Chapter 6
Dimitri and John climbed into his BMW after running a scanner over it. No bugs.
He opened the garage door and backed out.
As he drove away from his house, he asked, “Why Kladno?”
“I just remember a house there. A Renaissance residence she said one of her lovers had acquired for her. Since we can find no record of it, I decided we should check it out ourselves.”
This was the first he was hearing about it. Several blocks later, he checked his mirrors and saw three cars following him. He took E48 northwest out of the city.
“Why do you think this is the place?” he asked.
Cars piled up behind him. In the dark it was hard to tell if any were following him or just heading out of Prague to home, to another city, or even into Germany.
Neither he nor John talked as they drove toward the old city. The expressway was busy tonight. Cars passed him, and several he guessed were driving under the influence, even though it was prohibited. He had his expressway pass, which he always kept current. Never knew when he’d need to take a trip such as this.
The town of Kladno came into view, its lights winking in the night. An old city, it boasted a population of about eighty thousand. A big center of industry, especially coal for the Czech Republic, he knew it was a quiet historical town few sought out. In fact, he’d never done more than drive through it. There were other towns he’d visited, and preferred. Kladno, though charming with its mixture of medieval and Renaissance melding with the modern factories, had never appealed to him.
He followed John’s directions. Twice they took a wrong turn, but finally they arrived.
It was almost two in the morning when he pulled up in front of the large house on a quiet street. For all appearances, this was just the average historical town house, shaded a different color than the one next to it, but it was set behind its own iron fence and gate.
He looked around. “Does the house have a garage or a courtyard to park the car?”
A gray Audi drove passed them. He watched in the mirror as the car braked at the next intersection and turned right.
“I think there was a courtyard around back,” John said.
“This it?”
“Yes.”
“You’re certain? I don’t care to deal with the Kladno police because you think this might be the place.”
John didn’t answer as he climbed out of the car.
Dimitri looked up at the four-story house. He opened the door and climbed out of the car. Nothing moved. No one passed in front of the windows. The houses on either side were quiet and dark.
The air hung heavy with oncoming rains and the sharp smell of coal. He could hear the faint hum of the plants outside of town.
Their doors clicked in the night. He transferred his phone to vibration mode and watched as John did the same.
He pulled his SIG from his shoulder holster.
“Ready?” he asked John.
“I’ve been ready for three fucking years,” John muttered.
*****
Elianya shook her head, shocked at what had happened. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.
With a curse at the guards who had heard nothing and had let the bastards leave—or so they said—she paced. What the hell did she do now?
“Madam?”
She stared at the body and wondered how the hell to get out of this mess. Leave it to men to fuck things up.
“What?” she snapped. They’d have to dispose of the body, well, bodies. She wasn’t about to chance leaving the other one alive. And they had yet to find the other one.
“Explain to me again, what the hell happened?”
The guard shuffled his feet, and said, “We thought . . .” He cleared his throat.
“Yes?”
“That is, we were going to do a practice run, and—”
She held up her hand. “You wanted to make a bit of money on the side.” She pierced the idiot to the spot. “Don’t lie to me. I’ll always know. I detest liars, and lying.” Well, she did. “Doing something is not nearly as grievous an offense as lying about it.” She crossed her arms and tapped her fingernails atop her sleeves. “Remember that if you don’t want me to end your career too soon.”
She looked back to the body. Young. Too damn young to be dead, and this one would have made her so much money. Small for her teenage years, she was almost an exact replica of her much younger and alive—though hiding—sister.
So much for the shoot tonight. Damn idiots. “Do not ever again try a stunt like this.”
The girl could easily have passed as twelve, and with some digital enhancements even younger. Shit. And the girls had been such a find—hell, even a bargain at the price she obtained them at from the greedy Ukrainian relative.
“There’s someone coming, madam.”
His words jerked her back. She whirled to the doorway where the guard stood. “Who? The police?”
He shook his head. “No, your brother’s man. Petrolov.”
Her mind racing, she realized this might not be so bad. “This might work. Kill him when he gets up here.”
His eyes widened.
She walked to him, patted his cheek and said, “He’s a loose end and it’s not as if my brother will care.” She laughed to herself. The guard, a remnant of Russia’s once feared KGB, merely narrowed his green gaze at her. “Do you wish to take Petrolov’s place?” she snapped. “I assure you, if he’s here, he has an idea of what’s going on, and he won’t like it. That one will turn on those involved. You don’t want him to see you. When you’re done with him, find the other girl and bring her to me. We should probably just kill her. I want no loose ends.” She shrugged. “No, let her live. But get this place cleaned. We have another appointment scheduled for tomorrow evening.”
She grabbed the edge of the counterpane and tossed it over the girl. “Wrap the girl and bring her to my car. Quickly. We’ve got to get rid of her.”
Hurrying out of the room, she turned on the next landing and motioned for her driver to follow her. To the other guard, she said, “Grab videotapes and the folder and CPU sitting on the office desk. Get those in the car in back and be quick about it.”
