Breaking Conviction by Greer Rivers
Chapter Twenty-Two
Once inside, Wes cataloged the room, noting the exit to the back hall in the corner, the small stage with a chrome pole, and a pleather couch with a man on his phone. Wes’s hands hung loosely by his hips, ready to engage his Taser at any time. He had a gun too, on his ankle, but that was for emergencies. Andrew Ascot would never constitute a physical emergency.
Wes took the moment to study one of Ashland County’s wealthiest. The harsh glow from the man’s phone put his features in stark relief. Ascot’s face had taken on that oddly smooth feline quality that the rich paid for to hide their age. He might’ve depended on Botox and plastic surgery to fool people, but it seemed he hadn’t bothered with his thinning gray-blond hair or his portly figure.
This was a man who bought, sold, and hurt women. Who played a part in killing Ellie’s best friend, and kidnapping Ellie, Nora and all those other women. A man who was now somehow inextricably intertwined with Naomi’s ex-fiancé. Men who hurt innocents were scum and Wes wasn’t sure what he’d do to Ascot if they didn’t desperately need him to find the mastermind behind the human trafficking in Ashland County.
“Ah, finally. I was wondering if I’d have to order someone els—” Andrew Ascot stood from his pleather seat and Wes took advantage of his momentum, immediately grabbing the man’s fat wrist. Ascot shouted and Wes shoved him against the wall before the man’s wild swing could make contact. With his other hand, Wes slammed the right side of Ascot’s head against the sheetrock. His skull only made a shallow impression in the drywall, but Wes knew he’d been struck hard enough to likely cause disorientation.
Men like Ascot deserved everything they got. They used people up and left them broken in their wake. A simple concussion would never be enough. Wes’s knuckles tingled to beat the pudgy flesh of this monster and unleash his own beast.
Ascot managed to yelp, but the music was so loud in the building, no one outside the small room would hear. These types of rooms were meant to silence the moans coming from inside. Although the confessional’s current groans were being caused by a very different reason.
“Wh-what’s the meaning of this? Who are you?” Ascot’s voice was muffled against the dented wall.
“Let’s do introductions afterward, shall we? I already know who you are, Ascot, and that’s all that matters right now,” Wes answered as he easily applied pressure against Ascot’s neck.
“How did you get past my security?” he screamed and Wes shoved his head into the wall again, cutting off the yell.
“You brought dogs to a building full of pussy. Did you really expect them not to hump everything in sight? Shut the fuck up. Don’t move.”
Wes removed his hand from the man’s wrist and Ascot instantly began to wriggle. Using his knuckle, Wes dug his pointer finger in the man’s exposed temple and got close enough to smell the pungent alcohol on his breath, cloying aftershave, and the acrid scent of urine. Normally, the smell would’ve made him nauseated, but adrenaline flooded through him.
This was an opportunity to alleviate some of the anger that always boiled so silently under the surface. He closed his eyes, trying to rein himself in and remember the objective. When he opened his eyes again, he was focused.
“This right here” —Wes emphasized each word with a tap of his knuckle against Ascot’s temple— “is called the sphenoid bone. It’s one of the most vulnerable points on the human body, yet it protects the most important asset a man has.” Wes applied more pressure. “And all I have to do is strike it just right… and man’s most dangerous weapon is neutralized.”
“Please, I-I don’t know why you’re here. I have money… whatever he’s paying you, I-I can double it!”
He? Interesting… and fucking infuriating.
“I could give two shits about your money, Ascot.” Wes kept his knuckle depressed into Ascot’s skull and pulled handcuffs from a pocket on his utility belt under his coat. When he slapped Ascot’s left wrist with a cuff, the man tried to push away from the wall, but Wes only huffed out a pleased laugh.
“I was hoping you’d fight back.”
In his next inhale, Wes wrenched Ascot’s arm back, popping the shoulder out of its socket and causing him to howl in pain. On Wes’s exhale, he grabbed Ascot by his thinning hair and bent him forward while simultaneously driving his knee up into his face.
A roaring filled Wes’s ears and his vision tunneled to the blood splatter on his knee. Something in his mind shifted.
“You hurt her! She was good and you hurt her!” His voice sounded odd and tinny to his ears as he got lost in his rage. He drove his knee up into the man’s soft flesh again. And again… and again… and again.
He faintly registered someone yelling through the headset, but Wes ignored the irritating buzz as he threw the man to the wall.
The pressure inside him felt like it was being relieved through a small hole in a helium balloon. The hazy, red fog in his mind dissipated. Breathing hard, Wes stared with mild satisfaction at the unconscious heap on the floor. He stretched his knuckles. It hadn’t been enough. It felt good, though.
The door behind him opened and Wes tensed his fists before he realized Phoenix was slipping in. His teammate cursed and rubbed his hand over his face.
“You crazy-ass motherfucker. You weren’t supposed to kill him,” he muttered with a defeated shake of his head. “You’re smiling, you know that right? Christ, what the fuck’s wrong with you, dude?”
Too much to admit.
Wes grunted at the observation and bent to check Ascot’s neck. Although he knew he hadn’t hit the bastard hard enough to kill him, he’d certainly done some major damage. Soft men are easier to take down. “He’s alive.”
Phoenix shook his head. “Yeah, well, even knocked out he’s probably a thousand pounds of deadweight. You know the rules. You knocked him out, you carry his fat ass. We gotta get outta here, dude. Those asswipes out there are this close to bustin’ their nut in their pants.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, there was a knock on the door. “Mr. Ascot, sir. We need to leave.”
“Shit, dude, okay, we gotta go.” Phoenix whispered loud enough to be heard over the music and bent to help Wes.
