“No! No! Please!” I screamed, thrashing on the table. Hank glanced down as he tried to unzip his pants and that was all I needed. Using his distraction, I grabbed his hand with the gun and twisted, making him cry out. The gun flew out of his hand, but before he could reach for it, I lifted myself up on the table and head-butted him so hard that black spots danced in my vision, but at least I sent him sprawling to the ground.
Ignoring the pain that was threatening to split my skull, I hopped off the table into a crouch, then flipped it over so it would shield me in case Santini already had his gun out and was aiming at me. I tugged my jeans back up and quickly zipped them. Hank was trying to push himself up, holding a bloody hand over his nose. I was closer to the gun he’d dropped, so I grabbed it and rolled over, peeking out from behind the right side of the table, and quickly aimed and pulled the trigger.
Santini fired at the same time, and the bullet embedded itself into the table, barely missing me, but the next shot formed a hole in the table’s surface. I got to my feet and squeezed the trigger again, this time hitting Santini in the shoulder. He stumbled toward Aaron, who somehow had the strength to catch the chain, pull himself up, and wrap his legs around Santini’s throat, bringing him down.
Santini still had a grip on his gun and was trying to point it at Aaron’s leg. I aimed at him, but I couldn’t risk hitting Aaron, so I glanced at Hank, who was struggling to lift himself up. Hank wasn’t a threat at the moment, so I raced toward Santini. He’d managed to get free of Aaron’s grip, but just before he could shoot, I tackled him and brought us both to the ground. Our guns went flying, but I didn’t care.
Getting on top of Santini, I curled my fingers into a fist and brought it down repeatedly onto his face. My knuckles were stinging and hurting, but all I could see in my mind was Santini punching Aaron over and over again. Santini moaned, lifting his hands to shield his face, blood covering his mouth and nose. I knew I didn’t have much time before Hank got to one of those tables with weapons, so I jumped to my feet, picked up the nearest gun, and shot Santini in the face.
I looked up toward Aaron, except he was no longer there. My pulse racing, I stared at the empty hook. If Hank... I spotted Hank in the corner of the room. Aaron held him in a chokehold, his chain wrapped around Hank’s neck. Hank’s face was getting redder and redder as he was trying to grip the chain, but Aaron didn’t let go. A few moments later, Hank’s arms went limp and he fell to the ground. The coldness in Aaron’s eyes disappeared as he met my gaze.
“We have to get out of here!” I yelled, unsure how many men could be waiting for us outside or returning after what had hopefully been a futile search for Marco.
“Yeah, but we need some of that.” He dropped the chains to the ground and nodded toward the table with weapons.
“Good idea.”
We grabbed as many guns as we could carry and ran toward the exit.
“Are you okay?” I asked as we stopped at the door.
Aaron’s shirt was torn and bloody in many places and he was limping a little. “Yeah, you?”
I bobbed my head.
“Let’s just keep moving.”
I pulled up the gun and glanced outside but couldn’t see anyone, which was weird. “Where’s everyone?”
“I don’t know.”
We ran outside, hiding behind various boxes, but it seemed like everyone had left. “They wouldn’t send everyone after Marco, right? I mean, they thought he was a spy who could expose the location of the special shipment, but they wouldn’t send everyone after him while someone else could come and attack this place. That would be stupid,” I said.
Aaron lowered his gun and swore.
“What?” I followed his gaze across the empty yard. Wait, empty...? “The trucks are gone!”
“They thought we were too much of a threat, so they risked sending the shipment early.” Aaron let out a frustrated breath.
“But if all the trucks are gone... then Marco should be safe somewhere, right?”
“We have to get back to the car. He might be waiting for us there, and we have to get there before anyone else does.” Aaron’s eyes were filled with worry.
“He’s fine. We’ll find him.” I rubbed his back, and he nodded. Aaron and Marco had left their phones and anything that could identify them in the car, which hopefully wasn’t easy to find. We hadn’t exactly planned on getting caught, though. But I refused to think something had happened to Marco.
