Took me fifteen minutes to cross the busy and busier Mt. Pleasant traffic to the area that consisted of the Wando Welch Ports Authority.
The warehouse, situated near the Wando River, boasted enough space to start my brewery and expand if business took off. The area was a lifeline to shipping as well as trucking routes, eighteen-wheelers rumbling the pavement one after the other, heading inland to I-95.
In other words, the location was pretty damn near perfect.
I hopped off my bike, laid my helmet aside, and bent my head back to bask in the summer sunshine. Clear blue sky above, and only Shy’s Charger in the middle of the otherwise empty parking lot.
No sign of the realtor.
No sign of Shy either, except for her ride.
Slapping dusty leather gloves against my thigh, I strode to the roll-back door on the steel-bunker of a building. It didn’t take much elbow grease to pull one side open, but I noticed the busted keypad lock.
And wondered if I needed to call for immediate backup.
That was probably just Hunter’s fucking Mt. Pleasant’s finest Vice suspicions making me paranoid.
I had my knife, in any case.
Momentarily blinded from the hot sun, I stepped into an empty shadowy space, smelling earth and iron and the sweat of men who’d formerly worked there.
Then I heard a voice.
A muffled voice. More of a whine.
Diablo appeared from the dark depths and—I was gonna fucking kill him—he held Shy in front of him.
“Hola, muchacho.”
Stomping forward, I snarled, “Get your fucking filthy hands off her, cabron.”
He produced a gun. “You never write. You never call.” Holding the side of Shy’s face, he cranked her head toward his. “You . . . never . . . pay . . . me.”
Kill the cunt or pay him? Fuck. No brainer.
Backtrack was my middle name when he held Shy captive with a pistol pointed at her head.
“Got the money now. Just need to withdraw it.” There was no other possible choice. “You have to let her go. Please. Jesus, Diablo. Let her go!”
“Nah. Don’t think so. She’s my leverage. Now I think I need some restitution, or is it retribution?” He waved his gun toward me. “I take it out on you”—he started pressing the trigger with audible clicks—“or her?”
“Me!” I raised my arms. Made myself a fucking clean target.
My heart bottomed out. Sweat popped out on my forehead. “Me, Diablo. I’m the one you’ve been after.”
“No! Don’t!” Shy cried out.
He smiled that snaky twist of his thin lips before turning the muzzle on Shy again.
“Seems she likes you.” My rage went viral when he wrapped his arm around her waist. “I’m taking your girl with me. Time to play hide and seek, Rush, and hope you can find me—with the money—before something bad happens to tu novia.”
I gripped the hilt of my knife, aching to release it from the sheath and thrust it through D’s throat, but I couldn’t risk it.
Not with the gun.
Not with Shy silently crying.
Not with no backup in case anything happened to me.
Diablo hauled her out the back entrance, holding her in front of him as a human shield.
“You can’t do that!” My face warped with rage and pain, I stomped after them. “FUCK! Don’t you get it? She’s sick!”
Diablo halted halfway to the Camaro he’d parked behind the building.
My stomach pitted even lower.
He spun slowly around. “Is she?”
I knew I had a harrowing expression on my face. I pushed past it to look at Shy.
She bit into her bottom lip, shaking her head.
But it was too late.
“How sick?” Diablo asked.
“Fuck you.”
“I’m gonna fuck her, jefe, if you don’t deliver the money.” He started off again, and Shy stumbled.
My worst nightmare.
Coming to life.
“Sick, si?” Foraging with his meaty hands beneath her skirt, he found it.
He found her prosthetic.
“Get the fuck away from her NOW!” I tore forward only to be brought up short when he aimed the gun up at Shy’s chest.
My sight went extreme rage-red when Diablo released her prosthetic, and he tossed away the lower half of her left leg like it was nothing more than trash.
“Even better incentive since she has no leg to stand on.” He hauled Shy along, and she had to hop to keep up with his march. “I hope you hurry, Rush.”
“SHY!” I bellowed.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Self-inflicted Wound
I BENT AT THE waist, dry-heaving over a dusty patch of concrete as Diablo tore away with Shy in the car with him.
His final threat hung in the air. “Try to follow us and I’ll cut off her other leg, guero.”
Swiping a hand across my mouth, I stared off down the road. I didn’t know where Diablo was taking Shy, and the sickening feeling in my stomach grew into a violent need to sever his head from his body.
I picked up her prosthetic, wiped it down with my bandana, took care with it as I slid it into my saddlebag.
If he hurt her, I was gonna kill him so dead his remains would be unrecognizable.