482Chapter 1 Who's Got My Girl?
A/N: This started out as a short one shot and before I knew it was three chapters long and growing. The story just bloomed in my head, begging to be written. This is my first ever story written for Fanfiction. I love the Stephanie Plum series and have enjoyed it for many years. Reading the books over and over until I got turned onto Fanfiction. I love Fanfiction and always wanted to write a story so I hope you will appreciate my use of the characters. All Spanish is from my basic knowledge and Google Translate.
I know most stories are written from Stephanie's POV. But this story couldn't have been written in anything other than Ranger's POV. So, I hope it works for you.
Not mine, just taking them out to play. ; )
Rated M for violence, adult language and in later chapters smut. Major violence warning in the first chapter. You can skip most of it avoid the part of the story between the *****.
This is a Babe story, not horrible to Joe, he is a minor character, but would be disappointing to cupcake only fans. Spoilers for all twenty-four books.
Please review. Remember this is my first ever story. Half this story is written and being edited. I will post them as they are ready. I was going to wait till it was completely written but feel like reviews will encourage me to get it all done. Thanks.
Ranger POV
Tuesday, April 12. 19:00
It was just another Tuesday evening at RangeMan, my private security company, and I climbed up the stairs in my company embroidered black t-shirt and cargo pants with black army boots, to my private apartment, in the secured, monitored brick building, on seven for dinner by myself. My life alone was by design to protect the ones I love. Uneasy thoughts of the past cross my mind and I walk into the office in my apartment to check her trackers. Detective Joe Morelli's again, the one all the women call Officer Hottie, because with his brown hair and chocolate brown eyes he is considered by most women to be movie star handsome. They got back together three weeks ago and I figure they got another two months before they do the break up thing again.
I don't know why they do it; the longest they have ever stayed together without a fight has been just over six months and that was only once when her sister, Valerie with her husband and three girls, moved into her apartment and she didn't really have a choice but to get along with him. They usually don't make it three. I long for the nights she sleeps at home, when I can go over and watch her sleep. Her peace touches my soul and brings me a serenity I never thought I would feel again.
As much as she has gone through in her life, with kidnappings, bombings, exploding cars and still she is an innocent in her heart and mind, with a sweetness that I can feel every time I touch her. I can see her clear, bright blue sapphire eyes in my head, framed by her shoulder length curly brown hair, that is wild and practically uncontrollable in the morning. I can feel her five-foot, seven-inch soft frame plastered up against mine, taste her sweet pink lips, from earlier today when I dragged her out in the alley outside the Vincent Plum Bail Bond office and stole kisses from her. She feels guilty when she is on with him, but she can't say no, she can't resist me, always wants me and I know it so I take advantage of her every chance that I can get to remind me and her that I could have her if I put my mind to it.
But it's not a safe life I lead and even now there are rumors that Krizen is trying to get back to the states to get revenge for wrongs he blames on me. Tyco is in the states but he was last seen in California exporting high-end stolen vehicles and running a chop shop on the side. Gussipe Torlini hasn't been heard from since his human trafficking ring was busted in Egypt. If he hadn't taken that group of American diplomats and their families he would have been left alone, but he had to poke Uncle Sam, and Uncle Sam did more than just poke him back, we shut him down. The list is endless and I keep my ear to the ground to hear who is in the states and my back to the wall knowing they are always lining up to get at me.
It's nine o'clock and I know I won't be able to sleep so I change into black gym shorts and black tennis shoes and lug my six-foot 230lb solid muscle frame down to the gym. I am second generation American-Cuban, with short, straight dark brown hair, dark brown eyes framed by annoyingly long thick black lashes and dark mocha latte skin that means I don't burn under the hottest desert sun. My good looks and hard muscular body can get me any women I want and a long line of women I don't. For the last few years there has only been one woman I wanted. One that I have had in my bed numerous times.
Three of my enemies have already kidnapped or hurt her to get back at me. I can't justify having a relationship with her and putting her in even more danger on a regular basis. I mean I carry two guns and a knife at all times for a reason. I keep my back to the wall watching for the danger that is always hunting me. I can't even get her to carry a gun most of the time and even then, half the time it is not loaded. I love her to the depths of my being; how could I live with myself if she got hurt because of my past. I know the cop can take care of her. Well, at least he sleeps with a gun and it is definitely loaded.
