by Tom Crown
He never learned any of their names. He heard them plenty, over the months that passed, but could never fit any to a face. None of the men ever introduced themselves properly. The first man had entered a few minutes after the boy spotted his open eyes. A powerfully built man, not that tall, but strong and hard. He had the presence of a leader with intelligent eyes and controlled movements.
The man promptly kicked Ryan in the face. He wore sneakers, and the impact wasn’t too bad on a kicking scale from barefoot to boots. Ryan had learned to brace himself, and he was quick to check people’s footwear, especially when his hands were tied behind his back. Shoes mattered.
Ryan felt his teeth with his tongue and tried to roll over on his back. He didn’t quite make it there, but instead assumed a position slightly on his side, well prepared to roll back onto his stomach, or even kick out if he had to.
The man studied him carefully and grinned. He seemed to understand what Ryan was thinking and appreciated his situation, and for some unimaginable reason Ryan felt himself liking something about this man. Not the man himself, the face kicker, but something about him. Perhaps he was only suffering from the first stages of Stockholm syndrome, beginning to identify with his captors and sympathize with their cause, but that sort of bonding seemed far-fetched when he was a hostage because of who he was. There was no external enemy to unite against, no grand theory about right and wrong that might have eluded him before the kidnap. He was it, the enemy, the imperial crusader.
Suddenly someone pulled a knife from a sheath. Ryan easily recognized the sound, the muted scraping of leather against metal. He opened his eyes wide and stared straight ahead. The present was back in its absolute detail.
Joel was holding a knife and leaning down toward him. Ryan tried to push himself away, but then the man with the AC/DC T-shirt leisurely sat down on his legs and stopped him from moving. The knife inched closer, and then one of the guys, the one with the beer belly, grabbed the hand holding the knife and shook his head. Joel grunted and maintained his own white-knuckled grip around the knife. The beer belly shook his head again. Joel mumbled something in Swedish and pulled the knife away.
Ryan momentarily closed his eyes and relaxed, not his body, not his throat nor his neck, but somewhere deep inside. He’d had this coming, he understood that, but he hadn’t at all wanted to die.
He opened his eyes again just in time to see a shoe rushing toward him. He tried to pull his head away, but it was already too late. He felt the impact, and it was worse than anything they had done to him before.
When he opened his eyes after the blackness that followed, the men were gone.
He looked up. The key was still in the lock. He reached for it and opened his door with a bloodied hand. His bags were still on the floor where he had left them, untouched. The bed he had never slept in was still made. They hadn’t gone inside.
He got to his knees and crawled into the room, kicked the door shut, and heard the key fall to the floor outside.
He began to push himself up, then felt himself sway.
Then nothing.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
KATIA GLANCED OUT the window at the hospital building, a one-story brick structure that didn’t look large enough to contain a proper morgue, as it slowly came into view outside. She had never been inside, hadn’t even known that the place existed, and she certainly wouldn’t go there today.
She lowered her gaze to the empty space beside her in the backseat where Ryan had been sitting. At night, she had studied the bruises on his battered face, all from before the explosion and before the crash. All from fighting to protect Jenny, a person he hadn’t even known twenty-four hours before. Katia had heard chivalrous statements often enough, as most girls in her position had, but rarely had she seen action. Never decisive action. Seeing it now intrigued her. Perhaps her life was actually about to change, and not just end, the way she had imagined it would. Perhaps. Yet for the moment Ryan was gone, and she had two far less trustworthy people to deal with before he came back.
Jenny was in the passenger seat by Steve’s side, her blond hair loose, shielding her eyes and much of her face. The makeup from the night before was gone. She had put on a gray blouse and a pair of comfortable-looking jeans, after insisting they stopped by her apartment and got her a change of clothing. Ryan hadn’t wanted to risk meeting any of her friends after what had happened the night before at the camping site, but for Jenny going back home hadn’t been negotiable. Looking at the people outside the hospital entrance, Katia understood what Jenny had been thinking. Mats’s family and friends were here and it wouldn’t have been smart to show up in last night’s clothes. People would ask questions, but fewer and easier ones if it appeared she had slept at home.
Katia turned her gaze back to the road and the approaching car in the distance that she knew belonged to Alex and Roman. They were driving slowly, approaching cautiously as if they were expecting trouble, or preparing to cause some.
“Just keep driving,” Jenny said to Steve, pointing the way with her mobile phone in hand. “Go around back.”
Steve nodded and shifted to second gear. Katia felt the vehicle lunge forward.
“If you want company in there,” Steve began casually, shrugging even as he turned the wheel, but Jenny immediately shot him a look that cut his proposal short.
He pulled up next to the green dumpster on the side of the building. Jenny opened her door and stepped out before the vehicle had come to a complete halt.
“Hey!” Steve called out, but Jenny didn’t look back.
Steve shifted into reverse and with a deep sigh pulled into one of the empty lots in the back.
