Pretty Like an Ugly Girl (Baer Creighton Book 3)

by Clayton Lindemuth

  The second doors open, Nat peered into the hall. It led straight to a set of glass doors, and beyond, a balcony with dancing women. According to Finch, Wayman’s office was at the end of the hall on the left, right before the glass doors. Another set of glass doors led to his office, and a final set allowed him direct access to the balcony.

  Depending on his mood, any of the doors may or may not be open during club operating hours.

  Nat presumed Wayman sat inside his office watching the club, working on his computer or whatever shithead evil assholes do at work. He also expected to see his bodyguard, the blond named Asger.

  No one stood guard outside the office.

  Maybe Asger was inside with Wayman discussing something. Or maybe taking a leak somewhere.

  “I’m going upstairs,” Tat said, behind him.

  “No, you’re guarding the rear.”

  “My sister is up there.”

  “We’ll get them next. First, we need the evidence in that office. Do as you’re told.”

  “I’m going up.”

  “No.”

  “I’m not leaving her.”

  “We do things in the right order. We need the evidence first because if we get it, this whole place is shut down forever, and the bad guys go to jail.”

  “I’m going for my sister. If your plan doesn’t work, she is still captive.”

  Nat closed his eyes, exhaled long. Could he just smack the insubordinate shit?

  Tat ran up the steps.

  “Stop! Don’t shoot in the door with your gun!”

  Nat ran after her. Caught up once she’d stopped at the next level up, at the third floor.

  “Wait, stop. Just a minute. A lot of girls are probably on the next floor, working. And if there are any on the top floor, that’s where we need to start. So I’ll open the door on the fourth floor. You go in and get any of the girls there. I’ll run up the fifth floor and clear it. Then whichever of us gets to the third floor first, goes in. Got it?”

  “Okay.”

  They climbed to the fourth floor. Nat shot it twice and tried the handle. It opened.

  “Wait for me to get up there.”

  He climbed to the fifth floor, where Finch said they killed girls. Shot open the door, replaced his magazine with a fresh one.

  “All right Tat, let’s go.”

  He entered the hallway. The floor was darker than the others. Silent. He tried the handle on the first door he found, and it was locked.

  He heard a gun blast from the floor below.

  Tat.

  Shit.

  Nat shot the first door’s lock. Pushed it open. Empty.

  The next.

  The next, and all the rest.

  Another shot from below. Then another.

  Tat was shooting open doors?

  He finished clearing the floor. There was no one being murdered on the fifth tonight.

  Just on the fourth, by Tat.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Tathiana pushed open the door and strode into the hall, her Glock pointed straight ahead.

  She moved down the hall mindful of what Finch had said. There was a Latina who used the name Amy, who served the slave keepers as their whoremaster. Because each room was locked, this woman was vital to finding her sister. She held a physical key.

  No one was in the hallway. She expected that to change. Tat holstered her pistol.

  A door at the far end opened and a girl came out. Long black hair. She carried herself with authority.

  “Amy?”

  The woman hesitated.

  “Amy, help,” Tat said. She looked to the door beside her, as if something behind it was wrong.

  Amy approached slowly. “Who are you?”

  Tat drew her Glock and closed the distance between them. Amy put her hands to her head. Tat pressed the barrel to her forehead.

  “Where are the keys?”

  “One key. My neck chain.”

  “Take it off.”

  Amy used one hand to find the key under her shirt and pulled the chain over her head.

  Tat took it.

  “This opens each door?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t move.”

  Keeping her Glock on Amy, Tat tested the key on the door beside her. It opened. Tat placed the barrel to Amy’s forehead.

  “Where is Corazon?”

  Amy looked away.

  “Where is Corazon!”

  Amy pointed down the hallway.

  Tat grabbed her neck and lifted. Amy stood. Tat jabbed the Glock into her back, jolting Amy forward. She poked her hard twice more until they stood at the door. Keeping the gun on Amy, Tat opened it and motioned Amy inside.

  A girl—maybe her sister—was bent over the edge of the bed. A hairy man was on top of her. He looked sideways at them and stopped moving; his mouth fell. His eyes darted.

  Tat prodded Amy again. “Over there. Beside him. You, get up. Stand by the wall.”

  He pulled himself from the girl and covered himself with his hands.

  The girl on the bed lifted her head and looked at Tat.

  “Corazon!”

  Her sister looked back at her, barely aware.

  Tat blinked away the water in her eyes. “Get up. Stand over here with me.”

  Corazon stumbled. Caught herself. Turned.

  She was still drugged, and Tat noticed something.

  Blood, down the back of her leg.

  Tat pointed at the man’s hands, covering the instrument of his evil. She fired. The man leaped and screamed. Waved his hands. Lunged for the bed and brought his knees to his chest.

  Tat shifted the Glock to Amy. Placed her ugly stare above the three sight post dots and squeezed the trigger.

  Amy’s head popped backward. She dropped.

  The man whimpered. Tat stepped to the bed. Kicked Amy’s head out of the way of her foot, and placed the Glock to the man’s anus.

  “No!”