It makes me crazy thinking of her perfect, god so sweet and perfect body in his arms every night. But that is my penance, the price I am willing to pay to keep her safe, even as it steals my sanity as I lay in bed thinking of her in someone else's arms. An hour of good weight lifting will get me closer to a night of partial sleep. An hour and a half later my arms are burning and I have run eight miles on the treadmill. I trudge back up to seven for a shower and to see if now I can sleep.
I lay in bed, breathing deeply, focusing my mind to shut down and go to sleep. Knowing when I dream I will always dream the horrors of my past and if I'm lucky she will show up at the end to bring a few peaceful minutes before dawn.
Wednesday April 13, 02:03
Suddenly my phone is ringing and the internal alarm for the building is going off. I grab my phone, "Talk." It is the control room. I am already up, gun in hand, black cargo pants going on.
"Breach on one. At the door, shots being fired into the door, one of them has a sledge hammer. It looks like they are going to break through it." Stanley the night guard at the control room alerted me.
I am instantly dressed; black t-shirt and boots in place. Knife and second gun in hand.
"I'm on my way down." And I disconnected as I hit the stairs strapping on my armament.
I arrive on one. No one is at the large mahogany front desk at night, but the lights are on as I enter. Zero, Tank, Lester, Bobby, Ryan, Ramon and Cal are standing, guns in hand, guarding the front, some looking slightly disheveled because they too have just been called out of bed. The glass door is shattered with more shots fired into the bulletproof door than I can count and the stale sent of burnt gun powder hangs in the air. It is shattered but it's still holding and the camera right outside the door has been shot out. I sit at the computer monitor, at the desk, pulling up the camera from higher up on the building and turn it to look down at the concrete step outside the front door. I see a small flat package left behind. It looks too small to be a bomb but it could be a trap with someone waiting for the doors to open and someone to come out so they can shoot them. I call the control room.
"Check everywhere for anyone out there, especially snipers."
They start going through all the camera angles, while I pull up the video of the assault and I freeze, my breath in my throat. It's Mukhtar, his brown eyes shining under his long brown hair, over his dark Turkish complexion and two large Hispanic looking goons standing behind him. He was severely injured after an attack in his village went wrong five years ago but I would know him anywhere. I'm not sure why he would be coming after me. We set him and his men free from the hell hole they had been kept in as a side part of a mission to stop illegal weapons from getting shipped from Turkey to Iran.
The video showed them walking up to the Haywood building door and just shooting the shit out of it. Then a Tank sized sidekick takes a large sledge hammer, raising it high over his head before bringing it down against the door three times. Good to know the extra strong polycarbonate works.
Mukhtar takes a small package out of his brown leather jacket pocket, holds it up for the camera and lays it down on the ground all while looking into the camera. Then he lifts his gun and shoots the camera out. I take a deep breath. Mukhtar is now the type of man to get up close and personal kind of dirty. Not a shoot from afar, he wants to see you quake, shoot you at close range but probably torture you first until you are a beaten man begging for death. He would know all about it he was practically there when we showed up and freed him.
But why would he be coming after me? And why after all this time? I took a deep breath and signaled for Cal, my refrigerator sized guard with a flaming skull on his white shaved forehead, and Zero, my brown military cut haired, blue eyed white bull, built slightly smaller than Cal, both wearing their RangeMan black, to cover me. I unlocked the door, and it creaked and the broken glass crackled in its bent frame as I slowly opened it and reached out to get the package. It was a small manila envelope, no writing on it, so I closed the door behind me and locked it, resetting the alarm. I nodded to the group of men. Two of the usual night shift; Ryan, another large man in black with brown hair and brown eyes and Ramon a 6' 2" big black man would guard the front door the rest of the night and the rest of the men were relieved to go back to where ever they had been.
I carried the envelope up to the medical lab on the third floor. It could be a biohazard, but Mukhtar had handled it with his hands so the outside was probably safe. Once there I got the sealed clear biohazard box out, we had a clear bio-seal case with built in gloves. So, I carried the box into exam room one setting it on the exam table, sealing and locking the door behind me. I placed the envelope inside and closed and resealed the lid. I slipped my hands into the built-in gloves and slowly opened the envelope looking for any kind of goo or powder that could be a biological agent.
