Fishy Riot, page 23
“I’ll see,” Clay called and then was gone. If there wasn’t, he’d find something to cut him out with.
“It’s okay.” Taylor stroked a hand over Sietta’s head soothingly, as much for himself if he was honest. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
“I know… I just… I never thought I’d be back here. It’s….” His breath shuddered as he struggled to stay calm. “I can’t be back here. I need to get out of here.”
“Shhh, in a minute, I promise. Clay’ll be back in a minute. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have left you alone, I didn’t think—”
“No, it’s….” Sietta swallowed. It sounded painful, as if he’d been crying and was dehydrated. Taylor didn’t mention it and held him tighter. “You must’ve been worried. I’m sorry. You’re sorry. Everyone’s sorry, so let’s not do sorry, okay? Get me out of here. I need to—”
“I know,” Taylor soothed. “You’re right, no sorry. We’ll get you out of here….”
“Right now,” Clay agreed, coming over with a small pair of bolt cutters and severing the chain, leaving the shackle on for now, prioritising. They would need bigger tools to get through the cuff.
Taylor didn’t bother to ask Sietta what he wanted as he wrapped him in the blanket and picked him up easily, then, holding him close, stormed up from the cellar and out the front door, not wanting him to have to see the men who took him or speak to them.
There was an ambulance outside and five cop cars. Taylor went straight to the ambulance and climbed inside with Sietta, closing the door so Sietta wouldn’t see the house.
Sietta was silent as he sat trembling while they looked him over. They frowned at the shackle and stuffed some bandages between it and the skin to stop it rubbing. They gave him water, checked his vitals, and asked questions they only got grunts and whispers in response to. It was a long process, but they declared him okay to go, as long as someone removed the shackle.
Taylor took him out of the ambulance as they lifted in the man who had been shot, and Taylor drew Sietta over to the squad van, sitting him on the back and holding him again, disturbed by how pale he was and how badly he was still shaking.
“What do you need, Si?”
“I want to go home,” he pleaded, pulling back far enough to look up into his eyes. Taylor swallowed, his throat dry and painful as it seized around his pain. He wanted to go with him, but he was on shift, and it wasn’t finished yet. He wanted to take them in, watch them be charged. He needed to see it through, to trust the job was done, especially since it was so close to home.
“Is it okay if Brayden takes you?”
Sietta jerked as if slapped, but Taylor watched his thoughts flickering in a myriad of expressions over his face before he nodded, understanding without needing to be told, and Taylor realised that was it. Sietta was the first person who understood him intrinsically. That was what drew him in, what snared him, why he was so stuck. And he realised in that same moment that he would never be unstuck, because that understanding would never falter, or even waver. But he couldn’t say it, the words struck dumb by the weariness in every line of Sietta’s body. Later, when he could shower him in kisses and warm him to the bone. That would be the time to talk.
He pulled his phone out and waited, his breath feeling too loud in his ears now his pulse was settling as the adrenaline waned.
“Hey.”
“No, it’s Tay, not Hay.”
“Oh, now you want to be funny,” Brayden fairly growled down the phone. “Tell me you’ve found him.”
“He’s safe,” Taylor breathed in agreement, looking down to check for himself. “I need you to come get him.”
“Geez, that’s fucked,” Brayden muttered, but Taylor heard him getting up, collecting keys that jangled over the line. “Where are you?”
“Point Piper house.”
“You cannot be serious?” Brayden swore, long and profusely, going on quite the rant about criminals, war, wankers…. It was impressive really, and audible to Sietta whose eyes grew increasingly wide until something Brayden said had him laughing, falling into Taylor’s side and wrapping his arms around him as if finally realising things were going to be okay.
“See you soon,” Taylor managed to say in between something about Kelly and dishes. He hung up and lifted Sietta into the back of the van, leaning in to kiss him hard. He was relieved when Sietta had no hesitation in kissing him back.
