by Sonya Clark
“You think one of the girls from that night wound up with him?” Kevin took his phone back, his fingers sliding over hers in what felt like a deliberate caress.
“Either that or some kind of trap.”
“Let me go with you.”
“Hell no.”
“What if you need to get out of there in a hurry? I have a really fast car. I have more than one really fast car.”
Damn it. He had a point. She didn’t know Belmont like she knew Cabrini. As fast as she was, lack of knowledge like that would still be a disadvantage if she had to make a run for it. “Okay, but you’re not parking too close. And you’re keeping your ass in the car.”
He raised his hands, palms facing out. “My ass goes where you want it.”
Getting him further involved was a bad idea, for multiple reasons. But if he was sitting in his car in an alley in Belmont, waiting for her, then that meant he wouldn’t be doing something really stupid, like trying to get himself into a poker game with mobsters. Definitely the lesser of two evils. “We’ll head out at nightfall.”
“I’ll go find some clothes appropriate for a sidekick.”
“If you wear tights, I’m leaving you here.”
Kevin glared at her as he left the room.
Chapter 23
Kevin decided pretty quickly that maybe his lap wasn’t the best place to leave the stun gun. He slid it between his seat and the door instead. The doors were locked. The lights and the engine were off. Even the radio was silent. He waited in the dark, fingers tapping a nervous rhythm on the steering wheel.
Dirty South was four blocks away. That was as close as Dani would let him get. He didn’t like it but he wanted her trust so he didn’t argue too much. And to be honest, it’s not like he would be much use in a serious fight. The cover story he’d made up for Dani’s presence in his life was starting to seem like a good idea, self-defense training. He never again wanted to be as helpless as he’d been the night of the attack. Plus he wasn’t finished with his community service yet, and he didn’t know how long he’d be chauffeuring a superhero into the scary parts of town.
The idea of wastrel playboy Kevin Moynihan acting as a chauffeur would cause a riot of laughter among just about everyone he knew.
The thump and rattle of a cheap stereo blasting sent his nervousness into overdrive. Lights shone in the rearview mirror. Kevin watched as the vehicle crept past the alley, tension tightening his muscles. After an agonizing several seconds, the car moved on and the music faded. The tension stayed, though.
Where’s your white liberal guilt now, huh?
He shifted uncomfortably in the leather seat, hoping Dani’s meeting with this Housecat guy wouldn’t take long.
***
Dani paced the roof of Dirty South, hands flexing, head bobbing in time with the hip-hop that floated up from the dancefloor below. If this was a trap, it would be sprung soon enough. If it was an offer of help or information, she would wait on the roof rather than break in again. Seemed the polite thing to do.
It didn’t take long for him to join her. “You want people to help you, you’re gonna need a better way to get in touch with you than a hashtag.”
She’d thought of that. Setting up something would imply a permanent situation, though. She wasn’t here to be some kind of savior for Point Sable, she just wanted to help three young women. “I take it that means you’re offering help.”
“Not me. Someone else.” Housecat moved closer. “But that someone is under my protection. So I’m gonna need you to take off that mask.”
Risk versus reward. This could be nothing. Kevin might be four blocks away, but at least one person had seen them together. That one person might have been Kevin’s friend, but he gave off an untrustworthy vibe. It would take a little doing, but she could be connected to Kevin, if someone wanted to do the work. Like, say, Russian mobsters.
Or the lab.
Housecat crossed his arms over his massive chest. “People think love makes the world go ‘round. That’s bullshit. It’s reciprocity – that’s the key. You show me a little trust, I’ll be inclined to reciprocate.”
“You’re asking me to take a big risk on the faith that what you have to offer will be worth it.”
He smiled, and she wondered if he ever had any trouble at all with getting women to pick up what he was putting down. “What I have to offer is always worth it.”
Nice and smooth, all right. But still, she hesitated.
