Kill Chain

by Meg Gardiner

  His jeans felt stretched tight over his knee. He let his hand hover above his kneecap, feeling a pulse of heat off it. He touched it just for a split second. It felt like a swollen and decayed old gourd. He wasn’t going anywhere, least not fast.

  He looked at his watch, pressed the light, and saw the dial: one seventeen a.m., Tuesday April 14.

  More than a day had passed. Hell. He fought to remember the chain of events. Biker white trash. Speed-freak hooker booting him in the skull. Running, dialing his phone, and praying for Jesse to answer.

  His phone. He patted his shirt pocket.

  Gone. He leaned on his hands, remembering headlights on the highway and Christian Sanger stepping out of the vehicle. The Queen of the Damned inside, smiling as her son strutted toward him.

  That creaking came again, wind-driven. He listened harder. Far away he heard a motor running. He clapped his hands. “Hello.”

  The sound came back at him from his left but suffocated in front of him. Something was absorbing it. Digging into his jeans pocket, he found his lighter. He flicked it and a bolus of light bloomed before him.

  He saw corrugated metal walls crawling with rust. Dirty floor. A huge padded furniture blanket hanging from one wall, another slumped in a corner. Then he understood about the creaking, the wind, the absence of engine sounds.

  The motion he was feeling wasn’t anything like the pitch of a ship driving through blue water. It was the creaking of a big block of metal stacked amid others. He was in a shipping container.

  The slit of light in the wall was a crack in the container doors. Biting down against the pain in his knee, he pulled himself along the floor and pushed against them. Bolted from the outside.

  For a minute he slumped, breathing hard. He hadn’t eaten or drunk anything in two days. His mouth was parched, but discomfort wasn’t the danger.

  What the hell was he going to do? What were they going to do with him? He breathed deep, smelling something more than rust and metal. Water: The container was wet somewhere inside. From rain, or being hosed down. And he smelled other scents now. Sweat. Old fruit. Rank urine.

  He held up the lighter again. Candy wrappers were piled in a corner. Beyond them lay an apple core. Near the crumpled blanket was a shoe. He lugged his way over and grabbed it. His heart went south.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  It was a girl’s tennis shoe. Bedecked with red and white daisies, beads worked in among the laces. The beads spelled out a name: Lita. Glancing around again, on the walls he saw marks, notches scratched into the metal. He knew they must signify days. Below them words were scratched, some in English, others in the baroque alphabet of the Thai language. And one in Spanish.

  He had to get the hell out of here, and soon.

  The container was stacked with others on a dock. The sounds outside were forklifts and cranes. They were loading these containers into the hold of a ship. If that happened, if he were sent out to sea without food or water, he would die.

  Perhaps like little Lita. He glanced again at the Spanish writing scratched into the wall. Ayúdame. Help me.

  13

  Christian parked the Viper on the drive behind Bliss’s Porsche and stalked into the house. The electric glow of L.A. lit the night, feverish, like his mood.

  Going through the arch into the courtyard, looking past the trellis down the precipitous hillside, he heard music, the Callas recording of Tosca. Bliss was going to get one across the side of her face. Propping his shades on top of his head, he threw open the door.

  The aria cut the air like a blade. Across the entryway and living room, he saw Bliss slouched by the windows. The five-million-dollar view tingled behind her. She was wearing six thousand bucks of designer clothing, but with a dozen studs in her ear and scratching at scabs on her arm, she looked like the sullen backwoods runaway she had been.

  He stalked across the room. “She shipped the phone to the Santa Barbara sheriff. You let her get away.”

  He raised his hand. She scratched her arm, gave him an eyeful of scorn, and shifted her gaze to the far side of the room. He stopped himself, catching a whiff of perfume.

  He turned his head. “Rio.”

  His mother was sitting on the divan, arms draped across the back, legs languorously crossed, sculpted into a vermilion suit. She proffered her cheek. He breathed, crossed to the sofa, and kissed her. Her perfume hinted at incense. They must be working an Asian group tonight, one of those horny trade delegations from the Chinese consulate.

