by J. S. Bailey
“Yet you came back.”
Vincent grimaced. “They made me do it. I can’t resist them.”
“Few could.”
“They whisper things to me. Awful things. And—” Despondency wrote itself across Vincent’s face, then he suddenly seemed calmer. “What is it you wanted to talk about?”
Jack took a moment to collect his thoughts. Upon waking that morning, he’d known he needed to come out here and do something but wasn’t sure what it was. At first he’d thought he wanted to clear up his foul mood from last night when the Roland dweeb showed up at the apartment and pulled a knife on him, but once he’d reached the outskirts of town he realized his trip to the Domus was meant to be something more.
“What would you do,” Jack asked, “if a little punk came to your house and threatened to stab you if you didn’t do what he wanted?”
“Troy would destroy him.”
“I’m asking you.”
Vincent’s expression deepened into a frown, and a new glint shined in his eyes. “We would destroy him, too. You shouldn’t have let him go. You could have ended him once and for all.”
It unnerved Jack only a little hearing another entity’s words coming out of Vincent’s mouth. He knew that one of them was often with him, as well. It even gave Jack encouragement from time to time. In fact, it was just that encouragement that made him decide to track his grandfather down using the information provided by Kerry, a hacker employed by Troy. Kerry had wormed his way into records showing an illegal change of identity for Graham, who had taken on the name of David Upton; the real David Upton having died in a car accident in Florida at the age of five.
Jack knew that one or more of the others had also helped him evade the police last week when they showed up to arrest him and Graham. Always coming in handy, they were.
Jack cleared his throat. “It would have been too risky to kill him there. We would have been seen, and it’ll be a cold day in hell before they lock me up again.” He paused. “I’ve been thinking about something Troy said. He wants to give me a promotion but I can only do it if I pull off the impossible.”
“Then you should think outside the box.”
“I’ve been trying.”
“Destroy him.”
“What?”
“Destroy him.” Vincent’s body gave a massive lurch as if he’d been shoved from behind, and he blinked wide, wondering eyes as if awakening from a dream. “Sorry, Jack. I must have dozed off for a minute. What is it you wanted to talk about?”
BOBBY REGRETFULLY left Bill Trautmann’s home without having broached the subject of the missing van—changing topics from Graham’s insanity to vehicular theft would have been so jarring that Bill’s suspicions would have been roused.
Instead, when he pulled out of Bill’s driveway, he made an abrupt turn into the electric company’s lot and parked between two of the vans.
Not sure what he would find, he killed the engine and got out.
Four spaces down from his, a mechanic had the hood of another van popped up and was rummaging around in its engine.
Bobby took a deep breath and casually walked around the side. “Hey.”
The mechanic gave a start and studied Bobby with coal-black eyes. In one hand he held a slender wire that was wet on one end, and in the other was a paper towel. He wore a white t-shirt with the Trautmann Electric Company name and motto printed over the left breast, and beneath that was embroidered the name “Angel.”
“What do you want?” Angel asked in a Mexican accent much thicker than that of Lupe Sanchez.
Bobby couldn’t take his eyes off the guy’s name.
“It’s pronounced AHN-hel,” the man said, reading Bobby’s mind. “I said, what do you want?”
“Have you worked here long?” Bobby asked, saying the first thing that came to mind.
Angel’s eyes narrowed. “Four years. Why?”
“I just wondered what kind of boss Mr. Trautmann is. I’ve heard he has a low tolerance for poor conduct.”
The man gave a nod. “Ah. Sí. You are looking for a job, no? Bill, he is a nice man, but tough.” Angel gestured at the van before him. “Like this van disappears yesterday and turns up in its spot a while ago. Bill says, ‘Angel, go make sure it’s safe to drive.’ Like someone stole it just to mess it up a bit. So I check steering, brake fluid, now oil…what?”
Bobby’s heart stuttered. “You said this is the van that was stolen?”
“Sí, and now it is back. Someone must have had a change of heart. If only more bad men were like this one, the world would be great place, no?” He grinned.
“What makes you think a man took it?”
Angel shrugged and wiped a bead of sweat off his forehead with the back of the hand clutching the paper towel. “It is a man sort of thing to do.”
Bobby took a few steps backward and squinted in through the passenger window. Clean gray seats. Shining steering wheel and dashboard. No trash or dirt on the floor. “Did you clean it out before checking the oil and stuff?” he asked.
“No.”
“Do you care if I have a look in the back for a minute?”
Angel’s amiability was replaced with his previous suspicion. “What is this about?”
“I’m nosy.”
Angel’s mouth tightened, and he glanced over his shoulder in the direction of Bill Trautmann’s house, which was mostly obscured by a thick stand of fir trees lining the lot. “Maybe I am nosy, too. Tell me what you really want, and then you can look inside.”
Like Bobby was going to tell Angel that the woman who’d birthed him had very likely been held in the back of this van for an undetermined length of time. “I just thought there might be some clues back there about who might have swiped it. You know, so you can tell the police.”
Angel seemed to think this over for a moment or two before saying, “Very well. Take a look. But you will not find anything.”
