The Lullaby Girl (Angie Pallorino Book 2)

by Loreth Anne White

  It struck Angie. “So it was you—you who ordered the deaths of Stirling Harrison and his wife. I thought they were killed to help Semy attain parole. But I get it now—you wanted that parole board to see him as a continued threat with gang links on the outside. You wanted to keep him locked up for as long as you could.”

  He snorted softly. “Him and Milo. Those two just made trouble for me at a time I was trying to grow the business. I put them inside as a warning to the others.”

  “How did they make trouble?” Keep him talking. He’s buying into this.

  “Milo was just too stupid—a liability. Semy, he was too soft.” Zagorsky’s features darkened. “He grew too fond of Ana and you two. Gave you both those pairs of shoes—the one that washed up. Before the opportunity presented to set Semy up in the drug bust, I made him watch what I did to little Mila and your mother. Because it was his fault. It was because of him that I was forced to kill Ana and Mila. He lost me good money there.”

  Hatred threatened Angie’s clarity. With it came the familiar heat of rage.

  Focus. Focus. Don’t let the anger blind me.

  “It ate at Semy for the remainder of his life—seeing Mila and Ana die. I think it’s why he named his own child Mila, born to him before he went into prison. But that’s enough talking now. Move.”

  “That drug haul had a street value of millions. That’s a lot to sacrifice just to put your cousin in prison.”

  “Got a tip through a two-timing informant that the VPD was already onto the delivery. It was tainted. We were going to lose it anyway. So I switched out crews and put Milo and Semy on the job. Move!”

  “No.” She stood her ground, hands clenching at her sides, clarity crystalizing fast, her mind growing harder, sharper. In her peripheral vision Angie noted various forest paths leading out of this clearing, all possible escape routes through the woods. “Tell me first what happened that night at the cradle. How did Semy and Milo allow us to escape? How was it their fault?”

  He moistened his lips.

  “Come on, Oly, you brought me all the way here.” A sour taste rose up Angie’s gullet at the shape of this man’s name in her mouth, her own father’s name. “Getting me here must have taken some serious effort. So why rush it now? Why not let me know what happened that Christmas Eve before I die?”

  He inhaled, a hint of amusement beginning to toy at the corners of his mouth. “Semy and Milo and another man—Ivanski—were supposed to guard you and Mila and your mother plus two others. You were being kept in an apartment in the city while waiting for word to come from contacts at the port so that you could be put aboard a ship.”

  “What ship?” she said quickly.

  “The start of your journey to Saudi Arabia. I’d sold you to a prince there, for his harem. Top dollar. He wanted to groom you and Mila from very young. I threw Ana into the bargain to act as a chaperone. Then, while you were all holed up in that apartment, awaiting the signal, the men were drinking a little too much that Christmas Eve. They were running out of vodka. Your mother saw her chance. She came on to Semy, who was vulnerable to her charms, far too vulnerable.”

  “He loved her, didn’t he?”

  Oly’s face blackened, and it made his eyes ice-light, like a Viking marauder. But he ignored Angie’s question. Which told her that she was right. She knew now—at the heart of it—why Semy had been punished. Why her father had found a way to tip off police to the drug bust. Why Semy had been forced to watch this red man kill Mila and their mother.

  “Ana suggested Semy go out in the van to buy more drink. The guys were bored. They’d been there for days. Semy agreed. When he left, Ana dead-bolted the door and, feigning inebriation herself, encouraged Ivanski and Milo to finish the remains of the vodka, and she offered herself to them. She had sex with them both. Then while they were lulled and starting to doze, she grabbed you two from the next room and fled.”

  The semen on her purple sweater. No time to put my shoes on as we ran into the snow where the Chinese senior at the Pink Pearl restaurant saw us.

  “What about the other two women you say were there?”

  “In the next room. High as kites. Didn’t know a thing.”

  “It was Milo and Ivanski who chased us?”

