Shock was frozen on her face. “Pete? How could you? These men . . . these men are absolute animals. How could you?”
“Their reach goes far and wide. Deep within the government. You saw all the pictures Kramer had on his wall.”
“So, what, you’re on their payroll?”
“Someone had to keep law enforcement at bay. Keep them off their game for all these years and protect the bureaucrats.”
“And what about the barn full of dead women?”
“Collateral damage. Of course, I knew about that long before you made the discovery.”
“And my niece? What about Ashley, Pete?”
Risen paused a moment. “She wasn’t planned. Only coincidence. Your operative too. It was me in the white van that day at her school. I needed to see her, to see if she was as special as the broadcast made her out to be. She was, oh, she was.”
“You disgust me, I can’t believe you would do this, after all I’ve done for you.”
As Collar kneeled in the same position, she heard rustling behind her. A footprint in the snow. She whipped her head around but saw nothing but blackness. Then she felt the cold hard steel barrel of a handgun being pressed against the back of her head.
“It’s true. You have helped me in the past from time to time, but this gig is . . . well, it just suits me better.”
Collar held her hands out to her side.
“Drop the gun.”
She didn’t release the rifle until he pulled the hammer back on his Beretta.
She raised her head and took one last glance at the house knowing her time was up. Take them down, Niki. Take them all down and send them straight to hell.
38
“ASHLEY, I NEED TO GET you back into your room,” Niki said.
“What? No! I’m coming with you.”
“I appreciate that, I really do, but trust me, you don’t want to be with me when I do what I need to do. In fact, I can’t have you with me because you’ll be a distraction.” Niki hoped she wouldn’t take that the wrong way.
Ashley waited a moment to speak. “I . . . I can’t go back in there with that . . . that monster.”
“Trust me, he’ll never be a problem again. He’s dead.”
“I know that, but—it’s not him I’m worried about. I just can’t go back into that room.”
Rage boiled over in Niki’s mind. She too felt the urge to leave and never come back, but she had men to dispose of first and she needed to be quick about it. “You have to go back into your room.”
“What about a different room? Maybe with one of the other girls.”
Without hesitation, Niki replied, “Too risky. What if another man is inside? One who paid the price for his prize and is too afraid to come out to face the firefight. No. You need to go back to your own room.”
In the dark, Niki could see the form of Ashley’s head fall in defeat.
“We don’t have time to debate this. Let’s go.”
They crept across the floor, keeping low as they followed the hallway back to room number 7. At the doorway Niki said, “This is where I leave you.”
“Are you sure about this? You’re sure you can get Sergei?”
“Without question.” Niki’s confidence couldn’t have been any higher.
“What about the guards?”
“I assume most, if not all, will be outside holding off the rescue attempt, leaving Sergei with his clients. At best, one guard might be there for protection.”
Ashley stopped in front of her door and refused to enter when Niki turned around and moved for the staircase.
“Be careful,” Ashley whispered.
Niki heard her but didn’t respond. She snuck down the staircase, holding herself flush against the wall that descended with the stairs. She heard rumblings from deep within the house, maybe inside the dining room. They were quiet yet panicked voices. When she reached the bottom, she ducked and moved across the front of the final stair, staying low and out of sight. After reaching the left side, she peered around the corner. The beam of a flashlight shone from underneath a closed door. Niki hadn’t visited that part of the manor yet, so truly she had no idea what was behind the door. She also had no idea how many people were in there, but soon she would find out. First, she would need to find a weapon.
Because of the light behind the door, she deduced that no one was in the dining room, which was to the right of that closed door. They better not have cleaned up in there, Niki thought. There might be a leftover steak knife or fork, something she could use to defend herself. But in the darkness and from her position, she wouldn’t be able to tell for certain until she got closer to the table.
She crept across the floor, lowering her head as she jogged ahead. She used a pillar as a blocker and peered into the empty room. Now that she was close, she saw a few plates strewn about on the fine tablecloth at the first table. Niki rubbed her hand over the delicate linen, feeling for anything she could use. Cold hard silver met her touch, but it wasn’t a knife or even a fork; it was a spoon.
Damnit. She quickly moved on, feeling her way across until she found herself at the end of the long table. Just as she turned to the other table, she heard an elevated male voice. She froze and turned to detect its origin. It was behind a different doorway. Niki saw a flashlight beam now being moved under another door also connected to the dining room.
“Check upstairs,” Sergei said. “Make sure the women are locked in their rooms. And the men who are with them . . . make sure they know we have this situation under control.”
“Roger that.” Suddenly the door swung open, and the man holding the flashlight waved the beam into the dining room.
Niki dropped to the floor in a thud.
“Huh?” the guard said.
Shit.
Instead of moving out of the dining room, the guard held his beam straight, moving it slowly across the room, searching for what he’d heard.
Niki figured she could actually use this moment against him. As he scanned with the flashlight, she could get behind him and take him out, but with what? She still had no weapon. She could try her unarmed battle skills against him, but she didn’t have that kind of time, nor could she risk alerting Sergei or the other guests.
