Page 115 of Being Lost

I eye a case of bottles and indicate them with my hand. Salem and Deuce take up positions outside the closed storeroom door, while Pennywise, Token and Deuce cover the hallway that leads to the restaurant itself.

“Distraction in two,” I speak quietly again.

“Got it, Prez,” Dart replies in my ear.

Then after counting the two brief seconds in my head, knock the case off the shelf.

It does the job.

We’ve taken out three men, but there’s Enrico left, and also the men who were laughing. At least two more from the different voices I’d been able to distinguish.

Oh, and the one who comes rushing out of the storeroom, allowing Salem to make his second kill of the night.

Three men come down the hallway. “What the fuck?” Enrico’s voice snarls. “You be fuckin’ careful, that’s my stock…”

He cares about the restaurant?

“I want him alive.” I don’t have to be quiet anymore.

What we don’t want is them shooting. A gunshot would warn their comrades in the auto-shop, that’s if by now there’s any left breathing, but I can’t take the chance there are not as I haven’t yet had the all clear from my sergeant-at-arms.

Fuck, but I’ve a good team around me. Knives flash, punches are thrown, the air punctuated with oomphs and the sound of fists hitting flesh. Then there’s the sound of reinforcements making their way in from the front.

By the time Dart arrives Enrico’s been overpowered and Pennywise is zip-tying his hands, and the other two men are dead.

“Front of the restaurant is clear,” Dart tells me first. “Two men dead.” Then looks around and shakes his head. “Could have left something for us.” He nods at Token and Salem and the other body at their feet.

“You can have whoever comes up from the tunnel,” I tell my VP seriously. Then look around. “Anyone injured?”

As they’re assuring me no, the element of surprise and lack of expectation of any threat had made our job easy.

And I’m further relieved to hear, “All clear here,” coming in Grumbler’s voice in my ear. “Do you want me to open up the holding pens?”

Pens are where you keep animals. I hate the term that he’s used, but that’s exactly what they are.

“No, stick to the plan.” Like me, I know he’ll want whoever’s been imprisoned freed as soon as we can, but I can’t have screaming and traumatised women stepping in front of a gun. Or running off into the streets of San Diego sounding the alarm. I certainly don’t want the cops turning up and finding us surrounded by dead bodies. Quickest way to get a one-way ticket to a different type of pen than the ones Grumbler wants to open.

“Grumbler. You’ve got a truck coming up the road. Maybe nothing… Nah. It is. It’s stopping outside. One, no two men getting out. Doesn’t seem to be anyone else.”

“On it.”

Curtis and Grumbler’s voices cease. I’m holding my breath, looking around I see the others doing the same. Then the sergeant-at-arms voice sounds again. “Problem dealt with. Neither of them Alder, Prez. Looked like extra muscle.”

“Copy,” I confirm.

“Fuckin’ murdering assholes.” Enrico’s been swearing at us for a while, but I’d tuned him out.

Ignoring his protestations, I spit a question at him. “What’s the procedure? Who are you expecting through the tunnel? How many of your men?”

“Enough to fuckin’ kill you,” he rasps out.

I highly doubt that. Instead I turn to Reboot with the intention of telling him to open the trapdoor up when I pause. What if there’s a signal they wait for, and not getting it, hustle back through the tunnel instead? I can’t afford to miss anything, however small it might seem. I turn again to Enrico. “You want to live? Or die like your men?”

He huffs loudly. “As if you’re going to let me walk.”

“I might,” I tell him. “Or, I might not. But there’s a chance I’ll be lenient tonight.”

“Ain’t gonna cooperate with you.”

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