by Skye Knizley
“You always say stuff like that,” Smoak said. “You know I don’t believe in that shit, not like that. Come on, you can take me downtown.”
“What about the Mustang?” Ashley asked.
Smoak shrugged. “Drive her until you leave for Cornell then put her in storage at your dad’s lake house.”
“It’s illegal for me to drive, Smoakie.”
“Never stopped you before,” Smoak replied.
PRESENT DAY
Ashley, this is an FBI matter not a military one, the TTY typed.
“It never stopped you before,” Ashley said. “That asshole is trafficking in people, General. People. Rock and I rescued a young girl who is never going to be the same after what that monster did to her.”
I understand that, but I hardly see how it involves my office, Chandler replied. The FBI are handling it, they have several of Frulov’s men in custody, and it’s only a matter of time until he’s cornered. They will get him eventually, alright?
“Eventually isn’t good enough, General. People like this slip from the Feds every day. He needs to be taken down. If you won’t do anything, we will.”
Stand down, Ashley, Chandler typed. Stay out of it. If you and MacKenna are caught, I won’t be able to protect you. I already pulled my men back.
“We don’t need protecting, General,” Ashley said. “Pretend it’s the Philippines and stay the fuck out of our way.”
She ended the call and turned to Rock, who was standing in the office doorway.
“What did he say?” Rock asked.
“He said to let the Feds handle it,” Ashley replied.
Rock nodded. “Maybe that’s what you should do? You and Miss MacKenna are supposed to work in the shadows, it’s why you bought Lollipops. This needs to be in the light of day.”
Ashley smiled and pushed past Rock into the hallway. “It’s the light that makes the shadow, Rock. Come on, we have work to do.”
They had taken Megan to the University of Miami Hospital where she’d been moved to the psychiatric care unit under police guard. The hospital was one of the best in the state with experience dealing with trauma victims, and Ashley had made sure the girl’s needs would be cared for. It meant dipping into the retirement fund, but neither she nor Smoak thought they would die of old age.
Ashley passed through the emergency room entrance and into the hospital without causing undue attention. She was there often enough with Smoak that people were used to her presence. She climbed the stairs to the fourth floor and hurried down the hall to Megan’s room. An officer sat outside on a plastic chair, a magazine in his lap and a cup of coffee on the floor by his foot. He stood when he saw Ashley coming and put one hand on his pistol.
“Good afternoon, ma’am,” he said. “This room is off limits to anyone but close family.”
“I’m Ashley, the one who brought her in.”
“And I’m sure we’re all very grateful, but, until Lieutenant Kreel clears it, I have to ask you to leave,” the officer said.
“That’s stupid,” Ashley said. “If I wanted to hurt her, I wouldn’t have brought her to the hospital.”
The cop shrugged. “I don’t make the rules, ma’am. Please move along, now.”
“Sure, Officer,” Ashley said.
She turned away, took two steps and pulled one of Smoak’s injectors from her pocket. When she turned back, she had it hidden between two fingers.
“Do you know when I might be able to see her?” she asked, stepping closer.
“That’s up to the Lieutenant,” the officer replied. “You can call him at the department if you like.”
“Do you have his card?”
The officer took his hand off his pistol and reached into his shirt pocket. Ashley stepped forward and pressed the ampule into his hand. He yanked back in surprise and shook his hand.
“What the hell, lady?” he yelled.
“I think you should sit down,” Ashley said.
“You’re… you’re…” he mumbled.
“You’re going to fall down if you don’t take a seat,” Ashley said.
The officer swayed on his feet, his mouth opening and closing as he tried to make a coherent sentence come out. Ashley grabbed his arm and helped him back into his chair, where he promptly fell asleep. She turned to make sure no one had seen and pushed open the door to Megan’s room.
