AN: Sorry for the slight delay. Hopefully this new chapter is worth the wait. :) Thanks as always to Kerry Blue, she always helps me to make the story that much better for you all.
Warning!: There is a good bit of strong language in this chapter. The possibility for that is why I gave this story the rating I gave it, but I thought I should give a special warning for this chapter because it has more than most other chapters in any of my stories. But I do think I only used it where it was organic and necessary to the story.
Brandy had never in her young life been more scared than she was right now. She had spent her professional career around guns, but had never had them pointed at her in anger before. But almost more than her worries over her own safety, she was concerned about Devon. Early in their rough ride he had been trying to reassure her with his eyes and it had almost worked as it gave her something to concentrate on. But they had hit a particularly nasty pothole at one point and the van they were in seemed to have no shock absorbers whatsoever, so she had to watch helplessly as Devon's head and left shoulder slammed into the side of the van and his eyes rolled back for a few moments from the severe pain. Since then he had still been trying to reassure her with his gaze, but it wasn't as effective because she could clearly see the physical pain he was enduring behind the reassurance.
Finally the van stopped and the side door was pulled open. One goon nearly tore her arm out of its socket while yanking her from the vehicle. Another pointed a switchblade at Devon before giving him a chilling warning. "I'm going to take the tape off your ankles. You try anything, I'll stick this knife in your girlfriend and gut her like a pig, you get me?" Devon nodded with rage and contempt in his eyes and didn't move as the goon used the blade to work through the duct tape around Devon's ankles. Brandy felt in that moment that for the first time she was seeing Devon the warrior and she had no doubts as to how dangerous a warrior he could be.
Normally that thought might have been disconcerting, learning about that darker and harsher side of him after she had come to care for him. But now it brought some comfort as they were ushered into a large house and into an elevator that took them down two floors. Even with him banged up and in severe pain she still felt somehow that she had a chance with Devon by her side.
The elevator doors opened onto a short hallway with them on one end of it and a dead end wall about thirty feet in front of them. There was one door on the right side of the hallway and two on the left. Brandy was suddenly shoved forward with a hand between her shoulder blades. "The door on the right is where we're headed."
She bit back a smart reply about how it was going to be a little hard for her to open the door with her hands taped up together behind her back. As the others moved forward with her, she thought she recognized the smell in the air, and then one of the goons opened the door and her suspicions were confirmed by the noise they hadn't been able to hear previously through the sound-proofed door. They were being taken to a gun range.
They all walked into the room and then waited as the figure in front of them finished the clip he was working on. The range looked to be very high tech, able to be set up as a tactical simulation with good guys and bad guys popping out of various locations as well as working as a simple distance target shooting range. The man they had been brought to finished his clip and hit a button on the wall that brought his paper target whizzing forward as he took his ear protectors off. Turning, he smirked at them.
"Ah, my guests have arrived. I hadn't planned on bringing things to a head quite this soon, but leave it to a Messer to stick their nose where it doesn't belong. You didn't really think you could just ask questions without being found out, did you?"
Brandy looked at Devon, silently hoping he would refrain from ticking off this obvious psycho, but she knew that her wish was unlikely to be granted. Some of her analytical abilities were coming back now that she had managed to push at least a little of her fear down inside of her and she knew that in addition to his anger provoking anything, Devon would try to use words to throw off their captor and get him to make a mistake, regardless of the danger that might mean for Devon himself.
"I didn't care if you knew that I was asking questions. What I did think was that a guy who had managed to avoid detection this long might refrain from doing something so stupid as to kidnap two people from a crowded convention center in broad daylight. The cops will be on you so fast you won't be able to blink and I'll enjoy seeing you head to prison you little prick."
Instead of getting angry at Devon's words, the other man merely raised an eyebrow. "Such vulgarity. But then, what can one expect from a man of your lineage?" He smirked at the look Devon threw him. "Ah, so you can dish it out, but you can't take it? How like your family." The man methodically unrolled the sleeves of his shirt that he had worn up while shooting. "The police, especially your pathetic family, have no clue where you are. As we speak, the van you were transported in is being wiped down and abandoned in a junkyard. And despite all the evidence I've given them, your family has come nowhere close to identifying me, so they won't be showing up in time to be of any help to you. They're always a step behind when it counts, but I have to say that even I am disappointed in their incompetence this time around."
Brandy waited for Devon's reply, but his attention had been snagged by something else. She followed his gaze to the paper target that their captor had been shooting at which she hadn't paid much attention to before. Now she noticed that instead of the generic black and white silhouette that most ranges used, this paper target had the color picture of a woman on it. The woman was very striking with a riot of curly hair around her head. Even more striking was seeing the neat grouping of bullet holes that their captor had put between the woman's eyes.
"Ah, you've recognized my target," the man said, obviously enjoying Devon's astonishment and anger. "Your late aunt is one of my favorite targets. Of course, I've also enjoyed shooting at pictures of your other family members, particularly your bitch of a sister." He cocked his head to the side. "Have you started putting two and two together, or do I still need to spell things out for you?"
Brandy looked back and forth between the two men, totally and completely perplexed. Devon might not need things explained, but she certainly did. But even without understanding what was going on, at the very least she knew that their chances of getting out of this situation unscathed had decreased considerably.
