by Brad Taylor
She slipped into the alley, seeing the lake seventy meters away. She began running, her little legs pumping as hard as she could make them. She was within twenty meters of the exit when the tattooed man appeared at the end.
She skidded to a stop, her mouth open in a silent scream. He bared his teeth at her and began walking up the alley. She whipped around and began running back the way she had come. She managed seven steps before the giant with the ponytail appeared, coming down the alley from the other end, holding his arms out as if he were catching a loose chicken, the veins crisscrossing his forearms highlighting the muscles.
She turned back, seeing the tattooed man closing in on her. She backed up against the wall, holding up her hands and saying, “Don’t, don’t, don’t.”
With an accent so strong she could barely understand his English, he said, “Where is the phone?”
Her legs failed her. She slid down the wall until she was sitting down, her arms over her head.
The giant man grabbed her hair, jerking her back up. She squeezed her eyes shut, silently calling for her mother.
She heard what sounded like meat being slapped in a butcher’s shop, then was unceremoniously dropped to the ground. She opened her eyes and saw a black man above her, striking the giant with blows so fast they were a blur, the giant’s hands always a split second behind as his head snapped back, absorbing every punch.
The tattooed man shouted, raising his fists. She threw her hands over her head again and a form jumped over her body, colliding with her enemy. Wide-eyed, she watched the struggle, both grunting, the sweat flying off from the fight. Two seconds later she saw the tattooed man flying over the back of the other man, her rescuer holding his elbow as her enemy slammed into the wall next to her head.
The body crumpled to the ground, unconscious, and her benefactor turned to her, holding out his hand. He smiled, and she leapt up, running toward the waterfront, expecting him to grab her. He did nothing. She exited the alley, her lungs sucking in great gouts of air. She began sprinting blindly back to the statue, her brain reverting to a primordial instinct of survival.
She cut into a park, racing down a path that wound through the trees, and ran headlong into the older man. The tattooed man’s partner. She struggled to escape his grasp, and he snatched her up by her neck. He held her high with both hands, her feet twitching in the air, and then something slammed into him with the force of a freight train. She bounced on the ground, rolled upright, and saw a chiseled man with shaggy black hair cradling the older man’s head in his arms, Tattoo’s partner thrashing like a shark on a line, his glasses askew, and spittle flying from his mouth.
She leapt up again, her own mouth agape, and raced out of the park, her mind unable to assimilate what was happening. She broke out into a street and realized, in her disorientation, she’d run away from the lake. She glanced down the avenue and saw another giant of muscle stalking toward her, this one with his head shorn close to his scalp.
They’re everywhere. And I’m going to die.
She ran up the street, now without a plan. Like a car thief sprinting from police after wrecking the ride, her only thought was to get away.
The road took a turn, and she was out of sight of the mountain of muscle, hidden by the buildings along the road. Ahead of her, the avenue bridged a canal. When she reached it, she stopped, looking toward the lake.
The canal went under one other road before emptying at the shore. The channel was deep, but it only held what looked like three feet of water, and had a raised path on both sides. An idea formed. She glanced back to make sure the muscled giant hadn’t made the turn, then scrambled over the railing, landing in a heap on the path. She scrambled underneath the bridge, wrapped her arms around her legs, and waited, trembling.
She heard cars passing over her, then laughter floating out from a group of tourists walking across the bridge. She began to hope. To believe the giant man had kept running down the road, trying to find her.
Her brain engaged again, the panic dissipating. She pulled out the cursed phone, feeling both loathing and love. It had killed her family, but it had also saved her life. She began googling the rail system out of Switzerland. She needed to leave behind anything these men knew, go someplace completely different. Maybe make it into Germany and turn herself in to the authorities.
The iPhone diligently searched for her request, then cleared. She clicked on a link for the Eurail website, and heard a thump to her left. She looked that way, and her world collapsed.
It was the giant. He stood on the other side of the bridge, grinning. He walked underneath, crouching low, and said, “Neat trick. But not good enough. Give me the phone.”
She screamed and leapt up. He snagged her shirt and she jerked it free, running as fast as she could toward the lake, hearing his footsteps behind her, her conscious mind shutting down. She’d reached her breaking point, the whipsaw of repeated fear cracking her. Her mother had not been correct. If it is to be, it’s up to me ended up being nothing more than a saying. It hadn’t saved her life, just as it hadn’t her mother’s. Her father had also been wrong. His search for a better life had ended in a rain of blood.
And she was next.
She ducked under the next bridge, cleared the other side, and saw her worst nightmare standing on the path. The man who had murdered her family. The one who had slaughtered an entire police station.
Her legs faltered, and she fell to her knees. She was done.
He walked to her and said, “Hand me the phone.”
She pulled it out of her pocket, her hand trembling. She said, “Take it. Take it and let me live. Please.”
He didn’t reach for the handset, instead looking into her eyes. He said, “I wish I could, but you’ve used that phone. Which means you’ve seen what’s inside.”
She started sobbing, shaking uncontrollably, holding the phone out as an offering with her head bent down. She said, “This isn’t right. You killed my entire family. Isn’t that enough? Take it. Please. This isn’t right.”
