by Jaycee Clark
She’d run.
And she’d heard her sister, Zoy, stop screaming. They’d held Zoy down, their hands at her throat . . .
She slapped her hands over her ears and tried to be quiet. Very, very quiet. They couldn’t find her. She knew what would happen if they did. They’d made her watch. Told her it would be her turn soon.
Her sister had yelled at them, cursing the men who did this.
The house was so quiet.
She shivered and closed her eyes, curled tighter in her hiding place. What if they found her?
Should she leave the house? They might see and it was dark outside.
The monsters would get her if she left. And snakes.
She whimpered and wished Zoy would come for her.
The monsters would get her if she wasn’t quiet.
Quiet, quiet. Like a shadow.
• • •
Dimitri slipped into the house first, John covering him and closing the door behind them both. They checked the downstairs rooms. Nothing. John took the second story, Dimitri decided on the third.
The thick carpet on the stairs swallowed his footfalls.
A sweet floral scent waved in the air. Nothing stirred in the house. He glanced behind him when he reached the top, thinking one of the shadows shifted, but no, nothing moved. He waited, staring at that space just to the bottom of the stairs.
Then he heard it. Just a whisper of a sound. Like a . . . whimper? Moan? He pulled back, aiming the gun at the floor as he hurried along the wall, checking first one room then another.
He heard nothing from John below stairs.
The room at the end of the corridor cast a soft glow into the darkened hallway. Thick carpets covered the floors. The walls were tasteful, with high-dollar art hanging on them. And unless he was mistaken, that one there was a Rembrandt.
Sculptures and plants filled alcoves.
Nothing moved, nothing stirred. He stepped closer to the room at the end of the hallway.
Nerves skittered along his skin. He knew, knew he wouldn’t like what was in that room. And just like that, he felt it. The cold ice seeping down over him, slowing everything, focusing his senses. His heart thrummed against his chest.
He stood to the side of the door, heard a soft thump from below and started to call out to John, when he heard the moan again. He swung back to the room, his gun aimed.
With the toe of his boot, he pushed the door open the rest of the way. It swung open slowly. At first he saw nothing but a large room done in white lace and pale yellows, a fireplace, a seating area with wingback, yellow damasked chairs. Teddy bears and dolls scattered against one wall. A large dollhouse sat beneath a window.
But then he saw the camera equipment, black and gangly, almost alien in the room. The camera was aimed beyond his vision.
He stepped into the room.
The camera was aimed at the bed.
Jesus. He froze.
But the bed was empty.
He hurried into the room, scanned the area, noted the floor-to-ceiling mirror on one wall. The dolls and bears, the small white bed.
He glanced away, but a spot caught his attention.
He walked back to the bed.
A spot near a pillow, a smear on the sheet further down.
Sickness rolled through him.
Dolls. Bears. This was a child’s room.
For show?
Or more?
Elianya was into child porn.
Christ.
His breathing quickened as he stared at the stains. He reached out and touched one, surprised when the spot left a damp red imprint on his finger.
Still fresh.
He looked back to the camera. One a digital. Expensive cameras, both digital and 35mm, sat on tripods. Lights glared down on the bed from their stands on their own tripods.
Then it clicked. His head jerked back to the cameras. A fucking set. Goddamn it. Quickly, he walked to the digital and saw the last picture. A man covering a girl.
A young girl.
Son of a bitch! Something inside him snapped. He heard it crack, break and shatter. He stood there, flexing his fingers over the butt of his gun. Flex. Flex. Flex.
A muscle jumped in his cheek and he bit down until he knew his teeth would shatter and pain shot up to his brain.
Flex. Flex. Flex.
All he saw was the girl, obscenely naked and being horribly abused.
Then he looked closer and jerked back.
Dead. Her eyes stared wide at the camera, glazed . . . but . . . He looked back at the bed. Then back to the camera. The man’s hands were at her throat.
Ice trickled over his skin, the room around him blurring. The young girl’s face on the camera shifted to others he hadn’t been able to help. To others he had. To faces he wanted to forget and knew he never would . . .
He blinked and focused.
Rage hot and thick threatened to break through the ice.
He took a deep breath.
So small. She was so damn small with her cloud of black hair, pale face and blue, blue eyes pleading . . .
His heart hammered in his chest.
Flex. Flex. Flex.
A shot pinged across the room, an explosion in the silence. He whirled, kicked out, and brought his hand up, knocking the gun out of the man’s hand. A useless move, for the man was already falling, even as the gun slammed into the wall. Dimitri aimed his SIG Sauer even as the man thumped dead to the floor.
A woman, dressed all in black, stood in the doorway, her gun still pointed in his direction. For just a moment, a split second, his finger tightened on the trigger as he thought it had been John, but no. The man dead at his feet, with half his head blown across the wall, wasn’t John.
He and the woman stared at each other. He didn’t take his eyes off her. And in that instant, the world shifted back.
She stood there, dressed in black—black pants, boots, a turtleneck and leather jacket—tall, athletic. Dark hair, mocha skin, and those icy green eyes. The woman from the bar.
