Still no response.
God, she needed to stop. Every time she yelled, it seemed to reverberate through her body and hurt her arm. So, she was stuck on her own. But wasn’t it a good thing that Harry wasn’t here? If he were, wouldn’t the ‘boss’ begin to make an example of them?
The room began to whirl around her again as her stomach protested all the movement and yelling. Oh God, no puking. Puking was worse than crying.
She leaned over and wretched, but very little but slime and stink came out. When she felt herself passing out, she tried to avoid the slime, but then fell on her bad arm. She cried out in pain as everything went black again.
“I had to go through two dummy corporations before I could get a name of someone that this fucking SUV belonged to.” Kane was pissed. So was Ezio—it was now nineteen hours since Samantha had left her office.
“I don’t recognize the name, but Leo, your brother, or that Vice cop might.”
“You call Martin, I’ll call Sy,” Ezio said to Leo.
Leo walked into the living room. Ezio got Sy’s voicemail. “Son of a bitch.” He left a voicemail then texted the man to get back to him.
Leo came back into the room five minutes later. “Bertram Anders is bigtime. He’s out of Richmond, but he has ties up and down the Eastern seaboard. He’s into smuggling, drugs, and gambling. Apparently, he doesn’t like prostitution.”
“Isn’t this too small-time for him to get his hands dirty on?” Asher asked.
“I asked Martin the same thing,” Leo answered. “Apparently, he got started twenty years ago as a small-time gambler and built his business from there. That side of the business is personal to him.”
“So, he might have owned the casino in the wig shop and the poker game?”
“That’s what Martin thinks.”
“Why target Samantha?” Ezio asked. But he knew the answer. He’d grown up in New York; this was a vendetta, pure and simple.
“Martin thinks they want to make some kind of example out of Sam for ruining that slice of his operation.”
Ezio shut his eyes, trying to block out the pain of that answer.
“Martin will be over here in twenty minutes. I couldn’t stop him.”
“Then we need to be gone,” Ezio said. “We don’t need the police hassling us with their rules. We’re going to do things our way to get Sam out of there alive.”
“Agreed.” Leo smiled grimly. “My brother isn’t going to be surprised; that’s why he told me in the first place, to give us a head start.”
“I like your brother,” Kane grinned.
“Kane, what can you do for us?” Asher asked.
“I can find out where good ole Bertie Boy lives in Richmond.”
“Do it. Also find out places where he might stash Samantha in the meantime.” Ezio said grimly.
Kane just gave him a side look, that told him he was already on it.
It took Night Storm’s computer genius less than ten minutes to come up with Bertram’s address and six different locations that were real possibilities to stash people.
Ezio and the others were extremely aware they weren’t allowed to operate as SEALs inside the United States. This was just a few friends doing a friendly little hunt for a missing girlfriend, nothing more than that.
The four of them were already committed and they didn’t want to bring in other members of their team in case things went south and their “friendly hunt” got them into trouble with Sy Morgan.
Kane’s truck was outside Ezio’s house. Leo would drive his truck so Kane could manage the comp in case he got more info. But first, everyone gathered around Kane’s truck.
“I’ve got the team’s comm system. Buckle up, boys.”
They all put their mics and receivers on and tested them. “I’ve amped them up. They should work throughout all of Richmond, but our cell phones are back-ups if we need them.”
They all nodded at Kane. He delivered the coordinates for the seven locations.
“I doubt that anything will be done at Bertram’s house. It’s in the ritziest part of Richmond. Yeah, it’s gated, but still there is a lot of traffic on the street where the gate is,” Kane said as he pointed things out on his computer.
“I agree,” Ezio nodded. “Pray God, he has her stashed at one of these six locations. So, two each?”
They nodded.
Ezio’s phone rang. He saw it was Sy Morgan so he put it on speaker. “Yeah?” Ezio answered.
“Why’d you call?” Sy wanted to know.
Ezio looked at his teammates. They all shrugged; it was his decision how to play it. Ezio decided the last thing he wanted was cops horning in. “I wanted to know if you heard anything on the APB out on Samantha or something about that game-runner.”
“Nope, nothing so far.” Sy sounded sorry. “I promise, you’ll be the first person I call if I hear anything.”
“Thanks, man.”
Ezio hung up and again looked at Asher, Leo, and Kane. “Are we ready?”
“Yep,” Leo said. “We’ll find her.”
“Absolutely,” Asher bit out the word.
“You better believe it.” Kane looked pissed.
“Okay, Ash, let’s get a move-on.” Asher and Ezio did a fast run through the woods to their vehicles with the list of places they were going to check out.
It was now twenty-one hours since Samantha had disappeared. Ezio arrived at the first place, and once again was praying to God that this wasn’t the place that Samantha had ended up. The house looked like it had been built forty years ago but had had a hard life. He would bet anything there were squatters in there, and if it weren’t currently, it had been a heroin den in the past.
It was lined up amongst four more houses, all in
