Bad Roads (E&M Investigations, Book 2)

by Lena Bourne

  “Hey, you can’t take that. It’s mine,” she says.

  “And you’ll get it back once we’re done with it,” Ivan tells her.

  I highly doubt that’s ever going to happen. I’m certain they’ll destroy everything they’ve collected here within the next hour. And there’s absolutely nothing I can do to stop them. A part of my mind, the part that still remembers my military training is considering fighting them for it, but that’s a ridiculous notion. There are five of them, and four look like they spend all their free time at the gym.

  The best I can do now is secure the witness. And hope the USB stick she gave me contains enough information to thwart this crooked lawyer’s plans. People like him make me sick. Situations like this make me sick. And I’ll make sure they all pay for that.

  “Let’s go,” I tell Lina again and give her a little push to get her walking towards the door. Once she starts moving her feet, she needs no more urging.

  “Don’t go far,” Ivan calls after her, making her shake and walk faster.

  I want to issue a couple of threats myself and it’s all I can do not to. It’s better he thinks he’s won. He’ll make more mistakes that way. I hope.

  Lina is breathing hard and still shaking as I escort her to the car.

  “Do you think I’ll go to jail?” she asks in a whisper.

  I shake my head and lie. “No, of course not.”

  But the thing is, they’ll need a fall guy for this. And I’m afraid she’s it. Brina better hurry up and get her investigation into this moving, or we’ll never get to the bottom of this.

  My phone is ringing, and I answer it before getting in the car with Lina.

  “They’re taking the women from the house somewhere,” Walter says breathlessly. “They’re putting them in vans. What should I do?”

  Shit. This is their exit strategy. And by the looks of things they’ve had it planned down to every detail for a while now. It was a mistake going to see Vasko this morning. I didn’t think they’d move so fast. I was wrong.

  “Follow them, but don’t engage,” I tell him. “Make sure they don’t see you.”

  They’ll take the women somewhere. At least this way we’ll know where. But I’m afraid that won’t help us much.

  Not once the masterminds cut all ties and get comfy in their new place of plausible deniability. But at least their actions confirm that they’re guilty of something. For whatever that’s worth.

  16

  Eva

  Fata’s house once again smells like a restaurant kitchen. There’s so much food on the rectangular table in the kitchen that there’s barely any room for plates and cutlery. I’m hungry but dreading eating too much for the second day in a row at the same time.

  Renata has put on so much makeup she looks like she’s about to hit the nightclubs hard. She’s also wearing a shimmery emerald green dress that looks stunning with her auburn hair but is also very tight over the hips and has a very low neckline. I feel very underdressed in my jeans and cowl-necked cotton crop top. Her grandmother is piercing Renata with very judgmental sideways looks, accompanied by mutters of displeasure at her appearance, but isn’t confronting her on the issue.

  The doorbell rings and Renata flies to get it, or tries to, since the dress she’s wearing is much too tight to allow running.

  “What the hell is wrong with her?” Fata mutters as soon as Renata exits the kitchen, but she spoke low enough so I can pretend I didn’t hear.

  A moment later, Renata returns, leading a very red-faced Rado in by the hand. He cleans up good and looks quite striking in his black pants and a white button-down shirt. And given that he’s not scowling at the moment, he’s handsome in that tall, dark, and mysterious way, which is often lost on me, but not with him. I understand what Renata sees in him better now.

  “Sit,” Fata says grumpily after Rado greets her. “Let’s eat.”

  And we do just that in tense silence for the first five minutes.

  “This is delicious,” Rado says, indicating the spinach burek on his plate. “Just like my grandma used to make.”

  “I’m glad you like it,” Fata says and she sounds like she’s speaking through gritted teeth. “Your grandma was a good friend of mine. We were neighbors once upon a time.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Rado says in between bites.

  Renata smiles at him each time he says something and nods along like he’s saying the most interesting thing. It just makes him look down at his plate and blush harder.

