Chapter 25

Joe heard an unfamiliar voice.

What the fuck? Why was there someone in her bedroom while she was?—?

Ah, shit.She wasn't at home.

As her brain began to clear, several things became apparent.

One, she'd been blindsided when, while walking that lout toward the bar, his asshole friends had injected her with Propofol. Two, they'd clearly brought her to wherever she was right now. Three, she was laying on a cold, hard surface. Four—geezus, the list was too frigging long—her hands and ankles were restrained. And five, the idiots who had done all this were right this minute arguing loudly.

Dammit.Where was she, and how long had she been out?

Think Joe, think.

The floor beneath her was clearly concrete. The raised voices had an echoey sound, as if they were in a very large, nearly empty space…

Duh.

It had to be the warehouse she'd previously surveilled, which could be good news for her. But before she'd get pumped over that possibility, Joe focused and listened in.

"…didn't sign up for this," one peevishly angry voice decried.

"Shut the hell up," growled another. "You'll do whatever I tell you. When I tell you. You're lining your pockets with the money we get because our benefactor finds us connections and looks the other way. And he doesn't normally ask for much except for his cut, so suck it up. We're doing this."

"Fine. But why does he want her to disappear, anyway?" the first man backed off on his ire and whined instead.

"Because she's a pain in his ass, and has been getting too close to solving a few of the cases he's got his fingers deep into. And she's a slippery bitch. He's tried to have her ‘accidentally' killed in the line of fire any number of times, but the cunt manages to come out unscathed, every time."

"So we have to do his dirty work."

"Yeah, idiot. We do."

Joe heard what sounded like the cuffing of someone's head.

"Especially if we want to keep raking in the big bucks."

Crap.None of that was good.

Joe immediately knew she had to be "the bitch" they were talking about, and rage built inside her as she also figured out who the only man was who could have set her up. Her Chief of Operations, Lester Gavin.

What a prick. She'd always known there was something off about the guy, but even more so in the last few years. He'd gotten twitchier; more remote even with the agents under his jurisdiction whom he liked. But she never would have guessed that the bastard was lining his pockets with the drug operation money he was supposed to spend his career fighting.

She was pissed.

Sanctimonious bastard.

Calling her out for her gung-ho attitude and her language. Her fucking language. Now it all made sense, keeping her off teams; isolating her on solo jobs. He'd been afraid of her, and had been trying to take her out all this time

Well fuck him.

Joe wasn't going down without a fight. That was for sure. She'd see his ass skewered to the door of his fancy office if it was the last thing she did at the DEA.

She attempted to find calm in her head, and began thinking and strategizing.

Once Wendel discovered she wasn't coming back on shift, would he think to notify…somebody? And would that somebody be Mike, who had all her intel, trackers, and video feeds? Or would it be some local cops who wouldn't know what to do with a missing person? She hoped the former, but…

Joe sighed.

Mike had crossed swords with Wendel, putting the man on notice not to be a prick. Of course, the handsy bartender hadn't seemed to be holding any kind of grudge during the night. Not with how nice he'd been acting toward her. Meaning Joe might hope for a rescue from Mike and company if things went her way.

But she couldn't count on it. She had to figure an avenue out of this, herself.

Her restraints…

She opened her eyes just a slit to look down at what held her, and a slow grin spread across her face.

Idiots.Not only had they used zip ties, they'd bound her hands in front of her. Easy-peasy. But would the movements required to break them draw attention?

She focused once again on the crew across the vast room.

"So what are we going to do with her?" the whiny one asked, putting Joe's plans on hold for the moment.

Yeah.What are you going to do with me? she wondered.

The mastermind answered without hesitation. "We're supposed to make her death look like an accident. So here's the plan. Once it gets light outside, we walk her into the woods behind the warehouse. There's a small river back there that's about three feet deep. We bash her head with a rock, knock her out, then throw her face down in the water. It'll look like she hit her head and drowned."

Great plan, Joe huffed to herself.

These guys were clowns. It figured that's who fucking-Lester would surround himself with.

She opened her eyes a little wider and peeked toward the speaking men now that her vision had completely cleared.

There were three of them, well across the room, standing behind the table that held all the cooking apparatus. She wasn't exactly in their line of sight, but not completely out of it, either. Joe was going to have to watch them carefully, timing her move for when they all had their backs to her.

If that happened.

Getting ready, in the smallest of increments, she rolled quietly to her back and bent her knees halfway to her chest, keeping a sharp eye on the argument that had now escalated as to whether the group wanted to continue using Benji, or not. The absent man had apparently been griping and moaning a lot lately, worrying that his wife would find out about his extracurricular activities.

Well, that answered one question for Joe.

Benji wasn't in attendance. She only had to worry about the three men she could see; Anthony Galici, Chuck Banito, and the muscle-bound goon she'd bested in the parking lot before the trio had played dirty and drugged her.

Not the best odds, but not terrible.

Unless they had guns.

All she had was her tiny 9mm Ruger tucked into a hidden pocket in her bra, positioned directly under her left armpit. She could feel with her arm that it was still there, so either none of the idiots had searched her. Or they'd missed it, for which she was grateful.

But in order to use her weapon, she had to get free.

Galici was pontificating again. "We're going to have to get our product back from Benji before we make plans for him," he growled. "I don't trust him anymore, and leaving all that expensive shit in his truck doesn't sit well. Jason, you've made good headway with the shelving units."

Jason, Joe assumed, had to be the large muscle-man.

