The day drug endlessly on for Matt, Foggy, and Karen, as Karen stayed glued to the GPS app, watching for movement from Maroney's car. They had verified that it was indeed the detective's car and that is was parked outside of the police station. Every time it moved, she would call the guys and they would track it to the new location. Fortunately, the detective went out on very few calls that day and made one trip to the courthouse. By the end of the day, the friends' nerves were frayed, and they were straining to refrain from taking their frustrations out on each other.
Just after 6:00 that afternoon, Maroney left the station and Karen called the guys to let them know he was on the move again. When his car stopped in front of the women's shelter, she called it in to them. Matt and Foggy arrived a few minutes later and watched the car from the alley just up the street. He was in the center for less than thirty minutes before he came back out and left.
His next destination was the abandoned warehouse they had searched that morning. After a short trip on the subway and walking a few blocks, they stood across from the building again. Maroney's car was still there, along with an older sedan that had seen better days.
Matt started towards the building and Foggy grabbed his arm and pulled him back into hiding. "Where are you going?" he whispered.
"Why are you whispering? There's no one around to here you." Matt informed him.
"Well, I don't have super hearing like you. How was I to know that?" Foggy asked in a normal voice.
Matt didn't answer, instead he said, "I'm going to get closer and see I can hear what they are doing."
"Oh, okay, I guess. But no vigilante stuff!" he told Matt.
"Do I look like I'm dressed for it?"
Foggy looked at his friend dubiously, "No, but I know you. You want to punch someone right now."
Matt grinned at him, "I always want to punch someone."
As he walked away, Foggy called after him, "Always?"
"Always," was the response as Matt disappeared around the corner of the second building to come up on the backside of the warehouse. Once again, he climbed the rusted ladder to access the roof and dropped down to the lower rooms.
He could make out two men in the main room below him and their muffled voices transmitted through the thin material of the ceiling.
"Why do I always have to do it?" the second man was whining.
"Because that's what we pay you to do," snapped Maroney.
"Can't you make some calls instead?"
"No, that would look suspicious," Maroney replied. "We don't want to draw any extra attention to ourselves for a while. Taking care of that nosey bitch is going to be bad enough. The boss is on my case big time."
That got Matt's attention. How did they take care of her? Was she even alive still?
"Now," he continued, "get this place cleared out by morning. After the building inspector is done, we will have to wait a few days, but then we can start back up. Until then, everyone needs to just lay low."
"Fine," the other man said, "I'll call Joe and we will get it done tonight."
"You better, or you will be the one to answer to the boss," came the threat from Maroney. "Speaking of, I need to get going. I have a stop to make before I meet with him later."
Matt dropped low against the ceiling as the door opened and Maroney walked out. He waited until Maroney left through the far door of the warehouse, then he dropped to the floor, carefully opened the door, and stepped into the room. The man in the room had his back to the door and was looking at the TV in the corner. Matt flipped the lone light in the room off, shrouding it in darkness and leapt at the man before he could turn around, landing a hard kick to the center of his back.
The man fell forward into the TV and both him and it fell to the floor. He rolled clear of the TV and onto his back, but Matt was already on top of him, punching him repeatedly in the face. He got in a punch that landed on Matt's gunshot wound and when he flinched and moved to protect the vulnerable spot, the man was able to flip him off and scramble to his feet.
He kicked Matt once in his injured side as he tried to rise from the floor and knocked him into the table. When he tried to kick Matt a second time, Matt grabbed him by the foot and swept his other leg out from under him while he was unbalanced. Both men rose to their feet and faced off in the gloom.
"You don't know who you're fucking with," the man growled at him.
Matt didn't answer, instead he launched himself at the man again. He got in several hard hits, then spun the guy and smashed his face into one of the metal doors. A couple more cracks against the door and the man slumped to the floor, unconscious.
Matt staggered back to the table and sank into one of the chairs, pressing his hand against his side. When he pulled it away, there was blood on it.
The door behind him swung open violently and slammed against the wall and Foggy rushed into the room brandishing a piece of rusted pipe. When he saw Matt sitting at the table and the other man unconscious on the floor, he lowered his makeshift weapon and glared at Matt.
"I thought you weren't dressed for this shit."
"I needed to punch someone," he quipped back.
Together, they bound and gagged the man and Foggy drug him into one of the cells. Locking him in and taking the keys with them, they left him to be discovered by the building inspector in the morning.
"You need to go see Claire," Foggy told Matt as they walked back to the subway station. "You're bleeding again."
"There's no time," Matt told him and filled him in on the conversation he overheard.
"Then let's go back to your place and wrap you up better so you aren't leaving a blood trail," he suggested.
"There's a drugstore two blocks over, we'll get some bandages there and take care of it." Matt didn't want to waste time going back to his apartment.
"Great, now we are doing first aid in alley," his friend griped, but followed him to the drug store.
Nyah was dozing on the hard floor again, when Goatee unlocked her cage.
"Get up," he told her.
She stood up and looked at him. "What?"
