by R. B. Schow
Chapter Twelve
LEOPOLD WENTWORTH
Leopold told Stacy and Emily to play with each other a little while longer while he made some business calls. Looking at the two twenty-somethings, he started feeling like a parent telling a friend’s daughters to behave. This left him with an awkward feeling inside. The girls were of legal age, of course, but they were also a welcome distraction. He hadn’t run but two smaller ops in the last few months, which meant he was bogged down in the doldrums of his old life dealing with block-chain cryptography. The money was good but the work he did was about as passionless as making toast or clipping your toenails.
“Every man who reaches an elevated state of earnings finds himself in the same conundrum,” a New York socialite had told him on a date they’d gone on maybe a month or two ago. “They need a big house, a handful of fast cars, and a pretty woman on their arm. I want to be that pretty woman for you, Leopold.”
“A fashionable man doesn’t have just one pretty woman on his arm,” Leopold countered playfully. “If he wants more than one, he has them. But maybe what he wants is peace and quiet, a little solitude. In that case, having a woman will not suit him. I suppose it depends on his ambitions at the time. Surely you understand that.”
“Of course,” she had said, eating her steak and savoring every bite. “But you don’t strike me as a man who likes to go to bed alone. At least that’s what I’ve heard. Aren’t you at the age where having some permanence seems attractive?”
“Not really, but maybe? I won’t really know until I meet the right woman.”
“That’s interesting,” she had said as she sipped her wine.
“There is no way to determine who will be the right woman, or how that special connection will form. It either will or it won’t. I pray, for my own sake, that I make such a connection sooner rather than later. If it doesn’t happen, I have other interests.”
“You sound both hopeful and cynical,” she’d said, reaching across the table to take his hand. The way she looked at him, her sapphire eyes hypnotic and the skin of her hand so soft, he nearly fell prey to her gravitational pull. “After this, we should do coke together and fuck.”
And that had done it. All the hope he had garnered with her suddenly felt pointless. Was true love even possible anymore? Were the days of romantics gone, swallowed whole by this weird, completely unrecognizable new society? After he and the socialite had a great two weeks together, they parted ways. He tried not to rule out the possibility of true love somewhere down the road, but then this morning happened and he wondered if the age of addicts had replaced the age of romantics. Dear God, what a dismal feeling!
Then again, he couldn’t be too judgmental when he had woken up in bed with a stranger he was sure he had sex with who was now swimming naked in his pool with the girl he did remember bringing home so he could have sex with her.
Perhaps he was just as soulless as everyone else.
Outside, Stacy got out of the pool, her glistening body dripping wet. “Leopold, is it okay if I sit here?” The suggestive way she said it did a number on him. He nodded his head in approval. In reality, she didn’t need an answer, she just wanted his attention.
Emily got out of the pool next, parted her friend’s legs, then moved in and put on a show for him.
“You need to come join us, Leopold,” Stacy said before throwing her head back and letting out the most satisfied sigh.
And this is the last time I get involved with girls in their twenties, he told himself. Turning his back to them, he dialed Estella.
“Yeah,” Esty said after answering on the first ring.
“I need you,” Leopold replied.
“Thank freaking Christ,” she replied. “I’ve gone through as much dick as I’ll ever want, I’ve had ten facials at the spa in the last few months, and I replaced my entire wardrobe. I’m dying to save someone, or kill someone.”
“Well, then,” he replied, “you’re going to love this.”
Leopold told her the job, holding back on some of the details while embellishing on others in an attempt to get her moving ASAP.
“I’m on the next plane to El Paso,” she said. “I’ll let you know my flight particulars when I get them. Did you already speak to Yergha?”
“You were my first call,” he said.
“Aww, thanks, Leo,” she replied in a sweet voice she seldom used. “But Yergha’s in love now, so you’ll have to let him know the—”
“I don’t care if he’s in love or not,” Leopold said, turning back to the poolside show. “We’re talking about three little girls and a missing wife.”
“She’s a politician’s wife, Leo,” Estella said.
“I know,” he said. “And quit calling me Leo. It’s Leopold.”
Ignoring him, she said, “Yergha got into this business with the hope that he could kill some politicians, not save their families.”
“Yeah, well maybe we work our way up to the politicians by way of the cartels and all the other scumbags. You know as well as I do that more than a few of our elected officials are shady as shit.”
“Yeah. No kidding.”
“As for Yergha’s current state, love is fickle. It can turn on a dime. So maybe, like you, Yergha’s desperate for work the same way you were desperate for work.”
“You’re still mad that I didn’t do the Russia job,” Esty said.
“I’m not mad,” he lied. “I was more disappointed than anything. But it was good that some guy was balls deep inside of you. If not for you and your sexual escapades, I would not have expanded the team.”
“Will they be joining us?” she asked.
“Only if you say you can’t handle it, and then maybe only Kiera. Atlas’s situation is…delicate, if not problematic.”
“What’s his last name?” she asked. “And why won’t you tell me anything about either him or Kiera?”
