Resist Me (Change Me Book One - standalone): McCoy Raven Boys (25 page)

A loud, high-pitched whistling sound, a pop, and then bright light behind me made me jump. The sky was lit with fireworks. The idiots on the party boats were bent on a big ass celebration. These fireworks weren’t the puny ones designed for the general public use, but the heavy-duty stuff, most likely obtained from a reservation. The fireman in me cringed. If I was here on vacation, as I initially planned, I would have the local fire department running here in a jiffy. But now I had more important task at hand. Someone else would have to bring them over.

I swore under my breath. This was fucking ridiculous. Jack and I had a zero chance now for spotting anyone who tried to sneak up on us. God damn party boat. Another firework exploded high in the sky, lighting the area with a cool-silver glow. Shouts and hoots of a drunken approval followed, only adding onto the madness.
 

When I was scanning the woods, a movement to my left caught my eye. Someone was running between the trees, away from the water! I trained my gun on the figure, but I didn’t pull the trigger. That could have been anyone, even the neighbors’ kid.
 

I half-stood-up and rushed into the woods, but trying to stay close to the cabin. I hid behind a tree and pulled my night vision goggles on. Now, I was in business. The little shit had no chance. I saw him crouching about ten yards to my left with a gun swiveling from side to side. He wasn’t sure where to point it. I did. I aimed for his thigh and pulled the trigger, just as another firework cracked open in the sky.
 

He howled in pain and fell onto his side.
 

“Drop the weapon.” I rushed to him with my gun trained on his head.

He did, clutching onto his leg with the other hand. I kicked his pistol out of his reach. He was about my age, but even his loose t-shirt wouldn’t conceal how skinny he was. No muscles to speak of. That didn’t necessarily mean the guy was weak, but I had at least sixty pounds on him.
 

He was panting and yelping in pain, his eyes terrified. There was a thick scar on his chin that looked like it was left by a knife. “Leave me alone. What do you want?” he squealed in high voice.
 

With the gun still pointed at him, I quickly searched him for any other weapons, but found none.
 

“Who are you? What do you want?” he repeated, scared out of his mind. His eyes flicked all over me, unsure of what was to happen next.
 

In my night vision goggles I must have looked like a real bad ass to him—prepared and ready. Good. Nothing worked better in the start than the right image. Fortunately, I had skills to go with that image too.
 

I pressed the muzzle of my gun to the side of his skull and said, “Shh. You’re too loud.”

He didn’t know what to make of me, but he shut up.
 

“Good. What’s your name?” I asked quietly.

“Vince,” he peeped, shaking.

“How many of you are here?” I asked.

His chin trembled, but he managed to say, “Eight.”

I hoped he wasn’t lying. I looked at his leg. The blood seeped through his pants fabric and glistened on his fingers. But it wasn’t an artery. He would live.
 

“Where are the rest of your
friends
?”

“What? I told you—everyone is here… the eight, including myself. We drove in two trucks. Left them by the road.” Vince was scared out of his mind.
 

I kept at it, “How did you know where to come?”

“I don’t know anything,” he cried.
 

“Shh,” I said in a soothing voice. “If you tell me all I need to know, I’ll let you live. If not… the choice is yours.” I wondered if that was the fucker that killed Lisbeth’s friend Helen. I could rip him apart with my bare hands.
 

Vince cowered away from me, but I grabbed his hair and pulled him back so his cheek touched the muzzle of my M9. “I’m a patient man, but even my patience has limits, and you’re testing them. I would be careful if I were you,” I whispered.
 

“Okay, okay… I know a little. Not much. They don’t tell me everything. I overheard Ed and Max talking. It’s about some girl. They said she has to be dealt with, this time for good. No more fuckups.”

“Who are Ed and Max exactly?”

“Ed runs the club. Max is his right hand.”

“The club, you say, eh? More like a gang, isn’t it? What do you do in your club?”

“We just… hang out.”

I hit Vince over the face with the back of my hand. His head bounced to the side, and he cried in pain.

“I told you about certain limits to my patience?” I made a show of cocking the gun. “The are officially stretched. You talk, or I pull the trigger.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, wailing. “No, no, no! What do you want to know? Please!”

I pushed the gun into his cheek. “Where are you from?”

“Florida. Tampa.”

“When did you come here and why?”

“We’ve been in Portland for over a week. Ed’s contact gave him the location. We had everything arranged—a place to stay, the trucks, the weapons. Everything. I don’t know how. They don’t tell me nothing. I just hear it here and there. The other guys who work for them don’t know much either. We are just told what to do and we go in.”

“Go in and do what? Kill an innocent girl?” I hissed through clenched teeth. “What do you know? What happened in Portland?”

“The explosion? It was our club’s job. We were told to blow that warehouse to pieces. So we did. But then they told us to drive here,” he gestured around, “and do it all over.”

“Why? To blast something else?” Fuck, they
did
want to level Ryley’s cabin. Over my dead body. Dealing with my brother was worse than hell. And of course there was Lisbeth. I told her to hide inside. I couldn’t let those monsters get to her.
 

“No, not here. Ed said it was more complicated now. We were to get inside the house and kill everyone there, then leave quickly,” Vince’s voice trembled as if he was about to cry.
 

“Is Ed here with you?”

“Yes. And Max is too.”

And five other criminals. That means four for each of us, Jack and myself. That was nothing, unless the other members of the
club,
as Vince cutely called it, were much better trained than he was. “Where are the others?”

“Back by the trucks, waiting for me.”

“Did they send you here for reconnaissance?”
 

“Yes.”

So if he wouldn’t come back soon, the hell would break lose faster. Or maybe it wouldn’t. I had a plan, but first there was something else I needed to ask Vince. “Who killed Helen?”