“Sitrep?” Hawk used military jargon to ask if everything was alright.
Phoenix growled over the headset while glaring at Wes as he picked up Ascot’s arms. “Our resident Dexter went psycho on the fucker. Knocked an easy target out cold. Devil, we might need your assist—”
The door behind them slammed open and the two burly AIE security guards stormed into the room.
“See!” Phoenix’s yell distracted the guards, slowing them down. “I told you they’re two-pump chumps.”
One of the men growled a second before both attacked. Wes and Phoenix simultaneously dropped Ascot like a sack of potatoes. Normally, they’d do the minimum to just get away from the men, making sure not to hurt anyone too badly. But they were in a public place and needed to get the fuck out of there before they drew too much attention. Instead, Wes and Phoenix got into an offensive stance, ready to attack in order to take the linebackers out quickly and succinctly.
The thrill of the fight flowed through him like an electric current, and he channeled all his anger at the enemy in front of him, finally able to let loose.
“Make sure not to kill them, Dexter!”
That’s fine. It’s no fun when it’s over, anyway.
Wes and Phoenix worked in tandem around Ascot’s unconscious body, attacking their respective target with fluid strikes. The guards were good, obviously well trained, but he and Phoenix were better. Individually and as a team.
His blood sang with excitement during the familiar dance. He and Phoenix had been on the same team one way or another for eight and a half years. Their friendship was strained now, but their muscle memory and instinct didn’t have that kind of petty drama.
He and Phoenix played off each other, exchanging kicks and strikes until finally Phoenix took a hit to the gut hard enough to make him pause. Wes sent an uppercut straight to Phoenix’s guy’s jaw, knocking him out cold. But the selfless act cost him.
Wes’s open torso was perfect for the man’s front kick to connect with Wes’s ribs, sending him into the wall. The guy charged at Wes and he braced himself for impact only to see the guy’s eyes widen as he seized up and collapsed rigidly to the side, jerking and contracting as 1.8 microcoulombs and fifty thousand volts of electricity flowed from Phoenix’s Taser down the two barbs into the guy’s neck.
“Let’s go.” Phoenix said as he laid the Taser on the sofa, no doubt to make sure to leave the Taser’s barbs in the man’s skin. If Phoenix took the Taser, the current would immediately cease, and if the man were a professional, he’d likely be able to get up like nothing happened.
Wes grunted and swallowed back the pain in his ribs before shuffling around the man jerking on the floor. He bent to pick up Ascot but hissed at the ache. After a fortifying breath, Wes exhaled through the pain and maneuvered Ascot across his shoulders in a fireman’s carry.
“Jesus H. Christ dude, hurry up. We only have twenty-seven seconds left.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Wes gritted out under the weight and his screaming torso. “I rigged the Taser to shock that long in the first place.”
But Phoenix was already out the door. He had a point. As soon as the charge ceased on the Taser, the guy would be shaken up, but no worse for the wear.
Wes huffed as he followed Phoenix without looking back. Hopefully, the asshole on the floor was feeling every one of those 1.8 microcoulombs of incapacitating agony. After stupidly trying his invention on himself, Wes knew from experience it hurt like hell.
“Hey! Over here,” Devil stage-whispered a few feet ahead of them as he pushed open the exit. Wes squinted at the bright sun and clear blue sky, but his vision quickly adjusted. Tires squealed as Hawk nearly drove up on the curb. Devil thankfully had Wes’s back as he carried Ascot across his shoulders on the way down the stairs. Phoenix jogged down the stairs to open Hawk’s trunk, scanning the parking lot as he did.
“Coast’s clear, I think. You’ll have to do your techno-magic on the cameras though, for sure.”
Wes grunted and dropped Ascot into the open trunk, making sure to finish cuffing the bastard before they closed him in.
Without another word, Devil and Phoenix ran to Phoenix’s Camaro while Wes rounded Hawk’s sedan. As soon as Wes’s ass hit the leather seat, Hawk peeled out behind Phoenix.
“So you knocked him out, huh?” Hawk’s tone was neutral, but Wes heard the undercurrent of anger in his voice.
“Yes. But it ended up working out, didn’t it? We got the target and—”
“—and our cover blown to pieces. You’re going to have to fix that.”
Wes swiped his face. “I know, man. I just—”
“You know the rules, brother. Fight it out in training or talk it out in therapy. The crew is a warrior. Devil’s the fists. Jaybird’s the heart and he’s preoccupied with Jules about to pop at any moment. Draco’s the legs and we’ve been cut at the knees with him in a coma. I’m the backbone and Phoenix is—”
“The dick?” Wes snorted. “For fuck’s sake, don’t tell me he’s the soul or some shit.”
“Fuck you, man. I’m a soldier, not a goddamn poet.”
“It’s a terrible analogy, Hawk.”
“Whatever. The point is, we can’t have our brain malfunctioning. I need you firing on all cylinders.” Wes rested his elbow on the window ledge, trying to calm his knee as it jerked with adrenaline, and resisted rolling his eyes before Hawk continued. “You’re hyped up on the fight. Your hands are bloody. What if Naomi sees you like this—”
“She won’t,” he growled out.
“You’re damn right she won’t. But it’s more than that. She can’t see this side of you and look at you the same way. Not after what she’s been through. You should get that better than anyone. You’ll terrify her if she sees this side. You know that, right?”
Wes’s hands trembled and he tightened them into a fist, noting the small cuts on three of the knuckles, despite their calluses from training. He closed his eyes and mentally buried down the memories, the nightmares, the rage. Finally, he swallowed and answered his leader.
“I know.”
