Blood World

by Chris Mooney

  Only there was nothing breezy or casual about him. Frank buttoned his jacket as he opened the door for her, his pale skin almost as white as his tee—Dracula dressed by Christian Dior. She could see his eyes behind his sunglasses, studying and assessing her, probing for weaknesses.

  He held the door open for her. Ellie climbed in, waited for Frank to join her. When he did, she took control and spoke first.

  “The man in the photograph—he looks different now. Dyed his hair black and grew it out, and he’s also wearing black-framed glasses. But there’s no doubt it’s him. His name is Paul. At least that’s what Anton called him.”

  “Anton?”

  “He took me to see Paul.”

  From the corner of her eye she saw Frank squeeze the steering wheel.

  Ellie said, “I thought we were going to lunch. Anton went to a BMW dealership, said he had to pick up a part, and the next thing I knew, we had switched cars. He thought he was being followed. He had me leave my phone behind.”

  “And why did Anton bring you along?” Frank’s tone remained flat, the way it always did when he spoke—or at least when he spoke to her.

  “He wants me to help him acquire young female carriers. He didn’t say why.”

  Next, Ellie mixed facts with what Roland had shared with her last night. “They were discussing the guy you work for, or with—I’m not sure. Sebastian. Are you two partners, or do you work for him?”

  “What were Anton and Paul discussing?”

  “I hear Sebastian’s offering a sizable reward for anyone with information on his stepson.”

  “And where, exactly, did you hear that?”

  “From Anton and Paul. It was one of many things they discussed together yesterday. They’re going to make a move against you.”

  No reaction from Frank.

  “And when, exactly, is this happening?”

  “I’ll tell Sebastian,” Ellie said. “Only Sebastian.”

  Ellie’s words hung in the air like a bad odor. Frank’s mouth parted slightly. Then he drew in a long, slow breath as his tongue dug into a back molar.

  “The reward he’s offering would solve my debt problems—all of my debt problems,” Ellie said. “I wouldn’t have to take out a personal loan from you—from anyone.”

  “Tell me what you know, and I’ll tell—”

  “This isn’t a negotiation.”

  Ellie’s tone was polite. Still, Frank’s eyebrows jumped in surprise, and his face flushed.

  “I’ll share everything I know,” Ellie said, “but only with your boss.”

  Ellie had seen plenty of men get angry over the course of her life, but she had never witnessed full-blown rage until the day when Anton, pumped full of carrier blood, flipped out and crushed a stickman’s hand in a car door. Anton’s rage, though, was a primal response. Like fire, it burned for a brief period of time until it either died on its own or was extinguished. What Ellie saw in Frank’s eyes was a cold and clinical detachment—the soul of a man who, after slitting your throat, would sit back down at the dinner table to resume eating while you lay at his feet, bleeding.

  Ellie was glad she was wearing dark-lensed sunglasses. They hid the fear in her eyes, her rapid blinking. “I mean no disrespect,” she said. “This is just business. I’m sure you’d do the same thing if you were in my position.”

  Frank opened his mouth to speak. He immediately snapped it shut and abruptly pulled over to the side of the road and double-parked. He kept his hands on the steering wheel, squeezing it, and for some reason she thought he was going to backhand her, right here in the car. He didn’t seem like the type to hit a woman, but then again, how many women had come before who had made that mistake?

  “Call me when Sebastian wants to talk,” Ellie said, and turned to the door.

  Frank grabbed her roughly by the wrist.

  “Hold on,” he said.

  He took out his phone and began punching in a number.

  “In person,” Ellie said. “Not over the phone. In person.”

  Frank’s gaze burrowed into her face as he spoke into the phone. “I have someone who insists on meeting with you. Faye Simpson. I’m sitting with her right now. She just informed me she met Paul yesterday. Anton arranged the meeting.”

  The conversation that followed was short, less than a minute. Ellie had no idea what it was about, since Frank didn’t speak. He listened to whatever Sebastian was saying, Ellie unable to make out a single word.

