Thresh: Alpha One Security: Book 2 (9 page)

I kept an eye on our pursuers, who stayed a couple of car lengths back. When it became obvious they weren’t going to mount a mobile assault, I backed off the accelerator until we were back to legal speeds.
 

Once we were cruising smoothly, Lola dug out her cell phone and called the hospital, claiming an unexpected family emergency that would keep her occupied for several days. After that, we drove in silence for a while, passing out of Miami and away from the urban and suburban areas.

“Where are we going?” Lola asked.

I shrugged. “No idea. They’re just following us for now.” I eyed her, noting her thoughtful expression. “Why? You got an idea?”

She bobbed her head side to side in a
maybe
gesture. “Well, there is a place, but…I’m hesitant for a couple of reasons. First, it’s hard to get to, which is part of the reason I’m even considering it, but when I say hard to get to, I’m really not kidding. Remote doesn’t even begin to cover it. Second, I really don’t like the idea of leading anyone there, because it’s…it’s my dad’s place. I don’t want to pull him into this mess, too. He’s…kind of a hermit.”

I considered. “Where are we talking?”
 

“He’s got this place way down in the Ten Thousand Islands area, the kind of place you have to know exactly how to get into and out of, or you’ll be totally lost forever.”

“And you know how to get there?”
 

She nodded. “Yeah. I half grew up there. It was our summer getaway. We’d pack up as soon as school let out and take his boat out there, and we wouldn’t come back until the day before I started school again. Then, when Mom died, Dad moved out there full-time. Hasn’t left since. He has this friend who delivers supplies, and I visit him sometimes when I can.” We were nearing an exit ramp for a different freeway, and she directed me to take that exit, which put us on a smaller, two-lane highway heading south and west out away from Miami.
 

“So I’m assuming it’s not accessible via a vehicle,” I said.

She snorted. “Yes, Thresh, there’s a nice highway leading right up to my dad’s handmade cabin deep in the Everglades.” Not only did I get the snort and the sarcasm, I also got an eye roll. Bonus points. “That’s the tricky part.” She looked at me sidelong, chewing on a thumbnail. “I’m kind of assuming you didn’t just happen to purchase this vehicle since arriving in Miami…”

I twisted my fist around the leather of the steering wheel. “Not…exactly, no. I more…borrowed it. Firmly.”
 

She snickered. “Which means you bashed some poor asshole over the head and stole his very nice Jeep?”

I pretended to bluster as if I was offended. “I would
never
bash some poor asshole over the head and steal his very nice Jeep.” I affected an arch tone. “I have
standards
, I’ll have you know. For your information, I held him up at knifepoint and stole his Jeep. But I was polite.”
 

She raised both eyebrows. “You
politely
stole a vehicle at knifepoint?”

“Yep. Didn’t even hurt him—” I tipped my head to the side with a shrug of one shoulder, “—much. Just a little tiny, itty-bitty spot where I pricked him with the knife. Won’t even need a Band-Aid.”

She eyed me. “Well. I certainly wouldn’t like to know what it looks like when you’re
not
being polite about something.”

I shot a glance in the mirror, checking for our pursuers; they looked a tad bored. I’d have to make things interesting for them, at some point.
 

“You’ve seen it,” I said. “It can get…messy.”
 

That silenced her for a moment. “I see. I guess I can understand why you’d be upset, all things considered.”
 

I laughed outright. “Upset? I’m not upset at all. This is a bit of fun, so far. It’d be better if I hadn’t gotten shot, but then these are the same guys who put the bullets in me in the first place, and I did a number on them during the last op, so I’m kind of looking at this as…retribution, for both sides.”
 

A few more moments of silence went by, and then she glanced at me again. “What was the op? I mean, if I’m gonna get dragged into some shit out of a Jason Bourne movie, I might as well know why.”
 

I debated about what to tell her, and then figured she deserved to know the truth for the reasons she gave. “First, when I said I was a security contractor, I really did mean that. We generally provide personal security for high-profile clients on an event-by-event basis. Like when some A-list celebrity is doing some big flashy event and they want to beef up their normal security, they’ll hire us. My job is usually to be big and scary and intimidating, honestly. So, for the most part, I’m not a mercenary, I’m a security contractor.” I paused to change lanes, accelerating around a slow-moving RV. “But sometimes a job comes our way that’s…not as simple.”

