Find A Way Or Make One (9 page)

At Raylan’s nod, we proceeded to moving the chamber pots and getting all the women and girls into the corner. As I was listening to what was going on
outside the door, Raylan threw
a question at me that I hadn’t been expecting. “Are you going to get the boys too?” Immediately my mind flew to the images of my three boys. My red headed Seamus that looked just like Toby, and my dark haired Cian who at four years of age already had mastered the pout
and soulful eyes that made women putty in
his hands, and Tiarnan. At twenty years old, Tiarnan shared his dark good looks with his
half-brother
Cian, but exuded the danger and sex appeal most mean dreamed of having.
      

Thinking of my boys, and what I would do to anyone that hurt made me even more determined. “Everyone will be leaving here today.”

After making sure that all the girls were in the corner, I hovered at the door listening for anything. Suddenly I could hear a commotion from the first floor, then I heard one man leave while telling the other to stay put and watch both rooms. It sounded like their
merchandise
was only kept in two rooms, one male and one female. Made sense, I would make sure there were no other rooms but it looked like I only had to worry about two.

After hearing the steps of the man going downstairs reach the bottom floor, I nodded at Raylan. She and the girls started moaning, and wailing. The man outside told them to shut up, but they persisted. When he threatened to come in with the whip, it was hard for me to remain objective. That fucker would get what was coming to him; of that I would make sure. I nodded and Raylan to keep it up, then I went to pick up the rankest chamber pot in the room. When the man outside came in, you could tell that the smell from the buckets was closer to him than what he was used to. Once he was all the way in the door, I dropped the bucket on his head and had him on his knees after one swift kick aimed
at the backs of his knees. I quickly hit him on the head with the butt of my
Glock.

“Take those sheets and tie him up. I will get the boys and bring them over here to wait with you until I send Yasser up here to help you all leave. You will know it is him because he is dressed in Bedouin attire. Is there only one other room holding the boys, or are there more rooms and more people that need to be gotten out of here?” Raylan shook her head no, so I quickly left.

There were about eight boys, ranging from five to twelve years of age, all appeared malnourished and terrified. I quickly rushed through the languages that I thought that they
might know. I was lucky that they all seemed to understand Arabic so when I told them I was getting them out of here they
seemed to be hesitantly hopeful. Once I got the boys in the room with Raylan and the other girls, I quickly and quietly made my way down the stairs. I could tell that the men were getting tired of dealing with Yasser.
One even muttered in Albanian
that he couldn’t wait to gut “this uppity bastard” like a fish. I decided it was time to make my presence known.

I pulled my Bowie from my leg and released the safety on my Glock. Speaking in Albanian I calmly stated, “The only gutting that will be done here will be by me. Too bad that I will be gutting men like you with no balls.” The man roared in outrage and immediately went for his
gun, but I managed to shoot his kneecap before he was able to reach it. I gave quick and precise directions to Yasser. “Go upstairs, second door on the right and get everyone in there out the back door.
Meet me at the warehouse. I will have
Nadeen. Go!”
Nodding, Yasser quickly went raced up the stairs.

I soon had my hands full with the dogs as Raylan called them. Their fighting styles could be summed up in one word; dirty. They would do anything to gain the upper hand. I was given no choice but to kill two of them, and I soon incapacitated the other three as well. I pulled my backpack off and got out the mask and the bombs. After I had put on the mask I
released one bomb. I made my way to the through the bottom floor of the house. Soon I found came to a room with the door slightly ajar.

As I cautiously walked in, I was immediately able to see a young woman, who I assumed was Nadeen, with a knife held to her neck by a big, dirty man with oily hair and empty black eyes.

“So, her brother had to get the help of a woman to get his sister, did he? Weak, so weak. He doesn’t deserve to live. No bother, I will kill him after I kill you and his slut of a sister.” He threw
Nadeen to the
ground and came at me. I quickly shot him in the gut and went
to go check on Nadeen
. In my haste to get to
Nadeen
and get her out of there I didn’t check him for any other weapons. As I felt the knife lodge itself in my right shoulder, I didn’t really register the
pain. I turned around and shot him between the eyes. Then I got to
Nadeen
who was huddled, sobbing in the floor. After I calmed her down, she and I made our way to the door.

Once outside, we made our way to my Harley.
Nadeen
gasped as she saw the knife. When I told her to pull it straight out of my shoulder, she looked horrified. Up until that moment she had not
said a word to me, but now her eyes filled with tears as she said, “But the pain, how will you be able to stand the pain?”

I let out a low chuckle. “Oh
Nadeen, I
am no stranger to pain. In fact, we have a long standing relationship.” After assuring her I would be alright, she did as I asked.
She held a
rag to my shoulder until we got to the warehouse. Only after seeing her brother hug her,
and making sure that the others were alive did I quietly fall to the ground in a dead faint.

9

“You can never be what I want.
At best, all you could ever be is a cheap imitation.”

Wyatt

Wyatt3

What the hell is going on? After I was unceremoniously booted from the club, I decided to wait around outside; hoping to get a chance to talk to Kylee and explain about Catherine
and Sable. I knew that Sable had totally screwed whatever goodwill I might have had with Kylee, but I wasn’t going to give up.

I guess I had been out there waiting close to two hours when I see Kylee and the front man from
Jagged Pill
, Ethan or Evan or something like that,
walk out the side door and make their way to a waiting limo. I stand off in the background to see if Kylee is going to leave with him. I hope to hell she is not, because not only would that make tracking her down and forcing her to listen to me more difficult, I don’t know if I could handle the images my mind would conjure up of them in the back of the limo.

But no, Kylee didn’t leave in the limo. She and Ethan or Evan talk a minute, hug, and then he gets into the limo and left. Alone, thank goodness.

