by Matthew Iden
Molter gave him a wan smile. “You drive a black Mustang, you get used to being pulled over.”
“I guess that would be right,” Terry said, then paused. “How old is your friend, by the way?”
“Sixteen. We met at church camp over the summer. Her parents asked us to wait until she was eighteen before we get married.”
“Ah,” Terry said, nonplussed. “Good for you. Anyway, everything checks out. You want me to take you to a hospital?”
“I don’t think so,” Molter said, glancing at the girl. “She just needs to get home and into bed.”
Terry nodded, wished him well, and reminded him to put on his hazard lights next time he wanted to park on the shoulder of a highway. He walked back to his cruiser as the Mustang took off. He watched the car’s taillights wink in the distance. Something bothered him, even as he sat down in the cruiser. The kid had looked too calm. But tense at the same time. Like he was on the clock and impatient to get to something.
He toyed with calling it in, chasing down more info on the car. Then he shrugged and put the cruiser in gear. He’d done what he could and it was the end of his shift on a bitch of a night.
CHAPTER NINE
The knob, unlocked, turned easily in my hand and the door opened into what looked like a kind of combination mudroom and trash alcove located probably just off the kitchen. The smell of mold and garbage was thick in the air.
An unlocked back door wasn’t the first surprise of the night or even of the past five minutes, however. Topping that list was why I was willing to face arrest for breaking and entering, assault, and a whole raft of other serious charges that I knew the repercussion of only too well.
The answer was simple, of course: Chuck needed my help, he needed it now, and this was the most direct way to get the answers we needed. But it was hard for my ex-cop’s brain not to tick off each of the misdemeanors and felonies I was flirting with the moment I’d opened the gate behind the dump that was Tuck’s house, trespassed through the yard, and tiptoed up the rear porch to try the back door.
Logic suggested that we were also tempting fate for what could turn out to be nothing. Lucy might not be here at all, she might’ve never been here in the first place, or she might be sitting in the living room contentedly watching a movie with her ex, not expecting her brother and his friend to come bursting through the door like they were on a SWAT raid.
C’est la vie, I thought, trying to get average sentencing numbers for the crimes I’d committed—and might be committing soon—out of my head. I shut the door quickly but quietly to keep the cold air from alerting anyone in the house. Loud shouts coming from a few rooms away made me flinch until I realized from the canned voices that followed that I was hearing a TV show or sporting event cranked to a volume I’d never tried on my own set at home.
My alcove was separated from the kitchen by a cheap beaded curtain, which was great for me, as it let me examine the place without sticking my head in. Stinky, dirty, and unremarkable were the three words that came to mind. An old fridge with a dent and enormous scratch on the front sat in one corner. A stove with burnt food thick enough that I could spot it from the alcove rested in the other. Dishes in the sink, cans and pizza boxes on any other available flat surface. Nobody here.
I checked my watch. Chuck had told me he’d give me eight minutes to get around back and get inside. Not very generous if the door had been locked, too much time now that I’d discovered it wasn’t. A quick pat, an old habit, told me my gun was in place. My arms were tingling down to the fingertips, another familiar feeling I got just before a raid or a bust.
Two minutes before Chuck’s eight minutes were up, I eased back into the shadow of the alcove as a thin, redheaded guy sauntered into the kitchen and opened the fridge. I swallowed as I watched him dig around for something to eat or drink. He’d materialized out of nowhere, it had seemed. Maybe the living room was a sharp turn out of the kitchen. It was hard to tell. The exit out of the kitchen was dark and the noise from the TV covered everything else.
The kid took his time, rooting around the fridge like it was his job. I glanced at my watch. Thirty seconds. I squeezed my fists and rolled my shoulders to loosen up. The clink of a bottle and hiss of a cap coming off told me the kid had found what he wanted.
Fifteen seconds. I thought, or imagined, a thud from the other side of the house. I parted the beads with my hands, careful to make as little noise as possible, and took two long strides to close the gap with the kid.
