by Sonya Clark
The night she’d burned down the trafficker’s house, that first shower she’d taken here after Kevin found her in the street, the water had turned red as she washed the blood off. Just some weird trick of memory after the stress of seeing a dead body. The dead body of an innocent. The traffickers deserved every injury, every bullet and cut and kick and punch. Dani had no remorse about killing some of them. None whatsoever. She only wished she could have killed them all, especially that bastard with a fondness for a stun gun.
Steam curled up from the flowing water. She found a soap dispenser and pumped way more than she needed into one palm. Scrubbed her hands, wrists, all the way up to her elbows, even though she hadn’t actually touched the body. Seeing her was bad enough, but leaving her felt like a betrayal. Dani had left with no cell phone, or change, not that there was a working payphone below 110th Street. Hell, there might not have been a payphone left anywhere in the city. Police needed to be tipped off. Even if they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, solve the girl’s murder, they would at least make sure she was buried somewhere. Not left abandoned, prey for animals one last time.
Pain from the intense heat of the water didn’t register right away. Once it did, though, Dani bit back an oath and shut the tap off. She shook her hands, searching for a towel. The world turned fuzzy and dark. She grabbed the edge of the counter. How long had she stood there like that? Her hands were tomato red and sore.
Oh God. You’re dissociating again.
She lunged for the jacket and shoved her face in the lining. Kevin’s cologne filled her lungs.
“best to engage all five senses and force yourself to stay in the present and”
Dr. Hurd’s voice whispered to her from four years in the past. After Cassidy was dead and Wolff carted off to who knew where, Dani, Nic, and Angel finally got the treatment they’d needed for PTSD. They may have had the same diagnosis but their symptoms varied. Hurd believed Dani’s was worse because of her background. Dani had no opinion on that but she didn’t much care either way once she finally tried some of the coping techniques and figured out what worked for her.
She let the jacket fall away and staggered to the fridge, cupped her hand under the ice dispenser and pushed. Two chunks landed in her palm with others hitting the floor. The cold burned on her already raw skin.
Kevin entered the kitchen, mouth open to speak. He shut it and stared.
“I’ll be okay,” she ground out. “I can deal.”
“What can I do to help?” He hurried to her side.
“Turn some music on. Doesn’t matter what, just something loud and obnoxious.” She slid to the floor, passing the ice from hand to hand.
Kevin plugged his phone into a sound dock. The horrible girl group wall of noise that emitted from it made her question his sanity.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “You told me loud and obnoxious, I gave you loud and obnoxious.”
“Did you pay actual money for that shit?” She tried for a smile and was glad to note that she got there. It was working. She felt calmer, more centered.
He knelt beside her. “I’ll have you know they happen to be really cute, and I have very eclectic taste in music.”
“That means you like a lot of embarrassing stuff, right?”
He smiled. “I’m a sucker for cheesy pop.” He noticed the ice in the floor and gathered it up then tossed it in the sink. “You want to tell me what happened?”
What happened…Jesus…where to start? Water dripped from the ice melting in her hands. She watched it run between her fingers, onto her jeans and the floor. Afraid if she stared too long she might start to slip away again, she climbed to her feet and dumped the mess in the sink. Kevin handed her a towel. She dried her hands and gestured at the sound dock with her chin. “Could you turn that down a little?”
Once again he did as asked. “I would offer you a drink but I’m trying to take it easy with the booze. How about coffee instead?”
She nodded. “Are you an alcoholic?”
He set about making the coffee. “No, just an idiot. I drink when I party. When I’m not going out, I don’t miss the booze.” He snorted. “Or the partying, for that matter.”
“Then why do you do it? Party?”
He shrugged. “Because I’m just another dumb, idle trust fund baby. Because it’s what I’ve always done. My friends all go to clubs and private parties. And I do have fun when I go out.” He paused for a moment. “Actually, I think I do miss it when I haven’t gone out in a while. I like the loud music and the lights and just getting lost on the dance floor. You don’t have to think when your body’s on autopilot.”
Dani knew what that was like. “I feel that way when I fight.”
“That’s more than a little disturbing.”
She focused on the smell of the coffee, silently listed all the things he had arrayed around the French press. Maybe she wasn’t quite a hundred percent yet. “Are you scared of me?”
A good ten seconds passed before he answered. “Not enough to ask you to leave.”
“At least you’re honest.”
“You can be honest, too, with me.” His blue eyes darkened with intensity. “Where were you, Dani? What happened?”
On the way back, she’d made the decision to tell him. Some things, not everything. More than he was probably ready for, despite his curiosity. If she was going to find those other girls, she needed help. And she needed…she didn’t know the word for it.
Backup. She needed backup. Not out in the streets, but someone to help her obtain information. Someone who knew the ins and outs of the city. Someone who could be a sounding board. Goddamn it, she needed someone to talk to.
“So much for being a loner,” she mumbled.
“What was that?” A sly grin lit up his face.
Dani returned the grin but it quickly faded. As tempting as it was to just keep on doing whatever this was with Kevin, there was work to be done. “Bring the coffee.” She slid into the breakfast nook.
