Back AT You

by John W. Mefford

  And she’d never done or said anything? She was, essentially, complicit in some of these crimes. I withheld my anger, knowing things weren’t always black-and-white.

  “I’m sorry about your friends, Gertie. But it’s not too late to do something about all this. The drug business, the girls… We need to stop it.”

  “Dmitri,” she said.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  “He’s this Russian cat that comes in and meets with Travis. I’ve heard them talking.”

  “About?”

  “Trading girls for the drugs. They use the street terms, like murder eight, tango and cash, China girl.”

  My mind swam with ideas on where this could go. But the main person who came to mind was the man with the thick accent who wore the Carter mask. “Does Dmitri wear nice clothes and look like he’s just had a manicure?”

  “Good-looking guy, yeah. And he likes the finer things—that’s pretty obvious. I saw him get into a Jag one time. He’s the exact opposite of Travis. Travis is smarter than he looks, but he’s white trash in my books.”

  And yet she’d still said nothing. I took in a deep breath, but Ivy beat me to it.

  “Gertie, we think Travis has Angel. Or maybe he did something with her.”

  “Like trade her to Dmitri?” Gertie asked hesitantly.

  “Do you know if Travis did that?”

  “Like I said, I haven’t seen Angel.”

  “But…” I gestured with my hand for her to continue. She did.

  “It’s all so fucked up now. Dammit!”

  “What is it, Gertie?”

  She released a heavy breath. “Liv…I knew she was curious about what Travis and Dmitri were up to. I just tried to stay out of it.”

  Right, like bury your head in the sand. But that name—Liv—was one of the names Lady Di had thrown out there. The three Russians had asked about her.

  “Earlier in the bar, Gertie, three men walked in, and I saw something about you change. You were scared. Why?”

  Her eyes were wide with fear again. “I think they’re looking for Liv.”

  “So Liv works at The Wild Thing?”

  “Until she disappeared a couple of days ago.”

  “Someone took her? Or she just vanished?”

  “I’m not completely sure.” A tear rolled down her cheek.

  “Why would someone take her?” Ivy asked.

  I spoke before Gertie could respond. “Or why would she have a need to vanish?”

  “I don’t know the answer to either question. She’s a nice person…kind of a friend to me, although she kept her distance. Never wanted to hang out or do anything.”

  “There’s got to be something else here, Gertie. Did you see something that maybe you forgot to tell us?”

  She wiped her face. She looked like she’d aged five years in the few minutes we’d spoken. Her face had red splotches, and shadows made her wrinkles more prominent. She looked down and kicked some rocks.

  “Gertie?”

  She lifted her head and blinked hard. “Liv seemed to be curious about a couple of the girls that Travis brought in the back. I turned a blind eye—I was selfish and afraid. But she couldn’t help herself. I warned her not to get too close. But I wonder if she did.”

  “Too close to…?”

  “Meddling in Travis’s business? Maybe to one of the girls? I don’t know what she did.”

  Ivy turned to me. “Could she have Angel?”

  “It’s possible, I suppose.” I looked at Gertie, who was about to speak when a door opened behind us. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the three Russian tanks from earlier. Two were speaking in their native tongue, but the one in front eyed us as they walked to a blue minivan and got in.

  “Here’s the crazy thing,” Gertie said under her breath, even though the guys were in a car at least a hundred feet from us. “Those three Russians are the Bar Act at Circus Circus.”

  “A drinking bar?” Ivy asked.

  The blue minivan drove out of our sight, around the building.

  “No, it’s an act where two guys hold up either end of the bar, and the person on top of the bar does all sorts of flips and twists. They actually call themselves “The Three Amigos”—that’s a running joke.”

  Interesting tidbit, certainly, but was it relevant? Probably not. I touched Ivy’s elbow. “I wonder if they’re connected to Dmitri.”

  Gertie jumped in. “I don’t know how, and I can’t prove it, but I think they are.”

  I looked at Ivy. “So, why would Dmitri—he’s Carter from my earlier experience—want to find Liv?”

