Damnation:
Ashes Remain
"And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him." -Revelations 6:2-8
"Only a fool would underestimate a man with nothing to lose."― Lance Conrad, The Price of Nobility
Chapter 2: Hostage
It was a race against time. Sadly, it wasn't one he thought he'd win.
Leon ran for his car as he demanded, "Where are you?"
Moira hissed, "...I'm in the laundry room with Mika. Dad...I don't know wh-"
The silence was over now. Through the phone he could hear the screaming.
Hunnigan. Loud. Scared. Angry. She was shouting and there was clatter of noise that said struggle. He could hear it. He knew Moira was terrified. Hell, he was too.
He whipped the car around another and shot into the oncoming lane as he raced toward the highway. "Does Mika have her phone?"
Moira was whimpering. He could hear the shattering sound of breaking glass. Mika's voice sobbed somewhere close by. He tried again as he pushed the car up to a hundred on the highway. Even at this speed, he was eighteen minutes away.
"Moira, listen to me."
Her voice came back to him, breaking and scared, "...Mika has her phone."
"Good." He whipped the car up the exist ramp and spun one hundred and eighty degrees to the blare of horns and squealing tires as he cut off other drivers, "Have her dial 911, Moira. Now. Hurry. Where is Derek?"
"...I don't know. He left after the party. Dad...help me."
There was a clapping sound on Moira's side. Laughter and harsh gutteral language filled the line between them. He could hear the thump of landing fists and the squeak of furniture on the marble floors. He hear Moira's breath suck in with horror and Mika's muffled sobbing. Hunnigan's voice was long gone. It didn't take being there for him to know what he was hearing.
His daughter was hiding in the laundry room listening to her mother being raped.
The rage was so white hot it hurt him. It trembled through his hands as he pushed the car to as fast as it could handle. The frame shook and rocked, the tires squealed, the wheel jerked in his hands to resist it.
He could almost see her with her eye pressed to the crack in the door, watching the macabre display of her mother's defilement.
He was going kill every last man in that house. They didn't know it yet, but they were dead where they stood. The clock on the dash said he was fifteen minutes away. He heard the sirens and was grateful.
He was grateful that Mika had called 911 like he'd instructed. Maybe, maybe, maybe - they'd get there in time.
There was a rustling sound. Hunnigan's voice high and scared, "No! PLE-"
And Moira's soft whimper, "...Hurry, Daddy."
Daddy. That's what he was. He was her Daddy. When it mattered, at the core of it, he was her father. He was supposed to protect her. He was failing her. He was failing her mother. He wasn't fast enough to save them.
He heard Hunnigan's voice get cut off. They'd shoved something against her face to stop her pleading. He heard it. He heard it happen. The muffled scream and the gunshot. For a moment, his heart seized in his chest. He could see it - the pillow on her abused face, the terror in her while they'd used her and then executed her at point blank range.
He'd loved her for half his life and now she was gone. Stolen. Destroyed. Her daughter would never smile at her mother's tearful face when she walked down the aisle. She'd never get to see her grandchildren or hold them and smell their heads after they were born. He could see her laughter on the day they'd brought Moira into the world. So beautifully joyful.
Gone forever.
He felt the numbness descend over the rage and congeal like cold blood.
The car squealed into a fishtail as he rounded a sharp turn. With a sobbing gasp, Moira whispered, "...Dad...they're coming for us!"
He knew they would. It's what they were there for. Not to rob the place, to kidnap. Robbers didn't often rape and stick around. He commanded, "Hide. Now Moira. Hide anywhere you can."
"O-o-ok."
Mika scurried and hid inside the dryer. Moira poked herself into the wardrobe. He heard the door swish shut.
She whispered low and quiet, "...what now?"
The dash clock told him he was ten minutes away. He'd never make. He'd never get there. So he told her, "...now they'll take you."
Her gasp was high and scared. He could see her trembling, "...no. No no no."
Calming her, he kept his voice level, "Moira, listen to me. Listen to me, sweetheart. When they grab you, leave the line open. Put your phone some place where I can hear you and shout out everything about your abductors that you can. Anything, anything at all, that will help me find them. If they attack you...remember to always, always, always aim for the eyes and groin. Do you understand me?"
He heard her quiet harsh breathing before she whispered, "...I'm so scared."
