by Sonya Clark
Loud footfalls from the stairs, rushed, angry words in Russian. The rest were coming. Dani retrieved the loose gun from the floor and took another off the guy she’d knee-capped. She tucked one gun into the small of her back, kept the other in her left hand, the rebar tucked under her right arm.
Things were about to get ugly. She took a deep, calming breath.
The door opened. Dani rushed at it, not firing until she had clear targets. Two bullets in the first man through the door, another two in the next. She shoved past their prone bodies and slammed the door shut behind her. Anybody trying to check on the girls would have to get past her. If she recalled her firearms lessons correctly, this type of .45 had a twelve-round clip and one in the chamber. Hopefully both guns had all their rounds. She was going to need every bullet. That meant no more targeting center mass. Head shots from here on out.
She wiped sweat from her face with her forearm. Two more bad guys rounded the corner. The first got a bullet, the second ducked back just in time. He was quickly joined by two more, all three of them firing their weapons around the corner of the stairwell. Dani crouched down and flattened herself against the wall as much as possible. Chunks of drywall rained down, the smell of gunpowder thick in the air. They stopped firing and one guy popped his head around. She sent him down with one shot.
Somebody bellowed in anger. Dani wished she’d been able to get a better count of how many were in the brownstone. Were all the girls long gone? Were the guards watching the fire escape now? Shit. Doing this alone was stupid. She needed to get out, now. There were too many of them, too many guns. Her best bet was to get out via the fire escape and keep to the rooftops.
The door behind her opened. Kneecap Russian barreled out. Dani raised the gun a hair too slow. He slammed into her and they went careening into the far wall, spilling onto the stairs and the Russians waiting there. One picked her up and threw her to the next landing.
Her back against the wall, she reached up and found the banister and used it to pull herself to her feet. The guy who’d thrown her was talking to her in Russian that she guessed was supposed to sound menacing but she was just too fucking tired to care. She’d lost the gun somewhere. The rebar was on the floor. More guys were on their way up the stairs.
“I just want a cheeseburger,” she said to the guy talking at her. “A shower. Clean clothes. Maybe watch a movie. What do you say?”
He sneered and growled more Russian at her.
“So that’s a no, huh?”
The next set of two gangsters stepped up onto the landing, guns drawn. Dani wasted no time. She pushed off from the wall and kicked the gun from the hand of the nearest gangster. It bounced off the head of another and clattered down the stairs. She slammed her foot into the knee of another gunman, grabbed his arm and twisted as he went down from both the pain and the force of her grip. He was a big guy like all of them, but one on one he was no match for her strength. As she got her hand on his and the gun, she felt some of the small bones in his hand break from the pressure. She forced his arm up and fired the gun, dropping one Russian and sending Mr. Talkative running up the stairs.
More footsteps came pounding up from below. Dani jerked her captive around and shot at the newcomers. The gangster used his free hand to punch her in the back. She planted her elbow in his face, feeling his nose break at the impact, then forced his arm inward and shot him with his own gun.
A bullet came close enough for her to feel it disturb the air. Swearing, she whirled around and shouted at Mr. Talkative. “You’re a lousy shot!” She spotted the rebar on the floor under the bodies and retrieved it then backed up against the wall.
Mr. Talkative spoke, not that she had any idea what he said. Nor did she care. She had to lure him out of hiding. “So what do you say you put that gun down and come beat on me like a real man?”
Two more men crept up the stairs, so quiet they were probably hoping to catch her unawares. They didn’t know that with her hearing, that was unlikely to happen. Dani edged closer to that end of the landing, rebar at the ready.
The top step creaked. Dani rushed at the attackers. She swung the rebar in one long graceful arc, up and over to take out one guy with a blow to the head then down and back up to hit the other one in the crotch. Both tumbled down the stairs, either unconscious or simply unable to get back up.
A door opened down the hall and someone sent a hail of bullets her way. She dove down the stairs, running over the uneven terrain of bodies in the floor. The shooter followed, with yet another two coming up in front of her. She dropped to the floor right as all three fired at her. The shooter from upstairs went down, along with one from downstairs. She swiped the rebar at the gun hand of the one left, knocking the pistol away and doing damage to his hand.
“Always in pairs,” she said as she rose. “You guys are like women who go to the bathroom together.”
“You’ll die for this, bitch,” he snarled.
“Finally, one of you speaks English.” Dani twirled the rebar like a baton. “And here I was, upset that I’d never learned to say fuck you in Russian. Come on.” She crooked a finger at him. “Come at me, bro.”
He bellowed in rage and rushed at her. She dropped to avoid a fist, then swept her leg out to trip him. He fell, tumbling down a few stair steps. She got behind him, grabbed a hank of his hair, and bashed his head into the wall repeatedly.
Dani braced herself against the banister. Back up, or all the way down? How many had she killed? Seriously injured? Not enough. They were traffickers – they all deserved to die. Three days. Three days between being taken off the streets and sold to the lab. Three days in hell, and she and Angel and Nicole and Cassidy had barely made it out alive. Three days. It may not have been the same crew, or even the same city, but they were the same kind of evil, and all she wanted to do was make them pay.
