Winter Miracle

by Teagan Kade

  He goes to pull the gun free, but he’s not quick enough. I punch him right in the face, the blow slamming him into the ground, knocking him unconscious.

  I collect the guns, putting one down the back of my pants and taking hold of the other.

  I fucking hate these things, but this has to be done.

  Goon One’s groaning, hands over his broken nose. I fish through his pockets, finding the keys. He groans again as I take hold of the side of his face, pressing it into the ground. I place the muzzle of the gun against his knee cap. “One question. You answer it, you get to keep the use of your legs today. If not, you can wind up like your buddy over there. Where’s Bobby taking the girl?”

  Nothing.

  I lean down closer to his ear. “I didn’t hear that, sorry.”

  “Fuck. You,” comes the weak reply.

  I fire, a hellish scream following, the stench disgusting.

  I move the muzzle to the other knee cap, forced to use my arm to pin him down.

  “Oh, Christ,” he mutters. “Oh, Jesus.”

  I shake my head. “Saint fucking Peter himself couldn’t help you now,” I tell him. “I’ve got six rounds left. I’ll use every one of them if I have to, leave you here to bleed, leave you to the coyotes.”

  I press down harder with the muzzle.

  He barks out a name.

  I press down harder. “The address. What’s the fucking address?”

  He gives it, breathing hard.

  I keep the muzzle there. I should do it. This guy’s bad news, but I pull it away, separating the gun and mag and tossing each in opposite directions. I slip the other down the back of my jeans.

  I find his cell in his pocket, crushing it under my boot. I take out my own cell and wallet from him, pocketing it and moving over to his friend. I hunt for his cell, smashing it the same way. The last thing I want is for them to raise the alarm and tip off Bobby to my sudden resurrection.

  “It’s a long walk back to the road. Better get moving,” I announce, punching the address into my cell.

  The conscious goon doesn’t say anything else as I run to the Hummer, throwing open the driver’s door. It’s going to take over an hour to get there—an hour where Bobby can do whatever he likes to the woman I love.

  I turn the ignition and slam my foot down on the accelerator.

  “Not today.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  DAWN

  I cannot even comprehend how we have been betrayed after working so hard, doing everything we could to get Rick’s whereabouts. Yet, here I am. There’s no Max. That’s the worst part of it all. He might be dead by now.

  Don’t even think like that, but I can’t help it. I want to cry, to scream, but all I really feel is a strange detachment from reality. I pinch myself. I actually reach down and do it, pulling my skin together, and damn it, it hurts.

  “Have fun.” That’s the last thing Bobby says to his men before there’s a sharp prick at my neck and the next thing I know I’m waking up groggy in the back of a car, two of Bobby’s men up front, one of them Ponytail from the cage fight.

  The doors are locked. It’s the first thing I checked. Once more we’re headed away from the glitzy postcard version of Vegas to a neighborhood far less appealing. We could be back in Brooklyn.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  Dark eyes dart up into the rear-view.

  “Please.”

  Ponytail turns around from the passenger seat smiling. He looks over my outfit. “They don’t have nice clothes like that where you’re going, baby. In fact, they don’t wear much at all.”

  The two goons smile at each other and the dread suddenly becomes overwhelming. It doesn’t help I’m still groggy from whatever they injected me with. I sink into the leather and breathe hard trying to calm myself. There’s a way out. There has to be, but no. This is real. This is happening, and it’s happening without Max.

  We pull around the back of a building the color and texture of mud. There’s no signage.

  I try to scream when they pull me out, but a grubby hand covers my mouth, pressing so hard it hurts my jaw.

  I make them drag me. I don’t want this to be easy for them.

  Inside, it becomes very clear where we are.

  While the exterior of the building looks like it’s set for demolition, inside it’s red velvet and silk, plush and luxurious. A large, older woman stands at a desk, a brute of a man beside her with a pistol tucked down the front of his pants, but the real giveaway is the room beyond.