So was he. His heart was hurting with it, but he told her, "I know, baby. I know you are...but I will come for you. Do you understand? I will not stop until I find you. Stay alive. Stay alive, Moira, and I will bring you home."
"...I'll try."
He heard the door thrown open. He heard Mika's frightened screaming. The car fishtailed and nearly rolled over as he cornered again and raced like he'd get there. He'd never get there.
He knew it, but he just kept on trying.
He could hear the voices as the men approached where she was hiding. The accents, the force of language, the roll of dialect - he started recording it on his phone before they'd even begun talking. Slavic. Where? Eastern? Wester? Czech? Albanian? They weren't close enough to the phone for him to discern it that clearly.
And then?
Then they had his baby and it didn't matter anymore. He'd burn their whole fucking country to the ground to get her back.
He heard the clunk of the phone. He heard Moira scream and shout, "Tall! Scarred face from brow to chin! Huge muscles! Tattoo of interwoven snakes on his left wrist and hand!...nooo! DAD! DADDY!"
Jesus Christ.
His foot pressed the accelerator to the floor. His throat was hurting. His muscles trembling.
There was a rustle as the phone was found and lifted. He could hear the breathing on the other side, shaking and harsh. Excited. Her abductor was rushing with pleasure to have tortured and raped his family. Divorced or not, Hunnigan was his family. That didn't stop because you couldn't love each other anymore.
He was eight minutes away.
And so he said, voice low and dragging,"I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want, and I couldn't give a fuck less. I don't have have whatever it is you're looking for, I can promise you that, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now that'll be the end of it. I won't come looking for you, I won't pursue you, but if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you and I will enjoy watching your face while you die screaming."
The silence dragged out for a handful of seconds.
Finally, there was a low pitched laugh that left his blood cold and a taunting answer in a familiar voice, "...good luck...comrade."
No.
Out loud into the buzzing disconnect of the line, he said it again, louder, "No."
Impossible.
Ada had made sure Jack Krauser was a pulsing ball of flesh in Spain. She'd been damn sure. Right?
That wasn't Jack Krauser on the phone. Jack didn't have his daughter. Jack hadn't raped and killed his ex-wife. That wasn't possible. Jack was dead...and nothing in their world ever stayed that way.
The car threw mud as he angled it up the huge lawn. He had to ram down the gate blocking his way to do it. It squealed and flashed with sparking metal as his Impala devoured the gate like the jaws of death. As if it could stop him.
As if anything could. The Impala spun to the side as he opened the door and threw himself out. He ran before the car had come to a complete stop. It's tire tossed mud as it finally waited in the rain with the engine running.
The front door was wide open and his gun in his hands as he cleared through it. Fast, but not stupid. He moved like he'd kill anyone he found, but he moved hoping against hope his daughter was still there.
The house was a wreck. It was smoldering on one side from a fire they'd started in the kitchen. The paper was peeling and blackened. It stank like gasoline as he rounded the first set of stairs and moved up.
He was three steps up when he heard the screaming.
Outside. Outside and to the back.
A single shout in the smoking night, "DAD!"
"...no."
Reversing, he stopped being safe. He ran for the back door to the huge mansion and through the curling inky air. His shoulder smashed into the rear door. He could hear the roar of an engine. He saw her being stuffed into the back of a van with a pillowcase on her head. Unmarked, maybe gray - it was hard to tell in the dark.
His roar shook the air with rage, "MOIRA!"
"DADDDY!" Muffled but so loud. She had the lungs of an opera singer.
And then someone punched her in the gut to shove her inside.
The covered face of her kidnapper turned toward him.. All Leon could make out in the dark was his grin. He stopped caring. He gave up. He lifted his gun on that grinning face.
The bullet took the man in the chest as he ducked and ran around the front of the van. He grunted and was jerked into the vehicle by someone else. The tires squealed. Leon ran so fast he was sure his lungs would evict from his body with the effort.
But feet were no match for six cylinders. The van was gone into the siren filled night before he could blink. He was on his phone as he ran back toward the house. Jill picked up on the second ring as he entered the back hallway and ran for the front door to make an attempt to chase them. "How was the party?"
She sounded so happy. She had no clue his world was on fire. He started to tell her and something rose out of the flames. The moment dragged to a crawl. It felt like he had all the time in the world to react.
He turned, his gun came up, he got off a single shot - and an answering one hit him in the chest. It threw him to his back and his phone spun across the floor as he fell. The first boot that came at his face was twisted to the side. The snap of the ankle was loud somehow in the crackling air.
