“Shhh!” Danny said. “Why do they have you cuffed like that?”
The young woman shook her head frantically, her hair flying out like an Afghan hound with its head out the car window.
“Can you speak?”
The young woman nodded.
“What’s your name?”
The woman didn’t answer; she just made a shrill sound muffled by her clamped-together lips.
“Your name, honey. Just give me something to call you.”
“Nina,” she said. The voice was high-pitched, almost a squeak.
“Nina, what are you doing here? What are you, a working girl?”
“What?”
“That’s it, right? Some egghead research guy called you for some take out, things got a little rough…he cuffed you until you calmed yourself down. Then he pays you and you’re on your way.”
“I don’t know w-what you’re talking about. Go away!”
Every time she opened her mouth, Nina’s voice rang discordant from what he was expecting.
“Nina, I’m Danny. Look, in another place, another time, I would have asked you out in a second. Right now you gotta stop acting so strange. Now that you’ve seen me, I need for you to be on my side, OK?”
Nina pursed her lips and looked up at Danny again with those large eyes. “OK,” she said.
“If anybody asks you, you didn’t see me, OK?”
Nina looked up at Danny as if what he said wasn’t what she had expected and she looked deeply disappointed.
“You’re a very beautiful woman, Nina.”
Nina’s face caved in on itself and she squealed miserably. She buried her face in her arm and started to cry again. Danny’s instinct was to comfort her and he touched her bare shoulder.
Nina opened back up and recoiled violently. “Don’t touch me!” she screamed. “Don’t touch me or I’ll die!”
Danny felt the slap of Nina’s emotion but afterward it synched disparate thoughts in his mind and all of sudden, everything became sharp and clear.
“Nina—how old are you?”
A tear squeezed from Nina’s eye and her mouth trembled. “Six,” she said.
“Jesus.”
Nina started to stamp her bare feet on the concrete floor. “I don’t want to be here!” she cried out hysterically.
“Shhh! Nina…it’s OK. I won’t let anyone hurt you. What happened? Why are you here?”
Nina dipped her chin guiltily. “It’s because I talked to strangers.”
“What do you mean?”
Danny could see Nina equated confessing to getting punished so when she looked up at him he smiled warmly at her.
“Mama told me not to talk to strangers. She told me not to…and I did,” Nina started, the corners of her mouth bunching up. “I didn’t mean to but he showed me a picture of his puppy and he said he couldn’t find him unless I helped him.”
“The strange man brought you here?”
Nina shook her head with an exaggerated motion that would have rewarded an older person with a sprained neck.
“Uh-uh. It was someplace else with no windows and everything was locked.”
“Were you there long?”
“I got sleepy. And then I woke up here. And everything was changed.”
Danny connected the dots. Stranger. Kidnapped the girl, took her to some basement, drugged her, brought her back to the facility and then “changed” her.
“Did the man touch you?” Danny asked gently.
Nina started to cry again when Danny stopped her. “Don’t cry,” he said.
Danny spied a small cabinet overlooking an examining table and pulled open a few drawers until he came across what he was seeking. His fingers sifted through a drawer of medical instruments and picked up a stainless steel probing tool. Danny squatted beside Nina. Bringing the instrument down to Nina’s wrist, Danny held the cuff steady. “Let’s just get this off,” he said.
Nina stopped crying, like a child who is easily distracted by something fascinating. Her tear streaked face burrowed close as Danny worked the thin metal probe into the handcuff’s open lock.
“Did he stick you with a needle?” Danny asked with a calm, soothing tone.
“Uh-huh. It hurt,” she said.
“Were there any other little girls he did this to?”
“I dunno.”
Finally, the cuffs came open—“There,” he said. Nina held up her released wrist and then had an idea.
“Put it on. Let me try,” Nina said excitedly.
“No, no. We don’t want to do that.”
Nina had her legs twisted in a way that her slip was starting to ride upwards. Danny pulled the slip down to her kneecap. “Sweetheart, do you have any other clothes?” he asked.