Megan was lying on the single bed, a white sheet and light green blanket pulled up to her chin. A nourishing IV drip was connected to the back of her left hand, and she had color back in her face. The girl stopped staring at the sunlight streaming through the window and looked at Ashley. Her face was blank for a moment before she smiled with recognition.
“You’re the girl from that room,” she said. “The one who got me out and brought me here.”
Ashley closed the door and sat next to the girl. “That’s right, Meg. My name is Ashley, do you remember?”
Megan nodded. “I remember, you can’t hear very well.”
“But I can read lips just fine. I don’t have too much time. Can I ask you some questions?”
The girl nodded.
“Thank you, honey.”
Ashley pulled out her phone and showed Rayne’s photo to Megan. “Have you ever seen this woman?”
Megan looked at the phone and nodded. “She was in the nightmare too, in another room. I think her name is Rayne or something.”
“That’s right, her name is Rayne,” Ashley said. “She was taken, just like you. Do you know what happened to her? Is she still alive?”
“They took her away,” Megan said. “When they came for the others, they took her away with them, too.”
“Do you know where?” Ashley asked.
Megan shook her head. “No…just away. A terrible man came for her.”
Ashley scrolled her phone to a picture of Frulov taken from the internet. “Was this him?”
Megan looked at the picture and shook her head. “No, that isn’t him. He was younger and big, like he lifted weights.”
“Did they ever take you anywhere else?” Ashley asked.
Megan shook her head. “Not since the nightmare started. Not since I was taken.”
Ashley squeezed Megan’s hand. “Can you tell me about that? How you were taken?”
Megan bit her lip and shook her head. “I don’t remember anything. I was coming home from summer school, that’s all I remember.”
Ashley smiled. “Anything you can tell me will help.”
“Are you going to save the others?” Megan asked.
Ashley stood and looked down at the pale, weak-looking girl in the bed. “Yes, Megan, I am.”
“Good…they need an angel, too.”
Ashley turned away and stopped, her hand on the doorknob. “I’m no angel, honey. But my best friend is, and she will make sure those men pay. I promise you.”
Smoak pulled off the A1 highway and cruised through the crisscrossing streets opposite to Port Everglades until she reached a parking lot outside of a luxury hotel. She wasn’t sure what idiot had decided to block the beautiful ocean view with a monstrous, fifteen story building, but according to the information she’d received, Sanctuary was docked in the river beyond. Frulov kept a suite at the hotel, just so he could use their docks, which were some of the only ones in the area large enough to accommodate the sixty-meter long ship.
Smoak felt eyes on her and lowered her glasses to look at the attendant that was watching her from his air-conditioned booth. He waved his hands and, in a complex shorthand, indicated that she needed to either park or leave the lot. She frowned at him, spun her bike around in a cloud of tire smoke and rode back down the street to an empty lot where a club and bar had stood before the hotel had been built. She crossed the lot and rode as far as she could before parking her bike at the edge of the concrete pier.
Half a dozen yachts bobbed in the waves along the southern side of the long pier. They were impressive, but too small to be Sanctuary. She turned and walked along
the western edge, her eyes on the handful of larger yachts docked outside the hotel.
Sanctuary wasn’t hard to spot. The pristine white yacht floated alongside the secondary pier, glowing in the sun like a diamond. Her radar was turning slowly, and Smoak could see a handful of men moving along the upper deck above the tinted observation windows.
She stopped to sit and retrieve a pair of binoculars from her pack. With a closer look, she could see that the men were armed with silenced MP7s. Unlike the thugs she’d encountered at the old hospital, the men carried themselves like professionals. There was no chatter, no open beer cans and no drugs, just heavily armed men doing their job.
What are you protecting, boys? she thought.
She continued to watch, splitting her time between the guards on the deck and two that had stepped out onto the pier. They were all on high alert, their weapons at the ready, speaking often into the two-way radios they had clipped to their wrists. After several minutes of watching, Smoak saw another group of men pull up in a white Cadillac limousine. They climbed out, spoke with the men on the pier and then opened the back of the limo.
