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  Not finding any suitable cover, Willy leaned around the dumpster. She dreaded what she saw… The man, hands tucked into his hoody’s front pocket, was coming to investigate the noise.

  “Shit, Will, now what?”

  She knew what she needed to do. She just hoped she wasn’t going to regret it. Looking down at her black shirt, Willy unfastened the top three buttons and opened the garment wide enough to get a good look at her chest. Cleavage was one thing that most men’s eyes couldn’t avoid.

  Even behind a mangy dumpster.

  Peeking out again, she saw that the assailant was only thirty or so feet away, having a hard time looking her way because of the western sun. Getting ready, she slid her gun back into the back of jeans. Counting to five, she stepped out and gave the hooded man her sexiest grin.

  It worked…well…sort of.

  His eyes went straight to her boobs, but his hand still snapped up a gun, just slower. Lashing out, Willy backhanded the weapon from the gangbanger’s grip, earning a grunt of disapproval from him. Not letting him rebound, she launched forward, striking him in the face with a quick jab, breaking his nose and watering his eyes. Naturally, his hands went to his face.

  Willy’s booted foot went to his crotch.

  When he keeled over, Willy caught him in the face with a knee strike, knocking him out cold on his feet. Snagging the front of his hoodie, Willy dragged the man behind the dumpster and used his forward momentum to her advantage, throwing him face first into the side of the building. Quickly, she reached into the container and proceeded to cover his inert form with a half-dozen of the filthy, black bags.

  Wiping her hands on her jeans, Willy unconsciously fixed her hair and buttoned up her shirt. Satisfied, she picked up the guy’s felled gun, slipping it into the front of her pants, and looked back down the alley. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that nobody had seen what happened. The last thing she needed was to get into an all-out gun war.

  She moved forward, running on the balls of her feet, avoiding any, and all, puddles. Splashing around in alley water was not only gross but noisy. As she got closer, though, she slowed. Now, in between the two buildings, Willy stopped and took cover behind a second dumpster.

  There, Willy calmed her growing anxiety and drew her pistol. She really didn’t want to have to use it. This wasn’t a human trafficking outfit like she’d just dealt with in Japan. These were just some drug-dealing punks in serious need of a beatdown. They didn’t deserve to die.

  Even if they did shoot my abuelo.

  The sight of him on the floor of her parents’ home, bleeding, and in pain, shook her. Willy wanted to make these people pay. If she had to kill any of them in the process, she wouldn’t bat an eye. She was trained not to.

  Before moving off, Willy tucked her gun beneath her armpit and removed the unconscious man’s gun from her belt. She released the magazine from the bottom of the handgrip and expelled the bullets, one at a time, discarding the pistol and the empty mag into the dumpster. She didn’t need its owner waking up and having such easy access to a weapon.

  Keeping her Glock at the low-ready, Willy rounded the container and approached the rear of the empty SUV. She took thirty seconds to take in the area just outside of the warehouse. Listening carefully, she heard…nothing. There was no sound coming from anywhere around her.

  Where are they?

  Staying low, she crept up to the double doors and gently tried the knob. It didn’t budge. The windows were covered too. She wouldn’t be seeing the inside of the building from here. Gritting her teeth, Willy looked around and noticed a catwalk above her head.

  Slipping her gun back into her jeans, she headed for the dumpster and quickly mounted it. Using a drainage pipe, she scaled the side of the warehouse like Spider-woman, praying her sweaty fingers didn’t slip.

  Fifteen feet later, Willy latched onto the catwalk’s railing and vaulted over it, groaning when her feet rattled on impact. Again, she waited to see if someone came running to check on what all the ruckus was about.

  Silence.

  Confused, Willy stood and moved to the closest uncovered window—strangely, none of them were blocked. She was shocked at what she saw. Actually, she was stunned at what she didn’t see. She couldn’t come up with an answer, so instead, she just stood there and scratched her head.