“The drug’s gone.” He ran his hand across his face, turning in circles. “We can’t catch or check seven trucks that could’ve all gone in different directions.”
I looked around the farm and focused on the small house. “Maybe we can find some information in there.”
“They wouldn’t be so stupid as to leave clues.”
“But they were in a hurry. They could’ve forgotten something or maybe Santini was supposed to take care of it. And if it’s coded in some way...” I shrugged. “We should go check.”
“Okay, but we have to be quick.”
When we were sure no one was there to jump out at us, Aaron kicked in the door and we found ourselves in a small office full of papers. The computer on the desk was still on.
“They didn’t even have time to shut it down.” I flipped through a few papers. “Didn’t you say your father wouldn’t risk the shipment getting busted? Don’t those guys have to follow the schedule then?”
“Yeah, but this is an extreme situation. It’s different.”
“But they didn’t contact him, and that guy... That was Santini, right? He didn’t tell them to take the shipment anywhere, just ordered them to go after Marco. Wasn’t he in charge?” A frown creased my brow. “Would someone act against his orders and not contact your father?”
Aaron looked up from the folder he’d been inspecting. “Yeah, the guy was Santini. Maybe they didn’t want to speak in front of us, or maybe they had a protocol in place for situations like this and nothing needed to be said.”
I bent down to check one of the drawers. “Maybe. But now that you mentioned a protocol... What if they had a backup plan? If someone came snooping around here, they could transfer the shipment to another place and then deliver it from there.”
“I don’t know. This seemed like the safest place. It’s isolated... No one is supposed to just venture in here.” Aaron clicked through a few files on the computer. “Let’s see if they have any info about a property around here where they could keep the trucks until tomorrow.”
“I never thought I’d be chasing after a drug,” I muttered.
“Why not?” A hint of amusement tinted Aaron’s voice. “You’re the daughter of a drug lord.”
“I always wanted to stay as far as possible from anything drug-related because I was just sick of it all. I mean, the whole drug business is the reason why I couldn’t... why I still can’t be with my family or live my life how I want to. I always have to hide, lie to every single person outside my family about who I am... I just couldn’t make a real connection with anyone.” I threw a bunch of useless papers to the floor so I wouldn’t look at them again by mistake. “When I was a kid, I’d sometimes stare at the stars and wish for my family to be normal, but... I guess wishing stars aren’t as good as people say they are.”
“I think we’ll have to file a complaint against the stars. Didn’t work for me either,” he said.
“What did you wish for?” I asked.
“Doesn’t matter.” He shook his head.
“I think I’ve got something.” I picked up one of the papers, tracing my fingers across it.
“What is it?” Aaron came around the desk and took the paper from me. “A list of numbers from one to seven. Seven trucks. But it doesn’t say anything else. It’s blank.”
“No, it’s not. Feel the page.” I waited until he arched an eyebrow at me. “There are indentations in the paper. There are five of them, they’re exactly the same, and they’re right under number five. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.” Actually, I thought it might be international Morse code, but I wasn’t sure.
“The fifth truck,” Aaron said. “We need to find the fifth truck.”
“Yeah, the drug’s probably in there. Now we only need to figure out where the damn truck is.” I opened a few drawers, dug through the papers, and tossed a few folders, but there wasn’t anything useful.
“It was probably a plan they agreed upon in person. No written data anywhere.” With one swipe of his hand, Aaron crashed everything that was left on the table to the floor. “Fuck! We won’t get it in time!”
“I still don’t get why Santini would stay with us. This is too important. Why would he just leave the shipment? Sure, he thought he had us under control, but if more people came after us, then his life would be in danger.” I leaned against the desk and chewed on the inside of my cheek. “It doesn’t make sense. And I know the other two guys are out of the picture, but where were they planning to store the drug? Maybe the trucks would still go there.”
