Sins of the Father and Mother (A Tanner Novel Book 42)

by Remington Kane

  “I’m after the same people you are.”

  “I was wondering who killed Johan Becker. That was you?”

  “Yeah, and Becker and his people have recently taken more girls hostage.”

  Taran’s features darkened at that news.

  “The woman you’re working for has a scarred face?”

  “Yes. She was treated horribly years ago. She hired me to help her with the people who wronged her. Nick Collins was one of them.”

  The front door of the house opened, and Vicky Denton stepped out onto the porch. The scars on her face were ragged, but it was her eyes that caught Tanner’s attention. There was a hint of madness in those eyes.

  Vicky met Tanner’s gaze and then looked him over, noticing the weapon secured on his hip.

  “Who is this man, Taran?”

  “He is a friend, Miss Denton. His name is Tanner. He wants the same thing that we do.”

  “I doubt that,” Vicky said. “But bring him inside and we’ll talk.”

  “Is Nancie Ventura still breathing?” Tanner asked.

  Vicky smiled. “She is. I’m going to take my time with her. I owe her for this face of mine, and for my father’s death.”

  At that moment, Bo came barreling around the side of the house. He was headed for Taran. Tanner held up a hand to stop him while gripping Taran’s shoulder with his other hand to keep him from reacting and defending himself.

  “Calm down, Bo. He’s a friend.”

  Bo skidded to a halt and towered over Taran. “Your friend knocked me out and hog-tied me with plastic cuffs.”

  Taran wasn’t intimidated by Bo’s size. He did look perplexed.

  “I checked you for a knife and found none. How did you get loose?”

  “I broke the cuffs by straining against them. Once I had my hands free… I… I… um, hello.” Bo had spotted Vicky Denton. Her scarred face had made him lose his train of thought.

  “Are you coming inside or not?” Vicky said. She didn’t wait for an answer and turned to enter the house again.

  As the men followed, Tanner asked Taran a question.

  “Is that woman sane?”

  “I have wondered that myself,” Taran said, and into the house they went.

  9

  To Hell And Back

  After having her face slashed open at the hands of Nancie Ventura, Vicky Denton had been sent off to a brothel in Uruapan, in the southern portion of Mexico. The trip had taken days and during that time Vicky Denton suffered in agony. Instead of stitches, her face had been taped up, resulting in an infection and high fever.

  The operator of the brothel received a woman who was in such a feverish state that she didn’t even know where she was. He figured she would be dead within days and that he was in risk of losing out on the money he’d paid for her.

  As a result, he placed Vicky in a room and began selling her right away. His customers weren’t the type to care that she was suffering or that her face was wrapped up in bloody bandages. It was her bottom half they were interested in.

  Despite the damage to her face, Vicky was young, shapely, white, and a natural redhead with large breasts. The man made his money back in only four days, and Vicky had been an unwilling receptacle for hundreds of men.

  Instead of dying, she outlasted the fever, which at one point had reached a temperature of 106 degrees. In one way, the fever and its resulting delirium had been a blessing for Vicky. She had almost no memory of her first few days inside the brothel.

  Once she’d recovered and was able to resist, she was bound to a mattress. She endured the degradation of being used like a piece of meat, along with poor rations and unsanitary conditions. When she promised not to be violent to the customers, she was cut loose from the mattress. By then, she had bedsores.

  The first time she stood before a mirror and saw what she looked like, she vomited.

  Vicky Denton had grown up in comfort and a level of luxury. In the brothel, her life was lived among lice, roaches, and rats. Worse of all were the human vermin that infested the place. When drugs were offered to her to dull her senses, she gladly took it. The owner of the brothel was also involved in the drug trade. Getting drugs was no problem for him.

  Vicky existed in a drug-induced haze of bad food, forced sex, and declining health. Eight months after being sold to the brothel she weighed ninety-three pounds and her hair was falling out. She knew the odds were good that she wouldn’t survive much longer but also didn’t welcome death. If she died, she could never get revenge. And Vicky wanted revenge more than she wanted her next breath. When she slept, she dreamt of killing the woman she knew as Mistress.

