Beauty & the Beast

by Nancy Holder

  They flew up more flights. Drenched in sweat, her knees and thighs aching as badly as her wrists, Heather fought to keep up with the Russian. Her butt was throbbing.

  Then they were on the roof and the moonlight was shining down on them again. The rooftop was littered with beer cans, broken glass, and trash, which Heather gamely waded through as Svetlana yanked her toward the edge of the roof.

  The edge of the roof?

  Remembering what had happened to Ravi, Heather opened her mouth to scream for help. But that was stupid; the only people for miles around wanted to kill her. And if Svetlana had planned to kill her, she would have done it already. But images of Ravi’s death and his hideous swan dive to the street whirled in her brain like a kaleidoscope. Her mouth filled with acid and her stomach clenched. She dug in her heels but Svetlana didn’t notice as she reached the roof’s edge.

  She’s been nice to me, Heather reminded herself, but she was moving into panic overdrive. For a couple of crazy seconds she thought about pushing Svetlana off the roof. She’s been really nice. She’s already saved my life.

  Svetlana trotted down the edge of the roof to the corner, made a right, and kept going. She glanced over her shoulder at Heather, who debated what to do, filled her lungs with the fetid rooftop air, and caught up.

  “Look.” Svetlana pointed down. Incredibly, there was what looked like an occupied small industrial park amid the cityscape of dead factories and warehouses, and in it, an open mini-mart. Bright lights from the entrance coated the front of the store and the parking lot. There was one car in the space next to the front door.

  “Come,” Svetlana said.

  Back toward the stairs they ran, just as in the distance SUV engines roared. Their footsteps clanged loudly as they crashed down the rungs and the notion seized Heather that the murderers could hear them and would know immediately to come into this building. The mini-mart was blocks away and whoever was inside probably wouldn’t bother to call the police if someone was trespassing in this desolate landscape.

  They left the building. Heather reflexively crouched over to make herself a smaller target as they ran down an alley. She tried to visualize where the mini-mart was and squeaked out a shout when Svetlana hung a sharp left at a T-intersection and made for open ground—a vacant lot.

  “No! We have to stay hidden,” Heather yelled, but if Svetlana heard and/or understood her, she completely ignored Heather and leaped over a truck tire. Glass, cans, half-opened foam containers draped with rotting fast food dotted the dirt like land mines. By then Heather had completely lost track of their location and could only trust that Svetlana was seeing the bigger picture.

  They reached a stretch of chain link and Heather staggered backwards in despair. There was no way she could climb it. She was done in. Done for.

  “Go, go, go!” Svetlana bellowed, smacking her on the arm.

  “Ow! I can’t!” Heather cried.

  “Shut up! Up!” Svetlana smacked her on her butt. It hurt like the world’s biggest bee sting. Then the woman bent down and positioned her shoulder under Heather’s bottom and straightened. She locked her knees. “Up!” she ordered.

  Sweat stung Heather’s eyes. Her hair was in her face. She couldn’t see what she was doing. But she hooked her fingers around the chain link and slid her toes into the diamond as if she was going horseback riding and the wire was a stirrup. She grunted from the pain but pulled herself up.

  Svetlana said something in Russian. “Good, good, good, Heather. Good. More. Faster.”

  Heather almost retorted, “I’m trying.” But trying would get them killed. She had to do this.

  It took her a year, or so it seemed, but she was finally teetering at the top of the fence. The ground danced far below. She was afraid the drop would damage her ankles and was about to inch back down when Svetlana pushed her hard and she plummeted to the earth. Her cry of pain was masked by the sound of Svetlana’s falling body as she joined her.

  “I’m hurt, I’m hurt,” Heather said. “I can’t go on.”

  “Shut up.”

  Svetlana stood and pulled her to her feet. Heather rocked back and forth. Svetlana took off without looking to see if Heather was following her. Miraculously, Heather kept pace, moving through a white-hot curtain of fiery torture.

