by Lexy Timms
They opened the door.
The setup was like something out of an old horror movie. The building had to date back to WWII and so the hallway was narrow, with several nondescript doors on each side, transoms hovering over each, most painted shut. A few wedged open for the sake of what air flow there was. The whole place smelled of mold, of too many people living in too small a space. Why was there always the scent of onions, when the people ate in the cafeteria?
Wary, feeling vulnerable and exposed, they moved down the hallway, Taylor taking the lead.
Angelica didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she hung back a little, just as unsure.
At the end of the hall, a door stood on its own with no number, no marking to distinguish it from the rest, save the unique location of it.
“Okay, so which one is his?”
“In my building, Manchester has the room at the end of the hall. I was in it once...” She smiled at Taylor’s expression. “Don’t ask. Anyway, his room was twice the size of mine. If this building stays true to the shape of that one—”
“Then our grandiose lieutenant will have that one.” Taylor pointed to the door at the end of the hall, thinking, of course. In any horror movie, it’s always the last door in a very long hall.
With the other doors opening suddenly, releasing the entire forces of hell the moment the intrepid heroes are past, thereby cutting off any possible escape.
He shook himself. It wasn’t like him to see the bogeyman. Aftereffect of the pheromone?
Focus, Taylor. Focus.
“Can you hear anything through the door?” she whispered as they approached. “Your hearing is better than mine.”
He smiled a little. “I’m not quite that good,” he murmured, and paused in front of the apartment, considering the door and the transom overhead. If anything, he should be able to hear something through there, but not only was this window painted shut but it looked like someone had put a piece of cardboard over the glass, so no one could see in. Why do that? You’d need a stepladder to see anything...
“Whatever it was he was babbling about pulled him out of bed so fast his face was still red from his exertions.”
Taylor looked at her. He was impressed. Very impressed. But then, he shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, she’d been trained to be observant. Though it took a wicked nasty mind to put things together in quite the way you needed to sometimes. “You’re a natural at this.”
“Thanks.” She flashed him a grin. “Let’s just hope that Franco can keep him busy long enough for us to check this out.”
Taylor pressed his ear against the door. “I hear something. It’s like a whistling sound. And something with it... like a puppy... I can’t tell.”
“A puppy?” Their eyes met. Durant wasn’t exactly a dog person. “Can you pick the lock?” Her voice had taken on a slightly panicked note.
“Of course.” He grinned and lifted one leg. The powerful kick crashed the door off its hinges and splintered the doorjamb.
“Subtle,” she murmured, trying to look past him even before the dust had cleared.
There was no holding her back. Angelica took the lead, looking behind her as though to make sure that Taylor was following before slipping into the room. She took a look at the rumpled bed and the young lady lying on it and turned, her face a mask of absolute horror.
A child.
Lying on the bed.
A girl. She couldn’t have been more than thirteen. Fifteen at most. Naked with one foot chained to the bedpost, clutching a thin sheet in delicate, fine-boned hands. She faced the wall, flinching, expecting some new terrifying thing, and it was all Taylor could do to control the rage. His hands shook, and he blinked and blinked again, struggling to see past the red haze that filled his sight.
“I will kill him,” he said, and it was he and the tiger who spoke as one, something that should have shocked him. But it didn’t.
And he meant every word.
He couldn’t contain it. The fury that tore through him, the desire to change, the tiger roaring to be let out, to exact a revenge that would be terrible and oh so deserved.
“I will fucking kill him.”
Chapter 15
His voice conjured the very fires of hell. Angelica understood that, but first and foremost she was a doctor. And it didn’t take a genius to see that she was losing him, and if she lost him she’d lose this child, and everyone else who was being victimized in this place, that they still needed to find so that they could save them, too.
“You will help me get this girl to some treatment.” She faced him, her words clipped. Sharp. Filled with every ounce of authority she could possibly summon, terrified that it wouldn’t be enough to reach him. He had grown in his rage, his shoulders and chest puffed out like an angry tiger. She could see the look of transformation in his eyes. All around them were large piles of white: sheets, pillowcases, towels. All white. All recently laundered. The whole camp was a sea of white laundry, it seemed.
He’s not hearing a word I say.
With no other choice open to her, with no time to try and reason with him, to reach out in any other way, she spun and slapped him, hard. He turned on her, lips lifting in a snarl that should have sent her scrambling backwards, only she didn’t. Instead, she stepped forward, placing a hand on his chest, willing him to look at her, to realize who she was.
He tilted his head, regarding her warily. More animal than man. Confused.
“You will help me take this girl somewhere safe, do you hear me? Do you both hear me?”
A very bestial growl vibrated in his chest but he looked back at the bed, at the girl who had retreated as far as she could and was making frightened mewling noises from under the only blanket.
He moved toward her. For a moment she panicked, thinking it was too late; he moved too swiftly, with too much violence. Then he reached out and took the chain in his hands, which tethered her to this hellish nightmare, and snapped it as though it were nothing at all.
