Trust (20 page)

Chapter 22

Lance

Looking around the conference room where all The Boss’s associates were gathered discussing the future of the organization and their current projected revenues, I didn’t feel even a hint of remorse for what I was about to do. I knew all the people in attendance, some I may have considered friends had they not been murderous monsters, but instead all they were to me were marks. Their guards were also in attendance standing against the back wall, pretending to ignore their bosses’ conversations. Like shooting ducks in a barrel.

Glancing at my watch I realized it was time, the conclusion to years of plotting and planning. I took one more look at the man I
had considered my father, until I’d learned the truth. I’d even idolized him at one point in my life, hoping to be as great of a man as I perceived him to be. However, now all I felt was contempt.

“If you’ll excuse me
, everyone.” Pushing my chair back, I made my way to the door.

“Son,”
my father’s voice called out after me.

I paused with my hand on the doorknob of the conference room door and then slowly turned and met my father’s gaze for the last time. “
Yes Father?”

“Hurry back, we need to discuss your recent deal and your future with the organization. We’re extremely pleased
; you’ve surpassed our expectations.” I met everyone’s gaze – many of them were smiling at me in appreciation – once more and nodded.

“Of course, I’ll only be a minute.” I left the room and
closed the door firmly behind me. Pulling a small roll of electrical tape from my pants pocket I ran it along the bottom of the door and along the seams to keep the gas from seeping out into the hallway. Once done, I pulled a small transmitter from my jeans pocket, flipped open the cover and didn’t even pause before hitting the button that released the poison gas into the ventilation system feeding into the conference room. The gas was odourless, colourless and tasteless, I’d blocked the vent so the only place the gas would feed into was the conference room so everyone in the room would be dead in ten minutes, dead before they even realized they were in danger.

There were twelve guards patrolling the interior of the compound,
with strict orders to steer clear of the conference room, easy marks. They’d be dead before they even realized I was a threat. Once they were taken care of I’d grab Gwen, the women downstairs and we’d get the fuck out of there. As soon as we were outside the gates, I’d detonate the explosives I’d strategically placed throughout the compound and bring it to the ground. It would takes days, maybe even weeks for officials to get to the bodies and make positive identifications, giving us time to be far away before they began to suspect who was behind their deaths.

Foolproof.

Gwen

“Now!” Lance yelled, bursting into the room where I’d been sitting in the living room, dressed in a pair of his jogging pants and t-shirt, awaiting his arrival.

“
Ohmygod!” He was soaked in blood – over his clothing, in his hair, on his face. His? Someone else’s? I had no clue. Jumping to my feet I raced across the room to him and immediately began checking him for injuries.

“Jesus Christ Gwen, stop fussing
, you’re wasting time we don’t have!” Grabbing my hand he practically threw me out of the room and into the hallway. Not bothering with closing the door, he grabbed my hand and pretty much pulled me behind him and he ran down the hallway, down the stairs to the main floor, into the library and into the elevator that took us down to the underground floors.

I glanced over at him as we waited for the elevator ding. He had a holster on over his bloody t-shirt
. One gun was still holstered while the other, equipped with a silencer, was in his free hand. I also noticed he was wearing a utility belt with extra clips attached to it.

“Where is everyone?” I hadn’t seen a soul, dead or alive
, on the way down.

“Dead.” The elevator dinged and we stepped out
. Less than a minute later we were in the dungeon with the laundry cart, which had been sitting outside the dungeon waiting for us. He’d really thought of everything. As we stepped into the dungeon the women grew frantic with a mix of emotions ranging from fear to excitement to confusion.

“
Ohmygod! Gwen! Are you okay?” Becca asked as she leapt from her cot and raced to the front of the cage.

Lance unlocked the cages for the twins first
, yelling at them to get out and stand by the door. Both had looks of confusion on their faces, but did as told without question. He’d only been training them for a week and they were like obedient little puppies.

“Fucking son-of-a-bitch!” Jenny snarled
, throwing her entire body against her cell door and glaring at Lance. Jenny looked pure insane, her red curls a twisted mess, her green eyes bloodshot and her body littered with bruises. Not speaking, Lance pulled a needle from a little pouch on his utility belt and jabbed her arm with it.

She squealed, pulling her arm back. “What the fuck!” He proceeded to jab the other three he considered
“problem children.” By the time he unlocked the cages of the non-problem girls the four were passed out.

“What the fuck is going on?”
Becca ran to me once free and gave me a hug.

I hugged her back. “We’re going home.”

“Gwen!” Lance’s voice had me redirecting my attention where it needed to be – on him. He tossed the keys to me. “Get the other girls’ cages unlocked and have Becca help you pull them out and into the cart.” He hoisted the unconscious Jenny onto his shoulder and placed her into the laundry cart. He had two more girls in the cart, all piled unceremoniously inside, by the time Becca and I had the new wild child inside the cart.

“Let’s go.” He gave the cart a push and headed toward the stairwell. The girls were asking a slew of question
s as we followed behind, ranging from where were Tanner and the others, to where were we going to a protest that we were going to get in trouble. All chatter was ignored. Lance didn’t seem to give a shit whether they followed or not; it seemed like as far as he was concerned his part was done.

“The stairs,” I announce
d, cursing under my breath seeing the cart and then the flight of stairs.

“Everyone grab a
n edge, we’re carrying it up.”

