by Holly Hart
Roman pulled into an empty parking space and turned to face me, killing the engine as he moved. He took his right hand off the steering wheel and placed it on my shoulder, where it hung heavy. His voice was deep, and rumbled as he spoke. "Listen to me, Ellie. Don't mistake patience for inaction. Don't mistake action for results. And don't you ever think that I want this any less than you."
I cringed as he spoke, but he wasn't done.
"Rushing in there could get both of us killed. And then who does our son have? No one. This is me. This is what I do." His voice softened. "Can you trust me to do it right?"
I nodded, masking a tear. "I can, I'm sorry. It's just –."
He stroked my arm as he spoke. "I know." He lifted his hand off my shoulder, twisting his body as he reached to fish something out of the passenger seat footwell. "Put this on," he said, handing me something – a heavy, navy-blue something. My brow furrowed together as I stared at it, my brain trying to match it against anything it had ever seen before.
"What is it?" I said, noticing a Velcro strap on the heavy package. Roman was already moving, his body reaching in a hundred directions at once. He opened the glove compartment, pulling two fresh, black magazines of bullets out and tapped them against the dashboard before stuffing them into a back pocket. He checked his handgun's action. He was fast, smooth and efficient.
"Bulletproof vest," he grunted. He was economical with his use of words now, as if his brain power was in use somewhere else. Focused on solving the problem. Focused on saving our son. I hope that was the case. I knew it was.
"Where's yours?" I asked, flipping the vest over now that I realized what it was, and that it was upside down. My aching muscles protested as I pulled the heavy Kevlar-plated garment over my shoulders.
"You're wearing it," Roman said, shooting me a quick, caring smile as he tightened up. "Come on, let's go. Whatever happens, stay behind me. If I get shot, run. And go to the FBI, not the police. Maybe they'll be able to help."
His door was open before I had a chance to reply to this new barrage of information, and I followed his lead. My head was spinning, but I knew I could figure out the details later. I closed the car door quietly, and as I turned I bumped into a letterbox bearing the number thirty-five. Next door's letterbox. "We're here," I whispered to myself.
Roman had his weapon up, pointed at number thirty-seven. It was broad daylight, and anyone could have seen. It was a white picket house in a white picket neighborhood. I knew that something was already wrong. I choked out the question, desperate not to hear his reply. "What is it?"
He didn't speak, perhaps couldn't, just poked his chin towards the house. I didn't need a second explanation. The front door was ajar, and shards of orange-red porcelain and clods of dirt littered the porch. There had been a scuffle.
We were already too late.
22
Roman
I looked at Ellie, my throat seized with worry, but kept my expression blank. The last thing I needed was for her to panic. I didn't think she would, but she was a mother, and her child was in danger. I thought she was a fighter, not a worrier, but I hadn't seen any proof. I motioned with my eyes for her to stay behind me. She nodded, the only sign of her fear the slightest of tremors in her hands. I was impressed.
I crept towards the house, checking that nobody was watching. I didn't see so much as the twitching curtain of the neighborhood gossip. Good. The last thing I needed was the police turning up.
I checked my weapon one last time, making absolutely, abundantly clear something I already knew – that the gun's safety was on. My son might be in there. And the good Samaritans who'd taken him in when I hadn't been there for him. I wasn't going to be the one to put all that at risk. But my gut was telling me what I already knew to be true – danger lay ahead.
"Stay here," I whispered to Ellie. "I'll call you when it's safe." I glanced at her, but even as my head strained to look over my shoulder, I knew what I was going to see. She shook her head resolutely, her jaw clenched shut. I was about as likely to convince her to stay behind as a high tide was to knock over the Statue of Liberty. She was coming, whether I liked it or not. In this case – not. I was nervous, both of her getting hurt, which I didn't know I'd be able to bear, and of what she might see inside.
I sighed but didn't try to fight her. My stomach was a nervous sea of acid, rumbling every time I took a step. I kept moving forward, eating up the newly cleaned flagstones that made up the path to the front door. I stepped over a shard of the broken plant pot. It was a good ten feet away from the door. However the scuffle had started, it had got violent. I pointed down, glancing at Ellie as I moved forward. She nodded, and stepped lightly over it.