“He had a gun aimed at the back of your head,” she said softly. She had a British accent.
They still didn’t lower their weapons.
“Didn’t want him to take your mark?” he asked, his voice graveled more than normal.
She smiled, dimples winking at him. “Oh, I haven’t marked you,” she said, tilting her head, “yet.”
He narrowed his gaze at her even as hers shifted beyond him to scan the room. He saw the color leave her cheeks. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” she whispered. She licked her lips, swallowed. “Is this room what I think it is?”
Still staring at her, he shook his head. “Put your gun down.”
“Are you going to shoot me?”
For one moment, she stared at him, then shrugged and lowered her weapon, still pale, her eyes darting this way, then that. “Fine, but I draw the line at handing it over to you.” She shoved it into her pants.
“Who are you?” Dimitri asked.
“I think the more important question is who are you, Mr. Petrolov.”
Again they stared at each other.
“Are you Raven?”
She grinned, but didn’t answer his question. “I hear your partner coming up the stairs.”
He listened and heard John’s soft footsteps hushing along the carpets. Why hadn’t he heard her?
“Where did you come from?” he asked.
“I followed you.”
Of course she had. He motioned for her to come into the room. He felt his phone ring, but ignored it. John walked to the doorway. He took one look around, took a deep breath, another. “Christ. A bloody fucking porn set.” Then he turned to the woman. “Hello, Lenora.”
“Hello, John.”
John looked from one to the other. “Which one of you killed this guard?”
“This guard?” Dimitri asked.
John jerked his head to the doorway. “Took out one downstairs in some sort of study.”
“I did,”
the woman said. “Mr. Petrolov doesn’t seem too impressed, even though the bleeding bugger had a gun aimed at the back of Mr. Petrolov’s head.”
John’s gaze narrowed on his. “This true?”
Dimitri turned away from them and back to the camera, then glanced again at the bed. Still, like a broken doll, she lay in frame, but no longer in reality. Where the hell was the girl?
“I think someone died here,” he said softly, glancing at the other camera.
He wanted to flip back through all the cameras. But at present, he knew he simply couldn’t stomach what he’d see on them.
“What?” John asked.
He pointed. “Blood on the sheets.” Then he pointed to the cameras. “From the last frame on this digital, I’d have to say our pedophile went a bit too far.”
John and Lenora walked to stand behind him. John took another deep breath and started to flip through the digital shots. Dimitri ignored most of what he was seeing. Right now, he simply couldn’t handle it. But then a flash of white at the edge of one frame caught his attention.
“Wait.”
John looked at him, his face grim. “What?”
“Do the next one. I think there was another girl.”
And there she was. At the edge of the screen, the same wide blue eyes—terror rounding them, cherub cheeks and long dark curly hair. One big man reached for her as she clearly ran.
“Did she get away?” the woman asked, her voice so low he barely caught it.
He shook his head, chills dancing over his arms. He had to get the hell out of here.
“I don’t know, but I’m not leaving here until we know for certain.”
John, studying him, grabbed his arm. “If anyone died, this is a crime scene.”
He wretched his arm free. “I think even you can see that murder happened here and that may be, Johnno, but I’ll not leave any child behind in this house.”
He didn’t need to look again at the cameras or in the room to know the exact location of everything, even down to the last music box set atop the mantel. The pink curtains in the dollhouse.
Out in the hallway, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath and then another.
He hated this fucking job. Hated it. He didn’t care what he had to do. This was it. He was out.
She had looked so small, so damn small—but then had she really been? Was she older? He knew from living with the slime this long that things were rarely what they appeared, but regardless, she hadn’t deserved death. She hadn’t deserved whatever else had gone on here.
Who was she and who had hurt her?
If he’d gotten here sooner.
“Why the hell am I just now learning of Elianya’s little side business?” he snapped out, his hands fisted on his hips, not turning back to the room.
His muscles tightened.
John sighed. “I was ordered not to tell you.”
He glanced over his shoulder, piercing his friend with a look, but John didn’t look away. “Why?”
John’s brows rose. “I didn’t ask why. You don’t ask why. Christ.” He raked a hand over his face. “I have to call this—” He broke off and answered his phone. “What?”
Damn bastards. He’d seen a lot and had been part of more, but by God, he’d never been a part of this. The fact that Viktor might have known for a while, the fact John had known for a while and hadn’t told him . . .
He took a deep breath, closing his eyes.
Then they shot open. The other girl.
He didn’t listen to John. Where the hell was she?
“Are those the only cameras?” he asked from the doorway.
Lenora hadn’t walked far from the cameras. She still stood there, pale and studying one of the pictures. “Well, we know the digital is still working. And it appears the film may still be in the thirty-five millimeter.” Her eyes rose to his and iced, mirroring his own rage. “If we look through all the frames, we might just have the bastards who did this.”
“Thanks, I’ll let him know,” John said, his features hardening. “No, I’m with him. I’ll make certain he gets to a safe house.” John’s eyes, bright with anger and something else, zeroed in on him. John flipped his phone shut. “It appears you’re out of a job, and even if you weren’t, your cover’s been blown wide-ass open.”
