The Tears of Odessa (An Atlas Hargrove Thriller Book 1)

by Ryan Schow

  “Including the time you already spent?” Leopold asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I just need you to prove that she’s alive, or dead.”

  “Oh, that’s all?”

  “Get lucky,” Leopold snarled.

  “I’ll call you in the morning,” Scotty said, spitting out another seed.

  “Be sure you do.”

  He hung up, then called Cira again. She answered on the first ring. “Is he done crying?”

  “He’s here.”

  “Then put him on.”

  Cira did as he was asked. Atlas picked up.

  “Hello, Leo,” he said, no evidence of him breaking down present in his voice.

  “Tell me everything,” he said. “Spare me no detail.”

  For the next half hour, Atlas briefed him on the entire situation. It wasn’t hopeful. Grim described it better. When he was done, Leopold said, “If I call, you tell Cira she’d better answer.” He knew she would, for she always answered, but he had nothing else to say.

  “Anything else?”

  “The same goes for you.”

  “Roger that.”

  He hung up, called Halden back; he answered right away.

  “Give me good news, Leopold,” he said. It sounded like he was on even footing again. He could hear it in his voice, in his push to control the situation—to maybe even shape the outcome.

  “She’s most likely dead, Halden,” Leopold said with a heavy heart. “Beaten to death and dumped in Odessa, Ukraine. We need light, but my man is about ninety-five percent sure it’s her. If you want, I’ll have him send you pictures, but he said he’d advise against it.”

  “Send them,” Halden said.

  “Okay.”

  “If this is her,” he replied, his voice breaking slightly, that soft edge of hurt back, “I want to revise our arrangement.”

  “How so?”

  “Is your team capable?” he asked, clearing his throat, strengthening his voice again. “Are they the kind of team who can get in and out of a bad situation and not be seen?”

  “They can be ghosts, if necessary,” Leopold said with more surety than he felt.

  The team was still new, and competent, but his confidence was shaken. Yet not all was lost, he reminded himself. Atlas was going to work out. But only if Scotty Chase could deliver a clue. If he didn’t find something on Alabama, then Atlas would have done everything for free and he would not return to the team if needed.

  “I want you to kill them,” Halden said with a razor blade edge to his voice. “Kill every last one of them.”

  “We were hired to find her,” Leopold said. “That’s what we did.”

  “I want her body.”

  “That will be arranged.”

  “Is it possible that this isn’t her?”

  “I’ll send you the photos, as I offered earlier, but I’m told it’s grisly.”

  “I will give you one hundred thousand dollars for every one of those twisted monsters you kill. The proof of death must be unquestionable.”

  “You want it messy.”

  “I want a damn bloodbath!” he roared. A second later, the phone line went dead.

  He paced the room for what seemed like forever. The woman he was seeing, Denise, poked her head into the office, her lovely face full of concern.

  “Why are you yelling?” she asked.

  “Do you ever have those days where everything goes wrong, and what was once something beautiful and perfect suddenly feels fucked dry and ruined?”

  “I wish you wouldn’t talk like that.”

  He simply stared at her until she left the office and went to bed. He picked up the phone, called Scotty.

  “Twice in an hour,” the detective said.

  “I’m making moves, big moves,” he said. “And it’s imperative that you deliver.”

  “I need more manpower, then.”

  “Budget for two more men, three if you need it, and get me proof of life!” He didn’t want to hear any excuses or reasons why nearly a week had passed and he had nothing to show for his efforts, so Leopold abruptly ended the call.

  Stalking down the hallway, he crawled into bed next to Denise. He shivered despite the heat. It was her cold shoulder. Good God, it was icy.

  “You should take a shower,” he said to her. “I’m not saying you need it, I’m only saying I need to think in private, and I don’t want you to leave.”

  She threw back the covers, muttered her own version of curse words, then went into the bathroom and slammed the door. He heard the shower turn on. Picking up his phone, he dialed the number. Cira picked up right away.

  “Put Atlas back on the phone.”

  She did.

  “I need a number,” Leopold said.

  “What kind of a number?”

  “A percentage.”

  “Of?”

  “Certainty,” Leopold answered.

  “Pretty high, but it was dark outside, and though my light was bright, the body was dirty.”

  “But it looked like her?”

  “Yes.”

  “We knew the time would come where we’d find her or not,” he said, talking more to himself than Atlas.

  “This is where you tell me I move from the recovery side of the mission to the assassination side?”

  “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

  “I’m not doing it.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve only been at this a few days,” Atlas said. “Detectives were on the hunt for my daughter for years.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Tell me what you need from me, and what you want from me, and then we’ll discuss what I’m saying.”

  “I want you to recover the body and bring it back to the States. And then I want you to kill everyone involved. I’m talking scorched earth, no one’s left breathing. Are you catching my drift?”

  “It’s not hard to follow.”

  “What you do to these monsters…they won’t need body bags to clean up the mess, they’ll need a mop and bucket.”

  “Then I want a full month.”

  “A full month?”