Angelica gasped and opened her mouth to say something. He had to have hurt himself, she could swear she saw blood on his hands, but he was past hearing her as he picked up the child, cradling her with infinite tenderness, wrapping the blanket, the white blanket, more securely around her bare limbs. He turned toward Angelica then, and she wondered at his control. The blanket was right under his very nose; he had to be smelling nothing but that right now, but though his face was pale he seemed... well, not fine, but at least himself as he carried the child through the door. His entire body was rigid, emanating the fury of both man and tiger, yet he crooned to the girl as he carried her down the hallway toward the stairs, whispering soft words, tender things that broke Angelica’s heart.
He only paused once, waiting as Angelica opened the door for them.
“I will kill him,” Taylor murmured in passing, and it was this phrase that was more terrifying than the other times he’d uttered it, for it was this deadly calm voice that told her he truly meant it.
“Not now,” Angelica insisted, ignoring the bitter satisfaction in knowing that Lieutenant Durand would someday be punished for his actions. But then, she’d been fighting the need to scream and vomit simultaneously since she’d seen the girl. She swallowed hard, putting a hand protectively upon the child’s head which was now resting on Taylor’s shoulder. The girl was so exhausted that she’d already fallen asleep. “She needs you now,” she said, her voice hoarse. It was a struggle to get the words out.
Taylor took the stairs like he couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
Angelica followed, wishing she had some idea of what to do next.
“SHE’S ASLEEP,” ANGELICA reported to Taylor.
He hadn’t calmed down much in the interim. He’d waited in the hallway while she’d examined the girl as she cleaned her up and put her to bed. In her own bed. She’d wrestled hard with her conscience on this one, knowing that this girl should have gone to the clinic, where everything could have been logged and documented
, but right now she didn’t trust anyone. And until she knew more, the last thing she was going to do was to leave a vulnerable child in the open ward, like she had Charra. She still hadn’t gotten over the feeling that she’d been entirely to blame for the disappearance of the first girl. This second, whose name she didn’t even know, she would protect with her life if need be.
Now, as she slipped out into the hallway to talk to him, careful to leave the door open a crack behind her so she could hear if her patient needed her, she wasn’t sure which Taylor she was talking to. She wondered how close to the surface the tiger actually was. He’d volunteered to discard the blanket; since it was nowhere in evidence, she supposed he’d gotten rid of it somewhere. Now she was counting on the fact that he was away from the influence of whatever had been used on the white things in the laundry to clear his head, and hopefully calm him down.
The wildness in his eyes was, mostly, Taylor. At least she hoped it was.
He paced back and forth outside her door, fingers drumming on his thigh as he moved. His boots beat a rhythmic tattoo on the floor. It was a wonder the neighbors hadn’t complained. She suspected that most of them had taken to wearing ear plugs to bed. They’d advised her to, if she ever wanted to get a decent hour of sleep, as the walls were so thin, and every noise in the hallway seemed to amplify due to the nature of the high ceilings and the transoms over the doors. She glanced at hers now, thinking that she’d never given it much thought, as the ceiling fan had kept her own apartment reasonably cool and her transom painted shut anyway.
Now she realized why Durand had covered his. She worried for the girl, that she could be discovered so easily.
Not easily. No one can see through that window. We’re not that exposed. Now, if only I knew what to do next. We can’t get backup, or even any kind of support from outside. I don’t have evidence of anything except an incident with one young girl. The authorities would look the other way. Slap on the wrist.
If they believed us at all. They’d claim—who knows what they’d claim. And there’s nothing going on that would merit interference from the U.S. government.
She reached out to catch his arm in passing. “Taylor, what—”
But he evaded her grasp. “I need to go...”
“No.” Angelica reached for him again but Taylor stalked away, rage and vengeance in every step. She ran past him and got in front, past the turn in the hall so that he wasn’t going anywhere without pushing her down. She was tired and needed him right now. “He needs to be arrested, held, and prosecuted. You’re not the law here. You don’t even live here. This isn’t a part of your mission.”
“How can you say that?” he hissed, pointing in the direction of her door and the girl who lay just beyond it.
She drew him further down the hall, so that their voices wouldn’t wake her up. “She’s safe now.”
“Until he finds another?” he snapped, and she saw the way his fingers flexed. He wants to hit something. I guess it’s better than turning tiger and ripping someone’s head off. But he’s still awful damn mad right now. With good reason. But I need him to see reason.
“Taylor, Charra is still out there. What if she falls into the hands of someone like Durand? What happens if she changes out of fear or desperation in the bed of a stranger?”
Taylor’s arms crossed across his barrel chest. He said nothing.
“I want this stopped as much as you do.” She threw up her hands in frustration. “You’re not the one to do it. You’re an American and, I might add, the people you work for don’t exactly have a great reputation for keeping their noses out of other people’s business. He needs to be arrested and tried by his own people.”
“You can’t possibly think that’s going to happen. In case you haven’t noticed, things out there,” Taylor jerked a thumb in the general direction of the camp, “are in enough upheaval to be living like that. The government isn’t going to care about what one man does with one underaged girl.”
