Girl Undercover 10 & 11: The Abduction & Dante's Inferno (11 page)

I gave her and the boy a quick hug. “Did you hear from him again? Any more emails?”

“No,” she said. “The email I told you about is the only one. I thought you might need these.” She nodded at the towels. “If he’s… bleeding a lot.” Tears ran down her cheeks.

I took the towels from her and put them on the passenger front seat.

“How long ago did you get the email?” I asked her.

“Twenty minutes ago.”

“Did you email him?”

“Yes, I sent him three and tried calling him, too. No response.”

Damn…
This did
not
sound good.

KEEP READING. PART ELEVEN IS COMING RIGHT UP. BELOW IS A DESCRIPTION SO YOU KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT:

When one of Dante's trainers snaps and takes everyone at Cuerpos hostage, Gabi hurries to help her friend. She is convinced it must be The Adler Group testing out a killer hybrid in preparation for the upcoming coups. Which means everyone will die if she doesn't get there in time.

GIRL UNDERCOVER

Part Eleven—Dante’s Inferno

Julia Derek

Published by Adrenaline Books

Copyright © 2015 by Julia Derek

This is a work of fiction. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Published as an e-book September 2015 by Adrenaline Books.

To find out more about the author and to sign up for her new books release, visit
JuliaDerek.com

Cover design by Luly Blazek at
Kalosys Art.

Chapter 1

I was sweating bullets by the time I arrived at Dante’s fitness studio. The white-painted, one-level studio was built right on the beach in Malibu, in an area where the sand sloped significantly. Almost all of the squat building’s windows and the terrace on stilts faced the vast blue Pacific Ocean over which horizon a blazing sun hovered. It had taken me almost twenty minutes to get there from Ricki’s house due to traffic, and in that time, I had yet to receive another email from Dante on the smartphone his wife had given me. I kept telling myself it must be because the internet reception wasn’t very good up here, even worse than the cell-phone connection. I refused to entertain the other option. Dante could not be dead.

Several cars, most of them on the very expensive side, were parked in the lot behind the white building. From the outside, it appeared like any other day, seagulls squawking in the air and cars zipping by on the Pacific Coast Highway I was on, nothing off about it at all. There weren’t the sounds of gunshots being fired, which I prayed was a good thing.

Parking my car at the side of the road, I jumped out, wondering why the hell there weren’t any patrol cars around yet. Both Ricki and I had called for help, she 911 and I, in lieu of a police radio, had called it in to my division directly and told the operator to immediately broadcast the crime to all responding units. Malibu wasn’t under the jurisdiction of the LAPD, so I had emphasized that it sounded like a gunman was going on a rampage, likely holding dozens of Los Angelenos hostage, to get them to come anyway. This was way too big for the tiny Malibu police department to handle. Everyone knew that. So why wasn’t anyone here? The traffic wasn’t that bad, and surely there had been several patrol cars nearby that could have responded to the call within minutes.

Gazing down the road toward Santa Monica from where I had just driven, I hoped to spot at least a couple of police cars and hear the blaring of sirens.
Nada.

I placed another call for help to my division. When the operator picked up, I identified myself and gave her the same codes as before, stressing, in case she was new and needed to have things spelled out for her, that it was urgent, a matter of life and death. Many lives were at stake here if I didn’t get help immediately. She told me she’d see to it that the message was relayed.

Pulling out my gun from the holster I had attached around my hips right before I got out of the car, I scurried across the street toward the fitness studio. From my current vantage point, I had a good view of the main entrance. Dante had said that he was behind the front desk, and the entrance, a big glass door, was only feet away from that desk. But that was more than forty minutes ago. Was he still there? Was he still
alive?
Oh, God… Again, I tried not to think of that possibility. Since the vast majority of the studio’s windows faced the ocean, and they were beyond the door, I had no choice but to try to get a peek in through the entrance, not only to see where he was, but to assess the situation in general.

