by Sonya Clark
Despite the poor nutrition and sporadic workouts, her muscle tone was still good months after her escape. That’s the way her body had been designed. Or rather, redesigned. She’d been scrawny once, and weak. Vulnerable. The lab had changed that. In a way she was grateful, but not enough to stay and keep being the director’s favorite lab rat.
Warm-up done, Dani moved on to a circuit workout of fast-paced, varied exercises. She missed the weights and other equipment in the lab’s gym but did the best she could. Then she moved on to the route she’d been using as a makeshift running track, taking it easy on the first lap in case anything had been moved. With every lap she ran faster, until she was dripping with sweat and had lost count of how many times she’d been around the track.
Next came her favorite part – parkour. She’d never even heard the word before the lab. Once she began to accept her body’s new abilities, she’d grown quickly to love the challenge of parkour. She launched into the air, hands finding a hold on a massive piece of industrial equipment left behind to rot. Finding handholds and footholds, she climbed rapidly to the top. From there she leapt to another structure, then back to the floor, then up and over the remains of an assembly line. In and out of busted windows. Somersaults over work stations. The adrenalin high rocketed through her bloodstream and she realized she was grinning.
Dani worked her way through every level of the factory until she came to a stop on the roof. She leaned over, hands on her knees, and gulped in air. The cool breeze felt good on her skin. From this vantage she could see the lake to the east and Cabrini on all other sides. In the distance to the north, the lights of downtown Point Sable beckoned. She turned away from that sight and focused on her more immediate surroundings.
Accessing her night vision and dialing up her hearing, she looked out over the lake first. A few ships, nothing out of the ordinary. The water was placid and smelled faintly of chemicals and organic rot.
This area of Cabrini was still relatively quiet after the police raid on the factory. It would be a few more hours before most would venture out of their bolt holes again. The bass thump of hip-hop came from a club three blocks away. From somewhere closer came the scent of marijuana drifting on the wind and mixing with the smells from the lake. A car crawled by slowly, too slowly. Dani tensed and tried to zero in on it. Something was off with the engine, some kind of clunking noise. She relaxed and the car limped along to its destination.
Dani shifted her senses back to normal and returned to the ground floor of the factory. Still no one around, her stuff right where she’d left it. She put on her t-shirt, pulled the phone from her hoodie then draped the garment over her shoulder and left. The night was just as quiet on street level. Good.
She’d been avoiding the shelter but now she needed a shower. Surely he wouldn’t be returning. Rich guys like that had lawyers who could get their community service moved to somewhere safer. So maybe she could risk it. Scope the area for a fancy car first, then go in and take a look around. Make sure he wasn’t there. God, she wanted a shower and a meal, and to not have to worry about stuff like this.
But she didn’t regret helping him. She didn’t regret coming to the aid of any of the people she’d helped. It had brought her trouble, minor injuries, too much attention. After beating down nine members of the Dogtown crew, they were on the lookout for her. That didn’t scare her, but it did make for an annoyance. There were certain areas of Cabrini she now needed to avoid unless she was in the mood for a fight.
As she headed toward the shelter she turned on the phone. She’d been keeping it off to conserve the battery. Once a day she checked it for messages. There were always several, most from girls. Maybe this was the number he gave to the ones he wasn’t seriously interested in seeing again. Whatever, there sure were a lot of them, and they all sounded dumb as a box of rocks. That fit with the media image of him as a rich, useless playboy. So did the drunk and disorderly charge that got him community service. But there was some elusive quality to the messages he’d left for her that suggested there was more to Kevin Moynihan.
Tonight’s message was no different. “Hi, it’s Kevin. How are you?” He laughed. “Stupid question, huh? So I guess you’re not going to call me back at this point. I try to tell myself I’m not stalking you, since I’m basically talking into a void here. But it does feel weird to keep calling when you’ve had time to call back and haven’t. So I’m going to stop. I’m going to try to stop. I feel compelled to check on you. Repay this debt I owe you. You saved my life, saved me from serious injury. I don’t even know your name, and I can’t thank you in person. All I can do is hope you’ve listened to at least one of these messages, and that you know how grateful I am. And that my offer stands. If you need help, all you have to do is call.” He paused for so long that she thought he might have hung up.
