Chapter 16

Sorry for the wait, I get weird about endings 😝 we're almost there!!

“Maybe we can help each other, David,” she had said, but when he asked how, she was at a loss for what to say.

Maxine did not know how, not yet, anyway. She wasn’t even sure if she could help him. He seemed entirely deranged from his ordeal, and from the sound of it, his wife was probably a lost cause. If these people were as horrible as David was claiming, she doubted they were planning to let him or his wife out of this alive and were just keeping him tied up so that he wouldn’t blow their whole operation.

When Orlando had dumped her in the basement office, he’d seemed harried. Shaken. He wanted to know who she worked for and how much they knew, but hadn’t had time to try and coax it out of her.

She suspected he would return eventually to attempt to do so, after he finished handling whatever he was attending to.

Improvising, she turned to David and said, “You want to get your wife freed, and I want to get solid evidence so the cops can bust this whole operation—”

“The cops are the ones doing this, didn’t you hear what I said?!”

Maxine held up a hand. “Maybe so, but I know of at least one good cop that’s on top of this, and she might be closer than you think.”

David’s eyes widened in hope? Fear? She wasn’t sure.

“Are you the cop?” David then said breathlessly, and it clicked. He’d taken “closer than you think” quite literally.

Maxine came about a millisecond away from snort-laughing before catching herself. Instead, she schooled her expression into one of stoic seriousness and said, “Are you prepared to cooperate, David?”

He stared at her for a beat, wide eyes glassy and bloodshot.

Then, a single tear fell, and the man’s face scrunched in pain as he began to sob and said, “Can you help my wife?”

“I will do whatever I can to help your wife,” she said, hoping that, somehow, she could make good on that promise. “If you could just put down the knife, that would definitely help me to be able to think more clearly about how to make it happen.”

In the blink of an eye, the knife was on the ground. Instinctively, she knew not to lunge for it, but instead let it lie gingerly on the poured concrete floor.

“Wh-what do you know?” he then said.

“Why don’t we start with you telling me what you know, but do it fast, he could be back any minute.”

𓂃🖊

Miles approached the front door of the Diamond Palace with stern determination. He would find Maxine, and if possible, would badly injure the man who had the nerve to take her. Quite literally in his back pocket, he had the signed employee information form for the sake of plausible deniability. Still, he had no intentions of seeking out Orlando to give it to him.

The fact that he was improvising and had no real plan did not seem to be hindering his confidence in the slightest, he noted, but didn’t pause to examine why. Adrenaline coursed through him like he’d just hit the first drop on a roller coaster; he reveled in the feeling.

The front of the hall was empty, almost suspiciously so. Miles half expected the door to be locked, but it opened easily into a lobby devoid of the glaring light from the crystal chandelier and matching sconces he’d seen earlier. He stepped forward, grateful that the whole place was carpeted, and thus his footsteps were mostly muted.

Taking the route Orlando had used to bring him back to meet his coworkers earlier, Miles kept his ears peeled for any sounds of life, but could hear nothing. Then, just as he was about to turn the handle on the door in front of him, the sound of another door slamming in the distance made him freeze in place. It seemed like it had come from within the room he was about to enter, and his mind lit up as he remembered the interior door that had led to an inner courtyard.

“Incompetent, all of them! I can’t get no help around here, I gotta do everything myself.”

Orlando. Miles felt his teeth gnash together as his hand seized up into a fist.

“Hey, maybe the crooked cop knows her. Did you try—ouch!”

The second man’s voice was unrecognizable to Miles, but the smack he’d received for his comment was very clear.

“You got heads of Q-tips stuck in your ears, Benny? I told you, he wouldn’t take my call! His assistant said he was handling something urgent, though I don’t know what could be more urgent than this.”

Miles felt his brow quirk as he thought, Gladstone getting an arrest warrant would be.

He dearly hoped that was the case, because if he failed, Gladstone would be the backup he needed.

“So… so… what do we do, just leave her tied up? What if someone comes looking for her—ouch!”

“You’re such an ignoramus, Benny, you really think someone’s gonna come here?”

Before Miles could even smirk at this, he instead jumped about a foot in the air when a hand was suddenly placed on his shoulder. The shout that escaped his mouth was muffled by a hand, but was stopped entirely when he saw the face of the person who’d approached him. His would-be co-worker and napkin-folding enthusiast, Ernie.

“Ernie?” he tried to say, but was again muffled by the man’s hand.

“What was that?” came Orlando’s voice from within the room beyond.

A sharp intake of breath from Ernie was the only response before Miles was hurriedly pulled backwards. Before he knew it, he was shoved into what appeared to be a coat closet, while Ernie gingerly shut the door, making no sound as he did so.