  “Semy returned with the van at midnight. He saw Milo and Ivanski chasing you all across the street into that alley. He pulled up, heard gunshots, saw your mother fighting with them as she tried to put you and your sister into that cradle. Milo cut your face when he tried to stab Ana. He knew it was you twins that were the valuable commodity. Ana was expendable. But she fought back, and Milo’s blade caught your face. She got you into the cradle. Semy drove around to the other side of the alley, and that’s when the church bells started ringing and all the churchgoers started coming out. Milo and Ivanski grabbed Ana and your sister and fled to Semy in the waiting van. But you—” He tutted his tongue and tried to touch her scar again. “You were the one who got away, but there, he left his mark.”

  She took a fast step back from his touch. His eyes narrowed, and his neck corded. A flush of anger colored his cheeks.

  Don’t break his roll now. Buy time, buy time. Angie forced herself to stand her ground.

  “Why did you sell us, your own children? Why did you even keep us here in the first place?”

  He gave an irritable shrug. “I have a wife. Ana was an indulgence. The Saudi visited and saw you two. Little twin redheads. Fresh as daisies. You intrigued a man with enough money to buy several small countries. He offered me a deal I could not refuse. Now, move.” He waved his gun at her. “Or I kill you here now.”

  Angie turned, walked slowly, her brain racing. Long grass, dewy, dampened the bottom of her jeans. Water dripped from trees. The scent of moist loam and moss was rich, familiar. She’d come all the way back to this place that had been locked inside her memory. Mila’s foot had brought her here. Full circle. Back to where her twin had lost her life and her mother had died. Angie had finally found the truth, and now she, too, would die.

  As she walked she glimpsed a building through the trees—big. Built of logs. Green roof. A chopper squatted on a tiny helipad near it. That must be the craft she arrived in. An old woman in black watched from the windows in the distance. Angie stilled, pulse quickening.

  “My mother,” Kaganov said, waving at the woman to shoo her away from the window. “Mothers are important, not so, Roksana?”

  Rage mushroomed in her. Evil—he was pure fucking evil, enjoying this. She whirled to confront him, but he raised his hand up high and smote the butt of his gun down hard across her face. Pain exploded through her cheek. She staggered sideways under the blow. Bent over, she clamped her hand over her cheek. Blood leaked warm through her fingers. She could smell it, taste it—her own blood. Before she could regroup, he kicked her hard in the side of her leg, forcing her to stumble sideways.

  “Go, I said. Walk. We’ve got to make it across to the other side of the island. I need to return to my guests by lunch.”

  CHAPTER 55

  Through the floatplane window Maddocks scanned the densely forested coastline below with his scopes. His old friend Craig Bennett flew the plane. Bennett was ex-military and had contracted with the RCMP as a pilot. His bird had only visual flight capability, so they’d had to wait until the early light of dawn before taking off.

  Bennett’s voice came through Maddocks’s headphones as he banked his craft to the west. “There she is, Semko Island and the lodge.”

  Maddocks panned his scopes over the island. He saw the green roof of the expansive lodge, decks stretching out over the water. Outbuildings. Docks, boats. A chopper on a small helipad. Two floatplanes moored out in the water.

  Bennett angled the plane as they flew in over the island to come around in the correct wind. Maddocks had borrowed clothes and gear from Bennett, a keen fly-fisher. His plan so far was to walk in the front door of that lodge as a prospective client who was just checking the place out. Yes, it might arouse suspicion,
but it was the best plan he had at short notice.

  Takumi had finally okayed backup. Maddocks had received the call during flight, just minutes ago. The BOLO had resulted in the hit man’s Audi being spotted leaving the heliport in Vancouver. The kidnapper had been apprehended. Evidence of fresh blood and long red hair had been found in his vehicle.

  But the chopper that had been awaiting the man had already taken off with the cargo that the man had loaded onto it.

  According to heliport staff, the pilot had filed a flight log to Semko Island. Instrument flying—the craft was equipped to travel in the dark.

  Heliport staff also informed police that the pilot regularly flew the Semko route, and they’d confirmed that the package that the Audi driver had delivered to the chopper was large enough to be a body. This was the information that Takumi had needed to prove Angie—alive or dead—had likely been loaded onto that chopper. Takumi had gotten the green light for an ERT team to fly in to Semko.