“I’m….” He’d been going to say sorry, but they weren’t doing that. “I’ll be home as soon as my shift ends.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be off duty until the end of the week?” Sietta arched a curious brow. “I don’t think participating in raids counts as off duty.”
“Yeah, well, the boss said I could work as long as I proved I could behave and stop ordering people around… I guess I’ll just get bellowed at when he finds out, at which point it’ll be too late for him to do anything about it. Actually, he’ll probably give me indefinite nightshifts or something…” There would be a punishment, but he also knew the boss would understand. He’d done his job, and he hadn’t broken any laws. But he was focussed on Sietta when he should have been completely focussed on the job, and he knew the boss would see to it that he was reprimanded for it.
“Don’t you need to go help?”
“No, right now I’m protecting the victim,” he pointed out smugly. He felt sorry for Jones, who was being sent with the perpetrator to the hospital to guard him while he got the bullet taken out of his arm. Never a fun gig. They usually swore at you, a lot.
“A victim again, huh….”
“Not who you are,” Taylor pointed out softly. “Just something that happened to you.” Sietta stared at him a long time, his expression stuck somewhere between stunned and amused.
“Look at you being all philosophical.”
“Don’t get used to it. Was Viola here?”
“Oh, no, I wouldn’t dream of it.” Sietta studied his face, looking for some sort of sign, but to what Taylor did not know. “I heard them talk to her on the phone, but they didn’t talk about me. They were talking about you. Well, not you specifically, but the riot squad.” That didn’t sound good. It was another thing that linked events to Taylor, rather than Sietta, but he couldn’t figure out what the goal was.
“Get used to me being around, okay?” Taylor changed the subject again.
“How often?” Sietta looked sceptical.
“Always. Like, annoyingly in your face at all hours of the day. Up in all your business, wanting to know your favourite colour, the whole works, yeah?”
Sietta was gaping at him and trying to laugh at the same time. Sietta pulled him in for another kiss. Taylor figured that was a good sign.
“Blue.”
“Huh?” He was distracted by kisses.
“My favourite colour, asshole. It’s blue.”
“HEY.” BRAYDEN appeared at the vehicle’s back door, startling them where they were curled up on the edge in the sun, watching the arrests going on around them. “This place is a madhouse.”
“No kidding,” Sietta grumbled, but he slipped free of Taylor’s hold and stood, stretching and groaning as his muscles protested. His bruises were getting darker, a vivid reminder to Taylor of what had been done because he decided to go for a run. Idiot.
“Are you okay?” Brayden was looking Sietta over and taking in the bruises with a dark scowl.
“Sure. I got kidnapped and beat up. Nothing out of the ordinary.”
Taylor and Brayden both glared at that, but Sietta didn’t seem to care. He had a dark sense of humour, and they were just going to have to live with it. Hopefully for a very long time.
“Are you sure? Because there’s a shackle on your ankle.” Brayden pointed to it, as if Sietta might have somehow missed that it was there.
“Oh!” Sietta stared down at it. “Right. I’m still fine.”
Brayden glared at Taylor, and Taylor stared back because it wasn’t his fault they had nothing to cut it off with. Brayden hung his head and shook it, as he did when Jay and Emma did something that defied all reason and left him baffled. He studied the shackle for a moment before waving a hand as if it might magically disappear. It didn’t and he huffed.
“I’ll figure something out on the way home. I’m not letting you walk around with that thing on.”
“Awesome. Coz it’s heavy.” Sietta grinned. Brayden swore. Taylor waved as they walked to Brayden’s car and left.
“He okay?” Clay appeared at his side, and Taylor nodded because he suspected Sietta was doing far better than he should have been, but that was because he was weird, and weirdly accustomed to being held against his will. That wasn’t anything to be pleased about, but it was also a fact of life that Taylor was going to have to accept.
“I think I’m in love with him.”
“Uh….” Clay stared at him, then burst out laughing. He slung an arm around Taylor’s shoulders and hugged him tight, laughing harder when Taylor swore at him.