“What? When? How?”
“That was an informant we have inside the Prague police. Your boss was murdered, and whoever did it left images of your past aliases complete with names, or some of them, on Hellinski’s computer.”
The gravity of the situation here and as a whole clicked through him.
“We’ve got to get you out of here. Several people are going to want you dead. Word’s already hit the streets you were undercover,” John said, dialing his phone. “Hellinski’s friends are not going to be happy.”
“Who killed him?”
John’s gray eyes narrowed on him. “Elianya, it appears. Went in, no one saw her leave, and then one of the guards went in to tell Mr. Hellinski he was late for a meeting.”
“I’m not going anywhere just yet.” He walked back into the room to see Lenora/Raven, whoever the hell she was, taking both cameras off their stands. For a moment he studied her.
Her head was bowed, but he noticed the tremor in her hands. Hell, his own were still shaking. Her shoulders rose on a deep breath then another. Without turning to him, she said, “I couldn’t work vice. Never could do that. I can’t stand sex crimes.” She shrugged, turned to him, and he caught the haunted look that flashed in her eyes. “So I worked wherever else they needed me. Narcotics, scams, kidnappings, terrorism, homicide, wherever, however, just not something like . . . like . . .” She waved toward the bed. “No child should even know about such things, let alone experience them.”
He almost didn’t answer her, but then he did. “I couldn’t agree more.” Still studying her, he said, “I don’t know if you’re the elusive Raven who was offered a couple of mill to put a bullet in my brain or not, but—”
“It was actually five million.” She sniffed and shrugged gain. “But who’s counting.”
With that she finally looked at him with those witch’s eyes.
He didn’t say anything; neither did she. Finally he nodded. “Thanks.”
“For not killing you or saving your life?”
“Both.”
For a moment they simply stared at each other and he felt it again, hot ice between his shoulder blades. He shifted and rolled his neck.
“We should check the rest of the house.”
She nodded, glanced again around the room. “Yes. I’m betting there is a hidden video camera in here somewhere. Live action sells more on the market than frozen frames.”
He agreed. “We’ll look for the damn camera later. Now, I want to find a live girl.”
She nodded and followed him from the room.
• • •
Voices filtered through the quiet. She heard the thumps and bumps. A shot.
She shivered. So cold. Why was she so cold?
Her thumb shook in her mouth.
Think of something else. She’d think of something else.
Back home. Back home before Papa and Mama went away.
But then they went away . . .
Her eyes shot open, but only a sliver of light showed around the edge of the door. She huddled tighter.
She’d pretend to be a shadow. No one looked for shadows. No one cared about shadows.
Shadows were silent. Shadows didn’t get hurt.
She waited, heard them talking.
A man’s voice.
A woman’s.
She whimpered.
Please, not the monsters. Please not the monsters.
• • •
He raked a hand through his hair.
Shit. Cover was blown. Which meant he’d have more people after him. And here he was playing games. What the fuck?
“Hide and seek is never fun as an adult. Have you noticed that?” Lenora asked a
s they stepped into another room and flipped the lights on.
He ignored the fact she finished his thought.
Another room like the first. This one done in blues and grays. Sports paraphernalia on the mantel. Trains and action figures on the walls. Again, there was one large floor-to-ceiling mirror on one of the walls.
Rage licked hot through his veins.
“There are some things I could have lived without seeing,” he muttered.
Determined, he walked to the bed, dropped down on one side. He wished he hadn’t. Under the bed was an assortment of BDSM toys, chains, whips, boxes of things he didn’t care to open.
Christ, how many others had there been?
He straightened, checked behind the curtains as the woman ripped through the closet and the armoire. “The longer I’m alive, even with all I’ve seen, I’m constantly reminded there is still a depth even the lowest haven’t succumbed to.”
He couldn’t agree more.
He knelt in front of the fireplace.
They both heard steps coming down the hallway and pulled their guns as John walked around the door.
He shook his head and ignored them. “I’ve got a team cleaning your place in Prague and . . .” He frowned. “What the hell are you two doing?” John asked.
Then he heard it. A whisper of a moan.
“Shh,” they both answered.
John continued. “I called this in, explained to my superior what the bloody hell was going on. And he said Pete’s trying to get in contact with—”
“Shhh,” the woman said again, her head tilting to the side. She strode to the mirror, tried to lift the gilded edge of the golden frame, but it didn’t move. One eyebrow cocked at him. “Two way, perhaps?”
He pulled his gun free, but she only shook her head and pulled something hanging from her waist, beside her pack. It unfolded and she removed a suction cup from the center tube. “Always come prepared, boys.”
Chapter 7
Prepared?
John’s phone chirped and he answered it, still watching them.
The woman dangled the instrument from her hand and motioned him back. “Get out of my way.” Taking a deep breath, she placed the suction cup on the mirror and widened the diameter. “So who are you? John said your cover was blown. What’s your name? You already know mine.”
