Man Of Steel (15 page)

I sat up most
of the night while she tossed and turned in my arms. I had the need for a
cigarette and I don’t fucking smoke, so that’ll tell you what kind of state I was
in. I dozed off in the wee hours only to jump back up again when I hear my
little girl calling for me in my dreams.

I rolled out
of bed at the crack of dawn and she awakened at the movement. One look at her
face told me it had all come crashing back and whatever relief she’d gained in
the few hours of sleep was now gone.

I wasn’t
surprised to hear my boys gathering outside, I wouldn’t be at all surprised
either to find that they’d bedded down on my lawn the night before. “I have to
get up and get going baby.” With a quick kiss on her lips and a gentle rub of
her tummy I headed for a quick shower.

She had coffee
ready when I came down and I could tell from her puffy eyes that she’d been
crying. She broke as soon as I rinsed my cup and put it on the drain. I was
moving on autopilot, I had no idea what the fuck I was doing.

“Shh, come
here baby.” I pulled her in and held her close. “I’m gonna need you to be real
strong now baby. This is one of those times when your man is
gonna
be as close to being a dick as he can possibly get. I won’t have any time for
you or anything else right now. My sole focus is
gonna
be on my kid. It’s also
gonna
prove who we are
together as a team, because I’m gonna need you to have my fucking back. This is
not just my kid this is our kid that’s in danger. She’s a part of me, she’s
mine, as you’re mine, the three of us are a unit. Are you getting what I’m
saying?”

“Yes.” Her
voice broke and tore at my fucking heart. I wish I could howl at the fucking
moon myself but there was no time for that, I had shit to do. Shit that called
for me to be stone cold. But as much as my mind and heart was with my baby
girl, I knew my woman was hurting now too, so I had to give her something.

“Come on baby
don’t be scared, don’t cry. I’m
gonna
get our girl
back. You just prepare our home for when I bring her home because she’s not
going anywhere after this. She’s with us from now on okay.”

She nodded her
head against my chest as I squeezed her and kissed her hair. “I love you baby,
now be my big girl and go clean up while I get moving.” She held onto me for a
minute longer and I could feel the wild beating of her heart. I knew her fear
was twofold; she was afraid that Holly or myself might be hurt. But she was
also afraid of what I would do once I caught up to this fuck. The jury was
still out on that one.

I heard the
roar of engines outside as what sounded like the rest of my boys pulling into
the driveway, horns blasting. I went from lover and concerned dad to terminator
in a hot second. There was only one way to go into battle and this might just
be the most important battle of my fucking life. With one last kiss on her lips
I walked out the door. I didn’t look back; her soft sobs would only make this
shit harder than it already was. I know she was trying to be brave but the fear
was plain in her eyes and I couldn’t handle that right now.

The guys
hadn’t even got off their bikes but sat in full gear as they waited for me to
join them. I nodded in acknowledgement before climbing onto my ride and heading
out with them forming in line behind me.

We had already
coordinated the night before so we all knew where we were going. Nate as the
one most proficient with technology was staying back at the club to keep
digging while the rest of us went hunting. Someone had brought in the dogs, we
had helicopters scheduled to hit the air in a few hours and we’d organized our
own search party separate from the cops.

Only my men
knew that my focus was on this Paul person, I never let on to the cops that I
had a suspect in mind. Why?
Because I didn’t want them to
catch him.
If I believed for one minute that their resources were better
I would’ve spilled in a New York minute. But I had no doubt that I could get to
him first.

I saw a call
from Deanna but ignored that shit. I was sure she wasn’t calling to tell me
that she had my kid because the eyes in Holly’s room would’ve shown me if she
were there. Anything else she had to say to me right now was of no interest.
Fuck her.

We headed back
to the school to pick up the scent which I knew cold be a crap shoot since I
was pretty sure he’d left in a car and most trackers couldn’t pick up scents
that easily in such cases. But supposedly this pair was trained specifically
for that, so we’ll see.

No one was
saying anything as we got to work which is the way we usually did this, only
this time there was a sense of something in the air. This was one of ours, she
wasn’t an unknown, not that we cared any less when we were trying to save a
stranger. But the fact that this was Holly added a whole other element to what
we were doing here.