She looked over the balcony into the darkened entrance below. They’d enter the house at any moment.
Did Dimitri know his boss was dead yet?
Hurrying, she hoped they wouldn’t discover her library. Damn it. With any luck, her Russian guard would follow through with his job and then she could come back here and oversee the cleanup. They all but ran down the old servants’ stairs at the back of the hallway, down to the kitchens and out into the courtyard.
The cold night air hit her in the face, damper here than it had been in Prague. She watched her driver quietly shut the trunk lid. She slid in the backseat and told the guards to go back in and finish it.
The car started and pulled into the misty night. She watched out the back window, but no one followed. No shot fired. Nothing.
Chuckling, she smiled. So damn easy.
“I believe we should head down to Vienna. I’m in the mood for a spa. What do you think?”
“Yes, madam.”
“Of course we must first dispose of some of our cargo.”
“Yes, madam.”
So easy.
*****
October 31, 1:56 a.m.
Raven jogged through the night, watched as the men climbed over the gate. Two of them. She’d followed them all the way from Prague and just knew she’d been made several times, but apparently not.
Lights shone upstairs, creating halos in the gathering mist.
She should just stay out here.
From her point farther down from the house, she saw a car pull out into a back alley and drive in the opposite direction of the street they were all on.
She frowned.
No way they could have gotten inside and then driven away.
She should stay out here.
The darkness swallowed her bla
ck clothing and she put her hand on her gun under her jacket. Moving quickly, she climbed the black iron fence farther down from the gate. Perched precariously on the top, she scanned the ground and shadows. Nothing moved. She jumped, landed, rolled to her feet in one fluid motion, her gun out, scanning the area around her. Bloody trees cast some deep shadows.
She hurried to the side of the house, and decided on a darkened window.
Unzipping the pack on her back, she pulled out the suction cup and diamond bit. Contraption always reminded her of geometry class and those protractors that students could use as weapons if they so chose.
The glass cut quickly away, and she unlocked the window, swinging her leg up and listening before crawling in. Place smelled like a rose garden. She wrinkled her nose.
Showtime.
*****
Dark. So dark.
She sucked her thumb, her heart thundering in her ears.
She saw what the men did. The mean, mean men. One of them hurt her. Hurt her bad. But she’d gotten away. She didn’t like his hands.
She’d run.
And she’d heard her sister, Zoy, stop screaming. They’d held Zoy down, their hands at her throat . . .
She slapped her hands over her ears and tried to be quiet. Very, very quiet. They couldn’t find her. She knew what would happen if they did. They’d made her watch. Told her it would be her turn soon.
Her sister had yelled at them, cursing the men who did this.
The house was so quiet.
She shivered and closed her eyes, curled tighter in her hiding place. What if they found her?
Should she leave the house? They might see and it was dark outside.
The monsters would get her if she left. And snakes.
She whimpered and wished Zoy would come for her.
The monsters would get her if she wasn’t quiet.
Quiet, quiet. Like a shadow.
*****
Dimitri slipped into the house first, John covering him and closing the door behind them both. They checked the downstairs rooms. Nothing. John took the second story, Dimitri decided on the third.
The thick carpet on the stairs swallowed his footfalls.
A sweet floral scent waved in the air. Nothing stirred in the house. He glanced behind him when he reached the top, thinking one of the shadows shifted, but no, nothing moved. He waited, staring at that space just to the bottom of the stairs.
Then he heard it. Just a whisper of a sound. Like a . . . whimper? Moan? He pulled back, aiming the gun at the floor as he hurried along the wall, checking first one room then another.
He heard nothing from John below stairs.
The room at the end of the corridor cast a soft glow into the darkened hallway. Thick carpets covered the floors. The walls were tasteful, with high-dollar art hanging on them. And unless he was mistaken, that one there was a Rembrandt.
Sculptures and plants filled alcoves.
Nothing moved, nothing stirred. He stepped closer to the room at the end of the hallway.
Nerves skittered along his skin. He knew, knew he wouldn’t like what was in that room. And just like that, he felt it. The cold ice seeping down over him, slowing everything, focusing his senses. His heart thrummed against his chest.
He stood to the side of the door, heard a soft thump from below and started to call out to John, when he heard the moan again. He swung back to the room, his gun aimed.
With the toe of his boot, he pushed the door open the rest of the way. It swung open slowly. At first he saw nothing but a large room done in white lace and pale yellows, a fireplace, a seating area with wingback, yellow damasked chairs. Teddy bears and dolls scattered against one wall. A large dollhouse sat beneath a window.
But then he saw the camera equipment, black and gangly, almost alien in the room. The camera was aimed beyond his vision.
He stepped into the room.
The camera was aimed at the bed.
Jesus. He froze.
But the bed was empty.
He hurried into the room, scanned the area, noted the floor-to-ceiling mirror on one wall. The dolls and bears, the small white bed.
He glanced away, but a spot caught his attention.
He walked back to the bed.
A spot near a pillow, a smear on the sheet further down.