With interest.
That bastard with the stun gun hadn’t made an appearance yet. Maybe he was downstairs, waiting for the fight to come to him. By some minor miracle, she still had the gun in the small of her back. Quickly, she checked for more in the immediate vicinity, scooping up four. She tucked them away in pockets then twirled the rebar. Shouts came from the ground floor, slightly panicked. Good. Panic was appropriate for them right now.
A tiny noise sounded behind her. She turned her head to see Mr. Talkative taking aim. Before he could pull the trigger, she threw the rebar, planting it in his chest dead center. He’d been a lousy conversationalist anyway.
With a gun in each hand, Dani descended the stairs.
Chapter 8
No sign of her at the shelter. Worse, he almost threw up when he got out of his car. A thick sheen of sweat ran from his hairline into his eyes. After a quick look around, during which he could barely see, Kevin returned to his car and checked his phone. No calls, from her or anyone else. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and tried to blink away the moisture from his eyes. The world stayed smeary and streaky so he gave up. He reached into the glove box for the spare glasses and contact case he kept there then quickly switched out.
He felt like a sitting duck, the car parked not far from where he was attacked. Driving around was better than staying so he started the car and left.
Plenty was written about gang crime in the Point Sable Herald, the city’s last major daily paper, but none of it contained really useful information. A lot of general pronouncements, mostly, with an obvious lack of names, dates, places, and other details. It was considered a South Side problem, and therefore not of much interest to the majority of the paper’s dwindling readership.
But Kevin did know a few things. Lincoln Heights was Russian mob territory. They were involved in just about everything such an organization would be expected to have ties to: drugs, guns, prostitution, protection rackets, gambling. If it was illegal and profitable, they had some level of involvement.
They didn’t hesitate to kill. The murder rate in Lincoln Heights was crazy high. And that was just the bodies that we
re found.
Why would she want an address in Lincoln Heights checked out? Just how much trouble was she in? Because if she was in that neighborhood, she was definitely in trouble.
It might not be the kind of trouble his money could sweep away.
Even if he could help her, was he obligated? Yes, she’d saved his life, but did that mean he was obligated to possibly risk his? If she was in trouble with the Russian mob, her life was in danger and if he helped her, his would be too.
Driving usually helped soothe his nerves but not tonight. He went past crumbling tenements, trash can fires, groups of kids huddled together on corners and in alleys. Girls in cheap vinyl and tottering heels catcalled him at red lights, hoping to score a rich john in a fancy car. Liquor stores and strip clubs and corner dealers. Thumping music and angry shouts and sparkling laughter. There was plenty of life here, it just scared the hell out of him. It made him ashamed to admit it, even just to himself.
When his lawyer called about changing his community service to a safer location, Kevin almost accepted. He’d never been so badly hurt before, his pride and his sense of security, and yes, his manhood, so thoroughly ground down into almost nothing. Being saved by a woman wasn’t the source of his shame. It was his inability to protect himself that shamed him. He’d barely been able to fight back. No amount of reminding himself how many attackers there had been did any good. He still felt…useless. Incapable. In truth, he’d never felt more like the worthless playboy everyone saw him as. And he hated that.
Kevin didn’t want to add feeling like a coward to all that, so he’d told the lawyer he would continue his service at the shelter. Now as he considered how far to go to help the woman who’d saved his life, he thought maybe he was a coward after all.
Shit. He would keep an eye on the phone, check the shelter again tomorrow. For now, he would go home. He cued up some house music on the sound system and headed north.
Until he got to a turn-off that would take him into Lincoln Heights. He idled at the stop sign, considering things. Before he could talk himself out of it, he checked the GPS map on his phone and headed for the address she’d given him.
Just a quick drive-by. Surely she wouldn’t be anywhere around the place.
When he saw the flames reaching into the night sky, he knew instinctively that was the place. He turned onto the correct street and sure enough, there it was – a brownstone on fire at the far end of the street, spitting orange and red high into the sky and filling the area with thick black smoke. There was no sign of any kind of first responders, no neighbors milled in the street.
Someone walked out of the smoke that hung like a curtain around the house. Kevin slammed on the breaks. It was her. Jesus, she was trashed. Covered in blood and soot, clothes torn, dark hair flying like a pirate flag in the wind. She stumbled into the street and looked like if she didn’t sit down soon she was going to fall down.
Taking care not to hit her, Kevin pulled up, leaned over and opened the passenger door. “Get in.”
She stared for a long moment. He thought he was going to have to remind her of who he was when she climbed into the car and shut the door. “No hospital. Promise me.”
Kevin may have been rich and spoiled but he’d been in his share of trouble before. Kicked out of private school, juvenile arrests that cost the family money and favors to make go away. Gossip fodder and too many lovers and flunking classes in college because he couldn’t be bothered to get up before noon. Parties and drinking and fast cars and faster women and stupid stunts. Community service for a drunk and disorderly charge that his brother refused to take care of. Kevin had a long and colorful history of personal idiocy and reckless behavior.
But when this mysterious woman climbed into his car, he knew he was about to find out what real trouble looked like.