But he hadn’t. “I hope you’re safe. Good night, whoever you are.” She thought she could detect a smile in his voice and remembered his smile from the time she’d seen him in the shelter’s kitchen.
Just a rich, useless playboy. That’s all he was.
She shut off the phone and tucked it in her pocket. Not much battery left. She might as well sell it soon. Right now a shower and a meal at the shelter was all she wanted.
A scream split open the night, breaking her plans for a peaceful evening. Dani kicked her senses into high gear and located the sounds of a scuffle two blocks away, at the lake shore. As she ran, she shrugged into her hoodie and pulled the hood up to hide her face.
Another scream sounded, a female voice. Dani skidded to a halt and took cover behind the edge of a building to survey the situation. Three men, dark clothes, hard faces, and guns. Four women. More like girls, really, they looked so young. The girls had their hands tied and wore skimpy clothes, cheap cocktail dresses, short shorts and tank tops, wobbly high heels. Smeared eye make-up and terror on their faces. They were being herded from a boat into a panel van at gunpoint.
A fire burned in Dani’s gut, fueled by memories. Five years ago she was one of those girls. Her and Nicole and Angel and poor, dead Cassidy. They were sold to be lab rats instead of sex slaves, but that didn’t make them any less property. What the lab had given Dani didn’t outweigh her lack of choice in the matter, the loss of her freedom. When she escaped just a few months ago, she’d sworn she’d never be anyone’s property again.
And she wouldn’t stand to see anyone else forced into that role either.
One of the girls still had some defiance under her tears and smeared make-up. She let loose with a torrent of angry-sounding…Russian, maybe? That was Dani’s best guess. One of the men raised his hand to hit her but was stopped by another. Dani balled her hands into fists and stepped out from behind the building. She’d have to keep an eye on the guns and do this fast, but she knew she could do it.
The man who’d stopped one from hitting the girl took something out of his jacket and pressed it to the girl’s stomach. She screamed and dropped to her knees.
A stun gun. He had a stun gun. Dani froze.
Another burst of Russian, this time from the man with the stun gun. He leaned over the girl he’d shocked, yanked her hair back so she was forced to look up at him. More Russian, quieter this time, menacing. A threat of more harm, probably.
The other two men shoved the girls into the panel van. The man with the stun gun turned. Dani ducked behind the building. Shame filled her, and fear. The urge to run, the need to escape, the absolute terror of electric shock – it all churned together in a nauseating mix that nearly had her throwing up in the alley.
Get a grip. Get a fucking grip.
The van started and the back door was slammed shut. Dani peeked around the chipped brick and got a clear line of sight on the man with the stun gun. She’d bet money he was the leader, if she had any. Quickly, she activated the camera in her left eye and snapped a picture of him. She had no way of downloading it right now, much less running any kind of search, but she wanted the image anyway. He cli
mbed into the passenger seat of the van and the vehicle drove away.
Time for more parkour. Dani followed via rooftops.
Chapter 7
Kevin felt the weight of his mother’s gaze but chose to stare into his seltzer water rather than meet her eyes.
His sister Olivia said, “Did Paulson get your community service moved?”
Paulson, the lawyer who handled the family’s personal affairs, had indeed called Kevin to discuss exactly that. Kevin had declined, insisting he would return to the shelter when cleared by his doctor. “It’s not necessary.”
Olivia gaped. “You were nearly beaten to death! How can it not be necessary?”
Kevin had long ago mastered the perfect breezy, insouciant smile. He deployed it now. “Some bruises and a couple of broken ribs hardly equals nearly beaten to death. Don’t be so melodramatic, Liv.”
