by Karen Bell
When one of them suggested lap dances and more, it was the youngest one who reminded them that Maslak had ordered look, but no touch. On some level Mila registered his words and what they meant but she was no longer present and heard them from far away.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Friday predawn.
It was probably several hours later that Mila found herself lying naked and cold, on a piece of off-cut carpet. Her wig was gone too, although she had no recollection of having taken it off. Her hands were no longer tied but one of her captors was still awake, talking in hushed tones on his mobile phone at the table. It was the same boy who had brought her food the night before. The same one who had without a doubt, saved her in the last few hours from being raped.
He hadn’t noticed yet that Mila was awake and as he continued his conversation, she considered what to do. He was talking to someone in Russian with affection and again Mila sensed that he was her best hope. She waited until a pause in the conversation.
‘I…I’m cold. Could I please have my clothes back?’ she called, barely above a whisper.
He looked up and cut short the call before walking over to her, gathering her dress and underwear from where they still lay on the floor. He bent down and handed them to her.
Mila took a chance. ‘You were calling home?’ she asked, guessing from the little she’d overheard and from the time of the call in the dead of night that it was unlikely to be local.
He looked surprised, and paused before answering. ‘My mother, in the Ukraine.’
‘Ah…I lost my mother a few years ago but I have a daughter. She’ll be worrying about where I am. Her father died just recently too.’
‘I know,’ he answered.
Mila continued, hoping to garner sympathy. ‘I never chose to do those films or to work in the club. My husband raped me when I was sixteen and I didn’t know what kind of man I was marrying. I’m from a good family, just like yours.’
‘How would you know about my family?’
‘I know that you must love your mother and that you treated me with more respect than the others. It shows you’ve been brought up with values.’
‘Things are different in the Ukraine. Here you make choices but where I come from my choices were made for me.’
‘I understand that, but you’re smart, your English is excellent. You have the chance to make choices now.’
The boy was probably the same age as Holly but he was not naïve and could see where the conversation was headed. He stood up and turned away as she dressed and Mila thought she had pushed too far but he brought over the chair again for her to sit on and this time he didn’t tie her hands either.
‘I can’t do anything to help you,’ he said with enough regret, for Mila to believe she was still in with a chance. He returned to the table, and busied himself on his phone as the others, with heads on arms at the table, slept on. How long would they sleep? Mila felt that she had a small window of opportunity that might not be there once they woke up.
‘I think I need to be sick.’ She stood up and gripping the wall staggered towards the bathroom. She half closed the door behind her and got no protest from him. She stuck her fingers down her throat and this time had no trouble being sick. She came out a few minutes later to find that he had made her a mug of sweet, black tea.
‘I’m really cold,’ she said, shivering visibly. ‘Do you think I could have a blanket?’
‘There are no blankets but you can have my jacket.’
‘Thank you,’ she answered, draping it around her shoulders.
A couple of minutes later, back on her chair, Mila was looking at where the boy was sitting with his back to the kitchen counter and she took a deep breath, heart now pounding in anticipation of what she was about to do.
‘I’m going to be sick again,’ she murmured, punctuating it with a small retching noise. This time, as she rushed past him, Mila swept the edge of the jacket over the counter, at the same time grabbing her small clutch purse with the mobile inside. She closed the door fully behind her, making the first heaving noises as she fumbled to take the phone from the bag, dropping it and catching it before it hit the tiles. Her back was turned to the door with the coat shielding her in case he came in.
In a second, she had it turned on, willing it to boot up more quickly and then almost too late, remembered to switch it to silent as she punched in the security code. Half a dozen messages from Adie, and more recently several from Ryan came up and Mila’s heart leapt as she saw his name, but she had no time to read them, quickly pressing reply to the first one she could open. With fingers that wouldn’t stop shaking, she typed in the abbreviated code of directions she’d committed to memory from the Cambridge Hotel. Changing from Alpha to Numeric as she typed was agonisingly slow and she felt the minutes ticking by as every few seconds she repeated the retching noises or flushed the toilet to prevent suspicion. Finally she typed the word ‘warehouse’ before pressing send and then deleting the whole thread. As she did so, Mila realised that anything Ryan might have advised her in his texts, any sentiment he may have shared with her, was now gone forever.
She turned off the phone and momentarily wrestled with whether to hide it behind the toilet, or return it with the purse to the counter. She listened for any additional voices out there and on hearing none, decided to risk returning both to their previous position. It wasn’t worth the possibility of the phone being found out of place and she had already sent off the most important information.
She had tucked the purse under one arm, with the jacket concealing it as she left the bathroom and was shocked to see the boy right there on the other side, facing her as she opened the door.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked.
In the split second she had to think, Mila wondered if he’d noticed her purse gone, and wondered how on earth she was going to put it back unnoticed on the counter.
