Forty-five minutes later, thanks to a wreck that had brought the interstate to a standstill, we entered the downward descent of the exit ramp. I let up on the gas and coasted. During our wait, we’d tried to call Mutt at the Cove but he’d left. At the strip mall where the brothel operated, Darcy’s car sat where she had watched me attack the geriatric Ohio man in his black Chrysler 300.
Patricia said, “Oh, God.”
I parked next to the Infiniti convertible. There were other cars around. But no police.
“The mayor is going to pay for this,” Patricia said.
“I don’t want you going in,” I said.
“What? Why?”
I opened the car door and grabbed the top of the windshield to lift myself out. “If you hear shots . . . if it gets bad, I want you to get out of here and call Wilson.”
“This is crazy, Brack. You can’t go in alone. It’s suicide.”
“Suicide missions are my specialty.” I closed the door, pulled the thirty-eight, and walked toward the back-door entrance Darcy and I had used before. In the heat, I could feel my heart racing. My fingers tingled around the pistol. Just like war.
I raised my hand to knock.
A horn honked and a familiar voice boomed, “Brother Brack! Mind if we join you?”
Lowering my hand from the door, I turned to face Brother Thomas, who drove a large white van with blue smoke coming out the tailpipe. With him were a group of about ten people, men and women.
I said, “Y’all shouldn’t be here.”
He parked the van and everyone got out.
“Funny thing,” Brother Thomas said. “We was having a prayer meeting asking the good Lord what He wanted from us and Brother Mutt barged in, mm-hmm.”
They must have used I-26 and missed the traffic jam.
One of the men in the group, stocky, about my age, said, “From what we hear, you shouldn’t be here, either.”
I couldn’t argue the point.
My fear kicked into overdrive. “Darcy could be inside being held by my uncle’s killer and five kids with guns. I need to go in and get her and I don’t need this distraction.”
Brother Thomas said, “Sister Wells been our responsibility since we escorted her out of the hospital, mm-hmm.” He stepped to the door and knocked. “We going in.” The group gathered around him.
A lady with a pink dress and matching hat turned to me. “We all prayed up, chile. How ’bout you?”
Crystal answered the door in her negligee. Brother Thomas and the horde of his congregation stormed the fort, pushing past me and Crystal. I barely heard her say, “You can’t come in here!”
I pulled my pistol and followed the group inside, expecting the five guns in the back to start firing any second. What I found I did not expect. Four Chinese goons, hands bound and mouths gagged, were being led into the room by a second group of Brother Thomas’s parishioners. And Mutt. The only gun I saw was the one in my own hand.
“Opie!” Mutt said. “How ya doin’?”
“What the . . . ?” I didn’t finish. Something was wrong. The goon with the necklace who’d shot Darcy wasn’t tied up with the other four. “There’s one missing.”
Mutt lit a cigarette. “Slippery little sucker peeled away in a Trans Am.”
The Madame screamed at Brother Thomas in Chinese. The teenaged working girls, six of them in various forms of negligee, sat in the reception area with heads bowed. Female members of the church congregation found sheets and wrapped them around the girls.
Three of the four johns in the place, older white guys, stood in their boxer shorts and jockeys, hands covering their privates in shame. The fourth, a black man, wore nothing but a white towel. Men from the church gave the johns sheets to cover themselves as well.
The black john shook his head slowly. “Oh, Jesus. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” He put his face in his hands and cried.
Patricia came up beside me, taking in the sight. “Well I’ll be ...”
Brother Thomas said, “Brother Brack, it appears as if our friend isn’t here at present.”
Mutt said, “He right. I checked the whole place out.”
Patricia pointed a finger in the Madame’s face. “You have five seconds to tell me where Darcy is.”
The Madame screeched more in her native tongue.
“Look,” Patricia said, “I know you speak English. You have two choices.” She held up a finger. “One, either you tell me where Darcy is and I let you walk out of here before I call the police . . .” She held up a second finger, “. . . or two, I have you tied up with the rest and deported.”
Two of the goons on the floor jerked and thrashed around, hatred in their eyes.
Mutt said, “You guys behave. Or I’ll use ya as shark bait.”
Brother Thomas addressed the group. “First one of y’all that tells us what we wanna know walks out the do’. The rest will be takin’ the slow boat back to China, mm-hmm.”
A bald white guy clutching his sheet said, “But I’m an American.”
I said, “Those girls aren’t old enough to drive and you want to talk semantics?”
One of the teenagers, a tall beauty with slumped shoulders, stepped forward. The Madame berated the scared girl. Patricia took an extra gag from one of the men in the congregation who had subdued the goons and used it to shut her up.
