No Good Deed, page 15
part #2 of Lancaster & Daniels Series
“Does she know where they’re being kept?”
“No. Echo told me that Dexter has a new partner, and is about to abduct a woman in Saint Petersburg. I thought we might bust them together.”
The connection went silent. He was sitting in his car in the parking lot of Ashton Oaks Apartments in New Port Richey, waiting for Echo to come home. Echo and her baby were not safe here, and he needed to move them tonight.
“I can’t talk to you anymore,” she said. “For all I know, my cell phone may be bugged. The bureau’s done that before.”
“To you?”
“Not to me, but it’s happened to other agents they put under the microscope. If an agent gets in hot water, the bureau will monitor their cell phone calls, and also read their emails and text messages. My boss gave me permission to talk to you a final time. If I do it again, and he finds out, I’m history.”
He punched the wheel in anger. This was not right, and they both knew it. A Prius with a damaged bumper drove into the complex and parked by the entrance to one of the apartments, a building three stories tall with window AC units. Echo jumped out and glanced furtively over her shoulder before hurrying inside. She was dressed in torn jeans and a Mickey Mouse T-shirt and looked scared.
“My services are needed. I have to run,” he said.
“Where are you?” Daniels asked.
“At an apartment complex in New Port Richey. The dancer I was telling you about just came home. I promised to move her and her baby to a safe location.”
“Is she in danger?”
“I think so. A bouncer at the club caught us talking. He’s a friend of Dexter’s, and a member of the Outlaws.”
“I wish I was there to help you.”
But she wasn’t here, and that bothered him. The rules and regulations that FBI agents were sworn to uphold often proved to be the chains that held them down, and sometimes prevented them from bringing bad people to justice.
“Do you remember what I said about the Outlaws calling themselves one percenters?” he asked.
“I remember.”
“Well, you and I are part of a different one percent. We belong to the one percent that has sworn to fight evil. We’re the last line of defense against the monsters that make our lives miserable. It’s why you joined the FBI, and why I’m sitting in this parking lot instead of in a bar, drinking a beer and taking in a basketball game.”
She exhaled into the phone. “I know that, Jon. It’s why I’m attracted to you.”
“And it’s why I’m attracted to you. So get over here.”
“I can’t. Let me rephrase that. I can, but my boss will find out, and I’ll get fired. What good am I if I lose my job?”
She had a point. His window was open, and in the distance he heard cars drag racing on US 19, which seemed a common occurrence in these parts. He opened his door and put one foot out.
“I’ve got an idea,” he said. “I’ll figure out a way to feed you information without jeopardizing your job.”
“How do you plan to do that?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll figure out something.”
He grabbed a ball cap off the passenger seat and slipped it on. Then he got out, popped the trunk, removed a SIG SAUER P365 from the plastic bin where he kept his guns, and tucked it behind his belt buckle. Closing the trunk, he began to walk toward the apartment’s front entrance.
“Are you still there?” Beth asked, sounding worried.
“I’m here,” he replied.
“Be safe.”
“I’ll try.”
The elevator was on the blink. As he trotted up the stairs, he called Echo on his cell phone. She answered without saying a word. A baby cried in the background.
“This is Jon,” he said. “I’m coming up the stairs. What’s your apartment number?”
“You’re here?” she said, sounding surprised.
“Damn straight, I’m here. You need to leave soon. What’s the number?”
“Apartment 303. When you come out of the stairs, go left. I’ll be waiting for you.”
He took the stairs two at a time. At the third-floor landing he went left, and saw a shaft of light streaming out of a partially open door at the end of the hallway, which he ran toward. The floor was concrete, and his footsteps sounded like cannons going off. As he neared the door, it opened fully, and Echo greeted him with her baby in her arms. He was tiny, maybe six months old, with a head of black curls and dark, unblinking eyes. Seeing a stranger approach, he buried his head into his mother’s bosom.
Lancaster followed Echo into the apartment. Another woman sat on the floor in front of the TV, looking strung out, and he guessed she took care of the baby while Echo stripped at the club. The woman was a train wreck, with rotted teeth and sallow eyes, but he supposed it was better than leaving the kid alone.
Echo grabbed his wrist with her free hand, and pulled him toward the bedroom.
“We need to get out of here,” he said.
“Don’t you want to see the video of the girls?” she asked.
“You have it?”
“It’s on a private channel on YouTube. I’ll show you.”
The bedroom had a futon and a desk with a computer. A pile of dirty men’s clothes—Dexter’s, he assumed—lay heaped in a corner. Echo handed him her baby and got on the computer’s keyboard, which she handled like a pro. The computer had a separate hard drive that made a whirring sound as the screen came to life. YouTube allowed users to create private channels where unlisted videos could be shared with people who knew the link. The private channel that Echo pulled up had a large library. Based upon the titles, it appeared to be the property of the Outlaws motorcycle gang.
The kid gave him a mean stare, which he ignored. Bike Week had just finished in Daytona Beach, and the recent videos were of gang members attending the event. Echo scrolled down to an untitled video posted eight days earlier and clicked on it. The video started to play. Clutching the baby to his chest, he leaned in and peered at the screen.