“I don’t know much about Santini. Well, his criminal self. That’s why my father picked him. Everyone seems to think he’s... was just a lesser criminal, so no one paid any attention to him or the other two guys. But the others’ places are no longer safe and they’re too far, so they can’t be going there.”
“Okay, so maybe Santini stayed with us because he didn’t want to risk his skin if he got caught with his shipments, and he has enough alarm systems to know if someone comes his way. We didn’t think he could detect us in that field, and he did just that, so... But they still moved the trucks, just in case.”
“There are no cars here. What would Santini do if someone else came? Look at the alarm, wait for potential attackers, and say the shipment wasn’t there? They’d still kill him. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Unless he had an escape plan.”
“We have to go back to that garage.” Aaron grimaced. “And see if there’s a hidden office or something.”
“If we must.” I didn’t want to go back in there. Ignoring what had happened and focusing on the task at hand seemed like a far better option, but I knew we had no choice. Leaving the office, we raced back toward the garage.
“You search the left side, and I’ll check the right side,” Aaron said, and I sighed in relief. The bodies were on the right. I so didn’t want to see them again.
“So we’re looking for a hidden door or something that could open one?” I ran my hand across the wall to feel for any weird spots.
“Yeah. It could be on the wall or on the floor.”
“Does your father’s house have any of those?” I asked, because babbling about something seemed like a perfect distraction.
“Yeah,” Aaron said. “But I’m not supposed to know that, and you’re not supposed to know either.”
“Okay, I know nothing then.” I stomped my foot against an odd-looking stone on the floor, but nothing happened. “Do you think someone’s coming here to check for Santini or call...? Wait, does he have a phone?” We were such idiots. “We hadn’t checked the...”
“I’ve got it. You keep looking,” Aaron said.
“If he missed some calls or check-ins, someone could be coming back here.”
“Doesn’t seem so. I can’t see anything like that on the phone. I guess he was confident everything would be fine.”
“Anything else?” I found a spot on the floor that looked a bit darker than the rest, but jumping on it or pushing it didn’t do a thing.
“He does have a secret room after all,” Aaron said, coming toward me with the phone in his hand. After he tapped the screen, the ground started shifting, and a few tiles moved to reveal a stairway that led into the darkness. “Looks like a tunnel.”
“Let me see that.” I grabbed the phone. Huh. Santini had an app on his phone to alert him of any intruders on his huge property and he had this room that no one could find for emergencies. “That’s why he wasn’t worried someone could come and kill him. He’d have been safe down there and no one would’ve found him. The guy trusted his phone too much. What if his battery died or something? Or someone stole it? Unless he used it only when he was here, and if someone got it off him, then he was probably dead anyway and wouldn’t need it.”
“Probably had a backup for that, too, but there’s no need to search for that. The tunnel seems long.”
“I hate tunnels.” I groaned.
“I can imagine. You went through one on a daily basis to see your family.”
“Yeah, and for what? You still found out who I am.”
“My father didn’t,” he said.
“Okay, yeah, I’ll take that as a good thing. Are we going down?” I wasn’t too thrilled about that.
“I’ll just go check to see where it leads. This map won’t open and I want to see if there’s one down there.” Aaron started climbing down.
“You think the tunnel leads to wherever the trucks were taken. If they’re underground, then it would be almost impossible to find them.”
“Exactly.” Aaron disappeared into the darkness, the only light coming from the phone screen. After a few moments, he emerged with a bright smile on his face. “The tunnel leads to a few places, but there’s only one big enough for seven trucks. The map on the phone finally opened, though. Must have been triggered by me going down there.”
“Do you know where that place is and how to find it from the outside?” I’d hate to emerge right in the middle of our enemy’s camp.
“I could find it if I compare it with a few other maps of this area.”
“But we can’t take the phone with us. It has to have a tracker in it.”
“We don’t have to. There’s paper in the office. I’ll copy this map, we’ll clean the phone, and leave it here.”
“Let’s go.” I wanted nothing more than to be out of here as soon as possible.