Flawed (The Mercenary Series Book 3) Read online

  “That was the plan,” I replied, my throat dry, my voice hoarse. The run through the forest and sleeping in the cold had left me feeling like I was coming down with a fever.

  “Your boyfriend has another fifteen hours before he needs to be here with the money he owes me. Do you think he’ll do it? Or will he decide his pregnant girlfriend isn’t as important to him as two hundred thousand dollars?”

  Two things hit me. Giovanni somehow knew I was pregnant, and X didn’t have access to that sort of cash.

  “How did you know?” I definitely wasn’t showing yet. I didn’t know how he could have guessed. Had he spotted one of my pregnancy books back in the cabin? That might be a possibility.

  “When we followed you to the Catskill Mountains, after you’d left the hospital, we lost you, as there were so few cars on the road we were struggling to keep you in sight without looking suspicious. Because of that, we had to ask around a little. There’s a store up the road. The couple who ran the place told us where you were staying. It was funny, actually. It was almost as though the old man knew there was something not quite right. He didn’t want to say anything, kept insisting there was no one by your description staying anywhere close by. I could tell he was lying, though. I have a good nose for these things. As soon as I started cutting the old man, his wife started talking.”

  My heart sank. “You hurt him!”

  “Yeah, and then the wife wouldn’t stop screaming, so I didn’t have much choice but to take her out as well. She told me everything she knew before that, of course, anything to save her husband’s life. Not that it did either of them any good.”

  I stared at him in horror. “I can’t believe you killed an innocent elderly couple. What kind of monster are you?”

  “I thought you’d know all about monsters, sweetheart, considering the one you’re knocked up by. Have you asked him how many people he’s killed? How many innocent people’s lives have been taken by his hand?”

  I shook my head. “No one X has killed has been innocent.”

  “I hear he was going to kill you.”

  “I’m not innocent either,” I snapped. “Far from it. It might do you good to remember that.”

  He laughed. “Considering your current position, I don’t think you should be making threats. You thought you were being smart, but we were one step ahead of you the whole time. It was one of my men who shoved your car out into the oncoming traffic, by the way. I just wondered if you’d figured that out yet.”

  So it hadn’t been my father after all. “We could have been killed.”

  “No, we just wanted to shake you up a little bit, see what your next move was going to be. We could have snatched you in New York, of course, but there would have been so many more people around for you to try to get help from. And we wouldn’t have experienced all this beautiful scenery. Don’t you just love the fresh air out here?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I haven’t had the chance to breathe much of it down here.”

  He made an amused sound through his nose. “No, I suppose not.”

  I sat there, hating myself for not doing more. I could rush him, try to get hold of the gun he carried, but I was hurt, and every inch of my body ached. He also had two armed men waiting outside. Even if I managed to get hold of the gun and turn it on Giovanni, I would only end up shot by one of his henchmen.

  I knew one thing, though. From the story he’d told me about killing the elderly couple at the store, he wasn’t going to let us walk away from this. Even if X turned up with every cent of the cash he wanted, he’d still end up shooting us both. If he was willing to kill two completely innocent people, he wouldn’t think twice about killing us. In fact, I was amazed I wasn’t dead already. I figured he was only keeping me alive long enough to get X to hand the money over to him, and then we’d both be dead. I hoped X was prepared for that situation.

  “Well, I’m pleased to see you’re behaving yourself now,” Giovanni said. “I don’t want another scene like before. Just stay down here like a good girl, and we’ll both hope your boyfriend shows up on time.”

  The phrase ‘good girl’ grated me like no other, but I clamped my teeth together and forced myself to stay quiet.

  Giovanni turned from me, taking the flashlight with him.

  “Wait,” I said, suddenly panicked at the idea of being plunged back into darkness. “Please, just leave me the flashlight. I’ll go crazy being left alone here in the dark hour after hour.”

  “It’s just the dark. It’s not as though anything can hurt you.” He chuckled again. “I’m the thing that hurts you, and you can see me perfectly well.” As though to prove his point, he shone the light under his chin, like a character in that movie, The Blair Witch Project.