“Thanks.”
Bobby slid the passenger side back door open and climbed in. Goosebumps rose on his arms and the back of his neck when Angel’s words replayed themselves in his mind. All he could see through the windshield was the van’s open hood and brief glimpses of Angel moving around on the other side of it.
Could Angel have been the one to take the van? As a company employee he would have had a key, so Bobby couldn’t dismiss the possibility. But would he really be that obvious if he were the kidnapper?
The inside of the van smelled like Windex. The gray carpet on the floor appeared to have been vacuumed. A toolkit and some coils of wiring sat neatly on one side of the empty space.
He had the idea that even if the police came along checking for stray hairs and fingerprints, they wouldn’t find much of anything. Adrian Pollard’s abductor had known what he was doing.
But who was her abductor?
It startled him when he realized he’d become fully immersed in his search for her once again. She’s nothing to me, he thought. Just someone who needs a bit of saving. When he did find her, they would simply acknowledge each other’s existence before peacefully parting ways. Bobby certainly didn’t want to start a mother-son relationship with her. Her other children wouldn’t have done that. They would have been hurt, too.
The idea that he had siblings he’d never met made him feel strange, as if he’d just learned that the earth actually had four moons or that there was a secret continent in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that nobody ever talked about. He wondered how old his siblings were, where they lived, and if they were anything like him.
No. He couldn’t let himself think about that. He would have to crush those questions before they seeded themselves in his brain and began to grow. To learn the answers, he would have to sit down and have a long chat with Adrian, which was out of the question.
Bobby backed out of the van and slid the door shut. “Nothing,” he said. “I guess Bill will never get to find out what kind of creep stole his van.”
Angel stood beside him with his a
rms folded across his chest, his face warped into a scowl. “Get out of here before I decide to tell my boss you’re just here to snoop around.”
Bobby caught a glimmer of something in the man’s eyes, and he thought, Aha! “Are you talking about Bill or somebody else?” He continued before Angel could answer. “I see how it is. You know somebody who needed a van since using their own might have been incriminating, and you lent this one to him to use instead. They probably even paid you for it. Right?”
Angel opened his mouth to voice what probably would have been some kind of objection, but the ringing of Bobby’s phone cut him off.
He wanted to ignore it, but his gut told him he needed to take the call. “Excuse me,” he said, and stepped over to his Nissan.
Frowning, Bobby held the phone to his ear. “What’s up?”
“I need you to come over here,” Carly said in such a flat tone that Bobby almost didn’t recognize her voice. “Now.”
Alarm bells went off in Bobby’s head. “Did something happen?”
“Just come over here. Please.”
“I’ve never been to your house. I don’t know where it is.”
“We live at 900 Waterstone Drive off of Skyline Avenue. Do you know where that is?”
“I think so.” Bobby swallowed and glanced back in Angel’s direction. The man was rummaging around under the hood once more. “Do you need anything?”
“Just you. I mean; to talk to.” She paused. “God help me, I sound like an idiot. Just get over here soon, okay? I’ll talk about it then.”
The line went dead.
Coils of dread snared him. Just what in the world was going on?
WHEN THE little girl who’d joined Adrian first awakened, her gaze darted wildly around the concrete room before coming to rest on Adrian’s face.
The haunted look in the child’s eyes tore Adrian’s heart in two.
Adrian had probably looked the same when she first came to in this place, only unlike this child, she had a far better idea of what would happen to the both of them if she didn’t come up with a plan of action, and soon.
She crossed the small room and sat on the edge of the cot next to the girl and tried to smile at her just to provide her with a shred of hope, but for some reason she couldn’t work the muscles in her face to change her expression.
“Honey,” she said, “everything is going to be okay.”
Fat tears welled up in the child’s brown eyes. “I want my mom.”
“And we’ll get your mom, honey. But first we have to find a way out of here.”
Adrian knew that the odds of completing a successful escape without any weapons other than her own two hands were next to nothing, though the child didn’t need to know that. Telling her that she wouldn’t be freed from this prison until someone came along to do unspeakable things to her would have been a cruelty, which Adrian dared not inflict upon one so young.
So Adrian did the only thing she could in the meantime: she talked.
“Honey, what’s your name?” Adrian asked.
“M-Monique.”
According to Monique, she was eight years old, not nine, and she lived with her mother and little brother in a place called Eugene. Monique’s father had “up and left” one day to go live with “some blonde tramp,” and Adrian almost laughed hearing such adult words come out of the child’s mouth but quickly swallowed it back.
“Do you know how you got here?” Adrian asked.
Monique started to shake her head but turned it into a nod, the plastic balls on her hair ties bobbing up and down. “It was Wanda.”
“Wanda?”
“She’s a real nice lady. My mom always says not to talk to strangers but Wanda wasn’t like them.”
“She wasn’t like who?”
“Other people. Other people look at you funny like you smell or something and just keep on walking. But Wanda was nice and talked to me. She gave me a doll one day and my mom got mad and asked where I got it, but Wanda told me not to tell anyone, so I told my mom I just found it somewhere.”
