Other links:
Sapphire Angel, Superheroine (Book 1)
Power Play (Book 2)
Deconstruction (Book 3)
Savage Dawn (Book 4)
Savage Vengeance (Book 5 - this story)
VIOLENCE WARNING: The two stories in the Savage Gang saga, and especially the second story, involve a gang practicing extreme violence toward everyone — women, the elderly, the protagonist, etc. The stories contain mature sexual content and violence as well. I am placing this warning on all chapters, including those without such violence, so you can choose whether to continue.
CHAPTER 28
A hood blocked Olivia Lockheed's vision as her captors directed her forward, hands on her shoulders. Earmuffs muted her hearing, further preventing her from discerning the details of her surroundings. But it was damp. That much she knew, even without the benefit of sight or sound.
The sensory deprivation made her feel as if she were adrift in space, where time meant nothing. She could have been marching ten minutes, or perhaps five hours. She couldn't be sure. They climbed and descended ladders and stairwells, further confusing her and scrambling any ability to guess as to her whereabouts.
At least the journey gave her a chance to reflect on the situation. She pondered how the gang could have found the safe house. Lockheed came to an unpleasant conclusion, albeit one she had suspected for some time. Howard Vincent. It had to be him. He was corrupt. And he had eyes in all places.
Mostly, though, she thought about how to stay alive. She needed to show she had value to these men, so they wouldn’t kill her, or worse.
Her journey ended when her captors tightened their grip, stopping her in place. She tensed, trying to listen through the earmuffs. A moment later, one man ripped the hood from her head, before sliding the earmuffs from her ears.
Lockheed squinted, allowing her eyes to adjust to to the light. Her chest tightened when her surroundings came into focus. Savage was still here, although his mask was gone, allowing her to see his face and hair. His was face rugged and hard, with large cheekbones to match his square jaw. His hair was brown and short, with the outline of a snake cut into the top. He appraised her with a sneer.
He sat at the opposite end of a rectangular table, like a CEO sitting in a boardroom. But this place wasn’t an office building. The rough-hewn stone walls were damp, just as she had sensed during her march, and the ceiling was hewn from hard rock. Was she underground?
In addition to a man standing at either side of her, three other gangsters occupied the room, sitting in the chairs closest to Savage. They watched the FBI woman through the eyeholes of their mask. Savage was the first to speak.
“Rocco Lynch,” Savage said. “I want him. Tell me how to sign into the portal you mentioned. Now. I want to see if it exists, or if you’re bullshitting me.”
Lockheed paused, gathering her courage, before answering.
“How long has my boss, Howard Vincent, been in your pocket?” she asked, ignoring the gang leader’s question.
Savage raised an eyebrow and his body tensed for a moment, before he broke into a grin. He spoke.
“Howard said you’re pretty smart, and would figure things out eventually. All the more reason we need to kill you. But tell me where Lynch is hiding, and I’ll make sure it doesn’t hurt too bad.”
“You won’t kill me,” Lockheed said with ice in her voice as she stared down the fearsome gang leader. “I know more than you could guess. And that information can be your downfall. If I’m not safe and in my bed soon, the dominoes start falling. I’ve planned for a situation like this. I’ve set things up. Things will go in motion, automatically.”
Savage scowled at her.
“You’re bluffing,” he said. “What else do you know?”
Lockheed smiled. “You think I’m going to tell you, so you can avoid what’s coming? I’m not that stupid.”
“This is all bullshit, boss,” one of the masked men at the table said. “She’s full of shit. If she knew how to hurt us, she’d have acted on it already.”
Savage stared at her for several seconds before breaking into a grin and turning to look at the gangster.
“You’re right,” Savage said, nodding at the man and laughing. “She knows jack shit. She’s planned for a situation like this? Bullshit. There’s no online portal, either. She’ll never learn where Lynch is. Let’s just kill her and be done with it.”
Lockheed felt the cool beads of perspiration forming near her hairline. Her pathetic bluff might have only hastened her demise. Her voice cracked when she next spoke.
“Tell me,” she said. “What turned Vincent? Money? Threats?”
Savage snorted. “The old man was easy. We just had to pay him off. He was sick of working on a government salary. If there’s one thing we have, it’s money.”
Lockheed flashed red as she considered her own meager pay and the danger she faced every day. She couldn’t fault Vincent. The man had been at this career much longer than she had. Was this the first time someone had bribed him? Or did he make a habit of it? If the latter, he had survived this long without getting caught.
