Hollow's End Read online

  Hollow’s End

  An Edgar Vincent Novella Book 4

  Hannibal Adofo

  Hollow’s End

  by Hannibal Adofo

  www.hannibaladofo.com

  Copyright © 2019 Hannibal Adofo

  All rights reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under the copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  From The Author

  Also by Hannibal Adofo

  1

  Viktor Romanov had killed a lot of men in his life.

  And in just a few moments, he would kill one more. What’s another life to extinguish at this point? Viktor saw it no more as entertainment.

  Viktor raised his shot of vodka into the air, the harsh glow of the single bulb tethered to the basement ceiling adding an ominous shadow to his heavily tattooed torso.

  The tattoos made him appear like a monster more than a man. Violent knife wounds and scarred-over bullet holes covered up by drawings of snakes, bears, and Cyrillic letters and symbols, all designed to make a definitive statement: he was someone you didn’t want to cross.

  In front of him was a man in a pink button-up shirt that was soaked through with sweat, not from exercise or the heat, but fear for his life.

  “Can we kill him now?” a man said to Viktor in Russian. Another tattooed monster with a square jaw and huge muscles, a few inches taller than Viktor, with a smile on his face that said he enjoyed the act of torturing a man immensely.

  The huge Russian reached for the bottle of vodka resting on a rusted barrel. He tipped it up and swigged it like it was water until it was empty.

  “We can,” Viktor replied. “Or this pig can suffer a little bit longer.”

  A shudder traveled up the spine of the captive as he saw two other Russians enjoying the show and throwing alcohol down their hatches.

  “Give me a name,” Viktor said in English laced with a thick and forbidding accent. “And you’ll live.”

  The captive, a youthful man in his thirties, shook his bruised and bloodied head. “If I tell you, you’re just going to kill me anyway.”

  Viktor smirked. “You know”—he waved a finger at the man in the chair. “You’re absolutely right. I probably will.”

  Viktor and his cronies laughed as he moved over to a toolbox resting on the floor in the corner and removed a rusty pair of pliers. The captive trembled like there was ice water in his veins. “Hey, man,” he said with a blood-caked smile. “Y-you—you don’t have to do that.”

  Viktor tsked. “You don’t answer my questions when I ask them. You sit here and choose to bleed instead of taking the easy way out.” Viktor waved the pliers in front of the man’s face, teasing him. Testing him. “I want to know about your friends at the FBI.” He looked directly into the captive’s eyes. “Agent Winslow.”

  Special Agent Michael Winslow continued to shake with uncontrollable fear, his body on the verge of going into shock as he attempted to free himself from the inescapable notion that he was experiencing the last few minutes of his life. “Please,” he said. “You don’t have to do this.”

  Viktor snapped the pliers open and shut. “Tell me the name of your superiors.”

  Winslow shut his eyes and shook his head. “I can’t,” he said through sputtered breaths. “I won’t…”

  Viktor sighed, clearly irritated, gripped the pliers with a tight fist, and targeted Winslow’s fingernails. “So be it.” He clamped onto the right index finger and yanked with a strong, quick jerk.

  A bloodcurdling scream came from Winslow’s throat, and it continued as some disturbing things were performed on his flesh and appendages for what seemed to him like an eternity.

  “Miranda Stone.” Winslow finally couldn’t take it any longer. “She’s my superior. That’s who you want.”

  Viktor smiled, his face peppered, like ghoulish freckles, with droplets of Winslow’s blood. He patted Winslow on the cheek. “Thank you.”

  Viktor held a hand out. One of his goons slapped a silver-plated Colt .45 with a pearl handle in his palm as Winslow bobbed his blood-soaked head and eagerly awaited his release from all the pain.

  “You die knowing that Stone will die next,” Viktor said.

  The last thing Winslow saw was a bright white light.

  Detective Edgar Vincent was finalizing plans with his daughter for their Christmas vacation in Big Bear. Claire was speaking at a rapid-fire pace as she discussed everything they’d be doing over the next three days.

  “We have to check into our cabin by twelve at the latest,” she said. “Otherwise we’ll miss the guy that’s supposed to give us the key.”

  “Okay,” Vincent responded, trying to put away the latest in a never-ending pile of case files scattered on his desk in the Hollow Green station. “So what time should we head out from the hotel?”

  “Well, you get in at ten tonight,” Claire said. “And I figured we could hang out a little bit around Burbank in the morning, but we should still leave by eight at the latest.”

  Vincent shut off his desk lamp and went to grab his coat. “Sounds like a plan.” He stuffed one arm into his sleeve. “I’m heading out the door now.”

  “Fantastic! Okay, Dad, I gotta pack the last of my stuff. I’ll see you soon!”