I crept up to the door, nerves growing in my stomach with every inch. The crack in the opening was only a couple of inches wide, but it felt like a chasm. Two inches that might mean everything for me. Two inches that might change my life forever.
I paused, sniffed. Something wasn't right. My stomach growled. I doubted anyone would be able to hear it, but to me it sounded like a bomb going off. I tested the wooden door, shifting it a fraction of an inch, checking whether the hinges were oiled. The last thing I wanted was to give anyone inside even a second's warning. This was going to be tight, even without my enemy having even the slightest advantage. My heart skipped a beat, but it moved silently.
I pushed against it, harder this time, and fashioned an opening. The hinges didn't betray me, and I slipped through, weapon high and at the ready. I pointed it ahead, moving the barrel in an elegant dance that took it to every point of the compass in half a second. "Clear," I muttered, as quietly as possible. Ellie followed.
The sense of foreboding was rising in my stomach. Something was wrong. The house didn't feel occupied, not fully. There wasn't so much as the squeak of a floorboard, or hiss of breath – the usual rhythm of life. Kidnapped?
The house's layout was simple, probably the same as hundreds of units in the neighborhood. Stairs next to the front door, a short corridor leading to a door both left and right. An over-burdened coat rack on the wall to the right, a bright yellow raincoat that seemed entirely out of place in the otherwise plain neighborhood now lay on the floor. I took another experimental sniff of the air, and figured that the door to the right was the kitchen. It smelt of baking. Something sweet. I inched forward, but the further I delved into the house, the more I dreaded what I was going to find.
I grabbed Ellie's hand and pulled her close. I walked through into the kitchen, cleared it in an instant. Empty. No threats, no targets. Like the rest of this house. It linked to the living room. I didn't have a chance to prevent Ellie seeing it, a scene that I knew would haunt her for the rest of her life. I was no stranger to death, to violence, but it shocked even me.
Devastation. Blood spray patterned the walls in an elegant, bone-chilling display. A man lay on his back, slumped over a woman, his hands open in one last, desperate attempt to beg for his life. No, not his – his wife's.
Ellie shrieked, and I pulled her into my chest. I didn't want her to see it, to relive it forever. The scene told its own story, at least to someone who knew how to read it. The couple had retreated to a corner, the man with his wife behind him, just like Ellie had followed me. The woman's face, what little I could see of it, was streaked with tears mixed with black trickles of makeup. They had known they were going to die. Ellie's tears wet my shoulder, her body shook with shock, and fear.
Not fear. I knew what fear felt like, and it wasn't this. She was stiff with anger, with rage, with the desire to strike back and hurt whoever had done this, to ruin them.
The man had died protecting his wife. Backed into a corner, his last act had been to throw himself towards the weapons that had streaked fire, sending bullets tearing through his body. Two bloody holes peppered his chest, and blood had bloomed forth, soaking his white and blue check shirt. It now lay dark, one color, and sticky with a life force that was now congealed in a thick puddle on the floor. One fi
nal bullet marked his forehead, a thin trickle of blood the only sign marking an otherwise still face.
"They're at peace now," I murmured as Ellie fought her way out of my embrace.
Her face was black with thunder, and tears streaked her face in a chilling reminder of the woman lying in her death throes on the floor. "This is my fault," she said, weeping silent tears. "They wouldn't be dead if it wasn't for me."
"It's not," I protested, gripping the handle of my gun so hard I could barely feel my fingers. "It's not your fault. You didn't do this. You didn't kill these people. Victor Antonov killed these people, or ordered their deaths, not you."
Ellie's eyes flickered, as though something had broken free in the depths of her brain, a shard of memory, or understanding. "Victor…" She breathed. "I know now," she said.
"You know?" I said, my forehead wrinkled with confusion.
"It doesn't matter, I'll tell you… After," she said, her own brow furrowed. "I'm not sure yet."