He motioned for her to leave the cage, "You're leaving."
She looked at the other cages and the women watching what was going on with her. "Where are we going?" she asked.
"We aren't going anywhere," he laughed, putting an emphasis on the 'we'. "You are going to a ride." He grabbed her arm and pulled her towards the warehouse's rollup door.
The door was rising from the floor and a black SUV pulled into the warehouse. When it pulled to a stop, a portly man got out and walked over to where they were waiting.
"This her?" he asked.
"Yeah. Watch her, she's supposed to be a troublemaker," Goatee said as he handed the man a slip of paper.
Tubby glanced at the paper, then stuffed it in his shirt pocket. "Oh, I don't think she will be any trouble for me, will you Sweetie?" he asked in a gentle voice, then held up a taser he was carrying. He stepped forward with surprising speed and touched it to her stomach and activated it.
The shock jolted through her body and her muscles locked up. When he stepped back, she collapsed to the ground, cracking a tooth on the concrete and busting her lip open again.
Over the ringing in her ears she heard Goatee tell Tubby, "Christ, you could have warned me! You almost got me too, you Asshole!"
Tubby laughed and nudged her with his foot. "Get up."
Once she was back on her feet, he grinned at her. "We have an understanding now?"
She nodded and wiped the blood off her face. Pleased with himself, Tubby cuffed her and led her to the SUV and put her in the passenger seat.
On his way around to the driver's side, Goatee told him, "the rest aren't going until after midnight. Be back here by then."
"Got it," he said as he got into the SUV.
He started the vehicle then looked over at Nyah, "you are going to sit there and be quiet, right?"
When she nodded, he put the vehicle in gear and backed out of the warehouse.
When Karen called with the latest location for Maroney, it was on the outskirts of the city and the subway didn't extend that far out, so they called an Uber to get them there. Foggy had bandaged Matt's side up as well as he could, and the bleeding had stopped for the time being. Foggy was sure his friend would do something else to change that as the night wore on, though.
They had their ride drop them off three blocks away and walked the rest of the way. This warehouse was in better shape than the other one, but had other warehouses crowded up against it and across the street from it. It was late afternoon and the shadows were growing between the buildings, giving them plenty of cover as they approached.
As they approached, a rollup door opened on the front of the building and Maroney's car pulled out onto the street and drove away.
"Crap!" Foggy said. "What do we do now?"
"We need to find out who he is meeting with," Matt answered.
"But Nyah might be in there and we can't be in two places at the same time."
Matt shook his head, "yes, we can. There are two of us."
"Oh, no!" Foggy protested holding up his hands.
"We don't have time to argue," Matt told him. "You follow Maroney and see who he meets with. I will stay here and figure out how to free Nyah if she's even in there."
"I don't like this, Matt."
"You need to go if you're going to catch up with him!" Matt shoved his friend away from the building. "Go!"
"Okay, but text me as soon as you know anything! Oh, and Matt?"
Matt was already climbing a ladder to the roof of the building they were standing by. He looked down at Foggy, "what now?"
"Just be careful," he said. "Don't get killed. You're not invincible, you know."
Matt gave his friend a sad smile. "I know," he said, then continued climbing.
Once on the roof of the building, Matt made his way to the warehouse Maroney drove out of. Stopping on the adjacent roof, he focused on the interior of it. He could sense the hum of the electronics inside, but it was concentrated in one area towards the back of the building. He didn't detect any peripheral electronics, just the main electrical wiring for the lights, so he was sure there were no cameras or motion detectors set up for security. Inside the building, he counted nine people, but wasn't close enough to make out any details.
With that knowledge, he climbed down from the building he was on and, sticking to the shadows, made his way over to the warehouse. He found a door that led into a storage room on the backside of the building, and, making short work of the lock, slipped inside. The room was crowded with boxes and furniture stacked up to the ceiling, giving him plenty of places to hide if necessary.
Going to the wall on the interior side of the room, he scanned the room again. There appeared to be two cars and one van parked just inside the rollup door on the far side of the space. By the way they walked and held themselves, he identified two men patrolling and one by the electronics, probably computers. There were five others in the middle of the space, all either laying down or sitting on the floor. He heard one sniffle and guessed they were kidnapped women. He listened hard for Nyah's steady heartbeat but couldn't find it in the room. If she was in there, he supposed she was probably distressed enough to change the rhythm of her heart. Plus, there was a weird echo in the room that slightly distorted all the sounds. He wouldn't know for sure until he got in there.
The good news was that there were only three of them. The bad news was he had no way to easily sneak in and there weren't many places to hide once he was inside. He needed a plan. Against one wall of the room, there was a circuit breaker panel. An idea began to form.
He went outside and gaged that there was less than an hour of daylight left, but he didn't know if or when the women would be moved, so he would have to improvise and use what shadows there were now. He scooped up a handful of dirt and went back into the storage room, locking the door behind him.
