by Sam Sisavath
She told him, and he ordered it, then a second one about thirteen minutes later. He was waiting for someone, he told her, but the guy hadn’t shown up yet, though he was expecting the man any minute, which meant he might have to go at any time.
“You’re attending the convention?” he asked her.
She laughed. “Do I look like I’m attending a convention, Glen?”
“Guess not.” Another smile before he glanced down at his watch. “You know, I think this guy’s a no-show.”
“Stood you up, huh?”
“I think so.” He let out an exaggerated sigh and took a sip of his cocktail. “You wanna grab some dinner with me?”
“You paying?” she asked, and gave him a mischievous look.
“Absolutely,” he said, and smiled widely. “But what I meant was, you wanna grab some dinner with me in my suite?”
“Easy there, Texas. I’m not that fast.”
He chuckled. “Give me a break. I know a working girl when I see one.” He took out a roll of money and peeled off a hundred dollar bill and slid it under her glass. “How about it?”
“Five hundred for the night,” she said, and plucked the bill off the counter and slipped it into her purse.
“Five hundred’s steep.”
“Take it or leave it.”
“You worth it?”
“Every cent.”
He laughed. “We’ll see about that.”
* * *
He was trying to get her cocktail dress off before they even got into his suite on the fifteenth floor, and it was only through experience that she managed to keep her clothes on in the elevator, then during the long walk through the hallway. By the time they were inside his room, she pushed him away and walked into the living room while he locked the door and began peeling off his own clothes.
It wasn’t until he was strutting after her in his boxers that he started to feel the effects of the drug she had slipped into his drink sometime before the last entrée. She had been a little afraid she hadn’t timed it correctly, but looking at him now as he stopped about ten feet in front of her and felt for his head with his hands, she guessed she had, after all.
“What’s happening to me?” he asked, his words slurred.
Allie sat down on the end of a sofa and watched him trying to shake it off. He had the look of a man who didn’t know what was happening to him and began groping the wall for a handhold. He ended up stumbling into an end table and knocked the vase off it before dropping to the floor on his butt.
“What’s happening—” he said, but never got the rest of it out before he toppled over to one side, his cheek hitting the carpeted floor with a nice, solid thump!
She opened her purse and took out the phone and called down to the parking lot.
Lucy answered on the first ring. “Are you decent?”
She smiled. “Bored yet?”
“Getting there…”
“Go get some food. I hear they have a pretty good buffet in the hotel next door.”
“Oh, I see, you get to enjoy the four-star hotel while I get stiffed with the inn next door, huh?” Lucy let out an exaggerated sigh. “Eh, I have to take Apollo for a walk anyway. He’s getting a little antsy in the backseat.”
“Get him something to eat, too.”
“Will this take long, or shouldn’t I have asked?”
“I’ll give you a shout when I’m done,” Allie said, and put the phone away.
* * *
It took almost two hours before he opened his eyes, about an hour after she had everything in place. He was still just in his boxers but was now strapped to a chair in the bathroom, his arms bound behind his back with plastic zip ties and his ankles similarly restrained. Duct tape covered his mouth, but his eyes were wide open and free to see her standing at the sink counter, looking at the contents of his wallet.
She glanced over and made tsk tsk sounds at him. “You lied to me, Glen. Your real name’s Mick Anderson.” She held up his driver’s license. “Out of Tucson, Arizona. You’re a long way from home, too.”
He said something, but the words were hopelessly muffled against the duct tape.
“Sorry, I can’t hear you,” she said, and picked something up from the sink. It was a small metal tube, but when she flicked it, it expanded into a sixteen-inch metal baton.
His eyes widened and his entire body went stiff.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, turning to face him. “‘She’s just a girl. She’s not going to do anything. It’s just a bad attempt at intimidation.’” Allie smiled at him. “I assure you, Mick, that this is going to hurt you way more than it hurts me. On the plus side, I’m going to enjoy every second of it.”