Adrian could see it clearly in her mind. Monique’s mother must have had to work a lot to support two young children on her own, leaving Monique and probably her brother to roam unattended. This Wanda must have been one of the vultures who helped stock this underground prison. She would have seen Monique out somewhere, decided she was easy pickings, and pretended to befriend her so it would be easier to kidnap her.
“What else did Wanda do?” Adrian asked, afraid that her voice would break if she tried to speak any louder.
Monique drew her knees to her chest and gazed at the dirty cot. “She took me to get ice cream. We even saw a princess movie, and all the ladies wore these pretty crowns and dresses.” A look of dreamy contentment passed over the child’s face, as if the thought of being a real life princess was the most wonderful thing in the world.
It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, Adrian thought. She had practically lived like royalty in the years she’d been with Yuri—she’d had all the clothes, jewelry, and alcohol she’d ever wanted—and all it gave her in turn was a mountain of regret.
It all seemed so juvenile now. It was as if Adrian had been a child her entire life and was just now coming to understand what it meant to be an adult.
She first laid eyes on Yuri when he and his colleagues came to a benefit dinner at the golf course clubhouse where she worked. Adrian’s job that evening had been to work behind the bar counter filling glasses of wine.
When Yuri came back through the line for his fifth glass, she realized he wasn’t just doing it for the alcohol. He wanted to see her. It was just like with Ken and all the others all those years ago. A man had seen her, and he liked what he saw.
“You are so beautiful,” he said, a slur in his speech from the four glasses he’d already consumed. “What’s your name?”
At first she’d blinked stupidly at him like he’d just said something in a foreign language. Well, he did have some kind of accent. Something European, maybe. His hair was so pale it was almost white, though he wasn’t at all old; and he wore a crisp, clean suit with a shiny blue tie.
“I’m Adrian,” she said as a blush warmed her cheeks. “Is there anything else I can get you, sir?”
One of the men she’d seen sharing Yuri’s table stood behind him in line, laughing. “You watch out for this old dog,” he said. “He barks up a lot of trees.”
Yuri ended up staying late after the benefit was over and walked Adrian to her car. He told her he’d grown up in Kiev in the Ukraine and was now the chief executive officer of a financial consulting firm based here in southern Michigan. He slipped her a business card and told her that if she was ever lonely, to just give him a call.
Then he’d slipped away into the night like a shadow fading into darkness, and Adrian felt giddy inside to know that someone with such standing in their city would take an interest in her.
She’d called him the very next morning, and they were married three months later.
“Adrian?”
The sound of Monique’s voice snapped her back to attention. “What is it, honey?”
“You look sad.”
“Well, maybe I am sad.” She shivered, wishing her mind would stay in the present since finding a way out was far more important than lamenting about her years with Yuri. “How do you know Wanda is the one who brought you here?”
Monique’s bottom lip trembled. “She said we were going to the zoo. I’ve never been there before. But we kept on driving and driving, and then I said I was thirsty so she gave me a drink, and then my head got all funny and then I was here.”
A new wave of anger flared up inside of Adrian as she pictured the scene. She looked to the metal door. It could only be opened from the outside since there was no knob in here, but what if there was a way to get the bolt to disengage by sliding something into the paper-thin gap between the door and its frame?
Monique followed her line of sight. “How will we get out?”
/>
“I’m not sure.”
“Do you think someone will come save us?”
No, Adrian thought, but she said, “Maybe.”
BOBBY PULLED up in front of the Jovingos’ two-story house, parking beside Carly’s Aveo and wondering what in the world could have happened since she left him less than an hour ago.
Was this how life would be now that he was the Servant? One crisis after another after another without end?
His heart banged against his ribs as he hurried up the flower-lined walk onto the porch.
He rapped on the door and waited.
And waited.
“Carly?” he asked in a loud voice, hoping she’d hear him through the walls. “Open up.”
No response came, and the storm cloud of dread hanging over him darkened. He felt a stirring within him. Just go in.
He sucked in a breath that didn’t sufficiently fill his lungs. Here we go.
The house exuded an eerie stillness when he stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind him. Directly before him lay a kitchen with a table in the center of the open space, on which sat Carly’s purse, a napkin holder, and a candle in a jar. A crockpot had been set out on the counter, and empty packages of frozen vegetables sat beside it.
Bobby treaded lightly as he moved into the kitchen. He almost expected to find Carly passed out on the floor (or worse), but his fear proved to be unfounded since Carly wasn’t there.
His mind jumped backward into last week when he, Randy, and Phil had arrived at Lupe’s apartment to protect her when they’d learned that Graham was on the loose. Randy had unlocked the apartment and they’d all gone inside to find it vacant, though Lupe’s purse had been left behind on her coffee table.
Could Carly, like Lupe, have been abducted? Bobby wouldn’t put it past Jack to do something else to get even with him, but if Carly had been forcibly removed from her home, how in the world had she been able to call him from there?
A faint sniffling from up above met his ears, flooding him with both fear and relief. He returned to the entryway, eyed a carpeted flight of stairs, and ascended them to an upper hallway running perpendicular to the stairs.