by Lumen Reese
He seemed to know it, too. But when he lifted his gaze from the floor, his eyes were clear, his words were true. “We save Alex, I accept whatever happens next. And, like you said… Joey needs the money.”
“Let’s go.”
“Get your gun.”
*
Corso led the way east, to where the buildings grew less thick and instead of mud off the streets, grass grew as we climbed higher. We stayed on side streets, in back alleys.
We had been walking for an hour when Corso suddenly held out an arm, blocking me from moving any further. I flinched when we collided, backed up, and shook my hands to ease some of my tension. He looked at me funny, but didn’t say anything.
The shack across a small stretch of flat marsh was one of the last before the town gave way to empty plains. There were only a few people outside back toward town, nothing like the busy dock or Main Street shops.
Corso pulled a handgun out of his bag, and I did the same, checking that it was loaded and that the safety was off. I didn’t know for sure that I could pull the trigger when aiming at an actual human being, but they didn’t need to know that, and neither did Corso.
I didn’t have time to gather my thoughts. He stood and began moving forward, half bowed over with his legs bent, eyes focused the way I knew only his could be. Deadly focused.
I followed, surely looking less graceful than him as we approached the little shack. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. I was expecting bullets to start flying at any second. We moved to separate sides of the door.
Corso counted silently; lips shaping numbers, then threw his weight against it. He was thin, but there was hidden muscle under his coat. And he was fast. His reflexes were like a cat’s as he pointed his gun three times towards different areas of the shack and took mental stock of everything before I could clumsily follow.
“This isn’t right.”
Corso pointed to a spot in the center of the room. “Stand here.” I moved, floor boards creaking as I went, and he crossed the room to a table, where he shoved a book aside and pressed a few buttons hidden in a little cavity in the wood.
The floor shook below my feet, giving a sudden lurch and starting to sink down. Adrenaline spiked from the falling sensation. My whole body tense, I wiped a sweaty palm on my pants and then returned it to my gun. Corso jumped down onto the platform as it continued to fall. The section was tight, meant for only one person at a time. Maybe that was a defense mechanism, I thought, and there was a trap waiting at the bottom.
I backed up as far as I could without touching the walls moving behind me, and still I felt too close to him. Corso’s presence was more invasive than most people’s. He was a few inches away, but my skin still shrunk back and my insides felt tight as his eyes stayed on my face. Though it was dark, he had to see how I was squirming. He had to hear how I was hyperventilating.
The elevator shaft suddenly opened around us, coming with a rush of cool air, and I almost fell back. Corso grabbed my arm to hold me up, leveling his gun with one hand, aiming into the darkness. All around us was still. He pulled a small flashlight out of his pocket and flicked it on, throwing light on each wall, into each empty corner.
There were all the fix-ins for a laboratory. There were computers; large screens that took up half a wall with consoles before them that had all gone dark. Abandoned chairs and tables.
“What story line leads here?”
“Not a story line. It’s a security base. All the cameras for surveillance would be hooked up to these monitors to ensure the safety of the clients. But about eight years ago they moved it all to a base back in New York.”
We made quick work of exploring the underground rooms, down several hallways branching out, making sure we didn’t miss anything.
Corso sighed. He flung a few books off one table, then overturned it, letting out a loud, “Fuck!”
I’m sure I flinched, though he was the full room’s length away.
He stilled, breathing heavily and then mumbled, “She was never here. They must have moved the girls to a different quarter.”
Until that day I hadn’t ever known he had a sister. It seemed outlandish to me, that he could have family. Men like Miles Corso were usually alone in the world. And without her, he soon would be. What would happen then? The last thing grounding him to civilization would be gone. He’d become unhinged. I was sure.
He looked up, the determination clicking back in and then instantly becoming disguised. “Thank you for your help, Stella, but we part ways from here.”
“Part ways!? You said you would let me help you!”
“I thought we might find the girls here. We didn’t.”
“And you won’t! You’re one man, and by keeping these details to yourself, you’re going to get those girls killed! We need the police and we need the company’s cooperation, every able-bodied man they have could be searching the quarters right now!”
His voice became deathly quiet, and looking up from under his brow at me, in the dark, he looked truly frightening. “You’re not going to the police. You would never get that far. The other head designers of this place, they might be on the level, but you have no way of knowing. I know Jericho doesn’t want those girls found. And he’s got enough power to pit any part of this place against you, against us. The man he has traveling with you? You need to watch out. Keep doing what you’re doing, pretend to be looking for me, or you’ll find yourself in even more danger.”
“Are you threatening me?”
He didn’t answer, and it scared me more than anything he could have said.
“Jericho can’t be behind this, it’s too obvious. If we go to him with everything you know, he’ll do everything he can to find your sister. He could do in a day what will take us weeks. And we can explain that you only did what you had to.”
“You’re not listening.” He strode over and grabbed my arm, dragging me towards the platform, but I jerked away, and the tension building in me finally spilled over.
“Don’t touch me! Don’t ever touch me!”
