Elizabeth took two more shots, taking out two more cameras.
Then Ivan pointed up.
It was time for the top floor. They could see a light coming from beneath the doorway as they approached it.
On the door, there was a keypad.
“Uh, we have a problem.”
Ethan did not want to hear that.
“I have this,” Ivan said, pulling a device out. He placed it beside the keypad, and the device began reading the numbers to open the door.
“Got it,” she said.
“It’s not the same as the door downstairs,” Ivan stated.
He whistled for the other two men. If this was his personal space, he wanted them all ready to go through the door.
Together.
As one.
As she keyed in the information, the lock beeped. They had it opened.
She knew what she needed to do.
Unfortunately.
She was going to have to give him a heads up that they were coming through the door. Warrant in her back pocket, procured from a judge Ethan had visited, she was ready to go.
“You get high,” she said, pointing at the two tallest men. “We have low. Are we clear?”
They nodded.
“Wilcox, don’t fucking shoot me.”
“You owe me a dollar.”
She rolled her eyes.
The doors opened in, and she counted them down so they were all ready.
Three.
Two.
ONE!
She booted it, and they went in.
“FBI! Viktor Marchenko, you are under arrest!” she shouted, as they headed in.
No one was there.
It was a decorated space, there were pictures of some woman on the wall, music playing, and the furniture looked like antiques.
“Ethan, are you getting all of this?” she asked, as she scanned the room with her body cam.
“Yes, Elizabeth. He’s going to have a hidey-hole. There will be someplace where he does his dirty work. Since this is his personal space, and that’s his mother on the wall, he wouldn’t do it in ‘front’ of her,” he said, as Elan began pulling up facial recognition, and it popped fast.
KGB.
“Look for a separate room.”
She saw a door.
Heading toward it, she got ready. At the door, she made the hand signals, and they got ready again.
Elizabeth booted the door.
Only, she wasn’t ready for what she found.
Chained to what looked like a closet door was a woman. She was naked and clearly blind. It looked like her eyes had been damaged.
She whimpered the second they entered the room.
Not far from her, there was a dog dish with uneaten dog food in it. The woman was so thin, and she was trying to reach the food out of pure desperation but the chains holding her to the door were too short.
It was torture.
It was disgusting.
It was sick.
“Ethan, this is fucked up,” she said, showing him what she was seeing.
He, too, was horrified.
She was nothing more than an animal to him.
The cuckoo had escalated.
And that was bad for Dimitri and Katerina.
Very bad.
Chapter Ten
Viktor Marchenko’s
House of Hell
H er first and foremost priority was to get the woman clothed and fed. She looked like a child, and the mother in her was NOT going to let her eat dog food. She wasn’t a dog. She was a human being, and while that asshole had stripped her down to the animal that lived in all of them, she wouldn’t let her degrade herself.
Not on her watch.
She moved closer to her, the men behind her keeping watch. What made her love her ‘partner’ even more was the sympathy in his eyes.
Ivan didn’t try to stop her.
He didn’t try to keep her from getting too close.
Instead, he had her back.
“Who’s there?” the woman asked, pulling on the chains around her neck. She was tethered to the door, facing them.
“My name is Elizabeth,” she said.
“Can you give me that food?” she asked. “I’m so hungry. I need that food,” she begged.
Yeah, no.
“It’s dog food, so…”
She cut her off.
“I don’t care. I’m nothing. I just want to eat. He won’t feed me again for days. If I don’t reach it, it’ll be a week before he feeds me again.”
Elizabeth wanted to cry.
She had children.
This woman couldn’t be more than eighteen—if that. To see her beg for dog food…it broke something in her. It was a cold hard slap of reality of why she did what she did. Elizabeth fought against this cruelty.
And she would until her dying day.
“What’s your name?” she asked, as Heath pulled a candy bar out of one of his cargo pockets and handed it to her.
“He told me I don’t have a name,” she whispered. “I’m his pet.”
Elizabeth held the candy bar. She dropped to her knees before the woman and shoved the dog food dish away with her boot. The smell of it made her want to retch. The visual of this poor girl eating it nearly made it happen.
Apparently, she heard it sliding away.
“Please. I need that food. Don’t waste it. I need it. I haven’t eaten in days,” she whispered again.
“What was your name before you came here?”
She blinked sightlessly.
“Molly. My name was Molly.”
Well, that was a start.
“I have a candy bar. Would you like it?” she asked. “I’m not going to let you eat dog food. I’ll get you real food.”
Tears dripped from the woman’s eyes.
“Please.”
Elizabeth reached for her hand and Molly pulled back like she’d been stung.
“I won’t hurt you. I’m with the FBI. I’m here to get you out of here, Molly.”
She stared in the direction of Elizabeth’s voice.
“Really?”
“Yes. I won’t touch you if you’re afraid, so open your hands. I’ll drop the open candy bar into them.”
Molly did what she was told.