The girl, now shaking, said, “I think I know, but I have no passport and no money. I tell you and you let me go, I get sent back like the others.”
Patricia led the girl away from the group. Brother Thomas and I followed.
My ex-aunt said, “You tell us where Darcy is and I will do everything I can to get you asylum.” She put her arms around Brother Thomas and me. “These are powerful men. They will make sure nothing happens to you.”
The girl raised her head and her eyes met mine. “You came here before with the woman, the one you ask about. To talk to Suzy.”
I said, “Yes.”
She looked at the floor. “Suzy is gone.”
Patricia looked at me.
I nodded. “She’s right.”
The girl said, “Suzy’s trick, the one who beat her up. He took the woman.”
Patricia spoke in a soothing voice. “Where?”
“I-I don’t know. He say he going to feed her to the rats.”
Rats. One place came to mind. McAllister had shown it to Darcy and me. Chromicorp.
I turned and ran out the door, Patricia on my heels.
North of the town limits, I slowed Patricia’s Mercedes and made a sharp left onto the dirt road. The mudhole McAllister’s truck had no problem going through appeared like a lake in the windshield. Patricia’s Mercedes would not fare as well if I tried the same stunt. With the thick underbrush and trees lining the road, there was no room to go around the water. I stopped short of the small pond.
Patricia snapped. “What are you doing?”
“The puddle’s too deep. We have to go on foot from here.” I unbuckled my seatbelt and got out.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” She hopped from the passenger seat to the driver’s, started the car, and drove forward.
The front end of her Mercedes hit the water and bounced a few feet. The rear tires dropped in. For a second it looked like Patricia might make it. But the car sank. She tried to rev it but the traction control system I hadn’t had time to turn off prevented the wheels from spinning. The engine clogged with water and shut off.
A voice behind me said, “She should have listened to you.”
I spun around, reaching for the thirty-eight stuck in the small of my back.
McAllister shot me.
It felt like I’d been steamrolled by an NFL linebacker. I hit the ground hard. Electric lava fried every nerve synapse in my body and I couldn’t move my right arm.
Patricia yelled, “Brack!”
McAllister walked over, reached down, and picked up the pistol I’d dropped, sticking it inside his waistband. In my pain, I noticed he wore rugged boots and long pants and a long-sleeved shirt—good protection from the mosquitoes and vegetation.
He trained his Glock on me. “I should have known the Chinks in the whorehouse would talk.”
My arm ached like someone had hacked it off with a dull pocket knife. I took off my belt and tightened it above the wound to stop the blood flow.
Patricia screamed, “You won’t get away with this!”
McAllister said, “I expected something more original than that from the queen of Charleston news. Now, get out of the car or the next one goes between his eyes.”
“Where’s Darcy?” she asked.
McAllister fired another shot. The bullet hit the ground inches from my head. “I told you to get out of the car, not ask questions.”
The only other weapon I had, if it could be called that, was the Swiss Army knife. McAllister had at least two guns, knowledge of the terrain, and the right clothes. I had shorts, sandals, and a nine millimeter hole in my bicep. Patricia wore pumps and a dress. She got out of the car and waded out of the puddle.
McAllister waved his Glock. “Start walking.”
Patricia helped me to my feet. I kept pressure above the wound as we skirted the puddle and followed the path to the condemned site, our captor walking behind us.
Patricia said, “I can’t believe Constance actually bought your act.”
“Constance believes what she wants to believe. It’s not like she gets out much.”
The smell of my blood drew every mosquito within a five-mile radius and they feasted on Patricia and me. McAllister must have been under a layer of repellant.
I slipped on the muddy road and regained my balance. “Constance probably doesn’t want to be seen with a douchebag like you, anyway.”
“More like she couldn’t get off the couch,” McAllister said.
“You set up Galston real good,” I said. “I’m sure his siblings won’t mind you got the family cash-cow killed.”
“As far as they know it was you and that idiot detective who shot him. Saved me from having to do it myself.”
Between swats at the insects, Patricia said, “The Galston family has good attorneys. They’ll figure out the truth.”
We approached the rundown structure.
McAllister said, “We use the same firm. It’s in our lawyers’ best interest to make sure it all looks legit.”
A side door had been wedged open. Patricia stopped and turned around to face our captor.
McAllister said, “I didn’t tell you to stop.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “I’m not going in there until you tell me where Darcy is.”
Not the smartest play she could have made, I thought.
He pointed his gun at her. I was an equidistant ten feet between them, to McAllister’s right. Patricia didn’t move.
