Unholy Promises

by Roxy Harte

  Raised Orthodox, I haven’t prayed in a very long time. Today, I spent the entire morning praying. The day slid by without notice, and now, night has fallen over the city and the kinky have come out to play. I imagine there is a packed house, though I haven’t ventured out to see for myself. I can barely stand my own company, let alone a crowd. It is unfair that I have pushed away Garrett and Celia, but I tell myself that I am protecting them. When my cell phone rings and I see that it is Glorianna, I am reassured that I am making the right choice by keeping myself separate from them at this time.

  This moment, Glorianna is an ally; however, the moment I answer the phone and inform her that the mission was a failure, that may all change—putting my life and anyone near me at risk.

  I open the phone, saying nothing. From her side too there is silence for a moment. “I expected you to come by,” she says finally.

  “I wasn’t sure that would be appropriate under the circumstances.”

  “All is lost then?” she asks, and it is in the tone of a very dangerous woman.

  “No, I wouldn’t say that all is lost.”

  “What would you tell me?”

  I close my eyes, reaching out to Nikos and finding the energy that I know means he is still living, breathing… I seek more than that, needing to know whether he is at peace or surrounded by danger. I chant in my head, Alexiares and Aniketos, Alexiares and Aniketos, Alexiares and Aniketos, hoping for the correct answer. My thoughts fill with images of Nikos, Eva, Garrett and Kitten, all the ones whom I love. I imagine us gathered on my grandfather’s island.

  “I imagine more time is all that it will take to resolve this issue.”

  “More time?”

  “Yes, I have not failed you, I just merely need more time to make your wish complete.”

  My mind isn’t focused and my daydream distracts me. The sun is warm on the sand and I lead Eva away from the others, walking hand in hand down the beach. I make love to her with waves breaking around us. It isn’t practical, sand gets into all the crevices and is a bitch to get out, but it is the most romantic, happy vision my exhausted mind can come up with, and so I kiss her salty, wet face, making her laugh, and her cheeks glow with health. Can we stay here forever, Luka? I close my eyes on the daydream and my phone trembles against my ear, my hand shaking with the force with which I have it gripped. I have never allowed myself to dream of happy endings. I will not be denied this one.

  “Trust me, Glorianna.”

  “What you ask of me is great.”

  “The greater good will be served by your patience.”

  She sighs heavily. “There are others who want him dead today. Only because I cherish our relationship have I stepped out on this limb to protect him.”

  “Then do what you must do to save face, because to kill him, his enemies would have to be able to find him, and that isn’t going to happen.”

  “You seem very certain of that, Thomas.”

  I laugh. “You will see, love, my brother is invincible, but I would ask that you honor your promise of protection when I am able to bring him here.”

  She is curt when she answers, “My word is good,” before disconnecting.

  My cell immediately vibrates in my hand. My blood runs cold. Seeing Dad on the caller ID, I know it is Henri, and know that he wouldn’t break the communication blackout unless it were dire news or our assignment had changed. I don’t say a word, putting the receiver to my ear and waiting for him to speak first.

  “It isn’t good, my friend.” Henri’s voice. “The doctors believe she isn’t waking up because she doesn’t want to. She may not survive the night.”

  “I’m flying in.”

  “No!” Henri shouts. “Not until all the charges against you are dropped. I can’t assure your safety.”

  “When has that mattered before?”

  “I had to hold Eva’s hand through your funeral once. I won’t do it a second time.”

  I don’t have time to stay mad at him long. My cell phone is buzzing in my hand even as he hangs up on me. My US contact informs me I have an assignment.

  I close my eyes, letting a long silence fall between us like a wall before asking, “Details?”

  “Four nights ago, eight runaway girls triggered Interpol’s radar when they crossed into the United States. The border authorities somehow managed to let them slip through their fingers. Thanks to the headmaster’s missing person report filed the same day, we have current photos. They disappeared from their very exclusive boarding school. Recovery of an erased file on one of the girls’ computers produced information that the traders are meeting for an exchange at Lewd Larry’s on the eleventh.”

  “You’re keeping something from me.”

  “One of the girls is the daughter of an influential Canadian, very influential. Another is the daughter of the Japanese consulate to the US. And one is a princess of the House of Bernadotte. We need a speedy recovery. We need the couriers alive.”

  “How influential?” I quip, focusing on the Canadian girl, but he ignores my question and alarm bells ring in my head. I remember details about a Canadian drug lord’s long-standing feud with a Colombian trafficker, that he traffics anything of value—guns, drugs, women, children, even fighting dogs when there is a market, and it doesn’t improve my optimism on how tonight is going to play out. The thought of two rival cabals facing off in our public areas is one I’d rather not even consider.

  “If your boss is involved—” His voice holds an unspoken threat.

  “Tonight?” I look at my watch, seeing that it is twenty-two minutes past midnight. “It’s the twelfth as of twenty-two minutes ago. They may have already been picked up!”

