by Holly Hart
Think, Ellie! Work smart, not hard.
And then it struck me, like it had been preying on my mind all this time. The goddamn shelves were labeled. Pretty, organized white labels, like a library, and filed just the same. And libraries, after three years studying journalism at college and half a decade spent reporting, I could handle. The shelves were organized by year, then month, then week.
January, February, March, no – skip a few, the clock's ticking, August, September, closer, October.
November.
The month I ended up in hospital.
Search area narrowed, I sped through the shelf, the only shelf it could be. And there it was, my bag, stuffed full of my notes, and looking like the police had never even bothered opening it. I mean, why would they? It was an open and shut case, after all. Rick had absconded from custody, they knew that, and then I turned up beaten to all hell. Of course, he was long gone, but still. Open and shut…
I opened it, tearing aside the plastic sheeting that covered it and brushed my fingers against the soft, aged leather as I unclasped the chrome-plated buckle.
The bag fell open, and the musty smell of hard work, of paper that hadn't seen the light of day for months, filled my nostrils. I sucked it in greedily, a pig at a trough.
I pulled the string rucksack off my shoulder without looking, grasped an iPad and keyboard from inside, and turned it on. This was it, the culmination of my plan. I'd known – and hadn't told Roman – that there was no way I'd be able to smuggle evidence out of the police station.
This was the plan.
I started taking photos. Every last one of the hundreds, maybe even a thousand research documents. Sworn testimonies of witnesses, men and women I'd interviewed, faded black and white photocopies of bank statements, all headed with the logos of offshore banks – from the Cayman Islands, Guernsey, Haiti, Panama and a dozen others besides. I tapped the screen until my finger hurt, until I could hear it echoing around the room.
Something was wrong.
At least, different. I struggled to place it, to figure out what it was – what my subconscious had revealed. And then, at long last, I understood.
I could hear again. The fire alarm was off. It was only a matter of time before someone found me.
I knew what I had to do. I had to get the story out. The words began to fill my mind, like numbers cascading through the matrix, flowing like water after a storm. I'd known what I was going to write for months, even before Rick damn near beat the ability to speak out of me. My brain must have dwelled on it whilst I was in that coma, marinated it, made it ready, and now – with the power of desperation and the fear of failure spurring me on, the most powerful article I'd ever written began to soar from the crevices of my mind.
I wedged myself behind an overflowing rack, hidden from sight, and began to type. The clacking sound of keys filled my tiny corner of the room.
And my story began to flow.
35
Roman and Conor
For the first time in my life, I was lost, like Jesus in the desert. I felt the pressure of ten thousand tons of bricks pressing down on my shoulders, weighing on the arm holding my gun, pushing it down. It wavered, trembled, and I couldn't keep my aim. Even if my life depended on it – and my son's did – I wouldn't have backed myself to make that shot. Not without missing, or worse.
Victor's taunting sneer mocked me, teased me, showed me everything I had to lose, and everything I could do so little about.
"Please," I said, voice cracking. "Lock me to the ground, tie me here and leave me. Hell, kill me for all I care, and give my baby to Conor. Just let him live."
I'm sorry, Ellie. I failed you.
"Now," Victor grinned, hugging my son's swathed body to his chest ever tighter. "Why the hell would I go and do something silly like that? I hold all the cards here, Roman, not you, and not your dumb potato-peeling friend and his gun."
"Maybe," Conor said mildly. "This dumb potato-peeling friend should put a bullet in your thigh. How would you like that?"
I stared at him with abject horror. Why the fuck was he talking like that, provoking Victor, as if a baby's life wasn't on the line.
"Go on," Victor sneered. "I dare you."
A mocking smile licked Conor's lips. "That, my friend, was a fucking stupid thing to say."
A spurt of flame shot out of the rifle's long, black barrel. A gunshot echoed around the floodplain, bouncing off a hundred and fifty-seven rusted iron spikes, and every one sank like a dagger into my heart.
"No!" I roared, surging forward. I dropped my gun. It didn't matter, all that mattered was getting to my son.
A second gunshot exploded into existence, battling the air for its roaring supremacy. This one came from a different direction. From Victor's direction. Where my baby lay, wrapped in blue swaddling cloth that would soon be soaked red, clutched to the chest of a monster.
My throat stung, ripped raw. I collapsed next to Victor's writhing body, searching for the bundle that contained my son's shattered body, and held my failure as a father and as a man. I pulled it out of his hands, not listening to the gangster's outraged roar of pain, his cries as he pressed the fingers of one hand against a hole in his thigh that was weeping blood, and as with the other he searched for his dropped weapon.
Eyes blind with rage, I pulled a tiny knife from my boot and stabbed it through his wandering, murderous hand.
I clutched my son's broken body to my chest.