  Ivy shook her head. “I wish we could ask her. Maybe she knows something about Angel and got scared off. Who knows? She could be across the country by now.”

  I tapped a finger to my chin. “What if Liv somehow grabbed Angel before Travis did something with her, and so the Russians say they’re looking for Liv, but they’re really looking for Angel?”

  Ivy shrugged. “I guess it’s possible. It’s certainly a theory.”

  “One we can’t prove, though.”

  “I wish I could do more,” Gertie said, thumbing another tear in the corner of her eye. “I just wish I’d said something before now.”

  “Better now than never,” Ivy said.

  The blue minivan skidded to a stop next to us, and the door flew open. The Russians. The one with a red cap jumped out and aimed a pistol right at me.

  “Get in van,” he said in broken English. I saw one of his comrades in the van also holding a gun.

  We paused a second. My heart was peppering my chest like a drum.

  A gasp from behind me. “Dear God, we’re going to die,” Gertie said.

  I had to bring calm to the scene. “Let’s just get in the…”

  The man extended his gun and fired the weapon. The sound—only a couple of feet from my ear—jolted me.

  “No!” Ivy cried out.

  I turned and saw Gertie’s body flopping to the ground.

  “Get in van. Now!” Red Cap said.

  Ivy reached down for Gertie—she brought a hand to her mouth. “I might vomit.”

  There was nothing left of Gertie’s face.

  More yelling at us, mostly in Russian, from inside the van. With no other options, Ivy and I complied and got into the van.

  34

  Ivy

  I sat in the back seat with one of the gunmen—he wore no hat, showing off his chrome dome—and Alex sat in the middle seat next to the other one holding a gun. The driver wore a black cap and was on his phone speaking in Russian as we rolled out of the parking lot and onto the highway.

  A phone was shoved in my face by Chrome. “You know her?” His pistol was still aimed at my side. I looked at the photo on the phone. It was a woman with short, black hair and lots of piercings and tats. She looked like the typical clientele at The Wild Thing.

  “Never seen her before,” I said, shaking my head.

  He turned the phone to Alex, who was sitting directly in front of me. “You…you know her?”

  She held her gaze an extra beat. “Nope.”

  The three of them started yelling at each other in Russian, even as the driver stayed on his cell-phone call. They were under pressure, it seemed, to find this Liv person and bring her somewhere. She had to be incredibly important to them, but I had no idea why. Maybe Liv had been caught up in the drug web, similar to Alex. My thoughts took another leap: if Dmitri—the person Alex believed was the fake Jimmy Carter—was behind all this, then he probably would like nothing better than to have Alex brought to him. Did he even know The Three Amigos had Alex—his former drug runner—in the van?

  I only wanted to learn where Angel was. And with Travis likely being back at the bar, I feared that we’d lost our chance at finding her. Hell, we might be her only chance to not be sold into prostitution, or to avoid death. And look at us. We might not even live to see the next sunrise.

  Out of nowhere, images of Saul’s syrupy eyes and brilli
ant smile popped into my mind. His smile was always the brightest when we were tickling each other, or teasing the other one for some reason. We’d grown so close over the last year. He’d been the man who’d finally melted the walls I’d erected since my earliest childhood memories. I’d been with a few other men, but they never really respected me, probably because I hadn’t really respected myself. For years, I’d blamed myself, at least partially, for all the sick and perverted acts of adults—people who were supposed to care for me, if not love me.

  Saul, though, didn’t try to change me. He simply accepted me. He embraced our friendship, and, over time, our passion surged into a stratosphere I’d never thought possible. Not for me. So many memories from our Caribbean cruise, some adventurous, some just flat-out fun—like zip-lining through a rain forest—some that made my heart skip a beat for the right reasons. I loved that man. I had a future with the man. My other passion—to save kids from the horrors of abuse—had, once again, blinded me to danger. Saul had warned me, but he didn’t stop me. He knew I’d resent him if he pushed too hard.

