"We're stopping. Why are we stopping?" Holden asked Michelle when she slowed her car down and parked on the side of the road. "We're still miles from your chief's location."

"Jett's bugged my car," she replied, getting out of the car. "I need to get rid of that bug or else he'll track me with it." She hunted around her car, looking for the bug anywhere on the surface.

"And you thought about it now?" Holden asked in disbelief. "Check the inside, the outside is too dicey a place to stick it. It could get knocked off."

"Fine." Michelle returned inside, looking all over. "Hey, didn't Jett put a tracker on you too? Shoot, I almost forgot—" she stopped when Holden lifted his jeans to show his bare ankles.

"I snapped it off," he said shortly. "I'm not some kind of probation convict and won't stand for that kind of stuff."

"Hmm, I suppose that worked out well..." Michelle mumbled and returned to her hunt. Holden watched her for a moment before helping her search.

"Look, pretty—"

"Don't call me that," Michelle snapped abruptly.

"Then what am I supposed to call you? We're not on a first-name basis," Holden grumbled.

"Patterson," Michelle said firmly. Holden rolled his eyes.

"Fine. Look, Patterson, I hope you have a plan for when you find your chief. If he's with Zhang, I don't want to get involved. Twice as much if he's met Cross. The man's after blood."

"Then you shouldn't have come," Michelle scolded him. "If you were gonna wimp out at the last minute, you shouldn't have tagged along."

"I'm not wimping out, I'm just cautioning you to be careful," Holden said in a serious tone. "If Zhang doesn't kill me, your boyfriend will if he finds out you came to harm while with me." Michelle gave a humorless laugh.

"You don't have to worry about Brook, I fully intend to get us back unharmed. Yes, found it." She paused and bent under her seat to pull out the tracking bug Jett had placed. She opened her window and threw it out.

"They'll still be able to track it here," Holden commented. Michelle started her car and hit the accelerator.

"Not after this," she said, and ran her car over the tracker, smashing it to pieces. Holden exhaled.

"Some call it brave, others call it stupid. Either way, we'll see how this plays out."

Brook had been driving earnestly, his eyes flickering from the spot indicating Michelle's car on his GPS tracker to the road. He was almost there and felt trickles of relief seep through him as he neared her. So when the tracking dot suddenly disappeared, an iron ball dropped in his stomach.

"Jett, what just happened? The tracker disappeared!" He said urgently through the radio.

"I don't know! It wasn't from my end, my computer's still running! The only way that could've happened is if..." Jett trailed off, making Brook's anxiety mount.

"What, what?!" He yelled. Jett's nervous voice replied, "If the tracker got destroyed." Brook nearly exploded at that.

"Argh! Jett, try tracking Holden's ankle bracelet!"

"About that... I found the broken pieces of it in the garage," Jett said apologetically. Brook roared.

"Wha—WHAT?! No, no, this can't be happening!"

"That little weasel Holden must've taken it off," Reece said bitingly.

"Now how are we gonna track Michelle?" Payton asked somberly. Brook felt helpless and panicky, the thought that he might never see Michelle again terrifying him. He glanced at the little rosary slung on his rearview mirror feeling desperate. Michelle had put it there after his reunion with her, the day they moved in together saying it would always protect him. He whispered a prayer to it, his eyes fixing on the crucifix.

"Please... please help me find her." A sudden thought struck him like a bolt of lightning.

"Jett! Do you have a phone with you?"

"Yes, why—"

"Track Michelle by her phone number but don't call her!" Brook said rapidly. "I don't want her to turn it off."

"On it!" Jett responded excitedly. "I got her! I'm sending you her new coordinates now!"

"Good thinking, Brook," Payton commended him. Brook almost smiled in relief, glancing at the rosary. He took it in his hand and kissed it.

"Thank you," he whispered and put it in his breast pocket. His eyes fell on the little picture frame of him and Michelle on his dashboard, a picture of them from her birthday last year. He whispered to it as if he were talking to her in person.

"I'm coming, Michelle."

https://youtu.be/DBIfxLTRZY4

Must listen🎧🎵OST. ⬆

Several minutes later, Michelle pulled up her car near a hangar far outside the city. She didn't get too close in case anyone heard the sound of her car approaching. The hangar was a derelict, broken-down kind of place, the ideal haunt for criminals. Michelle scoffed when she saw it.