“No.” She looked at Danny again and made a sad face. “You gonna help me, Mister?”
“Danny. Call me Danny.”
She bit her lower lip. “You gonna help me, Danny?”
Danny sighed. For a moment, he didn’t want to look into Nina’s hopeful eyes. This wasn’t the plan. Nina had changed the entire landscape of his vengeful, nihilistic mission and now Danny could not even fathom his next move. “I—”
The sound of an opening door startled Danny and steps soon followed. Nina’s face squeezed together in fear again. Danny got Nina’s attention and silently shushed her. He made her watch him hide behind a tall steel locker across from her, his presence obscured to anyone walking into the area where she sat.
The steps drew closer. Finally, they stopped and Danny could make out from behind a male in his thirties with a white lab coat that had a badge with the name Shaw pinned to it. His movements were nervous, strung tight, like someone afraid to make the smallest mistake. He put his hands on his hips as he surveyed Nina in the chair where he had left her.
“Hey, sweetie. You miss me? I had to make sure there was no one else around. You and me, we’re going to have some fun. Don’t you want to have fun?” Shaw was admiring Nina when he noticed her cuffed wrist was free. His head cocked as if he momentarily wondered whether he hadn’t done what he was sure he had.
“Can I play too?” Danny said in a dark, pitiless voice that came from behind and chilled Shaw to his core.
Whipping around, Shaw caught Danny’s thundering fist straight to the face and fell to the floor so quickly that Danny’s sweeping second punch failed to connect. Unconscious, Shaw’s mouth fell open. Danny quickly began to strip off his lab coat.
“Nina, I want you to put this on. The shirt and trousers too.”
Nina rushed over and sat on her knees, watching Danny intently. She made a face. “They probably smell like him. Yeeech!”
Danny was learning child psychology fast. “For me?” he said.
Nina pouted. “OK.”
Danny stripped the shirt and trousers from Shaw, his socks and shoes as well, and let Nina steal away to a hidden corner of the room to dress. Rifling through other drawers, Danny was able to secure a bundle of loose cord, a knife and some duct tape. Shaw, when peeled, was revealed to have a bit of corpulence to his waist and legs and when Danny hog-tied him, he resembled a package of uncured sausage links. Danny left Shaw the dignity of his shorts and undershirt but stuffed an old rag in his mouth and kept it in place with the tape from ear to ear. Lifting Shaw was like pressing dead weight, so Danny pulled him under the armpits and stuffed him into the steel locker he had used for cover. He used his heel to push the unconscious man all the way in, and shut the locker door. Shaw’s nostrils had been left unobstructed and without food or water he could last long enough until he was found. There was a darker spirit in Danny though that hoped any security search would overlook Shaw and that he would pay for his sordid crime with a slow and painful death.
Nina was completely dressed now in Shaw’s lab uniform and coat. The shirt fit surprisingly well with Nina’s bosom contained in Shaw’s large shirt size. The pants hung loosely and the leg cut above her ankle. The shoes fit like floppy slippers. Fortunately,
the coat covered most of the incongruities and Nina was deemed passable to Danny’s eye.
“Does it smell?”
Nina nodded with a frown.
“Sit down for a minute.”
Nina sat obediently and looked around to see what Danny was doing. Danny knew Nina’s wild mane was going to be a flashing alarm so he smoothed and pulled hunks of her hair back. Looking in the drawer again, Danny found a large binder clip to serve as a barrette and fashioned the most serviceable ponytail he could manage.
Nina kept smiling. There was a game-like quality to all the detail and preparations Danny was addressing and like most children, she loved games.
“Ready?” Danny asked.
“Uh-huh,” Nina said.
“Come on. I’ve got an idea.”
