Flight 12: A Sloane Monroe Thriller (Flight 12 Begins Series Book 4) (3 page)

“Maddie, I’m in an underground parking garage next to the hotel. I found the car. The combination of numbers and letters on the plate match what she said to me just before she died.”

I pressed the unlock button on the key fob, heard the distinct click, opened the car door.  

“It’ll take me a minute to get to you,” Maddie said. “I thought I’d drive around the block a couple times until you called, but there was no right turn on the first two streets I passed, and there must be a billion traffic lights in this city.”

“No rush. I’ll see you when you get here.”

I shoved the phone back inside my pocket and crawled inside the car. It was as pristine inside as it was out. There was no litter of any kind, not even a gum wrapper. I felt beneath the seats. Nothing. Checked the center console. Nothing. The trunk. The visor. Why was telling me about the car so important? What was she hoping to achieve?

I popped open the glove box. Inside was a single item, a black leather case I assumed was the car’s user manual. I undid the snap, opened it. At first glance, it was just as I suspected, nothing but pages of mundane photos and descriptions explaining anything and everything relating to the car. I thumbed through it and discovered something else—a hidden compartment in the shape of a three-inch square, cut into the center of the last half of the book. Inside the hidden compartment was a woman’s ring. I also found a napkin with the words
Essence Night Club
scribbled in pen. There was one other item—a photo copy of a plane ticket. Skyway Airlines Flight 12 departing the following evening at midnight from John F. Kennedy International Airport. Destination: Rome’s Fiumicino airport. There was a name written at the top: Dashner. I shoved the copy of the ticket and the napkin inside my pocket.  

A sound reverberated behind me.

Panting.

Breathing.

Slow.

Heavy.

My head whipped around as a thick, black bag was thrust over my head, masking my face. I wriggled around, kicking at the hands of my unknown assailant. My boot connected, slamming into the man’s fingers. He reeled back, shouted expletives, threatened to “cut me.”

In the process of defending my life, my leg caught on something sharp, split open, the sting pricking my skin like the tip of a tattoo needle. The wetness of the blood dripped from my skin, tainting an otherwise impeccably kept car.

“Don’t touch her,” a male voice said. “He says we have to deliver her unharmed, and that’s what we’re gunna do.”

Shit. There were two of them.    

“A bit of roughing up will do her some good,” the injured man said. “Teach her a lesson. She needs it.”

“Walk it off, Cesare. That’s an order. I’ll tie her hands. She won’t cause no trouble.”

“You won’t get the chance,” I spat.

I jerked my legs backward, prepared to strike again.

“Look, lady. I want to respect the boss’s wishes. I really do. But if you don’t cooperate, you’ll force my hand. Now step out of the car.”

“Screw you!”

I did my best to fling my body onto the passenger seat. I hoped somehow I could get myself out of my current predicament, tear the fabric from my head, make a run for it. Big mistake. The calmer of the two men had anticipated my move, slapped a hardened piece of plastic around one of my wrists. I reeled my other hand in front of my body, pressing it onto my chest.

He had one wrist.

He wasn’t getting them both.

I couldn’t allow them to take me.

I knew what would happen if they did.

My freed arm was gripped tight, yanked back. The strength of my attacker far exceeded my own. As a woman, I was thin, my frame tiny, rather than muscular, which was why I’d spent the last few years learning jujitsu, a skill that, at the moment, wasn’t paying off.

We struggled together in a tug of war for control of my other wrist.

I lost.

“You have nowhere to go,” he huffed. “Your hands are tied, and you can’t see. Get out of the car, or I’ll force you out.”

I listened, heard what sounded like a gun being cocked, ready to fire.  

“You had a friend with you,” the man continued. “What was it you called her? Maddie, wasn’t it?”

Was he a cop? Were they both cops? Had he been one of the officers in the room when we were being interrogated?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “I’m alone.”  

“Feeling a bit of amnesia, are we? I tell you what. Let’s make a deal. You get out of the car and get into mine—quietly, without tryin’ to resist—and when your precious friend comes around the corner, I won’t be forced to put a bullet in her.”

I’d been in worse situations than this before, but never at the expense of someone I loved when I still had the chance to save them. He could have been lying. Could have been telling the truth. Either way, time wasn’t on my side. Maddie would arrive at any moment. If there was even the slightest chance he meant what he said, I had to save her.

“Come with me,” he prompted. “You have nothing to fear. Trust me.”

He was wrong.

I didn’t have “nothing to fear.”

I had everything.