Her life hanging in the balance, Lockheed’s mind churned at warp speed. She worked through possible bluffs and bargaining chips, discarding one after the other. None were feasible. Except one. But could she could down that path? Once she did, there was no going back. Her life would never be the same. She pictured Lady Justice holding a scale, with her oath to the FBI on one side, and her lifeless body on the other. She was out of options. She didn’t want to die, or suffer whatever else Savage had planned for her.
She decided.
“You could have tried to buy me, too, you know,” she said, raising an eyebrow and showing a thin smile. “You’re right. I don’t know where Lynch is. And there is no online portal. But I have something much better than anything Howard Vincent can give you.”
Savage snorted again. “Oh, really? And what’s that, bitch? More bluffing?”
“No. No bluffing. This is real.”
“What can you give us, then?
Lockheed inhaled, trying to calm herself, and making sure she was ready for this decision. She was. She had to be, if she wanted to live.
“I can give you Sapphire Angel,” she said.
The room was silent. Savage stared at her, saying nothing. But she could see the curiosity on his face. She continued.
“She’s embarrassed you at every turn, hasn’t she?” Lockheed said. “What if I told you I could serve her up to you on a silver platter?”
Savage watched Lockheed, his tongue between his lips, as he leaned back in his chair.
“I think you’re full of shit again,” he said.
“No, I can assure you I am not,” Lockheed replied. “I have met with Sapphire Angel more than once, and she’s agreed to work with me. If you want her, you can get to her through me. You’ll need to do the dirty work, of course, in taking her down. But I can deliver her to you, for you to handle. She'll never see it coming.”
Savage stared at the FBI woman again, his forehead creased. She had his attention now. But would he bite? If he didn’t, the next few moments might get very painful. Savage remained silent for several seconds before speaking.
"How would this work?" he asked.
"I reach out to her. I tell her I want to meet with her again — that I have a lead about your location. She shows up, but it's a trap. You take her down. And it's game over for America's sweetheart."
Savage studied Lockheed, again remaining silent for several seconds. When he spoke, the hint of a grin appeared on his face.
“You’ve earned yourself a reprieve,” he said, with a tremor of excitement in his voice. “For now. But you’re staying here. You can reach out to her from here. That way I can see if you’re bullshitting me and trying to save your skin.”
Lockheed shook her head.
“That won’t work,” she said. “Sapphire Angel and I have always met face to face. And I just met with her, and I had no leads for her. And I think she knows how to track my calls, somehow. She’ll know something is up if I call her so soon, or from here. Sapphire Angel will figure out something fishy is going on. She might figure it out, anyway.”
Savage scowled, but his body trembled. With anticipation?
“The little blond bitch knows how to track phone calls?” he asked. “You expect me to believe that?”
“Yes, I do. She has some impressive capabilities, which you should know. She often appears wherever you are, doesn’t she? Are those just lucky guesses?”
Savage frowned and scrunched his brow, staring at Lockheed. She could see she had gotten into his mind. Lockheed might get out of this yet. Savage spoke, seeming less certain of himself.
"She has a phone?" he asked. "Just give me the number. We'll use that to flush her out."
"You're not listening to me," Lockheed replied. "This has to go down perfectly, or she'll see right through it. Do you really want to risk that? Even if the risk is small, don't you want to maximize your chances? You're going to let me contact her.”
Lockheed watched as Savage’s mind churned, considering her words. Her words weren’t much of a stretch — at times she wondered if Sapphire Angel did have the ability to track her. As Savage stewed in his chair, Lockheed studied him. He seemed eager to get his hands on Sapphire Angel. Too eager. She pressed her advantage.
“The bottom line is, do you want her or not?” she asked. “If so, you need to be patient, and you need to let me leave this place. You can always find me again if I don’t deliver. But that’s not going to happen. I’ll come through. You'll be the one to hand Sapphire Angel her first defeat. And I know you want to make it a bad one. You want to humiliate and hurt her. This is your chance.”
Savage stared at Lockheed as he sat rocking back and forth in his chair. He muttered to himself before speaking aloud.
“How long until you can contact Sapphire Angel again without raising her suspicions?”
Lockheed made a snap judgment.
“Tomorrow morning,” she said. “And I can tell her I’ll meet with her tomorrow night. That should give you time to figure out a plan and get things ready.”