“Compartmentalization is key when we’re new and, admittedly, a bit sloppy. The goal is to get better with every job, but the jobs aren’t coming as quickly as I’d hoped, and with the amount of human filth operating in the world today, that’s pretty damn depressing.”
“Spoken by a true hero,” she said. “I’m batting my eyelashes at you, Leo.”
“I asked you to stop calling me that,” he said thinking about how much he hated Atlas calling him that. “Now book your flight and send me the details. And if Yergha arrives close enough to your arrival time, be sure to pick him up.”
“Roger that, big daddy,” she said, which for some reason made him laugh.
“Leopold, I think I’m going to cum!” the girl in the pool squealed.
“Who the hell was that?” Estella asked.
“You’re not the only one with a personal life, Esty,” Leopold said, embarrassed. “Book that flight and I’ll see you in Texas.”
He hung up with Esty and called Yergha who answered promptly on the fifth ring. This was far less prompt than Leopold expected when calling one of his assets.
“Hello, boss,” Yergha said, the Pakistani sounding happy. “Talk to me.”
“I have a job for you,” he said.
“Name the time and place, and I am on my way.”
“I thought you were in love, that you might have found the one,” Leopold said.
“I have decided to live my life as you do, being married to the things that make me happy, and not clinging so tightly to everything else.”
“I thought women made you happy,” he said.
“For a few nights,” Yergha said. “But when I am alone, I dream of bigger things. Then you don’t call or text and so I am forced to substitute women for my true passion. The job, boss, that’s what I love. Now tell me, who do I get to kill today?”
“Not a politician,” he said. “Not yet.”
The man blew out an irritated sigh then said, “I was sure this call would be the call.”
“Well, it’s not,” Leopold said. “Besides, I’ve only called you three times, Yerg
ha. Think of this as a marathon, not a sprint.”
“You have called three times and you have not allowed me this honor, this pleasure.”
“In due time, my friend,” Leopold said. “In due time.”
“Alright, then. Let me know where I need to be and I’ll be there.”
“El Paso, Texas.”
“Ah, dammit, Leopold. That’s a dust bowl and they hate people like me there.”
“No one even knows you well enough to hate you.”
“True, but El Paso?”
“I have alternatives to you now,” Leopold said. “If you give me even an ounce of grief about the job, I will tell you to find another job. This is how it works when the team expands.”
“So it’s going to be like that?” he replied, his voice soft, hurt.
“You knew it would be this way one day,” Leopold said. “How are all of your broken bones?”
“No longer broken. I will be in El Paso shortly. I’ll text you my flight information.”
“Estella is going to meet you there.”
“The one woman I actually want to sleep with is the one woman who won’t sleep with me on principle alone.”
“Why do you want to sleep with her so badly?” Leopold asked. Estella was gorgeous and hardcore but her attitude was usually crappy and she had the propensity to be mean.
“Because she is the one girl who can get close enough to kill me. And if she wanted, I just might let her. I mean think about it. The passion of a fight like that between two adversaries, along with the animal instincts to mate—”
“I’m sure she doesn’t have those instincts for you,” Leopold said.
“But if she did…”
“She doesn’t,” he said with a grin.
“And this is what makes me really want to kill. Before I go, tell me the job.” Leopold told him the particulars of the abduction, and that’s when he said, “So you tell me I can’t kill a politician, but that I have to save a politician’s kids, and his wife?”
“Who are all innocent.”
“I am shaking my head in disgust right now, Mr. Wentworth,” Yergha said. “But I will do this job because I need the money.”
“Need it or want it?”
“Want it.”
“Good, text me your flight information, and I don’t want to hear any more of your opinions on life, women, or even Estella from here on out.”
“You say the word and it is done,” Yergha said, jubilant.
“I just said the word, dumb-ass.”
“Yes, sir.”
He hung up, looked at the girls by the pool, and thought that they were both so lovely and so ready to go that it would be foolish to disappoint them any further.
Walking outside, he removed his towel and said, “Ladies, you’re about to get the best ten minutes of my day so let’s make it worth it.”
“Now that’s what we’re talking about, Mr. Wentworth,” Emily said as her head popped up from between Stacy’s thighs.
Chapter Thirteen
ZOEY FOX
As Zoey and Maisie were dragged into a different vehicle and driven away from Callie and their mother, Zoey fought hard not to cry. She was shoved into a bench seat next to Maisie. Her baby sister’s face was whiter than normal, her eyes wide with terror. This was by far the scariest thing that had ever happened to their family and it kept getting worse. She didn’t know what to do, what was happening, or when her father would come and rescue them.
When she could no longer see her mother, Zoey turned back around and glanced at Maisie. Her younger sister was looking forward, stiff as a board, with the odor of urine from her pants starting to permeate the air. The man on the other side of Zoey cracked a window pushing his head outside for fresher air.
Half an hour later, they pulled into an industrial yard filled with junky cars and several large scrap piles of fabric. The building at the center of the yard was big, like a warehouse, and it was ugly. There was peeled white paint, the dull shine of metal, and more than a few large patches of rust.
