Later that night
“ON MY SIGNAL, Z, YOU’LL go in.” RT’s commanding declaration came in crystal clear in Z’s earpiece.
Standing at the northwest corner of the ramshackle little house, his back pressed against the rough bricks, Z patiently waited for the go-ahead. As with any mission, everything except for the plan faded from Z’s mind. He wasn’t worried about the lack of moonlight that kept his surroundings effectively hidden from his view, the steady pelting of rain hitting his face and pinging off the metal shed a few yards away, or even the sticky heat washing over him from the humid summer night.
No, his comfort wasn’t factored in. The only thing that mattered was getting inside the trashed-out drug house and grabbing the girl who’d been snatched right out of her boyfriend’s twenty-year-old piece-of-shit Buick on Wednesday night. Z didn’t know if the girl had been aware of the true danger she was in, or if she was even up to speed on the fact that her boyfriend—a bottom-feeding X dealer—was dead. Although, Z somehow doubted the kid’s murderer had bothered to shield her innocent eyes from the grizzly scene.
One could only hope.
The sound of knuckles rapping on a door echoed in Z’s ear, followed by Conner’s gruff tone. “Pizza!”
Z couldn’t make out the mumbles that erupted inside the house, but he could hear movement.
“I said I got your fuckin’ pizza, bro. Open the goddamn door.”
Okay then. Leave it to Conner to get right to the point. The man’s temper had been flaring bright and hot for quite some time now. Tonight was proof.
“On three, Z,” RT stated calmly.
Z took slow, measured breaths and listened as RT’s rumbling voice counted down slowly. On one, Z slipped around to the back of the house, lifted his foot, and aimed the sole of his size-fifteen combat boot at the weathered doorknob, effectively breaking the door and sending it flying open and crashing into the wall. From inside, he heard the sound of glass smashing, people yelling. While Conner and RT created a distraction, keeping the kidnappers otherwise occupied, Z eased inside, aiming his Sig in front of him as he scanned his surroundings, the wet soles of his boots squeaking on the worn, yellowed linoleum flooring that was peeling up from the concrete beneath.
Good Lord, the place was disgusting. And it smelled as bad as it looked.
There were dishes and trash piled high on the chipped and broken kitchen counters. The refrigerator in the corner, with its broken handle and dented door, rattled loudly. A cheap metal card table sat in the corner, propped on two boxes because it was missing a leg, an ashtray in the center, overflowing with cigarette butts.
Didn’t look like these guys knew how to manage their drug money all that well. Clearly no budget for a housekeeper.
With his back to the wall, Z made his way through the kitchen and toward the room where the girl was supposedly stashed.
“Get on the ground!” RT and Conner both yelled at the same time, their words reverberating off the thin walls in the other room.
“What the fuck, man? I thought you said you had pizza!”
“Oh, shut up. And don’t fucking move or I’ll shoot your fucking foot off,” Conner added, the man’s fury reverberating like a bass drum at a rock concert. Z couldn’t imagine what Conner was feeling. Considering the guy had a fourteen-year-old daughter of his own, Z could only assume this hit a little too close to home.
“I said get the fuck down, you dumb ass!” Conner again.
More yelling ensued, this time from the occupants of the house. There were three of them, they’d been told. All armed but likely getting complacent due to the late hour, or perhaps from the pot that had left a cloying scent lingering in the air.
Definitely dumb asses.
The intel they’d received came from a prostitute who’d been doing business out of the same house in recent weeks. Seemed she had a conscience. That or she knew that RT’s request for information hadn’t been a request at all. Regardless, to hear RT tell it, it hadn’t been difficult to get her to talk. Turned out, the asshole drug dealers had stiffed her on her payment, and she was out for a little revenge of her own.
Z was heartbroken over the lack of ethics between bad guys. Shame.
Glancing into the living room as he passed, Z nodded to RT, who was pinning a tall, floppy-haired white guy down on the floor with his foot centered in the guy’s back.
Continuing down the hall, Z kept his back turned to the wall. He peeked into two other rooms—first, a small, yellow-tiled bathroom with a cracked sink and a dirty shower curtain, and then a small bedroom, with a set of grungy twin mattresses tossed onto the floor with a flurry of clothes. Both empty, except for the dirt and disarray.
And finally the last door. Closed, as the nightwalker had said it would be.
Z didn’t bother reaching down to try the knob. The padlock attached to a cheap brass hinge was proof that the door wouldn’t open. Good thing about dumb ass bad guys, they didn’t realize that kicking in the door and breaking the hinge from the jamb was as simple as smiling for the camera.
With little effort once again, Z turned and slammed his shoulder into the door up near where the lock was securing it closed. The wood cracked easily, but he hadn’t expected any less. At six foot seven inches, two hundred forty-four pounds, getting through a flimsy interior door wasn’t difficult for Z.
When the door flew inward, he immediately took stock of everything in the room. The girl—a mere kid—sat huddled on a grimy mattress, her hands tied behind her and her terrified cries muffled by the duct tape covering her mouth. A cheap brass lamp—sans the shade—sat on a small plastic table on the opposite side of the room, casting a golden glow over her and her meager surroundings. She looked like hell, but that tended to happen when kidnapped by thugs. The fifteen-year-old had been missing for two days and likely hadn’t seen a shower, or even a bathroom if the smell was anything to go by, during her lengthy stay in the shithole her captors had stashed her in.
“I’m here to get you out,” he informed the girl, ducking his head to avoid hitting the doorjamb as he stepped into the room, keeping his voice low, reassuring. After kicking a discolored pillow out of the way—weren’t they fucking sweet, thinking of her comfort?—Z leaned down and gently pulled the tape from her mouth. “If you keep a lid on it and don’t knee me in the…well, you know…we’ll be outta here in no time. Cool?”
Her panicked blue eyes widened, but she nodded.
When it was clear she was going to cooperate, Z jerked his chin upward, a signal for the girl to get up.
She stood slowly, her eyes scanning Z from head to toe, then back again. He dwarfed her in size, which seemed to frighten her all the more. Tears streaked a trail of dirt over her cheeks, and snot ran down over her chapped lips. Yep, she was a mess.
Her feet weren’t bound, which was a good thing. Z didn’t have time to untie her, especially since they would possibly have to resort to plan B due to the wrought iron bars covering the window that trapped them inside the house. His big-ass foot wasn’t going to get them out of there quite as easily if walking out was no longer an option.
Conner’s irritated grunt sounded from outside the room, but Z didn’t leave the girl. His job was to protect her until they could get her out of the house. “I said, stay the fuck down!”
“The girl! They’re tryin’ to get the girl!” one of the drug dealers hollered.
“You get a medal for bein’ perceptive. Now get on the floor, fucker,” Conner grumbled.
Something—or more likely someone—slammed into the wall outside the room, and another thud sounded when they hit the ground.