Housecat nodded. “Okay, okay. I’ll give you a little something. That someone else – she’s got information, and she wants to thank you.”
Bingo. One of the girls did wind up in Belmont looking for help. Dani removed the ski mask. Some strands of hair came loose from the twist she’d worked the mass into and floated around her face. She batted them away and met his searching gaze.
Whatever he saw in her eyes and expression, he must have approved of. “Let’s go.” He headed for the fire escape. “Put your mask back on until we get there.”
She did so and followed. Once on the ground he kept close to the building, out of the patches of yellow cast by streetlights. Around the west side of the structure, a quick dart across the street after making sure there was no traffic, then swallowed by the darkness of another alley. This building was dark and quiet and appeared to be empty.
He paused at the mouth of a stairwell leading to an entrance below street level. “For someone with short legs, you got no trouble keeping up with me.” Fishing for information.
She wouldn’t give him any. “Nope.” She pointed at the door below. “What’s down there?”
“A little hidey hole I like to keep, just in case.”
“Seems a little close to the club.”
He grinned. “Didn’t say it was my only hidey hole.” He descended the short flight of stairs then unlocked the door. A dark hallway led to another door. This one had three locks. Housecat opened it slowly, staying in the hall. “Sveta? It’s me.”
An accented, feminine voice replied, “Miles?”
Dani looked up at Miles, wishing he could see her raised eyebrow underneath the ski mask. From the downward turn of his mouth, he didn’t need to see it, he just knew.
He entered the room with slow, deliberate steps, hands hanging low and away from his body. Sveta must have been a skittish thing.
Very skittish, based on the nine millimeter in her trembling hands, aimed at the door. Dani froze.
Housecat spoke in a soothing voice. “Sveta, this is the Cabrini Ghost.”
Sveta was the girl who instigated the escape, the last one out as Dani held them off. Russian tumbled from the girl’s lips like fast flowing water, then she switched to English. “Take the mask off.”
Mimicking Housecat’s careful movements, Dani removed the mask. Sveta lowered the gun and rushed toward Dani, enveloping her in a tight hug. A torrent of Russian spilled forth and the other woman shook. Dani patted her back, at a loss as to how to comfort her. “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Russian.”
Sveta released her. She wiped the tears from her cheeks with one hand, the one holding the gun bobbing fitfully in the air. “Yes, yes. I speak English.”
Dani kept an eye on the gun. “Are you okay?” She really wanted to talk to the girl alone, but if Housecat was letting her keep a gun, maybe Sveta was safe with him. Relatively speaking.
“I would not have got away without you.” Sveta placed her free hand over her heart, big blue eyes shining. “Thank you. Thank you.” She hugged Dani again, a fierce strength in her arms that belied the tears.
Dani’s first instinct was to push the girl away, but then she remembered. Remembered the desperate need for human contact, touch that didn’t hurt, didn’t demand or degrade. Years after crawling through her own hell, Dani still carried some of that need around, deep inside in a place she didn’t like to acknowledge. Hidden under layers of fear – that giving in would bring more pain and broken trust – and shame – that even after all the horrors he
r body and soul had been forced to endure, she still needed to be touched, wanted to be touched in a way that would help clean all the bad stuff away. Dani closed her eyes, her mind swimming with images of every hand on her shoulder, every hug, moments of friendship and yes, even passion, that had helped her turn simple human touch from something to be feared to something close to normal. Something she could even welcome.
Dani remembered all of that, and then she hugged this Russian girl she didn’t know but had so damn much in common with. She hugged her like a long lost sister. Like both their lives depended on it. Some wound deep in her heart she hadn’t even known existed found its way to healing in that moment. It left scar tissue, but it healed nonetheless.
Sveta broke the embrace but kept a tight grip on Dani’s hand. “Miles said you were trying to find the others. To help them.” Her voice was steadier now, her accent easier to understand.