Once again, he did as asked. A girl could get used to that. Dani pushed the thought away and braced herself. This was going to be a rough conversation. “They were traffickers.”
“You don’t mean drugs or guns, do you?”
“No.” What she hadn’t decided was exactly how much to tell him. About the current situation – yes, because she needed his help. About her own past, ugh. She’d rather not. Even when Hurd had forced them into therapy, there were things Dani had not talked about. For all the trust she was putting in Kevin, she still wasn’t ready to talk about the voice that filled her nightmares.
“I saw four girls being moved from a boat to a van, and the van taken to that house.” She cleared her throat. “I was watching from a rooftop across the street when I saw them make a break for it. Three of them made it down a fire escape. A couple of the Russians came in and grabbed the last girl.”
“So you went to help her?”
Dani nodded.
“Did you get her out?”
“Yeah. She made it out.”
“But you stayed behind? Why?”
To give the girl time to escape, was the answer on the tip of her tongue. It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth, either. Dani stayed because she wanted blood. She wanted payback. She wanted to dish out some punishment to men who thought they could make slaves of women. Men who thought their size and strength and their social standing and money gave them permission to treat women like toys. Dani wasn’t a toy, and neither were those four girls. The only thing she’d wanted more that night than for those girls to get away was to kill every single person responsible for the girls being there in the first place.
“To give the girl time to escape,” she said.
Neither of them had touched their coffee. Kevin sat with his forearms resting on the table, the fingers of one hand making nervous circles on the surface. The silence stretched between them, heavy and full of tension.
“To kill as many of them as I could.”
> “Dani.” He reached for her.
She pulled her hands into her lap. “I was on the streets once before.” The words tumbled out and she couldn’t stop them. “I got caught by traffickers. Not the same ones, it was in…it was in a different city. They had me and three other girls, and they kept us for three days before they handed us over to the buyer. Don’t ask me what happened during those three days because I’ll never tell you. I’m never going to talk about it. Just believe me when I tell you, traffickers deserve to die.”
Kevin whispered her name.
“I wish I’d killed every single one of them.” She fled the kitchen and raced into the living room. The tablet was there somewhere, she’d left it on the coffee table. Or maybe it was the sofa, she couldn’t remember. She’d left it somewhere in this damn room.
Kevin approached with the device in his hand. “Is this what you’re looking for?”
She snatched it from him. “Did you see it? The picture of the dead girl? She was one of them. You can’t tell it from the picture but her body is covered in these marks.”
“What kind of marks?”
“Stun gun marks. She was tortured with a stun gun before the bastard strangled her to death.” Dani stabbed at the screen mindlessly, unable to recall how to find the app.
Kevin took the tablet. “You sound like you know who it is. The killer. Is he one of the traffickers?”
“Yes.” Dani paced the stretch between the back of the sofa and the windows. “He used the stun gun on one of the girls when they were being moved. I didn’t find him in the house. He could have left when I was on that rooftop, or when I was making my way down the stairs. I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, making your way down the stairs?”
“I made sure that last girl got out the window and then I fought my way down the stairs.”
“How did you get in the house?”
“I jumped from that rooftop. I took a piece of rebar with me and I left it in somebody’s chest. I fought, and I shot the men with their own guns, and I…I.” She couldn’t remember it all. She knew she’d found a lighter somewhere, and she vaguely recalled starting a fire in the house. But she couldn’t remember everything. Just a haze of violence and blood and screams, until she walked out into the night and got into Kevin’s car.
“I checked out.” Dani stopped in her tracks and sat on the floor. “I didn’t realize it until now.”
Kevin came around the sofa and sat beside her. “What do you mean, you checked out?”
Dani put her head in her hands, trying to still the whirlwind in her mind. “They said it was called dissociation. It’s a symptom of PTSD. I did it right before you came in the kitchen.” She had to stop talking. Stop telling him her secrets. He would kick her out once he knew too much and she couldn’t risk that, not yet. She needed his help to find the girls and get them to safety. So she’d better just shut up right now. Just shut up. Just shut –
“Who diagnosed you, Dani? Was this after you got away from who bought you? You’re leaving so much out.” He placed a hand on her shoulder, offering comfort.
Dani didn’t want
(deserve)
comfort. She scooted away, hair flying as she jerked her head up. “I can’t tell you. I won’t.”
“It sounds like you need to tell someone.”
“I can’t!” She covered her mouth with a fist. He was trying to help, she had no business screaming at him. Faking a calm she didn’t feel, she said, “Some of it is personal. A lot of it is just too dangerous to tell anyone.”
“I made the decision to risk the danger when I opened my car door and told you to get in. So stop treating me like a child and talk to me.”
So much for calm. “The only thing you need to know is that I need help finding the other girls before they wind up dead, too. Are you willing to do that? Because if you’re not, I’ll go right now.”
Anger shimmered between them. The electric blue of his eyes had turned to ice, his face a hard mask. Adrenalin surged through her and she wanted so badly to punch something.
“You’re not going anywhere.” He climbed to his feet.
