In For the Kill

by Shannon McKenna

  She found a program that would pinpoint the exact location of those coordinates. It was the middle of nowhere, about fifteen kilometers outside a town called Pozzo di San Ignazio. A satellite photo showed a couple of buildings, jagged rock formations. There was a road, but not a very distinct one. The land right behind the spot was rugged. Rocks, cliffs, gullies. Driving time, over two hours, according to the computer.

  What was this but one last muscle she could flex? She’d take anything, no matter how thin or improbable, just to keep moving.

  She dug into her suitcase for more appropriate clothes. Jeans, a button-down shirt, a light jacket. Her waist holster, her Micro-Glock. The most practical shoes she had, the sporty green kicks she’d worn on the plane.

  She dropped the filthy plastic sleeve and its miserable contents into the plastic bag she’d wrapped around her kicks, and shoved it into the bathroom trash. Her mother’s letter went into her purse, with her tablet, the maps, and satellite photos. Her phone would function as a GPS device, too, so she dug for it in her pockets. Then her jacket.

  Where on earth . . . ?

  Oh, God, no. When she’d shown Sam the text from his father, she’d never taken her phone back. She’d left it lying on his bed.

  Shit. Phoneless. Not good, but the alternative was to wake someone and beg the loan of a cell phone, which opened up a mess of other potential problems and delays. Her hosts might even insist on accompanying her. God forbid. She’d end up murdering them both.

  This bad business was between her and Mama’s ghost, which took all her attention, and left none for lecherous philanthropists or fawning socialites. Besides, it didn’t feel right to use Hazlett’s security personnel, now that she fully intended to blow him off. Likewise, all reasons for being civil to Renato Torregrossa had rotted into slime beneath the tiles of his atrium. He was now free to go fuck himself.

  She could buy another phone. The problem was the effort it would take to find a place to buy one here, communicate with personnel well enough to buy the right product, and then figure out how to activate it.

  Her problem-solving capabilities had been maxed out long ago.

  She could get in touch with Val’s contact, Simone, but that would put the world in touch with her, and she was too raw. She wanted to float in a bubble of silence. No scolding, no admonishments.

  She was going out to flex her very last muscle. It wasn’t a whim.

  It was a bid to save her soul.

  CHAPTER 24

  Dawn threatened on the horizon. No time to lose. She went to the security room, trying to cobble together enough Italian to tell whoever manned the room at night that she needed to open the gate, but she need not have bothered. The room was deserted.

  Strange. After all Hazlett’s self-congratulatory carrying on about his security, no one was at the vidcams? But she was in no mood to quibble with her luck. She took a flashlight from one of the shelves and sat in front of the monitor. Its screens showed different infrared images of the property. She clicked around until she found the app on the toolbar that opened the gate. She clicked “open.” Watched it grind wide.

  The enormous entrance door was four meters tall. Gently as she tried to close it, the door made a muffled boom.

  She took the hairpin curves of the access road fast and sped out the open gate unchallenged. It felt strange and lonely, with only herself to rely upon again. In just a few days, she’d gotten spoiled. Started to count on Sam’s forceful personality, his fearsome competence at just about everything. She’d gotten used to having a high-powered, super-deluxe resource constantly at her fingertips. His energy kept things moving fast, facing forward. No time for dark thoughts, creeping doubts.

  And the way he made her feel about herself. A siren, a seductive goddess. The outrageously generous way that he gave of himself. He’d flung everything he was before her as an offering. You are my life.

  And then made it impossible for her to accept it.

  She lost it. Had to pull over, on some beautiful highway overlook to cry it out. It didn’t feel like a crying fit. It felt like a seizure.

  When she could breathe again, she got back onto the road and followed signs to the Autostrada. She stopped at a rest area coffee bar, grimly determined to act like a grown-up and take care of her wretched self. No one was around to nag at her to eat breakfast, thanks to her own brilliant maneuvering, and today was not a day to fast. Who knew how much walking and climbing she might have to do? Some coffee, a yogurt, and a pastry later, she bought some gas and pressed on.