  I hadn’t really believed he was going to leave me the flashlight. The words had spurted from my mouth before I’d been able to hold them back. Still, there was a part of me that had hoped, just for a moment.

  The next part of this would be so much easier if I had some light.

  But Giovanni had already turned away to climb back up the staircase. I watched him go, his heavy footstep thumping on the wooden treads. He banged on the door, and the locks clicked open. Distracted by his arrival, I hadn’t even noticed that the door had been locked behind him. It meant he’d thought I would try to escape, and not only that, that I would have the speed and strength to get past him, even though he was armed and in full health, and I was the opposite. I took a tiny amount of satisfaction in that fact. They knew they’d underestimated me before, and they’d put a plan in place not to make the same mistake again.

  Only this time I didn’t intend for a locked door to get in my way.

  Chapter Eighteen

  X

  We weren’t able to leave right away.

  As much as this frustrated me, I realized I couldn’t expect Mickey Five Fingers to have everything ready to go just because I’d demanded it. He needed to get the money together, plus enough guns and ammo in case we found ourselves in the middle of a shootout.

  He’d left me sitting in his office, being watched by one of his henchmen, while he went about his business. I was starting to get annoyed. I didn’t like waiting around, and I didn’t think Vee’s father truly understood the urgency of the situation, or perhaps he simply didn’t care in the way I did. The memory of all the blood across the kitchen counter back at the cabin, and the way I felt when I realized what had been left for me, still sat at the forefront of my mind.

  As far as fathers went, Mickey was one fucked up son-of-a-bitch. He probably felt torn at the thought of someone hurting Vee that way. I bet he was pleased she’d been hurt, while at the same time wishing he’d been the one who did it, and angry at Giovanni for injuring what was his.

  With the exception of one of Mickey’s men—the guy I’d nicknamed Large, but whose real name was Bruno—who’d been left to stand over me, I hadn’t seen anyone for the last half hour. Vee’s father had taken Nicole away as well, obviously not trusting me with her. I’d wanted to speak with her, find out how she was, and tell her Vee had been worrying for her this whole time. I wanted to tell her this because I knew it was what Vee would have wanted. She’d always tried to put Nicole first, even if I didn’t agree with it.

  Finally losing my patience, I got to my feet. “I’m done waiting around. I’m going to see what’s going on.”

  Large pointed his gun at me, but I ignored it. He wasn’t going to shoot me, not when there was so much going on. I swung open the door of the office and entered the rest of the house.

  “Mickey!” I shouted, not wanting to go room to room searching for him. I hadn’t heard the gates opening or any sound of a car engine, so I figured he was still somewhere on the property. “Hurry it up. We need to get going.”

  No answer came back to me, and I didn’t hear any sound of movement in the house. Then I noticed the front door was slightly ajar.

  I stormed toward the front door and shoved it open to find Mickey and the othe
r guy hanging out beside my truck.

  I frowned. “Hey. What’s going on?”

  They both straightened and stepped away. I’d locked the vehicle, so it wasn’t as though they’d be able to check the inside for anything.

  “Nothing,” said Mickey, smacking the side of the truck like she was an old trusty horse. “Just making sure she’s roadworthy.”

  I scowled. “Don’t bullshit me.”

  “I wasn’t. We have a long drive ahead of us. I’d rather we took two of my vehicles than this old thing.”

  Was this some kind of trap? I didn’t want to end up in one of Mickey’s cars. I liked having the independence of my own vehicle.

  “The truck’s fine. It’s already made it to New York—”

  I almost said ‘and back again,’ but then realized I’d have been giving myself away about the visit I’d already made to check up on him. “I’m sure it’ll make it back again,” I said instead.