"But I'll want more, here, and here." The three turned to look where Galici pointed; the wall at the far end of the building.

Joe took immediate advantage.

Keeping her wrists apart so the zip ties were taut, she raised them up, then brought them down sharply across one bent knee. The plastic snapped.

Nice.

With half her Houdini act having been accomplished, she was about to go for more, but the men were turning back to semi-face her again.

Fuck.

Even if they weren't glancing in her direction again, Joe didn't know if she could accomplish her ankle escape swiftly enough

If she'd been alone in the building and had plenty of time, she'd use the shoelace-sawing method to get her ankles free. But as it was, she couldn't guarantee she'd have a full twenty or thirty seconds of the trio's inattention to work away at her restraints. She'd have to hope they gave her at least five seconds more of being distracted, so she could go with the less certain method. Which for her, during drills—shit—only worked about sixty-percent of the time.

At least she now knew she had until morning to make her move, but…

She had no idea what time it was.

The asswipes had abducted her just after midnight, and she didn't have any way of knowing how long she'd been out. Making a semi-educated guess, she'd say it had been no more than two hours. Propofol, depending on the dosage—which varied with a person's weight—often kept one under between one and two hours. Galici hadn't wanted to kill her with an overdose—because nothing said murder like an excess of a substance in a victim's system that wasn't a street drug—so that meant he'd probably gone lightly.

That was the good news.

The bad news was, they'd probably be looking for her to wake up sometime soon, so ignoring her wouldn't last. Meaning she had to make her move as quickly as possible.

"Go check on the cunt," Galici's voice ordered.

Shit, shit, shit.Why did she always have to be right?

Joe rolled back onto her side, hoping she hadn't been seen doing it, and draped the remains of the zip tie over her wrists. She closed her eyes and leveled out her breathing, also praying she could fool whoever was looking at her into thinking she was still unconscious. If not, they'd probably stick her again with that damned syringe, and that she couldn't have.

Footsteps approached.

Something nudged her shoulder. A shoe?

She kept her body lax, and the prodding foot kicked at her arm.

Joe still didn't move. It would take a lot more than that poke for her to give up playing possum.

"She's still out," Chuck's voice called out as he clearly headed back toward the group.

"Good. I want you to check on her every ten minutes. Got that?"

"Yeah, boss. I do," Chuck assured him. "But, uh, why? Where are you going?"

"I need some sleep. I'm headed up above to get some shuteye." The man yawned. "Jason," he ordered, once he'd smacked his lips a time or two, "you go outside and stand watch for the first hour while Chuck keeps an eye on the bitch. Then switch off, so neither of you gets complacent. As soon as dawn breaks, which will be in about two and a half hours, we'll dump her body, then go into town and take care of Benji."

Somebody grunted an affirmative. Joe assumed it was Jason since Chuck was more verbal.

She waited patiently, then heard steps climbing the ladder, and the slamming of the side door.

Excellent.

Now she'd only have one prick to deal with.

Piece of cake.

An hour or so later—going by her own, internal clock—Joe amended her expectations.

Now she was cursing inside.

Instead of sitting down somewhere on the other side of the warehouse, as Joe had expected him to, Chuck had chosen to position a chair only a few feet away from where she lay. Clearly, he was afraid of Galici and didn't want to mess things up. Because then he'd end up superfluous and dead, like Benji.

Fuckity-fuck.What now?

Chuck wasn't falling asleep, as she figured he might eventually do. And not only had his breathing not evened out, but the man was continuously humming under his breath. Which normally wouldn't bug her, but…

Goddammit. It was Baby Shark, for fuck's sake.

Gah! If she lived past dawn, she'd have that earworm stuck in her head for days.

Joe was just about to form another plan, when Chuck's chair moved.

"Where the fuck is Jason?" he muttered under his breath. "I gotta take a piss."

Right.Where was Jason, Joe reiterated to herself? Galici had told the pair to switch off, but the lummox hadn't yet come in to relieve Chuck, which could mean…

Joe smiled to herself. Had the cavalry arrived outside in the form of one hot-as-fuck Mike Carlese and his trusty SWAT team?

Damn, she sure hoped so.

If they were out there, they'd not only have incapacitated Jason, they'd take care of good old Chuck when he went out to relieve himself. That meant Joe could get herself loose, palm her little Ruger, then wake the boss-man up from his nap.

Hah! From sweet dreams to his worst nightmare. Now that's the kind of thing that made Joe's heart sing.

And not Baby Shark.

She heard the door quietly open and close behind Chuck, and she wasted no time. Joe rolled to her back again, spread her ankles as far as she could, brought her knees up, then sent them down to both sides as sharply as possible.

Nothing.

Goddammit.

But she wasn't giving up. It was a stupid time to be stubborn—especially knowing the shoelace trick would work—but Joe wasn't a quitter. She tried again.

Nada.

But… Third time's a charm, right?

Putting all her thigh muscles into it, she executed the maneuver again, and…

Bingo!

Freedom!

Joe carefully scrambled to her feet, then reached up under her shirt to access her firearm. Once she had it palmed, she felt a lot better. Not as good as she'd feel if she had her Glock 19, but she wasn't complaining.

On silent feet, she sped across the room and pressed her back against the wall next to the door Chuck had used. She'd give him a full five minutes to relieve himself just in case he had prostate troubles, then she'd assume outside forces had taken care of the man for her.

If Jason also didn't make an appearance, that would mean it was her lucky day.

Which left her…Galici.

Oh, she was so going to enjoy seeing his face when he realized the game he'd been playing was over.