Dani jumped up and shoved him against the glass wall. “I could hurt you and you know it.” She circled his throat with her hand. “So don’t give me orders.”
“You’re not going anywhere because I’m going to help you.” He covered her hand with his. “And you know that. So don’t try to bully me, Dani.”
She stared at where their hands covered his throat, and for a moment all she could see was the ugly ligature mark on the dead girl’s body. Dani yanked her hand away, suddenly ashamed. He was right – she’d been trying to bully him. She’d put her hands on him in anger and could have seriously hurt him if she’d lost control.
“Do the cops know about this girl?” Not as angry now, but his voice still didn’t have its usual warmth.
Dani put several feet between her and Kevin. She couldn’t meet his gaze. “I didn’t have a way to call in a tip. Somebody might have by now, I don’t know.”
He sighed. “I don’t know how to do it without the call being traced. Let’s focus on how to find the other girls for right now, then I’ll figure out how to call in a tip and stay anonymous.”
Back to business. Good. He wasn’t going to throw her out, even though she definitely deserved it after what she’d just done. Focus on the mission.
“Your focus will be on various types of high-danger missions.”
She forced the sudden memory away. “Can you draw faces? Like a police sketch artist?”
“I’m better than any police sketch artist. Be right back, I’ll get some supplies.” He hurried upstairs. Probably wanted to be as far from her as possible.
She didn’t blame him. She wished she could run away from herself, too.
Chapter 16
Dani stepped out of the sunshine into the pit-like darkness of a dive bar on the farthest edge of Lincoln Heights. A few bare bulbs and the vivid neon of beer signs provided the only illumination in the place. Anyone else would have been at a disadvantage with the abrupt change from bright to dark, probably one reason the regulars preferred the place. Dani adjusted her night vision with all the concentration it took to flip her hair back. She walked into the bar with confidence, something that in a woman would garner the wrong kind of attention in a dump like this.
Good. She was spoiling for a fight. The day was a total waste. No one wanted to talk to her, even when she flashed the cash Kevin had given her to buy information. Maybe nobody had seen the girls. It was a big city, easy to get lost in. Dani had taken advantage of that fact herself. Just days ago, though, people in the South Side wouldn’t have viewed her with such suspicion if she’d struck up a conversation with them. She’d looked like one of them then. Now, cleaned up and wearing nice clothes, she looked like an outsider. Not a cop, but not someone who had any business wandering around Cabrini and surrounding neighborhoods, hitting up strangers for information. Guilt nibbled at the edge of her thoughts all day, for so many reasons she’d lost count.
She tossed a bill on the bar and ordered a shot. “I’m looking for some friends of mine.”
The bartender poured whisky in a chipped glass. “You don’t have any friends here.” He pushed the glass toward her, some of the liquid slopping out.
Dani smiled then downed the shot. She pulled out copies of the sketches Kevin had drawn, now heavily creased from being folded and unfolded so many times. “I used to know these girls back in the day and I was hoping to find them again. Have you seen them?”
The bartender leaned on one beefy, tattooed forearm, staring at Dani, never once so much as glancing at the sketches. “Word of advice, little girl. Get outta here before someone decides they want a better look at your pretty face.”
She smiled again. “I can handle myself.”
Two bruisers in dirty jeans and old leather took up residence on either side of her. One of them leaned in close. “I wouldn’t mind seeing you
handle yourself.” He laughed at his own bad joke.
The ugly sound grated on her nerves. “If you don’t back off, I’m going to handle you, and not in a way you’ll like.”
The two bookends laughed but the bartender, he could tell Dani meant business. She could see it in his eyes. He said, “Take it outside.”
There was no getting out of a fight. As soon as she left, the two bruisers would follow. Energy hummed in her muscles, her body eager for a little violence. Might as well get it on. She placed another bill on the bar and winked at the bartender. “Have a nice day.” Not looking back, she sashayed out the door.
Sadly, only the talkative bruiser chose to follow her to the alley. Dani purred, “Where’s your buddy? I was hoping to take on both of you.”
He leered. “Don’t you worry. I got more than enough for you.” He took a step toward her.
Dani grabbed his hand and used it to twist his arm. While pulling his body down, she used his weight to bring hers up and caught his neck between her knees in midair and flipped him over. Momentum brought them both to the ground, Dani in total control. A few more seconds of pressure from her knees on his throat and he was a limp, gibbering mass. She released him and moved swiftly to a kneeling position beside his head then gave him a good thump to the noggin just because.
“That was quick and unsatisfying,” she said. “I bet you hear that from all the girls.”
A few garbled vocalizations that might have been curse words passed his lips, along with droplets of spittle. Dani leaned over, putting one knee on his throat again. “If you’re not going to give me a good fight, the least you can do is give me information.” She took the sketches out of her pocket and held them in front of his face. “Have you seen any of these girls?”
So, yeah, it would have been easier for him to answer if she’d lift her knee, but she didn’t want to hear his annoying voice. The frantic back and forth of his eyeballs was answer enough.
“Where do Russian girls go around here if they need help and want to avoid the Lincoln Heights guys? Can you tell me that?”
