by L. T. Ryan
“What do you think?” Alik said.
“No cops,” I said.
He shook his head. “This is a mistake.”
“We can handle this.”
“We?”
“Yeah, you and I.”
“You can’t even defend yourself. All that recovery work is undone now. How do you think we will take these guys down?”
“I’ve handled more. Guys I knew were trained operatives.”
“Aside from that,” Alik said. “We don’t even know where they are.”
“True,” I said, glancing at his reflection. “But I’m pretty sure Esau does.”
“And he’s a babbling fool right now.”
“He knows what kind of men we are. I think if we offer our help to him, he’ll open up.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
I glanced over my shoulder. Esau hadn’t moved. “He’ll lose his niece if he doesn’t.”
The old man lifted his chin off his chest and uncovered his face. “I know where they are.”
Chapter 11
ESAU WAITED UNTIL EVENING. WE drove his car to his house and went in together. Thick green carpet covered the floors wall to wall. The place looked like it had been furnished and decorated in the seventies and never updated. I wondered if the house had come furnished when he moved in, or were the furniture and fixtures representative of his tastes. It smelled like stale, burned coffee. Except when I walked past what must’ve been Isadora’s room. I caught a whiff of her lavender fragrance.
Esau led us to the kitchen, which had a couple cabinets and linoleum floors and countertops made to look like marble. He pulled out a map of Crete and spread it on the table.
“This is where we are.” Esau circled a spot in blue ink. “And the cafe is back here.” Referring to the beaches, he added, “Over here is the touristy area. You’re going to go past all that. Maybe fifteen miles. Right about here is an unmarked lane. Doesn’t show on any of the maps, or on those GPS things, but it’s there. You will know it by the wooden signpost that is so eroded you can’t read what it once said. You turn there and go until it dead-ends. Say a quarter of a mile is how far it goes back. There’s an old house there, the only one. That is where they stay when they come to town.”
“How do you know this?” Alik said.
Esau tapped his finger on the spot and said nothing.
“Have you been there before?” Alik said.
Esau still said nothing.
“Have they taken you there before?”
Esau glanced up and nodded.
“What’s going on here?” I said. “Tell us the truth.”
Staring at the ceiling, the old man took a deep breath. “I need a drink. Get you guys something?”
Neither of us responded as Esau rose and stepped to the counter. He uncorked a bottle, poured his drink, returned with a glass in one hand, and a burning cigarette in the other.
The smoke swirled and spread. I resisted the urge to ask for one.
I said, “Back at the cafe you said this was all your fault and that they were using Isadora to get to you.”
He sucked on the butt of the cigarette, said, “Yes.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“I owe a debt.”
“Can you pay it?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Will you be able to pay it?”
He looked away. “I hope so.”
“Say you can’t,” I said. “Say we rescue Isadora, and in doing so, we have to take out a couple of their men. What happens tomorrow when they find her gone? Find their guys dead?”
“They come back, I suppose.”
“And this time they’ll kill her.”
His eyes glossed over and his lips trembled. The cigarette wavered in his shaking hand.
“If they haven’t already.” I balanced my chair on its rear legs. “Right?”
Esau nodded once. A tear slid down his cheek. I wondered if he feared Isadora was already dead.
Alik said, “How much money do you owe?”
Esau didn’t answer the question. “You have to hurry. We’re wasting time talking about this.”
I looked at the darkened window. “We wasted time waiting until evening.”
“No,” he said. “They would have been watching the road. They would have known, and you would’ve walked into a trap.”
“For some reason,” I said, “I feel like I am now.”
“Please, just get her. Bring her back here and I’ll arrange for safe transport for the three of you. I’ll deal with the men by myself tomorrow.”
I glanced at Alik. He remained stoic. I couldn’t read his face. It appeared he wanted to leave the decision up to me.
“OK,” I said. “Your pistol, you bring it?”
Esau nodded, stood, lifted his shirt and then freed the handgun from his waistband. He set it on the table next to Alik. The Russian raised an eyebrow in my direction.
“Take it,” I said.
“I’ve got this too.” Esau turned and went to the kitchen. A drawer slid open. He rifled through papers. A few moments later he returned with a wooden sap. He slid it across the table to me.
It was old and weathered. Dented in a few spots. A hairline crack ran from the top down.
“A fine piece,” I said.
“Was mine,” Esau said. “During the war.”
“Got a bit of use.”
He smiled. “Back in the day, those six men would have found their skulls cracked and we would have tossed their brains into the sea.”
I rose and grabbed the sap. Assuming a fighting stance, I balanced it in each hand. “I’ll make sure you get it back, along with your niece.”
Alik and I made our way to the front door. I slowed as we passed Isadora’s room. The door was cracked, but the lights were off. An invisible wall of her smell was a welcome respite from the odor of the house.
“Wait,” Esau called out. He went back into the kitchen, then returned with two small flashlights. “I don’t know if that house has power or not.”
