Guns & Burning Rubber: The Iron Brotherhood series (8 page)

“Who else knows that she’s here?” Savage asked, after a tense second of quiet glares between the man and woman who seemed to be in charge of the Hellraisers.

Alicia shrugged.  “No one, probably.  Maybe Cross, her former boy toy, but I can certainly take his mind off of worrying about where his little handler is.”  Her lips quirked briefly upward.  “Hell, maybe I’ll invite him here, call it ‘burying the hatchet,’ making peace between your two gangs.”

“I don’t want peace with them,” Savage protested.  “I’d be as happy if they were dead.”

The woman waggled a finger at him.  “But wouldn’t it be so much easier to ambush them if they weren’t suspecting it?”

Savage frowned slightly at this, although whether the frown was due to the dishonest and backstabbing nature of the plan, or simply him not thinking of it first, Kara couldn’t say. 

“Listen, don’t worry about it,” Alicia soothed her relative, reaching out and patting Savage on the chest.  “I’ll go take care of Cross.  And I’ll leave you here, to have some fun with our little police snitch, before she vanishes for good.”

With that, Alicia turned and sauntered off towards the stairs - but not before looking back over her shoulder and shooting one last grin at Kara.  The smile was teasing, mocking, taunting the FBI agent for how easily she had let herself get captured.

But it was the eyes above that smile that made Kara shiver.  Savage was a brute, amoral and used to getting his own way, but he still seemed to have at least a hint of conscience, and still considered the strategic impacts of his choices.  There was no way that he could run a gun smuggling operation of this size without some sort of control on his impulses and emotions.

Alicia, on the other hand, was a blazing wildfire.  In her eyes, even in that split second, Kara could see that she didn’t care what consequences followed from her actions.  She was out to get her way, to have fun - no matter the cost.

And then, a minute later, the woman was gone.  Kara was left alone in the basement with Savage, the big president of the Hellraisers, the head of the gun smuggling operation.

And he was advancing towards her...

CHAPTER 10

Savage, the big, hulking biker president of the Hellraisers, wore a grin on his face as he stepped forward.  He looked as if he was already several minutes in, imagining all the terrible things that he was going to do to the woman, handcuffed and helpless before him.

Down on the ground, staring up at him, FBI Special Agent Kara Sybil felt small tendrils of panic climbing up her spine.

Focus, she tried to tell herself.  Take stock of the situation.  Measure the negatives and positives, and look for avenues of action.  Remember your training.

Positive: she wasn’t dead yet.  She was conscious, alive, and unharmed, at least for the moment.

Negative: she was currently handcuffed to a pipe, trapped in a basement.

Negative: no one else knew where she was - which meant that there was no cavalry on the way.

Negative: the man in front of her, now advancing towards her with an evil glint in his eye, had been given orders to kill her.

Positive: it seemed that Savage had some other activities in mind before he actually took her life.

Negative: Kara was absolutely certain that she was not going to enjoy these activities, even if they were holding off her death for a little longer.

Counting up the results of this analysis, Kara concluded that there were definitely more negatives than positives.  Not a great situation, all things considering. 

So what next?

Well, ideally, the first goal would be to get out of these handcuffs.  Kara risked a quick glance up at the metal bracelets around her wrists, the pipe in between her limbs and keeping her arms lifted up above her head.  The cuffs looked like a standard set, which meant that they would be relatively easy to pick - if she had the time and was left alone to do so.  She would also need some sort of tool.

However, the more pressing problem, as well as the biggest obstacle to her getting free, was definitely Savage.  The man was standing over her now, looking down at her with a grin.  Kara could feel the cool air of the basement blowing against her mostly naked body, and she knew that as soon as Savage started on her, she’d have no chance to escape.  The longer his torture went on, the more bruised and battered she would be, and the tougher it would be for her to have any shot of escaping.

If Kara was going to make a move, she had to do so now.

So she tilted her head back to look up at Savage.  Ignoring how leaning back against the wall made her shoulder sockets scream in protest as the handcuffs cut into her wrists, she put on a wide, toothy smile, beaming up at the man standing over her.

Savage paused at that smile, tilting his head a little to the side in confusion.  Kara was supposed to be nearly catatonic with fear, paralyzed by knowing that she was about to be raped, and then killed.  She wasn’t supposed to be smiling.

Kara pulled the smile as wide as she could, even as her lips burned in protest.  She opened her jaw slightly, as if she was about to whisper some secret to the hulking biker standing over her.

Savage bent down a little closer, trying to get close enough to hear what was about to come out of her mouth.

In a single, swift motion, Kara threw her leg up, slamming it as hard as she could into the fork between the man’s thighs.

#

Watching Savage’s face change was an exercise in satisfaction.

At first, the man didn’t react, and for a second Kara feared that maybe he somehow hadn’t felt the kick, that he was wearing a titanium cup.  He just stood there, frozen and motionless.

But then, slowly, the man’s face crumpled, collapsing in on itself like a depressurized soda can.  He fell down in stages, first bending at the neck, and then at the hips, and finally at the knees. 

Like a tree toppling in slow motion after receiving the final axe blow, Savage sagged sideways, falling off his feet.  The man was curling into a fetal position even before he hit the ground, his eyes staring out at Kara with a mixture of horror and shock behind them.  He looked as if he couldn’t believe that a captive woman, even one facing rape followed by death, would dare to inflict such pain.

But Kara wasn’t done yet.

As the man sagged forward, he was still awake and conscious.  His dropping down to his knees, however, brought his head within range of Kara’s limbs.

She snapped out her foot again - and this time, she slammed her heel up against Savage’s jaw.  The man’s mouth slammed shut, nearly taking off the tip of his tongue.  His neck snapped back, and Kara saw the man’s eyes rolling back in his head for a second before his lids dropped shut.