‘I just need a drink from the tap.’ She slipped past him, bending her head under the kitchen spout to drink, at the same time allowing the purse to fall into her hand beneath the jacket and then onto the bench.
It wasn’t in quite the same spot as earlier but if he’d noticed, he didn’t make any remark.
###
Ryan had eventually passed out on his sofa well after midnight and despite the phone being on the coffee table beside him, the small bleep of a message received, went unnoticed. It wasn’t until he woke up with a start a couple of hours later that he instinctively reached for the phone and saw it.
In a flash he was on his feet reading the coded instructions, punching the air with excitement. Clever, resourceful girl. He was astounded that she had managed to commit such a long series of directions to memory in any situation, but especially under duress.
He desperately wanted to send a reply, to let her know that he was coming, but he didn’t know under what circumstances she’d managed to send it, and assuming she was being held within earshot of her captors, he couldn’t chance her being caught out at the other end.
A chill engulfed him at the possibility of Mila having been discovered sending it. Again, he found his brain under assault by disturbing images as fears for her safety tumbled freefall through him. He was about to call Tony and the team at HQ to give them the lead, when it occurred to him that they might prevent him from going to her now. For the success of the operation, everything was riding on the deal and catching the syndicate red-handed. They wouldn’t be prepared to risk what had been so long in the making, even for Mila’s safety.
There was never really any doubt in Ryan’s mind about the course of action he was about to take and within minutes he and Jack were on the bike and headed back to the Cambridge Hotel. He would likely need Jack’s help when they got closer.
As he pulled up to the exit of the underground garage, he shook his head at the brazen confidence of her kidnappers in choosing a hotel immediately next door to a large police station. He took out his phone, scrolling to Mila’s message. Her code was sim
ple: L was left and R was right, and it didn’t taken a genius to work out that the numbers in between, represented seconds, and not metres. The time of night was almost the same, albeit a day later, and he hoped that in similar traffic conditions it would be easier to gauge the distances between each turn. He could only assume that she would have stopped counting whenever the car had stopped for red lights, but he had to admit to himself that one mistaken direction or a lapse in recall on Mila’s part and Ryan would be heading off in the wrong direction without knowing it.
He set off and soon noted that the car had taken back streets instead of the expressway, possibly hoping to avoid traffic and random police breathalysers. He didn’t need to stop and start but kept the phone open in one hand on the handlebars, hoping not to lose his place among the series of letters and numbers. In less than twenty minutes he found himself among the industrial estates of Alexandria where each driveway led to a series of factory units and warehouses.
He turned, according to Mila’s instructions into a smaller side street where an almost derelict warehouse lay well back from the road behind high hurricane fencing topped with a double row of barbed wire. The big double gates were chained and padlocked shut. It was the last property on one side of a cul-de-sac, and Ryan parked his bike out of sight behind the wall of another lot that backed on to it at right angles beyond. Even for a veteran cop, the place was sinister at this time of night, and he felt for his handgun as he and Jack approached.
The street was deserted as they looked for a way in. The unit appeared dark from the street but there were high windows running high along both sides that he saw were dimly lit from inside. Was Mila still there?
He and Jack crept silently, crouched behind the brick fence trying to get a better look without giving themselves away. The dog sensed through Ryan’s body language not to make a sound. They came to another fenced wall, that prevented them going further, but the adjoining property where he believed Mila was held, went even deeper and he couldn’t see what lay at the back.
It occurred to him that this whole thing could be a clever decoy to lead them away from the real container destination. They had Mila, and her phone. There was nothing to stop them sending the coded directions themselves, to make it appear as though she was tipping them off. Ryan’s head was spinning with possibilities and his body leapt to agitated attention at the possibility that he was walking into a trap. He hadn’t planned to take his investigation much further, he was on his own and unauthorised, but when he spotted a gap in the fencing between the two compounds, he was compelled to squeeze through. Reaching into a plastic bag in his jacket, he pulled out the pillowcase that Mila had slept on at his house and held it to Jack’s nose, hoping the dog would distinguish her scent from his. He had to know if she was really here, or if it was a con.
‘Find Mila,’ he whispered and immediately, Jack was sniffing the air, this way and that before putting nose to the ground.
Ryan knew that even if she was being held here, there was every chance that Mila had not been taken out of the car until it was already through the roller door to the building, in which case even Jack was unlikely pick up her scent, but it was worth a shot. He was on alert for any sounds from either inside the building or out, his heart thumping as much for the fact that he knew he was breaking police protocol, as it was out of respect for the danger of the situation. If he and Jack were discovered inside the compound, there would be no quick escape route, and no back-up.
Within seconds, he recognised a change in the dog’s demeanour, tail pointed flat behind him as he urged his master to follow him along one side of the building. Ryan had seen a driveway running along the other side and expected that there was car parking at the end of it. He held Jack back, just shy of the corner before stealing a look. Sure enough, there were two cars parked in the darkness and one of them was the Mercedes he’d seen on the hotel security camera.