At the same time, a crash and a deep-throated yell from the front of the house made the kid stand straight up like a jack-in-the-box, head turned toward the door he’d come through and completely oblivious to me. Until, that is, I grabbed the collar of his shirt with one hand and clamped down on his wrist with the other.
“Holy shit!” the redhead squeaked. The hand I’d grabbed was holding a beer bottle that hit the floor in a sploosh of foam as I twisted his wrist up behind his back in a come-along. He tried to turn his head to get a look at me while simultaneously struggling to get his arm free, but I pulled it inexorably upward between his shoulder blades until his fingers were wiggling just beneath his collar. He was flexible, I’ll give him that.
“Dude, what the hell?” he said. “What do you want?”
Another colossal crashing sound coming from a few rooms away told me it was time to join the party. With a little bit of encouragement, I steered my catch toward the door, through a dining room, and into a living area that, as shitty as it no doubt was, had seen better days before Chuck had made an appearance. A huge, flat-screen TV was facedown on the floor with wires and game console controls and DVDs scattered around it in an arc. The front door was hanging by a single hinge and frigid air opened and closed a broken screen door every few seconds. Beer cans and paper plates were scattered around the room.
A tall, angular kid with a black knit cap on his head sat on a beat-up couch against the wall. His hands were steepled together over his nose like he was praying or crying, but a thin stream of blood ebbed through his hands and down onto a plaid shirt, so I was going to go with crying.
Next to him on the couch was a stocky bruiser with an already-swollen face and a trickle of blood leading from one nostril. His pumpkin-shaped head lolled on his shoulders as though it was attached with a piece of wet string. I’m no judge of appearances, and it was tough to tell through the recent damage, but it seemed to me as though Chuck hadn’t done anything to hurt the guy’s looks—it was a face that had started at a handicap to begin with.
I urged my man to walk into the living room, keeping him off balance and dancing in case he wanted to stage a rescue. But he seemed as beat as the other two and I dropped him unresisting onto the couch. Moe, Larry, and Curly, all in a row.
I glanced at Chuck. His knuckles were raw and red and he was breathing a little heavier than normal. Incredibly, his shades were still on even though I knew he must’ve landed a dozen punches to take a lunkhead like Tuck out.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I’m good,” he said, but his face was a mask of anger and there was a little thread of crazy in his voice.
“What the hell, man?” the kid I’d manhandled said, whining as he rubbed his elbow where it had been twisted like a gum band.
“Shut up,” Chuck said, his voice vicious, then turned to me. “Check the back. I’ll watch these losers.”
I glanced down at the guy Chuck had KO’d. With his head lolling to one side, he was definitely out of business. The other two stared back at me, wide-eyed and compliant. Chuck was safe. In fact, I was more worried about what he might do to them. “Sure.”
I walked past them and down the hallway. Three bedrooms peeled off the short corridor. I stayed cautious in case there were other roomies, but the house was tiny and I was betting the three clowns out front were the only residents. The sleeping section of the abode was nothing to write h
ome about. Clothes on the floor, bongs in the corner, some magazines and personal electronics on dressers and nightstands. I returned to the living room.
Chuck looked at me. “Anything?”
I shook my head. “No sign of her. Hard to say if she was here—the place is a pigsty. It would take a forensics team to be sure. Is this our man?”
“Yeah,” Chuck said, then cast around for something. He spied a tallboy on the end table, grabbed it, then dumped the contents, still cold, over Tuck’s head in a steady stream. Tuck groaned. I handed him the rest of the half-empty beers in the room, which he proceeded to pour over Tuck, as well. By the fourth, his eyes were open and he was snorting and hiccupping from the beer running into his eyes and nose.
The tall blond kid groaned and I could see the blood wasn’t stopping. Based on the evidence, I’d say Chuck had knocked on the front door, the kid had gone to look through the peephole, and Chuck had kicked it—and the kid’s nose—in. I knew from experience it was going to hurt like hell. Maybe we could win some hearts and minds with a little bit of compassion.
