunman was four or five dozen meters away - the outside edge of standard buckshot’s effective range.
“Status?” asks the driver, apparently into the smartphone or a radio I haven’t seen.
Silence is the only answer he receives.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Waiting for violence is hard on the nerves. There’s a particular quality to it, almost like the air itself has taken on a sickness whose only symptom is to stretch the edges of time. It makes the seconds seem to lasts minutes, and minutes go on until whole years seem short. The added anxiety of the others in the building with me, from people who seem to know both the literal and figurative business of killing does not help the tension of waiting.
Despite their knowledge of devils and that I can drop into Hell, I can see that, for the first time since they’d started tonight, the mercenaries holding me may be in over their heads.
Stuck in the chair, and with nothing to do but think in the silence, I try to figure out who could have crashed into the van. None of the answers I come up with are pleasant. If this had been three years ago, before Mary had been taken, there’d be a chance that it was a rescue from some of my old acquaintances or friends. I’ve sold enough weapons to men with unspoken power, rubbed elbows and shared laughter with enough operators that some of them, maybe more than some, would have taken it upon themselves to give a hand if they’d heard I was in trouble.
I know that this is true, because more than several had agreed to help me in the hours after Mary had been taken. Some had expected favors or payments in return, but a few of them had agreed to kit up before I’d told them more than a sentence. If this had been then, I’d be sure this was done by my allies.
This isn’t then, though. All of my allies, all my friends, are dead. They’d been killed because I’d been sloppy. Hunted down and killed within hours of taking a phone call from me, asking for help in getting Mary back. Hunted and killed by the same company of mercenaries that now held me in this abandoned building.
Knowing that is the case prompts a growing dread in my stomach. The mercenary company led by the buyer I’d once known as Tom was far from the only organization, or even government, that would gladly call for my head. It’s not surprising. Anyone who’s been in the business of arms smuggling for as long as I have would’ve picked up a fair number of enemies. Maybe one of them picked up on my presence at the mess in the diner, and had been able to connect the dots quick enough to set up an ambush here.
It’s not a pretty thought. If I’ve got no friends left, what’s waiting for me outside probably isn’t a rescue, probably isn’t any better than being tied up in this shit hole van either. it comes down to it, I’d rather take my chances of getting by on my own wits than relying on the armed pair holed up in the high ceilinged room with me.
“I think you should untie me.” I say. My voice comes out louder, clearer, than I’d expected and breaks the stillness growing in the building.
Something hard and metal pokes, albeit briefly, into the back of my head.
“Not the time for distractions.” says the driver. “One of our own is on the line. We need to focus on him.”
I shake my head.
“Yeah, that’s actually why you should untie me.” I say. “It’s why you should free my legs at least. You said it yourself, this shit is dicey. And that accident looks suspicious as Hell. We may need to run. I don’t think you’ll be wanting to carry me if it comes to that.”
Waiting for the answer carries its own kind of tension as well, although one that’s easier to stand than the continued silence outside. At least I’m doing something, now. Or trying to. I almost hear the cogs turning in the driver’s head as he comes to a decision. After a few moments, he kills the light shining into my face, reaches into a pocket for something, and answers.
“Hold still.” he says, he walks across the room to me briskly and I feel a brush of new metal, this one light and sharp as a razor’s edge, graze over the exposed skin of my ankle near my zip tied feet.
The man makes three, quick, careful cuts at my bindings, letting my legs and wrists free. I flex my legs for a moment, but stop when he leans in close and breathes a warning into my ear.
“Make me regret this, and I’ll have my friend send you to Hell the old-fashioned way. Understand?”
“Got you. Like, thoroughly so.” I say.
I bend down a little to rub the feeling back into my legs, and straighten up in time to see a hand, bloody, and clad in a suit jacket, smash through the window next to Three Letter Agency’s head.