“Yeah.” Dani glanced around the room. For a hidey hole, it was pretty cozy. Small but functional, whatever it had been before, it was now basically a studio apartment a little bigger than the average motel room. The couch held a nest of blankets, a hollow spot in the middle where Sveta had obviously been sitting. A coffee table had been pulled close to the couch, with an open laptop set up and the remains of an earlier meal waiting to be taken to the tiny kitchenette. Dani gestured at the couch. “Can we sit?”
Sveta nodded and dropped Dani’s hand. She returned to her nest and tucked the gun between the seat cushion and the arm of the couch. Dani sat at an angle on the coffee table. Housecat took up a perch on the opposite side of the couch, his gaze rarely leaving the pretty Russian.
Sveta said, “I know about Polina. We found her picture on the…the.” She snapped her fingers, her gaze dancing around. “Hashtag. The Ghost hashtag. He did that to her, the bastard with the stun gun. That was him, yes?”
“I need to know everything you can tell me about him. About the other girls. Where I can look for any of them.”
Housecat spoke up. “His name is Ilya Bessonov. Just your average soldier, except for being a brutal piece of shit, even by Bratva standards. And that’s saying something.”
“Know where he lives? His hangouts?”
“I’m not exactly welcome in the Heights but I got people trying to find out that stuff.”
Dani looked at Sveta. “What about the other girls? Do you know where either of them might have gone?”
Sveta exchanged a look with Housecat before answering. “Tatiana, she is smart girl. If she can stay away from Bessonov and the rest, she will be okay. None of us know this city. We all lived in New York.”
Dani asked quietly, “How did they get you?”
Sveta shook her head. “It was modeling contract. Stupid, yes? Tatiana and I, we did a little modeling. Stock art, I think it’s called. Polina danced in clubs, waited tables. Masha, she was escort.” Sveta lowered her eyes. “We all did what we had to do to live.”
Meaning they’d all been sex workers at one time or another. It didn’t surprise Dani, and she didn’t judge. “Why did they bring you to Point Sable?”
“They said we weren’t paying them back fast enough.”
“For passage to America?”
Sveta nodded.
Dani rubbed her palms down her thighs. “So where’s Masha?”
Another quick look between Sveta and Housecat. Sveta exhaled slowly then spoke. “Someone saw her in Cabrini.” That was all she would say.
Silence ticked by for several heartbeats before Dani rose to her feet. “Okay, what are you guys not telling me? Out with it.”
Housecat said, “I been looking for the girls too. No sign of Tatiana yet but a source of mine spotted Masha in Cabrini.”
Dani spoke as if addressing a slow child. “So let’s go get her.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because she got caught in Dogtown territory, and I can’t go there.”
Dogtown. Jesus. “Where in this town can you go? Your own backyard? Is that it?”
Housecat swore. “I made a deal to stay out of Dogtown territory and they stay out of mine. I have to honor that or it’ll cause problems for my people here in Belmont. I don’t want a gang war.”
Sveta shoved the blankets away and hurried from the couch. “Right, because one woman is not worth it.”
Housecat rose and took two steps to follow her but then seemed to think better of it. “It’s not that simple, Sveta.” She slammed the bathroom door, the sound punctuating his sentence.
“Not that simple’s gonna get old quick,” Dani said.
“I’ll fix things with her,” he said, as if to himself. “You been around here long enough to know much about the Dogtown crew?”
“I know they almost killed someone I…someone I know. They’re dangerous. Some of them are practically feral.”
“They’re mostly kids. People in that gang, they don’t live long enough to be much more than kids. They fight dirty and they’re destructive as shit. I don’t want that in my neighborhood. It’s a long way from perfect here, but their piece of Cabrini is Goddamn Thunderdome.”
“And you want me to go in alone and get this girl Masha out?”
Housecat stared at her hard. “You pinned me to my desk like it wasn’t nothing. There’s something not natural about you.”
Dani tried not to flinch but didn’t quite make it.