  “What the…?”

  3

  Willy couldn’t believe it! The warehouse was totally empty. There wasn’t a single person or machine within it. She turned and looked both ways down the alley, seeing no one in sight. Shrugging, she drew her gun and smashed the window. Swiftly, Willy cleared the remaining glass from the frame and climbed in.

  Crouching on a similar metal catwalk, Willy aimed her gun down at the floor below. The interior of the building was a single, vacant room with thirty-foot ceilings. It took her all of three seconds to look over the space, still dumbfounded at what she saw. There was no way that the men she saw earlier could’ve left that quickly without her seeing it. Which meant…

  Secret door?

  It felt too damn fictional to be true, but Willy was all out of ideas. There had to be a hidden hatch or door somewhere. She decided to take a closer look and scaled a nearby ladder, stepping onto the concrete floor with quiet grace. If she rushed, her footfalls would sound like gunshots in a room this big.

  Still aiming her gun forward, she checked each corner first, moving to the center of the cavernous room as she did. The only thing she could figure was that there was a camouflaged elevator of some kind, and since there was no visible handle to speak of, it must’ve been operated by remote.

  “These guys are pros—real hardcore,” she whispered to herself. Her sister had gotten into trouble with some seriously dangerous people. Whatever group operated out of the warehouse, they weren’t some two-bit gang or neighborhood drug dealers.

  She shook her head. “And I came alone. Fuckin’ brilliant.”

  Willy stopped in what she estimated was the center of the warehouse. Shoulders slumped, she did a three-sixty and growled in annoyance. For good measure, she stomped her foot on the floor, feeling like a pissed off “tween.” Instead of the dull thud that usually associated itself with something pounding on solid concrete, the blow was met with a hollow bong.

  The floor beneath her wasn’t what it seemed.

  “Gotcha,” she said, kneeling. She rubbed her hand across its surface, impressed with the forgery. It felt the same as regular concrete except for one flaw. She didn’t really know how to describe it, but to her, it felt new—fresh—like it was only recently installed.

  The fact that there was a sizeable basement-type structure in South Florida also threw her for a loop. The water table was too close to the surface for there to be basements. Then again, this area of Miami was higher than the rest. Maybe, with the right designers, it could be done. Regardless of how it was built, the construction must’ve cost a fortune.

  “Who are these guys?” she asked herself.

  As she finished her question, the floor began to move. Scrambling off the opening panels, Willy watched in awe. The two pieces quietly slid away from one another on whisper-soft hydraulic hinges, settling onto the actual floor seconds later.

  Then, a head appeared, followed shortly by the rest of his body. She recognized him as one of the three men that had threatened her and her family, not that she could see his face at the moment. He was turned the other way, facing the front door of the warehouse. She did recall his bald head, though.

  He was carrying something odd too. In his arms was a classic white hazmat suit. It reminded her of Doc Brown’s suit from Back to the Future. What a gun-toting thug was doing with a “hazardous materials” suit was beyond her.

  She didn’t wait to ask him either.

  Staying quiet, Willy waited for him to step off the parked platform. Next, she calmly stalked around the opening, raised her gun high above her head, and pistol-whipped him in the back of the head. He went down like a ton of b
ricks, dropping the suit…and a small black device.

  Willy smiled. It was a remote of some kind. She glanced back to the elevator, seeing its doors close.

  Bingo.

  After unlocking the front doors, she dragged the unconscious man outside. While not overly big herself, Willy’s strength mostly came from internal desire. She willed herself to get the job done whereas some people bulled their way through their problems. It didn’t help that the guy was over two-hundred pounds of deadweight.

  Willy wanted nothing more than to dump the guy in the closest dumpster, but he was just too damn heavy to do it by herself. So, she did the same thing to this guy and hid him beneath a mountain of garbage. Luckily, the trucks didn’t come until Monday.

  Thank god for the weekend.