Deke I knew
was having a hard time and the set look on his face did not bode well. I knew
if he caught up with this hump before any of us did things might get messy and
I wanted to avoid that at all cost. Besides this was my kill plain and simple.

A call came in from Jake about an
hour into it. “I’ve put out a BOLO on the car he’s driving.”

“How the fuck did you find
that? My guy’s been looking all night with no luck.” That was good news, the
first break we’ve had since this shit started. Last night the cops said they
had nothing, the footage of the car that they suspected was too grainy to make
out much of anything and besides they weren’t sure that that had been the
correct car.

“I went into
the database and saw what they have so far, which is shit, and worked backwards
from there. There was only one unknown in the area at the time school was
letting out. He had to move really fast to get to her before your ex showed up.
That little strip mall before the turn off for the school has great camera
coverage.”

“Wonder why the asshole cops didn’t
think of that?”

“They don’t have the resources I do. You want the make and
model? We didn’t get a shot of the plate but in a town this size it shouldn’t
be too hard to find. Unless…”

Yeah, unless.

I took the
information from him and passed it on to my guys before calling Nate and
telling him to look for that car in the system. There was probably a good bet
that the car had been stolen and somebody might’ve reported it by now. There
were too many variables there so I didn’t put too much stock in it. Criminals
were a sophisticated bunch these days.

I was going
through the motions, but the reality was that I didn’t expect to find him this way.
I had a strong hunch that he would contact me when he was ready. This was about
me in some way;
Me
and what I do. Deanna had been sure
that if Paul was the one behind it, he’d done it because I’d made her get rid
of him. I wasn’t so sure about that. I had the feeling there was a shit load
more going on here than met the eye.

Another day
was almost at an end and still there was no word and no sightings. I’d made up
a thousand flyers of Holly and had them plastered all over the place. Someone
was working on a billboard and we had a call center set up, still it wasn’t
enough. With each hour that went by I grew more and more frustrated. I also
came up with a million and one ways to end this fucker on sight.

In the end it was Paul’s ex who
came through. On a hunch I’d put out a sketch of the man and his many disguises
as my men had captured during the weeks they’d snapped him going back and forth
with Deanna.

She’d seen one that looked
familiar and called into the center.

“What’s she saying Cassie?” Cass was
one of the sisters working the phone lined who’d taken the call.

“She says that it looks like
her ex, when I asked her where she thought he might be hiding out she gave me
the location of an old hunting cabin in the woods in Derby. Says it belongs to
his family but no one has used it in years as far as she knows. Blade, he has a
history.”

“Hold that for
now, just tell me where.” I was moving and motioning Deke, and
Styrder
over to follow me. I wasn’t sure what I was going
to find but I knew I would need them there if only to get my kid out of the
way. I took the info and hung up the phone.

“A call came in from the ex wife,
we’re headed to Derby.”

“You telling the feds?”

“What you think Deke? Let’s ride out.”

We slipped away under pretense of making the rounds again;
the least amount of people who knew what we were up to the better.

Derby is a
town about forty minutes away, wasn’t much there but old farms and wide open
spaces. It could be a crap shot but at this point anything was better than
standing around with my thumb up my ass.

When we were
almost there I stopped to have a word with the guys. “I think we should walk in
from here. I don’t know the terrain around this place and if he’s there he
might be on the lookout. The ex says there’s a back way in with the mountains
as a backdrop. There’s only one other way in or out so it might be a hike.
Let’s go.”

I checked my
glock and saw the others do the same. We headed out in an arc formation after
turning off our phones. I didn’t want anything tipping off this guy to our
presence.

The place was
a rundown old hut that looked deserted. I was beginning to feel the
disappointment of another dead end when I saw movement inside. My heart picked
up speed and I signaled to the guys that I’d seen something.

Using hand
gestures I told each man where I wanted him to go. Just on the off chance that
he got by me they knew they had to take him out. No way he was leaving here
with my kid. This shit ends here.

Fuck, I wish I had ten men with me,
but it was too late for that now.

