This Could All End in Tears

"Hey Johnny," Brian greeted jovially. He had just pulled up to the rendezvous site and he was ready to go. The Black Album was still ghosting through his brain from the ride over- the best kind of music to get pumped for a mission like this. And he was pretty psyched for this job.

He, Johnny, and Matt lived the closest, so he wasn't surprised that he was the second to get there. Instead of the younger boy greeting him warmly as he always did, he turned around and looked at his friend with an expression of grave sorrow. Brian could see the bad news in his eyes and it froze him solid.

"Bri, something's happened man."

"What do you mean?" His heart was doing overtime, thinking of all the foul possibilities.

"Val and Jack were attacked. They're both okay, though. Thank god, Matt got home in time." Brian took in the information and immediately began plotting revenge. He was about to ask if they knew who did it when Johnny interrupted his thoughts. "They weren't the only ones, man." The slow, deliberate and unwilling way he said that told Brian exactly who else had been attacked, but Johnny clarified anyway. "It was Meg and Ava, Brian."

"Are they alright?! Where are they? Who's with them? "

"We don't know, Bri. Matt had to get his family to the safe house, and we can't reach Jimmy or Zacky. I just got the voicemail telling me what's going on. I was gonna go myself but you were coming and-" Not waiting for him to finish Brian turned on his heel and ran for his car, not bothering to ask how they knew Meg had been attacked.

He floored it, leaving skid marks as he pulled out of the warehouse parking lot. He took the quickest possible route home, the accelerator touching the floor at all times. His mind was racing but he couldn't even think about the possibility that one of his girls might be dead. He couldn't live without them; there would just be nothing to keep him going.

He pulled up his long private road, chilled to see the front door busted and swinging open. He grabbed two of his guns from the glove compartment (both nine millimeters). He rushed into the house, calling out their names. Glass was shattered on the floor, furniture was toppled, and there were even a few heinous red stains on the carpet, which were slowly turning brown as they dried.

Furniture had been toppled over and moved as if in a search, while paintings were hanging askew and other signs of struggle littered his home. Discarded gas cartridges were left among the chaos.

Strangely only two things were missing, but they were the two most important things he had. He heard a heavy sobbing coming from behind the couch and jumped over the back of it to find Megan face down, covered in blood and bruises clutching something to her chest. Her hair was tangled and sticking to her face with all the sweat and blood. Brian's weapons slipped from his fingers.

"Oh, baby," he whispered, kneeling down and trying to gently move her into his arms. He cringed as she cried out in agony. He caught a glimpse of what she was holding, but at that point he was forcing back his own tears of grief. They began to fall as he spoke again. "Where's the baby, Meg? Where's our baby?"

"They fucking took her, Bri." She held up the penguin. "She doesn’t even have Milo with her."

"No!" he cried out, cradling her to him. "Ava," he whispered. He took a second to gather himself, breathing heavily and trying not to wail out his pain. He had to be strong for his lover. "We'll get her back, Megan. We'll find our baby and then we're gonna make them pay."

He couldn't let himself break down when his fiancé could possibly have internal bleeding. His first priority had to be to save her, and then he could worry about their daughter. There was nothing he could do for her now. He turned his head t make sure the path was clear for him to carry her to the car, but something else caught his attention. In elegant font his name was printed on the front of a think linen envelope. The expensive kind. He shoved it into his pocket and raced his lover to the car. On her insistence he fetched Ruben from the backyard as well.

Not seven minutes later Brian had driven into a secluded region of the forest, down a dirt path. He made a perfect 90-degree turn onto an even more undetectable trail, which barely allowed enough room for his sleek car.

He pulled up next to a gnarled old tree at the very edge of a medium sized clearing full of fallen leaves and tree parts of varying sizes. Brian stepped put of his car and walked over to the tree, pausing in front of it to analyze it for a moment before pressing his palm against one of the knots and pressing down. The knot retreated within the trunk for a brief second then popped back out.

A trap door large enough to easily accommodate a hummer swung open in the clearing before them. He climbed back into his car, rolling forward to the opening, checking his rear view mirror to make sure the metal door snapped shut behind him, which it did.