  She was about to dump his hazmat suit but got a crazy idea instead. Willy needed to bust these people before something terrible happened. Plus, she still needed to find her sister. It would make sense that they’d be holding her at their base of operations if they were threatening her life.

  Maria has to be downstairs.

  Donning the protective wears, Willy strolled forward, uncomfortable with having no access to her gun. She’d have to make do, and she knew keeping a weapon visible would call too much attention to herself. Waddling forward, she thumbed the remote, watching the floor open once more.

  The opening separated, revealing the platform to wherever. It naturally led underground to some sort of lab. What she’d actually find there was what worried her—and it took a lot to upset Willy. She stepped in, turned and faced the relocked front doors, activating the state-of-the-art lift system once more.

  The four-by-four space vibrated and sunk beneath her feet, beginning her descent into the unknown. Willy immediately started planning two steps ahead of herself, hoping she could swiftly find something to use as a weapon. There was a reason “Dumpster Jr.” had a hazmat suit with him, so she assumed there were noxious chemicals in the air.

  Or there was a possibility that they “could” be in the air.

  Once the hatch above her closed, Willy was all but blind. It was pitch-black in the vertical shaft, making it that much harder to guestimate her depth. She ballparked it at three stories—maybe four. It was impressive considering she was basically underwater now.

  She knew of some secret facilities within the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains—not that she was in any sort of similar circumstance. Some of them, however, were as many as ten stories deep. Some were deeper than that. Modern engineering amazed her sometimes.

  Light appeared around her ankles, indicating that her trip was almost over. Her muscles tightened, and her fists clenched shut. She was as ready as she could be. What greeted her was something remarkably…uninspiring.

  “Talk about an all-time buzzkill,” she mumbled to herself.

  The elevator finished in a dull room with a closed door and a single lightbulb. She half-expected to see some monstrous factory the size of the warehouse above her head. Instead, she saw nothing. There wasn’t even a hammer or wrench for her to use as a weapon. There was literally nothing around her.

  “Oookay.”

  Creeping forward, she dismounted the lift and slowly wrapped her gloved hand around the doorknob. Grimacing as the door creaked open, Willy peered through the one-inch gap she created and saw something she recognized.

  Test tubes…lots of them.

  There was a large-scale drug lab in the next room with dozens of tables sporting the tools of the trade. The left side of the room looked like it was outfitted to yield meth, while the center of the room was set up for cocaine. The right side was designed to produce her sister’s drug of choice, heroin.

  Maria had fought addiction for years, getting hooked before dropping out of med school. She had hooked up with a guy for a while who was a user himself. Never being shy about anything, Maria began her drug use in her junior year, dropping out two weeks before her finals. It was a shock to her unsuspecting parents, but not to Willy. She was able to see through the charade. She was trained to see through it. But she wanted her sister to ask them all for help. When it didn’t happen, they confronted her, driving her away even further.

  Willy hadn’t seen her hermanita in almost three years. Her grandpa assured her that Maria would be at her coming home party. It broke her heart that she wasn’t there. The feeling didn’t last, however. It was swiftly replaced with one of worry.

  The tables within the facility weren’t unmanned. Each one of them had an unsuited someone working diligently on whatever narcotic they were assigned to. If Willy had to guess, she figured that this was where Maria had been working recently. It’s probably how she came into possession of ten grand worth of drugs.

  Dammit, Maria, what were you doing?

  If her sister was THAT desperate for money, Willy wished she would’ve come to her or her parents. Even her abuelo would’ve helped without cluing in their parents. He knew things about both of them that Willy and Maria wouldn’t be caught dead revealing to their folks.

  With no one looking her way, Willy cautiously stepped into the long, rectangular room, keeping the door ajar just in case she had to dive back through. With all the chems lying around, Willy actually appreciated the hazmat suit now, even though it was loose and chaffing her armpits and inner thighs.

  Not to mention the smell inside.