I switched mine on and off. It wasn’t powerful, but then again, I only needed to see a few feet ahead.
Alik took Esau’s car keys and the driver’s seat. Fine with me. My left hip still hurt, and the car was a manual shift. He started the engine and backed down the gravel driveway. The same one I’d walked Isadora up the night before.
Like the previous night, it was pitch black out. The moon hid behind the horizon. I switched on my flashlight and studied the map.
“How far?” Alik asked.
I estimated the distance. “Should be there in ten minutes or so.”
“Think we should park on the side of the road and walk down the unmarked lane?”
“He said it was a quarter mile, right?”
Alik nodded.
“Take us five minutes or so. Probably a good idea. If anyone is patrolling, we might hear them.”
We passed through another small town. A few streetlights cast orange orbs on the ground. A couple kids hung out nearby, smoking something. They attempted to hide it as we passed.
“You smoke grass as a kid?” I asked Alik.
“What?”
“Marijuana.”
“No.” He paused a beat. “You?”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Does it really matter?”
“Guess not. Making conversation is all.”
Soon we were in the darkness again. I spotted a narrow dirt road the moment we passed it.
“I think that was it.”
“Where?”
“Back there.”
“Shit.”
“Just pull over here.”
“Should I go back?”
“No. If someone is listening out, they might think it odd for a car to drive by, stop, and turn around. Just go another couple hundred yards and pull over.”
A few seconds later, we stopped. Alik cut the engine. The ticking of muffler was barely audible over the sounds of insects.<
br />
“Think they noticed the car shutting off?” Alik asked.
“Depends on where they are,” I said. “If they’re at the house, then I doubt they even noticed we drove by.”
I had my fingers on the handle, about to exit, when a car pulled up behind us.
Chapter 12
ALIK PULLED THE PISTOL FROM his waistband and glanced at his side mirror. There was no passenger side mirror, and the angles on the others were off, so I stared straight ahead and trusted in Alik for a few moments. The headlights washed over us and the surrounding brush. A car door opened and slammed shut. The vehicle behind us idled.
Someone approached, speaking in Greek. I was careful to pay attention to my side of the car in case someone approached, using the brush as cover. The man appeared in Alik’s window. His hair was white. In the dim lighting, shadows deepened his wrinkles. He spoke, but I had no idea what he said. But his smile and tone put me at ease.
Alik responded slowly in Greek. The old guy straightened up, placed his hands on his hips. I leaned over and saw him look up and down the road. He bent over again.
“Are you sure?” He spoke in English, at the same pace as Alik.
“Yes,” Alik said. “We’re fine. Just stopped because we were in the middle of an intense debate.”
The guy looked at me, then Alik, smiled and turned away.
I wondered whether the arrival of another car, the doors slamming, the old guy talking, if it all had alerted the men at the house to our presence.
“This is fucked,” Alik said. He stared at the rearview mirror, obviously sharing in my concerns.
“We’ll lay low for a bit,” I said. “Get out of the car and wait on the other side of the road for fifteen. If they don’t come by then, then no one paid attention to it.”
We remained inside until the old guy pulled away. The area darkened and night settled in. The steady hum of insects rose again. After exiting Esau’s car, we darted across the road, and made our way down toward the turn off. We found a line of hedges and took cover behind them.
Fifteen minutes passed. My eyes adjusted to the darkness. There was no sign of activity on the road or the lane that led to the house. No voices carried on the wind. No lights swept across the dirt.
“Let’s go,” Alik whispered.
He took the left side. I stayed on the right. Passed by the wooden pole and sign Esau had mentioned. We kept six to ten feet of distance between us. We were close enough to hear the other whisper, and could tell when the other stopped.
I felt exposed out there with nothing other than the old wooden sap for protection. Hell, I wasn’t sure the pistol Esau had lent to Alik could be trusted to fire when the trigger was pulled. For all I knew, we both held bludgeoning weapons. They’d do no good if the men came at us with pistols and rifles. Even baseball bats would give them a slight advantage. If they knew how to use them, at least.
The road continued past the bushes. On either side were overgrown fields that moved with the wind. The house stood in the distance. A single-story square structure. It was too dark to tell what kind of condition it was in. The windows were dark. It didn’t appear to have a garage and there weren’t any cars parked in front.
Alik got my attention and signaled for us to move to the rear of the house. I followed his lead. There weren’t cars in back, either. They must’ve left Isadora here with a couple of men, then left.
Or they had left her corpse here.
Being more than a thousand feet off the road, and with no neighbors, the house was the kind of place you could torture and kill and no one would ever know.
I caught up to Alik. “Let’s get closer and check the windows.”
We cut across the lawn to the rear corner of the house. Made our way around counter-clockwise. The windows were darkened with drapes. Switching on our flashlights to peek through the cracks was out. It would draw attention. But luck intervened. On the far side, one of the windows had been left open. We stood there for five minutes, listening. There wasn’t a sound from within.
