by J. S. Bailey
Because even though Adrian had abandoned him, she must have felt some shred of love for him since she’d allowed him to be born.
Lying in that position made him realize how exhausted he felt. Last night’s conk on the head had not made for restful slumber, and now he could feel himself drifting away on a river of fatigue.
I can do this.
In his mind, he saw himself pulling into the parking lot of the apartment complex where Jack lived.
In the distance, he heard a door open and close. “What’s going on in here?”
“Shh. Bobby’s trying to go into deep meditation.”
He did his best to ignore Phil’s and Kevin’s voices so they wouldn’t distract him. Now he was at St. Paul’s hauling a giant bag of garbage out to the bins along the tall, wooden fence, and then came arguing voices in another language.
Voices. Arguing. Fence. Behind the church.
A woman standing along the curb in the dark, snatched away by someone in a work van.
The man named Angel tinkering around under the hood.
The voices. The fence.
Bobby’s body gave an involuntary lurch, and he snapped back into the present. Kevin stood beside Randy and Phil wearing an expression of utmost fascination.
“Any luck?” Randy asked.
Phil snorted. “Yes. Because luck is what we should place our faith in.” But the look in his eyes was hopeful.
“I’m not sure.” Bobby reviewed what he’d seen. “I kept seeing the fence along the back edge of St. Paul’s property.”
“Do you think she’s in one of the houses on the other side?”
“I don’t know. I’d like to find out.”
Phil glanced toward the door that led to the kitchen. “How soon do you want to leave?”
“Now would be nice.”
“Frankie isn’t likely to want you to go just yet.”
“I don’t care what Frankie wants.”
Phil smirked. “I don’t, either.”
“In any case, I’m not letting you go alone,” Randy said to Bobby. “I can have your back as long as we make a quick stop at my house so I can pick something up.”
“Would this something be kind of sharp?”
“You know me too well.”
Phil looked torn. “I’d go with you, but I don’t want to leave Allison and Ashley here alone with that Thane creature on the loose.” He bit his lip. “You should probably go out the back so Frankie won’t try to stop you. And Bobby, whatever you do, make sure you don’t hurt yourself.”
ADRIAN WENT over every inch of the concrete room in search of a thin object that could be slid into the crack between the door and its frame and came up with nothing. Whoever owned this place wasn’t stupid. They would have thought of everything ahead of time and made sure that escape was more difficult than interstellar travel.
Monique watched her with wide eyes the whole time she conducted her search, and when at last Adrian returned to her cot and sank hopelessly onto the thin cushion serving as a mattress, Monique said, “If someone comes, you can hit them on the head.”
“With what, honey? My hands?”
Monique scanned the room with her dark brown eyes. “You can throw a cot at them, and then we can run away.”
If only things could be that simple! To make the child think she hadn’t yet lost hope (which she was perilously close to doing), Adrian stood and lifted one side of the cot. Its frame must have been made of aluminum because it wasn’t quite as heavy as she’d expected. Maybe she could find a way to take the cot apart and use a piece of the frame like a club.
Just as she was thinking this, the door’s lock disengaged with a loud click and it swung open, admitting the woman who always brought food. This time she held a paper plate in each hand, both of them bearing a sad-looking peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a few slices of apple that were already turning brown from exposure to the air.
Adrian was too hungry to complain.
This time the woman stayed while they consumed their meals and then took the empty plates before moving over to the closed door.
A mad compulsion came over Adrian as she watched the woman’s casual manner. Before she could convince herself to do otherwise, she charged at the woman, who was several inches shorter but probably thirty or forty pounds heavier than her.
The woman dropped the paper plates in surprise as Adrian hooked a skinny arm around her neck and looped the other across the woman’s midsection to try to pin her arms into place. The woman struggled, and Adrian tightened her grip, but then the woman slammed her head backward into Adrian’s face, sending a spike of pain through her nose. Blinking tears out of her eyes and trying her best not to let go, she said, “I want you to let us out. I have a lot of money. I’ll pay you whatever you want if you let us free. I won’t even tell anyone who you are or where this place is.” These were all lies, of course, especially considering that Yuri had most likely found a way to prevent her from accessing their accounts now that she’d left him.
The woman let out a snicker. So she understood English after all. “You don’t know how tempting it is to let you go,” she said in a heavy accent. “You are a waste of space and resources. Our customers want the young, supple ones. If I’d known ahead of time how old you are, I would have put my foot down.” Her body shook with laughter. “We could always kill you, maybe feed you piece by piece to the next ones who show up here. At least then you’d be useful.”
This wasn’t going well at all. Adrian willed every ounce of strength into her right arm to restrict the woman’s airflow, and just as she was thinking that she might be able to crush her throat and use the cell phone to call the police, the woman managed to worm her way out of Adrian’s grip and slapped Adrian so hard across the face that another wave of tears sprang into her eyes.
Her captor slid the phone out of her pocket and made to dial it but Adrian jumped forward and knocked it out of her hand. It skidded across the floor, Adrian dove for it with the intensity of a bird of prey closing in on a rodent, closed her fingers around it, and punched in 911.