As the guard stepped forward, Niki snuck across the floor toward the opposite end of the room. As she crept, her fingers crawled to the top of the second table and reached for something, anything.
At the end of the table she would need to slide around carefully to avoid being seen. She lifted her hand and moved around the foot of the table, just as the guard walked down the space she’d just vacated. Niki paralleled the guard as he walked along the opposite side of the table, still reaching with her fingertips, trying to find some form of weapon.
Halfway down the length of the table, she knew he mirrored her movements, and no more than five feet separated them. Niki’s fingers caught the blade of a serrated edge. She gripped the steel and pulled it toward her off the table’s border, but as it came to the lip of the table the handle nicked the fine china and rang into the empty room like a church bell.
The guard whipped his head and the flashlight around and said, “Stand, or I’ll fire.”
Niki held the knife to her chest and closed her eyes.
Leap over the table and jab the knife into his chest. Do it now, before he knows what hit him. Her plan was flawed. If she did that, he’d likely get a shot off, and maybe he’d hit his mark. At the very least he would cause alarm, eliminating the element of surprise.
“I’m not joking. Show yourself! Now, damnit!”
But Niki refused. Instead, she crawled beneath the table. She could see his feet under the beam of his flashlight.
His tone turned more caring. Perhaps he thought that would work. “Look. Just come out, and I promise you won’t be harmed.”
Famous last words of every villain in any story.
How cliché. Niki wouldn’t let herself be on the losing end of that cliché. She lifted the ta
blecloth gently, then sprouted from the ground like a spring and jammed the tip of the blade deep into the guard’s chest.
She stared at him as shock hung in his eyes. She lifted his weapon from his hands as life began to leave him. He fell backward, hard against a chair, then fell to the floor.
Niki stood over him, waiting for him to breathe his last breath before she lifted the flashlight and pointed it back on the door from which he’d come.
Taking quiet steps around the table, she moved toward the doorway, but before she entered, she released the magazine from the weapon to make sure she was fully loaded. She led with the flashlight bulb facing the ground as she opened the door. It swung open into the kitchen. Makes sense, Niki thought. To her surprise, though, she found no one there. Now the voices, the nervous voices she’d heard before, had ceased.
As she continued through the kitchen, she saw an open door frame, and that’s when she heard the familiar Russian accent of Sergei.
“Darwin, I assume everything is in order?” Sergei said, not yet noticing who stood in the room with him.
Without missing a beat, Niki said, “Oh, everything is in order, but not the kind of order you’re going to like.”
Niki flashed the beam into Sergei’s face, making it difficult for him to see who was behind the light.
Sergei sighed. “I see. Who are you? And how did you find us here?”
Sergei figured the woman behind the flashlight was an outsider, someone who’d tracked him down and was there to bring him into custody. But Niki had no interest in the law. She would see justice done the old-fashioned way. Instead of answering his question, Niki lifted the light away from him and pointed it upward from her waist to reveal her identity.
Sergei grinned and then dropped his head as he nodded to himself. “Eight. I should’ve known.”
“How could you?”
“I knew you were special.”
“You have no idea how special I am.” Then she pointed the beam back on him.
“So, what now? You march me out the door and bring me to a cell? I assure you, my government will have me out within a day.”
“There will be no cell for you, only the grave.”
He laughed off her threat. “You don’t have the power or the balls to do that.”
“Balls?” She laughed right back at him. “You’re right. I don’t have the balls.” She stalled, then said, “I’m the pale horse.”
“What’s that supposed to be? Some kind of American metaphor meant to scare me?”
“Sure, call it a metaphor if you like. But that’s what I do, I walk into the darkness, much like I am now. I came here for liberation. You may not have seen it or expected it, but I’m here to shine a light on the evil that you and your friends represent. It’s so easy for you, for them, to pick us out of a lineup based on our physical appearance. You . . . no, they don’t bother to learn about us as human beings, because you don’t see us as such. You look at me and you see dollar signs. You’re the boogie man, the man in fairy tales meant to scare us as our minds run wildly out of control at the very thought of what you might do. Meant to torture us while we live in that darkness. Well, I’m here to tell you, that we have nothing left to fear, because . . . well, because you’re a dead man.” Niki raised the weapon and without another word, filled Sergei with three rounds. Two to the chest and one to the head.
39
COLLAR WAITED FOR THE shot coming from the end of Risen’s Beretta, but instead one came from somewhere near the front of the house. She didn’t even have the chance to raise her head, because she was afraid her ears were playing tricks on her. As she kneeled in the snow, she realized the barrel of the Beretta was no longer pressing against her skull.
Slowly, she turned around and saw Risen’s open eyes staring back at her with a fresh bullet wound through the center of his forehead.
“Agent Collar.” She heard through her ear. “All threats have been neutralized. We’re moving on the homestead now. Are you with us?”
She couldn’t catch her breath as she stared at the man who’d been determined to kill her. But she was still alive. Her heart beat so fast, she could feel it through her shirt.