The man hit the floor heavily, lying across her feet - and totally unconscious.

From her position, still sitting on the floor with her hands bound and restricted, Kara glared down at his prone figure.  “That’s less than you deserve, you ass,” she told him.  The words weren’t strictly necessary, and probably somewhat unprofessional, but no one else was listening on a wire.

And they made Kara feel a little better, if nothing else.

Okay.  Most imminent threat - namely, being raped and killed - was now neutralized for the moment. 

On to the next challenge.  She looked up at the handcuffs, twisting them back and forth to search for the keyhole. 

Kara didn’t have any tools on her; her outfit didn’t leave much room for concealed weaponry.  But this big oaf in front of her, lying unconscious on the ground, probably had something that she could use.  She wiggled one foot, struggling out of her boot so that she at least had the flexibility of her bare toes.

Cautiously, Kara probed at Savage’s prone figure, searching for something thin and sharp, anything that could be used to pick the lock on the handcuffs.  She kept her other booted foot ready to lash out in case the man woke up, but it seemed that her one-two attack had rendered him thoroughly catatonic.

There were no hairpins or bobby pins on the man, but Kara felt something bulging in Savage’s back pocket.  A bit of digging revealed the handle of a pocket knife.  That could work.

A bit more wiggling, and Kara managed to free the folded blade from its pocket.  Trying to breathe as smoothly as possible, she grasped the object in her toes and lifted it up, contorting her body as she tried to bring it up towards her hands.  Damn it, she thought to herself as she struggled, I should have been doing yoga all along!

Eventually, after a couple near-slips, she managed to transfer the knife over to her hands.  From there, it was the work of a minute to flick it open and rearrange her grip until she was able to slide the tip of the blade into the small hole on the handcuffs.

Handcuffs are a wonderful tool for keeping someone restrained, but they aren’t designed for long-term use.  The locking mechanism in a pair of handcuffs has to be thin enough to not make the cuffs unreasonably bulky, which means that the lock has to be small and simple.  Instead of using tumblers, like a traditional lock, a handcuff lock simply uses a ratchet to hold the cuff’s swinging arm in place.  The key is usually little more than a lever that can disengage that ratchet.

In a pinch, any thin tool with a bit of springy flexibility can serve as a substitute for that key, reaching the ratchet and managing to get under it to lift and disengage it from the teeth on the cuff.  In the past, Kara had practiced picking her own cuffs using, among other items, a bobby pin, a steel street sweeper blade, and a paperclip.

Now, she discovered, a knife blade worked almost as well.

With a soft click that made Kara’s heart leap like no other sound she’d heard recently, the cuff’s hold on her left wrist suddenly loosened.  Carefully keeping the knife blade still inserted in the lock to hold the ratchet open, she wiggled around her other hand until the cuff slid free, and her arm could drop back down to her side.

As soon as she lowered her arm, her wrist burst into fiery pain, but Kara forced herself to ignore the sound.  Instead, she flicked the knife back into a folded position, and then yanked the other cuff down and out from the pipe through which it was looped.  With the cuffs down in her hand, it was much easier to pick open the other cuff, even using her off hand to manipulate the knife blade.

Once the cuffs were off, Kara rose up to her feet.  She shoved Savage off of her as she stood, and then looked down at the man.  At first, revulsion spread across her face - but then, it was replaced with a grin that, if Kara had seen it on anyone else, would have looked particularly evil.

It was the work of moments to shove the man up against the wall, where she had been sitting until a minute earlier.  Getting his arms up was a bit tougher, but Kara eventually managed to get the cuffs closed around his fleshy wrists, locking him in place.

Let the man rot there until the police came to rescue him, Kara thought to herself with satisfaction.

But she still had to get out of this place.  Undoubtedly, now that she had been captured, Alicia saw no reason to keep the party going upstairs.  Hopefully, most of the Hellraisers would still be in the dark about her, and she’d be able to sneak out.

That was the best case scenario.

The worst case scenario, of course, was that they all knew about her infiltration, and were keeping a keen eye out for her trying to escape.  They would probably be armed, and Kara knew that she didn’t stand much chance of fighting off an attack with just the little pocket knife in her hand.

Really, she needed to get her hands on a gun of some sort.  A pity that Savage didn’t have a gun on his person.  Apparently, the man had considered his hands, and possibly this knife that Kara now held, enough to get the job done.

Kara glanced around the basement, searching for a better weapon, but all she could see were the large wooden crates, scattered across the floor and stacked against the walls.

Wait a minute, she suddenly thought.

Weren’t these crates the smuggled goods that she was searching for?

Stepping over to the nearest crate, Kara shoved the knife blade into the crack between the boards nailed to the top of the crate.  A few twists, and she managed to get one of the planks levered up from the sides of the crate.

Risking splinters from the rough wood, Kara grabbed the edges of the board and hauled up.  The nails still embedded in the ends of the board squeaked in protest, but they reluctantly gave way.

Tossing the board aside, Kara peered into the straw filling the inside of the crate.  She brushed some of it aside, and then sucked in a breath as dark, well-oiled metal gleamed back up at her.

Kara’s lips spread into a grin.  An observer, watching Kara smile like that, might have been reminded of a crocodile, or some other reptile that had just spotted its next meal.

With an effort, the FBI agent levered the metal object up out of the crate, turning it in her hands as she checked it over.

Let’s just see any of those bikers try and stop me now, she thought to herself.

CHAPTER 11

At the top of the wooden stairs leading up and out of the basement of the Hellraisers’ clubhouse, Kara Sybil paused, pressing her ear up against the closed door.  For several seconds, she stood there, almost holding her breath as she listened intently.