I cautiously slid out the contents and found it was a CD case with a picture of Stephanie and me on the front. I stood their staring at it. It was obviously taken yesterday when I had dragged her out to the alley. In the photo, we were walking back to the bonds office side by side. Her in her typical jeans and red t-shirt, me in my Rangeman black. The photo was shot straight on but from a waist high level. I don't know how someone could have taken it without me seeing them. Of course, if it was someone just walking down the sidewalk or going into the next-door bookstore with a cell phone down by their side that probably wouldn't have set off my internal alerts.
I looked closer at the photo and she had her heart cut out and there were rifle crosshairs over my forehead. As I stood there my heart contracted painfully and I knew in my gut that whatever was on this CD/DVD was going to be excruciating. Mukhtar wouldn't come all this way to leave happy notes behind. This meant Stephanie was in trouble. I ran back up to my office on five and pulled up all of her trackers. Her car, cell phone and purse were all still at Morelli's. Damn if they took her I had no way to track her.
I opened the CD/DVD and ran it through a program that checked for viruses, worms, trojans, any kind of malware or spyware and anything malicious that could be on it. I wasn't expecting anything, Mukhtar was not a tech savvy guy. He barely knew how to check his email and surf the web, internet was only available in a little café in his small village. I popped it into my computer knowing I should have Hector check the coding first but dread was gnawing at the pit of my stomach and I knew something was wrong, very wrong.
The video opened up in night scope mode looking at her car, then it spun around passing several guys huddled in a group to show the front of Joe Morelli's two-story brown townhouse. They didn't finesse the lock but took a tire iron to it and popped it open splitting the wood on the frame. Still as violent as it was it took a fraction of a second and wasn't that loud. Knowing the layout of Morelli's house, I don't know if he would have heard it up in his bedroom. Five large men pushed past the camera and headed up the stairs. By the time the camera made it into the room Morelli was up, white boxers covered in yellow ducklings on, his gun in the hands of the big goon in front of him that he was trying to fight.
His fight lasted about thirty seconds, until he listed sideways and collapsed to the floor. I wasn't sure if he had been shot, but I hadn't heard it on the video, then the camera backed out a little and I saw a syringe lying on the bed. They must have injected him with something, and he had a minute of fight in him until it took effect. Seconds later four men converged on him, kicking him repeatedly and I knew since he was unconscious he wouldn't be able to protect anything. The kicking only lasted several minutes but for an unprotected man that is a lifetime.
You couldn't really see the beating because he was on the floor behind the bed, so I couldn't see how bad he was. The camera panned back to Stephanie and Mukhtar's head bent down by her's. He smiled at the camera the sick perverted smile of a deviant and grabbed her head in his grotesquely misshapened right hand and bent it away from him and then proceeded to lick all the way up her neck. She didn't respond in any way letting me know for sure that she had been drugged. He laughed maniacally, held up a roll of duct tape, and proceeded to tape her mouth, her hands and her feet.
"Now we take her back home." He spoke in his broken English. The camera went black and I paused it. I didn't know what to say. I had such a good fifth sense that had served me and my men for years. Getting a gut feeling when things weren't right and knowing there was trouble ahead that we could then avoid or be prepared for. Something like Stephanie's spidey sense as she calls it, but mine works sensing danger and the best way to achieve an objective, or a warning on how to avoid problems with an assignment and with finding people like a hound dog I just sometimes know where people are trying to hide from me. But nothing had forewarned me of this and I was worried for Stephanie.
Mukhtar lives in a remote village in north Turkey. Certainly, he is not taking Stephanie there. More likely he has been hired by someone who knew his connection to me and is using it to get to me without raising talk on the street or warning flags. He is probably taking Stephanie to his boss, but what for? A ransom? Blackmail? To get me to do an assignment for them before they will release her? Anyone who knows the truth knows I would do anything for her and I will kill anyone who hurts her. I pulled my mind into the present.
I reached for my phone and dialed dispatch directly. "Send officers to Morelli's house and an ambulance. There has been a break in and he has been attacked and probably drugged." I said in a clipped voice as soon as Casey, the officer working nights answered. "There were six guys and file a kidnapping report for Stephanie Plum she was there with him and was kidnapped."
"Are you there right now?"
"No, someone sent me a video of the break in. Six guys broke into the house, there were two syringes on the bed and after a minute Morelli just collapsed, so I think he was drugged. But once he was down, four men took turns kicking the shit out of him. Then they duct taped Stephanie and I am assuming kidnapped her. They looked like they were preparing her to be taken somewhere. I have the DVD, when you can send an officer over to pick it up as evidence and take a report for me. Three of the same guys shot up my front door and then left the video behind as a present."