“Like killing people?”

I didn’t have to affect the offended tone of voice. “I’m not a fucking assassin, Lola.”

“Well shit, Thresh, I know next to nothing about you, so how am I supposed to know? You killed that guy with laughable ease. You don’t even seem affected. I didn’t mean to offend you but, if you look at it from my perspective for a second, it’s not a completely outlandish assumption.”

“I guess you have a point,” I said. “The jobs I’m talking about are things that go beyond the bounds of basic security. We’re not contract killers, we’re a threat-removal team. An insert-and-extraction team. If someone needs security against an active threat, where there’s real possibility of danger, you call us. The job that caused all this fuckery was…different, even for us.”

Lola pivoted in her seat so she was partially facing me, openly and avidly listening, now.
 

I sighed and drove with my knee while I rubbed the back of my neck, then re-took the wheel. “You know the actors Jon Lonigan and Callie MacPhereson?”

Lola snorted. “Um, duh?”

“Right. Well, they have a daughter, three years old. Cleo. Cute little thing, blond hair, blue eyes, innocent, and sweet as sugar.” I let out a breath. “She got kidnapped. It was…messy. The guys who snatched her did it in broad daylight, nearly killed the nanny in the process. Sent a ransom note with a photograph of some asshole with a big fuck-off knife to this little girl’s throat. Harris did security for a friend of Lonigan’s, so Harris got the call. Go get the girl. Cost was no object, and he didn’t want to know the details of how we did it. Just get his little girl back. So we did what we do: we got the girl back.
 

“Only, it wasn’t exactly simple. The tangos who snatched Cleo weren’t just some hack thugs. It was a professional job—people Harris ran into back in his black-ops days. Evil fuckers, and smart ones to boot. Coordinated, well-armed, trained, and with serious numbers. The guy in charge found out Harris was involved, and it turns out the two had bad blood between them. They planned to ambush us, so we set up a counter ambush—” I waved a hand, not wanting to go too heavy on the details, for both our sakes. “Things got hot, and fast. The whole thing went sideways. We barely got away, and we took out most of Cain’s guys in the process, but not Cain himself,
and
Cain never got his ransom money. So now we have one seriously pissed-off European mobster, and this guy…he has money, he has connections, and he’s just arrogant enough to think he can take on Harris and win.”

Lola was taking all this in stride, so far, but then she was proving herself to be fairly unflappable. “Can he? Take on Harris and win, I mean.”
 

I laughed, hard. “Sweetheart, Harris makes both Rambo and Chuck Norris look like pussies. Put them together, and they’re still pussies compared to Harris. Cain doesn’t stand a chance. And now that he’s gone after me? Shit, the motherfucker’s signed his death warrant, and I ain’t even pissed off yet.”
 

“Just out of curiosity…what would happen if you got pissed off?”
 

I thought for a second, trying to figure out how to answer that. “I’ve only lost my temper once in my life. I’ve always been bigger than everyone, and my old man, sadistic fuck though he may have been, made sure I knew I had to keep a lid on my shit. He drilled self-control into me from a very young age. So…I don’t get pissed off too easily.”

Lola frowned. “It happened once, though?”
 

I sighed. “Yeah. But that’s…not something I like to talk about. It was a bad time.”
 

Lola turned back in her seat to face the front. “I see. Well, I’m sorry it happened, whatever it was.”

“So. This plan of yours, to disappear into the swamp…”

“First, it’s not really a swamp, it’s a wetland forest. It’s a very complicated and very special place.”
 

I rolled my hand in a
keep-going
gesture. “Okay, so how do we get into this very complicated and special wetland forest of yours?”
 

She sighed. “It’s actually one of only three locations in the world to be declared—”

I cut her off. “Tell me when we’re in there, babe. Let’s get to the part of the explanation where I can plan how to lose these two assholes behind us without getting you killed.”
 

“Or you. We don’t want you killed.”

I guffawed. “Sweetheart, there’s only two of them. They couldn’t kill me if they had a goddamn bazooka. Pretty sure I can handle two little Euro wanna-be thug fucks.”
 