  Frank hung up and placed the phone on the console. As he slid back into morning traffic, his features morphed into a waxy stillness. He didn’t speak.

  Ellie stared out the windshield, trying to collect herself and her thoughts. Her heart wouldn’t stop racing, and she wanted to rub her wrist. He was surprisingly strong, Frank was. Then again, most men were. She realized—and not for the first time—she was at the mercy of men. It frightened her, yes, but she didn’t let it overpower her. She knew how to fight, wasn’t afraid of fighting.

  Fifteen minutes of silence was enough.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To get some pancakes,” Frank replied.

  * * *

  * * *

  Frank sat in monklike silence as they ate a leisurely breakfast at a cash-only diner located less than a mile from the hotel. The only time he addressed her was to tell her how much she owed for her half of the bill.

  She followed Frank back to the car, her stomach full to the point of being uncomfortable. She had stuffed herself on purpose so she would not only be alert but also have enough fuel to help her get through whatever was going to happen next.

  What was going to happen next? She didn’t know, and not knowing was making her second-guess her earlier decision to force Frank’s hand. He didn’t appear angry, but with Frank it was hard to say, the guy as expressive as a chunk of unmolded clay.

  Ellie slid back into the passenger seat, reminding herself that she wasn’t alone. Roland’s people were watching. They wouldn’t let anything happen to her.

  Frank remained quiet and appeared relaxed during the hour-plus drive out of the city—acted as though she wasn’t in the car. Ellie kept a close eye on her surroundings, especially when Frank took the exit for Long Beach.

  Ellie followed the street signs all the way to their destination: 184 Palermo Avenue. A wrought iron gate covered the end of the driveway. The gate opened, and Frank drove toward a spacious Spanish Revival house with plantation shutters and meticulously manicured shrubs. It sat alone on top of a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean and Alamitos Bay, more of a small compound than a home, she thought—the sort of place where power brokers could meet and discuss things openly without having to worry about the prying eyes and ears of neighbors.

  Has to be Sebastian’s house. Ellie had no way of knowing. The bay door of the three-car garage on the west side of the house was already open. There wasn’t another car parked in there—there wasn’t anything—and after Frank pulled inside and came to a smooth stop, the garage door was already closing behind them as he killed the engine, Ellie looked around the garage, wondering why it was so empty. It made her reconsider her choice to meet Sebastian here, on his home turf, instead of a more neutral location.

  Frank had already gotten out of the car. He moved around to the other side and opened the door for her. He didn’t ask her to get out. He reached inside and viciously grabbed her by the arm, his fingers digging deep into the meat of her bicep and finding bone as he yanked her out of the seat.

  She had never fought a man. Ellie had trained for it at the academy, and while she had gotten into her fair share of scrapes when arresting dopeheads, domestic abusers, and drunk drivers, she’d never had to go mano a mano with one. Frank was twice her size and three times as strong, and he was fast—and she was wearing heels. She slipped out of one, twisting her ankle in the process. The pain dis
appeared, replaced by a new one when he grabbed her arm and jerked it behind her back. He jerked it again when he forced it upward, toward her shoulders, in a hammerlock. He grabbed her hair, knotting it in his fist, and he marched her up the small set of stairs, to the back door, which was now open. She fell out of her other shoe and he pushed her forward through a hall, past a massive, airy kitchen and into the foyer, and he tightened his grip on her hair so hard, she was staring up at the vaulted ceiling, at a crystal chandelier. Her throat was exposed; that was all she could think about, that Frank or someone else was going to cut it—and there was at least one other person in the house, Ellie catching a shadow from the corner of her eye just before he moved her up a long set of stairs. Her feet kept tripping and Frank kept applying pressure to her arm, Ellie sure he was going to snap it and rip it from its socket, when he let go and shoved her into a bedroom bursting with sunlight.