“Get on the platform.”
“We’re not done.”
“Get on the platform, or I’ll leave you down here.”
I took my time walking over and stood on the tiny square of wood. Corso pressed a button on the table and jumped up onto the platform with me. I could feel the heat radiating off his body, so close that he grazed me when he moved in as the walls of the elevator shaft closed in again.
“You should listen to me, Stella.”
“I can’t. Joey needs the money.”
“If you could bring me in -which you couldn’t-then you’d be killing all those girls. My sister. For the money.”
I bristled. “You’re wrong.” Why couldn’t he see that he was wrong?
Corso shook his head and didn’t reply.
We were silent for a few thoughtful seconds as we continued to rise. My hand was on my gun. I whipped it up, trying to point it at him, but I couldn’t straighten my arm in the tight space. Corso had struck like a cobra, grabbing both my wrists with an iron grip and pulling me to him, so we were pressed together. My gun clattered to the floor.
The coldness in his eyes put a fear in me, and the feeling of his body touching mine froze me. But the rising of our platform in the elevator shaft made me aware of my feet on solid ground below me, and Corso’s grip on my wrists was firm but it did not hurt; in fact it kindled a surge of some warm elasticity in me I had never felt before. That thing sunk after a second and the fear began to swirl around inside me, and I pulled on my wrists, but Corso tugged me back in. The warmth bloomed back up, the lightness. The coldness in his eyes was gone. He only looked at me and drew in a few slow breaths, which I felt the rise and fall of in his chest against mine.
The platform rose up into the tiny shack and we were still locked in a stare-down. He released me slowly, then in a moment his face went unreadable again, and he turned and picked up his bag, starting for the door. He paused when
he got a look outside.
“Pick that gun up and keep it close. It’s dangerous here and you’re gonna have to shoot me if you wanna bring me in.”
Chapter Thirteen
I felt numb the entire walk back through town, heading west down Main Street toward the ocean. I walked among crowds who paid me no mind. On a restaurant patio I saw Elena once again, but she was facing a handsome dark-haired man and didn’t see me. She was leaning in as he spoke, but her head was on her hand and her face looked bored. Making me think of Danielle St. Peter’s chained in the dungeon under Sickness Island, and making me feel fed up with the world and everyone in it, I crossed the street and stepped right up to their table.
“Hi,” I nodded to the man but immediately turned away from him to address Elena. “I’m sorry, can I take up a few more minutes of your time?”
Flashing a dimpled smile to her companion, she breathed, “Sorry, excuse me, she’s an investigator.”
She stood from the table and I led the way past occupied tables and chairs and around the corner of the restaurant where we were out of plain sight of the diners, if not the people walking by out on the street.
“What is it?” Elena asked, leaning back on the red brick wall behind her.
My sudden burst of irritation had spurred me to take her away from that man, but I had no follow up and suddenly I was grasping for what I wanted her to know. “Look-when you thought… even if they went behind your parent’s backs to give you what you want, that’s not what you need.”
“You think you know what I need?” Her voice was petulant but she couldn’t look at me when she said it. “I’ll be taking over my dad’s company in a few years, I’ll be one of the most powerful women in Chicago before I’m even thirty. And I’ll be able to buy a perfect scenario for myself, then. I just have to wait.”
“This place isn’t real. These people are actors, they don’t really care about you. You’re young, you should be out cultivating something real with a real person.” I reached out to cup her face and pulled her closer and moved in and kissed her. Her lips were soft and my stomach was tight and my blood was pounding in my temples.
Her lips moved in a small, inviting way against mine, but I could give her no more and had to break away to breathe.
“Do you understand?” I plead, unable to watch the girl lose herself to pretending the way dozens of other buyers had and I had lost years of my life to daydreaming on an assembly line.
My hand was still on the side of her face, fingers sifting through her brown hair, and she inclined against it so it rested flat on her cheek. She was nodding into my palm, though her face had turned so sad again.
“Goodbye,” she said knowingly.
And I turned and headed for the street before her sadness could make me stay.
I went back to the inn where Henry saw me through the front window and ran to meet me at the door.
“Are you okay? God damn it, Stella.”
“I’m fine, calm down.”
“What happened?”
“I saw my chance, I went for it.” The moment had come, I realized. I had to tell Henry about Corso if I was going to. To wait even another minute would be too long, would be withholding. But to tell Henry was as good as telling Jericho, and to expose Corso would expose my relationship to him, would likely make me seem unfit to the be the one chasing him.
“And?” Henry demanded.
“He took me somewhere dark, I couldn’t see his face.” The lie tasted bad. Someday, I would explain it to him, and, good-natured as he was, he would forgive me. Distantly, I realized that I trusted Henry. I wondered if it was Dr. Foster’s advice to write the letter which had cinched it, or something else.
“What else?”
“I need a glass of water.” I headed to the bar.
“I need to call Jericho. He’s with Danielle St. Peter’s parents right now, but he has people out looking for you.”
“You told him?”