  “Yes, I’m sorry she died so young,” Fata says. “But it was a terrible burden she had to carry, raising you and your brother.”

  She’s not even trying to hide her disdain, or more like her downright cruelty. Rado’s eyes are black and dead again, yet full of fire. Rage, I’d say.

  “Fata!” Renata says in breathless outrage. “Why are you saying this?”

  “Because you’re clearly throwing yourself at him like a slut, and I want to prevent it,” Fata says in another brilliant display of what it means to go straight for the jugular in a metaphorical sense.

  Renata lays one of her hands over Rado’s forearms and wraps the other around his shoulders. “Actually, you’re too late to prevent anything. Rado and I have been going out for weeks and we love each other. And I chose tonight to finally tell you.”

  Rado looks like he’s got something sharp and hard in his mouth and doesn’t know what to do about it. The rage hasn’t yet faded from his eyes, which are more like two bottomless pools of black water now as he glares at Renata. She’s oblivious to his discomfort though and only has eyes for her grandma.

  “You and Rado?” Fata asks breathlessly. “Why?”

  “Because he sees past the mistakes I’ve made,” Renata snaps. “Because he sees me as a woman worth loving.”

  “Does he now?” Fata asks scathingly. “Maybe that’s because of all the mistakes he’s made himself.”

  Rado shoots to his feet, the wooden chair legs scraping against the floor with a grating sound. He somehow looks taller than a giant even though he’s hunched over, leaning against his white-knuckled fists on the table.

  “Shut up, old woman,” he hisses, the rage in his voice that much scarier because it’s quiet. “What do you know about me? Nothing!”

  He’s taking deep breaths through his nose and it sounds like a saw grating against metal. I’m frightened that a violent explosion of his temper is seconds away, but Fata is just matching his glare, a fearless, slightly mocking look in her eyes.

  “I know I don’t want you going out with my granddaughter,” she says. “And I know that the last two women you were close with are either missing or dead.”

  I’m nearly a hundred percent sure she’s talking about Esma and Anita.

  Renata gets to her feet too, and wraps her arm around Rado’s, the muscles in which are so tightly coiled it’s shaking.

  “You don’t get a say, Fata!” she says. “Come, Rado, let’s go.”

  He shakes her arm off and straightens up. “I’m leaving. Alone.”

  He stalks out of the kitchen and Renata hurries after him. It’s so sad listening to her begging him to take her too, while he puts his shoes on in the hall, and him coldly and curtly refusing. Fata leans back in her chair with a sigh that sounds like it’s coming from the depths of her troubled soul.

  The sound of the front door slamming shut reaches us from the hallway and Renata begging him not to just walk away is muffled now.

  “You must think we’re insane,” Fata says to me.

  “Why did you say all those things to him?” I ask, not at my best with questions, since the scene shocked me more than I’d like to admit. “Just to get a rise out of him or because you suspect him of something?”

  Fata looks at me. “He used to get up to all sorts of bad things. Then he left town soon after Esma Rajić disappeared and a lot of us thought he had something to do with it. And when he returned his brother just killed himself. No one talks about them now, not
after the way his brother died, but he’s no good for my Renata.”

  “Rado didn’t hurt anyone, especially not his brother or Esma,” Renata says from the doorway, breathless and speaking in a high-pitched, angry voice. “That’s just a story you and your hag friends came up with. And what do you care, anyway?”

  She strides into the kitchen, her face almost as red as her hair. “Why do you want to destroy this for me?”

  “I want to protect you,” Fata says, not unkindly.

  “From what? From the only man who’ll have me after the mess I’ve made of my life?” Renata snaps. “Gee, thanks, granny dear. So he’s made mistakes. So have I. So what? That’s all in the past.”

