Page 45 of Quiet Protector
“Will do,” Grayson replies before disconnecting our call.
As I slide my phone back into my pocket, I pivot to face my mom, taking in Isabelle talking on the cell phone she refused to hand Hugo earlier. “I’m sorry—”
“Don’t.” Mom’s stern glare cuts me off better than her snapped reply. She doesn’t usually have the face to pull off snarky, but she’s got it down pat today. “Go do what needs to be done, then get back here. We have a lot to talk about.”
“All right. Thank you.” I press my lips to her cheek before lowering my eyes to her keys resting on the kitchen counter.
Smiling, she rolls her eyes before agreeing to my request to borrow her car with the dip of her chin. My trunk is filled with Hugo and Isabelle’s luggage. If the portions of their conversation I overheard while talking to my mom are anything to go by, they’ll want their belongings when Hugo forces Isabelle to the hotel I’m confident Isaac booked for them.
“I won’t get a scratch on it,” I promise while snagging up the keys and hotfooting it to my mom’s swanky new ride.
Much to my dad’s dismay, she purchased a brand-new Genesis G80 with cash so she could drive herself to her divorce attorney’s office. Its eighty-thousand-dollar price tag barely made a dent in my parents’ joint bank account, but my father is still demanding for the value of the car to be taken out of my mom’s side of the settlement before he’ll sign their divorce papers. That’s how cheap he is. He won’t give up anything of value. Fortunately for all involved, he has no clue just how valuable my mother is.
* * *
Eight minutes later, my mom’s car skids to a stop at the back of the surveillance van Grayson’s motorbike is parked behind. “I thought you were waiting for me to arrive?” I say to Grayson when the sound of heavy combat fire booms into my ears.
“That’s not us. It’s a turf war we’re about to break up, and we need to do it quickly. Word is CIA is honing in. If you want to speak with Castro before them, we need to move fast.”
I accept the bulletproof vest he’s holding out to me before joining him next to a table full of maps. With the CIA on their way, we have to storm the recently formed Castro compound via the front door. It’s the quickest and safest entrance point.
“Shoot to kill is activated, but the less casualties, the better. We want Rimi Castro brought in alive.” Grayson double taps his surveillance video. For a man who spent the last year and a half hiding, he looks dog-tired. “If you can show caution, use it, but if it’s you or them, always place money on yourself. We good?”
When a collective hum of agreement vibrates through the makeshift command center, Grayson claps his hands together two times. “Suit up, we’re heading out in four.”
“Where’s Phillipa?” I ask Grayson while following him to a fleet of Escalades rigged with blinding spotlights and bulletproof windshields. My scan of the agents preparing to head into battle with me failed to locate a woman with eyes as dark as her raven locks.
Grayson shrugs before climbing into the passenger seat of the first Escalade. “I tried to reach her a few times. She hasn’t gotten back to me.” He unlocks the safety on his gun, slides it into the waistband of his pants before straying his eyes to me. “I can’t hold out for her, BJ. If the CIA gets Castro before us, we’ll never get the chance to talk to him.”
Agreeing with him, I jog around to the driver’s seat of the Escalade before sliding in behind the steering wheel. As adrenaline pumps through my veins, Grayson taps his out on the roof on our car. It’s as if the past twenty-two months never occurred. We’re once again on the field prepared to take down a syndicate with such fucked-up morals, they view women as nothing but babymakers.
“Ready for payback, punk?”
Smirking, I fire up the ignition, answering Grayson’s question without words.
Thirty seconds later, we’re rolling over untouched land with another thirty or so agents tailing us. The landscape is different than we faced in New Mexico, but the adrenaline high is exactly the same—as are the sound of bullets pinging off the windshield.
Grayson takes down two spotters on the gate before the tires of our Escalade ensure they remain down for the count. If a bullet between the eyes didn’t kill them, five thousand pounds of steel will get the job done.
“Go, go, go,” Grayson shouts at the agents piling out of the line of Escalades at the front of the eerily quiet farmhouse mansion. The silence is off-putting, especially considering the amount of gunfire I heard on arrival only minutes ago.
I lift my chin when Grayson signals for me to head left with half a dozen men while he climbs the front stairs. It’s so quiet, I can hear the raging hearts of the agents behind me when we creep across floorboards in desperate need of repair. The scent of gun powder and blood is obvious, but no amount of deadly smells could prepare my eyes for what they stumble on when I push open the back-side door of the property.
The warped wooden floorboards of the basement are littered with dead bodies. Some have been shot, others have been knifed, and one is chained to a boiler heater. Although the dark-haired man has a large knife wound stretched from one side of his stomach to the other, his wide and terrified eyes are open and locked on me, begging for assistance.
He’s suspected of killing my brother, so I should let him rot in hell, but I can’t. Rimi Castro may be the only person capable of identifying the bodies found at the Shrouds’ family ranch. Without him, the victims’ families may never get the closure I’m hoping to give my family. That alone has me removing a switchblade knife out of my pocket to cut through the rope tying him to the boiler before lowering him to the ground.
After yanking off my bulletproof vest, I tug my shirt off, bundle it together, press it to the wound in Castro’s stomach, then call in assistance. “We need a medic in the basement. Man with a stab wound to the stomach. No other survivors.”
The crackle of a radio sounds through my ear before Grayson’s deep voice gobbles it up. “Copy. Medic is coming down. His presence won’t help anyone up here.” He doesn’t directly say he’s facing the same body count I am, but his tone sure does.
When my eyes return to Castro, I notice his face is whiter than it was moments ago. The paleness of his cheeks has nothing to do with the amount of blood he has lost. It’s because he’s seeing a ghost, a man he was confident he ordered to be killed.
“What’s the matter, Castro? You look like the Grim Reaper came to visit you.” He chokes on the blood gurgling in his throat when I push down on his wound with more force than needed. “Or are you seeing a ghost?”
Before he can answer me, I discover the frantic thump of footsteps bellowing down the stairwell don’t belong to the medically trained agents in our team. They’re compliments of the CIA officers storming the basement, demanding for my men to place their weapons down.
“Lower your weapon,” an agent requests of me for the second time, her voice oddly familiar even with it being tainted with remorse.
