by Tara Brown
I turned and ran in the direction Servario had walked when he left with Harry, the man who had hugged him and called him Gustavo.
The streets were busy, even there in the industrial part of town. I hurried past several groups of people before stopping and listening for any sign that they were left or right on the street lined with buildings. The heat had plastered sweat to my forehead and underarms, and I dearly regretted not wearing underwear.
A red light inside a building caught my eye. The outside was sandstone and old looking, somewhat charming. But the inside had several red lights glowing through the windows. To me a red light always meant prostitutes so I decided to give it a go and see what happened.
My heels clicked against the beautiful street as I rounded the side of the building to the back. A single steel door with dark-green paint was there, appearing awfully lonely, considering the larger doors at the front of the building. I tucked my guns, pulled my hairpin out, and thumped on the door. It hurt my knuckles.
I rapped again, only harder. The door groaned as a large man opened it, giving me an odd look.
“I’m here to meet Harry. I have the virgins.”
He scowled, about to say something, but I jumped, driving the hairpin into his temple, exactly where I’d lodged it in the driver. He staggered back, but I pulled him forward and let him fall onto the street. I really hoped I was right about the red lights as he died, hopefully not unnecessarily. I pulled the hairpin from his head, wiped it on him, cringing at the nastiness yet again, and crept inside the building. I closed the door, allowing my eyes adjust to the dark and creepy glow of the red lights.
A sound near the back of the large open-warehouse-style building drew my attention.
I slipped my shoes off and tiptoed over the pale stone floor. When I reached the back, I found a long hallway with nothing, only silence and lights, thankfully not red ones.
At the end of the hall there was an entrance with a sign in Arabic. I twisted the handle slowly, peeking past the thick door. It was a waiting room with seats made of leather and a basket of magazines, only they were not like the ones my doctor and dentist had. They were porn. European porn. What kind of office had a porn basket?
I closed the door, slipping the pin back into my hair, trying my best to ignore the human remains on it, and pulled a gun. Ever so softly, I slinked down the hall, searching for the answer to the question of who keeps European porn in their magazine basket. The answer came in the second hallway, behind the first door I cracked open. Peering into the small slit, I realized it was just like the office we had raided and saved the sex slaves from last time. Without a doubt this would be the exact same situation. I would open doors and find horrors I couldn't unsee.
I took multiple deep breaths and tried to convince my brain to shut down my emotional side.
Leaving the door ajar, I crept into the room, pulling out my hairpin and stabbing as the frightened eyes of the victim being assaulted closed. She didn't see the horrors I committed upon the man tormenting her, just as I overlooked the ones she was suffering through.
I lifted a finger to my lips, a bloody finger. She shook, sobbing and scared. Needle marks scarred her arms and a black bruise marred her face. “Are you American?”
She heaved when she heard me speak. “Just stop crying and follow me. I’ll get you out.”
“My sister—” Her Southern accent bothered me. She could have been one of the fake girls I was selling.
“Okay. We’ll find her too. Just shut up, please. We can all cry and drink some scotch on the plane ride home.”
She stood on filthy feet and shaky legs and followed me from the room. She leaned against the wall in the hallway as I interrupted the occupants of room number two. It was much worse—a horror show—but both men were dead within seconds. I dragged the young girl, who was maybe nineteen, from the room. She collapsed into the sobbing arms of the other girl.
“Is this your sister?”
The first girl shook her head as silent tears rolled down her cheeks.
I turned and started toward door number three, scared of what we would find. Each door got worse as we went along. The sex of the slave changed a couple of times, but the age stayed close to twenty. It was sick and disturbing, but I thanked God for their ages. I didn’t need to see a small child in the arms of a grown man. There are things you cannot drink away. I knew that already.
We cleared a whole hallway without any interruptions. That made me suspicious. So I led them all into a room, the sobbing and traumatized mess they were, and whispered, “I will be right back. Do not make any noise and do not leave this room. I will be back.”
Not a single one believed me. The hollowness in their eyes and the acceptance of their fates told me they might be beyond saving.