Chapter 9
Dani stood under the hot water, let it blast her neck and shoulders and all the knots collected in the muscles there. Her first shower, upon arriving, had been to clean off the blood and soot and grime. Afterward, she’d fallen into the guest room’s bed and slept better than she had in no telling how long. Maybe ever. She woke stiff and sore from the fighting, so she used that to justify a second shower to herself. Being clean, not having to rush, using products that smelled good enough to eat, wrapping her body in a huge fluffy towel with another just for her hair – it was absolute bliss.
She stepped out of the bathroom, thankfully covered by the biggest, softest towel she’d ever used, right as Kevin Moynihan opened the guest room door.
“Oh, sorry.” He kept his gaze on her face. “I knocked but there was no answer.” He had two department store shopping bags in one hand and a newspaper under the other arm. “I’ve got some things for you.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
He drew his eyebrows together, his expression uncertain. “Your clothes were in bad shape. Covered in blood. I felt it best they be destroyed, so I threw them into the building incinerator.”
She gaped at him, incredulous. “You destroyed my stuff?”
Kevin came further into the room and set the bags on the bed then held out the newspaper. She glanced down at it then back up at him. He nodded. Blowing out a breath, she took the paper and unfolded it.
Front page, below the fold. Several paragraphs of not much of anything but she read them all. The Russians weren’t cooperating with police, which didn’t surprise her. Cops were speculating it had to do with a turf war but had no clues leading to any suspects. There was no hint in the story that all that damage had been done by one lone woman.
“Like I said, I thought it best to destroy your clothes.” Kevin studied her, his blue eyes just as vivid behind a pair of glasses as without.
He had destroyed evidence. He’d made himself an accomplice. God. So she’d helped this guy, that didn’t mean he owed her anything. Much less putting himself on the line like that. She crumpled the newspaper and pushed it at him. “I never should have gotten in your car.”
“You needed help.” He put the paper on a table by the window.
“What I need is to leave.”
“No, I think you should stay.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“You’re exhausted. You were hurt last night. I don’t know how you’re even alive, but I’ll save those questions for later.”
Oh, shit. He’d be getting precisely zero answers.
“Some of them survived,” he said. “They may have seen your face. They’ll be looking for you.”
“Which is exactly why I need to get out of here. You don’t want to get caught up in something like this.”
“No, I don’t. But you need help. Do you have any other friends you can go to?”
He had her there. She could only do so much alone. Besides, she was tired of having to choose between starving or stealing.
“Stay for a day, maybe two. Get some rest. You’re covered in bruises.” He gestured at her arms, mottled with purple. “Just hang out here and take it easy.”
A day, maybe two. They’d be looking for her in the South Side. This swank penthouse was half a city away. Hell, it might as well have been on the moon, as much as it had in common with Lincoln Heights and Cabrini. She pointed at the bags on the bed. “I’m guessing that’s clothes.” He nodded. She lifted her chin to indicate the door. “I’ve stood around in a towel long enough. Could you go so I can get dressed?”
“Of course.” He strode to the door then stopped. “Would you like breakfast or lunch?”
“Surprise me.”
He smiled, and for a half-second her knees threatened to buckle. “I will,” he said then left, closing the door behind him.
A day. Two at the most. A guy like that didn’t need her kind of trouble coming down on his pretty head.
The shopping bags were full. Casual stuff: jeans, cargo pants, a mix of t-shirts and long sleeve tops. Mostly dark colors like black, gray, navy blue. Stuff she might choose for herself, but the quality was li
ke nothing she’d ever worn. He must have dropped a few hundred dollars on these two bags, at least.
Then she examined the underwear and upped her estimate of the cost. Every piece was exquisite, bore no labels, and was a stunning shade of dark red. She’d never seen anything like it outside of magazine ads.
Dani selected what to wear, dressed then dried her hair. Combing it out took a few minutes. She was on her way out the door when she realized there were no shoes in either bag. No shoes so she couldn’t leave too soon – so the guy had great taste in clothes and a bit of a passive aggressive streak.
The big, airy penthouse had two floors. She descended to the lower level, checking everything out. The place was clean and modern and masculine without being overbearing about it. The living room was split into two sections, one with furniture centered around a huge television and the other with seating grouped together for conversation. The walls were divided between shelves full of books and white space with framed abstract art in the center. Opposite, floor to ceiling glass looking out over a balcony and a magnificent view of the city skyline.
Dani examined both the books on the shelves and the art on the walls. Most of the books were non-fiction, volumes on art, music, and history. She didn’t know what to make of the abstract paintings. The largest piece was at least four feet across and three feet long, a white canvas full of brilliant blues and greens in geometric shapes accented with looping spirals.
The lab hadn’t been all experiments and tests. Once Dr. Hurd took over and conditions became more humane, classes became part of the routine. Dani’s own education had been patchy at best before, but those classes had filled in everything she’d missed and then some. The arts and humanities had not been skimped over simply because of the nature of the lab’s mission. Dr. Hurd had seen to that.
Dani carefully searched the painting for a signature. There was something in the bottom right corner that might have been the artist’s initials but it was so stylized she couldn’t quite make it out.
