Saving Serena (Hawk Security #1)

Chapter 36

CHAPTER 36

Duke

We were still five miles from Thousand Oaks when Winston came on the comms line. “Guys, it really is a USB stick, not a drive.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“It’s a USB key to a locker at the SafeStor location near here. We ran into these at the bureau. It’s an electronic key that can’t be copied or hacked.”

That brought us closer, but we were running out of time. “We need what’s in that locker.”

“On the way,” Winston replied. “Full afterburner.”

“I don’t get why Rossi would send a locker key to your girl,” Lucas mused.

I shook my head and darted around another truck. “We stick to the plan until we know something more.” That didn’t make me feel good, because our plan of checking the two company locations was pretty feeble.

My brother nodded as we approached the freeway exit.

Excalibur Plating was closest, so that made our choice of which to check first.

“Not here,” Lucas observed after we made a thorough sweep of the parking lot and adjoining streets. “Meet us at the Knife Creek address,” he said into comms. “Nothing at Excalibur.”

“Roger,” Terry responded. “Almost at the freeway exit.”

Frustrated, I hit the steering wheel. We were stuck behind traffic at a light. I looked around the guy in front of us for an opening in the oncoming lane.

“Don’t even think about it,” Lucas said. “Cop parked on the right, and we’re not in LA. We don’t have Marcus to cover for us. Get pulled over now, and we lose a half-hour minimum.”

“We can’t wait. My woman needs us now.”

“As Zig Ziglar said…” Lucas began, starting another of his quotes, “‘Be careful not to compromise what you want most for what you want now.’”

We heard a phone ringing over comms.

“Kitty, I can’t talk now.” It was Terry. “Seriously, I’m in the middle of something. It’ll have to wait. Grace…Grace?”

“Problem?” Lucas asked before I could.

“Sorry, I forgot to turn off comms,” Terry explained. He didn’t say any more.

“We’ve got it,” Winston said in my ear.

The light turned green, and we crept up to the intersection.

“Enlighten us,” Lucas demanded.

“It’s Aiden Pons, the COO at Knife Creek. The box has a recording of him agreeing to pay the EPA guy a ton to overlook falsified well tests on underground water quality and some test data that I’m guessing proves failures.”

“Jordy, where is he right now?” I barked.

“On it.”

“Who is this EPA guy?” Lucas asked.

“Don’t know,” Winston answered. “We have a voice, but his name isn’t mentioned.”

“Is every day this exciting?” Vincent asked in the background.

“Shut up or you’re walking,” Winston snarled.

It was several agonizing seconds before Jordy was in our ears again. “Pons is out of the office today. He has a house in the hills, which is where his cell is pinging.”

Whatever Jordy did to get the cell location couldn’t have been legal, but I didn’t fucking care. “Address?”

He rattled it off, and I plugged it into navigation.

Lucas consulted his phone. “Guys, meet us a half mile from the house at the corner of Wild Bush Lane.”

“Copy that,” Terry confirmed.

My stomach finally unknotted. We had the bad guy in our sights, and the most likely location to find my woman. Now it was time to gear up and rock and roll, like the old times.

Only this wasn’t just any hostage extraction, this was Serena, which meant total focus.

“We’ll get her out safe. It’s what we do.” Lucas was on the same wavelength as me.

Serena

My heart thundered in my chest as I tiptoed down the hall, keeping my heels off the hardwood to avoid noise. Breathing silently was imperative, but difficult, as amped up on adrenaline as I was. “ Silent movement is a skill, ” the master chief had said. “ Practice it .”

I hadn’t, and I winced when the heel of my shoe made contact with the first step down the stairs. Somebody needed to clue this guy in that carpeted stairs were the way to go.

I stopped and slipped off my heels, ignoring the master chief’s advice. “ Don’t take off your shoes. Unless you have tough feet, or it’s all grass, you’ll injure yourself running barefoot and be caught .” I could put them back on outside. I’d already screwed up by forgetting to break off the heels.

Nearing the bottom of the stairs, I could hear Pons and the Russian nearby.

I looked around the corner and spied a door leading out the back side of the house.

Freedom beckoned, and for the first time today, a smile took over my face.

“ Find a phone if you can. ” I ignored my instructor’s words as I passed an office that most likely contained a phone. The fresh air outside was my goal. I refused to spend one extra second in this creepy house.

Reaching the door, I peered through the glass. A pool lay beyond a terrace of stone pavers, and beyond that, to the side of a small pool house, was a gate through the fence to the area of vines. That would be my escape route. A neighboring house couldn’t be that far away.

The voices behind me grew louder and were joined by footsteps.

“A half hour with her, then give me your bid,” Slimeball Pons said. “But that is after she and I have a chat about the key.”

From my limited view through the glass, I didn’t see anyone, but I had no choice. The deadbolt made a loud click when I unlocked it and pushed open the door.

Grinning with confidence, I took in a lungful of fresh air—freedom at last. With my shoes still in my hand, I hurried across the terrace and around the oval pool.

“Find her,” I heard Spinelli bark.

Fuck a duck. Without daring to look back, I ducked behind the outdoor barbecue, short of the pool house.

“Check the gate. She’s got to be here somewhere,” he yelled.

My heart pounded as I crouched down and listened to the running boots pass on the other side of the barbecue island.

“Gate locked,” a Russian-accented voice said. Then he ran back toward the house.

I slipped my shoes on. I’d have to scale the gate, and then it would be a footrace to the neighboring house and safety. Or, I could try to hide until Duke got here. He had to be on the way, didn’t he?

The door to the house opened and closed, then silence.

When they didn’t find me, they’d search this area again. The grapevines didn’t provide enough cover to hide, so my decision was made for me—climb the gate and run through the small vineyard to the neighbor’s house.

Peering over the barbecue, the coast was clear. I sprinted for the pool house.

Get to the gate and then the neighbor. Get to the neighbor. I turned the corner at a run. “Oof.” I ran smack into a nightmare.

“There you are.” Johnson grabbed me.

Eyes. I tried to scratch him, but he grabbed my wrist.

Knees . I kicked at him but only hit his shin.

“Bitch.” He slapped me across the face so hard my vision blurred.

Throat. I threw a punch where I thought his throat was, or at least one of them, but missed wildly. Nothing I tried worked.

He heaved me over his shoulder. “I like a little fight in a girl. You and me are going to have a lot of fun.”

I kicked and hammered his back with no effect as he carried me to the house.

“Tape her to this chair,” Pons ordered. The chair was big and beefy, not the kind I could tip over and break.

Tony Spinelli tossed his brother a roll of tape, and once again, nothing I did to resist worked.

Yaroslavsky sniffed my hair while Johnson taped my legs. Then he grabbed my breast and squeezed. “Ripe.”

I spit at his hand but missed.

“Spirited horse make best mount,” he said with a laugh.

“You stay with her while I get my kit,” Pons ordered after Johnson finished.

“Sir?” A waif of a girl who couldn’t be more than sixteen stood in the doorway. “Dessert is ready.” She didn’t even give me—a woman in obvious distress, duct-taped to a chair—a second glance.

“Thank you, Natasha. Igor, join me for pryaniki.”

“Real pryaniki?”

“I think you’ll like how Natasha makes them.”

Yaroslavsky grinned. “We see.”

Natasha ? The name on the bracelet in his sex dungeon. Was the teenager a girl Pons had bought from Yaroslavsky?

A wave of nausea rolled over me.