by Amy Vansant
They’d been sitting in Dez’s car, parked down the block from Volkov’s safe house, for half an hour, watching. The situation seemed calm there. A man sat on the porch, smoking one cigarette after the other. Inside, another man moved by the window from time to time. There was no sign of Volkov. No sign that Catriona and Mo might be inside.
Broch was frustrated and full of nervous energy, his knee still finding room to bounce in the cramped space of Dez’s car. He didn’t want to wait. Dez had begged him for a half hour of surveillance before they went charging in.
His mind was elsewhere when she touched him.
“Whit?”
Something about the expression on Dez’s face made his chest tighten with fear for Catriona.
Dez took a deep breath and exhaled. “I wasn’t going to tell you because, well, because I figured you wouldn’t want to hear, but it hit me if we go in there—”
“Juist tell me whit it is.”
She nodded. “Right. Sorry.”
Another deep breath, and she began. “Volkov is a loner. The Russian mob doesn’t want anything to do with him because, I don’t know. He’s messed up in the head.”
“How?”
“I don’t know the details. But I do know one thing about him. He likes to hurt women.”
Broch swallowed. “Ah’ve prepared myself that Catriona micht be hurt.”
“I don’t mean just hurt. Women go missing around him. Permanently. A lot.”
“Howfur dae ye ken this?”
“How do I ken it?”
“Know.”
“Oh.” Dez sniffed. “I had a friend who went missing after going with him. She was a stripper. No one even realized she was gone for a couple days. Then I heard she was in the hospital. She didn’t make it.”
“Volkov murdered her?”
“More than killed her. I went to see her. Her injuries...” Dez shook her head as if she wanted to break loose the memory and fling it away. “After, I asked around and heard Volkov was famous for this sort of thing. He’s a bit of a legend around the strip clubs. Sort of a boogey man.”
Broch didn’t know what a boogey man was, but it didn’t sound good. He looked at the house. The glow of the porch man’s cigarette bobbed in the darkness.
“We need tae gae in.”
“I’d like to watch a bit more. It doesn’t look like he’s in there.”
“Bit whit if he is?”
The thought that Catriona might be inside, suffering, while he sat outside—
Broch put his hand on the door handle. “We need tae gae.”
“Okay. Wait. We need a plan. They’re going to spot you a mile away. You and your skirt.”
“It’s nae a skirt.”
“Whatever.”
“And they willnae see me.”
“Fine. But let’s be smart. The guy on the porch won’t know me. You go around the houses and come over the side of the porch behind him. I’ll distract him.”
Broch nodded. Any plan that got him out of the car and closer to Catriona worked for him. He had his door open before Dez could finish her sentence.
Crossing the street, he cut between two residences several lots down from Volkov’s safe house. The first house didn’t have a fence in the back yard, so he ran through, skirting a plastic child’s pool and a littering of toys. A chain link fence encircled the next lot. He jumped it. As he jogged through the yard, he spotted a little girl staring at him through the back door screen. He waved and she smiled, waving back. He climbed over the fence on the opposite side to find himself next to Volkov’s property.
The six-foot wooden fence surrounding Volkov’s back yard was too flimsy to jump and too solid to break through. Broch stood on his toes and peered over it. The yard was empty. He could see a large screened-in porch, the glow from the adjacent rooms inside the house illuminating a smattering of patio furniture.
Moving along the side of the rancher, he reached the front porch and crouched down, peering between the thick cement railing that edged it. The guard no longer sat in his chair. He’d moved to the top of the stairs. Broch could hear Dez talking to him, laughing the way women did when flirting.
Broch grabbed the top of the porch railing and lifted himself until he could swing a leg over the edge. Lowering himself onto the porch, he crept towards the man flirting with Dez. As he neared his prey, Broch saw Dez’s eyes flick in his direction. She tried to play it off, but the damage had been done.
The man turned.
Sae much fae the element of surprise.