She took a step toward him and he attempted to retreat, but of course he barely moved against his restraints.
She stopped and pointed at the floor. “Oh, you’ll note the plastic I put over the floor. We wouldn’t want to make a mess for the hotel to clean up, now would we? Wouldn’t be fair to housekeeping.”
He started shouting something into the duct tape when she struck him on the shoulder, the thwack! of the metal tube slamming into flesh, echoing off the bathroom’s tiled walls. The blow left a thick purple bruise against his exposed flesh almost right away, and he screamed into the tape over his mouth and tried to move his arms but only ended up almost toppling sideways.
She reached out to steady him. “Easy there. Don’t want you to fall again. It was tough enough dragging you in here. You’re a big boy, Mick. I bet that comes in handy when you have to keep the girls in line, huh?”
His eyes teared up and he might have been begging, but it was hard to tell.
“Sorry, I can’t hear you,” she said, and landed a second blow—thwack!—against his left thigh.
He jerked his body up as if he was trying to leap off the chair, but of course he didn’t get very high before coming back down on the tarp. He couldn’t stop the tears from falling, but he must have realized pleading wasn’t going to work, so he resorted to firing daggers at her with large, bulging red eyes.
She leaned back against the sink counter and twirled the baton in her hand. “I know that look. You’re mad. I can see how you’d think I’m being sadistic, but I’m really not. I’m just trying to impress upon you the seriousness of your situation, Mick.”
Muffled sounds against the tape.
She ignored him and continued. “One of your johns gave you up, in case you were wondering. Told me everything. How you arranged young girls for him and his friends. You’re a bad man, Mick. A very bad man who is far from home, doing very bad things. And, oh, the guy you were waiting for? I found him outside the hotel and told him I’d call his wife if he didn’t turn around and never come back. I may or may not follow up with him after tonight depending on my mood. I guess I could always use more practice with this thing. Practice makes perfect, right?”
She pushed off the counter and squared up against him again. He tensed up and the anger in his eyes vanished in a blink, replaced by real fear. If she had any doubts, he convinced her when urine drip-drip-dripped from his boxers.
“Glad I lugged that plastic tarp all the way up here,” she said just before she hit him again, this time on the right arm.
Before he could finish screaming into the duct tape, she struck him a fourth time in the right thigh.
Ten minutes later, he told her everything.
* * *
The man who answered the motel door when she knocked on it had at least fifty pounds and five inches on her, but none of that did him any good when Apollo slammed into his chest and knocked him to the floor. The man was reaching for something in his jacket when Apollo growled and clamped down on his wrist. The big man let out a hellacious scream that probably woke up every single one of his motel neighbors.
Allie followed them inside and locked the door behind her. “Apollo, back.”
The dog let go of the man’s wrist and backtracked, but he snarled and showed his fang
s to the man.
“I’d stay down if I were you,” Allie said.
The man grabbed at his bleeding arm while Apollo sat down on his hind legs five feet away and never took his eyes off his prey. If the man thought he had any advantages, he quickly realized that he didn’t and didn’t make any effort to get up.
“My hand,” he moaned instead.
“You’re lucky you still have a hand,” Allie said.
The man thought about replying but wisely kept his mouth shut. Allie crouched next to him and stuck her hand into his jacket pocket, the same one he had been reaching for, and took out a small pistol. She put it away then looked around, but there was no else in the room.
“Where is she?” she asked the man.
“Bathroom,” he said.
She stepped over him and toward the bathroom on the far side. The door was closed, but Allie could hear movement behind it and there was light visible under the slot.
Allie leaned toward the door and knocked softly on it. “Faith?”
There was no response, and the only sound was Apollo letting out a low growl behind her. She looked back and saw the big man attempting to rise from the floor, only to sit gingerly back down at the sight of Apollo’s exposed fangs.
