Page 67 of Avenging Kelly

“Dear Mom. I really miss you. Dad said you were going to come over in early April to take me to Les Mosses - La Lécherette, but I wondered if we could go to Paris for shopping instead. Blah. Blah. Blah. Love Donna. P.S. They’ve opened a new chocolate shop in town. When I get a pass on Saturday, I’ll buy some for us to share. ILY.”

“Two minutes,” Austin announced as he held up the phone.

I reached down to grab my knife and flipped the doll in the air, grabbing it by the hair. “This, I’ll do to the doll. When we have your daughter, it will be much, much worse,” I threatened as I cut a lock of the doll’s hair and tossed it onto Ritchfield’s lap.

I dropped the doll on the floor between her feet and drove the knife into it, reaching for the phone from Austin and pressing the speed dial.

The rest was up to her.

26

LONDON

Once I got those fucking ropes off my wrists and the blindfold off my eyes, I was going to beat that big son of a bitch to pieces.

When I woke up with a dry mouth and a throbbing headache, I wasn’t happy to find my arms and legs tied to a wooden chair with my eyes covered by a fucking blindfold.

The air surrounding me had the stench of rotting fish, sulfur, and sewage, which wasn’t exactly pleasant. I had the feeling I’d smelled it before, though I tried to figure out when and couldn’t place it.

The acoustics in the room hinted that there were probably windows high in the building because I could hear the whistling wind through the broken panes. As I tried to focus on the sounds to get my bearings, the echo of footsteps left me guessing that the warehouse was damn big.

Like the crack of a whip, I remembered that the Mangello’s had a warehouse of similar size along the river—and I knew I was definitely along the river—and I had to wonder if it was in the same area as the Mangellos property. Wouldn’t that just be the biggest irony in the world if these goons were neighbors to the Mangellos?

A phone rang out, echoing in the space. “You’re cutting it close, doctora! Everything okay?” Montero asked. He was on the phone with Ritchfield, I was guessing.

“I dosed Hearts, so I’m coming out. I doubt he’ll recover from this one, so he’s no longer a threat, nor is he a source for the baby’s location. The one you have can find out where the baby is, so we’ll use him instead. Wait until I get there. I’ll bring meds so we can get the information we need, and then we’ll dispose of him. Which warehouse is it? There are at least twenty of them on the Jersey side, and I don’t have time to hunt you down,” the woman said.

That put me on alert. Was she bullshitting or had that bitch killed Kelly? Oh, god help her if she did.

There were three sets of footsteps roaming around the warehouse as I sat there with the blindfold, but then a creaking sound caught my attention and two more sets of footsteps joined the cacophony of sounds, though one walked much quicker than the other.

“Maniac!”

I tilted my head a bit but couldn’t see over or under the blindfold. I was losing my mind, but I had to hang on. I refused to accept that my Kelly was dead. There were more than competent operatives with him and more were only a phone call away. I knew Shepard Colson wouldn’t let anything happen to Kelly. Shep was a cowboy, and I knew he was a good man. He just wouldn’t let that bitch give my man an overdose.

Suddenly, I heard Montero’s heavy footsteps in what sounded like a slow jog. “Hey, boss. Where’s the girl? You didn’t get her back yet?”

“Haven’t tried. Too risky, but I’ll get her back,” the stranger said.

“How’s that one?” a female voice asked.

“Well, the doc said the other one’s dead, so this one is all we got to find out where Mia is,” Montero answered.

Suddenly, the blindfold was ripped off my face, and there stood Phillippe Trudeau and the same woman I’d seen in the CCTV feed Casper had found in Oregon. She’d been with the little girl who was pregnant with Trudeau’s next baby. I was guessing the entire gang had brought the party back to New York, just like I hoped they would. I just needed to get my hands on a phone to call in the reinforcements.

“Where’s my baby?” Trudeau asked, the slick grin not fading from his face.

He was dressed in a black turtleneck and tactical pants. Even with the scar on his face, he was handsome. He was also an asshole.

The woman, Bess if I recalled correctly, was dressed similarly. She was about five-two and shapely, if one enjoyed that sort of thing, and she was wearing a diamond ring that would choke a horse. I wasn’t sure how she could hold up her hand.

Bess walked over to Trudeau and handed him a toolbox. I guessed that was supposed to scare me, but that was my jam, the fucking idiot. That was how I’d gotten information out of drug dealers when I was with the DEA. And I didn’t scare that fucking easy.

“You’re okay with your husband screwing these little girls and then selling the babies?” I asked Bess as Trudeau taped my hands to the wooden arms of the chair after removing the ropes. I’d been able to loosen the ropes almost enough to slide out my hands, but obviously, he’d noticed. That was going to fucking hurt when I pulled it off and it ripped out the hair.

Bess giggled. “Phillippe is going to bring forth the next coming of Christ. I can have any baby I want after our Lord is born. God told me that.”

I had to believe my ears were hearing shit that couldn’t possibly be true. I wanted to wrap my fingers around Bess Trudeau’s scrawny throat and watch her fucking eyes bulge. Surely, she was certifiable.

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