  Maddocks was overdosed on adrenaline, his mouth bone-dry. He chose to focus on believing Angie was alive—she had to be. It was all he had to hold on to. It was what kept his mind sharp, his vision keen, every sense on alert. Something suddenly caught his eye in a forest clearing below. He swung his scopes.

  His heart spasmed. Shit. Angie—alive.

  With a man. Maddocks refocused his scopes, trying to stop his hands from trembling as he attempted to get a better view. The male was a redhead. Massive in stature. Kaganov. And he had a gun. He was forcing Angie to move ahead of him along a path that led through trees toward the far side of the island, toward docks that ran out into the water in grid patterns. The fish pens.

  “It’s them. He’s got her!” Maddocks said through his mouthpiece. “Can you set down on the west side? Around the point north of what looks like fish pens.”

  “Ten-four.” Bennett banked the plane, changing direction.

  Maddocks’s brain sped like it was on acid. This place looked as Angie had described it from her hypnosis memories. Old-growth forest. Log house with a green roof. Docks forming fish pens. Surrounded by water.

  Kaganov had brought his daughter home. To die.

  Kaganov shoved Angie forward through branches that hung low over a seldom-traveled stretch of the path. As she came through the foliage, Angie saw a cove and a beach below. From the shore, old wooden docks stretched out into blue-green water in a grid pattern. A weathered hut listed on one of the docks, faded blue paint peeling from old boards. Beside the hut lay a giant tangle of crab pots.

  She knew now why the sight of the docks outside Jacob Anders’s window had disturbed her so—it had prodded a buried memory of this place. She and Mila had stood right here, on this path, peeping down at the cove through the branches. And they’d seen something terrible. The recollection gushed into her brain like black, suffocating smoke.

  The big red man at the far end of a dock, forcing a thin woman to curl up into a large cage he used to catch crabs. The man wiring the cage tightly shut around the woman, who was crying. The man stabbing her a few times through the gaps in the wires, making blood flow onto the wooden dock. The man shoving the cage with the bleeding woman off the edge of the dock with his foot. The sound of the splash it made. The cry of gulls up high.

  Angie swallowed as she studied the scene afresh now, blood still leaking down her face from her split cheek.

  The place was clearly disused. The giant crab pots were commercial ones, and they were rusting. On the dock that reached the shore was an old fish-cleaning station. An old gaff leaned against the station.

  “Go down.” Her father shoved his gun into the small of her back.

  She inhaled and began to make her way carefully down the slope toward the pebbled strip of beach. Stones dislodged under her boots and skittered and clattered down the bank. That’s what he was going to do—put her into one of those crab pots and drown her. Make her bleed more before pushing the trap into the water. Her blood would attract fish. She’d sink fast to the bottom. She’d lie like that pig carcass trapped on the seabed, her flesh being picked clean by crabs and lobsters and sea lice and octopi. She had to act before he could get her to the far end of that dock where the crab pots lay in a heap.

  Cautiously, she moved farther down the slippery path and onto the beach. She stepped onto the old dock. The worn planks wobbled beneath her feet. She found her balance. Tentatively she made her way along the dock toward the fish-cleaning station. Water chuckled beneath the planks. Kaganov stepped onto the dock behind her, and she felt it sway under his weight. The breeze off the ocean was clean and cool and scented with brine. Angie came to a halt beside the station. She couldn’t allow him to take her any closer to those crab pots. She had to act now. This was where she had to pick her battle “These … these pens are no longer in use,” she said, her voice rough.

  He snorted, coming right up behind her. “Not for a long, long time. Salmon farming is now a highly scientific, computerized enterprise. My new pens are out at sea—in open water. Deep water. The fish stocks are monitored by techs and live cameras around the clock. My staff live in floating accommodations for two weeks at a time, then rotate shifts. It’s a controversial business, of course, feeding the world. Growing protein. Environmentalists wage war on the Atlantic salmon we farm here in Pacific waters, say it kills the local fish, damages spawning in the BC rivers, undermines the entire ecosystem. But I have publicists. Good ones. They offer tours to the public. It all helps the company profile.” He nudged her forward. “And now that we’re all caught up, my Roksana, it is time. Take off your boots.”