  Damn, I wished I’d listened. A future of happiness and true love and even a family—something I thought was only good enough for other people—was to be my destiny with Saul. Until now. Maybe fate had a different idea of how my life would play out. The ending looked frighteningly close.

  What about Angel? That poor girl had been sold by her own mother. Some perverted heathen most likely had her—whether that was Travis Wild or some other twisted fuck. Could she have escaped with this Liv person? Oh, how I wished. If so, I hoped that woman was far away from this place, maybe in some law-enforcement office, or on her way back to San Antonio to find Angel’s father.

  As The Three Amigos continued their yelling match, I caught Alex’s wandering eye. This was not the eye of someone who had resigned herself to death, or at least to the fact that we could do nothing more than hope they released us. She had that look of determination…of defiance.

  I immediately felt emboldened by her lack of fear, by doing whatever it took to survive. Without moving her head, I saw her eyes dart to Chrome, then over to Red, and then up to the driver. She did this several times. She had a plan of some kind. At least I thought she did. I couldn’t imagine how it wouldn’t result in one or both of us being injured or killed, but she was the expert at this stuff.

  I only wondered how long she’d wait. We were on a flat, black stretch of highway. A small, dark building was coming up on our left. I tried to think of scenarios that might give us an advantage. Outside of passing some topless showgirls who might distract our kidnappers—in the middle of nowhere—I couldn’t imagine what Alex was looking for. Maybe she would deem the risk too great. Maybe she would wait until we reached our destination, and then she would reassess our odds there.

  Maybe she’d only wait five seconds.

  Actually, it was more like four seconds when Alex gave a straight-line jab with her knuckles directly into the throat of Red. His eyes bulged, and he gurgled like he’d swallowed his tongue. She reached over, grabbed his gun hand, and fired the pistol into his knee.

  Damn.

  Red screamed as Chrome lifted his gun toward Alex. I swung my elbow into his arm just as the gun fired—the bullet ricocheted off the roof. The minivan swerved left and right. Red threw a punch at my face. Somehow, I dodged it. Copying Alex, I threw a jab into his throat. Similar results. I would have smiled had we not been fighting for our lives. He let go of the gun.

  I grabbed it as Alex snatched the gun from Red and whipped the butt of the gun off the head of the driver. He cried out. The minivan swung violently—we went up on two wheels. Everyone who could breathe was yelling. We teetered for another second, and then the van crashed onto its side. Glass sprayed everywhere. Without a seatbelt on, I was tossed around like a coin in a tin can. The minivan rammed into a boulder, which sent me tumbling through the cabin.

  A moment of silence. A breath. I touched my head and felt blood. Then I heard some moans.

  “Quick, Ivy, get out of the car.” Alex pushed herself upward through the partially open sliding door.

  I looked up and saw stars in the sky, and I moved toward those stars through the hole. As I pulled my legs up, one of the men grabbed my ankle.

  “Let go!” I kicked at him, but his grip was solid. “Alex, where’s the gun?”

  “I lost it in the crash.”

  I’d lost the gun I’d picked up as well.

  She moved to her feet, hooked her arms under my armpits, and pulled until she screamed. It wasn’t helping—I felt like I was being yanked out of my own skin.

  Then I heard a goddamn chuckle. I went spastic. Alex backed up a step. I flailed my whole body, torquing it without any pattern. The Russian’s hand finally let go, and I quickly pulled my leg upward. Alex and I climbed off the minivan. The headlights were still on, and the wheels were still spinning. Smoke billowed out of the crushed front hood. Glass crunched under our shoes.

  We came around to the front of the minivan. That was when I saw the arm reaching out of the cracked opening of the windshield. “Gun!” I yelled.

  Alex, moving like a panther, swung her foot like a punter and connected with the hand. The gun flew onto the ground. She ran over and grabbed it just as the man was exiting the minivan. He rushed at her—she fired the gun at his chest. He stumbled forward and dropped at her feet.

  Cool as a cucumber, she said, “Need to see if the other two are conscious.”

  We looked inside the van. The other two were either dead or close to it. Their eyes were closed, and there was a lot of blood.