"Can you identify the men? Have you seen them before? Do you know who they are?"
"No, I don't know who they are." Whatever name I knew him by I was certain it wasn't what he used to get into the country.
"Well Detective Morelli reported a break-in two hours ago. He was transported to the hospital. He will want any information you have of the break-in."
"Any word on Stephanie Plum?"
"Ranger, they have reported her as missing and possibly kidnapped. That's all the information I have so far." Casey told me.
"She was definitely drugged and kidnapped."
"We will send an officer by to get that recording, but it may not be till morning we are short staffed with men taking care of the crime scene at Morelli's."
"It will be at the front desk when you have someone available." I disconnected.
I quickly called up the video of the front door attack and burned it onto a blank DVD. Then I took another and burned just the video of Joe's house onto it. I knew there was going to be a lot more video for me that neither I nor Stephanie would want anyone else to see. I called down to Ryan on one. "Expect an officer to come by later tonight or in the morning. They will be picking up a recording, writing up a report for the attack on the front door and roping it off for the crime lab tomorrow."
I started the video back up steeling myself for the horrors that it would contain. Mukhtar had been horribly tortured for weeks before we found him and his men and helped them escape. The worst was that they had been starved, and when he wouldn't give up the information he was being tortured for they cut him up a little at a time, and left the part behind for him to eat to survive. Part of an ear, three fingers, two toes was the tally by the time he had been rescued.
Not to mention the daily beatings and other unspeakable tortures he and the other men were put through. They were just men that had been rounded up from a local village. A shipment had broken down outside of the village and the men and weapons had all disappeared and Mukhtar swore to us they knew nothing about them but they had been captured and tortured until they turned the weapons over. We let them go, seizing, destroying and transporting back what we could of the illegal weapons and ground to air missiles they had, that was our primary objective. Again, I couldn't fathom why he was coming after me and Stephanie.
The video was black for several minutes, but I could hear quiet talking and movement. Finally, the cap was removed from the camera and it was a close up of a spoon being held over a flame. Then a syringe came into view and all the liquid was sucked out of the spoon. Heroin. The camera panned down to a bed in a dark hotel room. Stephanie was tied facing up, spread eagle, in her pale pink camisole and light grey sweats, on the little twin bed. The needle was held in front of her face, and her eyes flashed defiance. Noise coming out from behind her duck taped mouth. My Babe, so much spunk and fight. As much as I was sad that they were going to inject her with this, whatever she had to face would be tempered by a drug induced haze that would make everything but death more bearable.
The syringe was lifted up from her face to her arm that already had a tourniquet in it. The needle was stuck into a vein and the drug was injected into her. The camera panned back to her face and I could only hope they were using a clean needle for her and not sharing it with a group. Slowly her face changed from defiant to relaxed to euphoric. "Get her up." Came the rough voice from behind the camera.
The camera shut off and when it turned back on Stephanie was up on her feet, still dressed in her sweats and t-shirt, smiling at the men around her. I gritted my teeth as one stepped forward and punched her right in the face and she went down like a sack of sand. My blank face was the only thing apparent as I didn't move and didn't breathe. If they beat her up right there on camera, where I could do nothing to save her I would dish out whatever they do to her ten-fold.
I focused on faces memorizing each one for the retribution I would bring, printing pictures of each man as the video played. She was picked up by her hair and hit again in the gut falling to the floor again. Two men hauled her up by her arm pits and she was punched directly in the eye, her head snapping back in reaction. "Enough." the voice from the darkness said. "get her dressed now." The camera panned to a pretty, skintight red dress hanging solely in the closet over a pair of five-inch red pumps.
The camera shut off again.
****************Violence Warning****************
You can skip down to the next row of asterisk and miss most of it***
The camera came on again. This time two more lights in the room were on, showing a shadowy, dimly lit small dirty hotel room with two twin beds, covered by faded thin red paisley bedspreads, a small black wooden table with one drawer and thin metal based lamp with a wide yellow brimmed shade between them. Across from them were three cushioned arm chairs that were a faded dark hunter green swathed in red, orange and yellow flowers, currently occupied by the other three men. There was a tall, living room lamp with the same yellow brimmed shade as the table lamp had, between the chairs that was on.