  “Hope not, Thomas. The girl’s father is en route to San Francisco under the general impression that Garrett Lawrence is behind the disappearance of his daughter and that Garrett is acting in conjunction with his Colombian enemies. With his power and the power of his Californian friends, he plans to have Lewd’s leveled by dawn.” He sighs heavily into the receiver. “Find the girls, keep them safe until we can extract them, and subdue the couriers. I’ll manage the father from here.”

  The loud click in my ear signals that this conversation is over.

  I do what I always do. I dissociate, forgetting for the moment Eva and Henri, cutting myself free of the emotions tugging me in a direction other than the job at hand, and head out to the main dance level. How hard could it be to spot underage girls?

  Sadly, it isn’t the first time my duty has been such. Girls lured from the safety of their homes and families with promises of fame and fortune, not knowing that their new talent agents sold them as prostitutes into South American brothels—it happens on a regular schedule. They are victims, traffickers recruiting them through fake advertisements, both print, internet and in some cases radio ads, as has been happening more and more in Canada. Once under the control of the traffickers, the girls are confined, their travel and identity documents taken away. The traffickers quickly gain the upper hand, threatening that they will harm their families if they do not cooperate.

  This isn’t why I was originally posted in San Francisco, but sadly it has become routine that I am called to retrieve children and young women being trafficked.

  Descending to the second floor in the glass elevator, I spot them. Still together as a group of eight, they are very young and sitting in one of the conversation pits. Each holds a mixed drink, and though they look young and nervous, they are also excited, a brightness in their eyes says without words that they are on the adventure of a lifetime.

  When the doors open to level two, my glare prevents any passengers from boarding and, just taking my eyes off the girls for that second allows them to be swallowed up by the crowd. Damn. I let my gaze soften, slowly scanning the crowd for the one thing that stands out like a sore thumb, because normal vision on the crowd below would be like seeking a needle in a haystack. However, their innocence backdropped against this crowd…

  They hav
e moved to the dance floor. Gotcha!

  Though dressed to look much older, it is obvious that they are very young, fifteen, sixteen, maybe seventeen, but I doubt it, increasing my suspicion that we have someone here, working on the inside. None of our security at the front door tonight would have let them in, but somehow, they are here. I stop the elevator, hovering between second and first, looking for their captors and finding them easily.

  They buy them drinks, watch their reactions to the sexual activity in the room. It’s about making them feel grown-up right away. To fit into the modeling world or acting career they dream about, they have to lose their inhibitions to fit in with the cool crowd. Only two men guard them, but I know that somewhere there is a third, possibly a fourth. As I watch, the men encourage them to dance, helping them to shimmy their bras from beneath their blouses. It is a cheap trick to help them feel more hip and, one step closer to their goal, lowering the girls’ inhibitions. It makes me sick, and suddenly it’s very easy to do my job.

  “That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.”

  Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

  Chapter Eighteen

  Eva

  London, UK

  WODC’s Private Hospital

  He isn’t here? It takes a few minutes to register what the nurse is trying to tell me. I close my eyes against the bright glare of the overhead hospital lighting and am immediately assailed by the noise level in the room—random whirrs, paced beeps, laughter coming from the hallway, rain hitting the windowpanes and a television somewhere in the beyond but annoying just the same. The nurse’s shoes shuffle across the floor as she rearranges where my IV tree stands. Does it really matter which side of my bed the damn thing is? Politely, I say, “Could I have a few minutes alone?” Inside, I’m screaming, just get the fuck out of my room already!

  “I’m sorry, miss, there has been only one visitor, not the man you describe.”

  “It’s fine, I’m just tired.” I smile as brightly as possible with half of my face swollen to the size of a cantaloupe. She nods and I am left fighting the tears that threaten to spill over my cheeks any second as the full impact hits me. Luka isn’t here, hasn’t been here, and obviously doesn’t care if I lived or died. Liam was right about that at least—Luka only returned for his brother.

  Voices coming from the hall indicate I am not free to cry yet.

  “Of course you can go in now. She’s awake, only for a few moments though, all right?”

  “Oui, yes, of course.”

  Henri?

  “Eva,” Henri says my name, but I keep my eyes closed, letting the choked, raw emotion clogging his throat infiltrate my brain, not even opening them when he lifts my hand from the bed. No, I open my eyes only when he offers, “We thought we’d lost you.” His head is bowed, crying over my hand. I have never seen him cry, never seen any emotion from him whatsoever.

  “I’m fine, Henri.” I lie, of course. I’m not really fine. I can’t bear to think about what happened, pushing everything from my mind—the visit to the warehouse, Liam, what happened with Liam, knowing I’m strong enough to survive this. I just need a moment alone. I need one moment alone. “I want to go home.”

  Henri nods. “Oui. In a few days, after you regain your strength, we will move you to one of the safe houses. Or you could come and stay at the townhouse with me.”

  “No, Henri, I want to go to my apartment, I want to go home. I want to go home today!” I demand, sounding like a child even to my own ears. I try to wipe my face, but too many IV tubes and wires I had no idea were attached to my body or why tangle and confuse my brain. Trying to focus, I almost manage to yank one of the IVs free from the bend of my inner elbow, but succeed only in causing one of the machines to alarm, emitting a shrill scream.