"Why do criminals always pick places like this to hang out?" She asked skeptically. Holden snorted.

"What, like you and your crew lived in a mansion while on the run from those Inferno Ghosts," he stated sarcastically.

"How do you know about that?" Michelle asked in surprise.

"Pft, your pal the computer nerd has pictures of all of you in your old base plastered on his office wall," Holden answered, "it's not like it wasn't obvious you lived in an abandoned military base in the desert."

"Forget I asked..." Michelle mumbled. Holden got out of the car while she hesitated.

"Having second thoughts?" He popped his head back inside to ask her, not seeing her move.

"No, it's just..." She blew out a quick breath, feeling uneasy. "What if I'm wrong about everything? What if we're walking into a trap? What if this isn't what the chief wanted? What if we don't make it back?"

"Hey," Holden said when she paused for breath. "Relax. We'll find your chief and get you back to your precious boyfriend in no time." Holden sounded surprisingly gentle as he spoke, without his usual sarcasm. Michelle glanced at him.

"Yeah, sure..." She said, feeling her topaz ring between her fingers. She pulled out her phone, the sudden need to see Brook overwhelming her.

"What are you doing?!" Holden asked suddenly in an outrage, grabbing her phone from her. "That thing was lying on?! Your crew could've tracked us this way!"

"Hey, give it back!" Michelle made a grab for it, but Holden held it away.

"No, not unless you wanna jeopardize your crew's safety."

"I don't, okay?! I just wanna see—chief!" Michelle's sudden exclamation made Holden look around.

"What? Where?"

"Not where, on my phone!" Michelle pointed to the screen where a message was blinking, its text partially visible in a notification.

"It's a text message! I didn't even know the chief had a phone... Open it!" Michelle said urgently, and Holden brought the phone down to read the message.

Michelle,
Hope you figured out what the hairpin was for. If you don't hear from me within the next two hours, track me and send those coordinates to the number below. Cop by the name of Bill Ritchie. Tell him Morgan sends his regards.

"Oh my gosh!" Michelle gasped. "Soriano sent this nearly two hours ago..." she stared at the tracker in her hand.

"I have to do what he's asking," she said anxiously, biting her lip.

"He sent it at five minutes past ten. It's almost midnight. We should wait a little longer," Holden said with a furrowed brow.

"But what if he's hurt? The guys did find blood near his car... he may need us!"

"And what, you're gonna rescue him?" Holden asked sarcastically. Patterson, they'll pop you off before you can blink. Trust me, if Zhang's involved, he's not above using guns." Michelle swallowed at that, her heart sinking.

"Turn off your phone if you don't want your boyfriend speeding down here!" Holden chivied her. She did so, her thoughts still on Soriano's message.

"The chief must've run into trouble but not before he had time to send this... maybe he found Mr. Cross and wants the police to get involved! And," she stared at the tracker, "this is the only clue to his location..." She froze in thought for a moment and then began to rummage through her car as though looking for something.

"Er, lost something?" Holden asked, raising his eyebrow.

"I need paper and a pen. If Soriano wanted the police involved, it must be serious. I want to check that hangar first. But just in case we don't make it back, I'm gonna make sure this cop finds us."

"How?" Holden asked cynically. Michelle didn't answer but clicked her tongue in frustration.

"Ugh, shoot, I don't have paper or a pen!" She stared at her windshield for a moment and an idea hit her. She pulled out her lipstick from her purse which was lying in the car.

"Patterson, I really don't think this is the time to apply makeup," Holden drawled in amusement.

"It's not for me," Michelle said, uncorking it. She began to write words backward on the inside of the windshield with her lipstick.

"What in the name of Pete are you doing?" Holden asked, baffled.

"Leaving a message for this cop, Bill Ritchie. Whoever he is, he'll get it once he finds my car."

"And how exactly is he going to find it? You can't use your phone without getting tracked."

"I'm gonna send out a distress signal," Michelle answered simply. "My car has a radio which can hack into the police radio. The number Soriano left is a radio channel frequency. All I have to do is send a signal to this number to alert this cop to our location."

"Then what happens when he finds us missing?"

"I want him to come and find the tracker in the car," she said impatiently. "That's why I'm leaving this message. If he finds my car and gets the message, he'll find the tracker, Soriano, and our location—if we can't return." She sent the signal and sighed in relief when it was done.