Broch snapped his palm into the air, breaking the man’s nose and then covering his mouth as he tried to yell. Broch pulled his head into the crook of his arm, choking him as he dragged him deeper onto the porch. He held him there, his back against the house, bobbing his head left and right to avoid the man’s flailing hands, until his foe went limp.
Dez looked up and down the street and then moved onto the porch.
“Did you kill him?” she whispered.
Broch huffed. “Nae. Ah wid hae, bit Catriona said ah shouldn’t murdurr fowk if ah kin hulp it.”
Dez scowled. “She had to tell you that?” She glanced at the man. “And she probably didn’t mean the guys holding her hostage.”
Crouching beneath the large front window, Dez peered inside.
“I see one dude on a sofa. The one we’ve been watching. I think he’s asleep. No sign of Volkov.”
Broch tried the door and found it open.
Pulling a gun from her waistband, Dez moved to him. “On three. One—”
Broch opened the creaky door and the man on the sofa turned his head towards him.
“Who are you?”
As the man scrambled to his feet, wobbly from sleeping, Broch stepped forward and punched him hard in the face. The guard fell, tucked between the sofa and the table where he’d been resting his feet.
“Shhh,” hissed Dez. She had her gun raised as she poked her head in the other rooms.
“Kitchen’s clear,” she whispered to him as she moved to the next doorway.
Broch leaned over and grabbed the guard by his shirt, lifting him to peer into his face. The man’s head lolled as if it were attached by a noodle, potato chip crumbs stuck to his cheek.
He’s nae goan anywhur.
Broch dropped him with a thud to the ground.
Dez slipped down a short hall to the right and reappeared a moment later.
“Clear.”
She glanced at a table beside Broch and pointed to it. “Look.”
He glanced at a pile of plastic strips sitting next to the ugliest lamp he’d ever seen. He looked back at Dez. “Whit?”
She rolled her eyes. “They’re zip-ties. Tie up those two in case they wake up.”
Broch’s attention moved from the zip-ties to the door in the center of the archway.
It had a padlock on it.
Dez went to the left and appeared again, almost bumping into him as he approached the door.
“That room’s clear. Did you tie them?”
“Na.”
She huffed and followed his gaze to the padlock on the door. “Yeah, I think that’s our winner. You don’t mind if I make sure the house is clear first, do you?”
Broch ignored her and put his ear to the door.
“Catriona?” he called.
A panic voice rose from within. “It’s Mo.”
Dez stepped back and pointed her gun at the door. She nodded to Broch. “I’m ready.”
“Staun back fae the door,” Broch called to Mo.
He gave Mo a moment to move before kicking. The hinge holding the lock ripped from the wood and the door flew open, bouncing off the wall behind.
Mo stood in the back corner of the small windowless room. The space was empty but for two paper plates, two plastic bottles and Mo herself.
Mo threw her arms around him.
“Thank god you’re here. These people are animals. We thought you were dead.”
“Catriona?” h
e asked.
She looked up at him, grimacing. “They took her. She wasn’t out there?”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. I woke up and that big man was walking out the door with her.”
“Volkov?”
She nodded. “That’s his name. The one from the warehouse.”
Broch scowled at Dez. “He wis here all along.”
She frowned. “Sorry.”
Broch spotted a smear of blood on the wall and felt his pulse quicken. He looked at Mo and she shook her head.
“Not hers. She beat up one of the guys. She wasn’t hurt the last time I saw her but the man who took her...” Mo fell silent. “It was only about an hour ago.”
Broch walked back into the living room. “We didnae see them leave,” he mumbled, looking around the house for doors they might have missed.
Mo followed him into the living room and spotted Dez. “Dez, Alain sent you?”
Dez grunted. “Something like that.”
Broch strode into the kitchen and eyed the rows of lower cabinets, dreading the idea of opening them in search of Catriona.
Thay couldn’t hae gaen far.