Housecat shrugged. “Unless you make problems in Belmont, I don’t care.”
“Tell me everything you can about where she’s at and who’s got her.”
He leveled a finger at the bathroom door. “Let me talk to Sveta for a quick minute, then I’ll give you the run down.”
Dani paced while she waited. Dogtown Thunderdome. Shit. This was shaping up to be an ugly night.
Chapter 24
Three sharp raps on the passenger side window startled Kevin out of a hard doze. He snapped his head up, panic flaring briefly before he saw Dani. He unlocked the door and she climbed in. “How did it go?”
“Housecat’s keeping one of the girls safe. He knows where another one is in Cabrini.”
“Is he going with you to get her?”
Dani shook her head. “He can’t. It would break some kind of gang peace treaty if he went to that area, so I have to go alone.”
“I’ll go with you.” He reached for the key in the ignition.
She stilled his hand with her own. “No. You drop me off, then go home.” She didn’t move her hand from his. He stayed perfectly still, afraid any movement would remind her they were touching.
“Look, I’ll stay in the car if you think that’s best. But you need me to pick you up. You’re going to have another person with you.”
She was quiet for a long moment, her thumb moving restlessly over his skin. The slight contact sent tingles all through his body. Finally she said, “Did the cops tell you anything about the group that attacked you?”
He swallowed a lump of sudden nausea. “They thought it was some gang called Dogtown or something.”
“Housecat’s neighborhood in Belmont, hell, all of Belmont, is a paradise compared to most of the South Side. The Russians make Lincoln Heights dangerous if you get on their bad side. Cabrini’s a scary place. The Dogtown crew roam all over Cabrini and Stockyard. Their home base is a slice of territory right on the line of Cabrini and Stockyard where everything starts to look all post-apocalyptic. It is a fucking hellscape. I may be a badass, but I don’t like going there. You hearing me?”
Kevin heard her, all right. The Point Sable Police Department would never admit it openly, but they didn’t patrol Stockyard. Or if they did at all, it was with the occasional police chopper flyover. The rest of the South Side was rough, even dangerous. Stockyard – so named because it used to be home to the city’s meatpacking district back when trains brought cattle to the market – was a no man’s land.
“How did this girl wind up there?”
Dani removed
her hand. “Who the hell knows? She didn’t know the city so she could have wandered over there looking for a place to hide out. Could have been snatched right off the street.”
“What are they doing to her?” Not sure he really wanted to know the answer.
“Probably pimping her out to anybody with a few dollars. I can’t leave her in that.”
“I know. There’s probably not much point to calling the police.”
“I’ve only been here a few months but I never heard of cops going in there. Besides, she’s illegal. She gets picked up by cops, she’ll get deported back to whatever shithole in Russia she came from.” She gestured at the steering wheel. “Talking’s not going to get this done. Take me as far as the shelter and I’ll walk from there.”
They rode in silence, tension filling the vehicle. There’d be no talking her down from this. Part of him didn’t even want to try. She’d taken on a houseful of Bratva soldiers and walked out alive. She could do this. Right? She could do this. Unless she couldn’t. He clenched the steering wheel tighter, not quite able to work up the nerve to reach for her hand.
He parked in what had become his customary spot in the alley behind the shelter. “Got your phone?”
“Yeah.” Her voice was clipped, tight.
“Call me when you’re ready for a pick up.”
“Go home, Kevin.”
“I’m going to wait here. You call me when you’ve got her. This car is stupid fast. I can be there in no time and get you and the girl off the streets.”
Dani let out a soft sigh. “Okay.”
Kevin unclipped his seat belt and leaned over, planting a quick, firm kiss on her lips. “For luck.”
Dani rested her forehead against his, eyes closed. “Thank you.” She broke away and climbed out of the car. Before she closed the door she leaned back inside. “Her name is Masha.”
“Go get her.”
Dani closed the passenger door and disappeared.
