Night Shadow Read online

  Night

  SHADOW

  The Night Trilogy: Book Three

  by

  B.K. Bass

  Published in the U.S. by B.K. Bass, 2021

  First Edition

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Night Shadow (The Night Trilogy, #3)

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  EPILOGUE

  About the Author

  COPYRIGHT © 2021 BY B.K. BASS

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First Edition, 2021

  Published by B.K. Bass in the United States of America

  Cover art licensed from Dreamstime.com

  B.K. Bass can be reached at https://bkbass.com/contact/

  For behind-the-scenes access and the latest news, subscribe to B.K.’s newsletter here: http://eepurl.com/dpaU6f

  Visit the author’s website at https://bkbass.com

  Books by B.K. Bass

  The Ravencrest Chronicles

  Seahaven

  The Hunter’s Apprentice

  The Giant and the Fishes

  Tales from the Lusty Mermaid, a Ravencrest Chronicles Anthology

  The Ravencrest Chronicles: Omnibus One

  Curse of the Pirate King (The Pirate King Duology: Book One)

  Shadow of the Pirate King (The Pirate King Duology: Book Two)

  The Night Trilogy

  Night Shift

  Night Life

  Night Shadow

  The Tales of Durgan Stoutheart

  Warriors of Understone

  Companions of the Stone Road (forthcoming)

  The Burning Sands

  Blood of the Desert

  Into the Red Wastes (forthcoming)

  Beyond the Veil

  Parting the Veil

  Standalone Novels

  What Once Was Home

  CHAPTER ONE

  I dashed through the shadows and slid to a stop over the wet concrete, kneeling next to a steel shipping container. The metallic monoliths surrounded me; some lying in isolation, others crammed shoulder-to-shoulder and stacked two, three, or even four high. Massive cranes loomed in silence above, ready to load the containers onto the nearby ship that dwarfed the machinery. Russian characters were painted on the bow that read Бегемот, which was an apt name for the massive ship: Begemot, or Behemoth, to us English speakers.

  Despite its size, I could barely make out the ship across the dockyard in the darkness. Clouds obscured the moon, and no lights were on in the yard. A gentle rain fell on the city, and a thick fog rolled in waves from the sea.

  I looked over my shoulder as Magdela caught up and kneeled behind the container next to me. We had been there two weeks prior, and I almost died. This was almost the same situation. We had a lead that the Russian mob—the Bratva—were loading a shipment bound for the motherland, and we were there to stop them. Last time, Boris was running the show. In my eagerness to get revenge, I charged out of hiding and got myself shot. Only some quick thinking, quick shooting, and skilled driving from Magdela saved my life.

  This time would be different.

  A faint whistle let me know our backup was in place. I peered through the darkness as a dull, red light flashed on and off several containers away. Another lit further along. And another. In all, six lights blinked in a series from our position to the edge of the docks. Eight of us weren’t much, but I didn’t expect the Russians to have many more. And we’d have surprise on our side.

  I was sure they’d be expecting something, though. We tried to crash the party last time they had one. Their benefactor in the megacorportions was just taken down. And this wasn’t the first time street gangs organized against the mob since then. In fact, we’d run operations almost daily, trying to take down the intertwined web of corruption between the mobs and the city from the ground up.

  A tap on my shoulder broke my chain of thought, and Magdela pointed out toward the open dockyard beyond the rows of shipping containers. As expected, a convoy of five black SUVs rumbled through the silence, their headlights like burning beacons defying the darkness of the night. They pulled up near the containers, and two armed men dismounted from each truck.

  Only ten. They’re getting cocky, I thought. Or careless.

  Most of the men oversaw unloading their cargo while another walked over. He, like the rest, had a snub-nosed full-auto slung over his shoulder. He held it at the hip, panning back and forth as he approached the shadows. All I could do was hope the gangbangers hidden there would stay cool and stick to the plan: We let the mobsters load the cargo, then we hit them when there was less chance of harming the goods.

  Back at the trucks, over two dozen thin, haggard, and broken-spirited young women—bound with zip ties around their wrists and gagged—were ushered toward the containers. Some resisted, but all they got for their effort was a pistol-whipping. One passed out after being struck and was dragged against the damp, rough concrete.

  Magdela’s hand tightened on my shoulder. As her nails dug into my flesh, I realized she was struggling not to lash out at the brutal treatment of the women. She could have easily been in their situation. Half or more of them were likely ‘recruited’ by her former employer, Sergei. He was the owner of Dreamworks, the flesh bar where she had worked as a cyberjack—plugged into his VR mainframe to give the simulations a human touch by tapping into the emotional centers of her brain.

  The whole thing started there. Magdela’s coworker and friend Evie turned up as a stiff on my shift as a detective for the New Angeles Police Department. Solving her murder led me to discover the twisted mess tangling the Russian mob and Talbot Industries in this flesh smuggling ring. In the process, they murdered my partner, Frank, and framed me for it.