  Like her departure from Villa Rosalba, driving to the coordinates on Mama’s photo was easy at first, just a matter of following signs. But once beyond the unbeautiful, shabby little town of Pozzo di San Ignazio, road signs no longer coincided with the maps. She got turned around several times until she realized she was better off ignoring signs and just following the satellite picture. Then the road butted up to a concrete barrier. She parked the car and continued on foot.

  After a forty-minute walk up the deserted, winding dirt road, she came upon a tall chain-link fence that was chained shut. Large signs warned her that it was proprietà privata, and attenti ai cani. Dogs, no less. Whoop-de-do. Dogs, wild boars, fire-breathing dragons, bring them on. She draped her purse crosswise over her shoulder and climbed the chain-link fence. The kicks were the right shoes for the task, having enough flex in the toes to hook into the links, but they weren’t great for the climb that followed—miles of steep switchbacks, as the sun got higher and hotter. She stuck to the rough, rutted road, which had been abandoned to the weather and was washed out in some places into a slippery cascade of dirt and shale. There were huge tumbled boulders, steep drop-offs. Scrambling over it was slippery and exhausting.

  The road descended into a canyon, its walls rearing up on both sides to block the sun. The heat beat down anyway. A fox disappeared into the bushes. Lizards darted, the occasional snake wiggled across the road.

  The buildings came into view a few minutes after she began looking for them. She wasn’t sure she was in the right place, it looked so different. The chain-link fence in the photo was now rusted out and knocked down. The building, some featureless prefab construction, had been new in Mama’s photo, but now it was battered, discolored. The shutters had been ripped off, the windows broken. Graffiti was scrawled on the façade, satanic symbols predominating. Some rooms had fire damage, with blackened streaks around the window frames.

  Her footsteps slowed as she approached the door. It was repellent, but the force that had pushed her thus far was like a gun to her back. She’d paid for this with her own heart. She would take what she had paid for.

  She was grateful for the flashlight, once inside. The light that filtered through the filthy windows was barely enough to see.

  The place stank. When her eyes adjusted, she saw why. It was unspeakably foul. Someone had built a fire in the middle of the room, and the bones of various small, half-burned animals were inside it. Human waste dotted the floor, as well as corpses of other animals, drug paraphernalia, used condoms. It looked like a meth den. Not surprising, if this was in fact the abandoned lab. Even afterward, an evil place attracted more negativity, more despair. She steeled herself to look through it. The front area, then a series of what must have been laboratories, looted and fouled. Broken glass crunched under her feet.

  In the back were large rooms made of cinder blocks and concrete. They were windowless, with drains built into the floors for easy hosing down, and industrial bathrooms attached, with metal toilets and sinks all streaked with dried, ancient filth. The remnants of big, heavy locks were evident on even heavier door frames. What appeared to be a vidcam mount could be seen high in the corners of each room.

  A holding pen, for the test subjects. That was what this room was. She knew this room. She’d lived in several like it herself, for months.

  She longed for Sam’s bracing presence. His caustic observations would put all this into perspective. He would keep this sick,
creeping dread and sadness from making her feel hollowed out.

  But she did not have Sam. This was her cross to bear, not his. It was smart of him, not to get sucked into her vortex. Look at the shape he was in after just a few days with her. Almost dead.

  She forced herself to go on, but the rest of the place was innocuous. Storage spaces, a filthy, looted kitchen. She walked out a doorway that was wide open to the elements, the door having been taken off its hinges and carried away. There wasn’t much outside, just more dirty, weather-beaten ugliness. Rock, scattered garbage. The ground sloped down, first gradually, then sharply, into a gully. It had been used as a garbage dump. There was a snarl of rotten plastic bags, plastic bottles, cardboard boxes. Narrow mattresses, rusty bed frames. Too many bed frames. They’d gotten sloppy. So sure that their tracks were covered, or that no one cared enough to notice their evil deeds.