Opening the panel, he tossed in the handful of dirt, flipped the main breaker off, quickly shut the panel, and found a hiding place near the door. Inside the warehouse, he could hear one of the men cursing and ordering one of the others to go check out the power. A door near him on the back wall opened and closed.
The handle of the storage room door rattled as someone tried to turn it, then there was a jingle of keys, soft cursing, and then the click as he found the right key to unlock the door. It swung open slowly, and the man surveyed the room from outside before entering. Not seeing any threat, he entered the room slowly, his gun held out in front of him. Matt allowed him to make it to the panel.
When he opened the panel and saw all the dirt and the tripped breaker, he muttered, "old ass wiring panel," under his breath and reset the breaker.
That is when Matt bashed him over the head with a metal table leg he had picked up. The man went down in a heap on the floor and didn't move. Matt took his gun, phone, shirt, and hat, tied him up, and left the room. He tossed the gun and phone into a pile of trash behind the building, put the shirt and hat on, then made his way to the door the man exited.
Pausing at the door, he pinpointed the location of the remaining two men. The computer guy was by one of the cars, digging around in the trunk, and the other guy was standing next to him. The car was between them and the door.
He opened the door and stepped into the room and moved to put the table with the computers between them, keeping his head down. He held the metal table leg against his leg on the side of his body away from them.
"Any problems?" called one of the men at the car, his voice echoing off the wall behind Matt.
Imitating the other man's voice as much as possible, Matt called back, "Old ass wiring panel." His voice echoed and was distorted slightly by it and the other man didn't seem to notice the difference. He didn't move from where he stood by the car with the other guy.
"Ok, get over here and help with this," the guy called back to him.
Matt carefully made his way over to the car, keeping as many things between him and their line of site as possible. As he crossed in front of where the women were, he realized they were in chain link cages that were free-standing in the middle of the space. Checking them as he passed by, he knew for certain Nyah wasn't one of them and wondered what had happened to her.
Passing by the van, he had nothing more between him and the others, so he had to move quick. Both men had their heads down quietly discussing something. The echo in the room made it impossible for him to make out what they were saying. All he could do was hope his disguise was working and they weren't on to him. Keeping his head down he left the cover of the van and walked quickly to them.
As he neared them, the one closest to him looked up and said, "Took you long enough," before it registered that Matt was not his guy. Matt dashed the last few feet and swung the leg at him.
He spun away from the car and Matt's blow deflected off his shoulder. The other man looked up with surprise and Matt slammed the car's trunk lid down on his hands that were grasping the edge of the trunk. He screamed and doubled over in pain. The other, younger man was reaching for his gun, but Matt was on him, swinging the leg. It caught the man in the elbow, and he dropped the gun. Matt continued to swing at him and kicked the gun towards the van hoping it would go under it.
Without his gun, the man started fighting back barehanded, but Matt was able to easily deflect his sloppy blows with the table leg. Another hard hit on his arm, and the crack of bones could easily be heard. The man quit putting up a fight at that point.
"Man, you don't know what you are doing. Who you are messing with," he told Matt.
"Who am I messing with?" Matt snarled at him.
The guy shook his head and didn't answer. He was trying to distract Matt because the other man had recovered and was pulling something out of the trunk and turning towards him. Matt registered the rifle in the man's hands and dove out of the way as he fired three shots. The bullets hit the other man and he fell to the concrete bleeding. Matt swept the shooter's legs out from under him and kicked him in the face as he fell. In just a few seconds, it was over, and Matt was surprisingly unhurt.
He locked the shooter in the trunk of the car, picked up the two weapons and locked them in the trunk of the other car, and checked on the guy that was shot. He was still alive, but bleeding heavily and wouldn't make it very long.
Matt knelt beside him and asked him, "who's responsible for this?"
The man looked at him and laughed, "you are so fucked!"
"Who!" Matt shook him.
Instead of answering, the man coughed up blood and passed out. Matt let go of him and stood up.
In the cages, the women were all standing watching silently. He walked over to them.
"Where's Nyah?" he asked.
The woman on the end answered, "they took her a little while ago."
"Where?"
She shook her head, "I don't know. They sold us over the internet to the highest bidder. She was the first to be delivered. The rest of us are supposed to go around midnight."
Matt walked around to the locked doors. "Do you know where the keys are?"
Another woman spoke up, "over there on the table by the computer."
A third woman asked him, "aren't you going to call the police?"
"They are in on it, Becky," the first woman answered for him.
"Not all of them," Becky shot back at her.
Matt answered this time, "We don't know which ones to trust, so no, I am not calling them."
He found the keys and started unlocking the cages. "Who can drive?" he asked them.
"I can," said the first woman.
"Find the keys to that van and get them out of here. Don't go back to Hell's Kitchen."
"Got it," she responded. "What about you?"
"I've got other things to do." He pulled out an envelope of money that was in the trunk of the first car and handed it to her. "Take this and get the hell out of here."
After the women fled in the van, Becky insisted on hugging him first, he went over to the computer. Feeling around, he located the cables and disconnected it. Then he pulled out his phone and called Karen.