The pantry door was missing and the shelving left no room for anyone to hide.
Broch pushed open the back door and entered the screened porch he’d noticed while peering over the fence. He left through a screen door and visually traced the edge of the yard’s perimeter, the fencing dimly visible by the light in the kitchen. There didn’t seem to be anywhere to hide in the dirt filled back yard.
Broch turned to re-enter the house, pausing when something about the angle of the wicker sofa on the porch struck him as odd. He noticed drag marks on the floor where the sofa had been moved.
Pushing it further away, he spotted the outline of a square on the floor.
A trap door.
He dropped to his knees and pressed his ear against the floor, his fingers scrambling along the wood, searching for a way to open the hatch.
“Dez!” he called to the other room.
Dez appeared from the kitchen.
“Yeah?”
“Tak’ Mo tae the car. Git her oot o’ ‘ere.”
“What are you doing?”
“Ah’m keeking fae Catriona.”
As if on cue, Mo appeared behind Dez. “Let’s go. I’ve got to get out of here.”
Dez sighed and looked at Broch. “I’ll take her. I’ll be right back. Don’t do anything stupid.”
Broch nodded.
The moment Dez left the room, he pulled his knife from its sheath. With his other hand, he felt the top of the trap door until his fingers brushed over a handle embedded in the wood. He hadn’t been able to see it with the sofa blocking the light from the kitchen.
He wouldn’t be waiting for Dez to get back.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Catriona glanced down the slanted hall leading to the ladder. Could she make it to the ladder, climb it and get out in time? Maybe, if she could incapacitate him long enough…
Volkov lunged at her again, swiping with his long arms.
She tried to dodge and use his momentum against him, but the tight quarters made it difficult to move from his reach. He grabbed her around the middle and she pounded down on his chin with her fist. He ignored the first blow and pushed her to the wall. The ragged stones ate into her back, bruising her spine. She cried out, the sound of her pain acting like gasoline on the fire of Volkov’s malicious intent. Laughing, he lifted her from the ground, but she twisted in the air to interrupt his body slam. He lost his balance, falling to the side to catch himself on one knee and she fell to the ground beside him.
Catriona scrambled away, trying to put enough distance between them so that she could find her feet, but Volkov was on her in an instant. He grabbed her from behind and she kicked, catching him in the chest once before he enveloped her and fell with his weight pinning her torso to the mat.
He punched her hard in the back of her head.
The world flashed white.
No no no...I can’t lose consciousness.
She’d seen what happened to the unconscious girls, twice. He would stand over her, victorious, before falling, elbow first, cracking her teeth like fine china. Then the things she couldn’t watch would happen, and she’d end up rotting in the oubliette, where no one would ever find her. If they did, by then, she’d be nothing more than a few drops of DNA on a crime scientist’s slide.
The elbow drop.
The move was predictable.
Catriona went limp. She hoped it wasn’t too late, that he hadn’t seen her move after the blow to her head.
Volkov ground his hips against her buttocks, shifting to straddle her. She could feel the tension in his thighs, knew he had his hand raised ready to hit her again. She didn’t know when or where the blow would land. Staying still, defenseless, awaiting the blow, was the longest five seconds of her life.
He didn’t swing.
Volkov dismounted, stepping over her with one foot to stand. She could feel the flexing of the floor pads on her right. Was he raising his hands in victory? She didn’t dare look. She had to trust the pattern. He’d rolled the other girls on their backs.
Volkov kicked her in her side, not softly but not hard either. She couldn’t stop the rush of air escaping from her lungs but she showed no other sign of consciousness.
“Victory in the first round.” Volkov clucked his tongue. “I thought you would be better.”
He slid his foot under her shoulder and flipped her over, squatting to arrange her on the ground. He straightened her legs on the mat and brought her arms down straight at her sides.
A moment later, she felt the bounce of the mat beside her.
This is it.