He said, “I’m sorry, but right’s got nothing to do with it.”
He took a step forward, and a shadow blotted out her vision. A man thumped to the ground in between her and the killer. He turned to her, and she saw another predator. A man with close-cropped hair, ice-blue eyes, and a scar tracing a path through his cheek.
She was dead.
He rotated until he had one man on the left, and the other on the right, his back to the wall of the canal, then said, “Get behind me.”
What? She didn’t move, still trembling on the ground.
He flicked his eyes to her, then returned to the two men, his voice like steel. “Get behind me. Now.”
She recognized the accent, and the clock of her life began beating again. He’s American!
She scampered behind his back, cowering and using him as a shield. The killer said, “I have no idea who you are, but this isn’t your concern. You are making a huge mistake.”
The predator said, “Am I? Because I only caught the last part of the conversation. Did you really murder her family?”
The killer shook his head, as if he disdained the conversation. He said, “Yes. Just like I’m going to kill you.”
The man in front of her changed in that moment. Becoming something else. Something unworldly. Amena saw it, and was frightened, even with the others trying to take her life.
From the left, the mountain of muscle charged forward, swinging a knife at the predator’s chest. Like a magic trick, the predator trapped the giant’s arm and rotated down, leveraging the momentum and causing all of that muscle to flip through the air. The giant of a man slammed into the stone, and the predator bent his arm forward, using the man’s own knife to stab him in the heart, leaning over him to make sure it penetrated.
The murderer of her family launched himself at her protector, and Amena ran
. Even if the American showed talent at fighting, she knew what the killer could do. The man with the scar wouldn’t win. Nobody could win against the killer. She went twenty meters, cleared the other side of the bridge, and then turned, seeing them locked in combat.
She took one tentative step back, believing she should help—wanting to help. She saw the killer gain the upper hand, rolling on top of the American, and she turned, racing back up the canal the way she’d come.
31
Jennifer and I were running toward the lakeshore path to Knuckles’s location when he cut in on the net. “Pike, Pike, target is down, and the girl is in the wind.”
Shit.
I held up, saying, “What happened?”
“She was attacked by that older asshole from the castle, the one we originally thought had the phone. He was holding her by her throat. I had to interdict.”
Against all authority I’d been given, I’d made the call to track the girl and protect her, hoping against hope that we could follow all of them, then whisk her away from under their noses. Praying they weren’t willing to execute an open-air interdiction, but would try to get her when she stopped for the night. That hadn’t worked out. Within seven minutes of her leaving the Queen museum, she’d been assaulted.
Brett and Veep had stopped that idiocy, but she’d escaped because Veep “didn’t want to scare her.” I understood his sentiment, but it royally pissed me off. Brett calmed me down by saying they were better off searching for the men here than chasing after her. And he had a point.
Jennifer and I had exited out the front of the casino, moving up the street, waiting on a lock-on from anyone to tell me where she’d gone, and Knuckles had just given it.
I said, “You don’t have control?”
“No. Sorry. I had some issues with the professor guy. Turned out, he could fight. I had to put him down.”
“Permanently?”
“Yep. He wouldn’t quit.”
It raised my worry about what was happening. These guys weren’t random human traffickers out to score a child. They were trained and had someone behind them. If Knuckles said the guy could fight, it meant he had to exert some energy to put him down, which meant that the guy could have probably destroyed 90 percent of American males.
I said, “No issue. Can you break from the body?”
“Yeah, no worries. He’s in some bushes. No attachment to me. Nobody was in eyesight, and I scanned the area for cameras. He’s got my DNA on him, but no connection.”
That was basically the same story I’d received from Brett and Veep, except their guys were still breathing. So far we were in the black. I said, “Give me a vector.”
He said, “She took off straight north, away from the lake. Right toward you, but she was running like a scalded monkey. You need to be quick to get her.”
I glanced at Jennifer, who was already working her tablet, and said, “Koko’s looking. Figuring out a search pattern.”
She raised her tablet, showing me the screen, and, off the net, said, “I’ve got it.”
Knuckles called back, saying, “I’m moving north in her last known direction. I just have no idea where she went. I don’t have a Growler.”
I said, “Hold what you have. She might double back. We’ve got the lake secure, and the east secure. We’re going to take the west. Out.”
I looked at Jennifer, and she said, “She’s running straight into the city. If she deviates, it’s going to be on this road.” She pointed at the one we were on, “Or the one farther up. I’ll take the high road. You take the lower. We push west, and see what we can find.”
I nodded and said, “Okay, but if you locate her, call me. Don’t try to interdict. There are enough assholes involved here that I don’t trust a singleton assault. Get two or more, or back off.”
She read right through me. “Meaning I might get my ass kicked?”
I looked into her eyes, knowing she thought I didn’t trust her skills, but that wasn’t it. I gave her the hard truth. “Meaning you might be killed. If Knuckles had trouble, they’re experts. Call me, no matter what.”
She squinted at me, not liking what I had said, then nodded and took off across the street. I started walking at a rapid pace west down the avenue, and then heard, “Pike, this is Koko, I’m on the parallel. Moving west now.”