  CHAPTER 27

  THE BEDROOM WAS wide, with large windows and a sliding glass door that opened onto a shaded balcony enclosed with balustrades. The only furniture in here was a cheap folding chair. The man standing in the room with her had brought it with him.

  The guy looked like Elmer Fudd on steroids. He was white and young and built like a tank, with wide shoulders, a massive shaved head, and a neck as thick as a tree trunk. He wore a visible earpiece, the kind the Secret Service used, and he had dressed for the part—a navy blue suit with black shoes and a white shirt without a tie. His jacket was open, and as far as Ellie could tell, he wasn’t carrying.

  The bedroom door was closed. He stood next to it, leaning back against the wall, hands tucked in his pants, and as she paced the room, sometimes rubbing the tender area on her arm where Frank had grabbed her, he tracked her movements as though she were a field mouse—a possible nuisance but by no means a threat. He didn’t move or say a word when she turned to the sliding glass door to the balcony, not surprised to find it locked.

  Not that opening it would have done her much good. The drop from the balcony to the backyard was steep; she’d probably break an ankle. Still, she would have risked it. Even with a broken ankle or leg she could have hobbled her way down the slope, to the shoreline, to the scattered people in the not-too-far distance who were walking the beach, pausing to look up at the sky, at the smoke billowing in the far, far distance from the wildfires that seemed to want to consume the entire state, burn everything to the ground.

  Two hours passed. Elmer Fudd took her to the bathroom once, and then back to the room, and shut the door. More waiting. She paced the room, barefoot. Her right ankle hurt, but the pain was manageable, thanks to the adrenaline humming through her limbs.

  Her adrenaline spiked when the screaming started.

  It came from somewhere downstairs and roared past the closed door, causing Ellie to come to an abrupt stop. The floor swayed under her feet and her organs turned to water. Elmer Fudd suppressed a yawn.

  The screaming went on for approximately ninety-eight minutes. She knew the time because she tracked it on her watch. Out of those ninety-eight minutes, the last twenty-two were those of someone experiencing the type of pain associated with the lower rings of hell.

  That someone, she knew, was Anton.

  When he wasn’t screaming in agony, he was cursing in Russian, and every now and then, when she willed herself to be still and strained to listen over the blood exploding against her eardrums, she thought she heard a faint whining sound—the kind made by a power tool motor. She heard it now, that faint whine, heard Anton howl and curse, and Ellie thought she was going to be sick, maybe even faint.

  She had caused this. Whatever hell Anton was experiencing, she had caused it.

  And at some point Frank would come for her. Frank or one of his men, or maybe Frank would contact the man in the room with her over his earpiece, tell him to drag her downstairs.

  Where she’d be tortured.

  Killed.

  The stark, terrifying truth she’d been ducking for the past few hours came at her and hit her in the heart like an arrow:

  She was alone.

  On her own. Roland and his men hadn’t followed her. If they had, they would have been covertly watching the house. They would have known she was being held prisoner here and they would have known Anton was being tortured. They would have known she was next. If they were here, they would have intervened by now, and they hadn’t, because for a reason she didn’t know, they weren’t here; they weren’t watching. She was alone.

  What could she do?

  She could tell Frank who she really was. She could tell him about Brentwood and about Paul and Sophia Vargas and everything she’d seen. She could tell him she was working with Special Agent Roland Bauer of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and his team, that they had been listening and tracking him for months.

  And Frank would then torture her and kill her.

  Ellie turned her back to Elmer Fudd and faced the sliding glass door. A window was cracked open, and she could hear the frenzied squawk of seagulls and waves crashing against the shoreline. Death was waiting for her downstairs, here in this beautiful house with its sweeping ocean views and bright sunlight. You weren’t supposed to go out in a place like this. This house, its location—this was where you came to build your future, not end it.

  Movement behind her. Ellie spun around and saw Elmer standing next to the door now, a meaty hand gripping the knob. She heard approaching footsteps. Frank was coming for her.

