by Tina Folsom
A man cried out, then cursed in Russian. He’d hit the guy, but not killed him. Next to John, Virginia appeared, her gun ready as well. John focused again, trying to figure out which way the guy had run, when he suddenly saw a nozzle pointed in his general direction.
“Duck!” he screamed to Virginia and they both dove for the ground.
More lightning lit up the sky, and thunder rolled over them like a tank charging into a war zone. John looked over to Virginia, but she was unharmed. He motioned for her to stay down, then looked around for anything he could use to distract the two criminals. He ripped a two-foot-long plank from one of the outer pallets, and lifted it with his left hand, waving it in the air, while he gripped his gun tightly with his right.
As expected, there was a movement on the other side of the stack. The thug fired, aiming for the plank, which splintered. John dropped it, and aimed. This time the bullet found its mark. The man dropped like a sack of potatoes.
Then another shot sounded from behind the stack.
“Got ‘em,” Zane confirmed through the mic.
“The three men from the ship are dead,” John announced through his mic. “What about the customs guys?”
“Both dead as a doornail,” Benjamin confirmed.
“Pushing up daisies,” Damian added.
“Greedy bastards,” Logan said dryly through the mic. “They didn’t leave me anything.”
“Grayson? The girls?” John asked.
“Container is locked with a chain. Ryder is getting a bolt cutter.”
“Ryder? Check in.”
“On my way back.”
“Hurry! I’m sure we’ll have company soon. Somebody will have heard the shots.” Though John hoped that the thunder and the pounding rain had obscured some of the sounds.
John marched toward the red container, past the customs van, where the twins loaded the bodies into the back.
“Good thinking,” he praised them on passing. At least from afar people would only see the empty customs van, and not the dead bodies. It would buy his team precious time to get away.
He pressed his mic. “Zane, get rid of the bodies of the three guys.”
“Already on it.”
John looked over his shoulder and saw Zane dropping one of the guys into the water. Virginia was busy searching the pockets of the second guy. Satisfied that his team was doing what needed to be done, he approached the red container, just as Ryder came around the corner and joined Enya and Grayson who were waiting there, scanning the area for anybody who might see them.
“Are we all visible again?” John asked Enya.
She nodded. “Wasn’t much point wasting energy once we all got drenched.”
“Okay.” He nodded to Ryder. “Open it up.” Then he added, “Get ready, just in case they’ve got a guard in there with the kids.”
Both Enya and Grayson aimed their weapons at the door. Ryder used the bolt cutter on the chain, snapping the metal, then tugged on the chain to free it from the door. He looked over his shoulder.
“Open it,” John instructed, “and stand back. I’m going in first.”
Ryder pulled the heavy door back. As soon as John could see inside, he focused his eyes. Then relaxed.
“Weapons down,” he said quietly, so as not to alarm the precious cargo. “Enya, join me. Virginia, meet us inside. The rest of you stay outside, cover us.”
John slowly walked into the dark space. With his vampire vision, he could already see what a human couldn’t: in the back of the container, the captured girls had huddled together in fear, clinging to each other on their mattresses.
John lifted his visor. He sighed when he saw the girls’ horrified faces. “Don’t be afraid. We’re taking you home to your parents now,” he said softly. “I’m John, and this is Enya.”
There were gasps and sobs, as if the children didn’t believe him. And why should they?
Behind him the door opened wider, letting in a bit more light.
With Enya by his side, John approached the girls, then crouched down when he reached the mattresses. “Jennifer? Mary? Carol?” He’d memorized their names from their files and hoped by addressing them by their names, some of their fears would dissipate. “Sarah? Jane? Cindy? Are you all okay? Andrea? Heather?”
“I’m Jane,” one of the girls replied.
“Are you taking us home now?” another one whimpered.
“Yes, honey, we’re taking you home now.”
A few girls started crying, but several inched closer. Finally, he could see them all. His eyes darted from one to the other. And with every second, his heart pounded more violently.
“Buffy?” His pulse beat into this throat. “Buffy? Where are you?”
But the only black girl he saw didn’t look like Buffy at all. He counted the girls. Twelve.
“There should be thirteen.” He exchanged a panicked look with Enya, then stared back at the girls. “Where’s Buffy? Where is she?”
The girl who’d identified herself as Jane came closer. “Buffy?”
He nodded and pulled a photo from a pocket in his suit, turned it to her so she could see it. “This is Buffy. Have you seen her?”
She looked at the photo, concentrated on it, then looked up. “Yes.”
“Where is she?”
“The man took her.”
Horror filled him. “What man? Where? When?”
“Before they put us on the ship. The man came and picked her up.”
“She was never on the ship with you?”
Jane shook her head.
Tears welled up in his eyes, and he didn’t bother pushing them back. “Oh, God!”
To his surprise the girl suddenly asked, “Are you her daddy?”
He met Jane’s gaze. And because he didn’t know how else to describe his relationship to her, he said, “I promised her Mommy to bring her home.”
31
In John’s office, Deirdre put the receiver back on the phone. “They’re back.”