His eyes went huge, and his mouth opened in a silent “a”. I was done with playing nice. I stuffed the barrel of my pistol in his mouth, although I kept my finger off the trigger. He couldn’t see that though; it was too dark in the woods. “I’m gonna count to three and then I’ll remove the gun for exactly three seconds. If you don’t tell me the truth, I will kill you.”

He shook so badly that his teeth clattered on the metal of my M9. I pulled the pistol out. “One. Two…Thr—”
 

“Wait! Wait, wait, wait.” Vince’s hands went up in a mollifying motion. “I wasn’t there. I swear to God. I wasn’t. But the guys talked… most of them are college kids, very rich, spoiled, dumb assholes. There was a party in some dormitory. They got totally messed up on booze and drugs. Some girls were there too, but they disappeared on them. So the guys went to look for more fun right outside the campus. It was all over the news. Max didn’t go with them, but Ed did. Max got really pissed. He punched Ed in the face, broke his nose. They fought until we separated them. Ed yelled for everyone to fuck off. He said that his father will take care of everything.”

“Was it Ed who killed Helen?”

Vince shriveled and started to tremble again. “Yes,” he whispered. “He cut her throat after they raped her.”

I wanted to hit him so badly. I was very angry and repulsed. If I’ve ever had any faith in the goodness of human race, this wasn’t the time. I needed more information though. The crucial information. Besides, Vince wasn’t really involved in that nasty business with poor Helen. Unless the little fucker was lying.
 

“Who’s Ed’s father?”

“I… I can’t—”
 

“Who is he?” I roared, shoving my gun back in his mouth. “Should I say three? I’m about to, and then your pea-sized brain will get fucking blasted through the back of your scull, you worthless shit.”
 

Tears ran down his cheeks. He nodded, and I withdrew the gun, but I kept it trained on his face.
 

“Speak!”

“Senator Kiersch.”

Great. Fucking just great. A politician… a
Senator
for fuck sake, involved in covering a murder, a gang rape, and the multiple attempts of another murder, plus destruction of the federal property. Nice.
 

“How did Ed and Max get the location info? Who gave it to them?” I asked.
 

“The FBI. Senator Kiersch has someone in there… a snitch. That’s how we knew about the safe house in Portland, and about here.”

Exactly the way Lisbeth suspected. One thought about Lisbeth alone in the house set my nerves back on fire. Jack was close by, but I didn’t know what exactly was happening around there. I had to get to her fast. I couldn’t let them beat me to it. Lisbeth needed me. And I needed her to stay alive. To stay…

“Turn onto your stomach,” I commended.
 

“Why? What are you doing?”

“Saving your life.”

Vince lay down and obediently rolled over onto his stomach. I pulled the handcuffs from my pocket and yanked his arms back. When he protested, I told him to shut up. I secured his wrists with the handcuffs to the trunk of a nearby bush.

Next, I ripped a piece of his t-shirt, grasped his hair, and pulled his head back to gag him. He was squealing in a high-pitched voice, shaking his head.
 

“Stop that. It’s for your own protection. If your buddies find you, they won’t hesitate to end your pitiful existence. So shut up and lay still.”

That did him in. His eyes were huge. He was breathing shallow and fast through his nose.
 

I took off toward the cabin. About thirty yards away, I radioed Jack in. “Jack.”

“Yeah. Nothing new.”

“One secured.”
 

We didn’t elaborate, in case someone was using the same radio frequency as we were.
 

“Good. I feel sorry for the subject already.”
 

Jack’s sense of humor was ever-existing, even in times of high alert or otherwise fucked up situations. I grinned to myself.
 

“I’m heading your way.”

“Okay. Over.”

I put the radio back in my pocket and secured the flap. I walked toward the cabin, my ears and the night-vision-amplified eyes focused on the surroundings. At the edge of the woods, I paused, waiting and observing. Walking slowly out into the open didn’t appeal to me, in case Vince’s buddies were here and not waiting by the truck, as he said they were. Running full-speed toward Jack wasn’t ideal either. I couldn’t be sure where he was exactly, and he didn’t know what direction I was coming from.
 

I whistled quietly—a long, single note. Jack whistled right back from the bushes somewhere by the water. I repeated the whistle, but this time twice. This was our code back from when we both served at the Marine Corps. It meant
don’t fucking shoot me. I’m moving toward you.
 

He answered with a single note. That meant he acknowledged. I slid my night goggles off, scanned the perimeter in front of me once again, and then, half-crouching, ran toward the spot where Jack was hidden. I found him behind some thick, flowering pink bush, squatting amidst the blossoms.
 

“Looking pretty in pink.” I grinned. There were little petals stuck to his short, spiky hair.
 

“Jealous?” He grinned back.
 

“How is she?” I nodded in the direction of the cabin.

“Quiet and still. Haven’t heard a thing. No movement either.”

I told Jack about Vince and what I learned from him. I watched my best friend’s face changing into that of loathing and anger. Our reactions were so similar.
 

“So there are seven of them left. We could use the element of surprise and quickly take care of them,” Jack deducted.
 

“Agreed. Let’s check on Vince on the way there. I want him alive for the investigation.”

Chapter Twenty Seven

LISBETH
 

Sitting hidden in the cabin was unnerving. I had the gun, but I didn’t have the confidence to use it. There were too many bad experiences in my childhood; too many mistakes; too many horrors. I missed Jan and his gentle, sweet ways. He got me out of the shitty hole the life dropped me in. He was my God-sent savior. After Jan died, I suppressed most of the memories about him though. They were too painful to relive. But I remembered one thing—the promise I made to him to never go back to my past and to make something of myself.