I didn't press, just glad that her mind wasn't entirely focused on the horrible sight before her. Glad that she was distracted from the enormity of it. The living room stank of death, oozed that cloying, sweet scent that didn't make any sense. It was too early for decay, for rot to have set in, the bodies were still warm. Yet something had changed, almost as though the universe was recognizing the horror of what it had seen – and was protesting it.
The house was empty. I didn't know how, but I knew. Years of experience, perhaps. But that meant something terrifying – horrifying. Victor's men had made it here before us, and that meant they had our son. I'd realized the truth the second I saw the broken plant pot, but there's a difference between knowing, and knowing. The creeping realization that I had failed my son, and failed his mother hit me like a battering ram to the gut. I wanted to sink to my knees, to vomit, to weep.
But instead I clenched my jaw, shut my eyes tight to ward off any stray tears, and let my head sink to my chest as I processed it. It was a moment to myself – the acceptance, and resolving never to fail this way again. But in my grief, my self-involvement, I didn't feel Ellie's hand breaking from mine. My ears barely registered the sound of her footsteps padding against the carpeted floor, the creaking of stairs, or the sound of a door pushed too energetically and impacting the drywall.
But the heart-wrenching sound of the choking, guttural sob echoing through the house was enough to slap me out of my reverie. My eyes snapped open and I sprinted into the hallway and up the stairs. There were three rooms up there, a master bedroom, a spare, and a converted office. An office, that is, converted into a baby's bedroom. The desk now a changing station, littered with nappies, wipes, baby powder and the other detritus of the whirlwind of motherhood.
A wooden cot, painted a light, delicate baby blue, stood in the center of the room. Ellie stood there, staring at it in silent agony, her body racked with physical sobs that didn't make so much as a sound – and more powerful for it, her hands pressed tight against her mouth.
"What is it?" I said. I wanted to scream with her, to beat my palms against the wall and howl my pain to the skies. But I'd made a promise. And I was going to carry it out.
She pointed at the cot. "There," she croaked. "Inside."
I saw it, a glinting flash, something shiny. A DVD, mockingly tucked into the baby's bedclothes.
A message.
23
Ellie
It was a taunt.
I felt like crying. No, that's not true. I felt like I should be crying. In reality, I was numb, emotionless. Past pain, past hatred, past fear. Just numb, floating weightless on a wave of hurt, but taking none of it on board. I was already soaked, sodden with pain. There wasn't room for anymore.
I reached out for the DVD, stretching out arms that belonged to someone else, but Roman got there first. His eyes were pinched, brow lined. I wanted to hug him, assure him that it would be all right – but also to beg and cajole him to make it so.
No. That's not good enough.
"What does it say?" I asked. My voice sounded alien, other, like I was a puppet and there was someone above me, out of sight manipulating long marionette strings. I wished that that was true. At least then, none of this would be my responsibility. Someone else could take up the burden.
I clawed at myself, disgusted by the way I was thinking. It wasn't me, not the real me. I was a mother, not a passenger. It was no one else's responsibility to make this all better except mine. Mine, and the man standing in front of me.
"No writing," Roman grunted, sticking to short sentences, as if he didn't trust his voice to hold out for much more. I couldn't blame him. I knew the feeling. He moved towards a notebook computer pushed back against the wall on the desk that had been turned into the baby's changing station. As I watched, I was suddenly possessed with the desire to rip this place apart, to search for anything bearing my baby's name. To know that little scrap about him, so little – and yet everything. It must be somewhere, so close – yet so far. Yet another part of me, a stronger part, didn't want to find out. Not here, not now. I didn't know whether I wanted the power, no – the responsibility, of naming my child for the first time, yet all over again.
I didn't know whether I had the right.
The computer whirred to life, and I wanted to march toward it and will the information we needed out. The second the desktop flickered into life on the screen, Roman pushed the DVD in. The computer's mechanism pulled it in, accompanied by a gentle buzzing sound. The disc moved excruciatingly slowly, and I was gripped with the urge to ram it in. I clenched my fists together, digging long, unkempt nails into the soft, delicate flesh of my palms. I rode the pain, savored the way it bit through my numbness.