  She crawled down to look more closely. Garbage was garbage, and this pile was more depressing than most, but she picked her way down and clambered out onto the pile. It was steep. She risked tumbling and sliding all the way down the hill, in a cascade of weatherbeaten trash.

  That phrase in Mama’s last letter echoed in her mind. You’ll find your strongest weapon buried in all this garbage. She’d been so annoyed with that. Mama should have known better than to have inflicted an empty, facile New Age truism on her, after what she’d been through.

  Then again, she’d taken an anthropology class, years ago in college, and heard a lecture about how much could be learned about a culture from studying its garbage. Garbage talked, the professor said. Nothing else in this goddamned mess was talking.

  So whatever. It felt stupid, forced, but she climbed out onto that garbage to listen to anything it might have to say to her.

  It was so quiet here. The wind had picked up, ruffling her hair and drying the dusty sweat on her face. There were even more bed frames than she’d thought, piled up on top of each other, higgledy-piggledy. There were various patterns of mesh. Interlocking circles, swirling mazelike coils. And . . . what was that? A flash of pale blue.

  Her stomach clenched, but she got down and forced her hand through the torturous patterns of wire. Straining for the little thing.

  It was a little stuffed bear. She got hold of its ear, but almost ripped it off. The fabric was rotten from exposure to the weather.

  Suddenly, she wanted that fucking teddy bear with all the single-minded resolve of a three-year-old. She flung bed frames aside, heedless of spiders and scorpions that scattered at the sudden movement. She got close enough to pull the bear free, slicing her thumb on a broken IV bottle in the process. It was covered with the fibrous egg-laying fluff left by insects and arachnids. Still in one piece. Barely.

  It had been made of pale blue chenille. One of its button eyes was gone. Stuffing poked out of the hole, so that it gave her a rakish wink. Its seams were rotten, and probably an entire ecosystem was nesting inside it, but she cradled it as if it were a newborn, careful not to let the blood from her cut thumb stain it further. Her hands shook.

  Here it was. The reason she was here. The bear was her catalyst. Her link, to the little child who had treasured it.

  The link broke through the ego barrier. It let her feel it. It reminded her what she was willing to bleed for.

  There was no other building to explore. She’d seen every room, every closet. The sensible thing to do now was to go to the police, to Tenente Morelli, the woman who had interviewed her yesterday, who spoke excellent English. She could tell the Tenente her suspicions, let the cops open an investigation and make whatever they could of it.

  But she had no sense yet of having done her duty. She wasn’t finished here yet. But with what? With what, Mama?

  She hiked up the gully once again and around the building. Maybe the spot where Mama had snapped her fateful photo would have a message for her, the way the atrium had. Or should have had.

  The spot was hard to find. Everything had changed. The chain-link fence was a tangle on the ground, the building had decayed, the rocks had shifted. But she finally found it. As close as she could figure.

  Mama had been so careful to frame that cleft in the rocks in the exact middle of the other half of the picture, and the way she composed her pictures left nothing to chance. The cleft looked like a cave opening.

  Well, and so? Sveti tucked the teddy bear into her bag, walked over to that pile of boulders, and began to climb.

  There was a narrow opening at the top. Just wide enough for a small, narrow woman to wiggle through on her belly.

  Once inside, the roof rose up into the shadows, and the floor sloped swiftly downward. She was in a large cave, the back of which was lost in darkness. The only light came from the slot she had just slithered through. It had the air of a cathedral, with light streaming down from the rose window high above, and the rest of the room a vast, mysterious darkness. Bats fluttered, startled by a visitor.

  She hated darkness. They’d been punished with it often. It was so easy for the lazy Yuri and Marina to slam the door and cut the lights.

  Fuck you, you whining little shits. Take that.

  She’d refused to get phobic about it. She couldn’t afford another crippling hang-up. But she still hated it.

  She dug out the flashlight and shone it into the chamber. The cave sloped down, and farther back, the roof was not high enough to stand. The mineral formations were pale, weird shapes in the darkness, the light flickering eerily over their pallid surfaces.