As I made my way over to where Kylee was standing, I saw another man approach her. Thinking that
she was in trouble, I quickly stepped out of the shadows and made my way over to offer her some protection, only to once again be reminded that there could be whole libraries of information dedicated to what I don’t know about my girl.

Before my eyes, Kylee starts
speaking rapid Arabic; when did she learn Arabic? After what I could only assume
was a disagreement, Kylee hands
the man her phone. After he finished typing something in her phone, she quickly held a cab and left.
      

I am so puzzled by what I have just seen I let Kylee hop into a cab and leave before I
can pull my head out of my ass and do anything. Fucking g
reat! I
just let Kylee get away again! Well, Cale and the guys haven’t left yet, so I will just wait and follow them when they leave. They have
to be staying near Kylee, or maybe even with her.
I settle back in the darkness, hoping that one of the guys will leave soon.

And I wait. About two hours later, I see Sunny and the redhead he was in the club with earlier,
leave.
I followed them for a minute, but when they got to the car and she was driving, I knew they were going
back to her place. If he was taking her home to his place, he would be driving.
Sunny and I had always tried to go to the girl’s place, but if
we had to go to ours, we always drove.
A random hookup is less likely to remember how to get back to your place if you drive.

So again I stepped
back in the shadows and prepared to wait. After another hour
I am almost ready to pack it in for the night, when Cale, Chip, Crow and Ken come storming out of the club. They all looked like overcome with concern and worry.
I made the connection instantly; Kylee!
Each of these guys felt fiercely protective of her and their obvious concern and worry, added to the shady interaction I saw outside of the club, I knew in my gut she was in trouble. As I hailed a cab I watched the guys hail one of their own. When I told the driver to follow their cab, he looked at me like I was insane, but for the right amount of cash, he did it anyway.

It didn’t take long for me to recognize where we were going; the warehouse.
Questions kept bombarding my head.
What had Kylee and that man been
talking about before she left; where had she rushed off to and what did she do when she got there; and how in the hell did she know fluent Arabic? I tried to push these questions out of my mind, but
they
lingered on. With each question that I had to push to the back of my mind, I was reminded that there were so many things that I never knew about Kylee.

When they reached the warehouse, I jumped out of the cab, too impatient to make change; I pulled out a massive wad of dirhams and asked him to wait.
All the
guys but Crow got out of the cab. As I watched the cab disappear, more questions began
formulating in my mind.
Soon after Crow left, the guys made their way into the warehouse. I stood outside; waiting to see what was going to happen.

In no time at all, another cab pulled up to the side of the warehouse.
I saw Ken and Chip rush out; Ken holding the exit from the warehouse open and Chip opening the door on the cab. About thirty seconds later, Cale came out carrying something or someone that I assumed was Kylee.
W
atching Cale come out of the warehouse with
my
girl in his arms caused a whole host of conflicting emotions inside me to come warring to the surface. The two strongest emotions were concern and jealous rage. Concern for the fact that Kylee was physically unable to walk out on her own and jealous rage because it was Cale, not me, giving her the help she obviously needed.

I followed them for about twenty minutes, until they pulled into a driveway, and then
into a garage. Without thinking about it I handed the cabdriver a fist full of cash and made to get out, when I was stopped by another cab rushing down the street.
As it pulled to the curb beside the house that Cale, Ken, and Chip had taken Kylee into, I watched Sunny
and Crow jump out of the cab, Sunny carrying a sma
ll camouflage duffel bag. They both rushed up the stairs, taking two or three steps at a time. Once they reached the door, they knocked and rushed in.

I got out of the cab, and after thanking the driver once again, I purposefully walked to the sidewalk
that led to the door they had all entered.
As I got closer to the door more of the inside lights came on and I could hear
several voices but they were too low to make out. Taking a deep breath, I
knocked at the door and waited. A million questions seem to explode in my head all at once. What is wrong? Is Kylee hurt? What was she doing tonight? How did she get messed up in this type of work? Will the guys let me talk to her? Will Kylee talk to me, even if the guys let m
e talk to her?
All these questions were swirling around in m
y head. I was so
preoccupied with trying not to listen to them that it surprised me when the door finally began to open.

When Crow opened the door, saying that he looked frustrated would have been a laughable
understatement. I could tell t
hat he had run his hands through his red hair several thousand times, his eyes kept darting to whatever was behind the door, and he was already starting to close the door when he was half way through his first sentence to me. “Ok man, I don’t know what has given you the idea that you are either needed or wanted…”

This time I was able to pull my head out of my ass in time to put my foot out to stop him from completely closi
ng the door. Crow was
not happy to have to continue talking to me, and I was not happy after he had tried to cut my foot in half with the door. We eyed each other up; the tension radiating between us so thick you could almost see it. “Look man, I get it ok. You guys have taken Kylee under your wing and feel that you have to protect her. While I applaud the sentiment, you don’t have to protect her from me. I would never hurt her.”

Crow busted out laughing. “Man, you are so damn full of yourself. If you have always been this way I don’t know how
Kye
let you live this long. First; we haven’t taken shit under our wing.
Kye
is a friend and has saved each of our asses in one way or another more than once, been involved in more covert ops than you can imagine and always came out on top. So she doesn’t need any
one to protect her physically.
Second; I know that you might not think you would hurt
Kye
, and you might not; physically. But you have hurt
Kye
in the past, and that is something none of us will let you do again. She deserves a hell of a lot better than some dumb rich boy playing house with her while he is playing soldier. She deserves everything; and until you either prove that you can give it to her, or get your ass to stepping, we will all be here to keep you in line.
Comprende?”