I snuck down another corridor until I reached a large area. Men were laughing and playing cards. I saw them through the slight crack in the open doorway. Servario was one of them. Guns sat on the table as they laughed and joked.
My heart raced, imagining the worst of him. He wasn't in trouble. He wasn't scared. He was drinking scotch and smoking a cigar. He was fine and I was a mess.
I turned, certain he had a reason for staying and laughing while the driver sexually assaulted me. Not even mentioning the sexually assaulted teenagers down the hall. Whatever that reason was though, I didn't give a flying fuck. I could not risk anyone for the good of the world. It wasn’t who I was.
I stalked back to the room I had left the teenagers in and opened the door slowly. One of the boys jumped at me, but I caught his weak arm in my hand. I lifted a finger to my lips. "No talking. No crying. Follow me and shut up. Don't drag your asses or we all die. Okay?"
They gripped one another and nodded.
I turned and snuck back through the hallways with them following me to the green door. We slipped out onto the road, each of them crying and sobbing and wanting to kiss the ground, but I shook my head. “Kiss American soil when we get home. Right now, we gotta go.” I jogged back to the car with the dead driver. I grabbed my cell phone from my clutch in the back seat and called 911.
“JESUS CHRIST, EVIE! WHERE THE FUCKING HELL ARE YOU?” Coop was calmer than I had imagined he’d be. He was only screaming and swearing, not threatening to kill me himself.
“Running back to the Burj Al Arab in Dubai.”
“OH THANK GOD, YOU’RE STILL HERE! YOU SCARED THE HELL OUT OF ME! I’ll COME AND GET YOU!”
“Just stop freaking out. I can meet you on the beach by the left side of the hotel. Bring a boat that can take about fifteen teenagers in bad shape.” I clicked the phone off and continued jogging with the teenagers on my heels. I opened my Google Maps and put the hotel into the link. We ran through the side streets and across main intersections. They were dressed in sheets and blankets and tattered clothes but not one person stopped for us.
No one cared about the group of people who were clearly injured. Not that it would have done a fucking bit of good. I would’ve killed anyone who stopped us as it was.
When we made it to the beach, I almost started crying too. The sand and rocks on my feet were soothing and amazing, perhaps a sign that I might actually make it back alive with the kids—the kids I couldn't turn and look back at. The kids I didn't want to mother, regardless of my desire to. I just couldn't. The horrors in my mind, lurking behind my eyes, were too fresh. I needed a minute and a drink and maybe some heroin to chase it all away.
But I didn't get any of that.
I turned and pointed at the seawall along the beach. “Sit there and talk to no one. Unless I come, you are a shipwrecked group of sailing kids who are awaiting your parent chaperones. That's your story.”
One of the boys nodded and gave me an inquisitive stare. “Who are you?”
“Someone who can sneak you in and out of countries without telling anyone. That's all you need to know.” It was a lie. If I was honest I would have hugged them all and cried about their wounds and made them a tea. That was m
ore who I was. The bitch who killed all those men, that bitch wasn't me. She was a trained assassin who came out when I needed her. Her only demand was that I looked the other way when Gustavo Servario unbuckled his pants.
It had taken us half an hour to get to the beach so I prayed that Coop would hurry and arrive any second before the most dangerous men in Dubai figured out I had stolen their precious imports.
I paced the beach and eventually forced myself to look at them, all of them. They were a straggly looking bunch of teenagers, the horror-movie version of an Abercrombie and Fitch commercial. I could have cried but I didn't. I focused on the fact that they were alive. Yes, the worst things that could be done to a person had been done to them, but they were alive.
The girl I had rescued first was sitting on the far edge. Her expression told me I hadn’t found her sister in the group. I flinched at the plan forming in my head, but when a boat came along the harbor, I knew I had to go back. I had to.
Coop and Luce hit the wharf with intensity, running down the beach. The kids behind me cowered, but I ran to the two people racing for us. Jack stayed with the boat, talking on the radio. Luce and Coop both wrapped themselves around me, hugging hard. Luce trembled when she spoke, “Quite the find, Evie.”