It was in black and white, and was taken from a camera perched high above its subjects, possibly a ceiling mount. It showed the interior of a spacious kitchen with an island in its center. The kitchen had two sinks, two ovens, and an assortment of pots and pans dangling from metal hooks.
A small army of women were busy fixing a meal. Several diced vegetables on cutting boards, while others cut meat into bite-size chunks. Still others added the meat and vegetables into pots simmering on the stove. There was also a cleanup crew, which washed and dried dishes and mopped the floor.
There were eleven women in all. They wore identical aprons and facial expressions that reminded him of prison inmates, all hope extinguished from their faces.
He searched the group, looking for Skye Tanner, whose face he had memorized from the photograph that Team Adam had sent him. She didn’t appear to be in the group. Then it clicked. The video had been taken before Skye’s abduction. But that didn’t make sense—Skye was the eleventh victim, and there were eleven women in the video. So who was the extra woman? The baby started to cry, and he passed him back to his mother.
“How did you find out about this video?” he asked.
“Dexter got drunk, and he showed it to me one night,” she said. “He told me that if I didn’t behave, I’d end up with the women in the video.”
“You mean you’d end up a slave.”
“That’s right. One of the girls was my friend.”
“You know one of the women in the video?”
“Yeah. Her name is Lexi. She used to dance in the club, and we got to be friends. One night, she didn’t show up for work. The other girls figured she’d gone to another club, but when Dexter showed me the video, I knew otherwise.”
That explained the eleventh woman in the video.
“Did you tell anyone about what happened to Lexi?” he asked.
Echo shook her head. It angered him, and he gave her a reproachful look.
“I didn’t want Dexter to hurt me. Or my baby,” she explained.
He had heard enough. They went into the next room, and Echo grabbed a paper bag off the dining room table that he guessed contained the things she wanted to take. As they moved to leave, the strung-out woman by the TV began to shriek.
“What’s her problem?” he asked.
“I’m all she’s got,” Echo said.
No further explanation was forthcoming. But he could assume. The woman was an addict, and without Echo paying her to babysit the kid, her income would dry up, along with her ability to score the drugs that kept her going. He crossed the room and shoved money into her face.
“Take it,” he said.
The woman fell silent. She held the bills up to the light, checking to see if they were real. Her face filled with bliss.
“Thank you so much,” she whispered.
He returned to where Echo stood holding her baby and her paper bag. The apartment window was open, and outside he heard the roar of a convoy of motorcycles entering the apartment parking lot.
“Stay behind me, and do exactly as I tell you,” he said.
“I’m scared,” she said.
“Don’t be.”
He opened the door and stuck his head into the hallway. It was empty, which he found surprising. The smart move for the bikers would have been to send members of their gang into the apartment building before making the ruckus outside. He would have been hard pressed to defeat a gang of men in close quarters, especially with Echo and her baby nearby. But the bikers hadn’t done that, which told him that they were amateurs.
He had dealt with their ilk before, and knew what to do. As he walked down the hallway toward the stairwell, he drew the SIG. Outside, the motorcycles were revving their engines, the bikers waiting for him. It reminded him of lions roaring at the zoo.
Reaching the stairwell, he glanced at Echo, who was trembling in fear.
“Say the word Hooyah!” he said.
She stared at him, not understanding.
“It’s a battle cry, and will give you courage,” he explained.
“Hooyah,” she whispered.
“Say it like you mean it.”
“Hooyah!” she said, much louder this time.
“There you go. Hooyah!”
Fear was contagious, and had cost more than one brave soldier his life. He gave her his best smile, and she found the courage to smile back. Pointing the SIG at the ceiling, he headed down the stairs.
CHAPTER 24
It was like a scene out of the old biker movie Easy Rider.
The bikers were in the parking lot, racing their hogs in a circle, making it all but impossible for Lancaster to get to his car and escape with Echo and her baby. In a way, it was a smart move, since they weren’t breaking any laws, except disturbing the peace.
Lancaster stood at the apartment building’s entrance, watching through a crack in the door. He put the gang’s number at fourteen, although that was just a guess, since they were moving too fast to accurately count. It was a big number, and it gave him pause.
“What are we going to do?” Echo asked, her voice trembling.
“Maybe we should call an Uber,” he suggested.
She looked ready to cry. They had run out of options. Even if he had decided to shoot them, his SIG had only ten bullets, which would have left four bikers for him to deal with. He could hold his own in a fight, but Echo and her baby were a handicap.
Without a word, Echo started to walk past him.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m going to go talk to them,” she said.
“That won’t work. They’re animals.”
“Do you have a better idea in mind?”
Out in the parking lot, one of the bikers had popped a wheelie, and was driving on his back wheel, grandstanding for his friends. He drove a hundred feet, brought the front wheel down, then spun around, and raced the bike back the same way he’d just come while doing another wheelie. It was illegal to drive a bicycle without a helmet in Florida, but not a motorcycle, and the biker’s long hair flapped in the wind.