Savannah pressed her hand to her chest and sighed. “Where is Buffy?”
“All the girls are downstairs in the medical center, being checked out.”
Before Deirdre could even finish the sentence, Savannah was already at the door and ripped it open. “Let’s go. Show me where it is.”
“We can’t just go down there.”
“If you don’t show me where it is, I’ll go by myself.”
“Ah, shit!” Deirdre cursed, but jumped up and joined her. “You’re a pain in the butt.”
“So are you.”
“Yeah, well, we can’t all be as cuddly as John.” Deirdre’s voice practically dripped of sarcasm.
They hurried to the elevators. “You don’t like him much, do you?”
Deirdre shrugged. “He should have let me go to Russia with him, but no, he made me babysit you.” When Savannah raised her eyebrows, she added. “No offense, but I’d rather be helping take out the assholes who took those kids than sitting around twiddling my thumbs.”
The elevator doors opened, and they rushed in. Deirdre looked at the buttons and hesitated.
“Well, are we going or not?”
“Hey, don’t get pissy with me.” Somebody passed by the elevator and Deirdre called out to him, “Hey, which level is the medical center?”
The guy stopped, gave her a strange look, then answered, “Lower level two.”
Deirdre hit the button and the elevator doors closed.
Before Savannah could comment on the fact that Deirdre didn’t know where the medical center was located, Deirdre cut her off with a glare. “I just started here, okay? And it’s not like I’d ever need the medical center myself.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were going to.”
Savannah refrained from answering back. Clearly, the woman had issues. When the elevator door finally opened, Savannah stepped into the hallway. It wasn’t very hard to figure out which way the medical facility was located, since a myriad of vo
ices drifted to her from a set of double doors. Kids’ voices.
Savannah’s heart leapt, and she started running. She pushed the double doors open and rushed into the large room. Several doors led from there to other, smaller rooms. Some of them were open, and she could see girls sitting on examination benches and on chairs. In the main room, there were partitioned off areas for various purposes. Here, too, she saw many kids, as well as several adults. Vampires, she assumed.
One person she recognized from behind. “John!”
He spun around. Their eyes locked. What she saw in them turned her blood to ice. “No!” She shook her head and let her gaze wander around the large room, let it fall on each child, examine each face. She walked farther into the room, turned this way and that. But there was no sign of Buffy.
She pivoted back to John, and he was already there, already gripping her shoulders, holding her so she wouldn’t collapse.
“Where is she, John? Where is my baby?” Tears stung her eyes.
“She was never on the boat. She was picked up before the ship left for Russia. The children confirmed it. A man came just before the ship left and took her with him.”
She slammed her hand over her mouth, but the sob tore from her chest nevertheless. “No, no, John, no!”
John wrapped her in his arms and pressed her to his chest. “Don’t give up, Savannah, because I won’t. She’s still in the country. She’s still here. And I’m gonna find her.”
“But how?” she wailed. “She’s gone, my baby’s gone.”
“The girls gave us a description of the man who took her, and we still have the two guys who held the girls at the port in Oakland.”
She looked up at him. “What makes you think they’ll tell you who he is?”
“They’ll talk, because I’ll make them fear me. I’ll show them what I will do to them if they don’t tell me all they know.” He slowly released her.
“You’ll torture them.” She made no judgement, only an observation.
“Yes.”
“I want to be there.”
“No. I don’t want you to see this.”
“I need to see it,” she insisted.
He hesitated for several seconds, then reached for her hand. “Come.”
John led her outside and down the corridor, then opened the door to a staircase. They descended one level, then entered another corridor.
“What happened in Russia?” she finally asked.
John gave her sideways glance. “The men involved are dead. They had a couple of customs officials on their payroll so they could smuggle the girls into the country. We got rid of them too. We went through their papers, anything they had on them. My team is currently combing through everything to see if they had anything that’ll identify their boss. The girls gave us a description of the man who took Buffy away. Detective Donnelly is on his way. He’s bringing a sketch artist with him so we can get a picture.”
She nodded. It was a long shot, but she appreciated that John wasn’t giving up.
“What’ll happen to the girls?”
“We’ll make sure they’re healthy, feed them, clothe them. But we can’t turn them over to their parents until we know where the head of the operation is holed up.”
“Why not?”
“Because if he finds out we rescued the girls, he might go underground forever, and then we lose our chance of finding Buffy.”
“Oh, God.”
“It won’t come to that. We’ll keep the girls comfortable until then.”
Fear nearly choked her. “But what if he already knows that you rescued the girls?”
“He doesn’t. The guys in Russia had no chance of contacting anybody before they died. From what we could piece together so far, there was a truck waiting for them, and the three men who transported the girls by ship were supposed to drive them cross-country. The trip would take several days. Nobody will realize for a few days that the girls aren’t on their way to their destination. Only then will whoever ordered them contact the kingpin and complain. We have time until then.”
“I hope you’re right.”
John pointed to a door. “They’re in there. Are you sure you want to be present? It might get bloody.”
Savannah tipped her chin up. “You can’t stop me.”
“I guess I already knew that.”