  She stuck her finger into the bag, brushing her fingers over the teddy bear. Could there be more clues in this cave? Was that the message of Mama’s picture? She closed her eyes and asked, like a prayer. A plea, aimed down, up, out. Anywhere it might get a benevolent listening voice. This place must be thick with ghosts.

  She cradled the bear and thought of the child who had carried that toy. Help me. You deserve to have your story told.

  She rooted herself, eyes squeezed shut. The air was heavy and humid, smelling of bat droppings. A hollow drip sounded. Her sliced thumb throbbed. Burned into her closed eyes was the pattern of interlocking metal rods and rings. A three-dimensional labyrinth of . . .

  Labyrinth. She had fixated on Renato’s garden maze as the labyrinth. But could it be this? Her directions were . . . for this cave?

  Oh, God, no. If she got lost in here, it would be like going back into the black hole where the traffickers had held her, but worse, and forever. She’d die alone in the dark. Everyone had their limits, and this was hers. She would do what Sam had begged her to do. Pass it to the police. Have them assemble a team of spelunking professionals, with maps, equipment, lights, ready to face this godforsaken cave and reveal all its secrets more effectively than she could ever hope to do.

  She opened her eyes and a little girl stood right in front of her.

  It was a hallucination, of course. She knew that so completely, she wasn’t even particularly startled. Brought on by stress, suggestion, exhaustion. The little girl was maybe three, dark skinned and barefoot. She wore a stained white cotton blouse and loose cotton pants, with flowers embroidered on the hem. She sucked her thumb, staring up at Sveti with huge, liquid brown eyes. Her hair was a tangle of black curls.

  She reminded Sveti of Rachel, all those years ago. Those big, dark gleaming baby eyes, full of terrible knowledge no child should have.

  As Sveti watched, she turned and scampered, swiftly and silently, into the dark . . . to the right. Like the first poet. R for Rodionov.

  Just like that, she couldn’t leave. She couldn’t make a decision based on fear when a little child reached out to her. Real or illusion, it made no difference. The imperative was exactly the same.

  Wow. Following visions, now. She probably needed antipsychotic drugs. But they were in short supply here, so she’d just go with it.

  She turned on the flashlight and followed her little friend. It was nice, in this bleak, awful place, to imagine that she had company. It was a childish mind game
, of course, but if it helped, who gave a shit?

  Help or no help, she was so fucking afraid. She heard Tam’s voice echo in her head. Endless, gruelling combat training sessions. Don’t allow fear to control you. Fear is just a fantasy. Pop the bubble.

  Intellectually, she understood that, but no amount of pep talking could keep her from feeling it. Fear of pain, darkness, but most of all, fear that it was all for nothing. Cruelty, for its own mean, stupid sake.

  She would find some meaning in this, goddamnit. She would slap some down on top of it by brute force and bolt that fucker down.

  It was slow going, through the big, confusing chambers, and the choices of left or right were by no means obvious. She had to explore each new cavern before she even understood which direction a person could choose to go at all. Some were full of deep, black pools of water, the minerals around them slippery with condensation, like wet ice.

  And so it went. Vast mineral monuments, like the trunks of huge trees. Cascading waterfalls of frozen stone. Huge phallic pillars and massive, tumorous lumps. She wished the little girl would simply appear and lead her on, but she did not see the little girl again. It had just been that one brief flicker, because she wanted it too badly. The little girl had slipped through the chinks in her mind’s armor only because she had not expected her. Ghost, hallucination, or vision, none of those entities could be forced. They did what they damn well pleased.

  She memorized every landmark, marking the image in her mind for her reverse journey. That cathedral ceiling, that batwing arch, those kissing columns, that fat, warty monolith. She was so focused on this, she did not allow herself to feel the breathless panic. Then she saw light, far ahead. She was so relieved, she started to cry.

  The chamber she emerged into was as large as the entrance chamber, at least twelve meters tall, with a big opening at the top a couple of meters across. A covering had been laid over the hole, she could see the straight line of corrugated metal silhouetted against a white sky. It looked as if the earth had given way, enlarging the hole.