"There. Now we won't be stranded, if something happens," she said, a little quiver of nervousness in her voice. Holden smirked and whistled.

"Smooth move, Patterson, I'm impressed. Now let's hope we make it out alive." They got out of the car, Michelle leaving the tracker on her seat. She quickly checked her lipstick message to make sure it was readable:

To Bill Ritchie
Morgan sends regards
Tracker to whereabouts in car

"Hope he gets it," Michelle said apprehensively as she and Holden made their way to the hangar.

"When we do find your chief—what are you planning on doing?" Holden asked.

"I don't know, I'm making it up as I go along!" Michelle whispered impatiently. "Now keep it down! We don't know who or what we'll find!"

"That's why it wouldn't hurt to have a plan," Holden mumbled.

"Even the best-laid plans go to waste. Trust me, making plans never pan out with my crew," Michelle said. "The best thing we can hope for is that cop finding us." She and Holden crept up to the hangar as quietly as possible, only the sound of their shoes on the gravel crunching a little.

"Hey, up here," Holden said, spotting a metal rail staircase outside the building, leading to the upper viewing gallery inside the hangar. "That way if anyone's waiting for us on the ground, they'll never spot us."

"Good thinking," Michelle said and followed him up the staircase. They kept to the shadows, listening for any signs of life.

"Listen! I hear voices!" Michelle said, perking up her ears. They reached the gallery and looked down onto the hangar floor. Since the whole place was pitch dark and only a single light shone in the middle of the hangar, it was easy to see the two figures the light was thrown on—one was a man with his back toward the watching pair and the other was someone tied to a chair with his head hanging down. But Michelle recognized him when he said something to the other man.

"Chief!" She gasped, causing Holden to quickly wrap his hand around her mouth.

"Quiet! Do you wanna alert them to our presence?!" He hissed at her. She pushed his hand away, staring at the chief with anxious eyes.

"What do you have against my crew, LaCroix?" Soriano raised his head to speak to the man in a deadly voice. Michelle nearly gasped aloud again but covered her mouth to hide her shock.

"LaCroix?! As in—Linus LaCroix?!" Michelle whispered, staggering back.

"You know him?" Holden asked.

"Long story," Michelle replied, her throat going dry. "But it all makes sense now! Mr. X, I mean, Cross, LaCroix... he was using a pseudonym to hide his real name!"

"Huh?" Holden said blankly.

"LaCroix means Cross in French," Michelle explained. She turned back to watch the chief.

"You know, you won't believe the number of gangs I had to go through to get decent service..." LaCroix said to Soriano. "You and your crew are harder to kill than cockroaches. Not to mention find... but then I came up with this fantastic idea to capture you and have your juvenile delinquents follow consequentially... but it was so hard capturing you! And then you decided to give yourself up on your own... ah, how the chips have fallen in good places."

"I figured if I gave myself up, I'd finally meet the," Soriano called LaCroix a foul name, "bastard who tried to kill my kids." He spat at LaCroix's feet. LaCroix simply looked on condescendingly.

"And you got your wish. Your death wish that is," he said with a low, dark chuckle.

"I don't care what you do to me, LaCroix. But if I go down, I'm gonna make damn sure I take you with me!" Soriano bellowed, and suddenly he snapped the ropes from his wrists which he had been cutting, and sprung forward at LaCroix, pinning him to the ground.

"Argh!" LaCroix yowled in pain as Soriano began pulverizing and marring his face. He shoved him with all his force but Soriano gripped him tighter than a cobra its prey. LaCroix tried to cover his face which was taking the most hits and began to yell.

"Get in here you idiots, and get this maniac off of me!" Soriano, realizing that they were not alone when he saw the men who captured him rushing into the hangar, quickly rolled away from the light with LaCroix caught in his grip. In the shadows, he deftly pulled out the tracker pin from his ponytail and slipped it under LaCroix's collar without him knowing, while dealing a jaw-breaking punch in his face as a distraction.

"Ow!" LaCroix was bruised and swollen-faced when the men finally dragged a rampaging Soriano from him. They searched him and found his penknife with which he freed himself and confiscated it. But they didn't realize he'd just planted a nano-tracker on LaCroix.

"I'd make you bleed to death for that if I didn't have other plans for you," LaCroix thundered at him, examining his jaw. Soriano simply glared at him with eyes like daggers, struggling against the hold of the men as he spoke.