Crouching down, the absolute silence bothering me, I started toward the door. Images of dead people scattering the gym floors inside Dante’s studio, blood everywhere, filled my mind. I pushed them away.

The sound of a firecracker followed by screams just as I was about to reach the glass-door entrance made me stop dead in my tracks. Catching my breath in an attempt to calm my racing heart, I leaned against the wall next to the door. Someone had definitely fired a gun with a silencer on it somewhere inside the studio. Throwing a glance to my left, I scanned the highway that ran along the coast for signs of any police cars approaching from any direction. Still nothing.

When I had calmed down, I leaned toward the glass door. I needed to get a look inside to see what was going on. At first I couldn’t see anyone, but then I saw people seated on the floor, lined up against a wall. The ones I could see, both women and men mostly in gym wear, all appeared alive and unhurt. A tall, broad-shouldered man dressed in a tank top and khaki shorts came into my line of vision. He had long, black hair held back by a red headband and his skin was olive, a couple of shades darker than Dante’s. Unlike my friend’s muscular arms, this one had no tattoos covering the skin. I couldn’t see his face well, barely in profile even. I was sure that when I did see it from the front, he would be gorgeous. The man had to be a killer hybrid sent out by The Adler Group for some reason. I highly doubted it was one of Dante’s trainers who had just snapped all of a sudden.

I noticed that he had a small machine gun attached to a strap across his chest then, a handgun in his other. Glancing at the people on the floor, he aimed the smaller weapon at them. He appeared to be saying something because a couple nodded and said something in response. I couldn’t make out any of it; the glass and the walls were too thick.

The gunman didn’t seem to realize that I was there, watching him. I had a good vantage point from where I stood; all I needed to do was raise my gun and fire it. One well-aimed shot would take him out and then this nightmare would be over.

I didn’t need to think about it; raising my gun, I aimed at the man. Right as I was about to squeeze the trigger, something cold and hard was pressed against the back of my skull.

“If you squeeze that trigger, you’re dead,” a smooth male voice behind me said. “Lower your gun.”

Doing what the stranger behind me wanted, I lowered the gun, my heart heavy.
Dammit.

“Good girl,” the man behind me said. “Now hand the gun to me.”

Sighing, I didn’t dare not doing what the stranger wanted. Not when I couldn’t get a sense of exactly where he was standing behind me.

Only seconds after I was deprived of my weapon, an arm was around my neck and the stranger behind me hissed, “Now knock on that door. We don’t want to take my friend by surprise. That could result in him being scared and shooting you. You don’t want that, do you?”

“No,” I mumbled. He pushed me forward so I had no choice but to take another step. We ended up standing before the glass door, blocking enough of the light from entering the studio that we created a shadow on the white floor immediately inside.

“Knock. On. The. Damn. Door.”

Shivering with fear against my will, I raised my hand and rapped lightly on the glass, praying silently that the man with the guns inside wouldn’t freak out and start firing at me.

He did spin around, but didn’t seem particularly shocked to see me and whoever it was that held me hostage from behind. As I had suspected, the black-haired man was gorgeous, his features chiseled and covered with the smoothest dark olive skin, his mouth luscious and his long-lashed eyes an electric blue. A corner of his lips quirked up in a grin that made him look evil, but didn’t diminish how strikingly handsome he was. All the people sitting on the floor behind him were staring at me as well. Unlike the black-haired hostage taker, I recognized a couple of them as Dante’s employees.

Definitely a hybrid,
I thought. And a new hire.

“Open the door and go inside,” the male behind me said, giving me a light shove. I raised my hands and pushed against the cool glass until the door opened. I walked inside with my captor attached to my body like we were Siamese twins, the mouth of his gun pressed to the side of my skull. Because the man before me was armed as well, I was not about to risk trying to get away from my captor by stepping on his toes hard with my heel or elbowing his solar plexus. Those methods usually worked great to get out of a situation like this one.