Three of the men sat on the further twin bed, and Stephanie was tied face down on the closest twin, her brown curly hair covering her face so I couldn't see what she was thinking. Her arms were spread wide and tied up tight, longways, the length of the bed. One to the top far corner and the other to the bottom far corner of the bed. Her torso, now covered by the tight red dress, splayed out across the middle of the bed and her butt and legs going off the side as she was kneeling on the stained threadbare green carpet. Dios, I would make them regret ever taking a job to hurt her, regret every thought of hurting her. If they killed her there would be no safe place on this earth for them to hide. (God)
Madre de Dios! I sweated in frustration, knowing this wasn't going to be good so I put the DVD on a 3x speed and watched while three of them that had belts took them off and one at a time stepped up to belt her across her back, her butt, her legs. My hand tightened into white knuckled fists as I watched in frustrated rage. With the faster speed, I couldn't hear the crack of each swing but I could see her jump and try to scoot away. Slowly her dress, barely long enough to cover her butt in this position, was riding up with each hit and squirm to get away. Finally, one of the men produced a knife and slid it down the back of her dress slicing it open to her waist and then pulled the bottom up over the smooth skin of her bare alabaster butt. (Mother of God)
Mierda. Her perfectly silky skin now marred with crisscrossing swollen red marks, turning purple; from her upper back to her thighs, no part was left unmarked. Again, I was thankful that it was her back and not her delicate front getting beaten, but I would find them and when I did they would disappear for what they were doing to her. Dios, how many times had I caressed that skin. Knowing she was mine if I were but to say the word and always pulling back, always leaving her alone to fend for herself. (Shit, God)
Next, one puto stepped forward lowering his pants, kneeling behind my babe. Cojeme, my hand slammed uncontrolled on my desk making the monitor shake and everything on my desk jump. I watched in fury as several of the other bastardo stroked themselves while they viewed the nights entertainment. Each man took turns violating her, some multiple times, while my chest was so tight I couldn't breathe, my fists clenched so tight with the need to break each one in half. When they were done, they each took a knife and she thrashed as they held her down and carved their initials into her back, butt and thighs. Fuck, I would shred them to ribbons! As soon as she is safe I would find them all and when I was done they would wish for the death I would bring. (man whore, Fuck me, bastards)
********A little more violence left but you need to know it for the story********
I sped the video up to 4x speed. I just needed to get to the end. If she gets killed at the end of this video I would die with her. Die a thousand deaths that no matter what I had tried to do I couldn't save her. All the trackers in the world didn't help if they didn't take them when they took her.
I did this to her I realized, refusing to have a relationship to protect her from exactly this horror. How was I so stupid to think that the cop would be a deterrent. That if they saw her going home to him they would leave her alone or at least he slept with a gun and could protect her. What a flimsy protection that didn't stand up to one attempt. Anyone that wanted her could get at her anytime.
She would have been better protected in her apartment if it was wired with a security camera right outside her door and fire escape. We would have known the minute her apartment was breached and could have had men on the way.
I looked at my watch, half an hour has gone by and all I could wonder was how much drugs did they give her and would they last longer than the abuse. Suddenly the camera was turned around and Mukhtar was talking to the camera. I stopped the DVD, backed it up and hit play.
"Ranger, this is a horrible way to repay your kindness of releasing me and my men, but when we got back to our village, it and our crops had been burned to the ground. Half of our women, children and animals had been killed. Those that were still alive had been violated and abused, even up to our oldest grandmothers. Now you and your men were honorable and would never do such a thing. But we found that the men who had were a mixed bunch of insurgents hunting the missing weapons for their own profit." He paused taking a deep breath.
"After bouncing around the Middle East and Eastern Europe doing odd jobs, this group of men recently retired to the United States. Half are Americans. We tracked the leader Michael Semeth and several of his men to Texas. So, what does this have to do with you? Well, we couldn't get temporary visas to enter the country and was approached by Sergio Valentino. I know you know him, and he hates you and has put out multiple hits on you, but could never get close." Yes, I knew Valentino, a Colombian drug lord that decided to put his drug profits into other lucrative businesses to wash the money at first and then to make even more of it.
"Sergio promised to solve our, getting into the country, problems if we took care of one little problem for him. Instead of a team trying to get you, we are to take out your women. First your lover, next your daughter, then your mother and finally your four sisters and we can't forget Grandma Rosa, and Grandma Sanja. It's not fair to you but it is the price I have to pay to get back at those that took everything from us."