“Cover me.” I pushed the window up and parted the drapes. Best I could tell, the room was empty. “I’m going in.”
Alik stepped up behind me, pistol extended, ready to shove it through the opening if someone came after me.
I went up and over and I rolled through to the floor with the sap in hand. My ribs burned. My hip, too. I buried the pain. It was warm inside, and smelled like garbage.
We waited with me inside and Alik out for another few minutes. No one approached. The door to the room didn’t open. Everything remained still. My eyes adjusted and a few dark outlines of furniture appeared.
“It’s clear,” I said.
Alik climbed in and switched on his flashlight after covering it with the window treatment in an effort to reduce the brightness. It provided enough light to see a few feet ahead. Probably made the window glow from outside. He panned around the room. There was a bed and a dresser and a bunch of trash on the floor, but nothing else. He focused the diffused beam on the door. I pulled it open. Alik stuck his arm through. We waited, then both stepped into an open room. There was a tipped over couch near the far wall. The skeleton of a kitchen against the back wall. A bare kitchen table next to it.
And two closed doors opposite where we stood.
“Which one?” Alik whispered.
I switched on my light and aimed it left. Started toward it.
Alik grabbed my shoulder. “Are you prepared for what we might find in there?”
“Yes.”
I turned the knob and pushed the door open. The room smelled like decomposing flesh. It made me gag. I had to back up and swallow air before entering. I shoved my light into the gap and pulled the cloth away from the lens. There were three black trash bags on the floor in the middle of the room. Nothing else.
Alik moved in, grabbed one, and dumped it on the floor. Loose trash spilled out. Flies buzzed. Maggots withered on the ground. He poured out the second bag, then the third. There were papers, rotten meat, left over food, paper plates. Some of the stuff could have been there for months.
But no body.
We left the room and shut the door, both of us with our forearms up to our mouths to silence the coughing and gagging.
“No way someone’s here,” I said. “They’d have come out already.”
Alik forced himself to swallow as he headed toward the last door. He opened it a crack and held his pistol in the gap.
“Whoever’s in there, we have you surrounded,” he said.
No one responded.
He placed his flashlight above the pistol and kicked the door open. I waited a few feet away as he entered the room. I prepared my mind for the worst. Alik would come out, shaking his head, avoiding eye contact. He would tell me they killed her, sparing the details of how.
And like a fool, I’d rush past him to see for myself.
The door creaked open. I aimed my light at it. Alik stepped out, shaking his head, taking a deep breath. He looked up at me.
“Spit it out,” I said.
“Empty,” he said.
“Shit.” Relief washed over me. The sweat on my skin felt cold for a second.
I stepped around him and peered into the room. Four plain walls and the bare subfloor, blackened with mold. The carpet had been ripped up and tack strips left behind. Nails poked out like a medieval torture device. Other than that, nothing. Where was she? We had cleared the house and found nothing. I turned and walked past Alik and stood in the middle of the room. Alik was looking up.
“Attic?” I said.
“Didn’t see an access,” he said.
“I didn’t check the room we came in through.”
We headed back the way we came in. I was swinging my flashlight across the floor, up the walls, over the ceiling. Maybe we had missed a lot stalking through the house.
Alik entered the room ahead of me. His light lit it up. He spun to meet me.
“Nothing,” he said.
“Figures,” I said. Then I thought of something else. “Come with me.”
I went back to the middle of the main room and stopped and waited for him.
“What is it?” he asked.
I lifted my knee and held it in the air a moment. My hip tightened with pain. My right leg hurt like hell. Figured I had re-injured one of the fractures. But it didn’t affect my balance, so I stood still for a second, then I drove my foot to the ground like I was trying to break through the planks of wood we stood on.
The sound was hollow and soft. If we were on a slab, it would have been solid. The floor reverberated under the force of my kick.
“Hear that?” I said. “Feel it?”
Alik nodded, slowly, as though he got it too.
“There’s a space below us,” I said.
“Where’s the cellar access?” he said.
I retraced our steps around the house. We hadn’t split up. Our lack of firepower prevented it. I hadn’t seen a door outside leading underground, and neither had Alik. The only two doors were in front and back and from where I stood in the middle of the room I had a sight line to both.
“Could it be out in the field?” Alik said.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” He leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling like the answer was spray painted there. “Can’t think of any reason someone would want a tunnel into a basement.”
“Only one going out,” I said. “But if that were the only method of ingress and egress, it would defeat the purpose.”
“Which is?”
“A way to get away. Think about it. These men, they aren’t exactly lined up on the right side of the law, right? So it makes sense they would want some kind of way to escape sight unseen. A tunnel leading out of the basement makes sense, then. Right?”
“But how do they get down there?”
“Exactly.”
“OK, scratch that idea, then.” Alik walked into the kitchen area. He moved chairs, pushed the table to the wall, stomped on the floor. “What are we missing?”
“Dunno. Place ain’t that big.”