I acknowledged, and kept going, peering into shop windows and looking for anyone running on the street. I saw nothing. I checked my Growler, and had no signal, which frustrated the shit out of me because we had a much better capability to find that damn phone, but it required a spool-up. The girl was on the run, with probably about thirty minutes worth of life left, but it would take me three times that to get the giant bureaucracy to geolocate her handset. If she made it into the night, I would be able to track her again.
But I didn’t think she had that long.
I reached a bridge across a canal, still seeing nothing. I began to jog across it, and felt my Growler vibrate.
Huh?
I stopped and brought it up. The signal was strong. I looked up and down, seeing nobody on the road. I went to the rail of the bridge, looking north. Nothing. I went to the south, and saw the girl.
She was on her knees in front of a man towering over her. A man who radiated skill. I’d seen his type before—every damn time I looked in a mirror.
She was holding a phone in the air and trembling, catatonic in fear. The sight brought a spasm of rage.
I whispered on the radio, saying, “All elements, all elements, I have her. She’s with a hostile. Sending grid. Close on me now. As fast as possible.”
I knelt down, pulled out my cell phone, and sent my location. I heard the girl offer a message of mercy. “This isn’t right. You killed my entire family. Isn’t that enough? Take it. Please. This isn’t right.”
The man said, “I’m sorry, but right’s got nothing to do with it.”
I’d told Jennifer not to interdict without backup, and I had fully intended to do the same, but the words ripped through me, tearing open a scab that had never healed.
Enough.
I vaulted over the railing, slamming into the ground between the girl and the man. I stood upright, caught movement over my shoulder, and saw the crew-cut mountain of muscle crouching underneath the bridge, a knife in his hand.
Shit. Bad decision.
I rotated my back to the stone of the canal and said, “Get behind me.”
The girl looked at me like I was Freddy Krueger, her fear burning bright.
I put a little steel in my voice, locked eyes with her, and said, “Get behind me. Now.”
I saw recognition on her face, of what I wasn’t sure, but she scampered behind my back, holding on to the legs of my pants.
The man to my front said, “I have no idea who you are, but this isn’t your concern. You are making a huge mistake.”
I kept one eye on the muscle and said, “Am I? Because I only caught the last part of the conversation. Did you really murder her family?”
He tossed his head left and right, like this was nothing but an inconvenience, then said, “Yes. Just like I’m going to kill you.”
I heard the words and felt a crack in the blackness of my soul. Something I’d buried in years of scar tissue split, the evil slithering back out. The worm wanting satisfaction. Wanting to feed.
The man-mountain charged. He came forward at a dead run, swinging his knife, sure that all those hours in the gym would translate to an easy win. I dodged the blade, trapped his arm, locked up the joint of his elbow and wrist, then whirled in a circle, using his own momentum to flip him to the ground. He hammered hard onto his back, and I immediately torqued his arm over his chest, falling on the blade with my body and ramming it into his heart.
I whirled to the other threat, but I wasn’t quick enough. The killer hit me in the shoulders, wrapping
his arms around me and taking me to the ground. Within a split second, I knew he could fight. Everything was an economy of motion, designed to protect his vital parts while harming mine. He tried for a quick-finish arm bar, but I evaded his hold, and then we started swimming, arms and legs all fighting for dominance. I saw his eyes widen, realizing the same thing I had about him.
Yeah, asshole. I can fight, too.
He mounted on top of me, crossed his wrists, grabbed my collar, and jerked outward, trying to choke me. I broke one hand free and punched him with an ineffectual hammer fist to the head. He leaned forward, his head tucked, and slammed me with his elbow, ripping my face. I locked my legs over his and torqued, flipping him onto his back. He countered, wrapping his legs around my waist. I swam a hand under his thigh, broke the hold, and punched him directly in the face. He rolled away from me and I scrambled to keep up the pressure. I wrapped my arms around his body, attempting to gain a rear naked choke, and he threw another elbow, catching me in the nose with the force of a jackhammer. I saw sparks, and lost the momentum. I continued to hold him, but my head was in a fog from the blow. He spun on his back, grabbing my arm and jerking me close to him. He whirled his legs and locked them around my neck in a triangle choke. He began squeezing. I felt the pressure and knew I had seconds before I passed out from the lack of oxygen to my brain.
The son of a bitch is going to win. Kill me.
I huffed like a bull, the blood snorting out of my nostrils. I heaved off the ground, his legs still locked around my neck, his hands holding my shirt. I staggered to the edge of the canal, him still squeezing, a maniacal look on his face. I dropped forward into the water, falling on top of him.
I saw his face under the surface, eyes wide, his legs squeezing harder, his body thrashing to get oxygen, realizing it was a race. The fight had left us both heaving, but I could still get air even as he cut off my blood flow. I felt my vision tunnel, saw his head break the plane of water, and I slammed my hand on his face, pushing it back below the surface. I hammered his stomach, saw an explosion of bubbles, and my vision closed to black. I lost consciousness for a split second, and then felt the legs leave my neck. The blood flowed, and my vision opened again, like a curtain being drawn back.