The old lady, who I take to be Annie looks surprised when she sees Phoenix in the blonde wig, but she covers her shock like a pro.
“Come in, Whisper, and you must be Edge. I’ve heard a lot about you. Happy birthday to the both of you.” Her hands are shaking; the only tell she's giving away how scared shitless she is. "Theodore isn't feeling well, so he's in our room with our son if you'd like to follow me."
"Is he all right," Phoenix says in her best Whisper voice, keeping her tone low enough that the man in their room won't be able to distinguish the difference.
Annie holds the conversation up to dispel any suspicion as we walk. She looks like she's been slapped about, her makeup not entirely able to pull off the cover-up.
And then I hear Hazard in my earpiece. “Fuck, Mathias is down. I’m on the guy.” He sounds like he’s running. “He’s headed for the van.’
Fear spiked through me. Van? Is he dead? Is Whisper all right?
Phoenix tugs on my hand as we follow Annie. She’s heard what Hazard said, I refocus on killing this fucker.
Slade's in my ear now. "We've located their bedroom window. Theodore's slumped in his wheelchair, and he's not moving. I'm leaving Tucker posted outside the window, he's got you covered, and I'm gonna be following you in shortly. We can't see our man. He could be behind the door. Be careful Phoenix," he says quickly.
We arrive at the bedroom door, and it's open. Annie walks in first her head turns scanning the room. There's the metallic scent of blood in the room.
The fucker’s gotta be behind the door.
I push Phoenix behind me, my gun in my hand and boot the door hard with my foot sending it crashing backward, but nothing happens.
Shit!
Where's the bastard? I scan the room; the old man is slumped in the chair. Annie is over by his side.
Christ! Where is the bastard?
Phoenix is now beside me, gun raised in two hands, but she’s looking over her shoulder in case the fucktard comes up behind us.
The old man jumps up from the wheelchair and shoots Phoenix and I know I’m next.
Fuuuck!
Everything happens so quickly.
She grunts holding her side. I wrap an arm around her waist and roll to the floor with her, dodging the bullets with my name on them, twisting her around my body as we both shoot off bullets in the direction the fucker was just standing. We make it behind a wingback chair.
I hear Slade in my ear yelling. “I can’t get to the room; you’re all shooting it up.”
“You all right, darlin’?” I get out just as the window shatters, unable to hear Phoenix’s response clearly, but I got the gist she was doing okay. Tucker’s shooting through the glass, pumping out bullets—the only noise to interrupt the silent war that’s been going on.
I look around the chair and can see an old man lying unconscious under the bed in a puddle of blood. I just found Theodore.
Out of my peripheral vision, I see Slade make it into the room. He locates fucktard on the ground and knows it isn’t Theodore from the British accent that’s cursing and spitting obscenities from being shot numerous times. One of his hands is a mess. I kick the gun away from him and press my foot into his shredded hand. He raises the volume.
He’s not gonna hurt another person, and then I lift my foot as Slade shoots enough electricity from his taser into fucktard to have him twitching about like a fish out of water and dribbling down his chin.
He may have dialed it up a few extra notches.
The guy is barely conscious, well, he was then Slade pistol whips him with a look of rage smeared across his face.
I’ll soon be able to wake him up, can’t have him dying on me before I fuck him over with No Mercy.
Tucker smashes the rest of the glass in with his gun and elbow then climbs through the window frame.
Slade’s swearing like a sailor when he sees Annie cowering in the corner crying and I point to under the bed where her husband is lying. He crouches down beside her. “You okay Annie?” he holds her hand gently.
“Yes, now I am.” I notice he doesn’t ask about her husband. I’m not even sure if the guy’s alive. Then he roars when he sees Phoenix on the floor resting against the wall behind the door. “Phoenix… What the fuck? Are you hit?” I think he thought I had her waiting somewhere safe or she was deliberately staying quiet so he wouldn’t notice she’s hurt.
“He was aiming for my ‘pregnant’ belly”—she uses finger quotation marks—“so he got my side. I’m fine; it’s just a scratch.”
From the blood soaking Whisper's new dress Phoenix is wearing, it looks more than a scratch, but I keep my mouth shut, Phoenix is tough, and she wants every man to believe it. Slade can sort his woman out. If she were mine, it would be a whole different story.
Tucker’s stripped back pieces of the mask from fucktard’s face, to reveal the man we believe is Filip. He's now checking him for weapons. Once thoroughly searched, we roll him over so Tucker can slap handcuffs on his wrists behind his back. Then we roll him back, so he's facing us.
Fucker’s wearing a Kevlar vest, but we still managed to put some holes in him. Good thing too, I needed a breathing body to torture.
Slade’s got Phoenix in his arms. She’s protesting about being held but at the same time hissing from the pain.
Tucker’s moved on to assisting Annie’s husband gently back into his wheelchair. The guy’s alive, he’d just been knocked out, but he’s wounded.
“I’ll call Doc Evelyn’s father to come check everybody out over here,” Slade says. “Annie, we need to use another room for Theodore and Phoenix, because we gotta keep what happened here on the low-down. You okay with that?”
“Whatever you need, you can trust us.” She understands we have our reasons why we can’t call the police over here.
Fucktard is gonna remain invisible to society; his death will go unnoticed.
“Slade, can you handle everybody here? I need to get to Mathias and Whisper.”
Hazard's voice comes through the earpiece. "Whisper's fine, and I've called 000 for your brother, but the guy's hit bad, they should just about be here."
Fuck!
I start running.