Godfrey

In the faint distant you could hear the whimper of a small child. As we sit hidden in the woods, we check over our weapons, our devices and make sure that we are in communication with our team at the base. “How many men can you see in imaging?” Lewis asks, speaking softly into his headset. Lewis is our team leader. He has been with us since we were in our infancy and his loyalty knows no bounds. There is nothing he wouldn’t do for us. “Five on the first floor, eight on the lower floor. The boy is with the main target and the Martinez’s are lined up along the south facing wall. Jacob has scanned the area and no alarms or cameras are visible but proceed with caution. The images are being sent to you now. Mind your fire and get them out unharmed” a voice with authority bounds through the small headsets in our ears. The voice I know all to well as the one in my head. Always pushing me to do better and always making me feel less then what I am. Markus Godfrey, my older brother doesn’t work in the field anymore. He gave that up to run the operations from headquarters and front the IT firm that my parents built when we were children. It took a lot for him to step back but he had too. Someone had to run the show when my mother died. It fell on him to continue her legacy. “Copy that.” Lewis replies, motioning for the rest of the team to huddle together. Lewis and myself are joined by Samantha, Edison and Craig. Markus sent in his best agents on this mission. This happens to one of those cases that our little operation was made for. A man by the name of Sico Vantino was holding a family of five hostage inside. Nothing new for the Spanish/American millionaire who, when he’s not making trades on the stock market, is abducting and murdering whole families for his own sick and twisted pleasure. When we took this case, Markus briefed us as a team and we sat in a dark room as we watched footage of one of his family annilations.

We have seen some disturbing things in our time but what we witnessed that day has haunted our thoughts and waking moment and we hunted down the man responsible for such violence. Every single one of us is ready for what we are about to walk into. It’s taken our team three months of careful surveillance, investigation and patience to be able to catch Sico in the act and make sure that he never has the opportunity to destroy a family and take innocent lives, again. Sico, would have continued to get away with it, if it wasn’t for one of his board members finding the video by accident and contacting our organisation. We are the phone call the rich and powerful make when they want bad people to disappear with no questions asked. When this board member brought this to the attention of his peers, they all agreed that the best thing to do was to have him eliminated. Quietly.

The underground has a system. A decade ago, my mother Nora Godfrey, used her resources to create a digitally app that to anyone else is just a silly game that nobody ever plays but with the right passcode it unlocks what we call, the blackboard. There, clients from around the globe post their ads with jobs they want done. Markus is very selective with the jobs he takes. And as one of the moderators of the blackboard, ensures that every job posted is above board. Those marked for death must be there for a reason. One instance, a jilted groom wanted revenge on his fiancée for leaving him and used the board to hire someone to kill her. Markus ensured that the authorities were handed that information on a silver platter and watched from his blacked out SUV as the jilted groom was handcuffed and arrested for hiring a contact killer to kill his ex fiancée. Word spread fast that the board was not to be used for revenge and was there for those who believe justice needs to be served.

And that’s how men like Sico get what’s coming to them.