  “Rivera was cautious,” Rio said. “She didn’t simply put the file on disk.”

  Bliss held up a flash drive. “It’s fried. Self-destructed.”

  His scalp pinpricked with sweat. “The information’s gone?”

  “Of course not. Transferred.”

  “Where?”

  “Delaney’s daughter,” Rio said.

  He gestured at Bliss. “Who she let escape.”

  Rio gave him one of her looks and recrossed her legs. That Sharon Stone thing, it was a tic with her.

  “Christian,” she said, probably for the second or third time. “We know where she is, and Shiver is on it.”

  “Shiver?”

  Bliss scratched at her arm. With her skinny frame, her inch-long blond hair made her look like a boy. “Delaney doesn’t know she has a second tail.”

  “Why hasn’t Shiver stopped her?” Christian said.

  “She’s on her way to Bangkok. And so am I.”

  “What?” He didn’t bother to hide his surprise. Turning to Rio, he said, “What’s she going there for?”

  “Obviously, to get more information,” Rio said.

  Rio’s hair gleamed in the light, black curls piled high. It was the hairdo she had worn for the latest portrait, which hung behind her on the wall, the one modeled on the painting of Caesar’s wife. Though his mom wore more jewelry, and stilettos, and breast implants. Thai breast implants.

  Bangkok . . . he hated that place.

  Even though he thought that maybe it was where Rio’s mother, his grandmother, had come from. Rio’s father had been a U.S. serviceman; he was pretty sure of that. Her mother . . . Rio said she was a Thai city girl. She also said she was a Casablanca runaway. Or, on nights like tonight, when Maria Callas was rending the air, she might have been Italian. It didn’t matter now—they all had American passports.

  But Bangkok, that was where their lives had gone wrong, when his own father was working there. It was the place where Rio got the idea for the growth hormone, and for keeping her stable looking young. And where everything turned to shit.

  “Christian,” she said.

  “How do you know for sure? What if she’s just running away?” He heard his voice rising and couldn’t stop it. “We have to get it.”

  Bliss slid up behind him. “The flash drive was on a chain with a medallion. You know who?”

  Christian rubbed his hand over his chest. His bones were aching. The fatigue was sinking into him, overcoming his jitters. He eyed Bliss more closely.

  “Maria Auxiliadora?” he said.

  “Herself. La Virgen.”

  He nodded, still rubbing his sweater. From one of the bedrooms, feet padded along the tiled floor. Eden came into the room wearing a man’s dress shirt and bronze legs, looking half-asleep. She stretched her arms over her head, running her fingers through her tousled black curls.

  He snickered at her. “What the fuck is that? A beaver ’fro?”

  She hoisted the shirt around her waist and peered at her pubic hair. It was shaved in the shape of a lightning bolt. “Like it?”

  Rio stood up. “Do you have the game worked out tonight?”

  Eden dropped the shirt. “Yeah. The uniform’s Culver City PD, the car’s old LAPD. I’ll stop him on his way home from the country club.” She explained for Christian. “Fortieth birthday role-playing. A kidnapping.”

  Rio smoothed her skirt. “You do not beat him at the roadside. Take him to the Valley house before you get busy with
him.”

  “Of course.”

  “And, Eden, he turns the tables. You let him get the upper hand.”

  Eden tightened. “I don’t play the submissive; you know these guys don’t have limits—”

  “You do it, or we don’t get their repeat business.”

  “He’s a venture capitalist. His partner set this up—you remember the guy last year, Rio; he cut me—”

  Rio snapped her fingers. Eden went quiet.

  “And this man may cut you too. And you will scream and come, and then you will clean it all up.”

  Eden looked at the floor.

  “It will all be recorded,” Rio said. “Stop worrying. I take care of you. I always do.”

  The cameras would catch everything. Though, of course, the clientele didn’t know they were being put on video—they discovered that only if they went too far. But anybody who messed up one of the girls from Elysium Concierge Services paid for it. Dearly, sometimes for years, generally to the Caymans account.

  Rio tilted her head, waiting until she got a nod from Eden. She turned to Christian. He rubbed his chest again, the tightness returning.