A scream. A roar of pain in his shoulder where the bullet had gone in and right back out the other side. He hit the wall and started to rise and the kicking started enmasse. Not just one guy - at least four. They just started kicking the shit out of him while he rolled to his side and tried to minimize the damage.
They'd likely have beat him to death if the sirens weren't right on top of them. As they retreated, one spat at him in a guttural English, "...next time we leave you on a roof to die, huh?"
With laughter, another taunted, "Your bitch cried as we fucked her to death!"
He closed his fingers around his phone and shoved it into his back pocket. He knew Jill was still there on the other end, half horrified and half business. She'd make the right calls while he finished what he'd started here. She'd get him answers.
His hand slipped in his own blood as he tried to rise. The rage beat in his breast like a drum. The world was tinged in shimmering lack of oxygen. He wanted to grab Hunnigan's body. He wanted to carry her out to bury her.
The house was ablaze now.
They had his baby.
They'd murdered his wife.
He tried to get up and his ribs protested in a scream of pain. He spit blood on the floor from his damaged mouth. He finally got to his feet and stumbled toward the body thrown over the couch and half on the floor.
Still in the pretty dress she'd impressed in. Now it was around her hips with her legs obscenely spread like she'd died still being fucked. The world on fire around him wasn't nearly as hot as the rage in him. He felt like nothing in the world made sense by the blood in his mouth that tasted like revenge.
The pillow on her face saturated in blood.
He lifted the pillow off her face to find her eyes open and wide in death. Her mouth bloody and swollen. Her nose smashed like a fist had hammered it into her face.
His hand touched her cheek. He begged her forgiveness for failing her and lifted her into his arms even as his body told him he was hurt. He carried her through the smoke and flame like a man with nothing left to lose.
On the front lawn, cops were rushing toward him.
His car was gone. Gone. GONE. Stolen by the men who'd left his life in ashes. His daughter, his car, his wife...taken away by a man who should have been a long time ago. Why?
The why didn't matter. What mattered?
They were about to find out once and for all which one of them was better.
Jill had heard the whole fight go down from his phone on the floor. She'd put in calls before he'd even finished with the cops. She was tracking the leads that Moira had tossed at them. She was digging into whatever could be found on Jack Krauser still being alive.
Who was the target here? Leon?
Or Simmons?
To know that, they had to find out who was working with Krauser. The snakes on the wrist. What did it mean? The Sacred Snakes? Hidalgo? He was pretty sure they'd leveled that underground cartel in Bolivia when he'd been there last with Jack.
Had Krauser turned to the dark side and revived them? How had he survived Spain? It seemed so unlike Ada to leave a loose end that big untied.
Derek had been inconsolable when he'd left him with Hunnigan's body at the house. The longer he stood there, the less time he had to find his daughter. He'd wanted to punch the weasley asshole in the face and shout, "What have you done!?"
But he wasn't sure that Simmons was the target. With Krauser at the helm, there was a good chance that Leon was. Was it personal? There was too much working against him to be coincidence here.
The taxi rolled up in front of his house and idled as Leon extricated himself. The wound on his shoulder ached but he'd survived worse. It was a clean through and through shot. It would hurt, but it wouldn't stop him from tracking his daughter like a bloodhound.
Leon headed up the walk to his front door as the taxi rolled away. He reached for the keypad to put his code in and found the door cracked already. His hand froze. His ears perked.
His hand tugged his Magnum and he crouched before he jiggled the doorknob.
The crouch saved his life as the door was eradicated in a shotgun blast above him. It splintered and tossed chunks of dismantled wood. Whoever they were? They weren't very good. Stupid. Sloppy. And scared.
Leon returned fire through the hole in the door and heard them gasp and go down in a clatter. He eased open the door and cleared left and right as he crouched through. The gunman was dead on his back with a broken coffee table beneath him.
But he wasn't alone.
The second face peeped around the corner and was turned into a canoe in a handful of seconds. The heavy round left them missing a left eye and most of its socket in a bath of blood as they went to their back and someone close to them shouted, "He's here! You said he wouldn't be here!"
"Get the fucking dog!"
Were they kidding? If they even touched that goddamn dog, he was going to rip off their dicks and fuck them to death with them.
So he called, quite calmly, "You even fart in the general direction of that puppy and I'll shove your head so far up your ass you'll shit in your own mouth."