Using his keycard, John opened the door and marched inside ahead of her. She followed. The room was as large as her own bedroom, but it was sparsely furnished. In fact, there was no real furniture. The two cots in the room were built in, and the small table was affixed to the wall, the two chairs mere stools fastened to the concrete floor. A metal toilet without toilet seat and a tiny sink were located in one corner. The walls were bare. Neon lights on the ceiling illuminated the room.
The two men in the cell shot up on their cots. They looked worn out, their gazes guarded as they looked at John. Then they fell onto her, and both guys jolted. They recognized her, though she didn’t recognize them. After all, they’d worn masks.
“Stand up!” John demanded in an icy voice.
Both men immediately stood up.
“You withheld information from me!” John thundered. “And you know what happens to people who keep things from me? They get hurt.” He swiped his hand across the chest of one of the men, slicing his shirt to shreds.
The man yelled out in pain. “No! No! Stop!”
Savannah noticed the blood that now drenched the shredded shirt. John had used his claws on the man. And though it should frighten her to see the man she’d made love to use violence without flinching, she remained calm and without fear. He was doing this for her, for Buffy.
Shoving the hurt man back onto his cot with his hands pressed to his bleeding wounds, John directed his gaze to the second criminal. “Unless you want me to do the same or worse to you, you’d better talk.” John flashed his fangs at the man.
“Oh God! No! What are you?” He stumbled backwards, hitting the back of his knees on the edge of the cot.
But John didn’t let him fall. He snatched him by his shirt and pulled him closer. “Do we understand each other?”
Shaking, the man nodded. “Anything you want. Please, don’t hurt me.”
Savannah recognized his voice now. He’d been the driver the night they’d tried to kidnap her.
“There was a thirteenth girl.” He motioned to Savannah. “My friend’s daughter. She wasn’t on the ship. According to the girls we rescued, she was never on the ship. Who was the man who picked her up?”
“I don’t know.”
John dug his claws into the man’s shoulder, making him cry out in pain.
“I really don’t know,” he said quickly. “The boss sent him. He sent us a text message. Said not to put the girl on the ship; that a client, the man who’d ordered her, would come pick her up in person. We were to hand her over without questions. That’s what we did.” He looked to his associate for confirmation.
The injured man nodded. “It’s true. That man picked her up.”
“Did he have a name?”
“He didn’t give one. And we didn’t ask.”
“What did he look like?”
The man in John’s grip tried to shrug, but John’s painful claws stopped him. “Like a businessman, you know, suit, nice-looking, blond, maybe around fifty. That’s all, I swear. I don’t know who he was.”
“What else?”
The man hesitated. Then he seemed to remember something. “Yeah, he had an accent. Not sure, but it sounded Eastern European, maybe Russian, or Slavic. I don’t know, I’m not good with accents.”
“Another thing: when you kidnapped the little girl, were you supposed to kidnap her mother too?”
The man chanced a look at Savannah, then lowered his lids in shame. “Yes. But she wasn’t there. So we took only the girl.”
“Your boss ordered you to try it again, didn’t he?”
Again, the man nodded.
“God, you guys aren’t just e
vil, you’re stupid too, aren’t you?” John let go of the man and tossed him back on his cot. “You can rot in here for all I care.”
John turned and took Savannah’s elbow. “We’re done here.” Again he used his keycard to open the cell door and ushered her outside.
In the corridor, he looked at her. “Are you okay?”
She nodded. “What did you mean by them being stupid?”
John sighed. “They’re too stupid to see it, but it’s evident: the man who picked up Buffy was their boss.”
“What?” Her breath hitched. “How do you know?”
“The man behind this operation has been extremely careful that nobody working for him knows too much. But then he sends a client to pick up a child from the kidnappers he employs? Exposing the location where he keeps the girls captive until they can be put on a ship? A location he presumably wants to continue using? He’s not that stupid. But he counted on his henchmen to be too stupid to put two and two together. He took Buffy for himself; she was never meant for a client in Russia. And he tried to have you kidnapped after the ship had already left for Russia. He wants you and Buffy for himself.”
“Oh John, how are we gonna find him? From the description the kidnapper gave, it can’t be Alexi. He’s blond, and he has a heavy accent, yes, but he’s too young by at least twenty years. And if it’s not Alexi, who then?”
“We’ll know what he looks like soon. And then we’ll hunt him down.”
32
On his way to his office, John’s cell phone pinged with a text message from reception.
Detective Donnelly here to see you.
Coming, John texted back.
He put his hand on the small of Savannah’s back and ushered her down the corridor. “Donnelly is here. Let’s see what he’s got.”
“Do you think he’ll be able to help? I mean, he sent me to you in the first place,” she said doubtfully.
“There’s something you need to know about our relationship with the police.”
“Yes?”
“Donnelly knows that we’re vampires, and whenever the police suspect that a case might involve preternatural creatures like vampires and the like, he sends the case to us. So when he couldn’t find any leads in the real world, he asked me to evaluate the situation and see if I could find any connection to vampires. If we don’t find anything, we send the case back to them.”