  Vicky wasn’t fluent in Spanish, but she was able to converse in the language while using simple sentences. When she was growing up, she’d picked up a little of the language from a Mexican housekeeper who had been with them for years.

  Notwithstanding that they were in the same dire situation as her, the other women in the brothel showed no compassion towards her. They called her Monstruosa Blanca, the White Freak. Bizarrely, the women were jealous of her.

  They were allowed to wear nightgowns and sit out in the front room where customers could look them over. Vicky had been ordered to stay in her room and await the steady stream of men who paid to be with her. She didn’t know if it was her white skin, large breasts, or red hair that captivated the men, but she never lacked for customers. She did know one thing. It wasn’t her face that attracted them. Regardless of the cause, she made the brothel money. For that reason, the owner began giving her more food. It was the same unappetizing rice, chicken, and noodle dishes she’d always been given, but the extra calories stopped her weight loss.

  One day, as a sweaty man with too much hair was rutting away inside her, Vicky felt something cool and metallic hit her hip. It was a knife that had fallen out of the man’s pocket. Vicky shoved the blade beneath the edge of the mattress and waited for him to finish. She studied the knife when she had a moment alone. It had a six-inch blade, and it was sharp.

  She was a prisoner in the brothel, as were the other girls. When the brothel was open for business, six guards were on hand. During the off periods, there were only two guards. One of them was a fat man who drank and would sit in a chair and sleep in front of the back door. Vicky decided that he would be her target. If she could kill him quietly and take his keys, she could unlock the door and flee before anyone knew about it.

  Vicky sighed as soon as she came up with the plan. It was a nice fantasy, but not practical. For one thing, she had no idea where she was. She never got more than a quick glimpse at what lay beyond the doors because the windows were all painted black and had bars on them. The building was one level, painted an ugly beige color, and was L-shaped. A glance out the front door only allowed a view of the longer side of the structure.

  She barely understood Spanish, was kept naked, and doubted that she could walk more than two miles before keeling over in exhaustion, as weak as she was.

  She hid the knife in a crevice in a wall. If she ever reached a point where her hatred wasn’t enough to sustain her, then she would use the knife on herself.

  That day never came. Vicky’s loathing for the woman named Mistress wouldn’t let it. She endured a year, then a second, and entered a third year of hell inside that brothel. She didn’t know how or when, but she knew that as long as she still drew a breath, she had a chance at getting revenge. Her body wasn’t the only thing affected by her ordeal; her mind suffered as well. Perhaps the fever had warped her brain, or one of the many bouts of venereal disease, but she knew she was not the same as she had once been.

  For one thing. She no longer cared about the men. In fact, she barely noticed them as they clambered onto her, did their thing, and slid off. Vicky spent her days planning her revenge. In her mind’s eye, she imagined every delicious moment of agony that she would inflict upon Mistress. Visualizing Mistress’s torment often made her break out in laughter. There were times when she found she couldn’t
control herself and would laugh uncontrollably. It happened occasionally while a customer was with her. The men often climbed off of her and backed away as if they were looking at a madwoman. Perhaps they had been.

  Vicky thought of Nick too, but for some reason, she never mustered much hatred for Nick. He had been involved in her abduction, yes, but it was that bitch Regina who had drugged her. Vicky was certain of it. Unlike Inga, Vicky remembered seeing Regina after becoming disoriented by the spiked beer.

  Vicky had been loaded into the van and laid beside Inga, who was already out cold. The drug hadn’t hit her that hard yet, and she remembered asking Regina for help.

  The bitch had laughed at her, laughed, and she even blew her a kiss.

  “Have fun in your new home, Vicky. Look on the bright side. You’ll never have to worry about finding a date again.”

  Vicky remembered that so well, despite the narcotic in her system. Later, she met another repulsive bitch, in the form of Mistress.