As we all huddle together to listen to instructions, we pause as we hear the whimpers get louder and shouting carrying through the woods behind the old warehouse. “This is it. Olivia, I want you up high with your rifile aimed directly on Vantino. Samantha, you and Edison take the left and Craig and I will take the right. No gunfire until we have all bodies in sight. Edison, the five on the first floor. Can you take them down without armour?” Lewis asks, staring at Edison. With a smirk, Edison nods. “Not even a question, boss.” Edison holsters his weapons and cracks his knuckles. As an ex black obs navy seal, Edison is a force to be reckoned with. He will have those bodies on the floor before we even manage to breath the same air as them. “Olivia, you take the one on the right and head upstairs, there is another guard up there you can take out before manning your post. Samantha, you take out the one on the left and Edison that leaves you the three in the centre. After the floor is clear, we all branch out and like I said, no gunfire until Olivia has eyes on target. Let’s get this done, quickly. On three.” Lewis counts down and we break. We all fan out and approach the building with caution. Staring up at the warehouse, I imagine how terrified this family is and what they must be thinking. The surroundings look a lot like what we saw in the video which tells me this is where Sico brings all his victims. The warehouse is in the middle of nowhere in Norway. 40 miles from any resemblence of civilisation. Sico must know the area well if he chooses this spot. How many more families suffered this fate before he was discovered? How many more would suffer if he hadn’t been? The thought chills me and makes me clamp down on my rifle like it’s my last lifeline and I smile at the thought that in a few minutes. I’ll have this scumbags head in my vision and I choose if he lives to breath the same air for a little while longer or dies in the same space he tortured his victims. As we prepare to take out his men. I wonder who in their right mind would take a job protecting a serial killer. The way that this man hurts his victims. How could anyone stand by and watch that happen again and again? It’s this thought that seals their fate. They may simple stand by as he brutalises his victims but they all but pull the trigger themselves by allowing this macabre act to continue. Craig slips through the door unnoticed and holds it open for the rest of us as we file in. I immediately walk down the hall to the right and spot my first target. Moving my rifle behind my back, I quietly step forward and with one swift move hold his head in my both hands and snap his neck, moving quickly to grab his body and lower it to the ground. I look up and Samantha has taken down the guard on the left side of the hall and Edison has his switchblade out and with three strikes the men near the closed door are struck down. Samanatha and Craig are right there to catch their fallen bodies so they don’t make a sound and then with a wave of his hand, Lewis instructs us to push forward and find our posts for the final showdown. Lewis moves in front of me and takes out his hunting knife. I stand against the wall as he moves towards the next guard grabbing his forehead and slicing his throat letting his body sag against him and then fall to the floor. The guard on the opposite ends turns around slowly but before he can speak or raise his weapon. I reach behind my back and grab my bow and arrow out. I aim it at him and fire. It hits him in the chest and he stumbles back into Craig who snaps his neck to make sure he is really dead and then his body is too, laid on the ground. Craig then heads back downstairs. Lewis nods at me and I slide across the floor and spin with my back against the wall. He leaves me to head back downstairs and I get my rifile ready. I aim it at Sicos head and wait for further instructions. I stare at the scene before me. Sico has a little boy, no more then six years old against his chest and he has a gun pointed to the boys head. The family we’ve come to know as the jessep’s are hanging by their hands under the window all four gagged. A mother, father, brother and sister watch helplessly as Sico instructs the boy to choose who will die first. Sico only ever pulls the trigger once. He makes the youngest member of the family pull the trigger each other time. His rule. Only one of his family members can survive. The youngest chooses who that is. Nine times out of ten it’s always the mother who survives. Then Sico shoots the youngest in the head in front of the mother then he turns his rage on her. What happens to her is what makes my blood boil. The mother witnesses everything that happens to her family and then has to endure one of the most excruciating deaths. As a Criminal minds fan, I know that must mean that he has mother issues. He gets off on the