  “See you soon, Claire Bear.”

  “Adios.”

  “Adios, amiga.”

  Vincent allowed himself a moment to decompress from a long day’s work. He was feeling sore and tired. He wondered if the job was getting the best of him.

  He grabbed the keys and made a move for the door, desperate for some R&R and much-needed time with his daughter.

  Two steps into his exit, his cell phone rang. He had the suspicion it meant that he wasn’t going to make it. At least not on time. And he would have to call Claire to tell her he was going to be late…again.

  “This is Vincent,” he said, the phone to his ear.

  “How close were you to leaving?” The familiar voice of Miranda was on the other end of the line.

  Vincent was both intrigued and perturbed. “I barely made it three feet from my desk.” He looked in the direction of his chair. “I take it this isn’t a social call.”

  “Not in the slightest.”

  Vincent knew then it was probably best if he sat down again. “How are you, Special Agent Stone?”

  “I’ve had better nights,” she said.

  “Care to tell me why?”

  “Yeah. I can give you about ten reasons. Each one of them a Russian gangster with a hard-on for murdering people. The messier, the better, from what I’ve heard.”

  Vincent perched forward, resting his elbows on his desk. “Sounds foreboding.”

  “Very.
And we just received the body of the undercover agent working on this very case, which makes it all the more foreboding.”

  Vincent squinted as his stomach rolled and memories from his past rose and came to light. “I’m sorry to hear that. So where does calling me up come into play?”

  “You worked undercover for the DEA ten years ago.”

  Vincent paused.

  “How do you know about that?” he asked, his voice a bit strained.

  “I can walk you through it over the phone, or you can catch a ride to the South Side office, and I’ll tell you all about it in person.”

  Vincent tapped his finger against his desk. Agent Stone remained silent as he contemplated his answer for several long moments. “I’ll be there soon. There’s something important I need to do. After that, I’m all yours.”

  “Copy that.”

  What Vincent needed to do was call Claire and break the news. Big Bear was a bust, like many trips they’d planned before this. He didn’t want to make the call, and she wasn’t going to like it.

  2

  After flashing his badge and signing in with the front desk outside the field office, Vincent was escorted inside by a stoic female agent and taken through a work area lined with tables, phones, paperwork, and computers, but only a single agent working in the corner behind a massive pile of papers.

  They turned left, and the agent who escorted him in knocked on a door with a plaque reading, Miranda Stone, Special Agent in Charge.

  “Come in.”

  As Vincent walked inside, he saw Agent Stone composed and calmly leafing through a case file on her desk. Her hair was frazzled, and her navy-blue suit looked as if it had a couple of days of wear.

  She looked up. “Vincent,” she said, sounding relieved.

  He pointed to the chaos on her desk. “You look a little flustered there, Agent Stone. Maybe you should take a five or some much-needed R&R.”

  Stone motioned to the other agent. “That’ll be all, Agent Riley.”

  The agent left the room, closing the door behind her, as Vincent slipped into the chair across from Stone’s desk. “You’re all business.”

  Stone huffed then shook her head. “I’ve yelled at more people on the phone in the past few days than I care to count.”

  “I can hear it. You sound a little hoarse.”

  “Comes with the territory. And so does dying on the job, apparently.” Stone rubbed the back of her neck. “I don’t know where to start, Vincent,” she said, gaze wandering and focusing on nothing. “I’ve stepped in a pretty big pile of shit here.”

  Vincent gave her a moment as Stone steadily slouched into her chair. “What’s going on?”

  Stone turned her head and drew an exhausted breath. “I’ll keep it simple. We were working to take down a Russian gang. We sent a man in undercover to dig up some dirt, he got caught, and then maybe gave up some information, I don’t know. But what I do know is they hacked my computer.”

  Vincent noticed that there wasn’t a shred of any electronic equipment on her desk. “Are you serious?”

  “Deadly. I’ve had my tech guys do a sweep of the entire building. I displaced some personnel, swapped some others out to other locations, and only kept a skeleton crew of my most trusted agents. I’ll keep making changes until I’m positive things are secure. These Russians can be tricky when it comes to hacking.”

  Vincent looked around the room. “Should we even be talking in here, then?”

  “If there’s one place I’m sure that’s clean now, it’s this office.”

  Vincent relaxed. “Okay, so, like I asked you before, what does this have to do with me?”

  Stone leaned back in her chair. “The op against the Russians was a joint operation with the DEA. They were smuggling guns into New Mexico, where a couple of DEA agents were killed during a raid. Turns out we, the FBI, were working on the same crew but over a prostitution ring they were running here in Chicago. After we sent our guy in and began working on the case, two days later, our guys get killed. When I said his body was sent to us, I should have specified that it was not entirely intact.”

