The guests had proven to be a different, more difficult breed.
Entitled white men, aggressively argumentative, shouting insults and wild threats until Owen pulled one out of the mass and dealt with him right there, letting the body drop to the floor without a word. Silence had fallen like a shroud until MacLeod stepped forwards and to the side, separating himself from the rest of the men.
On the off chance there was security Alace hadn’t located, they’d decided to go the safer route. Which meant Owen had worn a ski mask, same as August. Staring out through the eyeholes, he’d longed to tear it off to show his face.
Locking gazes with MacLeod, Owen had delivered justice as effectively as possible. “Norton, Tambor, Barnes, Riss, and Burton.” MacLeod’s eyes had widened at the carefully enunciated names of the five remaining members of the ring he was so deeply embedded with, and Owen dipped his chin in a slow nod. “I told you I’d come for you. I told you, and I showed you. Eye for an eye, tongue for a tongue, and life for a life.” Without more discussion, Owen had lifted the handgun he held and shot MacLeod in the forehead, the bullet exiting the back of his skull in a messy shockwave of blood, bone, and brain matter.
Shouting men had jostled backwards, angling to get behind something, someone—anything, as long as it was away. As if they’d practiced the maneuver before, Owen and August had taken their shots, working similar to how they’d handled the guards, from the edges of the shifting crowd into the middle. Owen dropped their final target, the dead man falling gracelessly amidst the tangle of limbs and shocked expressions.
He shook himself as the RV rumbled, tires drifting onto the warning strips ground into the surface of the road. Drawing the vehicle safely back into his lane, he glanced over his shoulder at the scene still unfolding in the back of the RV.
August was seated at the table, one little girl collapsed against his side, his arm curved around her shoulders. Another child, this one probably the boy they’d found in the mix of kids—it was hard to tell for certain from this distance—was in his lap, held there securely by August’s other arm.
Doc was farther back in the living area with a child who was slightly older than the others, urging her to drink from a bottle of water. With several sleeping children scattered across the fold-down bed, she was the lone holdout, the only one still awake, and as Doc spoke soothingly to her, she lifted the bottle to her lips.
Good.
The plan was to deliver the children to a physician Doc knew from his time in New Jersey. He trusted this man to ensure the kids got the help they needed without drawing attention to their trio of vigilantes. They’d offload the kids into an unused weekend camp close to Philly, wait for the physician to arrive on site, then make like a tree and leave.
His phone buzzed and vibrated from its current position in a tray on the console, the sound loud. Owen wore a headset paired to the phone and tapped the earpiece to answer the call. Given there was only one person other than the two behind him who had the number, he smiled as he asked, “Can’t get enough of me, huh?” He and Alace had hung up only a few miles back, after she’d relayed the updated information about their transfer location.
“Oh, I’d say I’ve seen more than enough of you.”
Owen’s muscles locked into place. His ears buzzed, and his throat pounded with each beat of his heart. The male voice was unknown, the tone deep and casual, as if the speaker had all the time in the world.
“Who is this?” Owen deliberately pitched his voice loud enough to capture August’s attention, and a quick glance around saw the man on alert. Owen motioned towards his ear and the phone, then raised his hand to his ear with the thumb and little finger extended, a military hand signal to call the radiotelephone operator. Facing front again, Owen heard movement behind him and then August’s voice, hoping it was him calling Alace. “Who are you? How’d you get this number?”
“Funny thing, that. When cell signals are jammed in a particular area, it makes the ones which are able to connect a lot easier to find.” The man chuckled, a dry and dusty sound as if he were on the verge of coughing. “You basically handed me the information.”
Not only was this a clear threat, the man had identified himself as being associated with the ring of pedophiles. The only other answer could be a similar agenda to their group, which Owen knew was unlikely. As he’d told Alace recently, there weren’t many out there like they were. Good news was, if the caller was one of the remaining ring members, there was a limited roster to review and identify.
“What do you want?” The sound of the call changed, echoing thinly. Owen glanced at the GPS map to see relatively smooth terrain all around them. The change wasn’t due to environmental interference, which hopefully meant Alace had tapped into the call. “Who’d you say you are?”
“I didn’t, actually. I won’t, honestly. Why would I give you an inch of advantage when you’ve already proven so adept at mitigating sophisticated countermeasures?” Another bout of laughter that sounded more like an asthma attack, the rattling of air in the man’s throat painful to hear. “I’m not stupid…Schmitz.”
August fell into the other captain’s chair at the front of the RV, phone sealed tight to his head. Owen struggled to pull in a breath. This was as direct a threat as he’d ever encountered out in the bush. More terrifying than facing down more than a dozen men earlier tonight. Schmitz was his alias for this mission, his cover identity for travel and identification.
“Shocked you silent, hmmm?” Oily and grating at the same time, the man’s voice ripped along Owen’s nervous system, causing his fingers to clench hard on the steering wheel. “You have taken a lot of my property. I hope it’s not simply shock that’s stolen your voice. Ideally there’d be a tiny bit of fear there, too.”
“Norton—”
“Don’t be ignorant. Norton, Tambor, Barnes, Riss, and Burton are pawns in my game. They’re oblivious to the lines of stress surrounding them. Little men with little desires, content with the smallest of scraps.” Anger bled through now, and Owen focused on stoking that emotion, hoping to force a mistake.
“Weak men lean on little men. Weak men give their possessions away, unable to protect what they hoped to keep.”
“I’m not weak. Don’t equate my courtesy reaching out this one time to warn you with any level of weakness. You and your companions are targets for more than myself. Swooping in and ruining individual scrimmages, disrupting the order of things. I’m not the only one looking for you.”
“You want to find me?” Owen kept his response just shy of a bellow with effort, the rage in him surging forward. August motioned, and Owen looked over in time to see August draw the edge of his right hand, palm down, across his neck in a throat-cutting motion from left to right, signaling "danger area." No shit, Sherlock. “Maybe I’ll find you first.”
“I’d love that, actually. Should I issue an invitation for yourself and the two men with you?”
Yeah, keep talking. So far the man didn’t indicate he knew anything other than what they’d potentially exposed on this mission. Keeping the man in the dark about Alace and her capabilities gave them a significant edge in any game he could devise.