"I'm not the maniac here, LaCroix, you are. You were behind all those arson cases in the last few months. You're a sociopath who oughta be locked up for massacring innocents."

"Innocents? That's utterly inaccurate," LaCroix sneered. "Everyone associated with you and your crew is on the wrong side of the law and deserves to be punished!"

"Wrong side of the law?" Soriano asked incredulously. "You're the one who hired mercenaries because you wanted to keep your hands clean! And who died and made you judge, you snake?!" Soriano growled at LaCroix.

"MY BROTHER DIED! THAT'S WHO!" LaCroix shouted. Soriano narrowed his eyes.

"And you have some misguided notion that I'm behind that? He was murdered by a damn psychopath!"

"You stole my brother away from his life!" LaCroix bellowed. "My brother had me, he had his college, he was getting well settled... and then you came along and put foolish ideas in his head—ideas I was staunchly against— ideas to become a mechanic, start his own auto shop... ideas that made him throw me and his life away!"

"He was threatened by those cursed Inferno Ghosts, you daft imbecile!" Soriano shouted back. "He got on their bad side and would've ended up dead a long time ago if I hadn't taken him in! Whatever problems he might've had with you isn't on me!"

"Perhaps," LaCroix said bitingly, "but he ended up dead anyway! You failed to protect him! He'd have never died if he'd come to me, I'd have protected him! But your influence caused a rift between us and he cut me off! If you were going to make him throw his life and family away for a pack of outlaws to run around with, you could've at least protected him!" Soriano stared at a fuming LaCroix for a moment. All this happened because he wanted to avenge his brother, albeit the wrong way. The love LaCroix had for his dead brother fueled a bitter hatred for those whom he thought were the reason for his death—building a deep sense of poisonous vengeance in the broken man.

Soriano looked back on his own actions—everything he'd done tonight, hunting Zhang, going after his blood—it was all for the same reason. Zhang hurt his kids; he wanted to make sure Zhang was dead so he couldn't hurt the ones he loved again. He wanted revenge. In a way, his own actions weren't much different from LaCroix's; but he didn't go around killing innocent people to soothe his pain.

But still, they both sought the destructive means of justice—vengeance.

"You're right," Soriano said suddenly in a raspy voice. LaCroix stared at him in disbelief.

"Excuse me?"

"I failed to protect your brother. And I almost failed to protect my own kids. I try my best but it just isn't good enough at times. And for that, I'm sorry." LaCroix scoffed cruelly.

"Your ridiculous 'sorry' doesn't bring my brother back."

"You have to stop this, LaCroix. This killing spree? It won't bring back your brother but it will make you as low as the men who took his life."

"I'm doing this for my brother," LaCroix thundered. "No one knows what I lost. But I will make them feel the pain I feel."

"By ripping families apart, killing off the people associated with me?" Soriano asked. "Your brother wouldn't have wanted this, LaCroix."

"You don't know anything about my brother!" LaCroix bellowed. He ran a hand through his hair and blew out a breath. "But I intend to keep my word. You, you will feel the pain I suffered... as soon as I get my hands on your young felons, I'll make you watch them suffer. I'll make you scream their names as you watch them die. It'll be the last thing you see before I send you to hell." Michelle turned ashen and weak at the knees when she heard that.

"Go to hell yourself, LaCroix!" Soriano began to fight and struggle as he raged, but the men pounded him until he was too weak to fight back. They tied him back to the chair.

"I have much to do before that, Morgan," LaCroix said, knitting his fingers. "First of which, is baiting your crew to come running here." Michelle's eyes widened.

"They'll never come here!" Soriano argued.

"They will if they think their precious chief's life is at stake," LaCroix simpered. "And I have just the person to set the trap." Footsteps came through the dark and suddenly, a woman stepped into the shadows. Fortunately, Soriano's gasp was as loud as Michelle's, or else her hiding place and Holden's would have certainly been discovered.

"Jada Alvarez?!" Soriano ejaculated.

Oh, the horror. 😨😱Only my readers saw that coming. Michelle and Holden are hiding right in the lion's den and Soriano's under the lion's paw.  The reason behind Cross's revenge is finally out! Hope it made sense. And behold, the traitor steps out of the shadows. What do you think will happen? Share your suspense!