I signaled to Chuck to wait a second and went back out to the kitchen. The freezer had never been defrosted and so it was more like an ice cave than a food storage apparatus, but I found what I was looking for and chipped it away from the freezer’s icy grip.
I went back to the living room and tossed the ancient bag of frozen beans to the kid with the broken nose. “Put that on your face.” He raised it and tentatively pushed it against the bridge of his nose. I knew the pain was enough to make him pass out, but the throbbing would be down to a manageable thud in a second and the bleeding should stop . . . well, eventually.
Chuck looked over the trio. “Any of you assholes know who I am?”
“Rhee,” the red-haired kid blurted. “You’re Chuck Rhee. Lucy’s brother.”
“Straight up,” Chuck said, turning his attention to the kid. “And I bet you know why I’m here, huh?”
The kid shook his head.
Tuck, his ambition bigger than his abilities, started to get to his feet, but I put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down without effort. “Listen,” I said, “we all know Lucy was here. And you can tell from our, uh, method of entry that we’re serious about finding her. So, we can spend the night beating on you until we get some answers or you can start talking and we’ll be out of here in five. Now, where is she?”
“You’re a cop,” the blond kid said to Chuck, his voice muffled by the bag.
“Not tonight, we’re not,” Chuck said, then bent over him, his movement slow and measured like a snake’s. His face was an inch away from the other’s. “What’s your name?”
The kid swallowed. “Che.”
“And who’s this loser?” he asked, pointing at the kid I’d pulled in from the kitchen.
“That’s Ookie,” the blond kid said.
“All right, Che. Ookie.” Chuck said both names slowly, like he was savoring them. “I’m going to ask you once. Where . . . is . . . my . . . sister?”
“Man, I don’t know—” Che started.
“He took her,” Ookie blurted.
Our heads snapped around to Ookie. He looked like he was going to faint from the attention. “Who?” Chuck asked. “Who took her?”
“Some dude, man. Mean, tall. Like Lurch.”
“When?” I asked.
“An hour ago, maybe,” Ookie said, looking scared, suddenly realizing his good buddy Tuck would probably kill him for talking to us. But his tone said he was afraid we might kill him for not.
“Where’d he go?”
“I—I don’t know, man,” Ookie said.
“Tuck had her ready,” Che said. I could see the pain lancing through his face and head, but the words seemed to spill out on their own. “She was doped up and waiting in his bedroom when the guy got here.”
Chuck twitched when he said bedroom. “Details. What happened? What did they do? What was the guy driving? Where’d he go?”
In a matter of minutes, we’d dissected everything Ookie and Che knew, down to the black Mustang and a description of the guy’s face. Sometime during the interrogation, Tuck became fully conscious and started swearing at them to shut their mouths.
Chuck grabbed Tuck’s chin in a grip so strong that it had the tendons standing out on the guy’s neck. “You don’t get to tell them anything. What you get to do is tell me everything you know, right now, or I swear to Christ I’m going to start cutting parts off your body.”
Tuck said something unsavory regarding Chuck’s mother. Despite giving up sixty pounds, Chuck lifted Tuck off the ground and dragged him down the hall in a version of the come-along grip I’d used on Ookie. Tuck resisted, but he wasn’t operating on all cylinders, and I doubt it would’ve been a fair fight, anyway. The two were a riot of arms and legs and punches as they stumbled down the hall.
“Chuck!” I called, then swore as he ignored me. I didn’t want to leave Larry and Curly, even if they appeared intimidated and a little damaged. But I wasn’t comfortable with the look on Chuck’s face, either. I was stuck and had to settle for standing there, grimacing as we listened to the yells and fleshy smacks coming from down the hall. I slipped a hand under my leather coat and scratched under my holster.
“Man, are you a cop?” Ookie asked me.