  The guy that wore it before her sweated something fierce, giving the interior of the suit a nice case of secondhand B.O. Grimacing against the stink, she noticed that the last workstation on the right was unoccupied. Stepping lightly, she made her way over and began acting like she was working on the next batch of heroin. What she was really doing was casing the joint, keeping her eyes low and her face hidden.

  The first thing she noticed is that everyone working around her had their right ankle chained to their table.

  What the fuck? She sighed. Forced labor?

  Her sister’s involvement was starting to feel less voluntary than Willy initially thought. She was beginning to think that Maria had been made to work down here. Just then, someone came marching down the aisle at the center of the room.

  “Valdez!” he shouted, his voice slightly muffled by his duplicate hazmat suit.

  The person to Willy’s left looked up, and it’s then she saw it was another woman. Valdez’s hands shook when her name was announced. Willy could instantly tell that the woman wasn’t here voluntarily. Her heart dropped, thinking back to the girls in Japan.

  More slaves.

  Not only were the people responsible for this place well-funded, but they were soulless monsters too. Even if the workers here owed insurmountable amounts of money to them, their freedom shouldn’t have been the price. Then again, Willy actually owned a moral compass. People like this didn’t.

  “Si?” she asked, standing at attention.

  “Doesn’t speak English either,” Willy mouthed silently.

  Illegal immigrants, if that’s what Valdez was, had a hard time finding work. This wasn’t what they came to America for, though. It didn’t matter what side of the wall you were on to believe that. This was wrong in every way possible.

  The “warden” stomped forward, kneeled, and unlocked Valdez’s ankle from the bolted-down leg of the table. He then grabbed the young girl by the upper arm and dragged her away, whimpering like a beaten dog. Willy wanted to follow them but didn’t want to be seen and thrown into open conflict—not yet.

  I need a weapon…

  She tried to pull her right arm into her suit, using her left hand to maneuver the material around. Just when she thought her wrist was going to break, it popped free. Grinning she fought the suit again, wrapped her arm around her back, finding the handgrip to her Glock. This time, she smiled wide.

  The forward angle made it much easier to get her arm back in place, and she did so with the gun shoved into the attached glove’s index finger. She sighed. The oversized sleeve was, indeed, long enough to compensate for the weapon and her sho
rter arm. If she had been in a smaller, female-sized suit, she would’ve had no shot.

  Glancing left, she spotted a single door in the corner of the room. She could clearly see a deadbolt lock too, and it would undoubtedly be locked. Worst case, Willy could always put a bullet in it and see what was on the other side.

  Feeling better about her situation, Willy stepped away from her station, earning a look of terror from the three closest…women. As she continued forward, the rest of the room, one by one, looked her way.

  All women.

  Shit.

  It was a drug ring’s sweatshop, operated by imprisoned girls of all ages. No one in Willy’s family had seen Maria in months. The only reason their grandpa thought she was coming by the house, was because of a phone call he had with her over a month ago. Willy realized that the call must’ve been right before Maria was brought here.

  Looking at a few of the women, Willy held a single finger up to the clear facemask, pressing on her lips, telling them to stay quiet. When she was halfway through the room, the set of double doors reopened at the rear of the room. Instead of standing and fighting, Willy did the smarter thing and dove beneath the closest workstation. She quickly scampered under the table shushing the older lady standing there.

  “Stay quiet, and I’ll help all of you get out of here,” Willy begged, speaking Spanish. Three quick nods answered her and then the worker got back at it.

  Willy’s first language was English, growing up in South Florida. Her family spoke Spanish fluently, but Willy and her sister were raised to speak English with the hopes of it furthering their education. But, like most Spanish speaking homes, they picked up on it and learned it anyway.

  “Hernandez!”

  Willy pressed her face against the floor and saw that it was the same man who had taken Valdez. Gripping her gun harder, she readied herself for her next move. She needed to wait until he was in the right spot, though.