Katia turned around and to her utter horror saw Alex’s car entering the hospital grounds. She instinctively ducked down. Steve looked at her, but she only leaned down further, pretending to adjust her shoes. She waited ten seconds, fifteen, and then peered out again, one hand concealing her face. To her right, Alex and Roman had just left their car and were striding purposefully toward the hospital entrance. She wondered what they might be up to, heading for a hospital that to her knowledge they had never visited before. They could, of course, be there because of an injury, maybe from the firefight in the forest, but that didn’t seem likely. They would much rather handle such matters themselves. Probably they wanted to learn more about what had been reported about the crash the day before, and also take a closer look at Mats’s friends and family.
At Jenny.
Perhaps. Either way, Jenny should be fine. She was among family and friends, right where she belonged.
What next? The bus terminal was nearby, but she knew that the buses came far in between, and she wasn’t ready to leave. She had watched those buses when she first got to this town and dreamed of one day being on one of them, but a lot had happened since that time. She didn’t dream of anything anymore. She didn’t have the energy or the will. But she did have plenty of unfinished business.
“You all right back there?” Steve asked with another glance in the mirror.
Katia nodded.
“Want to go somewhere?” Steve picked up a camera, out of long habit it seemed, and looked around. He was restless. He looked in the mirror again, and she didn’t like what she saw in it. That calculating coldness. She had seen it before.
She shook her head, cursing herself. What a fool she had been, trusting the wrong people, blindly hoping for a way out. Was she making the same mistake again? She searched deep inside, tried to shed every emotion and come up with the truthful answer her life could depend upon now, but all she saw was her own foolishness.
Such simple deceit. Such unforgettable cruelty.
“Hey Katia,” he had said in that bad English of his, the most popular guy in school, speaking with such confidence his voice alone made her blush.
She noticed other girls looking on with curiosity, their world rearranged. Leaning against the locker next to hers, his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, he glanced at them nonchalantly and watche
d them giggle. He managed the slightest shrug and turned back to her again.
“If you want a friend,” he said, switching to Russian. “Someone to hang out with. Go some place. I’ll take you.” He smiled and pushed away from the locker with his shoulder.
She saw him again in the cafeteria. He looked straight at her. She turned her head down, purposefully giving him the chance to turn away if he wanted to, but he waved her over. She nodded slightly and glanced around. People were watching.
She never went out at night. She wasn’t old enough, and she still liked watching TV at home or reading books in bed. She had a telephone in her room, and sometimes she would talk with her friends for hours at a time. She liked turning off the lights and pulling the sheets over her head to muffle all other sounds, hearing only her friends’ voices from the other side of town. She liked the feeling of floating away into an imaginary world, like when her father used to read stories to her in the darkness when she was little.
He called her just before lunch on a Saturday. He was just hanging out and wanted to take a walk by the river. The weather wasn’t good, but it would be good with her there, he reassured her.
He didn’t have enough money to take her to a café, but he knew where they could get a cup of coffee if she wanted one. She didn’t drink coffee, but she was delighted to be in his company, and walking along the river had been cold, so she accepted. They went to a loading dock in the back of a warehouse. He knew people there, men her father’s age. They all looked at her with unpleasant grins on their stubbled faces. But he pulled her close and held her tight, making her feel safe, like her father had as they crouched under the living room window while people rioted in the streets and Russian jets thundered overhead.
“I want to show you something,” he said and pulled her further inside. She was suddenly afraid, but all he did was go to a table and pick up a newspaper. He showed her an advertisement for a modeling course in Milan. At first, she didn’t know what to make of it, but he knew how to find ways to compliment her, and something about the way he looked at her made her feel very flattered. He had never once tried to kiss her, but she knew he had heard about what happened to her over Christmas, and believed he didn’t want to push her.
“I have to go,” he said, surprising her. “To Milan. My family owns a restaurant there. I have to make pizza. With a little hat on my head.”
She giggled, like the other girls at school always did. And suddenly she understood. He wanted her to go with him. He wanted to take her away. She felt her heart beat faster, and he seemed to sense her excitement.
“I want you to come. Do you want to?” He leaned closer and reached for her face.
She smiled, her cheeks pressing against the palms of his hands. “I do!”
In the darkness, in bed, with the cover over her head, she went through the risks of their plan over and over again. She knew her father would never approve, and she knew young girls often ended up in trouble. But she was already in trouble. And she wouldn’t be alone in Milan. He would be with her.
She went with three girls she had never met before. The ride took three days, which seemed like three weeks, and after the trip, things moved very quickly. She never saw him again. The school in Milan was closed, and she was locked up and soon sent on to Berlin. She didn’t have any say in the matter, and at that point she didn’t really know what to think or do. In Berlin, she was told to pay for the transport. Her passport had already been taken. In a matter of days her life turned into a nightmare, one she could never have imagined.
She finally accepted the truth of what had happened. There had never been any school in Milan. There had never been any restaurant. There had never been any hope or happiness. She had cursed herself for being so foolish. She had heard a lot of stories about girls going west only to be killed, thrown off a building or a ferry, or sent to some Arab country where they were beheaded for their crimes. She had heard it all, and still she had fallen for the same simple lie.
Never again.