As much as it sickened me, I just needed her to survive. She was the strongest woman I knew, she has lived through so much. If she can just survive I would be by her side. I would help her through this.
Suddenly the thought I would never leave her side again, went through my mind and I knew if she would have me I would move her in here with me. She would never be safer than here living with me. Always by my side. I could protect her better keeping her close than pretending to not love her and sending her away. She would be mine. I knew in many ways she already was, but I didn't know if she could forgive me for this atrocity being forced on her to punish me. She has never told me she loved me, but I could see glimpses of it in her eyes, her infectious smile she could never hide, and in the way, she could never say no to me.
I had to find her, had to have her. I scoured the video for any clue, I had already looked but now I tried to read the loose papers and card propped on the table between the beds. Turned out to be menus for local restaurants that delivered and a TV channel guide. I guess they had rearranged the room because I didn't see any TV or any furniture that would hold one. I kept looking but couldn't find a single piece of paper anywhere that had any information on it.
Finally, the camera was turned around again and Mukhtar started talking. "This next part is not what I would do. I would just kill all your women outright," He pulled out a six-inch hunting knife from a sheath on his belt. He lifted her head up by her hair, her face still covered by the high angle of the camera and all her hair hanging down around her face. Then he ran the knife edge across her throat. "But we were given specific orders and everything we do here tonight is videotaped for Sergio as well as for you. We were given the equipment and told exactly what to do and how to do it. So, we must go for a trip now and prepare your woman for her final performance." I jumped as he plunged the knife into her left side, below her rib cage, if she didn't bleed out she should survive, but now I had to get to her fast.
I started the video fast forwarding again. The next shot was of a ten-story red brick and glass building, with white brick accents, it was a building in downtown Trenton, the Wilson building I realized. He zoomed up, up, up and from the seventh floor there was Stephanie, tied up in a blanket hanging from a white beam that stuck ten feet out from the building. Mierda! Maldita sea. This whole time she has been hanging their bleeding out and I have been watching every bit of this video for a clue. I looked at my watch, the video had been left a little after 0200, it was two thirty-five now. Mukhtar was talking again and I slowed the video to listen. (Fuck, God Damn It)
"You can't save her but I will be video-taping your pathetic attempts. The beam she is hanging from folds down to the building to make her fall, it will only hold a total of two hundred pounds before it collapses, so if you put any weight on it," he lifted his arm up in-front of his face and let it fall, "phoomfh, it releases and lets her loose. Also, I have a release mechanism that is holding on to her rope that I can release at any time, but to give you a chance to watch the woman you love die I won't release it until you are ten feet from her. Ten feet from the top, bottom or side and zip she goes free." He held the remote up and showed it to the camera. "Best of luck to you." Then the video went black.
I had my phone in hand and the video copy's and file folder of pictures in the other. I was calling Tank as I ran down the stairs to the equipment room.
"Talk."
"I know where she is we need eight men, and all repelling equipment loaded up to leave in less than ten minutes. Tell Bobby to have a trauma kit and an ambulance waiting." I was grabbing repelling equipment and as much rope as I could carry. Lester, Hal, Tank, Woody, Cal, Zip, Junior and then Bobby showed up. Every man fresh from the sheets, wearing the standard RangeMan uniform of black t-shirt with RangeMan embroidered in red over the left chest, black cargo pants tucked into black army boots.
"She is hanging from the seventh floor on an arm that reaches ten or more feet out from the Wilson building. I need six men on the side of the building, Lester, Woody and me from the roof, Tank, Cal, Hal below her from the sixth floor. When we get with-in ten feet of her they are going to release the catch that is holding her and she will drop. So, you must get below her first. Pack the litter. We will need it to bring her up. Load up, leaving in five."
I whisked out with all the equipment and rope I had slung over my shoulders and ran for the concrete stairs barely hearing the pounding of my boots as I took them two at a time. Worried about how much she might have bled out and how long it had been since she was stabbed. I slung all my equipment into the back of the black Cayenne and left the hatch open. I got into the driver's seat, slipped on my climbing gloves and started the engine. Seconds later the garage door opened and all my men came pouring out running to get to the vehicles.
