Jessica Clare - Last Breath

I jangle the handcuff over my head. “Can we get rid of this?”

“Yes, of course.” She gives me the shirt and heads to the far wall, plucking a key from a hook with an expertise that makes me wonder how many other women she’s seen in this room. She returns, grabs one of the weird sex stools, climbs it, and undoes the latch on the handcuffs for me. “Now you’ll be quiet so I can work?”

I clutch my wrist to my chest once it’s free. I feel like crying again, but it won’t serve any purpose. “I’ll be quiet. You’re Naomi?”

She blinks at me, steps down off the stool, and then shrugs. “Most of the time. Sometimes I’m the Emperor.”

I tug the sleep shirt over my head. It’s a Mickey Mouse shirt, and I’m trying not to be weirded out by something so clean and childish in this bizarre place. It feels good to be wearing something. “The Emperor? That’s not another hacker? You’re the hacker?”

“I’m the hacker,” she agrees, and her gaze skids to the door again, as if she doesn’t like to look at me. “But I can’t hack anything if it’s not quiet.”

“Sorry,” I say and wring my hands. I’m feeling shaky and fragile, but excited all at once. “Daniel sent me,” I murmur in a low voice. “He’s here to come get you.”

“Oh no,” she says. Anxiety flickers across her face. Her hands go back to the brim of her cap. “Oh no. That’s not good. He can’t be here.”

“Wait, why can’t he be here? You want to stay?” I’m shocked.

Naomi looks at me then shakes her head, gaze skidding away again. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I want to leave. But he can’t be here. It’s dangerous.”

I bite my lip. “I don’t have any way of telling him not to come. I had a GPS tracker, but they took it with my clothes.”

She nods absently and pulls at my sleeve. “We’ll figure something out. Come with me.”

Daniel

LETTING REGAN GO BACK TO Hudson is about the worst thing I have ever done. Petrovich and Mendoza literally sit on me to keep me from dragging Gomes out and punching him until his face is raw, tenderized meat. Kind of like what’s between his pants right now.

“It’s time.” Petrovich hands me a cheap pair of black pants, a white shirt, and a vest. These are our uniforms. The GPS Regan has will alert us to her location and hopefully that will reveal my sister. Petrovich is still working out where his hacker will be. He thinks basement. I don’t really give two shits.

“Do I tape my gun to the bottom of the tray?”

“No weapons,” Mendoza reminds me. Only Hudson’s carefully vetted guards are allowed weapons. Even those in the kitchen are screened due to their placement near knives and heavy objects, but I guess the wait staff is not. At some point, Petrovich and I will have to disarm two guards, take their weapons, and find Regan.

Getting inside Hudson’s compound is ridiculously easy if you have no weapons and are dressed like staff. Mendoza has done it before; at the time he was unwilling to level the place to find his lost girl. But I guess it ate at him, and now we’ve tipped him over the edge. That and we’re the ones taking all the risks.

“You eat this shit?” Petrovich asks, sniffing at the squares of raw tuna speared by a toothpick.

“We can’t all live on borscht,” I mock, picking up my own tray. “Let’s do one circle, meet back here and then decide on our targets.”

He nods and—with one more disgusted sniff—walks out.

Petrovich and I as waiters is a foolish disguise. I can already see the Hudson men eyeing us with suspicion. If it were just me, perhaps it wouldn’t be an issue, but Petrovich is a bear of a man with a dour expression—like Nick. Humorless.

Inside, I count eight Hudson men stationed at the corners of the room and two at each entrance. Their weapons aren’t visible, but their watchful eyes and careful poses set them apart from the party guests. The guards at the back of the room are being the least attentive; their eyes are wandering all over the barely-clad bodies of the female party favors. Hudson’s idea of party is a two-to-one ratio of prostitutes to men. My guess is that several of the “guests” are actually businessmen, although I see the familiar haircuts of military folk as well. Money, booze, and lack of control over one’s dick are the downfall of many careers.

“The men at the back,” I inform Petrovich when we meet in the expediting room where all the trays of food are delivered from the kitchen.

He nods. “There are four outside. First take out the two by the French doors. I will provide the distraction.”

I pick up my tray and head toward the back of the main party room. The French doors are open, and there is a near-constant stream of people moving toward the back where the pool is. Women are getting naked and drawing the crowd out. It’s easy enough to come up behind the guard on the right. Even easier to jab the discarded cocktail fork I’ve appropriated from a nearby table into his neck. He falls backward, but his descent goes unnoticed when Petrovich’s loud voice yells, “Bomb. There’s a pipe bomb.”

The guests start screaming and running in different directions as no one is sure where the bomb is located. I twist the neck of the guard and let him collapse on the floor. Moments later, his jacket is around my shoulders and the familiar weight of a semi-automatic is in my hand.” I take out the guard in the corner with an elbow to the nose. Two down, a million more to go. Over the melee, I see Petrovich disabling the guard across the way. I’ve got the ammunition and weapons of two. That’s enough. With a jerk of my head, I indicate I’m headed into the private rooms of the Hudson compound. I pull out the phone from my pocket and engage the GPS tracker. It’s good within five feet, Mendoza informed me.

The signal indicates that it’s northwest of my position, but as I look to the northwest, I see only a well-manicured lawn. The house doesn’t extend to the northwest from my position near the terrace and the French doors leading to the pool. Basement then. Dammit. I wish I had a blueprint of this fucking place. The tracker doesn’t map depth, only location. Regan was led north and then backtracked, but the private area of the house is too closed off. I’m going to have to find another way in. In the kitchen I find chaos. People are screaming and running several directions. I grab a worker by the collar as he sprints past me.