“Get out,” the man said to the girls when they stopped. He was a big man with acne pits and a few lines of scarring on his knuckles and arms. His black hair was thick and shiny, his mustache like a dead snake someone draped over his lip.
Both she and Maisie got out of the vehicle.
“Follow me,” the man said.
The two girls walked through the dusty parking lot to the warehouse. Zoey looked behind her and there was another man behind them making sure they didn’t run. Where would she run? With whom would she talk? They were trapped in another country and they didn’t know the language. That meant they wouldn’t run.
Zoey believed that her and Maisie’s only hope for survival was to do exactly as these men said and hope that someone would come for them.
Inside the warehouse, Zoey saw rows of what looked like standing desks full of strips of fabric. Around twenty women, girls, and boys were working. There were fluorescent lights strung up overhead along with open slats in the roof allowing for ventilation and natural sunlight. The workstations were situated on the bare concrete floor. Beside each station was a huge stack of fabric, presumably the day’s work.
Zoey wasn’t sure what they were making nor did she understand why young kids were working. One of the boys was a few years younger than Maisie and white. Was he American? He glanced up at Zoey and Maisie, but quickly returned his eyes to the task at hand. He had a bruised cheek and a split lip.
“Eyes forward,” the man who had driven them here shouted.
Zoey made sure she kept her eyes forward. She did so all the way into the office where an even uglier man sat behind a desk with the phone to his ear. He was yelling at someone in Spanish. When he was done, he slammed down the phone, looked up at the girls, and smiled the way you smile when everything just keeps getting worse.
“Are you kidding me?” the man barked in passable English.
“What?” the driver asked.
This new monster studied the girls carefully then he drew a deep breath, blew out a hostile sigh, and looked back up at the man. “Do you know who these two girls are?”
“Boss doesn’t seem to care, so I don’t care. I take them where I’m told to take them and I was told to take them here.”
“Those are the kids of a US Congressman,” the man bellowed.
“No kidding?” the driver asked, surprised. He looked the girls over, cocked an eyebrow, and said, “All the same, they’re yours now.” To the man who had been walking behind Zoey and Maisie, the driver said, “Ándele, Paco.”
The two men disappeared leaving the girls with this new creature who did not want them, but who seemed to know them.
“You weren’t supposed to end up here,” the man grumbled.
Neither she nor Maisie said anything, so he stood up, walked around the desk, then leaned down and pulled the duct tape off of Zoey’s mouth. She drew a breath from her mouth at long last.
“Thank you,” she said. “I was having difficulty breathing.”
He went to Maisie and pulled off her duct tape, too. She took a breath then looked at Zoey, almost as if Zoey’s actions dictated her actions. If Maisie was as scared as Zoey, she sure wasn’t showing it.
“I’m going to ask you some questions,” the man said. “They may seem funny or even a bit uncomfortable but they are important to the men and women who will be interested in you.”
“I want my mother,” Maisie said.
“You will never see your mother again, little one,” the man said, now sounding more comforting and less riled. “It is best to hold to the memories of her in your head. No more interruptions, please. Interruptions make me mad, and when I get mad, I tend to kill people.”
“You can’t just kill people,” Maisie said.
“Maybe not in your country, but over here, in this city, killing people is easy, especially little girls. We have entire deserts filled with them.”
Zoey vowed not to speak to the man again,
not unless she was spoken to first. At least, that’s what she told herself.
“What is your name, dear?” he asked Zoey.
“Zoey Fox,” she said.
“Zoey, have you had your period yet?” he asked.
She dipped her eyes and started to blush. He said the questions were going to be uncomfortable, but he didn’t say he was going to be asking such personal questions.
“C’mon, child. A simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ will do just fine.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Have you ever had intercourse?”
“Sex?”
“Yes,” he said with a smile.
“No,” she replied.
“Have you started to grow breasts? Do your nipples hurt?”
Inside, she started to panic. The man was disgusting, just the kind of creep her mother warned her about.
“I can ask you or I can find out for myself. As embarrassing as this is for both of us, there are price points on everything. Our buyers have very specific tastes. If I somehow mislabel you, if our buyer pays for one thing but gets another, a man like me ends up buried in the desert next to someone like you. Now please, answer the question.”
“My…they’re…I’m a little swollen there.”
“Do they hurt?”
“Sometimes,” she nodded.
Has any adult touched your privates inappropriately? I’m not talking about bathing you as a child or changing your diapers…”
“No,” she said.
“Have you ever performed any sexual activities with either girls or boys in your school?”
“Like what?” she asked.
“Anything involving their private parts or yours.”
“I showed my friend where my…where my nipples hurt, but she said hers didn’t hurt. They were still flat, so I told her maybe they would hurt soon, too. Is that what you mean?”
“Nothing with any boys?” She shook her head. “Good, that’s good. I’m so sorry for having to ask such terrible questions but I have mouths to feed. Daughters about the same age as you and a wife.”
