by james
Show time.
* * * *
Dark. So dark.
She sucked her thumb, her heart thundered in her ears.
She saw what the men did. The mean, mean men. One of them hurt her. Hurt her
bad. But she’d gotten away. She didn’t like his hands.
She’d run.
And she’d heard her sister, Zoy, stop screaming. They’d held Zoy down, their
hands at her throat…
She slapped her hands over her ears and tried to be quiet. Very, very quiet. They
couldn’t find her. She knew what would happen if they did. They’d made her watch. Told
her it would be her turn soon.
Her sister had yelled at them, cursing the men who did this.
The house was so quiet.
She shivered and closed her eyes, curled tighter in her hiding place. What if they
found her?
Should she leave the house? They might see and it was dark outside.
The monsters would get her if she left. And snakes.
She whimpered and wished Zoy would come for her.
The monsters would get her if she wasn’t quiet.
Quiet, quiet. Like a shadow.
* * * *
Dimitri slipped into the house first, John covering him, and closing the door
behind them both. They checked the downstairs rooms. Nothing. John took the second
story, Dimitri decided on the third.
The thick carpet on the stairs swallowed his footfalls.
A sweet, floral scent waved in the air. Nothing stirred in the house. He glanced
behind him when he reached the top, thinking one of the shadows shifted, but no, nothing
moved. He waited, staring at that space just to the bottom of the stairs.
Then he heard it. Just a whisper of a sound. Like a … whimper? Moan? He pulled
back, aiming the gun at the floor as he hurried along the wall, checking first one room
then another.
He heard nothing from John below stairs.
The room at the end of the corridor cast a soft glow into the darkened hallway.
Thick carpets covered the floors. The walls were tasteful, with high dollar art hanging on
them. And unless he was mistaken, that one there was a Rembrandt
Sculptures and plants filled alcoves.
Nothing moved, nothing stirred. He stepped closer to the room at the end of the
hallway.Nerves skittered along his skin. He knew, knew he wouldn’t like what was in that
DEADLY GAMES Jaycee Clark 47
room. And just like that, he felt it. The cold ice seeping down over him, slowing
everything, focusing his senses. His heart thrummed against his chest.
He stood to the side of the door, heard a soft thump from below and started to call
out to John when he heard the moan, again. He swung back to the room, his gun aimed.
With the toe of his boot, he pushed the door open the rest of the way. It swung
open slowly. At first he saw nothing but a large room done in white lace and pale
yellows, a fire place, a seating area with wingback, yellow damasked chairs. Teddy bears
and dolls scattered against one wall. A large dollhouse sat beneath a window.
But then he saw the camera equipment, black and gangly, almost alien in the
room. The camera was aimed beyond his vision.
He stepped into the room.
The camera was aimed at the bed.
Jesus. He froze.
But the bed was empty.
He hurried into the room, scanned the area, noted the floor to ceiling mirror on
one wall. The dolls and bears, the small white bed.
He glanced away, but a spot caught his attention.
He walked back to the bed.
A spot near the pillow, a smear on the sheet further down.
Sickness rolled through him.
Dolls. Bears. This was a child’s room.
For show?
Or more?
Elianya was into child porn.
Christ.
His breathing quickened as he stared at the stains. He reached out and touched
one, surprised when the spot left a damp red imprint on his finger.
Still fresh.
He looked back to the camera. One a digital. Expensive cameras, both digital and
35mm, sat on tripods. Lights glared down on the bed from their stands on their own
tripods.
Then it clicked. His head jerked back to the cameras. A fucking set. Goddamn it.
Quickly, he walked to the digital and saw the last picture. A man covering a girl.
A young girl.
Son of a bitch! Something inside him snapped. He heard it crack, break and
shatter. He stood there, flexing his fingers over the butt of his gun. Flex. Flex. Flex.
A muscle jumped in his cheek and he bit down until he knew his teeth would
shatter and pain shot up to his brain.
Flex. Flex. Flex.
All he saw was the girl, obscenely naked and being horribly abused.
Then he looked closer and jerked back.
Dead. Her eyes stared wide at the camera, glazed…but….He looked back at the
bed. Then back to the camera. The man’s hands were at her throat.
Ice trickled over his skin, the room around him blurring. The young girl’s face on
the camera shifted to others he hadn’t been able to help. To others he had. To faces he
DEADLY GAMES Jaycee Clark 48
wanted to forget and knew he never would….
He blinked and focused.
Rage hot and thick threatened to break through the ice.
He took a deep breath.
So small. She was so damn small with that cloud of black hair, pale face and blue,
blue eyes pleading…
His heart hammered in his chest.
Flex. Flex. Flex.