“Of course I did. I thought you might be in danger. Nevermind that it makes me look like a useless boob who has now twice failed to protect you.”
“It’s not your fault. You’re not a boob. I was raised by cops, I know how to ditch someone. And last night you were talking to Dr. Foster, at Jericho’s request.”
“That’s right. Stupid psycho babble. I would have saved you.”
I reached out and gave him a pat on the arm. “I know you would have.”
“So what happened with the fugitive?”
“He confirmed what we already know. Someone is running a human trafficking ring inside the Four Quarters of Imagination. His sister is one of the girls who’s been taken. He wants her back. He wants them all back.”
“Noble criminal.”
“Yeah. Call Jericho. It’s time for us to move on, anyway.”
“Where?”
“The Second Quarter.” I had been thinking about it all the walk back. “The kidnapped girls were moved from Sickness Island, it’s likely they were moved by boat, and the Second Quarter has part of the coast, too.”
He got out a phone and hit two buttons.
“Jerry? She’s back. She’s fine. Call off the search.”
I asked, “Where is he?”
“Where are you? -The town’s hospital.”
“Is he still with the St. Peter’s?”
“Are you-yeah.”
“Let’s go.”
*
In the end, though, the St. Peter’s had nothing for us. The man was weepy and the woman didn’t speak. Their daughter had not run away, as the police had told them. They had always maintained that Danielle was a responsible girl with a good head on her shoulders, and that something must have happened to her. They had been right, but to find out the truth must have made them wish they were wrong.
They left on the chopper by the roof of the hospital. Their daughter ’ s body, once identified, had been closed in a black bag and left in the morgue below, to be sent after them on the train.
When I said all I had to say to Jericho, he was not pleased that I had put myself in danger. I maintained that I had not been in danger, and he agreed to send us on, to the Second Quarter. We would take the train, as well. He gave me my satchel back, which I hadn ’t realized I had forgotten in the secret library. If I hadn’t, I realized with some disdain, they might have swooped in on the underground facility and Corso would be in custody.
Having secured maps of the Second Quarter, Henry and I sat at a table in an otherwise empty train car, and marked off places of interest. We would start at the shore, and work our way inland, which meant our ride would last only a couple of hours.
“I’ve heard about this cottage overlooking the sea, it was the setting of the longest story line the company ever ran. Five years,” he said, and there was an excitement all over him.
“Five years?”
“A woman waiting for her lover, trying to make his fortune. He returned once a year, and in the meantime she was set upon by all manner of suitors and complications. It was very Victorian.”
“Hm.”
“Nothing much runs through there anymore. And it would be large enough to hide a few dozen captives.”
I blinked at him, then looked down. I couldn’t lie straight to his face. “We’re not looking for the fugitive.”
He considered me for a minute, then said, “I understand why you want to let Jericho think that. This looks bad, for him. And this will be the first investigation of this scale in the Four Quarters, so it might take them a minute to find their feet. It’s good that we’re here, and it’s not hurting anything to look around, but once Jericho mobilizes the troops, we might need to step back and focus on getting your family that reward money.”
“Your logic is a little flawed,” I replied. “Even if you trust Jericho, we know that there is corruption somewhere inside the company, and probably pretty high up. We have no way of knowing that the people he has looking will really be looking.”
Henry sighed, but
then he smiled, a very specific, knowing little smile that felt gratifying as it spread to my own lips. “What?”
“You. Looking for the girls even though your reward is for catching the fugitive.”
My smile faded. “He made me an offer. When the girls are found, he’ll turn himself in to me.”
“So as long as they are found, you’re in the clear. Even if it doesn’t happen until after taxes, you can buy the kids back, from down south…”
“That’s not going to happen. They aren’t ever going down there.”
“Well, we’ve got like two weeks, right? Piece of cake. Although, I don’t see why you’d trust this guy to turn himself in. He was smart enough to get in here, he might think he’s smart enough to get out. I don’t care how noble he is, if he thinks he can avoid prison, he’ll take a shot.”
“Mm. Well let’s focus on finding the girls right now, and we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Excuse me.”
I stood from our table and headed to the back of the car, and he watched me go. There was a bathroom, the next car over. Well-lit, with sinks and stalls. I went past it, and through another empty car like the one Henry and I occupied, I found the very back of the train. In the last car were sacks of mail piled up the walls, and Danielle St. Peter’s body strapped to a table, in a black bag.
“Corso, are you here?” I asked.
For a second I thought I was talking to a dead girl in an otherwise empty room. But then, “Yeah?”
I looked up, to my left, to where more mail sacks were on racks. “Come down here.”
He shoved a sack. It hit the ground, then he jumped down. “Yes, Stella?” He groaned, stretching. “I thought you would be here.”
“Fastest way to get around.”
“Alright. Let’s forget what happened at the last place. Henry and I are starting at the coast. Check some places inland. Save the biggest o r the worst ones, though, and at night I’ll sneak out and meet you, and we’ll go through them together.”