It’s funny how one sense takes over when the other is incapacitated. I read once that when one sense is lost, another becomes heightened. I’d been seat-belted in to the back seat of what seemed like a four-door sedan. It was too low to the ground to be a truck, and not spacious enough to be a van—I could tell by the distance of the men’s voices in the seat in front of me. The black bag remained over my head, as did the zip-ties behind my back. In an effort to stop me from kicking again, I’d been zip-tied at the ankles as well. As far as I knew, Maddie was still alive. For whatever reason, I was the one they wanted.

It was daylight now. Almost. Every once in a while, tiny flickers of light filtered through the mask, sporadic, like the sun was being intermittently blocked by something. Possibly trees or buildings.

We were no longer in the city. The car hadn’t stopped at a traffic light for several miles. I couldn’t help but wonder if I was being driven into the woods where I’d be executed, buried in a shallow grave because I’d turned up at the wrong place at the wrong time.

I’d envisioned my death before. Thought about the ways I’d most likely meet my end. Of the various scenarios, this one hadn’t even made the top ten. I felt weak and helpless, incapable of defending myself. I wasn’t about to give up though. Not yet.   

Most women in my predicament would be too unnerved to remain calm and focused at a time like this. Not me. My normal life provided all the anxiety I needed. I’d lost an innumerable amount of sleepless nights over victims I’d searched for over the years. All of them were eventually found, though some were still lost forever, their souls gone to live in a world beyond this one. Wherever that was.

Sitting in the back seat of someone else’s car, being tied up, blindfolded—it almost seemed surreal—like my body was floating somewhere between this world and the next. Teetering on the edge. One foot remaining in this life, the other stepping into the great beyond.

Since the first right turn was made after exiting the parking garage, I estimated we’d driven for about thirty minutes. I’d counted every turn, clocked every bump on the road, ingested every smell. The car had a lingering aroma of cigar smoke and the smallest hint of glass cleaner, an unsavory, nauseating combination.

Cesare and the other guy were involved in a discussion about where to go for lunch, arguing over burgers and fries versus going to Rita’s house for homemade lasagna. They seemed calm, unruffled, like abducting someone at random was just another day. For them, it probably was.

“I don’t know what he wants with this one,” Cesare said. “I really don’t. Too feisty for my blood.”

“You just like women you can control,” the other man said. “Probably why you’re still single.”

Cesare grunted a laugh. “Being single is a personal choice. Strapping myself to a single broad isn’t nearly as much fun as lovin’ ’em and leavin’ ’em. You should try it sometime.”

The other man said, “I have a classy lady at home. And I’m happy. Maybe
you
should try
that
sometime.”

“Feisty or not, this one will break. They all do, eventually.”

“
This one
can hear you,” I said.

“
This one
better shut her mouth if she doesn’t wanna be stuffed in the trunk,” Cesare replied.

“Do it. I don’t care.”

“You don’t have any idea why we nabbed you, do you?” Cesare asked. “No idea who you’re goin’ to see.”

“Would it matter if I did?”

“S’pose not.”

Cesare laughed. “You scared?”

“Leave her alone, Cesare.”

“Do I seem scared to you?” I asked.

“I dunno. I’d have to look into those pretty, brown sparklers of yours. You don’t sound scared. I’ll give you that.”

“What’s your name?” I asked. “Not Cesare, the other one.”

I had nothing to lose. Why not ask?

“Vincent.”

“Vincent…what?”  

“What’s it to you?”

“I like to know the name of the man before I end his life.”  

Cesare roared with laughter. “Girls got balls.”

“You plan on killing me, eh?” Vincent asked.

“The first chance I get.”  

I was escorted—and by escorted, I mean Cesare had me by one arm, and Vincent by the other—into a building of some kind, possibly a house. The way everyone’s voices carried, if it was a house, it wasn’t a small one. On the way inside, I heard a gate open and close. Wherever I was, it wasn’t the woods.  

I was taken to a room, strong-armed onto a chair.

“Don’t make any stupid moves,” Vincent said. “There are two men at the door. You seem like a smart girl. I don’t need to explain what will happen if you’re dumb enough to think you can get out of here. You’ve got nowhere to go.”

The door closed.

I waited.

“Is anyone there?” I asked.

No reply.

I raised myself off the chair a few inches, tested the waters.  

“Sit back down,” a male voice said.

The voice was male, someone other than Vincent or Cesare.

I sat. “Who are you? Why am I here?”