  There sit maybe seven or eight girls wearing barely anything, all with the same void expression on their face—cattle waiting for the slaughter.

  The two men push me down to my knees. The woman comes around the desk to stand before me. “Bobby said you were cute.”

  I hesitate, but I say it anyway. “Go to hell.”

  She smiles now. “My, such a dirty mouth for such a pretty girl. We’re going to have to do something about that attitude, aren’t we now?”

  I look to the girls again, but they’re looking anywhere but at me. Some of them can’t be older than sixteen.

  The Madam takes out a cell phone and holds it in front of my face. There’s a picture of Noel on it. “Friend of yours?” She swipes right. There’s a photo of my mother. It’s taken from outside the house, through the kitchen window. Oh, no. “And we wouldn’t want anything to happen to her now, would we? That’s why you are going to cooperate. That is why you are going to do everything I say or face the consequences, and trust me, I don’t think a tiny thing like you would live through it.”

  The last thing I wanted was to drag my loved ones into this.

  The Madam places the cell back in her pocket and speaks to the guy with the pistol. “Take her.”

  The man comes forward and takes me under the arm, pulling me to my feet.

  “Maybe I’ll see you later,” Ponytail calls. “See what a fine thing like you tastes like.”

  Max.

  I can’t shake it. He’s alive, I know it. He has to be, so why does everything seem so damn hopeless right now?

  I’m unceremoniously pushed forward into a room, whatever drug they used to knock me out in the car causes the whole room to spin and tilt.

  The man stands in the doorway. “Let’s make this simple. The customers come in, you service them. You give them whatever they want. You don’t fucking complain.” He gestures to the side of the room. There’s a rack there bulging with cheap lingerie. “There’s your new wardrobe, princess.” He points to a box sitting on the floor. “But Bobby wants you to wear that. Be quick about it.”

  The door closes. I check it, but it’s locked from the outside.

  I move over to the box and open it knowing full well what’s inside. It’s the white lingerie set I bought for my night with Max. Bobby probably had cameras in the penthouse, watching us. Watching us make love.

  You don’t know that.

  Still, the thought makes my skin crawl.

  I hold the teddy in my hands and cry softly. I could refuse to wear it, but what then?

  I put the set on in the corner behind a flimsy mirror, pulling the panties into place. I don’t look at myself. I can’t bear to do it.

  The door swings open and the man with the gun is standing there. “Move it.”

  I follow him out, back down the hall to the front of the brothel. I hear sounds as we pass other rooms—slapping, men laughing, cries of “please, don’t.” I start to shake involuntarily.

  I’m directed to a seat next to a young Asian girl in the front room, instructed to wait until I’m called.

  I turn to talk to her, but the guy with the gun kicks the wall beside me. “Eyes front, sweetheart. No talking.”

  The front door opens and a man walks in.

  “Senator!” the Madam beams, coming forward to greet him. “How nice to see you again.”

  The client takes off his coat, handing it to the man with the gun. “And you.” He immediately walks into t
he room. He’s obese, probably the bad side of seventy. “Hello, girls.”

  There’s no response.

  I press myself against the wall, trying to hide in the small shadow cast by the lamp above as much as possible, trying to make myself invisible. When he looks my way, I avert my eyes.

  “Choices, choices,” he says, walking to the right with his hands behind his back as if he were serving dinner selections at the supermarket.

  He starts to walk back my way. No. Go back, but it’s too late. He’s seen me.

  He stands before me. “And what do we have here?”

  The Madam steps over. “Ah, yes. She’s new, this one. Fresh as a daisy.”

  “Is she housetrained?” asks the man.

  The Madam chortles. “I’m afraid not. She’ll need a firm hand.”

  The man smiles, eyes sitting on my cleavage. “I’m sure I can help in that department. Is she clean?”

  “Of course,” the Madam continues, watching me with eagle eyes.

  “I’ll take her.”

  “I’m not for sale,” I stammer.