There was a rustle of sound. Using the dead body on the floor, Leon rolled it up, turned, and felt it jump twice as someone shot into it like a human shield. He returned fire from behind the bleeding corpse and got his attacker clean through the throat. They grunted, gurgled, and tumbled off his balcony to crash loudly into the kitchen below. Pots set up a ruckus of clanging metal as someone shouted, "Who is this guy?!"
It was pitch black in his house. Only the trickle of starlight from the floor to ceiling glass walls offered any real flicker of visibility. They clearly didn't know whose fucking house they'd decided to raid.
Did they think he'd died at Simmons' mansion?
There was a soft shift of sound and he rolled, missed losing his ear to the swipe of a knife, and kicked the body in his arms up in the air. It smacked into his attacker, sent them stumbling, and Leon shot them from one knee while they staggered back. One in the chest, one in the head. Boom. Boom.
Someone else decided to get cocky and try to snipe him from the balcony on their belly. The bullet hit his chest with a thunk. Sadly for them? He was ready now. It hit the metal plating in his vest and stopped. It hurt, it would bruise, but it wouldn't do any other damage.
The gunman squeaked, "SHIT! He's armored, dude! He's got goddamn body armor on! He's not a fucking art dealer!" He watched the dark shift as the gunman tried to back away.
Leon shot them between the eyes right through the balcony while they panicked and he called, "Yep. You picked the wrong goddamn guy to come after. I'll give you one chance to put down your fucking guns and tell me who you work for...or we'll find out how long you can survive with a bullet in your balls."
Someone made a sound of fear and tossed a grenade over the balcony.
Leon rolled, his hand scooped, and he tossed the goddamn thing back to them like the world's worst game of hot potato. The person shouted in horror as it cleared the balcony and the grenade went off. Sadly for them?
It was a smoke grenade.
They'd clearly meant to make him unable to see.
They didn't know him very well.
He heard the puppy yip. He saw the movement as someone grabbed for it and it tried to bite them, and he shot them twice in the back. They screamed and went to their face with a sob of pain.
Leon used the couch in front of him for a running boost as he kicked off it, caught the railing on the balcony in mid swing, and launched himself up without breaking a sweat. He heard the guy behind him stumble into the wall and shot him through the smoke while he staggered. The sound of him flipping over the railing was loud in the smoky air.
On their face, the last of the gasping assault team was trying to crawl away.
Leon put a boot on his back and pressed into the wound above his left hip. The man squealed and jerked, crying out and begging, "W-w-wait! WAIT! Please! I didn't know! I didn't know what they wanted! They said to raid the place for anything valuable. They said you had a fucking expensive car so you probably had money! They said to get the dog and kill it and s-string it up on...on...on your tree out front to teach you a lesson. I-I didn't want to! I didn't know! I'm just a grunt man! A nobody!"
Leon grabbed him by the back of his jacket and jerked him to his knees. "Hands on the back of your head."
The guy did it without question as Leon told him, "You'd be surprised what a nobody knows. Where's my daughter?"
Looking afraid in the smoke, the man gasped, "W-who? Who? I don't know man. I swear to god. The-the girl in the house? Which one? I don't know anything about them."
"Let's try this again. Put your hand on the floor in front of you. Now."
Afraid, the man did it, trembling, "What man!? What? I can't tell you anything!"
"Yeah? Take a second and reconsider, won't you?" Leon stepped on his hand while the man jerked and shouted in pain. "Anything?"
"No! No! I don't know anything!" It was high pitched and terrified and pain filled. "I don't!"
With a shrug, Leon said conversationally, "That's a shame. Maybe I can jog that memory." Without another word, he raised the gun and the man squealed in horror before it echoed - and took off half his hand in a spray of blood and bone. Chunks splattered the wall as the man keened and jerked spastically, sobbing.
Holding him down with a foot on his wrist, Leon inquired curiously, "What? Hurts? Let's try this again...Where. Is. My. Daughter?" Each word was punctuated with a press of his boot on what was left of his hand, "When I finish here, I'll move on to your feet. We can go all night...or you can start fucking talking."
With a whimper and a snotty gasp, the man told him, "...M-M-Marcus. Marcus. I work for Marcus. H-He's got a shop. A shop over on Ettleston. M-Mostly mob type stuff, ya know? But we merc when the moneys good."
Leon arched a brow, "What about my car? What asshole took my car?"