  Fear blurred the edges of her vision. Ellie wanted the floor to turn into quicksand, suck her down past this room, to a warm womb where she would drown peacefully and not have to face the consequential horror of her choices.

  Elmer opened the door.

  The man who entered was tall, a good six feet, and had skin the color of cardboard. His thick black hair was cut short, and he wore a black suit, the jacket buttoned, with a lavender-colored tie and a matching pocket square. He smiled warmly, as though she were a guest and not a prisoner.

  “Faye, right?” he said, extending his hand.

  Ellie straightened, nodded confidently even though she didn’t feel confident. His hand felt warm and dry and strong in her limp, damp grip.

  “Nice to meet you,” he said in a jovial tone, like they were meeting at a cocktail party. “I understand you wanted to speak to me.”

  “Are you Sebastian?”

  “I am. Sorry to have kept you waiting. Some unforeseen circumstances, as I’m sure you heard. Billy here treat you okay?”

  Ellie nodded and swallowed dryly, her limbs shaking. She hadn’t known who to expect, but she hadn’t expected to meet a middle-aged Latino who looked like the older version of some guy who might have posed shirtless for the cover of a romance novel. He had a square jaw and sultry lips and the most piercing green eyes she had ever seen in a human being. He also had a drop of blood smeared on his smooth cheek.

  He saw where she was looking and, puzzled, touched his face. He examined his fingers and said, “That reminds me,” and then reached into his pocket and came back with what looked like a sealed bag the size of a deck of cards.

  “For you,” he said, and handed it to her.

  The bag felt light in her hand, the contents as clear as the bag.

  “It’s a poncho,” he said. “I don’t want you to get all wet, ruin your clothes.”

  Ellie didn’t know what terrified her more—whatever horror was waiting for her downstairs or his cavalier manner, Sebastian acting as though torturing another human being was an ordinary, boring activity, like waiting in line at the supermarket.

  “I was hoping we could talk here. About Paul,” Ellie said. “I saw him—”

  “Let’s have this conversation downstairs. It will be far more productive and a much better use of everyone’s time.” He stepped aside and motioned to the doorway with his hand. “After you.”

  Ellie stared at
it as though it were a portal to hell.

  Sebastian said, “If you’re having trouble walking, Billy here can assist you.”

  Ellie walked, her legs shaky and weak, and when she moved into the hall, Sebastian closed the door behind her. She didn’t have to ask where to go; she knew the way.

  The hall ended and she rounded the corner, to a winding staircase that ended in a foyer of travertine marble, the front door so massive it could have been a drawbridge. And this home might as well be a castle. She was trapped inside with the king and his guards, and at the king’s mercy. She gripped the banister, and as she took the steps one at a time, the packaged poncho gripped in her other hand, Ellie felt as though her soul had departed her body, felt as if she were watching her corporeal self trudge reluctantly downstairs, heading to her doom—a prisoner on her way to meet the firing squad.

  Even with her limited time as a street cop, Ellie had seen the myriad ways people hurt and killed one another, and yet there had always been a part of her that clung to the age-old belief that good always found a way to triumph over evil. She remembered something someone had said about how when you found yourself in hell, the key was to keep going, and for a reason she couldn’t fathom, let alone explain, she felt a momentary calmness. She would get through this. She had to get through this in order to find her brother.

  That fragile, scraped-together calmness shattered when she reached Anton.

  The odors hit her first—wet, coppery blood and the unmistakable stench of excrement. Anton, stripped of his clothes and bloodied and beaten and God only knew what else, sat in the center of the main living area, bound to a high-backed dining chair with plastic cuffs that had cut into his wrists and forearms and ankles from thrashing in pain against the restraints. His head hung forward, and he was drooling blood and saliva, his face unrecognizable. There was no question it was him. She recognized the tattoos—the ones that weren’t covered in blood. His blood. God, there was so much of it.