“Was,” I said, continuing to look down the hall. Ookie shifted in his seat as though he were going to stand and I turned and said, “Don’t.” I said it quiet, but dead on. I didn’t need these two getting the idea that they could divide and conquer while Chuck was busy beating the daylights out of Tuck.
“Do something, man,” Ookie said to me as he sank back down.
I stared at him for a second and said, “I already did. If I hadn’t been along, one of you would be heading for the hospital. Or dead.”
We looked up at the sound of one last thud, followed by a strangled yelp, then the toilet flushing three times in a row. Some low murmuring. Chuck came down the hall a minute later, rubbing his wrists.
“Did he talk?” I asked. “Or should I ask, is he alive?”
Chuck nodded once. “Yes to both. Let’s go.”
CHAPTER TEN
Waves of nausea woke her. Her body bucked, attempting to vomit, but she’d emptied her stomach already. The heaves were enough to pull her awake and no more.
She didn’t want to open her eyes, but the rhythmic pulse of freeway lights and steady thrum of a car engine told her she was on a highway. Curled into a ball and lying on her right side, she tried to place herself by sounds and smell alone. Freezing air blew across her head and face, but even that wasn’t enough to completely clear the smell of puke from her clothes or the tang of it from her mouth. Her head was aching and she shivered under a blanket or a heavy coat; the rough edge was touching her cheek. It was scratchy. Wool based on the wet-sheep smell, with the stink of old cigarettes lodged deep in the fibers. The smell made her stomach toss, but she swallowed three or four times in a row and managed to stifle the urge to heave. Her throat was raw from vomiting.
She opened her eyes a crack and tried to place herself in time and space. She was looking out a car window, which was halfway open, and it was night, which didn’t make sense. The last thing she could remember, it had been morning and she’d been talking with her grandparents, arguing with them about something, walking out of the house. Then she was meeting . . . meeting Tuck. The next set of memories were fuzzy. She was sleeping or flying or stopping and being sick. Voices rose all around her, some deep and strange, some familiar, but the right voices came out of the wrong mouths and nothing fell into its proper slot. She’d woken once before, she was sure—she had a vague recollection of looking over at someone in the driver’s seat, but was it Tuck? Her brother? Someone else? All that she remembered after that was her stomach heaving and being freezing cold before sinking back into unconsciousness.
/> The interior was dark leather and unfamiliar. The engine’s growl was almost like Chuck’s Integra that he loved so much, but more guttural and industrial. She watched out the window for a minute, hoping to catch sight of a highway sign or a road marker to tell her something, but she was slouched too far down in the seat and she watched in frustration as lamp poles and overhead trellises passed out of sight.
Lucy moved her hands slowly, easing them toward her pockets with agonizing slowness, hoping to find her phone by touch. But her shoulders moved the coat or something else gave her away.
“You awake?” a rough voice asked from the driver’s side.
She froze, hoping she might fool him into thinking she’d stirred in her sleep. But the coat was yanked from her shoulders and tossed onto the backseat. The sudden blast of cold air made her gasp.
“You going to be sick again?”
Lucy curled into an even tighter ball. After a moment, she heard a small click and her window shut. The rush of air and road noise was cut off and the car became preternaturally quiet.
“Here,” he said. She jumped as he nudged her. “Water. You need it.”
She ignored him and he nudged her again, not as gently. “Drink it. Or I’ll pour it over you.”
Lucy uncurled slightly and rolled over enough to grab the bottle he was offering, but not enough to look at the man. She broke the seal on the bottle and took small sips, wincing as the cold water trickled down her throat and hit the soreness there. She drank a third of the bottle, surprised at how thirsty she was, before putting the cap back on.
“Lucy,” the man said, making her flinch. She hadn’t expected him to know her name. “We need to get the ground rules straight. Look over here.”
Reluctantly, she uncurled the rest of the way and sat up. Everything on her ached and she bit back a groan. She got her first look at the driver. He was pale-eyed and blond. Lanky and big. In his twenties, maybe. Nobody she knew. He drove easily, with confidence, with just one hand on the wheel. Then she saw why.