This is the final chapter for Thieves, I hope you all enjoy the ending. Another thanks to RP the editor who worked on this story with me.
Warning: this chapter does contain non-consent sex, and is a little darker like the previous chapter. All characters are 18+
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Harry 'The Chaser'
The trees hid me as I smiled at the scene I had created below. It turns out Max had a little base where he kept his "girls" near his own home. I knew his house would be here in the area. All I had to do was find it - but not before freeing the girls.
I made my way into the underground bunker and left instructions with the girls where to gather once I had blown the doors from the entrance of their prison. Max's men were now scrambling in all directions, trying to round up the escaping women. The chaos was magnificent to see. I wanted this sick, son-of-a-bitch to pay, and this was the first of many victories. I had to be at least somewhat close to him now. And with all of his men trying to clean up the mess here he should be easier to find...should be.
I waited until I saw that all the girls were out before I slowly and carefully started making my way out of the trees and away from the scene. It was easy enough, but I still had to be careful. I didn't want all of this to finally happen only to be caught. After all, I still had a lot of work to do. The goal wasn't just to break his work - it was to destroy it completely - and to destroy him as well. To do that I needed to get to him.
I carefully climbed from the tree I was in and quietly began to creep away from the scene. I could hear the men rushing about. If they sounded too close, I'd try to travel in a different direction while still heading towards my destination.
Out of nowhere a figure moved in front of me. I hid behind the tree and stayed in the dark. At least the sky wasn't bright yet. The dark night gave me a slight advantage.
"We need more men here!" the guard shouted into the radio.
"The only men left are those inside Max's home," someone replied through the radio. "We can't send them out." Gunshots sounded in the distance.
"Don't you dare shoot them!" the guard shouted. They needed the girls intact if they were going to use them...which is what made this so perfect. The gunshots stopped, but the shouting and the disaster continued beautifully. I knew something was bound to go wrong, or my plan would change eventually. But the fact that I got this far was quite satisfying. Unfortunately for me, the man in front of me wasn't moving.
"Unless Max wants to lose the last of the girls we need more guards here!" he shouted. He was turning every which way, trying to keep his eyes on the situation. But he kept looking in my direction. He couldn't see me but I could tell that he suspected something was there. I kept as still as I could. Finally he turned the opposite way waiting for an answer. He was going to notice me if I didn't move.
In a swiftly made decision, I quickly snuck up behind him and grabbed his neck. Surprised, he jumped before trying to make a counterattack. I gripped his head harder and jerked it very suddenly to the side before kicking him to make sure I felt the deadly snap. He made no noise before hitting the ground. I stared at his lifeless body for a moment with a little guilt. I allowed myself to feel that way, otherwise I would lose myself in this battle. That was the last thing I wanted to do. Before leaving him lying there, I grabbed his radio.
"We can't spare any more! Try to bring them back. The Kentwoods will have our heads if you don't!" the voice on the radio warned. At this rate they might get a few back. But over half of them were already out of reach and still scrambling unpredictably.
I had already gotten the attention of most of the guards pointed toward the drug cargo. Thanks to my actions, he had less than half of it remaining. And no girls for his sex-trafficking. Max didn't have enough people to get control of the havoc my actions were causing.
The guards in this area knew about the explosion and chaos created in the drug cargo a short time earlier, which is the reason they weren't able to pull guards from there. Everything was going pretty much to plan up to this point. Now I just had to cut off the head of the snake. And hopefully, if I did well enough burning the remainder, a new one wouldn't grow back.
Once I was out of the tree line I had to be a lot quicker getting to my car. I had parked as far from the scene as possible, yet near enough so that I could get to it quickly if need be. All the running and metaphoric acrobatics I had to do for this got me into shape pretty quickly.
I couldn't get the smile off of my face as I made it to my car. A few moments passed as I caught my breath and started the engine, ready to start my search. Just as I was about to drive away my old cell phone rang. I didn't recognize the number, so I let it ring. I would listen to a voicemail later.
Rather than sit there and wait for the caller to finish recording their message, I drove to the hotel I had chosen to stay at for the night. Few had the number for that phone, so there was seldom an important call on it. I often would get a wrong number or a telemarketer when it rang. I didn't think about the call as I parked the car and made my way up to my room.
By the time I had reached the desk in the hotel room, I had forgotten about the call. And I soon was too busy doing more research on Max to think about the phone.
From the look of things, I was correct in assuming that he was still at his base somewhere in town. But he seemed to have been traveling a lot more while I was busy causing havoc at his house. I looked through more records and read the texts from the recorded conversations. A short time earlier I had tapped into their radio and whatever is said on there usually showed up on here. I didn't think the signal would be strong enough to be picked up in my present location. The only thing I could gather from little I could cipher was that he was needing some guards for a personal errand, and then most of them had to go back to his other cargo to salvage what I hadn't destroyed. I tried to find more information on his present location, but I couldn't gather enough to determine that. With a long breath in I buried my face in my hands before running them through my hair.
"Fuck it!" I growled before going back to square one in trying to find out where exactly his base was.
After trying to pin it to a few locations based off of travel patterns, transaction records, and radio chatter, I was tired. Although I wasn't an old man, age was slowly catching up to me. My hair was greying early, and with the extra aches and pains of the job I felt older than what I was; probably looked it too. After all the running around I would need just a little time to shut down and rest. I had been doing it for too long.
When I was finished writing the different locations down I started walking to the bed, making sure the window was locked on the way. The stress started to fade a little when I laid my head into the pillows, and my body began to relax somewhat. But I found myself unable to fully relax. With a sigh I thought about what I was going to do. I wasn't going to be able to keep this up much longer. Knowing that, I decided that after this whole Kentwood mess was done and over with I was done. At 35 the whole "chasing bad guys" or stealing from them was getting hard. Especially when a lot of my life went into doing what I did. I gave up my family for it. I gave up a teaching job; gave up the chance to find a girl; to have a family'; or to have someone I could tell everything to. Sure I could have gone out and looked anyway. But there was a lot of risk in that.
With my thoughts running wild, I sat up, knowing I wasn't going to be able to really rest. I still closed my eyes and let them race for a little while longer. Then I remembered the cell phone. I slowly got myself out of bed and reached for the phone looking at the number again before seeing that they left a voicemail. I still didn't recognize it, but didn't see the harm in checking the message they left. I sat down on the bed again while lifting the phone to my ear, quickly going through the system process to get to the voicemail.
"Hello Harry. This is Margret." Surprise filled me when I heard the voice. We kept in touch through e-mails from time to time, but I hadn't really heard from them until I saw their kids. "You helped my husband and I out about ten years ago," she continued. "I didn't call to reminisce. We need your help again. We desperately need your help again." She sounded distraught.