Angel
Holly would only say she loved Alessandro and wanted to know why he’d sent her away. I didn’t get it, any of it. I wanted to think maybe I was wrong that he was a bad guy. I felt it in my bones when I saw him. I felt a vibe in that place. A Kruna vibe. I hoped I was wrong.
We’d only seen one lounge-like room and then his private bedroom / quarters but the size of the compound, the lavishness of it? For now, Holly was home with me. To go from wondering if I’d ever see her again to having her under the same roof? I was ecstatic.
I’d seen the look in Dare’s eye as we left and knew that we were on the same page. We’d figure out how to stop that guy from taking my baby sister. We’d stop him just like we’d stopped Kruna.
For now, get Holly home. Figure it all out later.
She was weepy and sad. She wasn’t rejoicing in being with us at all. Every time I told her something about Portland or about our place or the people in Dare’s family she’d meet, she’d give me a watery half-smile. She still had a face like someone had kicked her puppy with steel-toed boots on when I said goodnight.
***
After dinner with a few of the girls the night after we got home, a quiet dinner where Holly didn’t say much, but where Luc and Bianca’s chattiness made up for what would’ve been deafening silence, we left them to watch a movie at our place with Holly. Will also hung out. Will would be working full-time, for now, as Holly’s bodyguard.
Dare took me to the storage unit, the same building we’d gone to when we’d hidden at Luc and Eddy’s cottage. This time, Dare brought me in and took me to a unit that had a big wall of safes in it. He’d shut the garage-style door in the small unit at the end of a long hallway. There was a folding chair against the wall. He unfolded it and motioned for me to sit.
He wasn’t saying much, so at first I thought it was business but then he was so quiet and serious that I thought it was something fun, that he was going to surprise me somehow. But when he opened a safe and pulled out a smaller lock box and inside of it was a laptop. He lifted it out and put it in my hands.
“What’s this?”
“This is Jason Frost’s computer. The hard drive is filled with videos of you. From Kruna.”
I didn’t drop it, but suddenly felt like I was holding a poisonous snake. Cold iciness flooded my body and I suddenly wanted to hurl it against the concrete wall.
“What do you want done? You want evidence in case anything ever comes back to bite us or you want this destroyed?”
“Have you watch---”
“No. Swear to you, I haven’t. No one else has, either.”
“Destroyed, please Dare.” I said softly.
He gave me a nod and there was a moment of heavily weighted silence between us until I heard a door slam and then multiple sets of feet walking as well as the sound of something rolling down the hallway.
“One sec, baby,” Dare said.
He opened the door and two men stood there with a very large metal drum that was on a dolly.
“JC,” Dare greeted.
“Dario.” The huge dark-haired guy dressed in head-to-toe leather shook Dare’s hand in a bro handshake, “This is Hugo.”
Hugo, an equally huge blond man extended his hand. Dare shook it.
“Hugo, JC, my wife, Angel.” Dare gestured to me.
“Hi,” I said.
They gave me a nod and carefully wheeled the dolly in and one reached into a black satchel and handed us long gloves and a mask/goggle contraption.
I was speechless.
Dare put his on and I put mine on.
The two men gave us nods and left, shutting the roll-down door behind them.
No further smiles nor pleasantries had been exchanged. Those guys were evidently aware of just how serious things were.
Dare used a utility knife to carefully pop the top off of the drum. Inside was a seal that he slowly peeled off. I stood. The drum had a strainer basket and below it I could see blue liquid but only at less than the half way mark. The inside was white, made of a different material than the outside.
I handed him the laptop and he very carefully slid it into the basket and then put the shower cap-like seal back on and slowly cranked something on the side of the drum so that the basket descended slowly without splashing. He put the top lid back on and then took off his gloves and mask so I followed suit. We went outside and sat down on the curb.
“What now?”
“Thirty minutes. JC and Hugo went for a coffee. We check to make sure it’s dissolved. Should be gone, not a trace. Then JC picks it up and we go home and put this behind us.”
I sat there and my mind streamed visions from Kruna, from being broken, from being stuck with Mr. Frost. I ached. And then I felt numb.
And then the numbness evaporated when I felt the beautiful touch of the man who’d saved me, who brought me back from near catatonia, who’d kept his promise and made sure that Kruna was taken down and destroyed.
“You kept your promise to me,” I said.
He’d put one of his hands on the back of my neck.
“About Kruna. You took them down. You made them hurt. You saved all those girls. Thank you, babe. I still can’t believe it. Not only do I get all of those things, but I get you. I’m the luckiest girl in the world.”
Dare
JC and his employee came back and checked the drum and showed me, with a flashlight that there was nothing but liquid in it. No sign of that hard drive, no sign of a single screw or wire from that computer. It was an extreme method to get rid of it but it was thorough and I was taking no chances whatsoever that Frost’s hard drive would turn up somewhere.
JC’s clean-up services were worth the exorbitant fees he charged and he was worth keeping in our Rolodex.
He and Hugo sealed the drum up and wheeled that dolly away from our sight and put it in the back of a truck.
I took my wife home and made love to her in our bed, quietly though, since her sister was in the den. I’d have to do something about this. Time to get a bigger place.