He turned and left her there. His heart ached, but he did it. Time was a huge factor, and his brothers and sisters were waiting to make their raid.
EIGHTEEN
“We need to find McGrady,” Maestro announced to the Torpedo Ink members gathered around the large table where they had carefully planned their mission. Steele was team leader, and he never left anything to chance. Not the slightest detail. They had plans for anything that could go wrong and then more plans just in case those steps went awry as well.
Code looked up from one of the seven screens set up in the room. “Billows had him picked up. The men who took him from his garage weren’t very gentle either. I had his place wired, complete with cameras, and I could see very plainly he was in fear for his life. He stepped over a line, and Billows must have decided to take him out.”
“Did you follow up on the car’s route through traffic intersection cameras?” Steele asked. “I need to know McGrady’s not going to be breathing down our necks.”
“The car took him to the location I’ve indicated on this map.” Code brought up the map on the largest screen hanging in the room. “We all agreed there had to be a way to bring the women to the training area that we were certain was located beneath the two clubs. Billows would never have been able to get away with trafficking for so long if he brought women in through the club. Someone would notice eventually.”
Maestro could easily see the large red X Code had placed on the map. The road was narrow and unpaved, looking as if it was a part of a park or land reserved for a park.
“You believe there’s another entrance to the underground rooms?” Steele asked Code.
“There would have to be. How could Azelie work for Billows for seven years and never see evidence of women coming and going if her boss moved them through the club?” Code said.
Maestro nodded. “I suspected as much when she told me about hearing the woman scream. Her boss wasn’t in an office, she was certain of it, yet he appeared out of nowhere. How did he get down there without her being aware?”
“When Maestro told us Azelie’s story, he mentioned then that there would have to be another entrance,” Code explained. “Beneath the city, there’s a maze of underground tunnels. It didn’t surprise me to see Billows’ men taking McGrady to a different location to enter his underground rooms. Suffice it to say, McGrady, if he’s still alive, is in a holding room below the Adventure Club.”
“Thanks, Code,” Steele said. “We’re going to run this mission by the numbers. Always be aware of the clock; time’s moving fast on us. Billows normally shows up in the underground office around three-thirty or four A.M. Code, do you have eyes on him?”
Code nodded. “At the moment, he’s at home with a very accommodating blonde. They never spend the night with him. He doesn’t sleep with them. He has very rough sex with them and then sends them home.”
“Let us know when he’s on the move,” Steele said. “We’re on the clock. Let’s move out.”
* * *
The team was made up of eight members, plus Steele at the lead. Lana, Preacher, Keys, Maestro, Master, Player, Ink and Code trained consistently together. In this case, Savage and Destroyer from team one had joined them because they were the best at interrogation. It was imperative to get names from Billows to continue the quest to find those higher up in the trafficking ring.
They left their transportation a good block away, and, like wolves, the pack circled around the huge building to come at the entrances from several sides. They couldn’t take the chance of guards getting behind them.
Cameras weren’t normally a problem. Code identified each security camera’s location, and he took over the cameras remotely. Code and his information were essential to both teams. He’d never let them down, not once, and Maestro knew the responsibility for the lives of his brothers and sisters weighed on him.
Each had a role to fulfill, and the lives of the others depended on them getting their job done. Lana was a marksman, rarely missing a shot. Maestro had never known her to fail in bringing down a target or protecting them from a distance. She was their eyes on scene, going high and establishing the best place to protect them from any hidden dangers.
Preacher moved around the building to find each security guard. He went to the left and Ink went to the right. If they encountered a guard, they killed him quietly and hid the body carefully so it wouldn’t be easily found. There were four stationary guards and one roving. Neither had much time to take the guards out and hide the bodies. Fortunately, when they ran the plan repeatedly, they knew the position of the guards, even the roving one. They had established ahead of time where to hide each body. That was due to Steele’s meticulous planning. When he ran a mission, no detail was too small, which was why their missions tended to run smoothly.
The most important guard was the one stationed at the entrance to the private hallway marked For Employees Only. If Billows came into the building via the clubs, he would use that route. A guard had to be present at that door, and one had to be sitting at the desk where Bobby Aspen usually was on duty. His replacement during the daylight hours was a man named Alex Right. It didn’t matter which guard sat at the desk, he had to be replaced with a team member. Preacher had that role.
Once he disposed of the security guards outside the building, Ink would remain dressed as one of the outside guards on roving patrol. Preacher would take Bobby Aspen’s place. He was adept at adapting his body image to appear however he needed to look. They had taken the precaution of making masks of both guards to be on the safe side.
As a precaution against being recognizable, every member wore a silicone mask. They were used to wearing them, changing their appearances and even their walks, with the roles they played, when necessary.
“Guard is down,” Ink reported. “In place.”
Preacher made his approach with Maestro toward the employees-only door. A guard stepped in front of the door, one hand on his gun, his chest out. He looked impressive, his features set in lines of command.
“You can’t…”
Maestro threw his favorite small throwing knife with deadly accuracy. It didn’t take a huge blade to kill a man. One needed to know precisely where on a body to hit, have the training and do so without hesitation. They were on him before his body went down. Maestro dragged him behind a wall of hydrangea bushes, concealing the body. Very little blood seeped down the neck to soak into the shirt and jacket.
Preacher wore a jacket with the security emblem on it in preparation for his role. He removed the keys and small radio as well as a cell phone from the guard’s pockets. Maestro opened the door and stepped inside as if he owned the place. The entrance was mostly dark, lit only by a single bulb. Much farther down the hall, he could see the desk was manned by Bobby Aspen.