She wasn’t shocked.
Viktor had made her into some slave. It made her want to vomit and rage around the room. It took a lot to make her angry enough to kill.
She was there.
Molly felt the candy bar in her hand.
“I’m hungry.”
Oh, they bet she was.
“Elizabeth, we have an ambulance rolling,” Ethan stated over the com.
“Don’t let them in the building. There are too many booby traps. I’ll get her out.”
Molly devoured the candy. Elizabeth’s heart broke.
This was someone’s child.
This was someone’s loved one.
This was a human being.
“How did you get here?” she asked, as Ivan headed out into the kitchen to get some water for the girl.
“I met this man online. I was meeting him for dinner. I was so stupid,” she said. “My parents told me to be smart, and I wasn’t.”
She began crying.
“That man sold me to him. He blinded me. He did horrible things to me,” she whispered.
“What was the first man’s name?” she asked.
“It was a screen name. ‘BillyTheKid’. That’s what he called himself. He said he was Billy.”
She hoped Ethan heard that.
“I have it, baby. I’m doing the search now,” Ethan said over the com.
“Do you know any other names? Did he say anything to anyone else? Did someone come here and visit?”
“Utz. I heard the name Utz. I couldn’t hear his first name. That’s all.”
Elizabeth took the bottle of water that Ivan found, and the blanket that Wilcox had found.
“We’re going to get him,”
she promised. “We’ll get you justice.”
“Can I have more food before he comes back? Can I have more before you leave? It will be a week. I’m only fed on Wednesdays.”
And here was Stockholm Syndrome.
She actually thought they’d leave her there.
Yeah, no.
“Where did he go?”
“He took her out of here.”
She lifted a brow and signaled to her team. They might have more than one woman there. She needed them to quietly search.
Ivan stayed guard and the other two men began moving around, searching.
“Who?” Elizabeth asked.
“His other pet. He has one under the bed too,” she whispered. “I can smell her.”
The whole place was funky on the stink-o-meter, but she wasn’t sure where it was coming from. Molly hadn’t exactly been kept clean.
She knew that was part of the torture. Viktor made her into nothing more than an animal.
Elizabeth pointed at the big bed, and the three men headed there. When Ivan checked for no booby traps, he signaled when it was clear.
She pointed up.
They lifted the mattress.
Wilcox actually gagged.
There, in a makeshift box under the bed, was a dead woman. She was rotting, there were worms crawling out of her eyes.
“He said if I didn’t listen I’d have to sleep with her again. I didn’t want to sleep by her again. She smells and doesn’t talk.”
Yeah, because she looked to be dead a couple of days.
“What was her name?” Elizabeth asked as she heard her husband telling Wilcox to come down and get a tarp. They were going to take Viktor’s playthings.
She knew why.
He’d be pissed.
It would make him nuts.
“Sofia. She told me her name was Sofia Bisecker. Then she stopped talking. It was right after he blinded me.”
“Ivan, I want something to get these chains off the door,” Elizabeth stated.
“I can rip them off if Heath helps me. We’ll have to cut them off later. I don’t want to dig around in here too much. It could be dangerous.”
“He’ll be angry,” she whispered. “He’ll punish me if I ruin his things,” she warned.
Elizabeth didn’t give a flying fuck. She would deal with Viktor later. After she found the person selling him women, she’d end his miserable life.
With one bullet.
He wasn’t the only one who could end a life. After seeing this, she’d do it.
“Just put me in the closet. I’ll be safe in there.”
Yeah, that was never happening.
Over her dead body.
“Do you want to go home?” she asked. “I can get you home,” Elizabeth promised.
Molly was scared.
“He told me if I tried to escape he’d do to me what he did to Shoshanna.”
That was another name. They had three women so far, and she didn’t think it would end there. Elizabeth thought about the remains of the Jane Does at the morgue.
“What did he do to Shoshanna?” she asked, purposely using her name. What he took away, she’d give back. They deserved a name.
They were not garbage.
“He put her in a box of water for days. He left her in there. Her flesh began rotting off. He took her today. I heard him talking to her. He took her to leave her somewhere.”
The count was at three.
Elizabeth watched as Wilcox unrolled a tarp. He handed Heath some gloves.
They began moving the remains.
While that wasn’t procedure, she didn’t think Ethan gave a shit. He was poking a crazy, and at that point, it was about getting them out of there before he came back from his body dump.
“Well, you’re coming with me. My friends are going to pull these chains out of the door, we’ll wrap you in a blanket, and get you out of here. He can’t hurt you now.”
She began crying.
“I have you, Molly. We’re going to take you home.”
“Please don’t let him hurt me anymore. I think I’m pregnant. I think he got me pregnant.”
And that horrified everyone.
Jesus.
Just when they thought it couldn’t possibly get worse, it did. The sick fuck might have spawned.
Elizabeth struggled to keep her comments in. Ivan patted her on the back in support.