  She fired.

  Tat faced her sister. “Use the bathroom. Get this man off you. I will be back for you.”

  She ran to the end of the hall and opened the first door. A man was on top of a girl. She stepped inside. “Get off her.”

  The man went to his knees, then straightened. He was white. Gray hair disheveled in oily tangles. His belly was huge. Legs and arms skinny. She raised the Glock and fired at his head. The man collapsed. The girl stared wide eyed.

  In Spanish Tat said, “Put on your clothes and wait for me here. We are taking you to safety.”

  Tat left the room and opened the next.

  Empty.

  The next. A man sat on the bed. A girl knelt before him.

  Tat pointed. Fired. The man fell back to the bed into his own red spatter.

  “Put on your clothes. Stay here. We are all leaving today.”

  At the next room, a man held the girl in front of him, as a shield. Tat approached. He backed away until he met the wall. She walked forward until the gun was so close to the man’s eye she could not possibly miss. The man released the girl. He said, “Please ...”

  “Okay.”

  Tat fired and felt blood spatter on her face.

  She left it.

  “Put on your clothes ...”

  She went to the following room. It was empty. Then she killed two more men. From the floor above, she heard Nat’s gun blast. At last, she came to the final room. Inside were a man and a bent-over boy. The man hadn’t heard the gunfire or had not cared. Tat shot him in the chest. She waved the gun indicating for the boy to stand.

  She held the pistol on him.

  What would he become? One of them?

  A scream rose in her chest, adrenaline-fury seeking outlet, stoked further by her hesitation.

  Tat wavered.

  At last she said, “Put on your clothes. Follow me.”

  She gathered the girls and led them to the stairwell. Her sister barely seemed aware of her rescue. Of anything at all. Tat blinked away more tears, and when that did
n’t work, snarled. There was work to be done.

  One floor down, she ran into Nat.

  He raised his eyebrows at the girl standing behind her shoulder. “Your sister?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. This is where the rest are.”

  “Why hasn’t anyone come for us?”

  “Did you shoot Amy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then there’s no one here to tell them. You’re two floors above, and there’s a nightclub right next to the office. They probably didn’t hear anything.”

  Tat nodded.

  “Can you get the other girls? I want to go after the evidence.”

  “Okay.”

  “If you get back to the stairwell before I do, take everyone out to the van and wait.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Tat’s insubordination turned out helpful. The girls would all be secured before Nat confronted Wayman and his crew.

  Nat expected the situation to get dicey. The business had profits in the millions, and since the product was murder, it made sense the owner would be willing to quickly cross the line. Plus, he had bodyguards. Nat watched for the blond Asger, but also the crew of mafioso-looking bouncers that doubled as enforcers. Wayman might call in any of them for support. A smart man would not leave a multimillion dollar business exposed to a single foreseeable risk. Nat assumed Wayman was smart. He had to have thought through the possibility of a gang or mob hit, just to grab some of the nightly cash.

  Nat almost wished Tat was there to back him up. At least she didn’t hesitate.

  Using his silenced Sig Sauer P220 Elite .45, Nat shot holes through the lock. He swapped magazines and entered the hallway.

  Empty.

  Ahead thirty yards were the glass doors. Beyond them danced half naked women, unaware of the gunfire and chaos behind the mirrored glass. To the left, still unseen, would be the office doors.

  What if Wayman was not inside the office?

  What if he was inside, and the door was locked?

  Nat had something for that strapped to his hip.

  He stood next to the left wall and approached with speed. He stopped before arriving at the office and looked inside from an angle. The light was on. Motion reflected off the double glass doors leading to the balcony. Nat tried to figure the angles, to guess where the person stood inside the room.

  He saw a blond head move quickly and realized his reflection must also be visible inside the office. Nat swung around the corner and fired into the glass. The bullet zinged but the glass held.

  Behind the glass stood Asger, the blond lieutenant. His narrow eyes glinted with nightclub light and rhythm, and he drew a gun from his hip and pointed. Nat recognized the distinct shape. Asger carried a Glock.

  But would it penetrate the glass?

  They faced each other.

  Asger nodded his head, as if he and Nat had come to terms. He raised his pistol arm, and took a bead on Nat’s head.

  Asger fired. The glass percussed. The bullet fragmented under the first layer of plexi and shattered into a starburst pattern, captured in place between layers.

  Nat placed his silenced Sig on the floor and stepped fully into view of Asger. He pulled a cannon from his left hip, a Smith & Wesson 500, and placed the barrel’s half inch hole against the glass.

  Asger’s eyes bulged. He put up his hands.

  “No!”

  He scrambled around a desk and fell to his knees before the glass and twisted the lock.

  Nat pushed open the door. It bounced against Asger’s head. He scrambled back, hands up.

  “Where’s Wayman?”

  “He said he had to take care of an emergency at home. He left last night.”

  “Where’s he keep the video?”

  “What video?”

  Nat swung the .500, pointed at Asger’s head.

  “It’s on the computer. And the backups.”

  “What backups?”

  Asger pointed to a desk drawer. “Wayman backed up every video on micro SD cards. They’re in a black book.”