As we kept moving deeper into the spacious fitness studio, I used my peripheral vision to find Dante. I found him in a corner away from the others, slumped and with a big towel tied around his thigh that was disturbingly red. He pressed another big towel against the first one. I let out a small gasp at the sight; it instantly made me think of Burt in that house near Philly. Fortunately, Dante looked very much alive still, blinking and trying to smile at me as he noted that I had spotted him.

“Just do as they tell you, Gabi,” he said weakly.

“You have a smart friend,” the man behind me said in my ear, his breath warm. “Just do as we want and you’ll be fine.”

“What do you want?” I asked as we stopped beside his friend, who had turned back toward all the people lined up against that one wall. I finally spotted two bodies lying on the ground, in pools of dark blood that had begun to coagulate in places. One was next to a leg press and the other next to a bench press. I hadn’t been able to see them from the outside.
Where the fuck is the police? They should’ve been here a long time ago!

There was definitely no sounds of sirens blaring on the outside, though, consoling me that help was near.

“Money,” the man behind me hissed into my ear. “Lots and lots of money. Ten million dollars in cash to be specific. Delivered to us in two backpacks that we can easily carry out of here.”

He patted me down and found Ricki’s phone in my pocket, which he took. Then he let go of me and pushed me forward so hard that I stumbled and landed on the floor in front of a couple of women with skinny, tan bodies and fake boobs. Both of them yelped loudly as I crashed beside them.

I flipped around so I could get a view of my captor. Tall, muscular and as handsome as his coconspirator but with a platinum-blond crewcut and fair skin, he regarded me where I lay in a heap on the floor. I pushed myself up into a more dignified position.

“And how’s that gonna happen?” I asked. “Does anyone even know that you’re here and what you’re doing with all these people?”

“No, not yet,” the fair man said, smiling wide. A couple of dimples popped up in his cheeks that made him appear endearing despite the gun with the silencer his hand and the machine gun that hung over his other shoulder in a strap.
Another hybrid for sure,
I thought.

“That wouldn’t be very smart now, would it?” he continued. “If cops were swarming outside—which they will be shortly—it would have been hard for me to get through to my buddy. I had to get here and join him before we alerted everyone. And here I am. I was just parking my car on the highway when I spotted
you
snooping around. I instantly knew you were up to no good. Good timing, huh?”

I smirked at him.

“What were you doing with that gun anyway?” he asked, indicating my Glock that he’d put in a front pocket on his denim vest. “Are you a cop?”

I didn’t answer, just glared at him.

Taking a couple of steps toward the nearest person on the floor, a small, fit man in his thirties, Blondie grabbed his arm and put the gun to his head. “Answer me. Are you a cop?”

“Yes, I am,” I replied, my heart pounding as I watched fear bloom in the small man’s face. “Please let him go now.”

“Not until you tell me how you found out what’s going on here. We haven’t told anyone yet.”

I debated whether telling the truth would be unwise, if that would result in Dante receiving another bullet that would finally kill him.

“Someone sent me an email,” I blurted before Blondie could shoot the man he held onto.

Blondie scowled. “An email? Who sent you that email? Huh?”

When I didn’t answer quickly enough, he fired a shot into the small man’s head, the silencer on the gun muffling the sound so that it sounded like someone had merely lit another firecracker. The light went out in his eyes, telling me he died immediately. People around him screamed and curled into balls, looking like they wanted to disappear through the floor. Staring at the poor dead man, I felt terrible. My indecisiveness had resulted in his death.

The dark-haired man with the headband waved his machine gun at the terrified hostages. “Shut the
fuck up
or more people will die!”

Everyone instantly followed his command and clamped their mouths shut.

Okay, they were clearly meaning business here, so I had better tell the truth. I could only hope it wouldn’t result in Dante’s death.

“Tell me who sent you the fucking email!” Blondie demanded, snarling at me.

“I sent the email,” Dante muttered weakly.

Bandana man turned to face Dante. “Ah, so
that’s
what you were doing on the computer. Sending emails to your cop buddies. I should’ve known taking your cell phone wasn’t enough.”