The door reopened. I heard the distinct sound of women’s heels clacking along the stiffness of a solid floor. A heated exchange ensued between the woman and two men. Several sentences were shouted in Italian followed by the woman switching to English, saying, “I said do it! Now!”

A few more minutes passed. I had no idea who was still around and who wasn’t. Something rattled on the floor next to me. A cool, damp cloth was applied to my leg, dipped into water, wrung out, and applied again. Scissors sliced through the zip-ties. I was free.

“Who are you?” I asked. “Why are you helping me?”

“I’m so sorry, Sloane.”

Her voice. I recognized it. I’d heard it before. I lifted the mask from my head, saw the long, raven-colored hair flowing past her shoulders. I blinked a few times, allowed my eyes to shift back into focus. “Daniela?”

Daniela was the sister of my ex-boyfriend, Giovanni Luciana. He ended our relationship shortly before his brother, Carlo, an FBI agent, was gunned down on a case Carlo and I were working together. I was present when Carlo died. I witnessed his death. My inability to save him haunted me even now, hovering over me like a bad habit I couldn’t break.

The split, while initiated by Giovanni, was a choice he made after the choice he’d already made to get close to me, but not
too
close. I’d long suspected Giovanni of having a secret life, a life outside of the one we’d been building together. At the time, part of me didn’t want to know the truth. Another part of me knew I
had
to know. I just had to. I’d never stop wondering unless I did. Never fully trust.

In an ongoing effort to get to know him better, I pushed. Asked questions. Never received the answers I wanted. Not from him anyway. Daniela had been the one to set me straight, the one to confirm her brother was the man I’d suspected he was all along. The mob, while diminished and not as talked about, was still alive and well in New York City, among other places. And my sweet, loving Giovanni wasn’t just part of it, he was the underboss, first in line to assume his father’s position as the head of the family.

In truth, if Giovanni hadn’t ended things, I would have. He knew the choice he had to make, and he made it. I’d never look at him the same way again. Never trust him again. That part of my past was over.

“What the hell is going on?!” I questioned. “Why go through all the trouble of staging a kidnapping when you could have just picked me up and brought me here?”

“Trust me … none of this was supposed to happen. Giovanni sent Vincent and Cesare to pick you up. No harm was supposed to come to you. I swear.”

“No
harm
? You saw what those two idiots did to me.”

She started to speak then halted when a pair of muscular men entered the room, their hands wadded around the back of the shirts of Vincent and Cesare, who walked in front of them. Vincent and Cesare were thrust down, knees smacking the ground as they were forced to kneel before me.

Giovanni walked in behind them, arms folded, his eyes screaming a kind of internal rage he was fighting to keep suppressed. He looked at me, at the cut on my leg, the zip-ties littering the ground’s surface. He questioned Vincent and Cesare about what happened, why I’d been tied up.

“We just did what you said,” Cesare said. “Picked her up like you wanted.”

“I asked you two to escort Miss Monroe back to the house, not turn it into some kind of circus event.”  

Giovanni gave a slight nod to the muscle men. They began kicking Vincent and Cesare from behind. Once, then again, and again.   

“Giovanni, stop! Please,” I begged. “Don’t do this. I’m fine.”

It was if I hadn’t spoken at all. He didn’t look at me. Didn’t acknowledge me in any way. His attention remained focused on Vincent and Cesare. “Did I ask you to tie her up, to cover her face? Did I?!”

“She resisted,” Cesare said. “We didn’t know how else to get her into the car. What were we supposed to do?”

“You were
supposed
to accompany her to the car and drive her here, unharmed,” Giovanni replied. “You’ll both apologize to Sloane.”

Vincent immediately followed through with Giovanni’s request. Cesare glared at me, offering a look that said any kind of apology was beneath him.

“You’ll apologize, Cesare,” Giovanni repeated. “Now.”

Cesare grunted the weakest apology known to man. He was told to say it again. I’d had enough.

“Everyone out,” I said.

Every man in the room appeared to hold their breath at the same time, appalled I’d made a command in front of their fearless leader. I revolved around, looked each one of them in the eye. I walked up to Cesare, dug my hand inside his pocket, yanked my phone out. I got within a couple inches of his face. “I said … GET … OUT.”

Giovanni flicked his wrist, and the men filed out of the room, heads shaking, eyes wide with disbelief.

I looked at Daniela. “You too.”  

“We need to talk,” she said.
“We will. Later.”

I waited until the room was vacated and then did what any woman in my position would do. With all the force I could muster, I struck Giovanni across the face.