Steve’s phone was ringing.
“Ryan?”
Katia leaned forward. There was no mistaking the agitation in Steve’s voice.
“God, no! Are you all right?”
Katia leaned forward between the seats, getting much closer to Steve that she felt comfortable with. He glanced at her, a worried frown on his face.
“Hang on,” he said into the phone, starting up the engine. “We’ll be right there!”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
JENNY SAT ALONE at a table in the hospital cafeteria, watching a group of friends waving apologetic goodbyes from the exit. She waved back weakly and watched them go back to their normal lives. It had been a horrible morning for all of them. For many reasons. For her, it had been horrid to see everybody, the people she had known all her life, and lie to them.
She turned her eyes away from the bright entrance, from the sunlight filtering through the plants and reflecting off the polished stone floor, and instead stared at the empty cups and plates scattered around the table. At the other end of the cafeteria, away from the summer sun, Mats’s parents were signing some papers with a doctor. There were so many different kinds of papers in this life. Especially a lot of them, Jenny had seen now, when your child had just passed away.
She only stole the briefest glance, but Mats’s mother knew exactly when to look up and meet her eye. The woman’s gaze was cold, not in an accusatory way, but rather lifeless and disappointed. Jenny could see what she was thinking, that she still, despite everything, had expected a church wedding for her son, and then grandchildren, and a long life filled with Christmas parties and midsummer dances.
Jenny turned away. She felt nauseous, suddenly sweating and freezing at the same time. She felt like she was losing her balance, as if she were falling, and looked around for a point of reference. Her field of vision was swaying, the light fading too fast.
She put a hand on the table to steady herself and closed her eyes. She had felt this way before. She recognized the anxiety and the sense of falling and knew she needed to breathe.
Suddenly her phone rang, playing the first couple of beats of a happy-sounding pop tune she didn’t even recognize. It was entirely inappropriate, and she didn’t dare look up. When the sound was finally gone the phone vibrated instead and she almost dropped it to the floor. She looked at the display. It was a message from Steve, asking to pick her up when she wanted to.
She felt her heart slow again. Thinking about Steve, about Ryan, and Katia, made her feel better than thinking about the situation she was currently in. Her new friends offered her a sense of relief she knew she didn’t deserve, but needed all the more for it.
She typed her reply, promised to let him know, and glanced around. Mats’s mother was looking at her, and perhaps she had been watching for a longer time. Jenny cast her eyes away, then pushed away from the table and got up.
She had never thought of Mats as someone’s child. He’d never been childish. He’d been boyish, for a while, but even that hadn’t been an innocent boyish. There had always been a mean streak to him. He had always lashed out. Had always needed to. And when he grew up to be a man, the boyishness had been gone, and the meanness hadn’t just been a streak anymore. Any trace of goodness there from the beginning had disappeared, retreating still further and steadily with every breath he took. Until he took no more.
She followed the signs to the restrooms and turned a corner to see the ladies’ room just to her right. She opened the door.
Suddenly the light changed. Something was moving right behind her. Her breathing became instantly shallow again and she felt herself lurch, felt herself falling again, but this time it was different. Someone had actually grabbed her and was pulling her, pushing her, twisting her arm. She turned and recognized the two faces behind her, Alex and Roman, just as they forced her through the doorway into the restroom. She tried to protest, but didn’t know if she should call out and draw attention to herself, and then it didn’t matt
er anymore. They had already pulled the door shut behind them.
Alex pushed her against the wall and covered her mouth with a dirty hand. She felt her heart pounding in her chest. She wanted to scream, to run, but it was already too late. She should have done that sooner, during the split second when they still had been in the hallway. Now they had her.
Alex slammed her against the wall again. She felt tears welling in her eyes. The light was so bright, her eyes so wide open.
“Listen real good,” Alex said, as if he hadn’t already gotten her attention. She was listening, and she nodded to tell him she was, but her head barely moved under his powerful hand. “We have a problem. A serious problem. You with me this far?”
She nodded as much as she could under his powerful grip.
“Your boyfriend... I’m referring to Mats, in case there’s confusion.”
Jenny nodded, then shook her head. There was no confusion.
“He was a... Let’s call it a business associate,” Alex continued, “and we were in the middle of a business transaction. We don’t want you to get involved in that. We just want the money we put in, the money we entrusted him with, we want that money back.” Alex lifted his hand away from her mouth and raised a threatening finger at her to warn her to stay quiet.
She considered screaming for help, but Alex shook his head ever so slightly, along with the finger, and she discarded the idea. She took a breath, slow and shallow, taking in the little bit of air that she dared to breathe.
“I don’t know anything,” she said, making sure to keep her trembling voice low. “I don’t know anything about that.”
“About what? Our business? His business?” He paused and studied her with a growing smirk. “Are you telling me you don’t know about the girls he used to drive around?”
“He said the two of you fought about it all the time!” Roman, the other man, said with a gleeful grin. And he was right. She had known, and even argued about it. She had known he took girls from the coast, sometimes in a van, sometimes in his own truck. She had known some of that, more than she liked to admit.