This was NOT easy to handle.
The visual.
The smell.
The reality of it.
This was Hell.
When people said Hell existed, this is exactly what she thought of—young women treated like animals by something so evil it had to die.
There was no choice.
Viktor Marchenko, and whoever was selling him women, had to be stopped at all costs.
“It’s okay, Molly. The nice people at the hospital will help you out.”
“Can I have more candy?” she whispered. “I have to eat. There won’t be food again for a while. My baby needs food.”
It horrified her.
Here she was, a child herself, and she was forced to focus on the fact that she might be carrying the child of her rapist and tormenter. If she could end the pain for her, Elizabeth would. She’d carry it for her.
“Ethan, have food ready, and get a doctor for transport.”
“A psychologist?” he asked.
“Copy. A good one.”
“On it, baby. Just get her out of there and the remains. If he’s not there, he’ll be heading back soon enough. He will be pissed that you’ve touched his things. You’ve entered his personal space, and there will be hell to pay.”
She laughed.
It was not a good laugh.
Oh, well, she had news for the fucking nut bag.
She was pissed too.
This was personal.
Viktor Marchenko was one sick animal.
And she was going to put him down—after she neutered him first.
* * * G R E Y S O N C R O F T * * *
Sky Villa
They watched it all go down, and it was horrifying. They watched as Elizabeth stared down at the dead girl being wrapped in a tarp, as two badass security guys puked their guts up in wastepaper baskets, as a broken girl was finally set free.
The entire time, Dimitri wept. He cried as Emma and Greyson held him.
This was his bloodline.
“He has to die,” he said, finally, as Greyson stared at him. “He’ll keep doing this. You have to end him. You have to put a bullet in his head.”
Oh, Greyson was going to work on it.
That was their plan.
Working in tandem, he was going to make sure that this nut didn’t procreate with anyone. He was going to make him pay for raping and abusing women.
As far as he was concerned, Viktor Marchenko was a dead man.
“Elizabeth is tracking him, and I’m going to find the asshole who is supplying him women. There’s no way that this shit is happening in my town.”
“The name she said,” Emma stated. “Utz.”
Yeah, he’d heard it before.
It was a damn good lead.
“I met him during the last case,” she said. “You need to call Ethan.”
He pulled out his phone and dialed the man. While he could clearly see he was busy, they needed this information and sooner rather than later.
“Blackhawk.”
“The name Molly gave you—Utz. We’ve heard it before,” he said.
“Where?” Ethan asked as he watched the security monitors for his wife’s safety.
“He’s one of the bartenders at ‘The Titty Corral’,” he said. “He was part of the last case too. Emma interviewed him, and another bartender pointed me in his direction.”
That was good to know.
It looked like Rosemary was keeping it in the business. She worked as a bartender and so did another trafficker.
“I’ll pass that on to Elizabeth.”
/> “Whatever that girl needs, she gets,” Greyson stated. “I’ll pay for it. You give her anything she needs.”
“Know a shrink?”
“Paris Archer can help her.”
“Can you get him to the hospital?”
“I’ll drive him myself,” he stated. “I’ll get him there. He’ll help her. I know he will.”
“Send him.”
Greyson hung up.
Emma was up and pacing.
“We have two more girls he’s killed, on top of the ones at the morgue. We need more information.”
Greyson agreed.
“Ethan has his ME coming in the morning. He’s going to be busy. He’s got the Director’s body, and now that rotting dead girl.”
“It’s not often we work a case and know the killers off the top,” she said. “I don’t know if this makes it easier or harder to catch them.”
“I don’t think ‘catching’ is the plan,” Greyson stated. “Elizabeth isn’t going to let him walk away. You heard her when she was talking to Molly. It was in her voice.”
“Good,” Dimitri said. “You don’t lock that kind of animal in a cage. You hunt him and destroy him. I only pray that he hasn’t had children with anyone. I pray Molly isn’t with child.”
They all thought that.
Then Dimitri got quiet.
“What?” Greyson asked, sensing that he had that look on his face.
“I am him. He’s my blood. That’s in me.”
Emma was horrified. She crawled onto the bed and took his face in her hands.
“No, that is NOT you. You’re not like that, Dimitri. You’re not anything like that.”
His lip quivered.
He looked exhausted.
“You should rest,” she said, touching his forehead. He was a little warm as his body fought to heal itself. “We don’t need a relapse.”
“I don’t know if I can sleep,” he said. “What I’ve seen…it’s horrible.”
“We’ll stay with you,” Emma offered. “We’ll stay here, Dimitri. We’ll sleep beside you in case you need us.”
He was rattled.
“He’s not you, and you’re not him, Dimitri,” Greyson stated. “We’ll stay.”
Emma gave him a kiss on the forehead.
“Greyson, call Paris and apprise him of the situation. I’ll stay with Dimitri.”
True Justice Page 31