His sister glared. “I was in the emergency room, brat. And I’m a doctor. I know what condition you were in, so don’t call me melodramatic. And don’t call me Liv, either. You know I hate that.”
Dorothy Moynihan broke her silence. “Kevin, I do hope you’ll at least have a driver take you from now on. One with security experience. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to finish out your service at the shelter, but there’s also no need to pretend this didn’t happen.”
Her tempered response surprised Kevin. Usually their mother was just as hard on him as his siblings. “I’ll think about that, Mom. Thank you for the suggestion.” He gave Olivia a pointed look. “And for being the voice of reason.”
“I’m just glad to hear you’re not going to try using this as an excuse to weasel out of your community service,” Dorothy said.
Kevin couldn’t help but feel deflated. Had they really thought he would try to get out of the rest of his hours? Did they think so little of him? Sean entered the parlor with half-hearted greetings for all. Dorothy rose from her seat to join him at the small wet bar by the bay window.
“Grace is still at her parents,” Olivia said quietly, her gaze on their older brother.
Kevin drew his eyebrows together. “Is it spring break? Where’s the kids?”
“With Grace. She took them out of school.”
Uh oh. That didn’t sound good. All of a sudden his wounded ego didn’t seem so important.
A member of the staff announced dinner. Sean led their mother to the dining room. Olivia followed. Kevin stood to do the same, pain twinging in his chest. If he was going to use his injuries to get out of anything, it would have been this dinner. But Olivia had insisted that their mother was worried about him, so he’d reluctantly agreed to attend. Now he had to wonder if there was any truth to that. Dorothy wasn’t the most demonstrative of mothers. Even so, he’d expected more than a backhanded compliment that was more of an insult.
His phone rang and he stopped in the foyer to answer it.
“Did you mean what you said about helping me?”
A strange thrill shot through him. “You’re the girl who saved me, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” A pause, and for a moment he was afraid she’d hung up. “I need information about an address. Who owns it. Police reports about it. Whatever you can find.”
“Uh.” That was not what he’d expected. “I don’t understand.”
“There’s not much battery left on this phone. I don’t have time to run a decent search. Can you do it?”
He had a hundred questions but asked only one. “How do I get back in touch with you if the phone dies?”
“Find me at the shelter.” She gave him the address she wanted investigated and ended the call.
Kevin memorized it and headed for the door. On his way out he found a maid and said to her, “Tell my family I had to go. A friend needs me.”
The address was in Lincoln Heights. Russian mob territory. He had a bad feeling about this.
***
Dani was perched on the roof next door to where the girls had been taken. The traffickers – she knew in her bones that’s what they were – had the run of an old brownstone, four stories high and in crap shape on the outside. She’d made a quiet circuit of all four sides, learning what she could.
None of it was good.
Two men guarded the front door, two others on the back. All armed. Numerous men were inside the brownstone. Fine-tuning her hearing, she could make out three different televisions, a cash-counting machine, and various conversations. Mostly in Russian, though one guy sounded like he was practicing his English along with the TV. A card game on the second floor and someone cooking in the first floor kitchen.
It was safer to assume they were all armed. Hell, they were Russian. It was a given. Dani stuck mostly to the Cabrini area but she knew Lincoln Heights belonged to the Russian gangsters. Staying out of their territory was the smart thing to do.
She’d left smart behind several blocks back.
The girls were on the fourth floor, locked in a room and crying. What lies were they told? Offered modeling contracts, jobs in nightclubs? Did they speak English at all? Were they even legal age?
Rage ticked like a time bomb in her chest, counting down to that moment when she just couldn’t hold it in any longer.
Calling Kevin had been little more than a stopgap. She’d told herself, find out all you can, know what you might be going in to. Tip the cops. Walk away. You can’t do this alone. All the while knowing she wasn’t going to be able to stop herself from doing something incredibly stupid and dangerous. Maybe that was why she’d called him – just to talk to someone one last time. Enough bullets, or too many hits from that stun gun, and she was dead. Death by gunshot didn’t scare her. She knew quite intimately how badly electric shock would hurt as it destroyed the unnatural parts of her body. It felt like being set fire on the inside.