  The Madam stoops forward and slaps me hard across the face. “Like I said.”

  It only excites the man more. “I do like the feisty ones.”

  The Madam hands him a key. “Room four, our finest. All yours.”

  The man takes my hand and pulls me up, wrenching it behind my back and pushing me forward down the hall. “Oh, we’re going to have some fun, you and me.”

  “You be good now,” the Madam warns, voice stern. She taps the cell in her pocket for effect.

  Max, where are you?

  The man pushes me into a well-furnished room lit dimly red. There’s a lingering alkaline smell to the place that makes me want to gag.

  He starts to undo his tie, approaching me as I back myself into a corner. “Don’t come any closer,” I warn.

  He laughs. “Are you going to put up a fight? I hope so.”

  He unloops his belt and folds it over in his hand, testing its give.

  I stiffen, hands against the wall, nowhere else to go.

  He unzips his pants, pulling out a flaccid, ugly cock. “I bet all those lips have tasted is sugar, but you’re slumming it now, my girl, and mark my words, by the end of this you’ll be begging for more.

  I can’t help myself, channeling Max. “I’ve seen cockroaches with bigger dicks.”

  He stops before me, cock in one hand, belt raised high in the other. “I won’t lie. This is going to hurt.”

  Before he brings it down there’s a loud bang down the hall.

  He turns. “What in hell?” but it’s not enough to distract him completely. He turns back to me, jiggling his member in his hand. “Open wide, sugar.”

  There’s more banging and commotion in the hall, shouting.

  Maybe it’s a raid. This doesn’t exactly seem like a legal establishment.

  My client stops, frustrated. “For fuck’s sake.”

  He waddles over to the door. “What’s a man to do wh—”

  Someone kicks the door down from the other side. It smashes into the Senator, driving him to the floor.

  Max walks over it, the wood splintering, the Senator unconscious below.

  “Max,” I say.

  I still think I’m dreaming it until he takes me in his arms, pressing my head against his chest. “I’m here,” he says. “But we don’t have a lot of time.”

  He takes my hand. “This way.”

  I run with him into the hall. He pauses by a fire alarm, smashing the glass with his elbow and pulling the lever inside. The alarm wails, the sprinklers turning on full. Doors open, clients and girls spilling into the hallway. I’m surprised the place has a working fire alarm at all.

  It’s chaos, but that’s clearly what Max wanted as he pulls us in the opposite direction as everyone else, towards the front of the building.

  We reach another door.

  Max pushes me behind him and kicks it once, but it seems to be fortified. “Fuck,” he says, kicking it again. He takes out a gun and fires at the lock, but the shots ricochet off.

  I take my hands off my ears, looking back down the hall.

  Max tries to kick it down once more, but the door’s not budging.

  “Max?” I call, growing nervous.

  He’s about to kick it again when it swings open. Standing there are the two men from the car. Given the look on their faces, the last person they expected to see waiting behind that door was Max.

  He seizes on it, kicking Ponytail in the head and leaping through the door, tackling the other guy to the ground and bringing the butt of the gun down on his temple. “Come on!” he yells at me.

  I run out wet into the open. There’s a full moon above, more light than usual illuminating the surroundings.

  A man walking a mutt of a dog stops when he sees me sprinting across the road. “What the fuck?” he stammers.

  Max reaches into his pocket and tosses him a cell. “Call the cops.”

  The man catches the phone. “Hey!”

  Max runs onto the road, standing in the middle of the traffic and holding the gun out. A car comes screeching to a halt. Max moves around to the driver’s door and smashes the window, pulling a man out and waving me over. “Dawn!”

  There’s a gunshot at my back. I scream and run forward, almost run over by a car travelling in the opposite direction. I step over the man Max pulled from the car and dive forward into the passenger seat. I’m barely seated before Max is inside, stepping on the gas without closing his door, the car taking off, weaving across the road as the rear windscreen shatters.