Which was exactly what her thoughts had been, but she didn’t tell him that. At least he was listening. “You said yourself, this is a post for people who are incompetent, who are useless. No one is going to try and bail his ass out. They’re going to hang him out to dry. All we have to do is press charges.”
“With who?” Taylor asked. “Manchester? The soldiers who serve under Durand?”
She’d been going around and around on that one while putting the girl to bed. The problem was, there wasn’t anyone. At least no one she trusted that much. She frowned a little and came up with one idea, but it was grasping at straws. “Can you reach your people?”
Taylor blinked. “Why?”
“Calling for help because you can’t find a shape-shifter might not be received too well, but calling for help because you uncovered a human trafficking ring might be of interest to the CIA.”
“That’s a stretch, going from one sick bastard to an entire ring.”
“No. Remember? The old woman told me that Charra’s entire village disappeared. We have evidence now that can get us help finding her without having to reveal your actual interest in the girl.”
Taylor thought about this a moment and finally nodded, some of the tension going out of his body, his arms relaxing slightly. “It’s not going to be an easy sell. Interfering with a foreign government, and a refugee camp... it’s tricky. But slave trade is a hot-button issue. I think that my bosses would be very interested in that, if it’s at all true.”
“Taylor...” Angelica swallowed hard, hating to even say the next part out loud. It had made her sick, the few details she’d managed to wrest from the girl as she’d examined her. Too scared to give her own name, she at least had confirmed some of what she’d been thinking. “That girl in there, she said she was with others, probably a dozen boys and girls. That they were all ‘taken.’ You can kill this sick bastard, sure. But how does that help them? We don’t know where they are.”
Taylor was visibly trying to hold on to his hatred of the lieutenant, his fists clenching with the desire to settle this on his own. Forget about this being a hot-button issue with the U.S. government. Taylor had a particular abhorrence of this kind of crime, it seemed. Something was triggering him, and she wondered what his connection to this was as, through gritted teeth, he hissed, “I have a phone. It’s in the lining of my bag.”
“Cell?” she asked dubiously.
“Satellite.” He sighed. “Look, you’re right, and I’m the one being an ass. I just don’t like it.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You don’t like me being right?”
“I don’t like me being an ass.”
“Let’s go make a call.” Angelica went to him and wrapped her arms around his waist, laying her head on his chest. After a moment, she felt his chest muscles relax as he wrapped his arms around her. His heart was still beating fast.
She held him for a long moment, not wanting to break contact, not wanting any of this to be real, wanting only to be in his arms—warm and safe and loved.
“Come on,” she finally said when she felt him calm and relax in her arms. She wished the moment could go on forever. Reluctantly she pulled away. She took his hand and they walked side by side back to the apartment, surprised at how far down the hallway they’d wandered.
She opened the door. Taylor was still holding her hand when she froze.
Franco sat in the chair at the table. The very same chair next to the two pistols they had left in the open. The pistols had been dismantled, lying in so many pieces on the table, like a particularly lethal jigsaw puzzle. The phone was gone.
The bed behind him was empty.
Angelica started forward with a wild cry. “What have you done?”
She was brought up short by the gun pointed at her head.
There was nothing Angelica could.
“The girl is of no matter. My associate has taken her elsewhere. You, on the other hand, were supposed to kill that fool of a lieutenant!” Franco hissed, fury radiating from e
very line of his body.
“That lieutenant, as you say, is your man,” Taylor said calmly. “It’s your uniform that was disgraced. It’s not my place to clean up your army’s mess.”
“You don’t understand,” the other man said sadly. “Now he knows you know. He’s just a little man in the system.”
“You can’t stop this by killing that little idiot,” Angelica said, hands raising in a form of surrender. “There are more, probably even worse than him. You have to stop this. It’s bigger than one person.”
“It’s bigger than you think, Doctor,” Franco said. He reached behind him with his free hand, his eyes never once leaving Taylor. He tossed something onto the bed. Taylor’s knife. “This was found by the construction equipment. Right next to Batu’s body. He was attacked by a wild animal.”
“Sorry to hear,” Taylor said, edging away from Angelica. She realized he was giving Franco a clear shot so she wouldn’t get hurt. She tensed, wondering what he planned. And fought the urge to follow, knowing that her trying to shield him would only lead to disaster, though her heart was shattering into a million pieces at the very thought of losing him.
“You know nothing about it.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Franco...” Angelica needed him to pay more attention to her than to Taylor. “Why?” She noted his expression and pushed on. “Why did you want him dead? What’s the point? Were you trying to get his position? Move up in rank?”
Franco huffed, drawing himself up to his full height. He wore his uniform with a sort of pride. It meant something to him. “That fool’s in charge of nothing and no one. He’s a joke and everyone knows it. He yells orders and no one pays any attention to what he says.”
“Then, why? Help me to understand.”
Franco gestured with the gun, using it as a pointer in her direction. She flinched, half expecting it to go off. She saw the whites of his eyes flashing in his rage and fury. “You saw! You were in that room. You examined the girl. You know what he did!”