  “What now?” I said, breathing like I’d run a marathon.

  I could see cuts up and down her arms and on her neck. “You need medical attention,” I said.

  “Same for you,” she replied. Then she turned and faced the back of the building. It looked like an old gas station that hadn’t been used in years.

  “We might be able to find a car we can use here,” she said, moving over to a car bay that was covered by a vertical sliding door.

  She’d obviously hit her head during the crash. This place looked like it hadn’t been open since Eisenhower was in office. “Wait, is this the place you mentioned in your story?”

  “Yep.”

  We quickly looked for a way inside and found none. The darkness of the night didn’t help. But with the aid of the headlights from the crashed minivan on the backside of the building, we spotted a padlock on the bay door. Alex fired the pistol into the lock—it exploded into tiny pieces. She pulled a chain, and the door opened.

  “No car,” she said, dejectedly. “We might need to walk all the way back to The Wild Thing. Or flag down a car on the highway.”

  I blew out a breath and walked into the darkened space.

  I heard the whimpering of a girl.

  35

  Alex

  “Did you hear that?” Ivy asked me.

  “Hear what?”

  Ivy had disappeared into the black abyss of the garage. “Watch out,” I said. “They might have traps set up or something crazy.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Ivy, what are you doing?”

  A moment later, she came out of the darkness, holding the hand of a girl with tight curls. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  “Angel?”

  She sniffled, her eyes squinting from the headlights of the minivan. “Yes, it’s me.”

  “She was curled up in the corner, eating a package of cheese and crackers,” Ivy said.

  “How did you escape? How long have you been in there? Are you okay?”

  Ivy held up a hand. She was right. I needed to hold off on my inquisition for the moment.

  “She had help,” Ivy said, motioning over her shoulder. All I saw was darkness.

  “I wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for her,” Angel said, looking into the dark garage. “Or I’d be some sex slave to a Montana rancher. God sent an angel to Angel.” She giggled through her tears.
r />   I wasn’t quite getting it, although the emotion in our space was intense.

  “Liv, it’s okay,” Angel called out. “Ivy was sent here by my dad. Alex is an FBI agent who knows Ivy. We can trust ’em.”

  A figure emerged from the garage. It was the same person from the photo the Russian had shown me. She walked closer, and I could see the piercings in her eyebrows and nose and many in her ears. A snake tattoo wrapped around her neck. She had short, black hair.

  “Hi, Alex,” she said.

  I knew that voice. I knew those eyes—a honey brown. And I knew her. I blinked a few times to make sure I wasn’t imagining it.

  “Liv has been the best,” Angel said. “That crazy man, Travis, was about to sell me like a head of cattle to some rancher living in Montana. But they started arguing over the price, and that’s when Liv walked into the back room, grabbed me, and ran out the front door. We’ve been on the run, hiding ever since.”

  Liv’s eyes went to her, then back to me.

  Ivy walked over and put a hand on my shoulder. We locked eyes for a second. We both knew who this was, but we couldn’t say anything. Not now, not in front of Angel.

  I turned back to the biker-looking woman. “Is that true…Liv?”

  “Yes.”

  I had a hundred questions for her, but I couldn’t ask them. I couldn’t stop staring at her. Ivy nudged me. “Cops or someone might drive by and see this…mess.”

  “They can’t find me. I don’t trust them,” Liv said, backpedaling.

  “It will be okay.” I touched my back pocket. My phone was gone. Probably destroyed in the crash. I brushed some loose hair out of my face and looked at Ivy. “I’m not sure I want all of us walking back to the Wild Thing to get your car. Too risky. I can go.”

  “But what if something happens to you? It’s too risky to go alone. We need to stick together and get to someone we trust.”

  I knew all it would take was a call to Jerry, and then we’d have to wait a few hours. I looked down at the gun I was holding. If I had to guess, I’d say it was a Russian-made Makarov, a .38. I tucked it into the back of my pants. “I’m going to flag down a car. You guys have to trust me that this will work. I don’t want you freaking out when I get someone to pull over and take us in.”