Lola rolled her eyes at me. “Okay, tough guy. Point is, you’re my protection, so I need you in one piece.” She eyed my cast-wrapped, sling-bound arm. “Or, at least, in the number of pieces you’re already in.”

“I’d like that too. Despite what you may believe, getting shot ain’t fun, so I’d like to avoid it if I can.”
 

“So the plan is to use Dad’s extra boat.”
 

I gaped at her. “Extra boat? Why didn’t you say so?”

“Because you distracted me with your
I politely stole a Jeep
nonsense.”

“
You
started that, honeybuns.”
 

“Honeybuns? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It means tell me where this fucking boat is so we can go get it.”
 

She hesitated. “Well, the thing is, getting
to
it is the easy part. Actually getting into the boat and on the water? A little more difficult.” She gestured behind us. “Especially since I’m relatively certain they’ll try to stop us.”
 

“Relatively certain,” I echoed. “Yeah, I’d agree with that.”
 

She tapped at the GPS, inputting an address on Plantation Island, wherever that was—
what
ever that was. “First stop, Uncle Filipo’s.”
 

“What’s at Uncle Filipo’s?”

“The boat.”
 

“I’m confused.”
 

She rolled her eyes at me. Seemed like she did that a lot. “I know, it’s complicated. Further complication is that Uncle Filipo isn’t really my uncle. He’s the friend of my dad’s who brings him supplies. He has a boat—well, actually it’s
Dad’s
boat if you want to be technical about it, but he’s letting Uncle Filipo borrow it more or less permanently, so Filipo can bring Dad food and propane and whatever else.”
 

I frowned. “So it’s Filipo’s boat?”

She shook her head. “Filipo is very particular on this point. It’s not his boat, he’s just using it.”

“And what does this have to do with our plan to borrow the boat?”
 

“Well, it’s next to Filipo’s trailer.” She did that hesitation again, the one that meant I wouldn’t like what she was about to say. “It’s on a trailer, and we have to tow it to the water.”
 

“Which means we have to lose the dudes behind us.”

“That would make it easier, yes.”
 

“This place of your dad’s…is it listed? Like, is he on the grid?”
 

“On the grid?”

“Searchable. Utilities, address, cell phone records, credit cards?”

“Oh. No, he’s off the grid, then. No electricity or running water, no cell phone, obviously. He has a bank account with his savings in it, but he doesn’t use it. He’d have to leave the mangroves, and that’s not happening. I can’t think of anything that would lead to him. To the world at large, after Mom died, he just disappeared. I even changed my last name to Mom’s maiden name after she died, so it’s not easy to tie me to Dad that way. Only Filipo and I know how to find him, or that he’s even still alive.”

I nodded. “That’s good. You might be able to hide out there until I can get you off Cain’s radar.”

“How are you going to do that?”
 

“By being charming and persuasive, of course.” I said it with a grin, hoping she got my meaning without having to have it spelled out.
 

She shook her head with an amused sigh. “I see.” She held up her fists, shook the left, “Charm…”, then the right, “…and Persuasion?”

I laughed. “Exactly. You get me, Doc.”
 

She twisted in her seat to look back at the Range Rover, still following two car lengths behind. “Any ideas how to take care of them?”

I drove with my knee, pulled my Sig out, and laid it on my lap. “Yeah—shoot ’em.”
 

She glanced out the windows at the freeway. “What, here? Now?”
 

I shrugged. “Now that we’re out in the country and away from traffic, we’ll switch seats, and I’ll take care of the assholes behind us.”
 

“That easy, huh?”
 

I bobbled my head side to side. “Easy? I wouldn’t say
easy
, exactly. I’d say it’s simple. Which ain’t the same as easy.”

She sighed. “I have a feeling this
is
going to get interesting.”

I grinned. “Lola, babe, when you’re with me, everything is interesting.”
 

Yet again, she rolled her eyes at me. “So I’m discovering. Funny thing is, I was perfectly content with my boredom.”
 

To prove a point, I used my knee on the steering wheel, reached out, traced my fingertip over her knee, down to the inside of her thigh, then dragged my finger slowly up the length of her thigh, slowing as I neared the juncture of her thighs. “Lola, sweetheart. You suck at lying.”