Pain exploded across her head before she could send the call through, and her vision wavered. Somewhere close by a child was crying, and the lights grew dim, and my, how her head hurt! And then…
ADRIAN AWOKE flat on her back, feeling sick to her stomach. Ropes bound her to the cot so tightly that she couldn’t even sit up. My God I can’t throw up I’ll DROWN if I do I can’t I can’t—
Monique sat on the cot across from her, her expression blank. Two new men had entered the room with the evil woman at their side.
One of the men—a guy with frizzy red hair and too many freckles on his face—pointed at the child. “This one,” he said, as if he were observing a household product sitting on a grocery store shelf.
Adrian strained against the rope and felt it chafe against the bare skin on her arms. This wasn’t supposed to happen. She was going to save Monique, not watch her get dragged away to a living hell. “Stop it!” she screamed. “Don’t hurt her! Take me, instead!”
The red-haired man laughed. “Looks like you’ve got a feisty one here, Rayna. I know some people who might like that.”
Adrian’s queasy stomach turned a somersault.
“You be quiet!” Rayna, her captor, snapped at the man. “Hurry up and finish your business. There’s someone I need to go talk to.”
Adrian watched helplessly as the other man seized Monique, forced her onto her stomach, and bound her small hands behind her back. Her eyes burned with tears. If only there was something she could say to the men that would give them an instant change of heart—a magic spell of sorts!
“What if she was your daughter?” she croaked. Monique wasn’t even putting up a struggle, and Adrian prayed that she would block this out of her memory so that if she survived, this horror wouldn’t haunt her for the rest of her life.
Eyes blazing, Rayna strode over to the cot, swung her foot back, and kicked Adrian so hard in the
side she swore she heard a rib crack. Red-hot pain seared through her and she tried not to be sick. “Monique,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
LUPE’S WHITE Prius still occupied Randy’s driveway when Bobby pulled up in front of the ramshackle garage and killed the engine.
“I was kind of hoping Lupe and Carly would have decided to take an impromptu trip to Miami or someplace like that,” Randy said as he unbuckled his seatbelt.
“Because it’s about as far away from Jack and Thane as you can get without leaving the country?”
“Exactly.”
Bobby followed Randy to the door, his nerves tingling with excitement. “Do you think it was dumb to promise Jack I wouldn’t let anyone know where he’s been staying?”
Randy pulled the door open, lifting his eyebrows. “You’re asking me that?”
“Point taken.”
Carly and Lupe were conversing in low voices at the kitchen table when they stepped inside. Lupe eyed them and rose. “Hang on, I’d better go help—” She froze, blinking in disbelief. “Randy? You’re—”
“All better,” Randy said as he led the way into the kitchen. “It turns out an old Servant is in town and still in the business of working miracles.” He grinned.
Lupe yanked his shirt up so she could see where Graham had cut him. She clapped a hand over her mouth. “There aren’t even scars! Let me find some scissors so I can get all those ugly stitches out of you.”
Randy held up a hand. “That can wait. Bobby and I have some urgent work to get done in town. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go get something out of my room.” He disappeared into the back hallway and Bobby heard him ascend the creaking stairs.
Carly, who had been gaping at Randy the whole time like he’d just been raised from the dead, cleared her throat. “What kind of urgent work?”
At first Bobby hesitated, not wanting to go into another long explanation, but instead he said, “I think Adrian is being kept in one of the houses behind St. Paul’s.”
Her eyes grew round. “And you’re going to get her out? Isn’t that dangerous?”
He swallowed. “Of course it’s dangerous. But how else am I going to save her?”
She gave him an appraising look. “Bobby, I mean absolutely no offense when I say this, but you’re not exactly tough. There’s going to be people guarding her. They could kill you if you try to get past them.”
“I thought you were on my side here!”
A pink tinge filled her cheeks. “I am on your side. I just think you should let professionals handle this.”
“I have to know if she’s really there before I give any kind of ‘professionals’ a call.”
Randy entered the kitchen with his hands hidden behind his back. “Who’s calling professionals?”
“Bobby is when he finds out if his mother is at this place or not.” Carly put her hands on her hips and arched an eyebrow at Bobby.
“Remember that the Titanic was built by professionals. Bobby, pick a hand.”
“What?”
“Left or right.”
“Um, left?”
“Good call.” Randy brought his hands forward. He held a leather-sheathed knife in each one.
Bobby gulped. Even though he’d known that’s what Randy had come here to pick up, he said, “Stabbing someone seems kind of up-close and personal.” Like that mattered when you went to visit Jack.
“You don’t say.” Randy handed him one, and Bobby slid it out of its sheath. Six inches of glimmering metal. A razor-sharp edge.
With luck, Bobby wouldn’t have to use it.
He put it back into the sheath and stuffed it in his pocket. “I wish we could do this at night instead. I don’t want someone to catch us spying on the place.”
“I can act as lookout,” Carly said.
“But you had that bad scare this morning,” Bobby said. “You should stay here where it’s safe.”