The curtain fluttered in the room where the girls were being held. Dani lay flat on her stomach, hoodie pulled close, head just high enough over the parapet to see. Somebody opened the window. It was the girl with the attitude, who’d gotten the bad end of the stun gun. Goddamn, she was trying to escape. Dani liked this girl. Rooted for her. Wanted to help her.
She could do nothing without making too much noise.
The crying from the other girls continued, but Dani thought she detected a false note in the sounds. As if it was as much cover as anything else. The girl who’d been stun-gunned began to lift the window, slowly, carefully, mindful of noise. Thankfully there was no screen. The men had made the mistake of putting them in a room with access to a fire escape and no guards on that side of the building. They probably thought the girls were so cowed by fear of the men and their guns that they would never dare try to flee.
Dani watched as one of the girls crept out of the window and onto the fire escape. Barefoot, she made her way down and dropped the last three feet to the ground. Dani checked the positions of the outside guards, gratified to find them in place and unaware of what was happening. The first girl out crept away into the night.
Dani was sitting on the parapet now, ready to jump if her help was needed. The girl at the window spotted her. Dani nodded and gave her the thumbs up. The girl bit her lip, the nearby yellow streetlight putting hard glints in her eyes. After a moment she nodded in response, then turned and waved the next prisoner to freedom.
It took longer for the second girl to make it down. Her body was tense with so much fear, Dani wondered if the poor kid was scared of heights too. Step by step, she made her way down and finally landed on the ground. Dani breathed a sigh of relief and checked for the guards.
One was walking the perimeter. Dani held one hand up, palm facing the window, other hand pointing to the ground. The guard moved slowly, holding his phone up to his face and thumbing through text messages. He never bothered to look up. Once Dani was sure he was back at his station, she gave the thumbs up again.
Girl number three hurried down the fire escape, clumsy and a little too loud. Dani searched the rooftop for anything she could use as a weapon. A few chunk
s of concrete, either too small to be of use or too big to carry if she had to jump. Various bits of trash. A cool rectangular piece of metal – a lighter. It might not have any fluid left but she shoved it in her pocket anyway. Finally she hit pay dirt with a decent length of rebar.
She hurried back to the edge of the roof. Girl number three was running up the street. The last one, the one Dani thought of as the leader, was half out of the window when the door behind her burst open. Two men rushed at her and dragged her back inside, all three screaming and cursing in Russian.
They would likely kill her for costing them the three other girls. And it wouldn’t be a slow death. Dani gripped the rebar, moved back several feet, took a running go and launched herself across the span between buildings.
She hit the fire escape with a thud and scrambled up it then swung her legs through the window, right into the chest of a Russian gangbanger. He fell backward, his loosely held gun flying out of his hand. The other man had the girl pinned to the bed, fist raised and aimed at her head. Dani got her balance and struck the second man’s arm with the rebar at the wrist. He screamed, clutching his arm to his chest. The girl got out from under him and rushed to the window.
Russian number one lunged for his gun. Dani kicked it away then twisted around to take another whack at the second guy. She wanted at least one of them down and not able to get back up for a good long while. Three quick blows across the back of his shoulders, then one good hard hit to his knee, and the second Russian crumbled.
Gun Russian had made it to his feet by this time, still wobbly from being knocked on his ass so hard. Dani hoisted the rebar like a baseball bat and swung at his head. She didn’t miss. He dropped to the floor with a heavy thunk.
Dani let herself taste a moment of grim satisfaction then turned to the girl. “Go.” She pointed at the window. “Now!”
The girl stared, big eyes full of emotions that needed no translation. Dani nodded. The girl nodded in response then disappeared out the window.