  I really want to know more about Fata’s theories regarding Esma and Rado, but this is no time to ask. Nor should I be here while they have this discussion since it’s too private. Renata is on the verge of tears, Fata looks like she’s going that way too and neither of them notices as I leave the kitchen and go get my bag from the living room.

  They’re shouting at each other as I close the front door behind me quietly. As much as I want to learn about Rado’s dark past, it’ll have to wait for now.

  Mark

  Lina is still shaking when we reach her apartment building and her face is about as white as her hair now. I’m starting to doubt that she told me all she knows about the operation run via the NGO, but she’s in no fit state to be grilled right now.

  The street we’re parked in is lined with young trees and their leaves are just starting to sprout. They’re glistening in the afternoon sun as they shake in the breeze, and she’s just sitting there, not saying anything and not getting out of the car.

  “Could you take me to my parents’ house?” she finally asks. “I don’t think I’m safe at home.”

  “Why do you think that?” I ask, as gently as I can given my suspicions about her knowing more than she’s telling.

  “That was so scary, the way they just came into the office and took everything,” she says. “And that lawyer, Ivan Derganec, he threatened me. You heard him threaten me. I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “Fine, I’ll take you wherever you want to go,” I say. “But if you know more than you’ve already told me, now would be a good time to tell me the rest.”

  She fixes her eyes on mine, her face growing yet another shade paler.

  “All the secrecy surrounding the women we apparently helped never sat well with me. Nor did the seemingly bottomless funds we had to do it,” she says. “I should’ve dug deeper. I think I am culpable in whatever was going on there.”

  My phone starts ringing before I can come up with a good response. It’s Walter again.

  “They just let all the women out at the train station,” he says breathlessly. “Just now. They’re giving them something and I think they’re telling them to get on trains and busses. I don’t get it.”

  I tell him I’ll be right there and look at Lina. I’m about to act on a whim, which might come back to haunt me later, so I’m really hoping what my mentor said about intuition is true.

  “They are putting the women from the halfway house onto trains and buses,” I tell her. “If we go there, do you think you can get some of them to talk to us before they disappear?”

  “Until yesterday, when I tried that, I’d say, yes,” she mutters. “But now I don’t know.”

  “Yes or no?” I ask.

  “I’ll try, yes,” she snaps and I just pull away and drive much too fast back to the train station.

  Walter is in one of the task force cars, a dark blue VW sedan, parked by the curb about twenty meters from the entrance to the train station. There are five long-distance buses parked on the sidewalk in front of it, and I can hear some sort of train announcement coming from inside the station though I can’t make out the words.

  A group of about twenty women, young and curvy, most of them long-haired, are huddled together on the sidewalk by the train station entrance. Five bouncer types are with them as is the lawyer. He’s handing out small manila envelopes to the women. He made short work of closing down the NGO office after we left.

  “Do you recognize any of the women?” I ask Lina. She squints at the scene for a couple of moments then turns to me and nods.

  I recognize a couple of the women too. The two black-haired ones who wouldn’t talk to me and Brina yesterday.

  “We’ll wait until the lawyer leaves and approach them then,” I say. “I’ll just go talk to my colleague now.”

  She gulps and nods again, and I hurry to Walter’s car, thankful that the lawyer is standing with his back turned to us.

  “What’s going on here?” Walter asks as I get in the car. “They don’t look like they’re being forced into anything. It looks like he’s giving them money.”

  That’s actually exactly what it looks like. “I have a woman with me who knows some of these women. As soon as the men leave, she and I will try to get at least one of them to answer some questions for us.”

  “If the men leave,” Walter says, but as soon as the words are out of his mouth, the bouncers start moving towards the two white vans parked a few paces in front of them. A few more moments later, after he gives the last instructions, Ivan walks to his black Audi that’s parked behind the vans and they all take off.

  The women just stand there, looking at each other with puzzled frowns on their faces, and glancing at the envelopes in their hands from time to time.

  “I hope this works,” I say without actually meaning to voice that particular thought aloud, and get out of the car.