He steadied his breathing as his heart began to beat ferociously at the thought of Mila still captive inside. He knew it was reckless to proceed further but he was not ready to call it in yet. He had a better chance under the cover of darkness to case the building, to see if there was any way to get in or to get Mila out. Any information he could provide in advance of a raid would be to their advantage but he knew that as soon as he called it, he’d be ordered to clear out.
The roller door faced the street with no covert means of entry, but around the back, he could see a single door with several offices in darkness on either side. He considered all options including the possibility of breaking in but he had no idea of how many additional cars might have been brought in through the roller door or how many men were inside. The whole place was huge, and as much as he hated to admit it, he needed help. Jack’s response had been enough to convince him that Mila had been there and was probably still inside.
He was back at the bike some minutes later when he made the call.
‘You’ve done what?’ It was Tony, roused from sleep, furious that Ryan had gone to the warehouse alone and even more worked up to learn that he and Jack had been snooping around. ‘You could have jeopardised the whole operation, and if they’d grabbed you too, we would have no leads.’
‘We stayed out of sight, but I had to know if she was there.’ It was an admission that he immediately regretted sharing.
‘You’re skating on thin ice Ryan. If your personal involvement with this woman is clouding your judgement then I can’t have you on the case. You know as well as I do that you should have left it up to surveillance, that’s what they’re trained to do.’
‘If it wasn’t for my involvement with Mila we wouldn’t have this lead now.’
‘And if it wasn’t for your involvement with her we wouldn’t have a hostage situation to contend with. Consider this your first and last warning. Give me the address and get yourself to Botany where you’re meant to be.’
‘I don’t actually have a complete address. I got here by following a series of instructions but I’ll text the coordinates to you just as soon as I’ve pinpointed this place on the GPS. Did the search teams find anything on board overnight?’
‘No but we ran some background checks on staff and we think we know which employee could be a snitch, so your theory about the container manifest being altered is becoming more and more likely.’
Ryan didn’t know if he could bear another day of waiting and worrying about Mila and what might be happening to her? He knew her captors would have seen her, bound and abused in those horrifying recordings. Hell, they may have been the ones who set it all up in the first place. He noticed his fists balling and his shoulders tensing when he thought of how that might influence their behaviour towards her. ‘When can we get the container off and start tracking it?’
‘Not yet, not without arousing suspicion. We can start taking all the containers off by mid afternoon but if we rush that one off first it’ll be a dead giveaway. Now that my last precious hours of shut-eye have been sabotaged, I’m going to dress and come in, but on second thoughts let’s meet at the office with TRT and MRT first, so we can discuss the plan. We can go from there to the port to brief the others.’
###
Mila had fantasised that the whole SWAT team or whatever it was they called themselves would come crashing through the doors to the warehouse within an hour or so of her message. She had even looked for the best place to throw herself to safety under gun fire, on the ground, under the bottom shelf of the storage racks where she could see a gap just sizable enough to tuck herself in with relative safety. But as the minutes and then hours ticked anxiously by, she wondered if her directions had been wrong or if Ryan could have missed the message altogether and she wished that she had sent it to Adie’s number too. As darkness gave way to dawn and then daylight, it occurred to her that there might be another reason for the police holding off.
When it came to her, Mila kicked herself for not realising sooner; she was less important than the overall operation to catch the criminals
and any rescue before the container arrived, would blow their cover.
As the day progressed, she noticed the excitement and tension building among her captors at the warehouse. She understood that the arrival of the big boss and the buyers in advance of the shipment was imminent and by mid afternoon Sergei had moved her into one of the internal offices, this time gagged and bound to a heavy desk with no chance of breaking free.
She heard them arrive, but couldn’t see anything from her position sitting on the floor. She was, for all intents and purposes, now in solitary confinement. The Russians had no intentions of showing her off to their bikie buyers – Mila suspected that their need for a hostage would only make them look unsure of themselves. Every limb in her body ached from the combination of stress and not having stretched out or lain down properly for days.
Sometime later, the door to the office was unlocked and Sergei entered, accompanied by someone she hadn’t seen before. Judging from the confident way he held himself, Mila could only assume it was Maslak. She looked up at him defiantly as he walked over, pulling up a chair on the way, before sitting down. His grey suit was exceptionally well cut, his white shirt open at the neck to reveal a heavy gold necklace, a well toned and tanned physique. He looked to be in his fifties with not a slick of silver hair out of place.
‘So I finally meet the elusive Mrs Taylor in the flesh. Take off the tape Sergei, I’d like to see more of her mouth.’ The way he lingered on certain words made her skin crawl. ‘You’re far more attractive in person and from this angle, although I can’t say that you have a bad angle, wouldn’t you agree Sergei?’ He grinned like a Cheshire cat.
‘Completely.’
‘I trust you’ve been treated civilly by my men?’