  Her heart skipped a beat. “Why?” she asked quietly, but she knew why.

  “Because maybe they float. Wouldn’t want your DNA washing up in Tsawwassen again. No more loose ends.”

  Slowly, Angie turned around to face him. He had his back to the forested island. Above him, up on the bank between the shadows of the trees, something moved. A ripple of the wind?

  Angie tensed as a form took shape in the shadows behind the branches. Her heart stopped. Men.

  Two.

  Armed with rifles.

  Then she recognized the blue-black glint of hair. Maddocks. What in the—? He’s come for me. He’s found me. Angie tried to level her breathing, to not give him away.

  Maddocks waved for her to keep going, to keep moving forward, away from Kaganov. He had his rifle trained on her father. But he needed Angie to put distance between herself and Kaganov in order to give him a clear shot.

  “Boots,” Kaganov demanded. “Now. Take ’em off.”

  Inhaling deeply, Angie bent over and slowly began remove her boots.

  A rock clattered down the bank. She froze.

  Kaganov’s head jerked. He spun around. Maddocks ducked back into the foliage, but not before Kaganov raised his pistol and fired. The crack sent a flock of pine siskins scattering from the trees. Silence. Kaganov held still, his back heaving as he watched the trees. Still bent over, heart jackhammering, Angie fingered her hand slowly, surreptitiously, toward the handle of the rusted gaff that leaned against the fish station. Her fingertips touch the old splintered wood of the shaft. She closed her fist around the shaft.

  As he registered her movement, Kaganov swung his gun back at her. His eyes looked like ice. Time slowed, stretched, as his finger curled and tightened around the trigger. Angie’s vision blurred as a pink glow appeared behind him. Suddenly Mila was there again, standing behind her dad, just like she’d appeared behind the Baptist before Angie had blanked out and emptied her clip into his brain.

  Mila reached out her hand. Her voice filled the air, as if the wind itself were speaking.

  Come. Come playum dum grove … come …

  Angie couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. As Mila came closer, Angie saw that blood was pouring from her eye sockets. The crimson rivers dripped down her white face, soaking into her pink party dress, covering her white legs. Rage exploded, sending blinding shrapnel through Angie’s brain. Her mind tu
rned black. Her vision narrowed onto only her father.

  Kill him. Kill him. Kill.

  She gripped the gaff handle tight and yanked it toward her. With a sharp twist of her body from her waist, using the upward momentum, she swung the gaff hard at her father’s face.

  The hook met flesh, bone. The impact juddered through her arms. She gripped the gaff shaft with both hands and jerked it downward, and the rusted hook tore through her father’s skin from the eye to his jaw.

  He howled as he pulled the trigger, but his shot went wild. All Angie could see now was blood. Hot blood everywhere. She placed her feet wide apart and crouched low. She stepped forward and swung the hook at him again, taking advantage of his shock. The hook tip dug into his chest this time, ripping open his shirt and the flesh across his pecs and down to his belly. He gasped, dropping his gun as he clamped both hands to his gut. Staggering backward to avoid her next blow, he slipped in his own blood. He went down hard onto his back. Angie stepped over him, straddling him with a boot on either side of his hips. She flipped the gaff around so that the hook was in the air, and she drove the back end of the shaft into his forehead with a crunch. His arms flailed at his sides. He went limp. Time slid to a halt. Absurdly, she could hear no more birds. No sound at all. The world had been muffled.

  Her father’s gray eyes blinked as he stared up at her, dazed. His face was a mangled mess of meat and blood. As he breathed, a foam of tiny pink bubbles formed at his mouth.

  Panting hard, she stood over him, the gaff handle slick with his blood in her fists.

  Kill him …

  But as Angie reached down and unsheathed his knife, she heard yelling. It seemed to come from far, far away, and she barely registered it. She dropped to her knees beside her father’s limp body, exhausted, dizzy. She brought the gleaming sharp edge of his hunting blade to his white throat and pressed it above his Adam’s apple, under the red beard. She registered the ginger body hair growing on the white skin of his neck, and the memory of him killing that sobbing, skinny woman flashed through her eyes again.