  “Unplug it all, and get me the book.”

  Asger moved to the computer. Unplugged cables. He looked up.

  “No!”

  Nat turned.

  Tat stood at the door with her Glock aimed at Asger.

  “Tat, don’t!”

  “You have the computer.”

  She fired. Asger’s head snapped back and he fell. On the floor, his body jerked but his eyes went blank.

  “Fucking dammit!”

  “He saw your face. You can’t be governor if he saw your face.”

  “Fuck.” Nat holstered his cannon, found the black book with the SD cards, and grabbed the computer. “Where are the girls?”

  “Where is Wayman?”

  “Already back at Flagstaff. I guess you can hunt him down there. So where are the girls?”

  “Hallway, waiting.”

  “I told you to take them out.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “And I didn’t figure you would. Get the door for me. And watch front and back while I carry this.”

  It was unlikely they’d face any new threats. Wayman’s bouncers and bodyguards worked on the dance floor, and likely wouldn’t learn of Nat’s operation until someone came looking for the boss. That could be hours.

  “Let’s go,” Nat said.

  Tat led the way.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  They argued as soon as Nat fired the van’s engine. He’d already put the plan in motion—already had queued a contact he knew from his work fighting human trafficking, to be ready to take over once the girls were rescued.

  “I’m taking the girls to someone who will get them to the Mexican embassy.”

  “No.”

  “Pull your gun. I don’t give a rat’s ass. This is going down my way.”

  “No. I don’t trust them. Men in business. Men in government. Men in church. It doesn’t matter.”

  Nat allowed himself to cool down. Missed the turn and kept going straight. He’d circle back. It wasn’t Tat’s fault she’d been dealt her set of life circumstances. Any decent person owed her a little grace. But it was her fault how she chose to be a constant insubordinate prima donna snit, and that needed a resolute correction.

  Eleven girls and one boy? crammed into the back of the van. He didn’t have the capacity to care for them in Arizona, and even if he did, he couldn’t keep them. Soon they’d have the same status as any other illegal.

  A shelter didn’t have the clout, but the Mexican government, through the embassy in Salt Lake City, would advocate for the girls’ rights in a powerful way. Even if it became a political game between two nations, the girls would be better off than if he allowed them to disappear into the United States with no one to look after them.

  Last, neither Nat nor Tat could allow themselves to be connected to the girls’ rescue. There were too many corpses for that.

  “I’ll grant you’ve come through some shitty situations,” Nat said. “And you don’t trust anyone.”

  “You don’t know—”

  “Shut the fuck up. Don’t interrupt me. You’re young and all you’ve seen is the ugly. It’s big and real. I don’t deny it. But if you live your whole life thinking it’s you against the world, and everyone else is rotten, then you’re already the asshole to someone else, and you’re always going to be the asshole to someone else. I risked my life for you and your girls. So stop being the asshole.”

  Nat glanced at her, partly to read her expression, partly to make sure she hadn’t pulled her new Glock on him.

  “Okay,” she whispered. Her eyes glistened.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “But not my sister. I will never lose my sister again. And I know where to stay for the winter in Flagstaff. And then we return to Mexico ourselves.”

  Nat waited. Thought. Nodded. “Okay. I’ll help.”

  He turned the van and resumed driving to the parking garage he’d designated with his c
ontact, a female attorney working at the Utah Domestic Violence Coalition he could trust to keep his identity secret, and take responsibility for getting the girls to permanent safety.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Gordon Emerson placed his service Glock 22 on the kitchen table. He pressed the release and slid out the magazine, then ejected the round from the chamber.

  He stood it on the table, a few inches from a laptop computer that was booting up.

  Next to the Glock he placed his credential case, a black wallet holding his FBI identification card and badge.

  He stared at it.

  As a boy he watched Elliot Ness on television.

  When he graduated with a law degree, he saw his buddies get recruited to law firms, Fortune 500 companies, and their local governments to work as prosecutors or public defenders. He loved the law, the idea that even as evil preferred to fight in the dark, good dragged it into a sunlit arena with polished marble and walnut. He loved that each side followed rules encoded by the very people who agreed to live by them. And he believed if it wasn’t for the good guys standing up to darkness, there’d just be evil.

  With that view he understood the quality of justice always came down to the quality of the team wearing its colors.

  He’d wanted to play first string. Prosecutors were indispensable, but the lawyers on the front lines—the ones carrying badges and guns—were truly in the battle.

  Gordon Emerson joined the FBI.

  His eyes on the FBI identification card, the shield, he sighed and was surprised by the rattle in his throat, like an old chest cold that wouldn’t break up.

  After so long, at war with himself … the end was a relief.

  He’d visited the nightclub shortly after it went into business. The Butcher Shop. When it opened, it was the place. He wasn’t a drinker. Didn’t go to bars or especially nightclubs, but when everybody talks about the same joint, eventually you want to check it out. He’d stopped in with some friends and when they wanted to leave, he didn’t.

  A girl had connected eyes with him a few times. She was small and dark. Latina.