  “Look, man, you slapped your dick around with this case for too long. I was brought in late. You know how I feel about kids and you sent me here to see the horrors of this godforsaken world. These blood-guzzling zombies see these children as currency, as a product, not as people. So when you say kill them all, I say no problem. But this is trauma to me. I’m seeing things I can’t recover from. Doing things I can’t repent for. So you will give me a month with your detective whether I wrap this up in a day or a week. Say yes and follow-through, and I’ll do worse to these guys than I did to Ronnie Beckett.”

  He had seen what Atlas did to Ronnie. He turned the man into a bloody pin cushion.

  “You have my word,” he said, sincere. “And Atlas?”

  “Yeah.”

  “More is better. The client said kill them all. He means all of them. But it can’t lead back to you, or us.”

  “That’s like telling me you’re going to send me to the moon, all I have to do is grow wings and fly there.”

  “No one said it would be easy.”

  “Just find my daughter!” he growled before hanging up.

  When Atlas handed Cira the phone, she said, “No one talks to Leopold like that.”

  “I just did.”

  The way she was looking at him, he felt the very air between them change. He was ready to give in, to accept his fate—the fate of his failed marriage, his prison sentence, this crap life he’d made for himself.

  “So are we going to have sex or what?” he finally asked.

  She just looked at him, and then she seemed to blink back into awareness. “When you get all romantic like that, how can a girl resist?”

  And with that, he began to undress her, burying his mind, body and soul into this woman. When they were done, he washed himself off, cried in the cold shower water, then pulled himself togethe
r enough to turn in for bed.

  Lying next to Cira, listening to her sleep, he couldn’t help but judge himself harshly for his constant outbursts and erratic emotions. But these were his emotions—for better or worse—and he’d have to hold it together for a little longer if he hoped to survive. When he finally slipped into a nice, deep sleep, he experienced the best rest he’d had in years. He felt so good that when he woke up next to Cira the next morning, he didn’t suffer an ounce of guilt.

  Seeing him smile, she blinked a little faster, like she wasn’t sure if she was seeing things right. “What is that thing on your face?”

  “A smile?”

  “I didn’t know you had one of those, Mr. Former Grumpypants.” With this, he laughed pretty hard, and then he reached for her hand under the blankets.

  “What are you thinking that has put such a lovely smile on your face?” she asked, yawning deep, then half stretching.

  “I’m thinking we’re about to rock the shit out of Odessa’s underworld.”

  “Oh, I thought you were smiling because of me.”

  “When I was smiling, it was because of you,” he said, leaning in to kiss her. “But now it’s time to put some folks into the ground.”

  While Cira was in the shower, he called Fadey Bondar and arranged for them to be picked up in an hour. Then he went into the bathroom and asked if he could watch her.

  “Only if you don’t make it weird,” she said.

  To this, he smiled again.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  ATLAS HARGROVE

  Room service came earlier than before. Cira answered the door in a robe, let the man in, then tipped him when he left. The food smelled amazing.

  “Can you call Fadey and tell him to give us another half an hour?” she asked.

  “I was thinking the same thing.”

  He had no idea staying with Cira would be about sex, hot showers, and room service, but with the hell that was about to befall them, he knew he needed to make the time. He’d be back in the Supermax again, fighting for his life, sleeping in solitary confinement, and taking flak from the guards and the warden alike. So why not make the best of what he had?

  He called Fadey, pushed the pickup time thirty minutes, then he and Cira enjoyed a nice breakfast. Unfortunately, while eating, images of bugs crawling all over Kaylee’s dead body snuck into my mind. He stopped eating, searched for a distraction. Grabbing his phone, he called Ruslana. She answered right away.

  “Good morning, Ruslana, it’s fake Aleksander,” he said, hoping she wouldn’t hang up. “I have a quick question for you.”

  “I expected to never hear from you again,” she replied, her tone cold.

  “I found Kaylee.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, she’s dead down by the chemical plant, the place where dead bodies go to rot.”

  “I know the place.”

  “Who uses the plant as a dumpsite, besides Dasha?”

  “Just Dasha, I think, and maybe some of the other organizations.”

  “So he kills the girls?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Why not keep them earning?”

  “Sometimes they just die, or they get beaten to death, or sometimes it’s more. Dasha runs a diversified company.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I asked you about murder, about blood, yes?”

  “How can I forget?”

  “I also told you it was difficult to find joy in anything left in this world, yes?”

  “You did.”

  “Well, there are people who are numb to most all the horrors of the world, but these same people—the ones who commit most of these atrocities—find their spirit in the suffering and consumption of others.”

  “Like yourself,” he said.

  “Yes, but not like these people that Dasha serves.”

  “What exactly is he serving?”

  “People will pay exorbitant amounts of money these days for snuff films. On the darknet, men and women will bid on methods of torture and death, treating it like an online auction where everyone gets to win.”

  “They run an auction for murder?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he hosts this?”

  “He does from time to time,” Ruslana said.

  He felt that familiar sickness return, the same sickness that seemed to plague him at every corner of this hunt.

  “So this is where he takes the boys and girls when he’s finished with them?”

  “You seem very sensitive to this for a man who has ingested the blood of another,” she said. “I would’ve thought you’d know of such…extracurricular endeavors.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “And yet you knew about VK.”