Another voice rang out in her ear, “Agent Collar, are you okay?”
“Uh, yes. Yes. I’m coming.” She stood, but felt out of sorts as she blinked slowly, getting her bearings as she walked over the deep snow banks.
When she met the remaining men at the front door, only five were there. Their team had taken heavy casualties, but they were sure to see this through. Collar nodded to the men as they waited for her to enter. One of them handed her a Glock to use. She glanced to the ground and saw the one dead guard lying half off the concrete step.
“Stay behind me, ma’am. We don’t know what we’ll encounter in here.”
Collar nodded in agreement and entered last. Two men walked up the staircase, and the other three stayed on the main level. Collar followed the men on the main floor as they spanned out, clearing the first room they entered. Then they moved to the next, the dining room, making quick work of the area.
Collar held her flashlight over her Glock as the men searched. The beam of her light stretched to the floor where she caught sight of a dead man with the blade of a knife sticking out from his chest.
Niki, she thought. A smile formed on her face. She knew this was her handiwork. She was alive, and that loosened the knot in her belly. Collar turned to the door on the opposite wall of the dining room and walked toward it. For some reason, deep down, she knew Niki was there.
As Collar pushed through the doorway, she saw the kitchen, then another framed open doorway, and at the end of her beam a man’s feet. He was lying face up. She walked over to him and shined the light on his face. Instantly she recognized him as the man at the top of her pyramid.
She grinned in admiration and said, “Niki, you are one hell of an agent.”
“Thank you.”
Collar shot up at attention. Two words from a voice she didn’t expect to hear, not yet. She reached for Niki’s neck and wrapped her in an embrace. Then she pushed out of the hug and asked, “Ashley?”
Niki breathed in deep and waited. “Physically, she’s safe upstairs. But emotionally, she will be . . . tortured. At least for a while.”
“Oh no, I suppose so.” When she hugged her again, the beam of her light extended beyond Niki. “What the—”
Niki turned around and added her own light, then said, “I figure the FBI will have a field day with this crop of deviants, don’t you?”
They shared a smile just as three FBI agents entered the room.
“Arrest them,” Collar said, nodding toward the collection of individuals sitting helpless on the ground.
Niki excused herself from the group. “Wait, where are you going?” Collar asked.
She turned and said, “There’s one more person I have some unfinished business with.”
“And where is he?”
“The basement, I’m told.”
“By all means then, don’t let me stop you.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” She took another step.
“Oh, and Niki?”
Niki stopped and turned back around.
“Thank you,” Collar said.
“Happy to help,” Niki said, then continued to the doorway that led downstairs.
WHEN NIKI OPENED THE door to the basement, a wave of dank, moldy air invaded her nostrils. She flipped on the flashlight and shined the beam downward while holding the light above the barrel of the gun. Wherever the light went, her barrel would follow.
Upon her first step the wooden stair creaked. The sound would’ve alerted anyone in the basement, but she didn’t care. If Mr. Ritter was down there hiding, he wasn’t likely he’d put up much of a fight since all his allies had been defeated. Niki continued down the staircase until her feet met the coolness of the concrete.
The darkness consumed her as she continued walking into the open area, highlighted by the
beam.
“I know you’re down here, Ritter. Save me the game of hide-and-seek, and tell me where you are.”
There was no response. Niki’s pulse quickened, and there was no way to slow it down. The last time she played a game of hide-and-seek with a criminal in the dark, the outcome was positive but not before a man held a nail gun to Collar’s head.
After a few seconds in the darkness, she heard a noise emanating from the corner. Someone was there. She could hear every single breath he took. The breathing was labored, as if asthma had set in, almost a wheeze.
Niki followed the heavy breathing with the beam of her flashlight. A man sat with his back against the concrete wall and his knees pulled into his chest. She lifted the beam to his face. It was indeed Mr. Ritter. His face lacked color as he peered up at Niki who aimed her gun at his head, ready to pull the trigger.
“I knew I’d find you down here, hiding like a coward.”
“I’m no coward,” he stuttered.
“No? What then? Just down here to collect your thoughts. I’d give you a penny, but I don’t have one on me.” Niki grinned.
“That’s a charming wit you’ve got there.”
“And I’ll have it with me always. Until the day I die. You, sir, lack conviction as well as the educational depth of a human being. Taking women against their will and sending them off to men to do God knows what to their bodies, to drag them down into hell.”
“Please. It’s all they’re good for.” He held no remorse.
Niki shook her head. “Still trying to sell that line of bullshit. What kind of man are you? Down in the dark, hiding in the shadows. But that’s what you do, isn’t it? Hide behind the mask of insecurity. Insecurity you’ve dealt with for so long. That’s why you take these women, to feel powerful, isn’t it?”
“Damn right.”
Niki watched him rock on the floor, anger boiling inside him, about to let loose. She knew he was weak, but not this weak. “You’re pathetic. You and your brother. You’re both pathetic.”
Third Degree Page 18