  They hung a sharp left and it was like they had crossed the border into another country: There was a purple OPEN sign in the window of the blessed mini-mart and a clerk behind the counter, head down, probably texting.

  And texting meant a phone.

  Svetlana pushed open the door, gun in hand, and ran inside, Heather a few steps behind her. The clerk shouted, “Whoa!” and raised his hands in the air. His phone lay in front of him.

  “Nyet, police!” Svetlana cried, pointing to his phone.

  “Please, call the police,” Heather translated. “Call them now. People are after us!”

  “Call, call, call!” Svetlana said. She whirled around in a circle. “Where is buying phone?”

  “Hey, so wait! Wait!” the clerk said.

  Heather darted forward and grabbed the guy’s phone. She showed it to Svetlana, who nodded. Heather punched in 911. The dispatcher answered.

  “This is an emergency!” Heather cried. “I’m at—” She looked at the clerk, who just stood there, mouth opening and closing. “Oh, God, what is this address?” she demanded.

  “You say or I’ll kill you!” Svetlana shouted, aiming her gun directly at the poor, terrified man. He fell to his knees behind the counter and began to cry.

  “Is there a robbery in progress, ma’am?” the dispatcher asked. Cool as a cucumber. Probably waiting for break time and telling the rest of the dispatchers how many robberies this made for the night.

  “Yes!” Heather cried. “I mean no!” What if the cops rushed in and shot them? They wouldn’t do that. Cops were not the foolhardy, trigger-happy mavericks people saw on TV. Except when they were.

  She said into the phone, “I mean we need you! We need the police now! People are after us. Russian mobsters! In pursuit!” She tried to remember police codes. “My sister is Detective Catherine Chandler of the one-two-five precinct. Two females. We are in danger!” If she had been on a landline, the dispatcher would see where she was. Stupid, stupid cell phone.

  Then she got an idea. Running down the aisles toward a bathroom sign, she caught sight of a bulletin board tacked with flyers about minimum wage, governmental regulations, and a business license for Marco’s Cash & Carry. And on the license was the address. Same as on that roast beef sandwich.

  “Is this a prank call?” the dispatcher demanded. “We are very busy here. There are severe penalties for tying up the emergency line for specious reasons—”

  “Here, here is the address,” Heather cried. She was halfway through it when Svetlana raced up behind her and grabbed her arm.

  “Go!” Svetlana shouted. “Ilya is here! Out back way!”

  “They’re here!” Heather yelled. “Zip code! Here’s the zip code!”

  She ran. She couldn’t hear anything and had no idea if the dispatcher was even still there.

  A popping sound behind them drew her up short. Svetlana yanked on her, sending shooting pains up Heather’s arm. She dropped the phone and picked it up. Pressed it against her ear as she stumbled for purchase.

  “That is Ilya,” Svetlana whispered. “Police are coming?”

  “Hello? Hello?” Heather whispered into the phone. “Dispatcher, are you there?”

  Dial tone.

  “You-you bitch,” Heather said, letting out a sob. Tears and sweat poured down her face. As she allowed Svetlana to herd her along, she punched in Tess’s number.

  “Vargas.” Yes, yes, yes, it was Tess.

  “Tess, oh, my God!” Heather whispered. “I was kidnapped. I got away. I’m with Svetlana. She has a gun. We just left Marco’s Cash and Carry. Here’s the address.” She rattled it off. “We’re heading…” She had no idea what direction they were going. “…away fr
om the mini-mart. Out the back door. I don’t see street signs. I don’t see anything! Can you track us?”

  “Call JT,” Tess said. “Get on his grid. Right now. He’s got the good stuff. Then download ‘Find My Phone’ if you can and invite me to follow you. If you can. Don’t jeopardize your safety to do this. Get to JT first.”

  “Right, right,” Heather said.

  “I’m on my way. I’ll call for backup. Call me back when you’re done with JT. Help is coming.” Tess was all business but Heather heard both the joy and the terror that Tess was clamping down. “Is Anatoly Vodanyov the man who kidnapped you?”