She turned back to the bathroom. “Faith, my name’s Allie. Your mother sent me to find you. She told me to tell you that she saved Angles for you, that she’ll be waiting in your old room when you come home.”
She waited five seconds, then ten...
An almost hesitant click as the door opened, and a pair of blue eyes looked out at Allie. “Angles?” the owner of the eyes asked.
Allie smiled and nodded. “Your mother told me you’d know what it meant.”
“Angles,” the girl with the blonde hair said. It wasn’t a question this time. “I called her Angles because I couldn’t pronounce angels when I was younger.”
The door opened wider, and Allie took a step back as Faith stood in the doorway. She was tall for a nineteen-year-old and might have been taller than Allie if she wasn’t standing in her bare feet. She was a beautiful girl, and there was still unbreakable spirit in the eyes that looked back at Allie, a fire that hadn’t turned to embers yet despite everything she had been through.
“How did you find me?” Faith asked.
“Iris,” Allie said.
“Iris?” Her eyes widened. “Is she okay?”
“She’s safe and home right now. She asked me to tell you—”
Allie didn’t get to finish because Faith threw herself at her, and it was all Allie could do to grab the girl to keep from being knocked to the floor. The tears came, the heavy sobbing against her jacket, but Allie didn’t tell Faith to stop or pry her away and instead held the girl in a tight embrace and let her do what she needed to.
“You’re safe now,” she whispered, stroking the girl’s hair. “You’re safe now…”
She looked back at Apollo, and the dog gave her a curious tilt of his head. She smiled back at him then looked at the man on the floor.
“Hey,” she said. And when the man glanced over his shoulder at her, “You have two choices. You’re going to tell me everything you know about the organization, or you’re going to find out just how sharp his teeth really are.”
Apollo growled for effect, and the man swallowed hard.
“I can’t,” he said.
“We’ll see about that.”
“You don’t understand, lady. I can’t, because I won’t. What you’re going to do to me, what your dog can do to me, it’s nothing compared to what they can do.”
Allie stared at him, trying to decide how far to push. She had a lot of choices, but there was something on the man’s face—a resolute hardness—that told Allie it wasn’t going to matter how hard or far she pushed, because he wasn’t scared of her. Oh, he didn’t want to die, and he didn’t want to end up at the wrong end of Apollo’s teeth again, but as much as he was afraid of her, he was terrified of them.
Who the hell are these people?
But she’d deal with that question later. Right now, she turned back to Faith and continued holding the girl as tightly as possible.
“Let’s go home,” Allie whispered.
“What about him?” Faith asked, turning her head just enough to look over at the man on the floor. “What about the ones who took me?”
Allie narrowed her eyes at the man, cradling his bleeding arm while at the same time trying to avoid Apollo’s hard glare.
“Forget about them,” Allie said. “I’ll deal with them later.” She turned back to Faith and smiled. “Right now, let’s just get you back home where you belong…”
From The Author
Things are getting interesting for Allie Krycek and company. She’s collecting a lot of new friends…and some new enemies too, from the looks of it. But hey, it’s nothing she can’t handle. Probably.
Until Allie Krycek returns, please consider leaving a review for the book at a bookseller of your choice. Even a short review would be tremendously appreciated.
And now, for those of you interested in being social, you can contact me at the following links:
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Also by Sam Sisavath
The Purge of Babylon Series
The Purge of Babylon: A Novel of Survival (Book 1)
The Gates of Byzantium (Book 2)
The Stones of Angkor (Book 3)
The Walls of Lemuria: The Keo Storyline (Book 3.5)
The Fires of Atlantis (Book 4)
The Ashes of Pompeii (Book 5)
The Isles of Elysium (Book 6)
The Spears of Laconia (Book 7)
The Horns of Avalon (Book 8)
The Bones of Valhalla (Book 9)
The Allie Krycek Series
Hunter/Prey (Book 1)
Saint/Sinner (Book 2)
Finders/Keepers (Book 3)