Maestro stopped just inside the door to lay his hand on the wooden panels that made up the wall. Immediately, he felt the connection in the way he did, the gift he’d been born with. The knot was only inches from his fingers. He felt Azelie’s presence strongly, as if she stood right there in that hall with him. The wood remembered her, felt her connection with it.
He found the necklace in the knot, scooping it out with one finger, his body covering the movement from Bobby. He suspected the guard’s desk was too far away to see what he was doing. That was why Azelie had chosen—or been given—that particular spot to conceal her key. She was adept at putting it in the hole and retrieving it, which meant she’d practiced somewhere else until she was extremely fast at it.
“Who the hell are you?” Bobby demanded, belligerence in his voice. He stood, gun locked in his fist, aiming at Preacher.
Preacher kept walking toward him, a friendly smile on his face. “New security guard. Weird you didn’t get the memo that I’d be introducing myself to you.”
Preacher was nearly at the desk by the time Maestro had the key in his possession. Bobby’s attention was centered solely on Preacher. It was clear he believed him to be the real threat. He thought Maestro was too far away, Preacher blocking any access to Bobby’s body. Neither Preacher nor Maestro had a gun out.
“Stop right where you are. I need to see your ID and scan your prints. This is a restricted area,” Bobby continued.
Maestro used Preacher’s body as a shield, coming up behind his Torpedo Ink brother in a deliberately slow stalk. Movement attracts attention. Preacher deliberately shuffled his feet, threw his hands up and out while he talked, spoke rapidly and interjected laughter into his monologue to keep Bobby off-balance.
“Isn’t it just like Billows to forget to send an important memo? Guess if he loses one security guard, especially a new one, he won’t lose any sleep over it.” He laughed as if he’d told a huge joke.
Preacher no longer moved forward toward Bobby, but he was the epitome of a very young man with ADHD, unable to stay still. He threw his arms around and punched his fist into his palm and turned this way and that. Bobby’s attention was riveted on him.
Maestro stepped around Preacher, putting him to the left side of Bobby. Almost simultaneously, he threw his favorite knife, the same one he’d retrieved from the outside guard. He didn’t ever leave his weapons behind if it was at all possible to recover them. Bobby reeled back under the impact, gurgling and choking. One hand came up to his neck as if he didn’t quite know what happened. The gun in his hand fell to the floor.
Preacher was on him, snapping Bobby’s neck, not waiting for him to bleed out. With the ease of long practice, he dragged the dead guard into the darkest part of the hallway. Billows kept the hallway dimly lit so there would be no chance of an employee seeing where the door was seamlessly woven into the woodwork. Even knowing it was there, the members of Torpedo Ink would have had a difficult time finding it. Fortunately, Lana had counted the steps Azelie had taken from the guard desk to where the opening of the door was.
Maestro measured out the steps while Preacher dragged Bobby out of sight and retrieved Maestro’s knife. Maestro placed his hand on the ornate wooden panel, feeling the instant connection. The lock was inches from his palm. He had Azelie’s fingerprints on his fingers using silicone, and he mimicked the way she palmed the tiny chip. His hand was much larger than hers. It took a moment to get the chip centered before he placed his fingers carefully on the pad woven into the wood. In all the years they had run missions and encountered heavy security, he’d never seen such a clever device.
“Keys, I’m in,” he announced. “Building’s as secure as it’s going to be.”
“Right behind you,” Keys assured him. He entered quickly, saluted Preacher, who had pulled on the silicone mask of Bobby’s face and a ball cap and sank into the chair Bobby had vacated. He was their first line of defense so no one could come up behind Maestro and Keys as they descended into the lower floors.
Maestro waited for Keys, allowing him to go first. The stairway was narrow, lit only by LED lights. Before stepping onto each stair, Keys patiently crouched low and ran his palms just above the next stair down. Both were aware of time passing, but they didn’t attempt to hurry the process. They knew how many stairs they had to descend to reach the floor where the offices and potential prison for the women were. Knowing there were bombs in the floor, both realized bombs could be placed beneath the stairs as well. It was entirely possible Billows activated the bombs when he wasn’t there, but if he knew Azelie was coming, he’d have made certain there was no chance of them going off.
“Player said he’ll have a main switch in the office he uses,” Key said. “And he’ll most likely always carry a manual switch on his person. When he’s taken, we’ll have to strip him to ensure he can’t blow us all up.”
Maestro wasn’t worried about Billows’ chances of killing them, not when Savage and Destroyer would be there to take care of the interrogation. No matter what self-preservation instincts Billows had, the two men were guaranteed to get around them. They’d been trained in every aspect of interrogation from the time they were young boys. Both had exceeded the expectations of every instructor.
Keys found four bombs beneath the floorboards in the maze of seemingly dead-end hallways, but none of the four were live. They’d simply been placed there.
“While you find an entrance to the other rooms, I’ll check Billows’ office for a switch for the bombs and also to see if he has the same kind of chip to unlock the door in the wall.”
That was the one thing Maestro was most worried about. If Billows had rested on his laurels and programmed the lock to be the same as the one for the door leading down to the underground floor, it was possible Azelie had access to every lock without realizing it. Billows had her so intimidated she hadn’t tried to explore the environment. That was smart on her part. Billows had been lulled into a false sense of security by Azelie’s compliance.
Maestro followed the same path Azelie had taken when she had tried to locate the woman screaming. She’d told him how the hallways narrowed and would dead-end straight into a wall. The floor was dimly lit with LED lights along the ceiling in places, but they hung down in a rope, causing shadows to move ominously. It was disorienting and gave off the illusion that the walls crept in, closing in on him as his hand whispered along the wood. It would be a terrifying experience for a young woman alone.