  I wracked my brains, trying to think what they might have been doing. I had the case containing the money with me, so it wasn’t that. I remembered the tracker that had been placed on the vehicle Vee and I had driven when she’d run away from Witness Protection, and made a mental note to check for anything as soon as I had the chance. I couldn’t see the point in him doing this, however, as we’d be riding together anyway. Perhaps he was worried I’d make a getaway after we’d got Vee back, and this was his insurance against knowing where his oldest daughter was. It didn’t matter. I could find a tracker easily enough.

  “Glad to hear it,” Mickey said. “You can take one of my guys with you, though. I’m not going to let you just drive off.”

  “Does that mean you’re finally ready to leave?”

  “Yeah. I’m ready. I just need to get Nicole from her room. The money is already in the trunk of my car.”

  “So you’re still planning on bringing Nicole?”

  He smiled, but the expression was cold. “Of course. I already told you, she’s my trump card.”

  The way he said it made goose bumps stand up on my arms.

  ***

  We set off, with me in my truck, leading the way, with Large sitting beside me, a gun pointed loosely in my direction. In the car behind us—the same large Merc which had reminded me of a funeral—was Vee’s father, Nicole, and the guy I was thinking of as Little.

  “You don’t need to keep pointing that thing at me,” I said to Large. “I came to you, remember?”

  “Sorry. Boss’s orders.” He didn’t sound sorry in the slightest. At the most, he sounded bored and put out that he’d been made to take this road trip.

  I was surprised none of them had bothered to search me and remove my weapon. I guessed Mickey Five Fingers understood we were going to have to be on the same side, at least until we got Vee back. After that, I didn’t know what was going to happen. I was trying not to think about her reaction when she saw I’d brought her father to her, instead of killing him like I’d said I would. I knew she’d be happy to see her sister, though, and I was hoping that would outweigh the incredibly bad part.

  The long drive gave me plenty of time to think, even if I did have to do it with a gun pointed at my side. I was outnumbered, and Mickey had already told me he planned to use Nicole in order to get Vee to go with him. My guess was that as soon as Vee was handed over, he’d point a gun at Nicole’s head until she went to him. Would I get the chance to shoot him before he had a chance to grab Nicole? I knew if I did, the other men would turn their guns on me. I also had Giovanni to worry about. Was he going to just take the money and hand Vee over, or would he try to grab the cash, kill us, and run? If I was a betting man, my money would be on the latter.

  One thing Giovanni wouldn’t be expecting was for me to turn up with Mickey Five Fingers. Did he even know who Vee was, other than my girlfriend? Had he bothered to do his research enough to know exactly whose daughter he’d taken hostage? He’d found us, so that made me think he’d been watching us for a while. Even so, men like him tended to think of the female part of a couple to be the ‘little woman.’ He might not have considered that she would be a force to be reckoned with in her own right.

  I hoped Vee hadn’t done anything that might have made him hurt her even more. I hoped she was thinking about the baby and protecting herself, rather than plunging into the middle of a fight like she normally would. I couldn’t predict anything Vee might do, though. If he goaded her, and she saw an opportunity, I knew she would take it.

  I just prayed she didn’t get herself killed before we got there.

  Chapter Nineteen

  V

  The thought of attempting my plan made me sick to my stomach, but I couldn’t see any other way out of this situation. I could sit around and wait for X to bring the money, but I knew Giovanni would take the cash and shoot us both. His merciless nature had been shown to me when he’d told me about the old couple at the store. He didn’t need to kill them. They wouldn’t have done him any harm, yet he’d taken their lives anyway. If he was willing to do that to a harmless old couple, there was no way he would let us walk away from this. I needed to be free before X arrived so I could intercept him and stop him bringing the money to the cabin. This was the only way I could think of doing it.

  For the first time in my life, I truly didn’t want to die. The thought of dying, and taking my unborn child with me, terrified me. I wanted to go on to live a long life, to give birth and watch my child grow. I wanted to have X by my side, and go through all the struggles of lifelong partners together. But I knew that would never happen if he was able to make it here with Giovanni’s money.