  To call what she felt for Mistress mere detestation would be an understatement. There simply was no word vibrant enough to describe the hatred she felt for that cunt.

  Unexpected trouble erupted in the brothel thirty-two months after Vicky entered it. A drug deal was held when the place was closed, and it had gone bad.

  More than a hundred rounds were exchanged between the two sides involved. Vicky laid flat on the floor and waited for the gunfire to cease, as screams and cries of pain competed with the roar of rifles and handguns.

  After it was over, the silence was only broken by the sound of moaning. Vicky wrapped a threadbare blanket around her. Before leaving the room, she peeked out into the hallway. A large man lay on his back. One of the other girls was lying on top of him. They had both been shot multiple times. Vicky could see what had happened. The man must have been holding the woman in front of him as a shield when someone stitched a line of bullets across both of them.

  She found more bodies in the main room. Two were men, but the women had been caught up in the slaughter as well. The office was in a room behind a large mirror. That was where the shooting began. Automatic fire had ripped through the cheap walls and hit the women sitting in the adjacent main room. They were kept on display there during business meetings as a bonus, in case anyone wanted to celebrate their deal with sex.

  That was rarely the case. Most of the deals were concluded in minutes and everyone but the brothel owner left.

  One of the girls was still alive. She went by the name of Angel. Unlike the other girls, Angel had never been mean to Vicky. That is, if you didn’t count the look of disgust on her face every time she looked at Vicky. Vicky couldn’t fault her for that. She had the same reaction whenever she saw her face in a mirror. Angel had been struck in the left calf. She was huddled in a corner of the room and shaking from fright.

  That was when Vicky realized that she wasn’t scared at all and hadn’t been scared even when the shooting was going on. She didn’t fear pain anymore, and if a bullet had ended her life, then so what? Everyone died. The only tragedy would be that she had never lived long enough to seek revenge.

  Vicky moved on into the office. When she saw what was spilled across the floor in there, a rare smile curved her lips.

  There was money, piles of money, American money, in stacks of hundred-dollar bills. Along with the money were packages of white powder that Vicky recognized as cocaine. There were also the bodies of the brothel owner and his bodyguards, along with the corpses of three other men, and guns, lots of guns.

  Vicky took in that scene and hope blossomed within her. She was free, and the money and drugs would make her rich. She was going to get her revenge after all.

  Vicky took the clothes off a man who had suffered a head wound. She hadn’t worn clothes in years, and it felt strange, it was doubly odd because the clothing was male and too big for her. Her feet swam in the shoes and even with the belt as tight as she could make it, the pants wanted to fall down. She rushed back to her room and claimed the knife she had hidden there. She used it to poke new holes in the belt. In one of the other rooms, she found pillowcases. She used them to stuff the money and drugs into, to have something to carry them in. She was breathing hard because she was unaccustomed to exerting herself and although she wasn’t afraid, she felt a sense of urgency.

  The shooting had been loud. Someone would come to investigate, possibly more drug people or the police. She had to get out of there.

  When Vicky opened the door, she saw several vehicles. Beyond that there was nothing but fields of green. The brothel was at the center of a vast avocado farm. Looking at the cars made her realize that she’d forgotten to grab a set of keys. It would also be a good idea to take one of the guns.

  As Vicky went back inside, the girl named Angel struggled to stand on her injured leg. She called to her.

  “Take me with you.”

  Vicky ignored her and went back into the office. She decided to take a handgun rather than a rifle. The one she claimed was a Glock. She took it off a dead man who had soiled his pants. He was the best dressed of the bunch, so Vicky figured that he might also have the best weapon. She knew almost nothing about guns but did know that they needed bullets if they were going to be useful. After checking the man’s pockets, she came across a key fob and a spare magazine for the gun.

  Angel had made it outside and was looking around. She was dressed in a short red silk robe.

  “I always thought that we were in a city, but it’s a damn farm.”