I wish Ashley were here, she would know what they were saying and have solved everything by now.
A few moments later, four of the guards on the boat exited, each escorting a pair of well-dressed, but drunk-looking women. They helped the women into the limousine and climbed in with them. Smoak tried to focus her binoculars on the last woman, who appeared to be struggling more than the others. She couldn’t make out her face, but the one thing she could see was flaming red hair.
Rayne! Smoak thought.
She would never reach the limousine before it left the pier, and even if she did, she would have to deal with the guards. It was just too risky.
Smoak turned and ran, her legs pumping and her boots thudding on the concrete. She sprinted up a bench and leapt from the back onto the fence that protected the pier from the empty lot beyond and never slowed. She jumped from the fence to the dirt, rolled and kept running. From the corner of her eye, she could see the limousine moving along the pier, and she ran harder, not stopping until she reached her bike. If she lost sight of them, she might lose Rayne forever.
She caught up to the limousine as it accelerated up the 395 ramp moving at a steady but legal pace. It merged into the travel lane and Smoak followed at the same speed, content to follow and see what was happening.
Half an hour later, the limousine pulled into the parking lot of a gentleman’s club and stopped in front of the main doors. Smoak looked at the sign and shook her head.
You have to be kidding me, she thought. Goldfinger’s? I couldn’t make this up if I tried.
The building was large, rivaling Diamond’s for size, and looked as if it consisted of two levels. The outside had been painted purple with gold metallic highlights along the roofline and in several alcoves that looked as if they would be illuminated at night. The image of a golden woman arching her back had been painted in the middle of each wall. No doubt, someone thought it was classy, but Smoak thought it looked like the hood ornament off an eighteen-wheeler.
She pulled into the lot next door and waited until all the women had been escorted inside before making her way to the back of the club. The parking lot was almost deserted with only a BMW and an older Mercedes parked near the rear entrance. Smoak glanced at both vehicles in passing and hurried up the steps to the back door. She found it unlocked and stepped through into the air-conditioned back room.
Somewhere ahead, she could hear the men speaking in Russian and the muffled whimpers of several women, but she could see little. The back room was dark, lit only by a pair of emergency lights. She slid along the wall toward an exit sign at the far end of the room, being careful not to step on any of the cleaning supplies that had been left in disarray on the floor, and listened at the door. The Russian voices were muffled, but she heard one of the men say, “Get them changed, the client and staff will be here any moment,” followed by a woman saying, “Yes, sir.”
The woman then raised her voice and said in English, “Get dressed or there will not be any more candy, my girls. The customers want you sexy and sweet. Hurry!”
Smoak pulled the door open a crack and peered through. To her left was a small office. Two men were sitting within, chomping on cigars and looking at pictures of half-naked women. From what she could see, all of the women looked glassy-eyed and confused, and their pictures had been taken in front of a blank grey wall.
Ahead of her was a closed doorway with flaking gold letters that said ‘Entrance,’ and to her right was an open door that led into a room full of vanities and lockers. The women inside were moving about as if they were in a haze.
Smoak closed the door and stared at the wall in thought. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that the girls were about to be put on display and sold to the highest bidder, probably while the club was open for the lunch crew. No one would even notice a handful of women parading around half-naked in a gentleman’s club. It was the perfect cover.
She didn’t see many options. No one was going to believe she was one of the strung-out girls there to be sold, and she didn’t have time to go back and change. She could either let the auction happen and get to Rayne once she’d been sold, or she could go in guns blazing. And she didn’t have a gun.
She was still pondering what to do when a lithe blonde woman in sunglasses stepped through the back door, a shopping bag in one hand and a bottle of diet soda in the other. The girl looked at Smoak in surprise and frowned.
“Who are you?” the girl asked.
Smoak smiled and plucked a coin from her jacket. “How would you like to make an easy five hundred bucks?”