Tank, my tank sized partner since he got out of the seals. He is black as night, 6'6", big as a house, and has a scary blank face to anyone who doesn't know what a big heart he has or that he carries around pictures of his cats that he loves in his wallet, got into the passenger's side. Equipment loaded in the back and closed so fast you heard the slamming of black doors and hatches like thunder rumbling through the garage. I peeled out of there in a squeal of smoking tires, like it was the Daytona 500 and practically ripped the arm off the security gate I charged it so fast. The road was a blur as the five vehicles sped through town, barely any other traffic on the road, the sky above us was mostly clear having lost the haze of the day and the heat of the semi-cloudy hot day had dissipated into a cooler night with a slight breeze.
Within minutes we were pulling up in front of the Wilson building, a line of black vehicles, like the swat team is here. As we unloaded, the men all took seconds to look up and see a large white, person size cocoon, hanging out from a white beam, just below a seventh story window. One quick look through binoculars clarified it was Stephanie, hanging there with her eyes closed, wrapped feet to chin in a white blanket and tied up tight, like a human burrito, little red heels poking out the bottom.
'Hang on Babe, I'm coming,' I silently spoke to her. Expecting that if she opened her eyes she would see the line of black SUV's signaling our arrival. I could only hope that she was still alive, that they hadn't done anything else to her once they shut off the video camera. The fact that there was no big red blood stain showing on the blanket she was wrapped up in brought hope that she wasn't bleeding out.
I started prepping my men the second my car door opened. I handed Zip, my 6' 4" black monster man who was often paired with Zero, in looks they couldn't have been further apart but their even calm temperaments were so similar they made great partners, the file folder. He knew to stay on the ground and monitor the situation, coordinate the emergency vehicles and scout for the six men in the file. It was his job to watch for snipers, we didn't want to get picked off the side of the building. I opened the back of the Cayenne and started unloading the ropes and equipment.
My men knew what to do: Tank, Cal, and Hal, Stephanie calls him Halasaurus because he is a 6'3" white guy with muscles on muscles, brown boyish hair and brown eyes; would exit a sixth story window and hang below her. Lester, my irritating 6'1", playboy cousin on my mother's side, who is still Cuban but has blond hair and green eyes, and Woody, my black haired, cowboy hat wearing, almost six foot, bulky but average compared to Hal and Cal, would bring the litter, we would be dropping from the roof. Lester and Woody would hang about the eighth floor with the litter. Bobby and Junior would stay on the roof, manage the anchors and raising and lowering the litter. I will be the only one to rappel down and get her. I had the twin glass doors open in seconds and Cal hacked the security system and men in black rushed the building like an FBI raid on some white-collar ponzi scheme.
I led the run up ten flights to the roof and immediately began suiting up for the decent. The roof was the easy place to descend from because there were already anchor points used by the window washers for the bi-weekly cleaning. While the guys on six will probably have to punch holes in the wall to find studs to attach to. After getting suited up, I grabbed the litter, Lester and Woody had hauled up the stairs and began to get it hooked up. Bobby, my 6' medic, with dark brown eyes and lighter black skin, was like Lester and Woody, large compared to the average man, lean when standing next to the other linebackers I hire prepped his medical box and then helped me get the litter ready. Junior was white, blond and almost as big as Hal and Cal, but he had blue eyes and a boyish face that made him look young and only a little threatening.
"Bobby, be prepared to treat her as soon as she gets to the roof. Expect a stab wound and she definitely has been drugged."
I stood for just a second remembering my last decent down a building, we were under heavy fire in Kandahar so we had to drop by bird onto the roof. We were trying to rescue a family but the door to the roof was blocked and three of us repelled down the side of the building and in through the living room window. But the mother was afraid of heights so we blew the door to the roof and walked them out. I just hoped this turned out as good that we would get to her in time and she would still be alive.
With that I went over the side of the building, rappelling a little over two stories to hang twenty feet above her. I turned around so I was facing her and watched as Tank, then Hal, and finally Cal climbed out of a six-story window directly below her all three moving to catch her when she is released. I looked back over my shoulder to see Les and Woody descending with the litter between them and a few lazy clouds flow over the top of the building.
When everyone was in place I braced myself for the inevitable drop, and freed my rope. I ran down the building and when I was almost level with her jumped out to grab her. I was only inches from her, but at that second, she was released and began to fall.
To be continued…
A/N I hope you are enjoying this story so far. I wrote it out because it was burning at my brain to get it on paper, and I share it now for your entertainment. Please read and review I really want to hear what you think. Will post the next chapter soon.