CSINYCSINYCSINYCSINYCSINYCSINYCSINYCSINYCSINYCSINY
Devon tensed. This had gone way beyond some random psycho that had a vendetta against his family. No, this had become much more personal than he ever could have imagined. "For some reason, though you seem a little young for it, you have a grudge against my family that seems to stem as far back as the murder of my aunt."
And finally Devon had found the trigger that would set off this psycho. "That bitch was not murdered! She was killed in self-defense! Not that she deserved the quick death she received. No, she deserved a slow, agonizing death like I have planned for you and the rest of your family." The man took a deep breath and attempted to regain his control, which he only somewhat accomplished. "Your aunt disgraced my father and when he went to discuss the error of her ways with her, she arrogantly told him she would put him behind bars for the rest of his life whether he had done anything or not. Then when she decided she would rather just kill him and went for her gun, my father shot her in self-defense. And then your family closed ranks and railroaded my father straight into a death row conviction and will have him killed by the state soon without any evidence to prove anything besides the fact that he had been in the apartment!"
"No evidence? Are you kidding me?" Reasoning with this level of psychosis was insane in its own right, but Devon couldn't help himself. "How about the eye witness testimony of an eleven year old girl who saw your father shoot my aunt in cold blood!"
The psycho sneered at him, his polished demeanor completely gone by this point. "As if your sister ever spoke a word of truth in her life. I didn't need any more evidence of that, but my opinion of her character was only confirmed this past summer when she went on a shooting rampage in Central Park and yet managed to make everyone believe she was the one victimized. She obviously learned well from her aunt."
Devon couldn't believe what he was hearing. How had this guy not been committed to a mental institution long before now? How could he seriously believe that Ella had just randomly started shooting people in Central Park? And, holy God, Devon suddenly remembered what the man was talking about! He remembered rushing to the hospital after Ella was shot, not knowing if she was alive or dead, and then the panic when she disappeared from her hospital room and his frustration at not being able to do anything to help. And then, finally, the emotional wringing his family had gone through around Ella's hospital bed, speaking of things they rarely voiced and reliving the pain of all their memories. Devon had been too young at the time of Stella's death to retain any real memories of his own about that period and its immediate aftermath, besides a general impression of the cloud his family lived under for a long time. But he had been around for the ensuing years when they had all watched Ella float along, a part of their family and yet apart, drifting farther and farther away until that day in Central Park finally started bringing her back.
But now this psycho was jeopardizing that. If her little brother died in even some small part because of her, Devon knew Ella would never forgive herself and would separate from their family completely, and likely forever. And that was something he would not allow to happen if he had any say at all in the matter.
"So, what?" Devon taunted, even as his head pounded with all the repressed memories that had suddenly come back to him. "You send armed thugs after a cripple and a lab tech because you obviously can't handle even the likes of us without muscled goons to back you up? And because you don't have the balls to go after a trained FBI agent, even though she's the one you have the nerve to blame for your father's situation? This is your idea of showing your superiority over my family?" He let all of his disgust and contempt for the insane idiot show on his face.
"Silence!" the prick screamed as he strode forward and placed the gun in his hand against Devon's temple. "Shut your fucking mouth before I do it for you with the same gun that silenced that whore you called aunt!" Devon couldn't stop the flicker of surprise he felt and the other man obviously noticed that and smirked as he dug the gun a little further into Devon's skin. "Oh yes, didn't I mention? This weapon in my hand is the same one that ended your worthless aunt's life. It was the start of my collection. My father trusted me and only me with the knowledge of where he had put it. He didn't trust the police to take it as evidence and prove that he had acted in self-defense - and his farce of a trial proved him right - so I kept the gun hidden. And then when I finally had the chance, I…took care of my mother and stepfather and inherited the funds I needed to acquire more artifacts for what I like to call my Justice collection. And Justice is the only name for the weapons that ended the lives of such scum as those who like to call themselves law enforcement when really they are just like the worst of the thugs they hunt and prosecute. They simply cloak themselves in their self-righteousness and the public meekly obeys them, just as lemmings follow each other right over the cliff."
Devon's eyes sparked. The man's anger had finally given him the opportunity he needed. The thugs had backed off enough, obviously believing Devon to be the cripple that he had called himself. And the psycho actually thought that having his hands taped together and a bum shoulder and hip would keep Devon from acting. The man had obviously never met a Navy SEAL before. "In all your psychotic rambling, you forgot one crucial point, scumbag."
The man smirked, making it plain that he felt that he hadn't neglected one single detail. "And what could that be?"
Devon tensed, preparing himself. "That you unloaded your weapon into my aunt's picture and now your gun is out of bullets." And before the man's face could register his reaction to that statement, Devon launched himself forward into the bastard.
P.S. There has been a guess or two about the secret song, but no right answers as of yet, so another clue: the secret song that influenced me while I was writing this story had an impact on the naming of one of the original characters of mine that shows up for the first time in this story. Considering there aren't that many new characters to the series that show up for the first time in this story, it's probably a little obvious who I am talking about, but I'll still be a little vague and mysterious and not come right out and say the name. :) Only one more chapter before the epilogue, so if no one guesses it after this chapter, I will give a very big, very obvious clue (more obvious than the one I just gave!) in the hopes that someone can figure it out!