torture he inflicts on the mother’s and heaven knows what happens if the youngest member chooses someone else. It’s bound to happen. If I was in this situation, I’d shoot my mother first. My father would be second only so he didn’t have to see his children be murdered. My brother would have to witness my demise before he’d wish for death without anyone holding a gun to his head. As much as my brother and I clash, I know in my heart that I mean more to him then our parents ever did. He was always close with our mother. Unlike me, who has hated her since I was a child. I’m closest to my father, who Markus has never seen eye to eye. My thoughts are interrupted by his voice in my earpiece. “Are you all in position?” Markus asks, ready as we are to take this bastard out. One after the other, the team fires off their responses and Markus focuses on me. “It’s on you now Liv.” My childhood nickname, which I hate that he calls me, especially when we are working. “What’s it going to be? Headshot or kneecap?” He asks. I think back to the video we watched and the possible victims we found during our investigations. I look at the petrified looks on the Martinez’s faces and the little boy who’s so scared he has wet himself and has cuts on his tiny frame where Sico is torturing him to fire the first shot that will kill one of his family. I know in that instant that a quick death is not what this kind of evil deserves. This kind of evil deserves to suffer. “Headshot is too kind. When was the last time we went on a hike?” I ask softly. I hear the team chuckle in my ear. “Agreed” they fire off one by one. Markus gives the final order. “Take your aim, soldier.” I smirk and get Sicos left knee in my sight. “On my count..” I stare at the boys scared expression, “it will all be over soon” I whiper to myself, willing him to hear me. “Eagle eye...fox two.” I fire a shot and it connects with Sico’s knee. He screams and falls backwards. The little boy dives forward and screams, as does his family. Edison has two guards down before the shot flew across the air and he is running to a third who is reaching for his weapon. Samantha, jumps on another guard twisting her body on his shoulders and taking him down to the ground, snapping his neck with her thighs. She pulls a gun out and aims it at another guards head and fires. Craig, as always, finds the biggest motherfucker in the room and proceeds to beat his lifelong rage out into the mans face. Lewis has the boy and fired at the ropes holding the family up and they’d fall to the floor, he then hides them behind the structure and fires at two other guards who are holed up behind metal boxes, shooting at them. I stand and walk down the hallway and find another position. Aiming my rifle at the men. I fire one shot and another. Both bullets connecting with their heads and their lifeless bodies fall backwards. The area goes silent except for the whimpering and crying of the Martinez family. And the dry groan of the scumbag who’s to blame for it all. We remain at our position, watching to see if any other bodyguards surface. Lewis’s voice comes through. “Markus, are we clear?” We stay silent waiting for confirmation. “Scarecrow, this is OZ.” I shake my head at Jacob, our switchboard agent. He has nicknames for us all. I am Rogue because I go off on my own missions without approval from Markus and I may have once put a white strip through my hair like the movie namesake. It was a Tuesday and I was bored. “I have imaging up. You’ve got six bodies on the south facing wall.” I see Lewis nod and say. “That’s the family and myself.” Jacob continues, “and five on lower deck. The rest of the area is clear.” The tension in the air releases and the team downstairs immediately shuffle forward to get the family out. I stand up and walk down the stairs. As I walk slowly into the main entrance of the warehouse and up to Sico, I physically stop myself from kicking his teeth into the concrete and scratching his eyes out. Lewis walks up beside me. “A clean up crew is on the way. So is Emmanuel. He will escort the Martinez home and make sure they are taken care of.“ I nod. Edison picks up Sico and shoves him to a back room so that the family don’t have to walk past him. I walk outside and wait with them as several SUV’s drive up and a familiar face climbs out. Emmanuel Martinez. Our client for this job but also a long fixture in the world of Godfrey. I have known him since I was 15 and he was 11 . Almost 20 years now. His father was a landscaper and tended to the lawns of the estates in my neighbourhood. He often spent time playing video games and hanging by the pool with my brother, our neighbour Thomas Webb and me. We were the best of friends. Everything changed one day towards the end of summer, just before his 12th birthday. That afternoon, nothing was ever the same between any of us. Our innocence died and what was reborn?