  Vicky walked past her and headed for a black Mercedes. She tossed the money and the drugs in the trunk and climbed behind the wheel.

  Angel hobbled up to the side of the car, she was trailing blood. “Take me with you. I can help. Do you even speak Spanish?”

  “I understand it enough,” Vicky said, and started the engine.

  “You took their stuff, didn’t you? The drugs and money?”

  “Why would I leave it behind?”

  “The drugs, the money, they belong to a cartel; they must. They’ll send people after you, and with your face, you won’t be hard to find.”

  Vicky had placed the car in drive, then paused. Angel had a point. Her face would make it difficult for her to do anything, no matter how much money she had. And she was in a foreign country, which would make it harder still.

  “Get in the car,” Vicky said. Angel hobbled around to the passenger door, cried out as she lifted her injured leg inside, then plopped into the seat. Vicky drove off, leaving hell behind.

  Angel turned out to be a godsend for Vicky. The petite woman drew much less attention than she would have and enabled them to gather new clothes, food, and a place to stay.

  While in the brothel, Vicky had been given drugs to calm her down. Her withdrawal from the substance was mild and she eased it by drinking alcohol instead. Angel had been given heroin and was an addict. Instead of trying to ween herself off the drug, she indulged in it more than ever. Vicky gave her the money to do so. She needed to keep Angel happy because she had to rely on her for almost everything.

  Vicky was in the country illegally, lacked good language skills, and was certain that there were people in the drug world looking for her. If she showed her face, her most memorable face, anywhere, she would attract attention she didn’t need.

  Angel had no family. She had grown up an orphan. She did know people who were in the drug trade, and it was through them that Vicky managed to sell off the cocaine. She had no idea if she had gotten a good price or not, but over a period of seven months they had managed to sell the drugs without attracting the attention of the wrong people. Vicky was sure that if she would have attempted to sell it all at once that it would have set off alarm bells for the people looking for them.

  Patience had another positive effect. During those seven months Vicky had regained much of the weight she’d lost, and with it, her health.

  With more than a million dollars to work with, Vicky was able to obtain fake ID and safe passage back
into the United States on a boat. She took Angel’s name as a surname and used her middle name of Hannah as a first name. She was Hannah Angel.

  Vicky didn’t want to go by her own name anymore. With her father dead, she had only a few cousins whom she hadn’t seen since she was a child. She also had no intention of going to the law and revealing what had happened to her.

  She didn’t want Mistress and the others arrested, tried, and convicted. She wanted them dead.

  Angel had plans to go with her to Florida and Vicky was glad. Angel had become a friend, and she had proven herself trustworthy while converting the drugs into cash. It would have been easy for Angel to have taken off with the drugs or money at any time, but she hadn’t done that. Perhaps it was because Vicky gave her cash whenever she needed it. It turned out that she might have been too free with the money.

  Most of Angel’s money went into buying heroin. Three days before their planned trip to America, Angel died of an overdose. She had been only nineteen.

  Vicky entered the United States on a shrimp boat with plans to track down Mistress. The private detectives she hired failed to find Nick Duffy, Regina Young, or the woman called Mistress. Until Vicky knew their real names, it was unlikely that she would ever find them.

  Her frustration level was high when a miracle occurred, and Inga Olson turned up. Inga did want to involve the police, and their resources made a difference.

  Nick Duffy’s real name was Nick Collins, his father was named Arthur. Despite Inga’s insistence that the Collins family had been behind her abduction and the abduction of many others, there was no proof. The family had come up with an alibi. At the time Spring Break had taken place the year Inga was abducted, the Collins family had been vacationing in Canada. They had somehow manufactured evidence that backed up their claim.

  Inga was adamant that they were the ones who had taken her, but without proof or more witnesses, there was nothing that the law could do. The same was not true for Vicky. Her investigators uncovered that Nick had a cousin named Regina. It was the same Regina who had helped to abduct Vicky.