His hands were raised over his head now, she was sure. She replayed the videos in her head and saw the way he bounced on his toes as he celebrated his victory.
Catriona relaxed her face muscles. She needed to risk opening her eyes. She’d never realized how hard it was to crack open an eyelid without squinting. Squinting would give her game away.
She allowed her eyelids enough slack to open naturally, feeling oddly grateful he’d punched her in the back of her head and not her eyes.
Above her, Volkov turned to his imaginary audiences, represented by each wall, one by one. When his back turned to her, she lifted her chin a bit to get a better view through the thin arc of her open eye.
Volkov made his full circle and then crooked his arms like a football field goal to make muscles on either side. He glanced down at her, lining up her mouth.
He turned sideways, preparing to fall.
Catriona tried not to tense.
Like a felled tree, Volkov began to topple, his elbow screaming towards her mouth.
At the last second, Catriona rolled away and Volkov hit the empty mat. She turned and chopped hard at his throat, striking him in the Adam’s apple with all her strength.
Volkov wheezed, grabbing at his throat. Catriona clapped her hands together above her head to create a hammer and swung down, striking him in the testicles.
If the strike to his windpipe didn’t leave him breathless, the groin shot would. She’d accidentally hit men there at the gym. She didn’t understand it, but she knew the effect ended fights very quickly.
Volkov jerked to a sitting position, howling, gagging, still struggling to breathe. He sounded like an amorous alley cat who’d smoked a pack of cigarettes every day through all nine lives.
Catriona twisted her body and punched him in the nose with every last trace of power in her body. He flattened to his back and she straddled him, pinning his arms to his body. Left and then right, over and over she struck at him, never giving him the chance to find his breath. He bucked, trying to throw her off of him, but she clung to him like an octopus’ sucker. Her mind told her to run to the ladder, that he’d never be able to stop her in time, but enraged, for herself and the women in the oubliette, she continued to pound him, striking lik
e a tireless machine.
“Catriona!”
The voice came from behind her. She paused for a split second, distracted from her attack. Volkov took the opportunity to whip his arm out from beneath her. His face covered in blood, he threw a blind punch, striking her in the side of the head.
The blow knocked her sideways and she struck her opposite temple on the stone wall.
The world went black.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Broch opened the trapdoor. The smell of dirt and something much more foul struck his nostrils.
It smelled like death.
A ladder led to the bottom of a shallow dugout. The floor appeared blue, and Broch wasn’t sure what to make of that. Light shone from another source below and to the right, so he knew the cellar continued.
It has tae be a prison...
Why else would someone dig a hole like that? He’d seen no root cellars since arriving in Los Angeles. Certainly people didn’t grow and store their own food in this godforsaken desert town.
Every sinew in his body strained, begging for him to call out to Catriona, but he couldn’t risk alarming whatever guard might be down there with her.
Volkov had to be down there.
Broch mounted the ladder and climbed into the pit. Crouching to keep from hitting his head on the ceiling, he shuffled down a ramp with the same blue padding for flooring as the first room. Something ahead of him steadily thudded.
Smack. Smack. Smack.
Poking his head into the room, he saw Catriona straddling a man, beating him with her fists.
He said the word before he could stop himself.
“Catriona!”
Catriona turned. Her mouth had just begun to curl into a smile when the man beneath her struck out with his right hand, knocking her from her perch and into the wall beside them. Broch watched her head bounce off the stone, then she slumped to the ground.
A sheet of blood covered the man’s face, but Broch could tell who it was.
Volkov.
Volkov pushed Catriona off of him and leapt to his feet. The Russian wiped the blood from his eyes and roared, running at Broch like a man possessed.
Broch swung but Volkov dipped, tackling him at the waist. Hammering with his elbow, Broch struck at his attacker’s shoulder. The Russian spun away from him, taking a defensive stance on the opposite side of the room. Blood dripped from a cut above his eye and Volkov slapped at it, bouncing on his toes, motioning for Broch to come forward.