“Onde fica a adega?”

He shrugs and wiggles like a worm on a hook. Worthless. “Where’s the fucking basement?” I scream but no one answers the crazy Texan.

Methodically, I start throwing open doors. Closet, pantry, stairs to a cellar. Bingo. I run down the stairs, past wooden boxes and shelves of cheese and casks of wine. It smells cool and fresh, as if there is regular circulation of air down here. The thick brick walls mask the upstairs disarray, and I can hear the trickle of water and the hum of electricity and not much more.

I move through the cellar as soundlessly as possible, noting that its size outpaces the house that sits atop of it. About thirty feet in, the room stops and there is nothing but stacks of food stuffs and wine bottles against the wall.

But the freshness of the air quality down here doesn’t fit with the room ending at thirty feet. Above me I see the air ducts and electrical conduit which don’t terminate at the brick wall but actually continue beyond. I start tapping to find the opening. Between two barrels of wine and crates of something, I find a vertical seam in the brick. To the left, on the floor is a depression. I fit my foot into the depression and press downward. Holding my breath, I lean against the bricks and am rewarded with the sound of a lock mechanism disengaging. A slight push and the hidden door swings inward on well-oiled hinges. The hum of electricity is louder now, and I wonder if the hacker lair is positioned down here. It would explain the conduit, the well-circulated air, and the noise.

I have a gun in either hand as I creep down the hall, my one shoulder glued to the brick wall on my right.

“I’m hungry,” I hear a female say. The voice is muffled, but it doesn’t sound like Regan.

“What do you want?”

“Root beer float. For me and my new friend. I think she looks like she needs a root beer float.”

“Hudson isn’t going to like that you brought her in here.”

“The crying was bothering me. Wasn’t it bothering you? How am I supposed to work if there’s all this crying?”

God, that voice. I know that voice.

“You’ll be the one crying if he puts you in the locker. Last time he did that you wouldn’t stop sniveling for days,” the male voice sneers back.

“And he lost several hundreds of millions of dollars, so I think that I won’t be going back into the locker anytime soon. That wouldn’t make sense.” Oh Jesus. I slide down onto my butt. It’s Naomi. The relief I feel at hearing her voice is sapping all my energy. I want to lie down on the concrete and cry like a baby.

“Saying that Hudson makes rational decisions is your first mistake. Eh, your problem.” There’s a pause, then I hear him speak. “The Emperor wants a root beer float. Make that two.” Another pause. “What the fuck is going on up there?” I creep closer until I’m right outside the door. The voices are crystal clear now. I place the guns back in my pocket. My sister is in that room. Maybe even Regan. I can’t take the risk that I’m going to shoot either of them. “All right,” he sounds annoyed. “I’m coming right up.” There’s a rustling sound. “Something is going on upstairs. Stay put.”

“Where am I supposed to go?” There’s no sarcasm in the question. No, Naomi truly doesn’t know.

“Don’t go wandering around again, no matter who’s crying.” The voice is coming closer to me and so are the footsteps. I don’t know who else is in the room, so I stay crouched down. The door opens, and the feet exit. Exploding upward, I drive the heel of my palm into the man’s nose. The sound of the cartilage crunching into his skull is extremely satisfying. He stumbles back, and I push him down, crouching on top of him with one hand on his windpipe and my left knee in his balls. My gun is out now, and I take a quick look about the room. In a chair, trussed at the mouth and feet and wrists is Regan, looking wide-eyed, scared, and a little pissed off. Make that a lot pissed off. Behind a bank of computers is my sister Naomi, looking only slightly older than she was eighteen months ago, pale-eyed and pale-skinned like she never ever sees the light of day.

There’s no one else in here.

“Look away,” I order the girls but neither do. “Fuck it,” I say. I drive my elbow into the windpipe of the downed guard twice, and he passes out from lack of oxygen. But I’m not leaving this to chance. I drag him out into the hallway and shoot him once in the head and then another time in the chest.

“He was from Massachusetts,” my sister says behind me.

“I don’t even know why that’s important.” I don’t wait for her to answer but drag her into my arms. “And I don’t want to hear how you don’t like to be touched. That’s not going to fly with me today.”

She stands stiffly in my arms, but I don’t care. Relief, grief, joy all wash over me in an uncomfortable shower of emotions but I endure it and make her suffer it as well because I’m so grateful to see her alive. I squeeze her tight and then head over to Regan. Her eyes are gleaming, and maybe if my sister wasn’t there and a dead body wasn’t lying ten feet away, I’d do something more than bury my head in the crook of her neck, thanking all the deities above for showing me some fucking mercy.

“Will this work?” There’s a tap on my shoulder, and I turn to see Naomi holding a long knife. I presume she’s taken this from the dead man. With a short nod, I get to work on Regan’s bonds. The minute that she’s free, she’s back in my arms and the tears are falling. I’m pretty sure some of them are mine.

Regan

IT WAS NAOMI ’S IDEA TO TIE me up but keep me at her side. I guess the guards were used to her weird behaviors. She simply waltzed into her workroom with me, sat me down, and began to tie me up in a complex set of knots, checking each one over and over again and muttering to herself. But she didn’t tie me up tightly, and the looks she kept sending my way told me that this was all an act.

But then the door busts open, and Daniel is there. I barely notice that he effortlessly executes a man in seconds. All I care is that he’s here, and he’s come to get me. To my shame, I start crying again. I told myself I’d be strong, that I could do this and be the fighter Daniel thinks I am.