  I laid my hand on Magdela’s and squeezed. I trusted her discipline, but it didn’t hurt to let her know I understood her frustration. Hell, I jumped the gun last time. If anybody understood how hard it was to be patient and play things smart, it was me. I learned the hard way that getting angry and rushing into a gunfight could get yourself, or somebody you cared about, killed.

  Finally, the last of the girls—the one being dragged across the ground—was loaded into the shipping container. As the mobsters closed the door, latched it, and secured it with a large padlock, every muscle in my body tensed.

  My fingers clenched around the cold steel of the forty-five caliber semi-automatic pistol as I raised it. It was a far cry from the hand cannon Frank favored, but a step up from the small revolver I carried for so many years. The guys on the police force gave me no end of shit for being old-fashioned, and that was only one reason.

  I leveled the gun and aimed at the man who beat and dragged the woman. He let his own weapon hang from its sling and lit up a cigarette. I centered my aim on the soft, red glow of the tiny ember in the middle of his face. Everybody was waiting for me to take the first shot. I took a deep breath, let it out, and squeezed the trigger.

  The explosion of the weapon firing sundered the silent night, and
my target spun foot over head as he fell. A series of loud cracks filled the night as the hidden gangbangers opened fire, and rapid, loud pops rang in my ears as Magdela unloaded an entire clip from her small sidearm.

  Most of the mobsters fell where they stood before they knew where the threat was coming from. As bullets tore through their ranks, three still standing made a mad dash for the trucks.

  They never made it.

  Within seconds of firing the first shot, it was over. The only sound left was the ringing in my ears and the faint sound of crying and screaming from within the shipping container, muffled by gags and steel walls. By the time I blinked the stinging smoke of Magdela’s gunfire from my eyes, she was running across the dockyard. Razor and Stitch appeared from the shadows and met her before the container holding the women, the latter bearing a heavy set of bolt cutters. Four other members of the Chimeras street gang emerged as well, these heading toward the fallen Russians and relieving them of their weapons and any other valuables.

  I caught up with Magdela as Stitch squeezed the cutters down on the padlock. He tossed it aside with a dull, metallic thud, and Magdela raised the lever to unlatch the huge box. Flashlights shone in to reveal women huddled together in one corner. There was plenty of room for them to spread out, but they pressed themselves together like nesting rats in a feeble scramble for safety.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Magdela said in a soothing tone as she entered the massive crate.

  Letting her reassure the victims, the boys and I walked away. The last thing the victims needed to be presented with right then was more armed men.

  “Hey,” Razor hissed toward Stitch. “Take the cutters and open some more crates. See if there’s anything else worth taking.”

  Stitch nodded and ran off to the next container.

  “We don’t have time—” I started.

  “Chill, little piggy,” Razor said as he clapped a hand on my shoulder. “By the time your squeeze gets those bitches calmed down and in the trucks, we’ll be done.”

  I glared at him. “How about a little respect?”

  “Whoa, sorry.” Razor held his hands up, palms out, with a pistol in one of them. “Just, stay cool. Won’t take us lo—”

  “Razor! You gotta see this,” Stitch called out.

  He’d only made it through three other crates. As we walked over, I peered inside the first two. Those held sundry raw materials, mostly sheets of corrugated aluminum and pipes, but the third was a different story altogether.

  Plastic boxes filled the container, some piled to the roof. Stitch dragged one out, cut off the lock, and opened it. Inside, nestled in protective foam, were layers of American-made assault rifles—all of them military grade. He opened another, larger crate, and we found ourselves staring down at a pair of shoulder-fired rocket launchers.

  Razor let out a sharp whistle and rocked back on his heels.

  “Fucking motherload, dude,” Stitch whispered.

  “No way,” I said as I slammed the second crate shut. “We can’t let this stuff get onto the streets.”

  The two of them gave me a deadly stare, and Razor’s hand tightened on his pistol. I was suddenly aware of the other gangbangers filtering into the container to see what was going on.

  “Which side you on, little piggy?” Razor asked. “See, we thought you were on ours now. That’s why we agreed to help with these little missions of yours. Still, we don’t work for free. We expect some spoils of war.”

  Moments of silence followed. My heart thundered in my chest and my pulse beat a frenetic rhythm in my ears. The tension was thick enough I thought I might have to dig myself out of the container with a shovel. Metaphorically or not, I was buried up to my neck with no way out.

  “Fine,” I said. “But only what fits in the trucks after the girls are loaded.” They couldn’t unload the whole container, and what they could reasonably haul off would barely be a slice of this massive cake of death.

  Razor shrugged. “Not like I got a boat to load this on. Deal.”

  “And,” I said. “I’m paid in advance on your ‘spoils of war’. You owe me.”

  Razor spat to the side, nearly missing my foot, but he nodded regardless. “You got it, little piggy. Your own private army,” he paused to pat the crate of assault rifles, “for your own little crusade.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  TEN WEEKS LATER

  The dream is always the same.