Savage considered her words, nodding. He exchanged glances with his men before turning his attention back to Lockheed. He spoke.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “My men are going to drop you off at your so-called safe house. By tomorrow morning, I’ll get word to you about how this will go down — how I’m going to set up that costumed bitch. And then you can reach out to her, and we can set things in motion. Don’t think about finding a new place to stay, because I’ll have men watching the place. If you try to leave before I say it’s okay, or try to screw us over some other way…”
Savage’s voice trailed off, and he sliced his finger across his throat. Lockheed swallowed.
“Good,” he said. “You understand. We will hunt you down if you betray us. You will be our primary target. But if you come through for us, you’ll live a happy life.”
Lockheed held his gaze but said nothing.
“Get her out of here,” Savage said, alternating his gaze between the two men on either side of Lockheed. “The same way we brought her in.”
Lockheed didn’t argue as one man slipped earmuffs over her head, and the other pulled the black hood into place, sending her world into darkness.
Maximus Savage watched as his men marched the hooded FBI woman from the room. He grimaced, holding a hand to his stomach. Larry Oberkfell had administered the last two vials to the gang leader a few hours earlier, and Savage had noticed a difference within minutes. Strength. Power.
But this new feeling hadn’t been without cost. Savage had spent an hour vomiting into the pool of water in the hideout’s main room, as his men had looked on with concern. He almost hadn’t pulled himself together in time to join his men in snatching Lockheed from the safe house.
Savage gestured to Crusher Barnes, who stood a few feet away from him.
“Come with me,” he said, before walking toward his private quarters. Barnes followed the gang leader, who sat on the edge of his bed.
“This could happen fast, if that bitch comes through for us,” Savage said. “We need to be ready. I’ll figure out how we get her to bring us Sapphire Angel, and where it will go down. I have a different job for you.”
“What’s that?” Barnes asked.
“We need someone to document things when I destroy the superheroine. Not if. When. We need someone who has a history with the Savage Gang. Someone who just returned to the job.”
Savage grabbed his laptop, tapped a few keys, and spun the screen toward Barnes. Megan Lawlor’s image and profile page from the Channel 10 website filled the screen. She was the same woman Rocco Lynch and other gang members had kidnapped and taken to Italian Lake in a snowstorm, to use as a hostage. Savage Angel had rescued her, defeating Lynch and the men, and handing the gang a temporary setback.
Barnes scrunched his nose.
“I thought you had your sights set on Ryan Addington?” the big man said. “You said he was the resident expert on Sapphire Angel.”
“Nah, not with Lawlor back on the job. I want you to nab her for this one. It’s perfect — she was there the night the blond bitch beat Rocco and his men. Lawlor should be the one to make sure the entire world sees me destroy Sapphire Angel.”
Other links:
Sapphire Angel, Superheroine (Book 1)
Power Play (Book 2)
Deconstruction (Book 3)
Savage Dawn (Book 4)
Savage Vengeance (Book 5 - this story)
I don’t believe—for a single burger-flipping second—that Olivia Lockheed is GENUINELY selling Sapphire Angel out to the Savage Gang here…..she “likes” Sapphire (ewww) too much for her to sincerely go through with this. I’m impressed with how quickly she came to the correct revelation that Howard Vincent was behind the safehouse’s exposure, though. Then again, when you’re in the FBI, you pick up a thing or two regarding deducing skills. Speaking of them, Savage explaining Vincent’s reasoning for working as a Savage Gang mole for the FBI kind of tugged at the heart a bit; it is true that government salaries are often unfulfilling and almost always don’t match up with the time and effort needed to do the jobs. Still, I feel like upending his entire section of the justice system may have been a bit too far, especially if it’s to such a merciless and ruthless group like the Savage Gang.
I don’t know how Olivia Lockheed’s going to get ahold of Sapphire easily now, though, especially since Sapphire thinks Lockheed left her behind after their most recent meeting when the latter got kidnapped by the Savage Gang. Maybe if Lockheed just takes some time to explain what happened—AND if Sapphire has any patience left in her—they can start putting together a plan against the Gang now that Lockheed has seen them in-person. Maybe where Howard Vincent is a “genuine” mole for the Savage Gang, Lockheed will instead be a “fake” mole…..? And eventually she and Vincent will come to blows at one point……?
And not only that, but we also have Wayne Steele & the Justice Seekers, who are just against anything Savage Gang-related. Wonder if they’ll ever find out that Vincent (and maybe Lockheed, ambiguously) have sold their sect of the FBI out to the Gang…..if so, maybe they’ll try to terminate them and make an already-complicated situation all the more worse. So many directions!
I have a feeling we’ll hear from either Team Sapphire or Team Hammer next. Or even Majid Azari and/or the silver-eyed man!