  Vincent didn’t even flinch. “Who was in charge on the DEA side?”

  “Guy named Kosinski,” Stone said.

  Vincent closed his eyes and sat back hard in his chair.

  Holland?

  Son. Of. A. Bitch.

  “That’s how you heard that I’d worked for the DEA,” Vincent said.

  Stone’s silence confirmed everything.

  “What did he tell you?” Vincent asked.

  “That you volunteered to go undercover for them when you were working in the city,” Stone said. “That you did a good job, and if anyone could go in undetected and take these guys down, it was you.”

  “Why not get an agent to go undercover? Someone with more training and experience than me?”

  “Because both of our organizations have been compromised. We don’t know how they did it, but these Russians hacked into our case files and got the names of all our agents. Those currently undercover were exposed, so we’re screwed. We can’t send any of our people in, so you are our best option at the moment.”

  Vincent sighed and hung his head, rubbing the stubble on his chin as he thought back to the time he raised his hand in a meeting at the Chicago PD and went toe to toe with leaders of an underworld crime syndicate for six weeks afterward. “Holland knew those files were sealed. That case was never supposed to be brought to light.”

  “Which is what makes you the ideal candidate.” Stone perched forward. “Don’t you see? You worked with these guys before. You can get in close to them. The fact that you went undercover, and those files were buried afterward, gives you an advantage.”

  “I don't think it's as easy as that. I haven't seen these guys in ten years. I'd have to come up with a pretty good excuse for my absence. After that, I’d have to prove myself to those thugs to earn their trust back and find out even a shred of what they’ve got going on. Who’s this gang?”

  Stone grabbed some paperwork and handed it over. “You’ve run with one of them before.”

  Vincent’s blood ran cold when he turned a page on the file and saw the mug shot of a burly and tattooed bastard that he had once despised rubbing shoulders with. “Viktor.”

  “We know he killed our agent,” Stone said. “And he’s also responsible for a prostitution ring enslaving women and children as young as six years old. He’s a fucking animal and needs to be stopped.”

  Vincent closed the file and tossed it on the desk. If he could only be as good of a father as he was at solving cases.

  What I wouldn’t do to be in Big Bear with you now, Claire Bear.

  “This is just a conversation,” Stone said. “You’re not obligated to do or commit to anything, but we are working against the clock here. We only have three days to take these guys down.”

  Vincent arched an eyebrow. “What happens in three days?”

  Stone sighed heavily. “There are ten girls they plan on shipping somewhere. But our agent died before he could find out where to and where from. All we have is time; the rest is unknown.”

  Vincent said nothing. But the fury inside him was beginning to boil.

  “We need you,” Stone said solemnly. “And I find it fortuitous that it’s you. We’ve known each other a while now. We’ve done plenty of favors for one another.” She drew a breath. “And now I’m asking for the mother of all favors. Lives are at stake here, Vincent, and you’re the best shot at saving them. Period.”

  The informal request hung on Vincent’s shoulders for a solid minute. The prospect of innocent lives being destroyed—and the fact that it would most likely be done at the hands at one of the most brutal and savage men he had ever crossed paths with—drove the nail straight into Vincent’s penchant and drive for justice, for doing the right thing.

  Knowing where his destiny was leading him, Vincent took a breath. “What do I have to do?”

  3

  Sto
ne walked with Vincent to her car in the parking garage and took a drive over to a hotel room on the outskirts of the South Side. The L-train ran over their heads with the screeching of metal on metal as Stone parked outside a three-story brick building and led Vincent inside. Darkness engulfed the Windy City as the cretins burrowed in its underbelly began to creep out from under their rocks.

  “Quite the four-star accommodations you’ve booked.” Vincent looked around at the peeling wallpaper and the vacant front desk.

  Stone said nothing as she ascended the stairs and took Vincent to the last door on the left in the cramped hallway painted a faded lime.

  Stone knocked twice on the door, footsteps shuffled, and from behind it, they heard someone call out, “Who is it?”

  “It’s Stone. Open up.”

  There was a slide of a bolt, and the door opened. Vincent and Stone entered a cramped room with six agents and a pile of equipment.

  Wires hung from the computers mounted on top of a foldable poker table. Radios and equipment were stacked on a shelf. And it looked as if the only place to sleep was the couch.

  One of the agents, an older gentleman with a snow-white mustache, approached Vincent. “Long time,” he said, the leathery quality of his skin the same consistency as when Vincent last saw him ten years ago.

  Vincent came toe to toe with Leatherface, sneered, and punched the guy square in the jaw.

  The room exploded into chaos as confused agents rushed to his side; no one really sure how they should react.

  “Vincent!” Stone said, grabbing him by the arm. “What the hell is wrong with you?”