“Dude, you’ve been in love with him from the moment you laid eyes on him. If you only figured that out now, you’re more repressed than I thought! Fuck, you took him home to meet Mum! Everyone knows you’re in love with him.”
Well, that was weird. “Define everyone.”
“Uh…. Mendel knows.” Good definition.
“Fuck!” That really was everyone.
As Taylor looked around, it became obvious they were finishing up. Everyone was being loaded into paddy wagons, and the squad was doing a final sweep while the forensics team took over the scene. They waited by the truck as the team ambled over, locked weapons into the cage on the inner truck wall, and climbed in. They slumped against the seats, the adrenaline finally leaving them worn and ready to go home. Unfortunately the sun was only starting to set, and they had six hours of shift left.
It took ninety minutes to get back through the city and out to the west where the station was. They spent it mostly in silence, Mendel and Hale slept on the benches, leaning against one another and snoring. Taylor and Clay sat side by side, whispering so as not to wake anyone. Harris drove.
“It just doesn’t make sense. They barely put up a fight, just enough to ensure they were arrested,” Clay pondered, his frown lines deep.
“Nah, the kidnapping would ensure they were arrested. The force ensured we’d take them in with us….” Taylor frowned at that. “Frey was way too calm, like we were playing into his hands. He barely even blinked at Si when we brought him out, couldn’t care less that we had him.”
“And Viola was nowhere to be seen. If they’d taken Sietta to kill him, he’d be dead, and if she wanted to torture him, she would have been there. As it is, there’s no motive for taking him. No one got a ransom or anything.”
“Something’s not right.”
“What if Sietta was merely a guarantee we would be the ones to arrest them?” Taylor mused, not liking where his thoughts were headed, but feeling like he was on the right track.
Frey was the master, not the dealer. That was important. He needed to figure out why. What was the plan?
“Why would they want to be arrested?” Taylor asked Clay, an idea starting to take shape.
That was the million dollar question. Millions of dollars….
“Sietta was able to get all that information on people because he understands what motivates them.” Clay picked up on where Taylor’s thoughts were going. “He said Viola’s like him. She knows people.”
“Knows what makes them tick,” Taylor agreed. “She would have no qualms using the brother she hates as bait for us to come pick up Frey’s men. If the crime’s bad enough, we’ll take them in.”
“Again, why would they want to be arrested?” Mendel woke up and asked blearily. He was missing the point.
There was a loud screech, and the world turned to pain.
14: Home Invaders
THE VAN was almost home to the riot squad office when it hit something hard, throwing them into the sides, seat belts snapping raw against their shoulders. Mendel kicked Clay in the shin by accident, Hale slapped Taylor in the shoulder where he’d been shot. Pain licked at them where they collided with hard metal, and there was the distinctive sound of the tyre blowing. The undercarriage ground against asphalt and the van slid, ploughing into the road before it slammed into the side of the car garage, and they were thrown around again on impact.
“Fuck me, Harris!” Mendel spat, then hit the release on his belt and hurriedly checked everyone over, but their body armour had protected them for the most part. Just bruises, not that they didn’t hurt.
“I’m okay,” Harris called out from the front seat. “Think I might have broken my leg.”
“How is that okay?” Hale muttered, rubbing his elbow where it had hit the weapons rack hard.
“Well, I’m not dead. I consider that a positive,” Harris griped, and Hale climbed through from the back to help him. “That pothole… it’s kinda big now.”
“Wha….” Mendel shoved the rear door open and looked down at the massive hole they’d hit.
“That didn’t happen naturally.” Clay peered over Mendel’s shoulder at the gaping wound in the bitumen. “Looks like acid.”
Taylor looked from the hole to their crashed van and the paddy wagons lined up out the front, empty, then swore loudly.
“Keys, Mendel!” Taylor grabbed the keys before Mendel could even react, snatching them from Mendel’s belt before unlocking the weapons cage as a bullet was fired from their office windows at the back of the van, barely missing Mendel’s leg. He pulled it in, and Clay slammed the door shut, another bullet hitting the side of the van. It was bulletproof, and they didn’t worry about it, focussing on arming instead.