They both stood stock still, listening. The door they had just been standing outside of opened, and they could clearly hear Orlando and Benny wondering aloud about the sound they’d just heard before retreating into the room.

After a beat, Ernie turned wide eyes on Miles and said, “What are you doing back here?! I unlocked the front door, hoping cops might show up, not you!”

“Cops? Why would you expect cops, and why were you creeping around out there? You almost gave me a heart attack!”

“Ugh!” Ernie said, slumping against the door like he’d just run a marathon. “I’m sorry, I just have no clue what the hell is goin’ on here.”

“Okay, okay,” Miles said, holding up his hands in a calming gesture, “Can you just start from the beginning?”

“We don’t got that kinda time, darlin’, but what I can tell you is they are keepin’ someone prisoner in the basement and they don’t know that I know!”

Miles’s eyes widened, and he felt his heart surge. Maxine. He was right. And now he knew where to find her. He half wanted to cut Ernie off right there and start planning how to reach her, but now that he was talking, it would be hard to stop him.

“Orlando sent all of the staff home for the day, but I didn’t see his text until it was too late. You see, I was down in the basement, doin’ the restocking I had asked you to help me with, and suddenly I heard a thud against the wall of a closet I ain’t never seen the inside of. I knew I shouldn’t snoop, but I heard someone moan clear as day.”

Moan? Was she hurt? Miles’s adrenaline spiked further, and he opened his mouth to interrupt, but was brought up short by what Ernie said next.

“And I thought, who is this man in the cellar?”

“Man? You’re sure it was a man?”

“Oh, honey, I know the moan of a man when I hear it,” Ernie said with unbridled confidence. “Anyways, then I heard some commotion upstairs, and when the door to the basement opened, I ducked behind some boxes. I couldn’t see anything, just heard footsteps and a door opening. And then, clear as day, I heard Orlando say, ‘If you try to escape, I’ll shoot you in the leg.’ He had a GUN!”

“Who was he talking to?”

“Well, I assumed that man, unless,” Ernie said, then gasped dramatically. “Do you think he’s got two prisoners?”

Miles nodded solemnly. Ernie gasped some more.

“What the hell have I gotten myself into?” he whispered to himself.

“Something that had nothing to do with you, you should leave.”

“Leave?! What about you? Do you—oh,” Ernie said, recoiling as a new wary expression crossed his face. “You’re part of this?”

“Not really. I got pulled into it, same as you, but I can’t just walk away. I’m pretty sure the other prisoner is my friend, and I gotta get her outta here.”

“What?! Who?!”

“My friend Maxine, or… you’d know her as Trina.”

“Trina the Latina sex-pot, Trina?!”

Miles merely blinked for a beat, then said, “Y—Yes?”

“Is she a cop? I knew I was getting cop vibes from her!”

“She’s not a cop, but listen, man, you really don’t need to be here. These people are fucked up beyond all reason, and if I were you I’d walk out that front door and never come back.”

Just then, distant voices could be heard growing louder as the seconds passed. Finally, a door, ostensibly the one Miles had been eavesdropping in front of, opened, and the conversation could be heard clear as crystal.

“Alright, the crew is finally on their way. They’ll handle the two in the basement, then torch the place.”

“Seems extreme, doesn’t it?”

“Hell no, Benny, the insurance payout is how we get set up again. It’s how we got set up last time they almost got us.”

“But don’t you wanna interrogate the girl more? What if she does know too much?”

“No time for it, and she’s definitely not FBI, she woulda used that as leverage already. Anyone else trying to take us down wouldn’t get past the sergeant. Might as well waste her.”

The front doors opened, and Miles could hear Benny requesting to drive the Cybertruck before the voices faded entirely. He turned to look at Ernie, who was shaking his head.

“I am not leaving until we get sexy Trina and whoever the other guy is out, and nothing you can say is gonna stop me.”

Miles was already nodding before Ernie had finished his sentence. “It sounds like we don’t have a lot of time. I’ll need all the help I can get. Which way to the basement?”

𓂃🖊

Maxine thought she might vomit if she had to listen to David talk for one more minute. Not only was she hearing the most vile description of the crimes she’d been unknowingly investigating, but she was also having to pretend to be a cop who already knew about it. Her mask of indifference was likely to slip at any moment.

Holding up a hand, she said, “That’s enough for now. Will you be willing to testify in court—”

“I will do whatever it takes, but I need to know my wife is safe!” he cried, voice shooting up an octave, and copious spittle flying into the air. Maxine somehow dodged this, but still cringed.

Not at the spittle, but at the man’s selfishness. To be so focused on the part of this that affected him personally, and not on the countless Hispanic women and girls who were being irreparably harmed by the operation, was vile. He might be genuinely deranged, however, and so she tried not to be too distracted this time.