Surprisingly, the girls all grabbed a side and we lifted the cart
. With the dozen of us the cart carrying the four women seemed feather light and we made it to the top in less than a minute. Even more shocking than the fact that the girls helped lift the cart was the fact the chatter had stopped and they all focused on following behind. Perhaps they could feel the freedom the further we got away from the cells – I couldn’t say, only speculate.

“If there’s no one to stop us then why are we hurrying?” I whisper
ed to him when we get into the elevator and ascended to the main floor.

“Because this place is going to blow.”

My blue eyes widened in disbelief. “Like blow up, gone?”

“Yea, we need to be as far away from here as possible when it happens.
The whole place is going to be like one big incinerator when all the explosives go off.”

The elevator dinged and doors open
ed to the library.

“Here.” Releasing the cart, Lance passed me the spare gun, with silencer.

“What’s this for?” I asked, accepting the gun with trembling hands. The girls and cart zoomed past us and out of the library.

“Because not all the guards outside are dead.”
When he caught my gaze, all emotion was gone from his eyes. He was in some sort of robot commando mode; it both assured and scared me. We caught up to the girls and as the front door to the house came into view, with the daylight streaming into the foyer, excited chatter among the girls erupted. Just seeing the wide smiles and gleam of excitement in their eyes made my heart swell and tears form in my eyes.

Chloe was about to grab onto the door handle when Lance stopped her, his hand on hers. “No. Stay here, be quiet and follow along.”

Chloe nodded and released the handle.

“Gwen.” I went to his side. He leaned into me, his voice low so only I could hear. “Stay close. Don’t he
sitate, just shoot. If you hesitate those girls will die because of it.”

He opened the door and immediately raised the gun and in two quick shots, both men – one on either side of the door – were dead
before they hit the ground, streams of blood beginning to flow from their heads as they fell.

To my surprise none of the girls so much as made a sound. I looked over my shoulder at them and to my dismay none seemed to be moved by the deaths of the two men. It saddened me
; were they all too far gone already? How much mental and emotional damage had they suffered from?

Lance motioned for us to follow along and we quickly made our way out of the house and down the paved driveway. There was a string of high
-end cars parked outside, Mercedes, BMWs, a Ferrari and various high-end SUVs. Shit, who were the people dead in the house? How many rich and powerful people took their last breath less than an hour ago?

“Come on, there’s four more guards roaming. Watch for them.” As a group we raced to the closed exit of the high fence.

“Hey! Hold it right there!” a voice commanded from behind us.

Lance didn’t hesitate. Before I even had a chance to look back over my shoulder, he had spun around, aimed, shot once and shot a second time. By the time I turned one guard was dead on the ground and the other was struggling to aim his gun, but the wound on his shoulder was making it difficult
. Lance took another shot, hitting the second guard in the center of the forehead and dropping him to the ground.

I caught Lance’s gaze for a brief moment and it was like looking into nothingness. He’d just shot two more people and it was like it didn’t even bother him. Not giving myself time to think about it we moved forward until we reached the guardhouse.

“Where’s the guard?” It hadn’t even occurred to me until we reached the guardhouse that there should be a couple of men in it.

“No longer on duty. One minute.”

“What the fuck!” I turned to the sound of the voice to see another guard running toward us, pulling his rifle from his shoulder. I glanced over at Lance through the guard station window, but he was too interested in whatever he was doing in there to notice the approaching guard. “Don’t move, bitches.”

Don’t hesitate, just shoot
. His instruction screamed out in my mind and I listened. Raising the gun, I didn’t even take careful aim, I just began pulling the trigger until nothing was left in the magazine and all that could be heard was a soft clicking noise. The man fell to the ground, but not before getting several shots off. The first shot went high, well over our heads. The second shot plunged into the side of the laundry cart.

I just shot a man…
Ohmygod…
My entire body trembled as I dropped the gun to the ground. He wasn’t moving.
I killed him…

The world began spinning and I stumbled forward. Grabbing the side of the
cart, I attempted to steady myself. The spinning increased and I began to fight for air, sucking in deep breaths, but not seeming to be able to get any oxygen in my lungs.

Pain…
I groaned as my hand brushed my thigh where the pain seemed to be radiating and when I peered down at my hand it was coated in blood.

Oh God… I’ve been shot…

The world went black…

~*~*~*~*~*~

“Hey girl.” I slowly opened my eyes to see Becca smiling down at me. “’bout time you came around, you gave us quite a scare.”

“
Wh-Where…” I frowned, trying to remember the events before the world went black. We were escaping. I shot someone. My frown deepened. “Was I shot?” I attempted to sit up and a surge of pain went radiating up my leg and I cried out.

“Just sit still. You’ve been out for close to a day.”

“What!” I begun to focus on my surroundings, scanning everything frantically. We appeared to be in a small motel room. “Where are we? Where’s Lance? Where are the others? Did we get out?” So many questions and no answers. I struggled to sit up again, only to be forced back down by Becca placing her hands on my shoulders.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. You’ve lost a fair amount of blood. Just rest.”

“Where’s Lance? Is he okay?”

Becca
brushed her hand along my forehead and pushed my hair out of my face. “He’s fine. He just stepped out, he said he needed to get some more supplies before you two leave, he didn’t prepare for you getting shot.”

“Leave? Where are we?”

“We’re about a five-hour drive from the compound. We’re safe, for now.”

“The girls?”

“They’re all on buses headed home. What happens to them when they arrive where they need to be is beyond me, but for now they’re free.”

“Why did you stay?”