  Placing my hands against the cellar wall, I felt my way back around. About half way down, the man-built brick of the first half of the cellar turned into the jagged rock face of the underground cave it was built up against. My feet caught on the wooden struts of a large rack which the summer inhabitants of the cabin must have used to store their wine. It was broken and splintered now, and it occurred to me that I might have used a piece of the wood as a weapon—not that it would have been much good against a gun. It was too late now. My mind was made up.

  I had to listen hard to hear it, but it was still there, the distant burble of running water below me. I knew, from my earlier exploring, where the gap in the rock was. It was going to be tight, and the thought of squeezing into that narrow space in the pitch black made my heart race.

  But it was my only chance.

  I debated removing my sneakers. They might become waterlogged and drag me down. But then I reasoned that I wasn’t jumping into the sea or a deep pool. I didn’t think the water would be deep enough to drag me under. Of course, it might change somewhere along the way, but from what I could hear, it was the tinkle of an underground brook, not the roar of a river. Besides, I might need my shoes in order to run on the other side, assuming I made it through. Water always came out somewhere, didn’t it? It didn’t stay underground forever, and these mountains were filled with rivers and lakes. I just needed to follow the water downstream as far as I could, and get out the other end.

  I took a deep breath to steady my nerves. My hands trembled from both the cold and from fear. I’d done a lot of crazy, dangerous stuff in my life, but the thought of the cold, dark, claustrophobic space terrified me more than any of them.

  I couldn’t think about what I had to do. I needed to focus on the result instead. I imagined Giovanni coming down to taunt me about something and discovering the cellar empty. Would he figure out what had happened, or would he think I’d vanished into thin air? He would be furious, I knew that much, and the thought of his anger was enough to get me moving. I hoped wherever the waterway came out wouldn’t be too far. Not only did I not want to spend hours navigating my way underground, I also didn’t want to come out too far away from the cabin. I needed to make my way back to the main road to be able to watch out for X’s truck and intercept him before he reached the cabin.

  Getting through the gap was going to be a tight sq
ueeze. I was tall, but still slender, despite my pregnancy. I imagined another month down the line and this would be impossible for me. I had to go head first, in case there wasn’t enough room to crouch and turn around down there. I planned to slip into the waterway like one of the rats I’d heard, or like a snake or ferret.

  Reaching out to scrabble around beside me, my fingers found a small pebble. I lifted it over the gap and let go. The splash came almost immediately, and I estimated the drop to be about six feet. I had no way of knowing if the gap between the top and the bottom remained the same width all the way down. I lay flat on my stomach and felt around, and it didn’t appear to grow any narrower—about three feet long and a foot wide. The tunnel itself, however, may shrink down to a hole only big enough to carry the water, and I’d be thwarted before I’d even gotten started. I hoped that wasn’t the case, and erosion had played its part, but the only way I’d find out was by getting down there.

  “You can do this,” I said out loud, trying to give myself a pep talk when there was no one else around to do it.

  I would have felt better if I’d managed to get the flashlight from Giovanni, but I hadn’t, so I needed to get on with it. If I discovered the attempt was impossible, at least I’d tried—and hopefully not gotten myself killed while doing so. But if it worked, I’d be free, and that would be a whole lot better than sitting in the dark, talking to myself, and waiting for Giovanni to shoot me.

  With my mind made up, still lying on my stomach, I wriggled forward. I was able to brace my hands on each side of the wall leading down into the gap, so I didn’t plummet headfirst. Constant worry flashed through my mind—was I doing the right thing, would I hurt the baby by my actions, assuming the baby was still alive after everything. But I knew if I didn’t at least attempt this, I would end up dead anyway, and so would my unborn child. It was our only chance.

  I edged forward, my biceps taking the strain as I grunted my way deeper into the hole. Agony screamed through my injured finger, though I held it up and away from the wall. This didn’t prevent me from bumping it, though, and the pain made my head swim. I hoped the bleeding hadn’t started again. I couldn’t risk losing consciousness and plummeting to the bottom. If I landed awkwardly, I could break my neck.