  Rio looked like a million bucks in that red suit. She was exceptionally proud of her body, and always dressed to show off. That was something she’d learned in France. Make them appreciate. Demand it. She angled her shoulders back, waiting.

  “You look fabulous, Mom.”

  She glanced down at her breasts approvingly. “Have you talked to that actress’s agent yet?”

  “I will.”

  “These Russians really think they can nail an A-list movie star. Offer more money.”

  His chest squeezed. “I’m working on it.”

  COO, that was what she called him. Chief operating officer. He felt like chief operating orifice. Elysium: your every desire fulfilled. That was what she promised. Plow the first lady? No problem. Get on it, Christian. He felt his energy seeping out as if he’d cut himself.

  “What if we’re too late?” he said.

  She blinked at him, her gaze softened, and with a beckoning finger she drew him near. He sidled over and she took his hand in hers.

  “We will get this. They will pay.” She squeezed his hand. “Do you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  “These people ravaged us, but that has made us survivors. Your father died, but we coped and overcame. And now look at us.”

  The voice of Maria Callas soared over the room. He looked past his mother, at her portrait above the mantel. Rio was like Callas, a champion.

  She ran a hand over his flowing hair. “You’re pale.”

  On his wrist, her grip shifted. She checked his pulse and looked at his nail beds, his hands so white.

  “Go take your medication.”

  “Bliss and Shiver cannot get this wrong, Mom.”

  Her eyes went bright with tears. She pulled him close, clutched him to her. “Be strong. We’re going to fight. The two of us, we’re fighters.”

  He stood rigid, arms at his sides. “Sure.”

  She leaned back and patted his shoulders, her face red. “Yes, Christian. Good. You stay tough. It’s . . .” Hand through his hair, looking away. “It’s okay.”

  He waited for her to let go, then stalked toward his bedroom. At the front door Bliss was zipping her jacket. She had a suitcase packed.

  Bangkok. Rio had all her plastic surgery done in Bangkok. U.S. board-certified surgeons, deluxe hospitals, Asian prices. She got all her treatments there as well, the hormones that kept her skin so smooth and supple—why she looked so fabulous despite the struggles she had lived through. Bangkok was one of her favorite cities. She went there on regular scouting missions, looking for talent to import.

  He paused, and when Bliss looked at him he pointed his hand at her, making a gun with two fingers and his thumb. He fake-fired at her.

  In his bathroom he got his works, filled the syringe from the bottle, and injected the EPO. Erythropoietin—it would get you busted for blood doping in the Tour de France, but was prescribed to keep up his red cell count. It staved off the worst effects of the anemia, though it wouldn’t for much longer.

  Eden found him sitting on the bed, field stripping the SIG. He had removed the cartridges from the magazine and lined them up in front of him. Nine—he touched them one after the other. She climbed on the bed beside him.

  “Rio told you to come take care of me?” he said.

  They always seemed so comfortable with him like this. They never looked worried that he would try to fuck them. He reassembled the slide, put it back on the frame of the SIG, counted the cartridges again, and loaded them in the magazine. Eden touched his shoulder.

  He shoved the magazine into the pistol, pushed her down onto her back, and slid the SIG between her legs. She stared at him. He rubbed the barrel back and forth on her pussy. She smiled. Carefully she took the gun from his hand, ejected the magazine, and gave it back.

  “Sorry, hon. I only have safe sex.”

  Above his empty hand, in the crook of his elbow, blood was running from the needle mark. That would change. Soon the blood would be running the other way. From other people. Down to the marrow.

  Wednesday

  The plane swayed through the deep night. Beneath us eastern Russia slid by, lights scattered along its coastline like lonely stars. Twelve hours had passed. So had Tuesday, cut short when we crossed the international date line.

  It was time. I fired up my computer, put in my earphones, and angled the screen so my seatmates couldn’t see. Jax appeared in her sleek black suit, eyes heated. The down-ticker read 18:01.33.

  “When I went to Colombia, I didn’t intend to embed myself with a bunch of gunrunners. My brief was to track the drug traffickers who were financing them. And it’s my endless regret that I did it by buying information from Rio Sanger.”