The Goldfinger’s main stage was a martini-shaped affair with a single pole at the front of the stage and two on the wings. Disco balls hung high overhead, reflecting a barrage of colors onto the backlit platform and a series of black lights made the stage edge glow like a midnight moon. The rest of the club was dark, lit only by neon tubes in the ceiling and floor lighting around the three-dozen tables placed around the room.
Smoak stepped through the stage curtain and joined the mix of regular dancers and women waiting to be auctioned. Her borrowed outfit consisted of a pair of white sequined chaps, G-string and bra top that her breasts threatened to pop out of with every step. A white kitten-ear headband held her hair back from her face and clear plastic sandals adorned her feet, completing the outfit.
She mingled with the other women, her movements less ostentatious than her normal dance routines at Lollipops. The last thing she wanted to do was be noticed. She wanted to find Rayne, make contact and figure a way out of the club, not get dollars stuffed down her panties.
It didn’t take her long to spot the redhead. The woman’s hair shone under the stage lights like a fiery beacon. She was leaning against a pole on the opposite side of the stage, her hips moving to some beat only she could hear.
Smoak noticed one of the guards watching her and she spun, beginning a slow strut to the opposite side of the stage. She’d taken two steps when the man reached up and took her hand.
“Let me look at you,” he said.
Smoak blinked at the guard and felt everyone’s eyes on her. She wanted nothing more than to kick him in the face, grab Rayne and run, but that was a good way to get someone shot. She smiled and squatted in front of him, giving him a clear view of her satin-covered sex.
“Are you sure that’s what you want, Tiger?” she purred. “Just to look?”
The guard smiled, showing gold teeth. “Come dance for us.”
Smoak let him help her off the stage, and she followed him to one of the shadowed tables a short distance from the main stage. A pair of guards, one male and one female, sat at the table sharing a bottle of cheap Vodka. The man was tall, with short brown hair that showed a wicked scar across his scalp and a mustache that could use some fertilizer. The woman was of average height with white and black streaked hair and blue eyes that couldn’t
have been natural. She couldn’t be called pretty, the best she could ever hope for was handsome, but she made up for it with an air of quiet menace most men would have taken as mysterious.
The first guard helped Smoak onto the table and she began to dance, her hands gliding over her skin as she moved. It wasn’t her most enthusiastic dance ever. With every hair toss and squat, she glanced at the redhead, trying to keep an eye on the other woman while maintaining her cover as one of the dancers. Her body moved on automatic, and soon, without realizing it, she was wearing nothing but her almost nonexistent panties and her kitten ears. Her bra was over the second guard’s shoulder, and she had no idea where the chaps had gone.
“Very good,” the second guard said. “Very sexy. What is your name?”
Smoak smiled and leaned forward, looking into the guard’s eyes. “You can call me Angel.”
“Angel. I like that, it goes with the wings on your back,” the woman said. “Come tell me what else you do, Angel.”
Smoak looked at the woman and slid off the table, straddling the black-clad guard. She felt the woman’s hands on her butt and swallowed the desire to tear out the Russian’s throat.
“What would you like?” Smoak asked, grinding to the beat.
“My boss will be concluding his business soon, and we will be leaving.” Her exaggerated accent made her g’s sound like k’s. “Would you like to come back to the ship with us? We have plenty of party favors for a girl like you.”
Smoak leaned forward, spilling her long hair over the woman’s face.
“What happens at this ship?” she asked, letting her lips brush over the guard’s.
“Whatever we want,” the guard replied. “And you leave with three gold coins for your trouble.”
Smoak felt one of the men’s hands on her back and she half turned, taking the man’s hand in hers and teasing her nails along his fingers. The gesture let her get eyes on the redhead again. She could see that money was exchanging hands and the redheaded girl was about to be led off-stage.
Smoak turned back and cuddled under the woman’s hair. She found the woman’s ear and whispered, “I’d rather gouge my own eyes out with a spoon.”