Conor approached me, but in my grief I didn't recognize his presence until his shadow blotted out the sun. "How could you," I cried, my throat tight with the feeling of a wave of sobs that wouldn't come. And nor would words, now. I said it again, hissed it. "How could you…"
He put his hand on my shoulder, and spoke with an exaggerated, cocky charm in his voice that fanned my anger into a white-hot rage. I faced him, ready to make him pay for what he had caused. "Whoa, buddy," he said, hanging back. "Where's the blood?"
His words washed over me. I searched for a gun that wasn't at my waist, clutched the bundle of rags to my chest and bellowed my pain to the sky. "How could you?"
"Roman, you idiot," he said kindly. "Look at the fracking thing in your arms."
It didn't fit. None of it did. Why was he so calm, after what had just happened? A ray of hope flickered within me, like a candle at the top of the mountain, fighting valiantly against the wind. I looked down.
There was no blood.
But no cries, either.
Just a bullet hole that had ripped right through the cloth. I unwrapped it, holding my son''s body gingerly, terrified to touch it.
"It's –," Conor began.
"– a fucking doll," I finished, open-mouthed, as I stared at the broken, crushed and bullet-holed body of a child's doll.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me."
36
Ellie
My finger hovered over the send button, trembling. I felt like the president, about to press the big red button to destroy the world.
Except, just like the president, there was no actual big red button to press. For him, it was the nuclear football. I watched a documentary about it, a briefcase with a computer in that can end the world.
My version was slightly less impressive – an open tab, with Gmail running in it. Still, I knew that it would end my world, as I knew it. This email would hit Alexandria like a bomb, sweeping through the corruption, the crime, and the killings like a brush. The only question was whether I would survive the aftermath. I was about to make some very powerful enemies.
I stared at the blinking cursor, and the last two words: "Regards, Ellie." It seemed so small, so insufficient in comparison to the story that preceded it. I knew that the thousand word article above it was the best thing I had ever written. I shivered just proof-reading it. It railed against what Alexandria, the city I grew up in, had become. It exposed the corruption, the lies, as well as the filth. And it lay down a challenge. To the gangs, to the police, to the city g
overnment – and most importantly of all, the citizens. Because without them, it was all for nothing.
Grow a pair, Ellie.
I pressed send, and the article, along with a folder full of photos that damned Victor Antonov to a jail cell, and a host of crooked cops and city counselors beside, winged its way to a list as long as my arm.
My old employer, the Herald was first.
Then the chief of police – though, since he was incriminated in the evidence I doubted he'd prosecute himself…
All the way up to the FBI.
The cat was out of the bag now, and like chickenpox ripping through a nursery, there would be no putting it back in. But just to be sure, I loaded every single last document into the cloud and shared it online. No coverups. Alexandria had had enough of those.
I shut the iPad, kind of wishing it was a typewriter, because the black slate screen's silent winking off was hardly the round of applause I felt I deserved after that. My fingers were burning. I'd never typed so fast in my life.
"Yeah, yeah," I muttered out loud. "'Nuff fluffin', El. You can celebrate when you get out of here."
The problem was, that was easier said than done. A draft of air brushed against my forehead, the slightest, tiniest movement – but enough, a warning. I thanked whoever was looking out for me up there. The usual Ellie, the one I'd been before all this started, would never have noticed such a tiny change in air pressure. Hell, she had her head so far up in the clouds the only change in air pressure she'd have noticed was the goddamn jetstream! Maybe Roman rubbed off on me, a little bit.
I know I rubbed off on him.
I hoped that I was just imagining things, that I was just on edge – understandable, after the day I'd had. Hell, the year! But that faint, weak hope was torn apart in less than a second.
"Come out, little girl," a wheezing voice called out. A familiar wheezing voice, like a parody of a horror movie kidnapper – both in the way he spoke, and what he said. "Come out, come out, wherever you are…"
I stiffened, pressing myself against the nearest metal rack, every last faint ounce of elation drained away in an instant. I pressed too hard, and watched in horror as I rocked the rickety shelving unit, and watched as it swayed to and fro, and as a cardboard box, precariously balanced, found its weight pulling it inexorably downwards.
I watched, and watched as it fell through the air, almost in slow motion.
And I heard as it crashed to the ground, making as much noise in this quiet, librarian space as Yellowstone erupting.
"I knew you were in here," the fat man wheezed. Because it had to be him – the overweight, creepy officer who'd seen me in the corridor. I knew I was right to distrust him, had been from the start. But smug self-satisfaction would get me nowhere. "Come out, little girl, and I'll make this easy on you. Don't make me come back there, will you, birdie?"
You wouldn't fit… I thought sourly. If ever there was a contrast between two men, Roman and the fat man provided it. And the fat man didn't come out in front.