  Though her voice was smooth, the energy behind it radiated anger.

  “Rio liked to watch sex and knew others did too, and would pay for it. People at the CIA. She approached us. And I dug all that shiny, happy footage of government ministers cozying up to her hookers. Those videos are what made them flip harder than bugs in a skillet.” She glanced at her hands. “But that’s not what this is about.”

  Her face faded out, replaced by a set of black-and-white photos.

  “Rio’s junior varsity squad.”

  “Oh, my God,” I said.

  They were hardly more than children. Girls riding the cusp of puberty, they were slim, faun-eyed, and terrified. One waif with raven hair and a soft mouth stared at the camera with a need to please so patent it was excruciating. I had to look away.

  “First clip,” Jax said.

  The footage segued to grainy video. A bedroom, the camera apparently hidden in a ceiling light. The door opened and in came a man, obese and half in the bag, accompanied by two girls who looked about fourteen, one East Asian, one blond. The man dropped onto the edge of the bed. One girl knelt at his feet and untied his shoes. The other began unbuttoning his shirt. He put two fingers on her neck and ran them down the midline of her chest. Nausea rolled through me like a wave of heat.

  “He was a salesman for an arms firm,” Jax said. “This was the next morning.”

  Cut to the disheveled bed, the man pulling on his clothes, cigarette in his mouth, face hungover. The girls were sleeping spooned together. With a knock, the door opened.

  The man glanced up. “Rio.”

  My skin tightened. She was dazzling, in a Roman-orgy way. Bronze skin, exotic features, helix coils of black hair, skirt highlighting a magnificent ass. She smiled, rested her fingers along the man’s forearm, and said something so soft and soothing that it was a mere stroke of the air.

  She snapped her fingers at the girls. “Wake up.”

  The girls scurried awake, got up, and pressed their palms together in front of their faces, as though in prayer. It was a distinctly Asian gesture, gentle and respectful. Thanking their defiler: holy God. The man dug in his pocket
and handed them each some cash. Then he smiled at Rio and sauntered out the door.

  Rio snapped her fingers again, pointing around the room. “Clean it up. Spick-and-span.” She swept out. I wanted to punch a hole in the computer screen.

  Jax reappeared, eyes shining with either defiance or shame.

  “Those girls—I never got them out. They’re lost. When things went bad . . .” She looked away and back again, fierce. “Watch out. Rio still has them. There are three of them, and hooking isn’t all they do for her now.”

  She touched a keyboard on the desk. “In the end, this is all about lost kids.”

  A photo popped on-screen: a girl of about seven, whose dark curls caught the light like a halo. Her brown eyes were impish, her gaze precocious. She was perched in the crook of a tree.

  “This one too. Lost. And . . .”

  The energy drained from Jax’s voice. “You really wonder why I quit the Company?”

  The photo segued into a video clip, the brown-eyed girl playing on a beach, and the air full of sweet laughter.

  “Lives ruined, what might have been, I can’t even . . .”

  Her voice was rough, her coolness and aloofness gone. The plane rocked, and disbelief crept over me. Jax cared.

  After a moment she straightened and lifted her chin. “You’re laughing and shaking your head, aren’t you? Rule number one: Don’t get involved. But I certainly did.”

  Her expression turned piquant. “Let’s get down to it. The op went wrong because I got involved with Rio’s man. So here you go, for posterity.”

  She leaned toward the camera. “Hank Sanger was an asset. American, ex-Green Beret.” Chilly smile. “I have a fatal weakness for military men.”

  I ran a hand over my face, wondering if she was addressing this to Tim North.

  “Hank was a mercenary, loosely connected over the years to the CIA, the contras, ran guns to private armies in Southeast Asia. I met him in Thailand. I thought he was helping us, getting information on some of the guerrilla types who were selling guns to the paramilitaries.”

  New film footage loaded. A bar: neon beer signs on the wall, the crowd smoking and drinking, jukebox in the corner where a man dropped coins and an old tune swelled to life, the gravelly voice of Ray Charles singing “Georgia on My Mind.”