An electronic ping ripped through the air, all the more startling for its quietness.
A window appeared on the homepage. A video. There was no thumbnail. Roman's hand hovered over the mouse, agonizing over clicking it. I knew how he felt. Terrified of what he would find. "Do it," I said, surprised to hear my voice so calm. He pressed play.
A man appeared on the screen, in the little video box. At first we saw just blackness, yet a moving blackness, someone's head too close to the camera.
"Ellie," the man said, backing away to reveal his head, swathed in a black balaclava. I jumped. I never expected him to know my name. It pulled me in, made this even more personal than my own child's kidnapping already was. "You've caused my boss a lot of trouble, you stupid bitch," he spat. I wanted to see his face, to study his expression – the man who had stolen my kid. I wanted to know how he could bring himself to do something so heinous, something that went against every human commandment, and every aspect of human decency.
"But Victor's a… forgiving man," the Russian-accented voice said, cloying in an unexpected, out of place calmness after the bile of the moment before. "And he wants to make deal." The man indicated off screen, and my heart jumped to my mouth. I bit down, piercing the tender flesh of my tongue, and the metallic, coppery taste of blood filled my mouth.
"You know what we have," he said, reaching out. For a second, the camera's view was blocked, and I wanted to dive in and grab it, fix the view. He backed up, and a sleeping child swathed in a light blue came into shot. I stumbled, my knees turning to jelly, my legs weakening, and I would have fallen over in shock if Roman hadn't called me. Still, my gut felt as though it was being wrenched out, grabbed by some powerful metal hooks and pulled.
"Oh my God," I whispered, grabbing the side of Roman's thick torso and squeezing. He didn't complain, didn't even seem to register the pain. His eyes were haunted, black with a mixture of rage and apologetic sadness. But the video didn't stop spewing its evil message just to give us a chance to recover from the emotional turmoil it had plunged us into. It plowed on regardless, grinding my heart into the dust and not even bothering to stop to crow.
The man rocked my child, my baby boy, or so it seemed, in his arms. It was a gentle, caring action, but I knew that it was a sick parody of real-life
. It should have been me, with him, holding him, and rocking him to sleep – not this gangster. A growling sound seemed to bounce off the little office bedroom's walls, like the throaty prelude to a big dog's bark. I glanced my side, and saw that Roman was positively bristling with anger, his fists bundled, and every vein on his powerful neck popping.
I would have felt sorry for whoever he was gunning for, but I knew who they were. And what they had done. What they are still doing…
"You see the kind of leverage we have," the masked man said, his voice dripping with barely disguised threat. "Me, I have no problem with kids. Your boy here, he's a great kid. Never weeps, never cries. You know, maybe I like him more than my own."
He looked down, and I wanted to rip that mask off his face, throw it to the floor and rake his face with my nails until his eyes bled. I'd never felt such rage, such desire to hurt another human being.
"Maybe I take him," the eerie, calm voice threatened. He looked up, and flinty gray eyes stared directly into the camera.
"My boss, he no like kids." He paused, allowing just enough time for the message to sink in. The meaning was clear. If we didn't do exactly as he said, then our son's life was forfeit.
"You hand over everything you have on Victor. No copies. Tomorrow, noon, at the Memorial. Don't be late." He turned away from the camera, and seemed about to turn it off. I couldn't pry my eyes away from the screen. Before he left, he turned back. "Oh, and Victor sends his regards."
The video window winked out. I sagged against Roman.
"He's dead," Roman growled. "Dead. I'm going to rip his cowardly little arms right off his body, see how he likes that. His wife and kids are going to find out exactly what kind of man their father is." His body vibrated with anger, his deep voice radiating through his barrel -like chest and trembling against my soft, tear-streaked cheek. He pulled me gently off him, cupped my cheek and stroked away a tear. Even in the depths of his anger, he had a place for me.