McAllister closed his finger around the trigger. I let go of the belt tourniquet on my arm and dove for him. He swung the pistol to me just as I grabbed for it. With my good arm I wrenched the gun up. It fired and hit somewhere on the second floor of the building. He bashed me in the face with Mutt’s gun and I fell to the ground.
Patricia yelled, “Stop!”
McAllister said, “Try that again and I’ll blow your head off.”
As I got to my knees, he kicked me hard in the gut, the same place Galston had tagged me.
I doubled over. My chest tightened around what felt like bruised, if not cracked, ribs. Sucking in consecutive breaths, each one more difficult than the last, I tried to think what to do next.
Nothing came to mind directly.
Patricia knelt next to me. To McAllister, she said, “If you’re going to kill us anyway, why all the drama?”
The sound of a helicopter getting close caused us all to look up. Patricia stuck something in the left pocket of my shorts as she helped me to my feet. By the weight and feel against my leg, I knew it was a pistol.
McAllister turned to us. “My ride’s here. Get moving.”
My arm throbbed. My chest throbbed. I was losing blood. Patricia looked into my eyes. She knew I was a better shot one-handed and delirious than she was uninjured. At least, I hoped that’s what she thought. From somewhere inside the building came a muffled scream. I’d made it through three years of hell on earth and wasn’t about to die in some backwater South Carolina waste dump. We were getting out of this. My drill sergeant screamed, “Snap to it, Soldier!”
McAllister cocked the hammer on Mutt’s thirty-eight.
The helicopter’s spinning rotors pulsed through my shoes. I faced the open door. “Okay. We’re going in.”
A musty smell wafted out of the structure. No light exited with it. I moved slowly and stepped inside. As my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I could hear the sound of creatures scurrying around—the rats we’d seen before, most likely. We stood in a large open room. Darcy sat in a chair, tied and gagged. She was dirty but alert.
Patricia gasped and ran to her.
McAllister said, “One big happy family. Get over there with them, Brack.” He shoved me and I fell beside the women, pain shooting through my body again. Rats darted away from us.
We were out of options. McAllister was far from out of bullets. My arm pulsated like the bass in a gangbanger’s Impala. Injured ribs reminded me of their presence with every breath. I teetered on the edge of a blackout. Darcy was tied up and Patricia had lost her bravado.
The only loose end McAllister had left was us.
I said, “Why’d you kill my uncle?”
McAllister aimed Mutt’s pistol and shot one of the rats. The blast echoed in the large brick room. Patricia and Darcy both flinched.
“Nice shot.” I sat up, recoiling at the pain in my body.
He said, “I hate rats.”
I stood, feeling nauseous and light-headed. I’d pass out any minute. Willing my mind to keep working, I said, “You couldn’t buy my uncle off. That’s why you killed him.”
He spit on the concrete floor. “Reggie wasn’t going to look the other way. Not after that two-timing rat Fisher tipped him off. Both of them had to go.”
“And Rogers?”
The helicopter’s rotors slowed. It must have landed.
McAllister’s smile showed off his bleached teeth despite the dim lighting. “You’re a smart boy. Why do you think?”
I took two more steps. My only thought was to separate his targets, make him take his focus off the women. “Well, he was dirty. Probably figured you were involved and wanted money. After you killed him, you torched my house and planted the gun. I guess you used him to set me up.”
“Bingo.”
Standing over the dead rat, five feet from the women and ten feet from the man with two guns, I said, “So many deaths.”
McAllister cocked the hammer back again. “There’s about to be three more.”
The room began to spin. I hunched over and threw up bile, my hand resting on my thigh. My chest burned and the sensation kept me from slipping into shock. After a few shallow breaths because deep ones caused enough pain to knock out an elephant, I regained strength.
McAllister said, “I expected you to be tougher than this, Soldier.”
He wiped a bead of sweat from his brow.
I summoned enough strength to kick the dead rat at McAllister, who swatted at the flying rodent with the gun. I reached into my pocket for Patricia’s pistol and fired four rounds into McAllister. From ten feet away, I easily hit my mark. The man’s knees buckled and he fell, the nine millimeter and Mutt’s thirty-eight he held clamored to the concrete floor.
I staggered to the door and aimed the pistol outside just as the helicopter’s back door opened and Goatee stepped out. Sweat dripped into my eyes as I pulled the trigger and my shot went wide. Goatee tried to jump back into the helicopter but missed and fell to the ground as the pilot lifted off.
I sighted him in.
The man who had helped set Darcy and me up stood and raised his hands in surrender.
“It’s over, Brack,” Patricia said from behind me. “You don’t have to shoot him, too.”