Danny and Nina carefully peered out into the corridor from the lab annex. The floor seemed empty—after all, Danny thought, it had to be past midnight by now. He remembered Shaw had said that he had checked to make sure no one else was around, presumably so he could be alone with Nina without witnesses. Now there was some innovative thinking—why stop at changing criminals into old geezers when you could kidnap a little girl and advance her age so she could become your personal plaything. Getting her into the facility after hours could be done. And if he were one of the administrators of the Bio-Justice processing unit, he would have access to the injectable compounds and presumably the light chamber. It takes a quasi-brilliant mind to bend that sick—to pervert method for one’s own depraved cravings.
Danny recalled something an old drunk told him at The Diamond Bar once. The grizzled barfly leaned sideways from his unsteady stool and whispered to young Danny about the bad decisions of his life.
“Opportunity bears strange children,” he said.
CHAPTER 21
Danny whispered to Nina in a storage room at the far end of the floor away from where Shaw was bound and gagged. The room was filled with heavy polyethylene bags of sterilized containers, slatted wooden crates stacked high and cardboard cartons which held equipment and research supplies. There were shelves and cabinets and a steel door that entranced a spacious refrigeration unit. Hopefully, Danny thought, no one would be entering the room for a while and it would be a good place to stash Nina until he could catch up to Conlan. The room also was rich with hiding places, behind equipment tables and recessed walls and sharply angled corners heightened with shadow.
“Nina, it’s very important that you stay here,” Danny said. “I’ll come back to get you. I promise.”
“Don’t leave me,” Nina said.
Danny didn’t have time for this. “If you come with me, your life will be in danger.”
“I don’t care.”
“Nina…no.”
“Pleeeease,” she whined.
“Shit!” Danny huffed, his frustration getting the best of him.
Nina frowned. “Bad word.”
Sounding like a brother to his annoying kid sister, Danny scolded, “You’re not coming with me. And that’s final.”
Nina made her face ugly again, a little cry starting a siren.
“Stop it!” Danny said firmly.
“But I’m scared,” Nina said.
Danny’s eyes darted to the door and back. “I’m scared too. Listen, Nina, I’m going to tell you something. But you have to promise not to say a word to anyone, OK?”
Nina nodded excitedly for she loved to be told secrets.
“You know, what they did to you…they did it to me too. They made me look older than I really am.”
Nina’s eyes grew wide in amazement. “You’re six, too?”
Danny shook his head. “No, honey. I’m a little older than that. But I’m scared just like you are. Promise me you’ll do what I say and stay in this room until I can come back and get you.”
Nina sighed. “OK.”
“Good girl,” Danny said. He was so happy Nina was finally working with him instead of against him that he made a move to hug her. Confused as to what that hug would communicate, he changed his mind. Danny looked momentarily puzzled on how to express his appreciation. Finally, he raised his open hand and patted Nina on the head. Nina smiled back.
Suddenly out of the stillness came a disquieting noise. Danny heard two voices in the hallway outside the door and quickly pulled Nina down to the floor so they were both hidden behind a stack of crates. With his arm, Danny swept Nina back, tucking her behind him as he watched intently to see if the knob on the door would turn. Nina knew to stay absolutely still and for once, Danny didn’t have to tell her not to speak.
The voices sounded like they belonged to a couple of security guards. Danny listened to hear if they were talking about the two beaten-up shits he had left on the stairwell but the voices were calm and even, as if they were talking about nagging wives and bad movies.
The problem was these guys weren’t moving on. They were parked outside the door like they had all the time in the world to shoot the breeze. For Danny, the waiting game dragged on interminably. After a few minutes had passed, Danny looked over at Nina who was tucked under his arm with her legs folded under her lab coat. Her eyes were closed and she was asleep. Danny remembered how the process had drained him and how he had slept for fourteen hours. Nina’s head leaned against Danny’s arm, her mouth slightly open and breathing deeply. The security guards were still yapping and there was nowhere to go so Danny allowed himself to close his eyes. He was starting to feel the depletion of his body and the exhaustion of the day catching up to him. He remembered telling himself to open his eyes. That was the moment before he drifted away, like Nina, into the fog of slumber.