“You have no idea.” I glimpsed back at them. “You have to get them out. They need to be taken back to US soil, now. You guys go, before they find out they’re gone.”
Coop gripped me, trying to meet my stare. “Are you okay?”
“No,” I admitted. “I will be when they’re gone and there is no chance of them going back. They’re just kids.”
Coop lifted my chin, holding my face and peering deeply into my eyes. “Get in the boat. I will find Servario. Or better yet, we leave him behind and let him sort this out on his own. He has connections enough to get out.”
I almost agreed and took the path of least resistance, but remembering that I’d left the dead driver in the car made me shake my head. “I have to go back. I sprung a trap and left him there to be blamed for it all.”
Coop rolled his beautiful blue eyes. “He has hung you out to dry tons of times. You owe him. Let’s go.”
“Right.” I stepped back. “But that's not me. I would never leave someone behind. I don't believe in leaving someone to fend for themselves. I’m not you or Servario.” I turned and ran into the dark toward the kids. “Go to the boat. These are American agents. They will take you to safety.”
I fled, hearing footsteps behind me on the sidewalk when I got back up there. My feet burned and ached from running barefoot, but I had endured worse pain than that before. At least I had worn a comfortable dress. I stopped at a busy streetlight, the one we had gotten lucky with on the way to the beach. Luce caught up with me. She huffed next to me, making me feel better about my fitness level as I wheezed and waited for the light.
“So, what was that?”
I glanced up at her. “Which part could you possibly be referring to?”
“The whole ditching Coop, flying away with Servario again, and then deciding to leave Coop on a beach with a bunch of teenagers.”
“Right.” I crossed when the light turned. “That part.” I passed a gun to her when we reached the other side of the street. “Servario told me we were meeting you, Jack, and Coop in Dubai. Then we got here and he said we were meeting you guys in Europe. He had a plan. We went to a club and I killed the driver, and now I’m here.”
She motioned her head at the beach. “You freed those kids from a brothel?”
“Yeah.” I shuddered. “And left Servario in there with the bad guys, after killing our driver. I left him in a trap that's about to be sprung.”
“Oh shit,” she mumbled.
“Yup.” I followed the map on my phone in reverse to the car. When we got to the Mercedes I stopped and looked in the window at the dead man on the floor of the car. It was hard to see him with the bright lights of the city shining in, but when I leaned over and let my shadow cover the glass I viewed him perfectly.
Luce leaned over the window with me, and I had to admit having her there made me feel better. “Creepy. How’d you do it?”
“Stabbed him in the temple with my hairpin.”
She snorted. “Nice.”
We turned and I pointed at the alley. “This way.” We hurried along the backstreet to the large building. I was scared they had discovered their dead guard, but he lay there as dead as before.
“You are becoming badass, Evie. Very badass,” she said quietly as we crept inside and down the long corridor. When we got to the porn room, I handed her a handgun. “Is that a grenade in your tits?”
“Yeah,” I whispered and snuck around the corner to the long hall with the doors. Each one remained closed, concealing a dead man or woman inside. When we got to the room with the cards and guns, I lifted a finger to my lips. Men chuckled, sounding more drunk since I when I was there an hour or so ago.
Through the doorway, I caught a glimpse of three men and Servario. The Harry guy was gone though.
Luce lifted her gun, sneaking a peek. She took a deep breath and snuck into the room, holding her gun out. I aimed and fired at the man to Servario’s right as she shot the man to the left and the man in the middle. Servario was up, grabbing Luce until he saw her face. He swayed slightly, stumbling a bit. He was drunk. He smiled when he saw me, holding a finger out to my face. “Did you find your way back to young Cooper?”