He could practically feel her glare burning a hole in him. “I said I’m stepping down as counselor while I work things out. I didn’t say I couldn’t help out in other ways in the meantime.”
Lupe’s face paled. “If Carly’s going, then I am, too.”
Randy looked stricken. “Bobby, this is your call.”
“Might I remind you,” Carly said, “that Lupe and I aren’t damsels in distress? I counsel people who had demons feeding on their souls. I think I can handle sitting in a car and calling to let you know if some thug is sneaking up behind you with a tire iron.”
“And I survived being imprisoned by Graham,” Lupe added, though a shadow passed over her face when she said it.
“But that’s different,” Bobby said.
Now both of them were glaring at him.
“Fine,” he said, sensing defeat. “You can both act as lookout. Maybe nothing will even happen.” And maybe it will.
THE FOUR of them squeezed into Bobby’s Nissan—the men in the front and the women in the back. Bobby took some reassurance from the fact that he had yet to experience a premonition, though one could hit at any moment.
“The question is,” Carly said once they were on the road headed back to Autumn Ridge, “how are we going to communicate with each other while you two are scoping this place out?”
“You said you could call us,” Bobby said.
“That might not be a good idea, though. People might hear you talking.”
“How about text messages?” Bobby tightened his grip on the steering wheel. His heart pounded harder and he forced himself to take slow breaths before his vision went gray with dizziness.
“But those don’t always go through right away,” Lupe said from her place behind Randy.
“We’ll set our phones to vibrate and use them like walkie-talkies, but only if we have to,” Randy said. “That should be easy enough.”
“That still doesn’t solve the problem of being overheard,” Bobby said.
“Then we’ll talk quietly.”
During a brief spell of silence, yet another Trautmann van passed them in the northbound lane heading out of Autumn Ridge.
“Not to change the subject,” Bobby said, thinking of his meeting with Bill Trautmann, “but did Graham ever mention a friend named Nate?”
“Nate?” Surprise colored Randy’s voice. “Not that I remember.”
“Graham sometimes talked about a Nate when he forced me to chat with him,” Lupe said. “He met Nate at Arbor Villa Nursing Home. He had a strange last name. Bagdasarian, I think.”
They stopped at the first light on that side of Autumn Ridge, and Bobby took the opportunity to crane his neck around to look at her. “Was he a resident or an employee?”
Her forehead creased. “I don’t think he said. All I remember is him talking about things Nate said to him. Like…” She paused. “That’s strange.”
“Let me guess,” Bobby said as he recalled Bill’s words from earlier in the day. “You can’t remember.”
“No.” She then murmured something in Spanish, to which Randy replied in the same fashion.
“Yo no hablo español,” Carly muttered as the light changed to green and Bobby turned onto another street. He made a mental note to ask Lupe more about Graham’s friend once their business in town was finished.
They completed their journey in silence. Bobby pulled into the parking lot at St. Paul’s, figuring that this would be a safe starting point. “Great,” he said. “We’re not alone.”
“I hate to break it to you,” Randy said while Bobby drove past a dozen parked cars toward the lot on the other side of the building, “but this is a church. People do church things here.”
Bobby parked beside the row of dumpsters and looked back at the church. Two women stood conversing at the front entrance while another woman and her small son wearing a Cub Scout uniform squeezed past them from within the building.
“They might not notice us,” Randy said.
Bobby thought the women would have to have a severe vision impairment not t
o observe what he planned on doing. “Okay,” he said, facing the three other occupants of the car. “I think the house might be on the other side of this fence here. What I need is for Randy to stand on one of these dumpsters and wave over the top of the fence so I can tell where he is when I drive over to the next street.”
Carly shook her head. “All we need is a big dog and a hippie van and we’ve got ourselves one bad episode of Scooby-Doo.”
Randy sighed. “I hate to say this then, but let’s split up, gang.” He opened the car door and climbed out, giving them a grim salute.
As Bobby dipped his head in reply, he had the sense that something more than the mantle had just been passed to him. As if Randy had officially acknowledged that he was no longer in charge, but merely a supporting player.
It’s all on me now. Bobby set his jaw. So I’d better do this right.
He backed the car up and drove back out to the road.
Bobby wasn’t wholly familiar with this end of town since he’d only been employed by the church for a week, but he knew he’d have to find a cross street as soon as possible and turn down it to find the street on which Adrian’s prison lay.
Assuming he was right about where she was.
He turned left onto the first street past St. Paul’s. The nearly identical houses were sandwiched together so closely that if one caught fire the whole block would go up in flames. Would traffickers work in such a populated area?
He swung another left and slowed to a crawl, keeping his gaze fixed on the left-hand side of the street to try to spot Randy.
The homes on this street sat farther apart than on the previous one, but an unforeseen problem soon presented itself.
“Who lets their hedges get so tall?” Carly asked as Bobby parallel-parked along the opposite curb so he could plan his next move.
“People who want to hide something.” He stared out at the row of houses, many of which were mostly obscured by twelve-foot hedges growing across the fronts of their lawns.