  “I’d heard of it,” he said. “Adrenalized, oxidized blood.”

  “The drug of the ultra-rich,” she mused. “The ultimate youth serum. Is there anything else your little brain wants to know from my big brain, Mr. Fake UFC?”

  “That’s all,” he said. “It’s been real.”

  “Of course it has.”

  She hung up before he could end the call. He just looked at Cira, who was looking back at him. She had stitches on her forehead, a nasty bruise behind it, and he was an absolute mess from too much abuse himself.

  Looking out the window at the bright summer morning, he couldn’t help but feel a pervading darkness. Long wispy clouds hung in the sky, beautiful to the tourists, but almost taunting to him. The voices in his head started up, a low, unintelligible murmur, as if the underworld was telling him that killing was right, killing was good. He could feel the temptation upon him, underneath him, beckoning him. It was tugging on the feet of his soul, and for some strange reason, he welcomed it.

  “I think I’m going to throw up,” Cira said, putting her hand to her mouth.

  “Rock-paper-scissors for the toilet?”

  She shot out of the chair without another word, hurried to the bathroom and fell to her knees before the toilet. He heard her dry-heave a couple of times, but not actually throw up. She must have heard the entire conversation. He stood, went to her, feeling compassion. This was not a world she could survive in. This was a world he wasn’t even sure he could exist in.

  “If you don’t want to go to the dumpsite, I understand,” he said as she wiped her eyes and blew her nose. “What we’re going to see is the kind of thing that will never leave your mind.”

  “I’ve seen some pretty hairy things in my time,” she said unconvincingly, “so I think I’ll live.”

  “Says the girl praying to the porcelain god.”

  She flushed the toilet, stood up, fixed herself in the mirror and said, “You cry in the shower, I almost puke in the toilet.” Turning to look at him, as if she’d leveled the playing field, she said, “I guess that makes us both human.”

  Embarrassed, he said, “I’d been wondering about that.”

  “Yes, I’m human,” she said, offended.

  “Not about you,” he replied. “I’ve been wondering that about myself.”

  “You cracked. It happens.”

  “So you’re going with me, then?” he asked.

  “Unless you happen to say otherwise.”

  “I’m not saying otherwise.”

  The minute he got in Fadey’s cab, Atlas described the location he had gone to earlier that morning with Dasha. Cira got in behind Atlas, shut the cab door, then said to Fadey, “Do you know the place?”

  “I’ve heard of it, yes,” he said, looking nervous about it. “I know exactly where it’s at. I’ve just never had a reason to go there.”

  “Now you have a reason,” Atlas said.

  “Bad spirits there,” Fadey said.

  “I was there last night. I can confirm that you’re right.”

  They drove in relative silence to the dumpsite, both of them knowing what they would find, her more scared than him. With each mile, however, Atlas found himself falling deeper and deeper into that hole.

  Where he�
��d only longed for Kaylee’s well-being last night, now he couldn’t stop thinking of Alabama. Was she in a similar predicament? Tossed in some cesspool, stuffed in a barrel, buried in a shallow grave? Was she taken care of, held captive, raped and beaten? All these questions he’d hoped to put behind him in death haunted him in life. They were relentless.

  They drove into one of the worst neighborhoods he’d ever seen. Dirt streets, abandoned cars, mangy dogs running after the car, nipping at each other, barking just to bark. The Soviet Bloc-style apartments looked ransacked, over-tagged with graffiti, and dirty. It was like the neighborhood had once been the epicenter of protests and violent riots, and no one wanted any part of them now. Looming in the distance was a huge, menacing smokestack.

  “Someone should tell Stephen King about this place,” Cira said. “It might inspire the next big batch of horror novels.”

  “Wait until you get inside,” Atlas said.

  A murder of crows flew past the smokestack, the bright morning skies giving way to a gathering of dark clouds. As they approached the site, these same clouds blotted out the sun, dropping the temperature a few degrees. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cira shiver.

  “I don’t want to drive in there,” Fadey said, genuinely scared.

  “It’s okay,” Atlas said. “We can walk.”

  “Did you bring what I asked you to bring?” Atlas said to Fadey. He nodded. “I’ll need you to open the trunk, then.”

  Fadey got out and opened his trunk, handed him the folded plastic tarp. He then looked up at the huge smokestack, the vacant building, the broken windows. Like Cira, he was overcome by an involuntary shiver. Wasting no time, he then hurried back into the cab and rolled up the window.

  Atlas walked up to Fadey’s window, knocked on the dusty glass. The Ukrainian rolled down the window an inch, his eyes animated, reticent. For God’s sake, he was acting as if the darkness outside might get in and get him if he opened the window any more.

  “We’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said. “You know we’ll need to put the body in the trunk, right?”

  He nodded, his head jerking a bit.

  He glanced over at Cira, whose eyes were glued to the many unnatural lumps in the damp, grassy soil. Farther back, he saw the piles of bodies and wondered if this land was cursed. He knew it was. They walked the tire-tracked path around the perimeter of the open field, both of them holding their noses, Cira’s face so white she looked porcelain.