The dim lights that ran the length of the ceiling lit his way as he came to the parking area. Zacky and Johnny were there to greet them. Neither said a word as Brian opened the back door and pulled Megan into his arms. She was awake but seemed lifeless, completely limp in his arms.

Both of the men grimaced at the sight of the little penguin clutched in her hand, not daring to pester them with questions. The look on his face scared them as much as Megan's apparent disregard for breathing. The only thing that cheered them was Ruben leaping from the back seat. Luckily for the St. Bernard, he'd been unable to escape from the back yard while the men were in the house. But even Ruben seemed to have his head hung.

They rushed her to the med wing where the doctor they had once saved from a Mexican drug cartel was waiting with a nurse. Johnny, who was the best medic of the team stayed to assist the surgeon.

The other men had all gathered in a room in the second of the three levels below ground. It was designed for plotting missions and other such strategic things, with maps and weapons cluttering the walls. It was almost like a den, but a more lethal one. They had left Jack sleeping in one of the several rooms of the compound.

Solemnly Brian held up the envelope he'd been left. They all stared at him as he tore open the seal. He unfolded the stiff paper inside and read from the font that almost looked like a party invitation.

"As you can see, I've had your fiance murdered. Your daughter has been taken and you wont get her back unless you do exactly as I say. Don't even think about trying to burn me, or you wont find so much as a fingernail left of your daughter."

"I say we track down the fuckers and rip them limb from limb." Matt's suggestion raised no objection, but wasn't very helpful.

"We need to figure out who these guys were working for first," Jimmy was thinking the clearest of any of them... for once. He was leaning against a table, with his arms crossed against his chest and his legs crossed at the ankles. He was Ava's favorite uncle, and she was certainly his favorite niece.

"We don't have any leads though," Zacky reminded them. "All those guys were your average low lives; nothing distinctive about them. Even that one Matt got his hands on couldn't tell us anything we couldn't figure out on our own. They were hired anonymously and told they'd get $2,000 for grabbing our kids killing the girls and keeping their mouths shut."

"No leads? What do you call Amanda knowing this shit was going down? For all we know she could be in on it!"

"Matt, man, you need to shut the fuck up. I swear to god the next time you say something like that, I'll break your fucking nose," Jimmy threatened in a low voice. Tension between two mercenaries was, to put it lightly, never a good thing. "We're all pissed, but Manda would never pull this shit and you know it." He had calmed down at this point and got his focus back. "I never got Manda's call and apparently Zacky didn't either. Who else didn't get a call?"

"I didn't." Brian's voice was wavering between being hard and being hysteric.

"That doesn't make sense," Zacky reasoned. "If she called Matt she defiantly would have called you. There's no way she'd ever let anything happen to Meg or Ava."

"Let me see your phone." Jimmy held out his hand so Brian could toss his cell into it. Jimmy pressed a few buttons and then snapped open the battery compartment. He plucked a little chip from the bowls of the device. "Our scrambled cell phones are no longer safe lines. Some motherfucker really knows what he's doing. Matt got his new phone two days ago and he's the only one who got the call, I'm willing to bet that his is the only phone that isn't bugged." Jimmy's voice was grave.

"So this guy is a computer genius who hired shit heads to do his dirty work." Matt was trying to decide which of their past marks this douche bag could be.

"Which makes absolutley no sense since it must have been someone really fucking good who bugged our phones without us noticing," Jimmy pointed out.

"Maybe we're looking at this the wrong way. A woman on the street asked to borrow my phone a week ago. She could have easily slipped the chip in when I wasn't paying attention. But there was no way she could... Meg and Val have enough training to take someone like her down," Zacky offered. "And they never would have opened the door to a stranger while they were alone with the kids."

There was a moment of thoughtful silence before Matt spoke up.
"Amanda is our most solid lead. We need to know what she knows."

"Amanda knew who where and when these guys would attack. Chances are that if she knows that, she probably knows who put the thugs up to it." Jimmy's logic was spot on as usual.

"We could get her to work with us- the fuckers would never know what hit them!" Zacky realized suddenly.

It was Matt that took the initiative to actually call her.