“I am going to fucking kill you.” I grabbed his hand, a sickening rage coming over me, and dragged him from the room. He tried to pull me into him and he tried to be funny. He slurred and joked as we stumbled down the hallway. He was too loud and too crazy. Luce cleared the room behind us and the hallway as we walked out. When we stepped out over the dead man, Servario burst out laughing. He pointed at the body, laughing and stumbling like a fool.
I passed my boob grenade to Luce. “Make it rain.”
She ran back inside. I hurried away from the building as an explosion ripped into the night.
After we were past the car with the dead driver in it, we slowed down. Dragging Servario’s drunken ass was crazy. “He’s lost his fucking mind. Who gets hammered on a job?” Luce mumbled as we staggered down the road.
"Shut up." He wrapped his arms around us both, holding us and staggering. “You stupid women have fucked this up, and I can’t afford to lose my credibility on this. So you will stagger with me down the road until we can steal a car and get to the plane. You will shut your fucking mouths, apart from giggling like schoolgirls. Do you get me?”
We both nodded, afraid of the tone of his voice.
7
Roofie means I love you
The shaking of the plane and the lack of sleep had made me twitchy. I hadn’t eaten in ages and my strength had waned. When I got inside the hotel room in Belgium, I flopped onto the bed. It wasn't the VIP suite in the Burj Al Arab in Dubai. It was a dumpy hotel that none of us would be caught dead in, in the real world. But this wasn't the real world.
This was a tired place where I had no idea if I would ever recover from. I closed my eyes and fell into a deep sleep.
When I woke, a man was sitting in the corner in the armchair. I sat up quickly when I realized I wasn't dreaming and there truly was a man there. The light from the streetlamps shone in bright enough to see it wasn't the man it should have been.
“You fucked it up. You were supposed to stay in the car,” Servario muttered.
“I realize that but the driver tried to rape me.”
“What?”
“You didn't notice the dead driver in the car as we walked past?”
“You killed the driver?” His tone dropped off as he clued in. He rose and climbed onto the bed. “I assumed my reputation would buy you safety there. I left you in the car like a possession, to show them who you were to me.”
“Great.” I didn't care for his excuses. “I have to go. Coop is helping those kids and meeting me back home.”
He crawled
over me, pushing me back on the bed with a light shove. “Did you truly mean what you said to me about La La Land?”
“Yeah. I truly meant I love you. I do, even if you’re complicated and you live in a disturbing world and you always leave me to fend for myself.”
“We live in the same world, Evie.”
"No." I stared up into his dark eyes. “No, we don't. In my world I would’ve risked everything to save those kids. I never could’ve drank just down the hallway from that. You walked past it, you didn't care. I am not a monster, I can’t be one.”
“I was leaving tracking devices and audio as a favor for the CIA. They are busting up the human-trafficking ring. Granted, they aren’t getting it all now that we won’t have surveillance because you blew up the building.” He sighed. “We had a reason for being there.”
“But again, you didn't tell me. You say you trust me but you don't. You never let me in on the things that are happening.”
“You have no poker face. You see kids in trouble and overreact.”
“Overreact to human trafficking? You are an asshole who doesn't care about anything,” I growled as I sat up, shoving him off me. I turned and climbed off the bed, storming from the room to find Luce. I didn't care that I was in my underwear and tank top. I didn't care that I had no shoes on. I didn't care. I just left.
When I got to the elevator I pushed the button rapidly. As the door opened I went to step in, but he rushed me, pushing me in with him. He spun me around and pinned me against the wall as the doors closed. The light in the shitty elevator was dim and flickering.
He seethed into my face, “I cared. I cared, goddammit. I cared in a way you can’t imagine. I sit next to those fucks, and I tolerate their bullshit by telling myself every single one of those kids is only one soul and I have to save millions.” His voice cracked. It sounded the way my heart did. “I care. I care about you. I have loved you my whole life, and I have to live with the fact that you are with him—that boy. You are safe with him. Why do you think I don't fight for you, Evie?” He pushed me into the wall as the elevator remained, frozen on that floor. “I let him have you, I let him love you. You are his because he keeps you safe, Evie. That's one way I can keep you safe. But you are mine.”