I made my way up to the place
keeping as low as I could. The windows were dirty and visual
wasn’t
that good but I saw enough to know we were in the right place. And what I saw
broke my fucking heart.

He had her
tied to a chair. She looked so small and helpless sitting there slumped over
that it was all I could do not to storm the door. He wasn’t in my line of sight
at first but I could hear movement. When he finally did come into view he was
cleaning what looked like a nine inch hunting blade.

I called on
all my training and said a quick prayer before crawling on my stomach over to
the door. There was no way to get in there without alerting him but I couldn’t
leave her in there a minute more. The best I could hope for was the element of
surprise.

I saw my boys
getting into position as I stood and prepared to kick the door in. Shit, just
as I expected he moved towards her at the first sound. I aimed my gun at his
head as he stood over her. “Step the fuck away from my kid.”

“Well of it
isn’t the great Hayden Blade Masters, welcome to the party. I would offer you
something to drink but I wasn’t expecting company.” The fucker grinned and
turned my stomach. He wasn’t looking as suave as he had been when he’d been
tooling around with my ex, but I guess that was to be expected after a couple
days on the run.

I wanted to
look at my daughter but schooled myself not to. For now she was out of
it which
was best. “This is between you and me, she’s just a
kid let her go.”

“You don't remember me do you?”

I kept my eyes on his waiting for my chance, just anything.

He had his filthy hand in my baby's hair and a knife at her
throat.

She started making waking noises and I almost panicked.

Please Holly baby, please don't
wake up, not yet

I was hoping and
praying that whatever this sick fuck had given her would work a little while
longer. He tugged on her hair and I fought my body not to move.

It was only
when he smiled that I realized who he was. All this time I kept thinking there
was something vaguely familiar about him and though the name hadn’t rung a bell
it seemed like it should’ve. Now I knew why. The fucker had somehow changed his
name
;
either by legal means or other.

He was using
his mother’s maiden name now
;
funny how it all came
together right now. I’d put him away a long tine ago when I first started
working domestics. He’d raped his daughter for months before she’d got up the
nerve to tell her mom.

The fucker had
been given hard time by the judge who had no tolerance for that kind of sick shit.
I hadn’t thought of him in years, too many assholes in and out of my life since
then. But he had my attention now.

I didn’t give
away the fact that I recognized him, just kept my eyes trained on him. “Am I
supposed to?” He became agitated by my answer, which is just what I wanted. One
slip up on his part would mean his undoing.

“You cost me
everything, my family, my job, my fucking life.
 
Now I’m going to destroy yours. Your
ex-wife was an okay lay by the way. I enjoyed fucking her in the room with your
kid asleep next to us. You should ask her about that some time. That’s if you
make it out of here.”

If he though
that shit would get a rise out of me he was sadly mistaken. I shrugged my
shoulders but didn’t say a word. He wiped his mouth and looked around as if
cornered.

“Who you got
out there, some of your asshole friends who were always following me around?
Too bad there weren’t there when I nabbed the kid. We’ve been having lots of
fun here together, haven’t we lil bit? That’s what you call her isn’t it?” He
tugged on her hair and she winced. Still I didn’t move.

“I use to have a daughter once,
until you took it all away.”

Did this fuck really think I
gave a shit about his sob story? He rambled on and on about how I’d fucked up
his life all the while either too stupid or too cocky to realize that his life
was measured in seconds. Just move one-inch asshole. As it was he was leaning
over so that his face was close to hers, any shot I take might hit her or
deafen her or some shit.

I just needed him to move the
slightest bit to do what I needed to do.

I let him do all the talking,
not once did the fool tell me to put the gun down, maybe because he knew that
shit wasn’t
gonna
happen.

I don’t know
who it was or how he knew what I needed him to do but right at the moment there
was movement outside and he turned his head to the window. I doubt he felt the
hollow point as it pierced his brain and splattered it across the wall behind
him. Asshole! Should’ve been worse.

The noise from the shot stirred
Holly and I ran over to untie her as my boys rushed the door. They took one
look at the mess on the floor and then turned their attention to my baby who
was waking up. “Torch it.”

The sky had a nice orange glow
as we rode away from there.