  “Yes,” Heather said as Svetlana pulled her into another alley and they ran the length. “Svetlana helped me escape, okay? She’s a good guy.” She also throws dead people off roofs, but tonight, she is my guardian angel.

  “Okay. I’ll pass that along. How many subjects are after you?” Tess asked. “What’s your situation right now?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe a dozen guys. It seems like a dozen. We’re running in an alley. There’s a lot of alleys around here. We heard gunshots.” She jerked, then stumbled over her own feet. Svetlana glared at her and she hurried to catch up. “The clerk! What if they hurt him? This is his cell phone. He can’t call for help!”

  “I’ll send an ambulance,” Tess assured her. “Stay out of sight. Don’t go back there.”

  Angry men yelling in Russian punctured what little composure Heather had built up. She jerked hard and almost dropped the phone again. Svetlana duck-walked, head down low, and hissed at Heather to keep up.

  “Tess!” Heather whispered. “They’re almost here!”

  “Call JT. Call me back. If I don’t hear from you I’ll call you in five minutes so get your phone on vibrate if you can. If you can’t, tell JT. I don’t want to get you shot.”

  “Okay. Don’t forget the ambulance.” Heather disconnected and ran after Svetlana.

  Find us. Find us and save us. Please.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Vincent came to, the spinning in his head compounded by the erratic and violent oscillation of the huge ship as it forged ahead. Although its engines were still running, the tremendous explosion had killed the lights, at least in this section of Deck Four, and possibly throughout the rest of the vessel. A beast did not need lights to see in the dark, but the people he had come to rescue most certainly would. He fumbled around on the floor around him and found the lantern.

  As he got to his feet, the roar of the blaze was considerably softer. At first he thought his eardrums had been overloaded by the concussion of the explosion, but there was no accompanying ringing in his head. Perhaps the blast’s shock wave had suffocated some of the fires? Because of the drop in noise volume it was easy for him to relocate the two sets of human heartbeats, both of them trip-hammering. There were other heartbeats as well, same location, but not human, beating in a wild jumble. He picked up the breathing mask, as he knew stabilizing Bethany’s father’s condition might require oxygen.

  As he hurried down the corridor, random details of the aftermath of the explosion stuck in his consciousness. Though there was some buckling evident in the ceiling panels and signs of ruptured seams in the walls, there was no scorching or jagged edges or explosive pitting anywhere, which would have indicated close proximity to the event. It was clear the explosion had had its epicenter somewhere above him, and the intervening decks had cushioned its full deadly force. If the hull had been breached by it, things were going to go south in a hurry.

  The Bethany trail ended at a closed storeroom door. The heartbeats he sensed, human and animal, were coming from the other side of it. A sense of relief swept over him—he had found two of them and they were still alive.

  He quickly switched on the lantern. He hit the door once hard with his fist and announced, “Emergency rescue coming in!” Then he turned the latch.

  As he opened the door, a yard-tall, four-legged whirlwind galloped out and shot past him. He turned and pinned the creature’s backside with the light for a second before it disappeared down the hallway. A Great Dane. It had to be Bethany’s dog. Where Sprinkles was headed, or thought he was headed, Vincent had no clue.

  “We’re in here!” Bethany shouted from the dark. “Please help us!”

  Vincent turned the light beam into the small room. Bethany was kneeling over her father, who had collapsed onto the deck on his back. Tears streaked her face, and she looked panicked, desperate. Two smaller dogs—a German shepherd and a Shih Tzu—with their leashes tethered to the legs of a table started barking and growling at him. The German shepherd bared his fangs, snapped, and tried to take a hunk out of Vincent’s leg. In the windowless steel room the noise they made was deafening. Vincent shined the light on his own face.

  “It’s me, Bethany. I’m here to get you out.”

  “Help my dad! Hurry, help him! He can’t stand up.”

  “Have you seen Mr. Milano? Did he accompany you?”

  “No! We don’t know where he is!”