  Lina is already standing on the sidewalk, arms wrapped tight around her chest and her head bobbing up and down.

  “A few of the women have already seen me,” she says. “I should go talk to them. What do I say?”

  “Tell them we need to ask them a few questions,” I say. “I’ll go with you.”

  She shakes her head. “Better not. They could take you as a threat.”

  I’m tall and not skinny, but few people have ever considered me a threat based on my looks. I nod anyway and she walks away, slowly and hesitantly.

  The women have now all seen her and have stopped talking among each other to stare at her. As soon as she’s near enough, they start bombarding her with questions. I’m too far to make out what they’re saying, but their body language and general gesturing tell me they have no idea what’s happening and what they’re supposed to do now.

  Walter gets out of the car, but I wave to him to get back inside before the women see him. If I’m a threat then both of us will be seen as an even bigger one, I guess.

  Lina points to me a few times, causing the women to frown in my direction and then start arguing again. At one point, a few of them grab their bags and stalk into the train station. A couple of moments later, a few more follow them. By the looks of things, whatever Lina’s telling them isn’t working. I probably made a mistake not going over there with her.

  But just as I decide to go there and try to remedy that, she starts walking back towards me, followed by the two black-haired women I’ve already met.

  The angry one looks even angrier today than she did yesterday. She overtakes Lina and strides up to me.

  “She says you can help us, is this true?” Her black eyes are shooting fire at me. But I smile and nod anyway. “I’m sure we can, yes.”

  “My sister is pregnant, can you help with that too?” she adds as she reaches me. She’s only about a head shorter than me and has a very pretty face, with high cheekbones and upturned, cat green eyes. If she wasn’t scowling all the time, she’d be even prettier. But I suppose she does have a lot to scowl about.

  “We’ll make sure she gets to see a doctor,” I tell her. “But I’ll need you to help us too.”

  She extends her hand. Her nails are long, covered with bright red, very chipped nail polish.

  “I’m Elira and my sister’s name is Drita.”

  I introduce myself too, and by then Lina and the sister have r
eached us too.

  “Let’s go,” Elira says. “We’ll tell you everything we know.”

  I have no doubt that she’s also fully ready to tell me a bunch of things she doesn’t know but thinks I want to hear. Beggars can’t be choosers though.

  Eva

  It’s still light out, though the sky already has that dusky purple color of imminent nightfall. Renata and Fata’s raised voices can clearly be heard even as I reach the sidewalk, and too many neighbors are leaning out their windows or puttering about in their yards to believe they just desperately needed some fresh air or remembered unfinished work at dusk. They’re listening to the argument.

  I walk along the sidewalk, greeting anyone who looks at me, which is everyone since I’m an interesting outsider in the middle of their routine, small-town life. I get polite but muttered hellos back.

  “Hey, hey, over here,” a woman calls from somewhere to my left.

  I turn towards the voice, which belongs to a short, red-haired woman leaning on a low, dark brown wooden fence. The front yard of the house behind her is so full of old, mostly rusted cars, tires, and scrap metal that hardly any grass is visible. A dog is barking somewhere behind her and I think I hear the rattling of a chain.

  “Can I ask you a question?” she says.

  “Sure,” I say and head towards her.

  The closer I get the older she looks. At first, I thought she was just a little older than me, but she looks closer to Fata’s age up close. Her dark eyes are encircled by crow’s feet wrinkles which look even deeper as she continues smiling.

  “Are you that journalist who knew Selima and Mirela in Berlin?” she asks.

  I nod, not immediately able to say anything past the lump in my throat. I failed both of those women miserably. And I think I’m failing Anita too. And her sister.

  “Selima was the daughter of an old friend of mine,” she says, still smiling.

  “I’m sorry,” I mutter and she gives me a quizzical look.

  “You did all you could,” she says. “Are you here to find Esma now? That’s what I heard.”