A shot pinged across the room, an explosion in the silence. He whirled, kicked
out, and brought his hand up, knocking the gun out of the man’s hand. A useless move,
for the man was already falling, even as the gun slammed into the wall. Dimitri aimed his
SIG Sauer even as the man thumped dead to the floor.
A woman, dressed all in black stood in the doorway, her gun still pointed in his
direction. For just a moment, a split second, his finger tightened on the trigger as he
thought it had been John, but no. The man dead at his feet, with half his head blown
across the wall wasn’t John.
He and the woman stared at each other. He didn’t take his eyes off her. And in
that instant, the world shifted back.
She stood there, dressed in black--black pants, boots, a turtle neck and leather
jacket--tall, athletic. Dark hair, mocha skin and those icy green eyes. The woman from the
bar.
“He had a gun aimed at the back of your head,” she said softly. She had a British
accent.
They still didn’t lower their weapons.
“Didn’t want him to take your mark?” he asked, his voice graveled more than
normal.
She smiled, dimples winking at him. “Oh, I haven’t marked you,” she said, tilting
her head, “yet.”
He narrowed his gaze at her even as hers shifted beyond him to scan the room. He
saw the color leave her cheeks. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” she whispered. She licked her
lips, swallowed. “Is this room what I think it is?”
Still staring at her, he shook his head. “Put your gun down.”
“Are you going to shoot me?”
For one moment, she stared at him, then shrugged and lowered her weapon, still
pale, her eyes darting this way, then that. “Fine, b
ut I draw the line at handing it over to
you.” She shoved it into her pants.
“Who are you?” Dimitri asked.
“I think the more important question is who are you, Mr. Petrolov.”
Again they stared at each other.
“Are you Raven?”
She grinned, but didn’t answer his question. “I hear your partner coming up the
stairs.”
He listened and heard John’s soft footsteps hushing along the carpets. Why hadn’t
he heard her?
“Where did you come from?” he asked.
DEADLY GAMES Jaycee Clark 49
“I followed you.”
Of course she had. He motioned for her to come into the room. He felt his phone
ring, but ignored it. John walked to the doorway. He took one look around, took a deep
breath, another. “Christ. A bloody fucking, porn set.” Then he turned to the woman.
“Hello, Lenora.”
“Hello, John.”
John looked from one to the other. “Which one of you killed this guard?”
“This guard?” Dimitri asked.
John jerked his head to the doorway. “Took out one downstairs in some sort of
study.”
“I did,” the woman said. “Mr. Petrolov doesn’t seem too impressed, even though
the bleeding bugger had a gun aimed at the back of Mr. Petrolov’s head.”
John’s gaze narrowed on his. “This true?”
Dimitri turned away from them and back to the camera, then glanced again at the
bed. Still, like a broken doll, she lay in frame, but no longer in reality. Where the hell was
the girl?
“I think someone died here,” he said softly, glancing at the other camera.
He wanted to flip back through all the cameras. But at present, he knew he simply
couldn’t stomach what he’d see on them.
“What?” John asked.
He pointed. “Blood on the sheets.” Then he pointed to the cameras. “And from the
last frame on this digital, I’d have to say our pedophile --” The man was as far as he was
concerned “Went a bit too far.”
John and Lenora walked to stand behind him. John took another deep breath and
started to flip through the digital shots. Dimitri ignored most of what he was seeing. Right
now, he simply couldn’t handle it. But then a flash of white at the edge of one frame
caught his attention.
“Wait.”
John looked at him, his face grim. “What?”
“Do the next one. I think there was another girl.”
And there she was. At the edge of the screen, the same wide blue eyes--terror
rounding them, cherub cheeks and long dark curly hair. One big man reached for her as
she clearly ran.
“Did she get away?” the woman asked, her voice so low he barely caught it.
He shook his head, chills dancing over his arms. He had to get the hell out of here.
“I don’t know, but I’m not leaving here until we know for certain.”
John, studying him, grabbed his arm. “If anyone died, this is a crime scene.”
He wretched his arm free. “I think even you can see that murder happened here
and that may be, Johnno, but I’ll not leave any child behind in this house.”
He didn’t need to look again at the cameras or in the room to know the exact
location of everything, even down to the last music box set atop the mantle. The pink
curtains in the doll house.
Out in the hallway, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath and then another.
He hated this fucking job. Hated it. He didn’t care what he had to do. This was it.
He was out.
DEADLY GAMES Jaycee Clark 50
She had looked so small, so damn small--but then had she really been? Was she
older? He knew from living with the slime this long that things were rarely what they
appeared, but regardless, she hadn’t deserved death. She hadn’t deserved whatever else
had gone on here.
Who was she and who had hurt her?
If he’d gotten here sooner.
“Why the hell am I just now learning of Elianya’s little side business?” he
snapped out, his hands fisted on his hips, not turning back to the room.