"Lazlo. He's...he's kinda the main goon? I don't know. He acts like his shit don't stink man. I just needed the dough. I swear. I didn't know about your daughter. I-I didn't...I didn't touch your wife!" He shouted it like it would matter at this point, "I don't rape! I don't do that! I just take shit! I swear!"
"You the guy who hit my daughter?To get her in the van?"
The man whimpered desperately, "...it's just a job, man. Just a job." He was pleading. He was crying. He was terrified.
But now he knew why he'd lost his hand.
Shouting high and loud, the man told him, "It wasn't personal man!"
And Leon returned, "That's where you're wrong. You made it personal when you touched what's mine."
The gun was loud. The back of his head exploded as if he'd swallowed a grenade. The man flopped in a pool of blood and his own shattered teeth. Leon dug into the pocket of his jacket and pulled free his phone.
When it asked for a thumb print, he was glad he'd blown off the other side of his fist. The moment the call log popped up, Leon saw the text from Lazlo. It was detailed. It knew things about his house it shouldn't have.
It had his codes for his doors and his gate. It had the location of his safe.
At least the one they thought would matter.
His doorbell dinged down below and Leon shifted over to touch the panel on the wall beside his couch and pull up the security feed. The curious face of a young cop was waiting for him. He smiled and said, "Evenin, Mr. Kennedy."
"Evenin, Jimmy."
"There's been some...concern about the noise."
Leon nodded and managed to look sheepish, "Party got a little out of hand. I could use...some help cleaning up."
Jimmy nodded sagely and told him, "Gotcha. I'll get right on that. Mr. Kennedy."
"Jimmy."
The young cop turned away without another word. That tended to happen when you were the right hand of the President. He managed to, literally, get away with murder. By the time he wandered back upstairs, the mess he'd made wouldn't even exist anymore. That was the price of power in his business. It wiped the slate when you greased the right palms.
With a whimper, the puppy beneath the couch belly crawled out. It sniffed around the dead man between them, lifted its leg, and pissed on his exploded head.
Yeah, he thought, he kinda liked the damn dog.
Leon clucked his tongue and put a bloody hand down to it. The puppy slinked over until he could pick him up and cuddle him. It licked his face - afraid but unharmed.
Holding it close, Leon moved down the hallway to his bedroom. They'd raided the safe hidden in his closet, but it hadn't contained anything but some cash and a watch or two. That was all scattered on the floor and half stuffed in a bag.
Ignoring it, Leon set down the puppy on the soft dog bed by the closet door and put his palm flat against the back wall of the open safe. It made a clicking sound and an ocular scanner emerged through a plate that opened in the ceiling. It lowered, scanned his left eye, and the floor of the closet grumbled.
It slid open and offered stairs downward.
Curious, the puppy followed him down the steps.
The untrained eye saw a sterile concrete room, but Leon put his hand flat below the light switch beside him. It beeped and the lights flickered. A panel beside him slid open to offer a sledge hammer.
Leon shucked off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. The puppy perched on the stairs watching him as he picked it up and rolled it in his palms. Lifting a brow, he asked the puppy, "What? You think I'd make it easy for someone?"
The puppy panted and waggled its tongue as he lifted the sledgehammer over his head and remarked, "Fuck that. They want it? They can dig for it. How long you think it would take to break up this hole room looking for my stash? If they were even wise enough to dig for it."
He brought down the sledgehammer with a cacophonous boom of sound against the cold gray ground.
The puppy laid its shaggy head on its paws and watched him in companionable silence.
If Lazlo was the guy who'd raped Hunnigan and helped set up Moira's kidnapping, he couldn't possibly anticipate what hell he'd unleashed on himself. He wasn't just dead, he was dead and burning. He just didn't know it yet.
In the rubble, Leon rose shirtless from the pit he'd unearthed. He'd just finished sealing the wound in his shoulder when the phone he'd taken off the corpse beeped. He picked t up to find the text message from Lazlo.
Done?
And Leon texted back: Done.
A moment later: Meet Warehouse. Fifteen minutes. Dispose of phone.
A pin was dropped with the location. Leon memorized it and pocketed the phone anyway.
In fifteen minutes? He'd be disposing of Lazlo along with the phone.
The clock was ticking. He had less than ninety six hours to track Moira and Mike before they were lost forever. He was officially on borrowed time. Lazlo was about to find out what happened when you fucked with another man's world.