  The dogs kept barking. Vincent turned to them and said, “Quiet.” The smallest dog shut up, but the shepherd kept barking and trying to get at him. Then he said it again in German. It was like he had flipped a switch. The animal immediately sat and looked up at him with rapt attention. The shepherd was a guard dog, maybe police or military trained. Vincent had worked with similar K9s in Afghanistan.

  “Bethany, can you hold this light for me so I can examine your dad?” he said.

  She took the lantern from him. The beam veered wildly around the floor of the little room. The girl was shaking from head to foot.

  “Can you please try to hold it steady?”

  Vincent bent over Mr. Daugherty, first loosening his tie and collar, then reaching down to take his pulse at the wrist.

  “He kind of passed out after we hid in here, before the explosion,” Bethany said. “Is he going to be okay? Say he’s going to be okay.”

  His pulse was irregular and weak.

  “Of course, he’s going to be fine,” Vincent said, trying to be as calm and convincing as he could. He passed his hand between the light source and the man’s eyes, making a shadow cross his face. The pupils were reactive. Good sign. But even in the harsh light, his skin and lips had an alarming bluish pallor to them. And the man appeared drowsy, like he was drifting in and out of consciousness. Whether it was from shock or trauma, Vincent knew his heart was not functioning normally.

  He leaned closer to the man’s ear. “Mr. Daugherty, Mr. Daugherty, can you hear me?”

  Bethany’s father opened his mouth as if to speak, but no sound came out of his throat. After a moment he gave up and shut his eyes. The effort was too much for him.

  “Is my dad okay?” Bethany asked shrilly. “This is all my fault. He tried to stop me from coming down to get Sprinkles, but I wouldn’t listen. He wouldn’t let me go by myself. I dragged him down here with me. I made him run.” The light moved away from where Vincent was working, leaving him and his patient suddenly in the dark. The beam swept wildly around the windowless room.

  “Oh, my God, where is Sprinkles?”

  Vincent noted the question, but paid no attention to it. He slipped the oxygen tank from his shoulders and put the mask over the man’s nose and mouth. “Breathe normally, Mr. Daugherty. Nice deep, even breaths. Everything’s under control. Everything’s going to be fine. We’ll get you out of here in a minute or two.”

  “Where is Sprinkles?” Bethany practically screamed into his ear.

  He didn’t need this. Not now.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as he worked on her father, “but when I opened the door he brushed right past me. I couldn’t stop him and I couldn’t catch him. Why wasn’t he tied up like the other dogs?”

  “How could you do that?” Bethany raged. “How could you be so stupid?”

  Vincent let her fury roll over him. “I didn’t know your dog was loose in here.”

  “He wasn’t loose. He was tied up. He got scar
ed and broke the leash. We’ve got to find him!”

  “I need to stabilize your father and get him up to the main deck where he can get proper treatment.”

  “I want my dog. I’m not going anywhere without him.”

  “Mr. Daugherty, are you feeling any better? Is the oxygen helping you get back some strength?”

  The man nodded weakly.

  “Do you know where Terry Milano is?”

  He shook his head.

  Okay, two humans and two dogs out of three each… for the moment. Time for triage and that gut call. Mr. Daugherty needed help now.

  “There’s enough air in the tank to make you comfortable while I carry you up to the lifeboats. Are you ready for me to do that?”

  His eyes went wild, looking around the dark room for his daughter. He shook his head violently: No. No.

  Vincent could see he had a big problem on his hands.

  “Bethany, I need help getting the other two dogs up to safety while I carry your dad,” he said evenly. “Can you help me do that? We’ll come right back and find Sprinkles. I promise you.”

  “No, I’m not going to leave him down here alone and scared. I’ll keep the two dogs with me until you come back.”

  Vincent wanted to explain the grave danger she was putting herself in, but he realized it would only make her position regarding Sprinkles more entrenched and she would be even less inclined to go with him. He decided to take another tack.

  “Your father needs medical attention immediately. I can’t give it to him down here. I don’t have the supplies. He needs medication and he needs it now. I can’t leave you here. You have to come with us.”