Maxine took a moment to notice that she was not scared. Not in the way David was, anyway. She was experiencing a level of calm that she imagined must be her own survival instincts kicking in; she didn’t often panic when the stakes were this high. Even the time she was caught breaking into the police station as a teen, she’d maintained a cool head.

When it was just her, she could handle anything. When other people were involved, people she cared about, she tended to lose herself.

Just as this thought passed through her mind, a door above was flung open, followed by the sound of footsteps thundering down the stairs.

And that’s when Maxine lost her cool, cool head.

𓂃🖊 

“What the fuck are you doing here?!”

Miles heard Maxine before he saw her face, but when he spotted her, he was not pleased with what he saw. Just after shouting at Miles, Maxine had been grabbed by a bald, bespectacled man in a tattered tuxedo, who had taken the opportunity of her distraction to grab a knife off the floor and hold it to her neck.

Miles had been involved in altercations involving knives in his lifetime, but he could not remember ever having such a strong urge to use one to harm another human being as he did in that moment. 

“Whoa now, David, let’s just calm down,” said Ernie, holding up two placating hands.

Miles only had eyes for Maxine, and hers had gone as wide as possible at her new predicament. 

The man—David, apparently—then alternated pointing the knife towards Ernie and Miles as he said, “Stay back, or the cop gets it!”

“The cop?” Miles found himself saying, only to see Maxine shake her head at him.

“David, that’s my partner. He’s not here to hurt you, okay?” Maxine said, then threw a nod of encouragement in Miles’s general direction.

Before Miles could even process her words, Ernie piped up again. “That’s right, David, I heard you trapped down here earlier, and I stayed behind to help get you outta here. This here is Officer Miles, he’s been workin’ undercover to find you.”

Without thinking, Miles threw a confused glance at Ernie, who made a face resembling the cringe emoji before shrugging and looking back at David.

“They’re lying,” David said, so quietly that they almost didn’t hear him. “Who are they and why are they lying? And WHERE IS MY WIFE?!”

The man’s volume and agitation had shot so high that his glasses came partially off his face, and the knife made contact with Maxine’s skin, causing her to suck in air. Again, without conscious thought, Miles lunged forward, but a loud noise from up above stopped him. Thankfully, David hadn’t noticed his movement, as he’d been too busy righting his glasses. In any case, all four of them froze as they listened to hear who had entered the hall above.

“Oh no,” said Ernie. “That’s the arson and murder crew. We’re done for!”

“The what?!” cried Maxine.

“Orlando’s people. They’re supposed to be here to torch the place and to—” Miles said, then swallowed with difficulty before going on. “And to kill you both. We gotta get outta here.”

Miles exchanged a significant look with Maxine in that moment, and the hint of fear he detected in her made the already roaring fire within him swell even higher.

“That’s right,” Ernie said, holding up both hands again and taking a step toward David, who was staring up at the ceiling with unfocused eyes.

Ernie’s approach startled him, however, and he lunged forward, thrashing the knife wildly in Ernie’s direction.

“Ah! Damn!” Ernie cried, and Miles saw a droplet of blood on the man’s forearm before he covered it, hissing in pain.

“I don’t believe you!” David hissed. “They’re here to arrest me, aren’t they? They know what I did!”

Miles looked to Maxine in confusion, but saw that her face was screwed up in much the same way his was.

“What you did?” Maxine said, in a voice far gentler than Miles would have expected, given that she was still being held hostage by the deranged lunatic. “What did you do?”

At this, David let out a loud sob, pinching his eyes shut tight as he began to cry in earnest.

“The shot wasn’t supposed to be lethal… And those girls… Those poor girls… But my wife! I had to save her… He said it was the only way!”

All of this had been delivered in barely distinguishable gurgles between sobs, and yet Miles could see that he was not alone in having understood the man’s meaning.

No more than a few moments passed, however, before many things happened at once. A loud crash rent the air as a door behind Maxine and David was flung open, and in stormed Brooks. Before any of them knew what was happening, David had been pulled into a chokehold. The knife he’d been holding clattered to the floor, followed shortly by the man himself, who had been instantly rendered unconscious.

“Holy shit, gramps, you got moves!” a voice cried from the doorway, and Miles looked over to see Jill staring in amazement.

“Jill?!” cried Ernie. “How’d y’all get down here?!”

“Uh, duh, we used the second staircase they boarded up to make room for the deep freezer?”

Just then, the cocking of a gun was heard from the room Jill and Brooks had entered from, and Orlando stepped inside.

“I did tell you I’d make you regret snooping around, Jillain."