  I’m seated. I can’t move. It’s dark. The odors of mold, sweat, blood, and sewage fill my nostrils. I struggle to see through the shadows. A single, grime-covered light flickers from the ceiling of the small utility room. Valves and pipes obscure damp brick walls covered in a sickly green film of algae that glistens in the faint illumination. Shadows vaguely resembling men waver along the walls in the darkness. A figure sits across from me, tied to a chair, gagged.

  There is a gun in my hand. I don’t remember how it got there. I try to let go, but something is squeezing my fingers against the grip. My arm raises, leveling the gun at the face of the figure seated across from me. I struggle to pull my index finger away from the trigger, but it’s being pressed down on the narrow strip of steel that can decide the fate of a man.

  “What’s more interesting than a cop killer?” a disembodied voice asks.

  I feel like I should say something sardonic in response, but I’m still trying to figure out where I am, why I’m here, and who the man staring into my eyes from across the room is.

  Those eyes seem familiar. I should know them. There’s something new there, though. Something I’d never seen in them before this night. Is it fear? Sorrow? Regret? Before I can decide which, the voice speaks again.

  “No, a cop who is a cop killer.”

  That’s right; I’m a cop. A damn good one, too. Or at least, I was. Before...

  A finger presses down on mine. A hand is holding mine closed. I’m not aiming the gun. I’m not pulling the trigger. Even so, it slides back. The hammer clacks down. The firing pin plinks against the priming charge of the round. The world explodes into chaos. A bright flash fills the tiny room. An explosion of noise, thunderous in the silence, echoes off the brick walls and reverberates through the copper pipes.

  The gun jerks back in my hand. A single bullet spins through the air between us. Those eyes are still locked on mine. Pleading? Forgiving? Blaming?

  His face comes apart as the lead bullet drills through his skull between his eyes. Flesh parts under the force of the impact. Soon, a mass of blood, bone, hair, and brain tissue splatters against the brick wall behind him. The body follows shortly after, still tied to the chair, slamming into the wall before slumping to the floor.

  A shadow detaches itself from a corner of the small room. It floats closer, wavering as it enters the light with a hint of a gleeful smile. “See!” it says. “I told you!”

  Odors of vodka and cigarettes fill my nostrils, burning alongside the lingering cordite from the gunshot. My arm is jerked to the right, toward the gleeful shadow. The grin disappears.

  “Wait...”

  The gun goes off and the shadows spins. It fires again, and again, and again. A young man, no more than twenty-five, sprawls to the ground. Blood pools around him, blossoming out and running through the grooves of the concrete floor like floodwaters overflowing a riverbank.

  The pressure on my hand is released. The gun falls to the floor. Other shadows, other figures, filter from the room.

  A sharp pain stabs into my arm, and everything becomes a blur. The last thing I see before it all fades away is a face grinning at me, seemingly satisfied beyond measure. This face... this man... this was who squeezed the trigger.

  No... It was me who squeezed the trigger.

  Did I?

  Or did he?

  That face: It belongs to somebody I should recognize. There’s a name that goes with that face.

  Boris.

  He smiles at me, then turns to leave as darkness consumes me.

  I woke covered i
n sweat despite the autumn chill permeating the small apartment. My bare chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm, outpaced by the frantic beating of my heart. I rolled over, grasping blindly in the darkness for the bedside table and my cigarettes.

  “Harold?” Magdela groaned behind me.

  “Yeah,” I muttered as I patted down the table. I finally felt the reassuring rectangle of the pack and closed my hand over it. Next to it was the cold chrome of an old-fashioned flip-top lighter.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I rolled back over with a cigarette in my mouth, flipped open the lighter, and thumbed the flint. Sparks and a sudden flame seared my eyes, and the familiar burn of smoke warmed my throat and chest.

  “Hey,” Magdela spoke again, this time rolling over and propping herself up on an elbow. “Are you okay?” She laid a hand on my chest, then drew it back and wiped it off on the sheets. “You’re sweating.”

  I took a long drag and let my eyes linger on the red glow illuminating her features. “No shit,” I said, letting the smoke drift out along with the words.

  “Another dream?”

  I sat up, any pretense of going back to sleep gone. The woman had the patience of a saint for putting up with me, but damn if she didn’t love to talk. “Yeah, same as usual.” I flicked on the light on the bedside table, squinting as the bare bulb propped atop a rusty, shadeless lamp threw back the darkness.

  Magdela sat up as well, a three-size-too-large t-shirt bearing the emblem of a twentieth century rock band hanging off one shoulder. Her pale skin gleamed like fresh milk in the stark light, offset by her flowing black hair. I tried not to stare, but even after three months together, there was something about her that made me feel thirty years younger; like a teenager again.

  She reached over and wiggled a slender finger in a ‘come hither’ gesture that would have gotten that younger man excited. I knew what she really wanted, though. After taking another drag, I handed her the cigarette.

  “So,” she said between puffs, “are we going to talk about it?”