Chapter 39

Each room Aaron passed as he made his way through the maze of passageways, was filled with nothing but darkness and smells. He hoped the next thing he would catch in the beam of his flashlight would be Makayla.

“I have the girls!” A voice reverberated from somewhere down the hall in front of him. Aaron passed a curtained doorway, searching each room with the speed of a demon at his heels. Bryce’s voice met his earshot as he rounded the corner into a short dark passage.

“Twelve girls!”

He ran into a dead end and turned back toward where he heard Bryce.

They were surrounded by distant gunshots; each shot a trembled along the floors and walls of the compound. A slow rumble of the storm passed overhead, the sound of rushing water echoing all around as the heavens opened up. He exited the passage through the heavy white drapes where he found Bryce, Jarvis and the missing girls. Bryce’s eyes met his sharply, and with the shake of his head he said to Aaron, “She’s not here.”

“Someone find agent McKenzie!” Aaron’s voice come out husky and brash with abounding emotion. He recognized one of the men who was being shoved to the floor and cuffed by a fellow agent.

Aaron did a double take. “Wait.” He stopped the agent cuffing him and crouched down beside the man, his gun pushed into the man’s forehead. His eyes did not miss the scar of an old tattoo, matching a familiar shape. It matched the tattoo of the man he had shot in the hospital after he tried to kill Raine.

“Where is she?” Aaron smiled wickedly sensing this man and Raine’s attacker where in cahoots. ‘The double agent in the organization.’ The traitor perhaps trying to overthrow the operation itself.

With the gun held to the man’s head, he crouched even further to look him dead in the eye. “One can always count on greed as a powerful motivator to screw things up.”

The man gave a full, boastful smile and with that, Aaron jumped up and violently pulled the man to his feet.

“Anderson!” Bryce yelled. “Don’t,” he warned him.

“This guy is the one who took Valmer’s heart. He is responsible for our victims’ torment. He sold the heart on the black market and is responsible for the nurse’s death.” As he spoke he tightened his grip on the man’s collar, choking him.

“How do you know that?” Bryce shouted over the chaos of his men rounding up perps.

“I just know Captain.”

The man struggled to breath. “Agent, stand down, this is not how the FBI…”

Aaron didn’t let up. “I can’t let this son of a bitch go…”

They often played this trick on their suspects, pretending they were going to violently interrogate the perp. “You can’t kill him…”

Bryce walked closer to Aaron, calling him over, making sure the perp was in earshot. “Take him out back where there are no witnesses. And use one of the other guns we seized, understood?”

Aaron nodded. “Make it look like his own men shot this damned traitor.”

Aaron was pumped with adrenaline, fueled by rage to such an extent that even at half the size of his perp, he was able to drag the man along with him. In the end, he didn’t need the man to talk. When they exited the room through the curtain, he noticed the involuntary shift of his eyes in the direction of the dead-end passageway.

“Thank you,” he said, shooting the man in the kneecap as he stalked off.

Behind him, the man’s cries, cusses and threats fell flat on his ears. The passageway walls were a blur as he headed toward a dead-end. A sliver of blue light came from behind the wall. He placed his ear to it where he heard a thump, or a beat. He stood searching for whatever opened the secret door.

“Fuck!” Aaron punched the wall out of frustration, pocketing his Beretta and swung the automatic machine pistol over his shoulder aiming it at the hallow wall.

“Are you insane!” He heard Jarvis come up behind him. “Never mind.” Jarvis shook his head as he stood beside him, giving him a once over, “stupid question.” He mumbled.

“Move!” he instructed Aaron to stand aside while he figured out how to open the secret door.

It didn’t take him long to find the concealed trigger, a weight plate on the floor right in front of the door. As the wall moved, they were greeted by a strong whiff of chemicals and the sweet stench of Devil’s Breath Flowers.

Aaron stormed into the room. The sound of a heart monitor blared from the speakers, filling the eerie space.

“My God,” Jarvis said in response to the shelves filled with jars of organs lining one wall. The sight of the colorful chalk drawing of a woman ascending into a cloud of white flowers took his breath away.

Jarvis swallowed, “It looks like…”

“Makayla!” Aaron bellowed. “Help me get her down!” he called to Jarvis as they both stepped over the bloody corpse of the killer, a scalpel laying right beside his bled-out body.

Aaron was already ascended up the metal staircase, he yanked a knife from his utility belt and cut away at the leather strap around Makayla’s waist. His one hand around her middle, he slashed at the gut holding up her wrist and pieces of her hair.

“I am here. I found you. Please God…” and he actually meant it for God’s ears.

“Is she alive?” Jarvis stood at the bottom of the steps, assisting Aaron. They placed her on to the floor, where Aaron wiped her hair from her face, staring in horror at the amount of blood streaked across her chest. He felt for a pulse, and his eyes searched her upper body for the wound.

“Her chest, right by her heart.” Jarvis’s voice was grim, empty and riddle with a tone of finality. His complexion as colorless as ash as he stood over them.

“She has a pulse, it’s weak Jarvis, but she has a pulse.”

“I’ll get the medics.”

“Your shirt.”

“What?”

Aaron’s palm pressed against Makayla’s chest over the area of her heart, the blood slowly oozing between his fingers. “I need to stop the bleeding.”