The rest of the gang stopped to watch. It looked like fun, and a second member popped a wheelie and rode alongside his friend on one wheel. It wasn’t long before the rest of the gang joined in, and rode back and forth on one wheel.
It was grandstanding, and it changed his opinion of them. Either they were drunk, high, or just plain stupid, and because of this, they didn’t feel threatened. That was a huge mistake. During his training to become a SEAL, his rigorous schedule had included classes called evolutions. Only when he passed the necessary tests could he evolve to the next level. One of his first classes had taught readiness, and how a SEAL could never let his guard down, no matter what the situation. The bikers had let their guard down, and the first rule of warfare was never to do that.
“Hide behind me,” he said.
“What are you going to do?” Echo asked.
“Just do as I tell you. Okay?”
“Are we going out?”
“Yes, we’re going out. On the count of three. One, two, three.”
Holding the SIG at his side, he marched out of the apartment building with Echo right behind him. His steps were fast and deliberate as he went down the brick path. The outside lighting was poor, and he didn’t think the bikers would see his sidearm right away.
Reaching the end of the path, he halted. One of the bikers roared past on one wheel, and flipped him the bird. It was the wild man who’d greeted him and Daniels at the clubhouse in Saint Petersburg. He tried to remember the guy’s name.
Dirty Pete.
He lifted the SIG and aimed at Dirty Pete’s rear tire. He squeezed the trigger, and the tire exploded, sending shards of rubber into the air. The motorcycle flipped backward, and landed atop Dirty Pete, pinning him to the pavement.
Lancaster stepped into the parking lot. The rest of the gang was still showboating. As they swerved to avoid hitting him, he shot out their rear tires. It was like shooting ducks in a barrel, and their bikes either flipped in the air, or spun wildly out of control.
The carnage was intense. One bike crashed into a parked car, and sent the driver airborne, his arms flapping like a bird. Another bike skidded across the pavement, and took out several other bikes before crashing, its driver howling that his leg was broken. Not one bike stayed upright. The four bikers who did not get their tires shot out had their own problems. Two crashed into other riders who were lying on the pavement, while the other two smacked into each other and caused a pileup. No one escaped unscathed.
Echo hovered beside him. He put his arm protectively around her shoulder, and led her to his vehicle. Her baby hadn’t made a sound. Great kid.
“Oh no,” she said.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw three bikers walking toward them. One had blood on his face, while the other two were limping. Some guys just never learned.
“Stay behind me,” he said.
When they were within striking range, he lunged at them. It was a tactical move, and got the desired reaction. The bloodied biker jumped backward, while one of the limpers halted. Only one of the bikers kept coming forward.
Lancaster feigned throwing a punch, but kicked the biker in the groin instead. The man doubled over in pain, leaving his chin open for a knee, which snapped his head back. He crumpled to the pavement in an inglorious heap and did not move.
The second limper knew karate, and took a little longer to subdue. He managed to get a roundhouse kick in, and Lancaster briefly saw stars, before sweeping the biker’s legs out from under him, taking him down. As his vision cleared, he heard a stream of curses, and spun around to find Echo spraying a can of Mace into the face of the bloodied biker, who appeared to be blinded. She emptied the can, and he stumbled away, screaming in agony.
She tossed the empty can away, then picked up her paper bag.
“Let’s go,” she said.
Her baby still hadn’t made a sound.
With Echo acting as copilot, he drove east on State Road 54 and eventually got onto the Suncoast Parkway. A few miles later the parkway ended, and he merged onto the Veterans Expressway, and headed south toward Tampa.
Echo rode shotgun and sang to her baby. Instead of caving under pressure, she had shown character. Although her future was uncertain, he knew she’d come out okay.
“What’s your son’s name?” he asked.
“Hector. We named him after his daddy,” she said.
He wanted to ask the father’s status, but knew that was none of his business.
“ICE took my boyfriend away six months ago,” she said, as if reading his mind. “He’s living in Mexico, trying to figure out a way to come back to Florida, and be with us.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“My boyfriend is smart. He’ll figure out a way. Where are you taking us?”
“To a hotel near the Sarasota airport. Once I have you and your baby in a room, I’ll connect with my people at Team Adam, and have them send a private plane to fly you to the horse farm in Tennessee that I told you about earlier tonight. You’ll be safe there.”
The Veterans Expressway had an express lane that ran for most of its length. He wasn’t keen on using it and paying the additional toll, but did so anyway, wanting to concentrate more on talking to Echo than maneuvering his car in the heavy traffic.
“I want to ask you some questions about Lexi,” he said. “Are you okay with that?”
Echo rocked her baby in her arms. “Sure.”
“You said that Dexter kidnapped Lexi. Why do you think he picked her?”
“I asked myself that same question,” she said. “Why take Lexi, and not one of the other dancers, or me? I think it was because Lexi was alone. She didn’t have any family or a boyfriend. When she didn’t show up for work, no one missed her.”
“Except you.”
“Yeah. Lexi babysat for me a few times. She was nice.”
“Was Lexi the first girl to be kidnapped? Or were there others?”
“I think there were others.”
“Why do you think that?”