  I take hold of Max’s arm. “I thought you were…”

  He looks at me. “And leave you, there? Fuck that, and fuck Bobby Cervantes.”

  “Where are we going to go?” I’m talking too fast, shaking from the cold water.

  Max hands me a bundle in his hand. It’s my dress. I didn’t even realize he was holding it. “Found it up front. You look great what you’re wearing and all, but…”

  “Where are we going?” I repeat. “We’ve got to get out of Vegas.”

  “And let Bobby get away with that shit? Sending you to one of his fucking brothels, trying to kill me? No fucking way. Besides, he hasn’t held up his end of the bargain.”

  “But he might not be at the casino.”

  “He’s not.”

  “What?”

  “That cell I tossed to the guy on the street back there? I took it from one of the goons out in the desert, went through his messages on the way here. There’s a party tonight, hosted by Vegas’s favorite crime lord.”

  “Where?”

  “Private address at The Ridges.”

  “You know it.”

  “I do.”

  I start to squeeze my hair out over the floorboard carpet. “How are we going to get in? It’s not like we have an invitation.”

  Max turns to me and smiles. “Leave that to me.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  MAX

  I check the map on my cell and look ahead. It’s the right house alright, an ivory mansion at the very top of the street.

  Should work out well… Or not.

  It’s dark, but I see there’s a single goon on the gate.

  I press down on the gas.

  “Max?” queries Dawn, nervous.

  “Hang onto something,” I suggest, flooring it. “Tight.”

  The engine purrs. I know this is insane, completely mad, but something’s telling me it’s going to work. Like Dawn said, it’s not like we can just roll up and be waved in with open arms. No, we need a brute-force approach.

  The goon at the gate steps forward realizing I’m not slowing down. He puts a hand up, yelling something, but it’s lost over the din of the engine.

  I grip the steering wheel hard. This is an old car, built like a tank—no airbags, which is why we need all the speed we can get.

  “Max,” comes Dawn’s voice again, louder now, but I concentrate on the gate, focus
ing all my willpower upon it.

  Come on. Come on.

  “Max!” screams Dawn when she understands there’s no backing out.

  The goon at the gate stands there too long. He tries to jump out of the way, but we clip him on the way through. He goes bouncing off the side of the car while we smash through the gates, sparks flying across the windscreen, the impact far heavier than I was expecting.

  Dawn’s still screaming as one side of the gate slides off the roof of the car and I try to wrestle the old girl across the large gravel driveway that follows, narrowly avoiding a large fountain in the center, pulling hard right to bring us around to the front of the house.

  I line the car up with the steps there.

  “Max!” shouts Dawn again.

  I floor it again and the car mounts the steps, flying through the front doors and into a marble foyer. Twin staircases surround the foyer, passing by the windows, through another set of doors and into a living room of sorts, people screaming and diving out of the way as the engine roars louder than ever in the confined space.

  I slam on the brakes, the car skidding sideways, a glass table smashing against my door, still skidding heading towards the kitchen. People clamor together in suits and fancy dresses, others in bikinis, and some in nothing at all.

  The car stops, rocking back and forth, the engine smoking and ticking. There’s brick and rock on the hood, debris from our entrance, and there’s silence save for the music that continues to beat and pulse from the DJ deck in the corner.

  I check on Dawn. She’s okay, breathing hard, but okay nonetheless.

  All I see out in the crowd is confusion. Two party guests come forward to help, thinking this is an accident, but I see another goon approaching fast from the right.

  I kick open my door and roll out, meeting him halfway and taking hold of his gun. I wrestle him to the floor and he manages to squeeze off a shot. It blows the right tire out.

  He’s strong, a real roid-head, but I head-butt him twice and pull the gun free, training it on him and waiting for the back-up, scanning the room as people scatter for the front doors.

  It’s good, this chaos. It’s all the cover we need.

  Dawn runs around behind me.

  I press the gun against the goon’s head. “Don’t be a hero. Bobby. Where is he?”