Let me show you.

Emmanuel nods at me and ushers his relatives to the car. I sit back on the wall near the warehouse and watch as Lewis walks over to him and has a conversation. Emmanuel looks at me again and then back at Lewis. He motions for his men to take his family away and the car backs away. Emmanuel walks towards me. I take a deep breath. Emmanuel stands before me. I’ve always been taller then him. So I sit on a crate so that I’m looking up at him and not down. “Lewis tells me you have plans for Vantino. I have plans too. Let’s compare.” I nod. As I explain my idea of how we can make this scumbag pay for what he’s been doing. The sly smirks that reach the faces of my team who have joined us and Emmanuel is palpable. “Well Godfrey, you never fail to disappoint. I like it. Shall we?” He motions for me to follow him to the car they have put Sico in and I do. My team get into our SUV that Edison retrieved and we drive away from the warehouse. Emmanuel’s driver stops a few feet up next to a white van. Emmanuel nods his head and the men in the van immediately understand, driving forward. I assume that’s the clean up crew Emmanuel organised. I explain where we should go and we turn down a dirt road and follow the path to a clearing. We all get out and Emmanuel’s driver grabs Sico from the trunk and throws him on the ground. Sico tries to plead with us but we ignore him. My team pull up behind us and they grab some water bottles and hand me one. Emmanuel declines, as does his driver. “We will watch from up here. Can’t get my suit dirty, now can I?” He retorts. Edison rolls his eyes and Craig snorts. “The dark prince is afraid to get dirty. There’s a first.” We smile at each other and start our descent to the bottom of the cliff. In these woods, there is one thing you need to be aware of and stay far away from. The exact reason we are here. Edison begins stripping Sico of his clothes and Samantha holds a bag out for them to be deposited in. Lewis holds him up as he squirms and Craig ties his hands to a tree trunk, leaving him dangling. We all step back and Sico speaks, “What are you planning to do with me?” His voice a bare whisper and filled with fear. I shake my headband a thing his cowardness. “Not so tough now, are you?” I reply. He stares at me and I lift my boot up, take out my ankle knife and slice a cut right across his chest. He screams out in pain and tries to kick me away. I grab his leg and make another cut on his calf. And then his other leg. I clean my life and put it back in my holster. I stare straight at him. “While I was learning all about the sick and twisted things you do. I asked myself. Where are all the bodies? 12 families. Over 50 people you have brutally murdered but no evidence and no paper trail leading to any form of disposal. Then I asked myself. Why this country? Why this warehouse? Why these woods? You abduct families from all over the world but you bring them here, on planes and in trucks. You always find your way back to Norway and I wondered why? And then I learned what these woods are known for.” His eyes widen as he realises what I’m saying. I smirk and nod my head. “It will be my pleasure, watching you be ripped to shreds by the animals you used to dispose of your victims. Poetic justice. Don’t you think?” He starts to scream but I just walk away and my team follow. We find our way back to the car and we lean against the hood. In my research, I know that this area of the woods is known for black bear sightings. You stay out of their way and they stay out of yours. However, bears gotta eat and the smell of blood will trigger them and one or all will come to find him and he won’t stand a chance.

As nightfall beckons and we all have managed to find ourselves laying down in the cars or on the roof or in the seats. I stare up at the sky next to Edison. He sees me smile and he chuckles. “Thinking of the northern lights?” I stare back at him. Barely able to see him in the darkness. “What?” I ask him, pretending I don’t know what he is referring too. He just laughs and shakes his head. I go to say something else but I sit up as I hear the sound of a bear and the piercing screams of a man being eaten alive. Everyone gets out of the cars and stands on the edge as we listen and wait for the screams to end. We hear the sound of gurgling and then silence. Just the grunts of a hungry bear and the sounds of the nature around it. One by one, we pile back into our cars and wait for daylight. It comes a mere 45 minutes later and after Lewis and Craig take a walk and confirm that the bear did our dirty work and rid the world of that sick bastard. We put our cars in reverse and get out of there. Emmanuel makes arrangements for a clean up crew to come to the woods to hose down the area but from what Lewis said. There is nothing left of Sico Vantino.

As we drive down the road towards the small town bordering these woods. I think of the first time I was in Norway. Back when I was young, before my world changed forever. My parents brought my brother and I here. Their friends and our neighbours were re-newing their vowels. Their son was my brothers best friend. He was my first everything. And the night his parents vowed, again, to stay married until the day they die. Thomas and I snuck away to a clearing not far from the reception where he gave me a necklace he spent all summer working to buy. He told me it was not an engagement ring because we were too young but one day, he’d bring me back here and he’d too marryme. Under the northern lights.

Emmanuel looks at me in the rear view mirror. And it’s as if he knew I was thinking about it. “He asks me about you, you know.”

I look up and catch his gaze. “Whenever we run into each other. He asks if I’ve seen you. He misses you, too.” I look at Edison next to me and he keeps his head down but I see the curiosity in his expression. “My father tells me the same thing.” Emmanuel breaths in and out with a sigh “Maybe next time you find yourself in Pasadena. Maybe we can all catch up.” He looks at me again and I nod my head but don’t say anything. We both know that won’t happen but we can pretend that things may change after all this time. But we both know better. Even if he doesn’t want to admit it. I’ll never go back to being the same person I was when we were young. Not after that day, that afternoon, that night. Three days after we returned from Norway.

The day they were both taken, the day I almost lost him to a madman and the first time I ever pulled the trigger on a psychopath.

Sneak Peak

Chapter 2

A new member of the team arrives but he isn’t what he seems. The team head back into the the field after a week off after the Sico job and Olivia takes leave to chase down a potential serial killer after her best friend from high school goes missing. What Olivia finds will change the course of her life forever...