Danny awoke with a start. He was disoriented, frightened. Then he looked down and saw Nina’s sleeping face where it had been before the drift. He felt relieved they were both still behind the crates, hidden away from danger but he could not determine whether he had been out for a minute, ten minutes or an hour. He shook Nina but she didn’t wake up. Slowly rising to his feet, he eased Nina down so her head lay on the floor.
The voices had stopped. The guards were gone. Danny crept to the window of the storage room door and peeked into the corridor. It was empty and somehow Danny had a sense that it was still early morning. A clock at the far end of the corridor confirmed it. Four fifty-five—nearly three hours gone! He remembered the mission—he had to get to Conlan’s office. He felt for his gun and worried if the sleep was a detour that had sidetracked him for good.
Danny had a moment where he imagined building a little fort made of crates and bundles where Nina might stay undisturbed. It seemed like a silly but plausible plan at the same time. He turned and was startled that Nina was awake and staring at him suspiciously. She rose to her feet and made a little frown.
“Did you come back to get me?” she asked.
“I haven’t left yet.”
Nina sighed and looked like she was holding back tears.
“The bad men went away,” Danny said. “You’ll be fine. OK?”
Nina returned to the place behind the crates and sat down. “Come back soon.”
“I will,” Danny said. He could only see her feet peeping out from behind the crates.
Trying to control Nina seemed a near impossibility. He could only pray the girl still had some semblance of fear and obedience drummed into her from a tough-love parent and would stay put. A feckless mom or dad who didn’t believe in boundaries and swore by time-outs could prove disastrous.
Danny left the storage room and retraced his path back out of Research Ward 2, and then through the double glass doors to the elevator.
When the elevator reached street level, the chime announcing its arrival echoed in the reception area, magnified by the early-morning acoustics of open, empty space. The front desk guard, usually at this post for hours without disruption, found himself alerted to the sound and got up from his seat to investigate. Looking toward the open elevator which had arrived from the underground levels, the guard expected to see one of the scienti
sts; they occasionally burned the midnight oil and came up to take a smoke outside. Maybe this one changed his mind at the last minute and let the car go. Since he was already up, the guard decided to head towards the men’s room for a quick whizz which he could squeeze out in twenty seconds before anyone got wise.
Danny watched the guard from a recess behind the elevator until he had disappeared and hurried to the other side of the reception area where he entered an open elevator and punched the button marked 15. He checked the Glock and slid it back behind his waistband and pulled his jacket over it.
Danny entertained dark fantasies of what he would do to Conlan if he were able to get to him. Two short bursts to his forehead while watching him drop to the ground was a favorite image. He wasn’t fond of the idea of beating the older man into unconsciousness—he couldn’t see the satisfaction derived from that. Maybe, he fancied, he could kidnap Conlan and throw him into the midst of the crawling, twisting agonized souls withdrawing from the Wayback drug on the factory floor, letting the writhing mob of human misery drown him in his own applied science.
The elevator ticked up—4, 5, 6.
He would wait for Conlan outside his office and let destiny dictate its course. The drop of happiness that had been dangled since he came through the other side of ghostly time had long since dried up—Sonya and his son, a corny fantasy for a dope with a flimsy grasp on reality at best. What did they call it—a pipe dream? Like a guy plugged into the internet trying to figure out how he would treat Jennifer Lawrence on a date. Or some working stiff wrestling with how he would deal with aggressive relatives pestering him for money when he won the Powerball Lottery.
And what about Nina? What the hell was he going to do about Nina?
—12, 13, 14.
The elevator stopped, the doors slid open. Danny stepped out onto a sheet of lustrous white Italian marble. To his right was a glass partition with just the number 15 etched elegantly in the transparent pane as if floating in air. Behind that partition were offices—presumably Conlan’s—hidden from sight and protected from unauthorized entry by a laser alarm system. Outside the partition was a reception area with two black leather sofas angled off and facing a large Matisse on the opposite wall.
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