  Covering my ears and closing my eyes, I scream, feeling as though my brain is going to explode. Fighting to sit up, I realize I can’t, I’m too weak. Crying out in frustration, I demand, “My God, what is wrong with me?”

  “You are weak, child,” Henri answers. “That is all. It will take time, but you are a survivor. All will be well soon.”

  I do not answer him, but think, Yes, I will live. I always do…even when I don’t want to. A nurse enters, efficiently readjusting the machines, and checks all my IV lines, making tsking noises. She finally pulls the sheet to my chin and turns off the blinding overhead light. I see that the nurse is steering Henri toward the door with a firm hand on his elbow. “She needs to rest, let her sleep tonight. You, too, need your sleep. You must take care of yourself. She will be fine now, the worst is over.”

  * * * * *

  The nurses of the Intensive Care Ward hate me, and I admit, I am a troublemaker. Once my head cleared enough to decipher the mystery of the wires and tubes, I was able to maneuver around them enough to get myself sitting in a chair. The doctors decided it was in my best interest to move me into a room with fewer rules, else it was going to get ugly. I still insist that I am going home—today. The doctors just manage to give me their company-issued scowl. I wonder if they learn to scowl in their very first Agency briefing? This is how you scowl, you try it. Yes, that’s right, exactly right. Your scowl will keep you alive. A child’s giggle erupts inside my head and I know for a fact, I’ve lost my mind.

  Henri and a nurse I have not met before arrive with a wheelchair. There are no introductions, no Agency-issued smile and no Agency-issued scowl. The nameless, expressionless nurse insists I sit in the wheelchair and something in her very blank eyes causes me to acquiesce. One elevator and three corridors later, we stop before a door.

  “Voilà! We are here, your new room away from those mean ICU nurses,” Henri states with a grand flourish as I am wheeled into my new hospital room by the nurse with no name.

  My greeting is a hundred bouquets of calla lilies.

  “Ohmygod!” Tears spring quick and unexpected at the sight before my eyes.

  “You had thought perchance he had forgotten you, mademoiselle?”

  “I, yes, I don’t know what to say. Where is he?”

  “Don’t worry about where he is, just worry about getting well enough to leave—soon. His deliveries are driving everyone to distraction, and he has promised the delivery of a dozen calla lilies every hour that you do not come to him.”

  “Luka,” I whisper to myself, hoping he can somehow hear my thoughts and reaching for Henri’s hand to make sure I am not dreaming. He squeezes my hand and the tightness on my fingers make me realize how badly I’m trembling. This is real. It’s really happening.

  “Slander, whose edge is sharper than the sword, whose tongue outvenoms all the worms of Nile, whose breath rides on the posting winds and doth belie all corners of the world.”

  William Shakespeare, Cymbeline

  Chapter Nineteen

  Thomas

  I haven’t seen Kitten since returning from Paris and now, not only do I have to face her but under the worst of circumstances. The traffickers, captured and still alive, are being detained at a local lock-up until international authorities arrive, the girls are safe, their parents already on planes to retrieve them. I find myself, mere hours later, sitting in Garrett’s living room, preparing to accuse Garrett, my friend and lover, of trafficking. Tonight I will blow my cover because tomorrow international agents will be arriving to question him as part of a human trafficking investigation that involves four countries. I close my eyes, wanting to start the day over again as I face Garrett and George, who is Garrett’s best friend and at Lewd Larry’s, his Number One, known more familiarly as Doctor Psycho. A retired psychiatrist, he is actually the sanity behind Lewd Larry’s.

  A brightly lit and lavishly decorated Ch
ristmas tree still stands centered against the bank of windows, which overlook the city. The gifts we bought for each other are still wrapped and tucked beneath its branches, making my heart ache for the day I might have had. As an agent, my life has never been easy, but I have never been able to say I regretted my decision. Since becoming part of the ménage with Garrett and Sophia, I’ve increasingly questioned my choices and now…I’ve managed to ruin our very first Christmas together as a ménage. It’s been a long time since Sophia has celebrated Christmas and she was so looking forward to this year as a family. I was too.

  I’m afraid the easy part of the evening is announcing I’m an international agent, living here in San Francisco undercover. It’s complicated.

  Garrett is quiet as I lay out the entire story—the prequel to why I have really invaded his house at the ungodly hour of eight a.m., including my faked death, betraying Eva’s trust, my brother and the danger he has put himself in to keep me from being in his place, my coming to the US then, while on a mission, meeting Latisha, who came to be under my protection, but who during that time saved me from myself by allowing me to love her…

  How losing Latisha and the children to Africa had reawakened old memories and the need for Eva had resurfaced, and even though I had originally gone to Paris to save Nikos, I had sought out Eva, who now incidentally is near death and I want nothing more than for her to live and come to love me again as it once was…even though I am completely in love with both him and Kitten. Then, as a final footnote, an oh-by-the-way, “You are under investigation.”

  He blinks then stands, excusing himself to the kitchen. I am not invited to follow. George doesn’t wait for an invitation, he just follows, leaving me on the couch alone, catching only the occasional phrase as Garrett discusses the problem with George.