“Aaron?” Makayla’s voice was barely a whisper.

“It is going to be fine.” He held her tighter to him. “I won’t let you die like this.” His voice caught in his throat as he pushed down broiling tears.

Jarvis handed him his shirt and fell to his knees beside them, doing his best to plug the wound. “It’s too late,” Jarvis started to say, “The blood is slow and thick…”

Aaron snarled at him. “Shut up, Jarvis!”

Makayla opened her mouth and Aaron held his breath. “Did we save the girls?” she asked, her eyes remaining closed. Her lips trembling as she spoke.

He nodded even though she couldn’t see him. “All twelve of them,” Aaron answered, kissing her cold hands. “Hang in there, okay. I am sure they’d like to thank you.”

“No,” Makayla croaked.

“Yes, yes, you are going to be fine. We will …”

“No,” she licked her lips. “Twenty-one.”

Her breath hitched, a tear ran down her face and Aaron put his ear to her freezing mouth. “I figured it out,” she said.

“What?”

“Delgado…” As she swallowed it sounded painful. “It’s a family name.”

Aaron shook her. “Don’t give up.” He rejected the pain, “Please Makayla.”

“Dannie,” she whispered, and with that, her lips remained parted, and she was gone.

He tried to resuscitate her, his body quacking as he pressed down, breathed into her mouth and repeated. Jarvis touched Aaron’s shoulder.

“Don’t touch me!” he said, scooping Makayla up in his arms and getting to his feet one leg at a time.

“Aaron, it’s a crime scene. You cannot….” Jarvis tried to stop him.

With Makayla in his arms, the world around him was a blue haze as he exited the sacrificial room.

Aaron was barely aware of the stares, the mumbles and the gasps as he exited the compound with Makayla’s body. His feet carried him to the garden, the wind whipping away at his hair. The grass soft and wet beneath his knees as he sunk to the ground howling her name into the night.

Bryce had followed his agent silently, giving the medics a small wave of his hands to give them some time. He came to stand beside Aaron, a part of him numbed by the loss. Taking off his windbreaker, he covered Makayla’s body laying before Aaron on the soft of the luscious grass, and in the shadows of the moon they said their goodbyes.

The medics came over, pleading to take Makayla from Aaron. Aaron clung to her body like a feral beast protecting its young.

“It’s time to let go son.” Bryce said from behind him.

Aaron shook his head. “I ...”

“There is nothing you can do for her now.”

Bryce didn’t want to accept what had transpired either, but he had to be strong for those left behind, his team would need him as much as he’d need them to get over the tragic loss of one of the ‘good guys’. He placed a firm hand on Aaron’s shoulder as the ambulances escorted the girls away with a flash of red and blue lights. They watched in silent morn as Agent Mckenzie was lifted onto a gurney, her upper body still covered by the windbreaker. Her feet and hands peeked out, the sight churning violently inside of Aaron. The silence mounted, the wind sang, and the gloom was like a crescendo inside of Aaron—ready to strike out. But where would he start to seek retribution?

Noting the state Aaron was in, Bryce pocketed his fists and spoke up. “We saved these girls. All twelve of them.”

Aaron stood stoically with his arms crossed over his chest. “Twenty-one.”

Aaron turned to face his Captain. “Makayla said there were twenty-one girls.”

“Are you sure?”

Aaron shot him a solid stare.

Aaron’s brows knotted together, recalling something else. “She said something about Delgado; it’s a family name.”

“What do you think that means?”

Aaron lifted his chin to the cloud covered moon, his eyes as dark as death. “Find his father.”

Bryce wiped at his forehead. As if called Jarvis came up behind them. “He was a foster kid, Valmer’s foster kid…”

Aaron and Bryce spun around.

“I found some information on this creepy guy, Delgado.” Jarvis looked up from his tablet with determination. His blueish eyes glinting in the fading light as squad cars took away what survived of the perpetrators.

“I don’t think she meant Valmer.” Aaron had a faraway look in his eyes.

The three of them stood in silence, suspended in the eye of the storm, waiting on the wall of chaos to decent once again.

Bryce said. “I’m assigning you a new case.” He looked to Anderson.

Aaron was about to protest.

“Your priority is to find his biological father, and those missing girls.” Aaron opened his mouth to say something when Bryce put his hand up so he could finish talking. “Then take a break. Go somewhere pleasant like Madagascar. When this is finally wrapped up, I don’t want to see your face anywhere near the precinct for at least a month.”

“You will let me work this case?” A spark returned to Aaron’s eyes.

“Well, the Devil’s Breath Killer has been, “Bryce smiled as he said, “, snuffed. Seems we now have a new case. Track down whoever is left in this operation. Kill them if you have to.”

Aaron stood for a moment, shocked by his captain’s words.

“The man you shot in the knee, I’ve arrested him before. Hell, I recognize at least half a dozen of these assholes we arrested tonight. We must make sure no one who is involved in this operation gets to recruit anybody else.”

Aaron arched an eyebrow.

“And Anderson… get some damned sleep.”

Aaron pulled a face, about to argue when Bryce added. “It’s an order, or I will hand this case over to Jarvis.”

“Jarvis,” Aaron smirked. “He’s a tech ner...”

“I think he’s proven himself of late.”

Aaron sighed. “Yes, Sir.”

Jarvis beamed brighter the moon.