“What the hell is going on?” Mendel demanded.
“It’s a setup. They wanted us to arrest them to get in the building.”
“Why?” Hale asked, as he tied off the makeshift splint he’d done on Harris’s leg then climbed back over to grab his gun.
“Because we have the largest haul of ice in Australia’s history sitting in our basement,” Clay realised, then swore under his breath as he grabbed some extra ammo and shoved it in his pocket.
“And all the cocaine from the ferry,” Taylor added. “There’s 1.5 billion dollars’ worth of drugs in there.” Several recent sizable drug raids meant none of it had been destroyed yet, the backlog sitting in the basement, waiting for the paperwork to come through before it could be dealt with.
“They can’t have taken everyone in the office! How’d they get out of their cuffs?” Mendel grabbed a second weapon and shoved it in his ankle holster.
“The Custody Manager would have removed them during processing,” Taylor reminded them, cursing procedure and the reviews that would likely follow.
“How’d they get the guns?” Mendel picked up a knife and hid it behind his belt.
“We brought the guns in,” Taylor watched Mendel’s armouring in fascination, wondering how many weapons the man had hidden.
“The rocket launcher raid,” Clay grabbed two Tasers and clipped them on a loop of cord on the front of his vest.
“Seriously?” Taylor had fond memories of the gun raid, but he wasn’t sure Tasers would help them this time.
“You never know when you’re gonna want to electrocute someone in the balls.” Clay checked they didn’t interfere with movement and then happily put a can of capsicum spray in his pocket.
“I could use a rocket launcher about now,” Hale lamented, clearly unimpressed with Clay’s choice of arsenal. He grabbed the sniper’s rifle instead and crawled back to the front of the van, opening the passenger-side door, which was hidden from the office view by the angle they’d crashed.
“I’m going next door, there’s a good roof shot at the windows and a good line of sight for front and rear.”
“Report as soon as you’ve found a position,” Mendel instructed, and Hale disappeared without another word. “Harris, stay here and mind the van.” Harris chuckled and agreed, sounding pained. The break must be bad. “Call an ambulance. And some backup.”
“On it.”
“How do we want to do this? There’s three of us, at least four of them.”
“They’ve been planning this for a while, if the attacks on Sietta were to lure us out,” Taylor pointed out. “They’d have let more men in by now. There’s no way they could hold the building with four guys. Hell, they probably had others arrested today by the other teams. Or some of the warrants we executed last night.”
“Agreed,” Mendel grunted. “The garage is the best entry, we know where the cameras are and we can move unseen. Go straight to level three, and move down through the building from there, clear as we go and try to catch them from behind. Our backup should arrive before we get to the ground and we can sandwich them.”
Mendel took point, Clay went in the middle, and Taylor brought up the rear. The sun was setting, offering them the cover of darkness to work in. Unfortunately it gave Frey and his men the same cover.
The entry to the garage was easy, and there was no sign of getaway cars, which made sense. If anyone triggered the alarm, the carpark would seal, locking everything in. The logical choice would be the rear loading bay, which had a dumbwaiter down to the basement for loading and unloading of large hauls. It was how they’d gotten the drugs in to begin with.
The stairs were harder. There was a guard on the first floor, but they Tasered him and Mendel punched him hard enough to knock him out. They gagged him and cuffed him to the stairwell to be sure he stayed put and didn’t make any noise, then kept moving. They had to jump from one barrier to another to avoid the cameras, which was hard when you were carrying a good thirty kilos of extra weight in gear, but it was what they trained for.
The third floor was abandoned, save for a lone armed man stalking the walls who was easily taken care of, and a sniper in one of the windows. Unfortunately for him, he was too busy looking outside to worry about what was inside, and Clay and Taylor crept up from either side and hogtied him before he could put his finger on the trigger.