His muscles tightened.
John sighed. “I was ordered not to tell you.”
He glanced over his shoulder, piercing his friend with a look, but John didn’t look
away. “Why?”
John’s brows rose. “I didn’t ask why. You don’t ask why. Christ.” He raked a
hand over his face. “I have to call this --” He broke off and answered his phone. “What?”
Damn bastards. He’d seen a lot and had been part of more, but by God, he’d never
been a part of this. The fact that Viktor might have known for awhile, the fact John had
known for awhile and hadn’t told him.…
He took a deep breath, closing his eyes.
Then they shot open. The other girl.
He didn’t listen to John. Where the hell was she?
“Are those the only cameras?” he asked from the doorway.
Lenora, hadn’t walked far from the cameras. She still stood there, pale and
studying one of the pictures. “Well, we know the digital is still working. And it appears
the film may still be in the 35mm.” Her eyes rose to his and iced, mirroring his own rage.
“If we look through all the frames, we might just have the bastards who did this.”
“Thanks, I’ll let him know,” John said, his features hardening. “No, I’m with him.
I’ll make certain he gets to a safe house.” John’s eyes, bright with anger and something
else zeroed in on him. John flipped his phone shut. “It appears you’re out of a job and
even if you weren’t, your covers been blown wide ass open.”
“What? When? How?”
“That was an informant we have inside the Prague police. Your boss was
murdered and whoever did it, left images of your past aliases complete with names, or
some of them, on Hellinski’s computer.”
The gravity of the situation here and as a whole clicked through him.
“We’ve got to get you out of here. Several people are going to want you dead.
Word’s already hit the streets you were undercover,” John said, dialing his phone.
“Hellinski’s friends are not going to be happy.”
“Who killed him?”
John’s grey eyes narrowed on him. “Elianya, it appears. Went in, no one saw her
leave and then one of the guards went in to tell Mr. Hellinski he was late for a meeting.”
“I’m not going anywhere just yet.” He walked back into the room to see
Lenora/Raven, whoever the hell she was, taking both cameras off their stands. For a
moment he studied her.
Her head was bowed, but he noticed the tremor in her hands. Hell, his own were
still shaking. Her shoulders rose on a deep breath then another. Without turning to him,
DEADLY GAMES Jaycee Clark 51
she said, “I couldn’t work vice. Never could do that. I can’t stand sex crimes.” She
shrugged, turned to him and he caught the haunted look that flashed in her eyes. “So I
worked wherever else they needed me. Narcotics, scams, kidnappings, terrorism,
homicide, wherever, however, just not something like … like.…” She waved towards the
bed. “No child should even know about such things, let alone experience them.”
He almost didn’t answer her, but then he did. “I couldn’t agree more.” Still
studying her,
he said, “I don’t know if you’re the elusive Raven who was offered a couple
of mill to put a bullet in my brain or not, but--”
“It was actually five million.” She sniffed and shrugged gain. “But who’s
counting.”
With that she finally looked at him with those witch’s eyes.
He didn’t say anything, neither did she. Finally he nodded. “Thanks.”
“For not killing you or saving your life?”
“Both.”
For a moment they simply stared at each other and he felt it again, hot ice between
his shoulder blades. He shifted and rolled his neck.
“We should check the rest of the house.”
She nodded, glanced again around the room. “Yes. I’m betting there is a hidden
video camera in here somewhere. Live action sells more on the market than frozen
frames.”
He agreed. “We’ll look for the damn camera later. Now, I want to find a live girl.”
She nodded and followed him from the room.
* * * *
Voices filtered through the quiet. She heard the thumps and bumps. A shot.
She shivered. So cold. Why was she so cold?
Her thumb shook in her mouth.
Think of something else. She’d think of something else.
Back home. Back home before Papa and Mama went away.
But then they went away….
Her eyes shot open, but only a sliver of light showed around the edge of the door.
She huddled tighter.
She’d pretend to be a shadow. No one looked for shadows. No one cared about
shadows.
Shadows were silent. Shadows didn’t get hurt.
She waited, heard them talking.
A man’s voice.
A woman’s.
She whimpered.
Please, not the monsters. Please not the monsters.
* * * *
He raked a hand through his hair.
Shit. Cover was blown. Which meant he’d have more people after him. And here
he was playing games.
“Hide and seek is never fun as an adult. Have you noticed that?” Lenora asked as
they stepped into another room and flipped the lights on.
DEADLY GAMES Jaycee Clark 52
He ignored the fact she finished his thought.
Another room like the first. This one done in blues and grays. Sports
paraphernalia on the mantle. Trains and action figures on the walls. And again, there was
one large floor to ceiling mirror on one of the walls.