Sickness rolled through him.
Dolls. Bears. This was a child’s room.
For show?
Or more?
Elianya was into child porn.
Christ.
His breathing quickened as he stared at the stains. He reached out and touched one, surprised when the spot left a damp red imprint on his finger.
Still fresh.
He looked back to the camera. One a digital. Expensive cameras, both digital and 35mm, sat on tripods. Lights glared down on the bed from their stands on their own tripods.
Then it clicked. His head jerked back to the cameras. A fucking set. Goddamn it. Quickly, he walked to the digital and saw the last picture. A man covering a girl.
A young girl.
Son of a bitch! Something inside him snapped. He heard it crack, break and shatter. He stood there, flexing his fingers over the butt of his gun. Flex. Flex. Flex.
A muscle jumped in his cheek and he bit down until he knew his teeth would shatter and pain shot up to his brain.
Flex. Flex. Flex.
All he saw was the girl, obscenely naked and being horribly abused.
Then he looked closer and jerked back.
Dead. Her eyes stared wide at the camera, glazed . . . but . . . He looked back at the bed. Then back to the camera. The man’s hands were at her throat.
Ice trickled over his skin, the room around him blurring. The young girl’s face on the camera shifted to others he hadn’t been able to help. To others he had. To faces he wanted to forget and knew he never would . . .
He blinked and focused.
Rage hot and thick threatened to break through the ice.
He took a deep breath.
So small. She was so damn small with her cloud of black hair, pale face and blue, blue eyes pleading . . .
His heart hammered in his chest.
Flex. Flex. Flex.
A shot pinged across the room, an explosion in the silence. He whirled, kicked out, and brought his hand up, knocking the gun out of the man’s hand. A useless move, for the man was already falling, even as the gun slammed into the wall. Dimitri aimed his SIG Sauer even as the man thumped dead to the floor.
A woman, dressed all in black, stood in the doorway, her gun still pointed in his direction. For just a moment, a split second, his finger tightened on the trigger as he thought it had been John, but no. The man dead at his feet, with half his head blown across the wall, wasn’t John.
He and the woman stared at each other. He didn’t take his eyes off her. And in that instant, the world shifted back.
She stood there, dressed in black—black pants, boots, a turtleneck and leather jacket—tall, athletic. Dark hair, mocha skin, and those icy green eyes. The woman from the bar.
“He had a gun aimed at the back of your head,” she said softly. She had a British accent.
They still didn’t lower their weapons.
“Didn’t want him to take your mark?” he asked, his voice graveled more than normal.
She smiled, dimples winking at him. “Oh, I haven’t marked you,” she said, tilting her head, “yet.”
He narrowed his gaze at her even as hers shifted beyond him to scan the room. He saw the color leave her cheeks. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” she whispered. She licked her lips, swallowed. “Is this room what I think it is?”
Still staring at her, he shook his head. “Put your gun down.”
“Are you going to shoot me?”
For one moment, she stared at him, then shrugged and lowered her weapon, still pale, her eyes darting this way, then that. “Fine, but I draw the line at handing it over to you.” She shoved it into her pants.
&n
bsp; “Who are you?” Dimitri asked.
“I think the more important question is who are you, Mr. Petrolov.”
Again they stared at each other.
“Are you Raven?”
She grinned, but didn’t answer his question. “I hear your partner coming up the stairs.”
He listened and heard John’s soft footsteps hushing along the carpets. Why hadn’t he heard her?
“Where did you come from?” he asked.
“I followed you.”
Of course she had. He motioned for her to come into the room. He felt his phone ring, but ignored it. John walked to the doorway. He took one look around, took a deep breath, another. “Christ. A bloody fucking porn set.” Then he turned to the woman. “Hello, Lenora.”
“Hello, John.”
John looked from one to the other. “Which one of you killed this guard?”
“This guard?” Dimitri asked.
John jerked his head to the doorway. “Took out one downstairs in some sort of study.”
“I did,” the woman said. “Mr. Petrolov doesn’t seem too impressed, even though the bleeding bugger had a gun aimed at the back of Mr. Petrolov’s head.”
John’s gaze narrowed on his. “This true?”
Dimitri turned away from them and back to the camera, then glanced again at the bed. Still, like a broken doll, she lay in frame, but no longer in reality. Where the hell was the girl?
“I think someone died here,” he said softly, glancing at the other camera.
He wanted to flip back through all the cameras. But at present, he knew he simply couldn’t stomach what he’d see on them.
“What?” John asked.
He pointed. “Blood on the sheets.” Then he pointed to the cameras. “From the last frame on this digital, I’d have to say our pedophile went a bit too far.”
John and Lenora walked to stand behind him. John took another deep breath and started to flip through the digital shots. Dimitri ignored most of what he was seeing. Right now, he simply couldn’t handle it. But then a flash of white at the edge of one frame caught his attention.
“Wait.”
John looked at him, his face grim. “What?”
“Do the next one. I think there was another girl.”
Deadly Games Page 7