I stayed quiet, silent as the grave. I'd seen enough horror movies to know how this ended. I'd already made the classic mistake, I sure as hell wasn't planning to make another. I even slowed my breathing, in one, two.
Out one, two.
In one, two…
I took a step into the corridor between the shelving units, not bothering to hide myself from the bulbous turtle -like security cameras, searching for the right rack. Like the one I'd backed into, many of them were old, poorly-maintained, and ready to fall. Like a rotten, hollowed-out oak tree in the middle of the forest, it might only take one slight push to bring the whole thicket tumbling to the ground.
That was the plan, anyway. I eyed the one to my side carefully, ignoring the incriminating fallen cardboard box, stacked full of yellow legal papers, but dismissed it. The whole bottom shelf was stacked three high with boxes, weighing it down like an anchor.
No, I needed something top-heavy. Like the fat man.
"Come on," he puffed, sounding closer. "I won't hurt you. I won't even touch you, if that's what you want," he said, his voice dripping with longing. I shuddered at the thought of his fingers coming within 10 yards of me.
My eyes wandered, searching for my get out of jail free card – though, in this case, it was rather more a get into jail card, given where I was currently breaking into. Still, I figured, better locked up than dead.
Jackpot.
I sprinted to the shelf, not bothering who saw me, the cameras or the man chasing me. I was in a race now, a race against time, and the seconds were ticking away. I reached it, tensed my body like an NFL player and drove forward, shoulder-barging it. It rocked, boxes stacked on the top shelf wiggling as the unit rocked from side to side.
"I'm coming!" The plump officer choked, sounding delighted.
I rammed it again, and again, and again –.
"Stop!" He squealed, and I turned my head and I saw him pointing his service pistol at me, held in two hands, shaking. The enamel top button at the top of his navy uniform shirt bulged against the stress of keeping it pulled tight, and in a strange moment of clarity, where the rest of the world seem to slow down around me, I realized that he'd tried to brush the doughnut dust off his collar, only to grind it in. I grinned.
"You're not going to shoot me, Frank," I said, injecting a boatload of confidence into my voice. In reality, I wasn't nearly so sure – so I stopped pushing, just to be certain.
"Frank?" He repeated stupidly. "What –?"
I shrugged. "I dunno, Frank," I said, emphasizing it. It seemed to be pushing him off balance, and I only hoped that his emotional baggage was as unwieldy and poorly distributed as his gut. "You look like a Frank to me. A fat Frank." I said, digging the knife in for good measure.
He reddened, blood surging to his face as he stiffened with anger. Suddenly his gun hand wasn't trembling anymore, and I cursed inside. I seemed to have touched a nerve…
Ah, crap. I thought. In for a penny, in for a pound. I span, kicked the rack as hard as I could, and dived for cover.
It didn't fall. But Frank did fire, and in the confined, concrete-walled warehouse that stored Alexandria's police evidence – tons upon tons of weapons, plastic-backed spent bullets, the seized contents of houses and blood-stained children's toys – in short, the detritus of a city falling apart, it sounded like the world ending.
I scrambled for safety, bashing my knees, palms and elbows against the coarse concrete floor, ducking and weaving and throwing myself behind stacked racks of evidence, cursing as I saw that row after row was filled with just flimsy, feeble cardboard boxes. I was no expert, but I didn't think for a second that they would stop a bullet.
"Oh shit, oh Christ," Frank mumbled behind me, sounding like a man on the verge of panic – a man who had realized he'd made a terrible mistake. I'd got my wish, that was for sure – you couldn't fire a weapon inside a police station without someone coming running, even in a police force as incompetent as Alexandria's. The question was, though, whether Frank would double down on his error, and whether that meant that I was in his firing line. I gulped.
A door crashed open, and heavy boots thundered against the hard, cold floor – salvation, if I lived long enough to see it.
"Officer, put your weapon down!" A woman cried, and the call was taken up by a dozen more voices, all echoing some variation of: "drop your weapon!"
I made my peace with the consequences, and made a break for it. Breaking into a police station? It had to be a felony – or some other equally terrifying legal term that I didn't have any experience of. Still, it was better than a bullet from Frank's gun.
I sprinted for the door, for the line of armed officers with their weapons drawn, my hands above my head. The heavy police belt weighed me down, and I reached down with my right hand to unclip it. I turned round the final rack with one hand in the air, one on my waist, and waddling at top speed like a terrified duck. The first police officer I saw, a young woman, perhaps twenty-eight
years old, looked as surprised to see me as I was her.
"Put your hands above your head!" She screamed without flinching, in a parade ground, battle-hardened roar.
"It is," I squeaked, hurriedly putting the right one up to join it.
"Get on the floor," she shouted, and I dropped, and then there was a knee in the small of my back, and the woman screaming, "you have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law…"
My cheek rested against the cool concrete, and I closed my eyes.
My work was done.
I just hoped that Roman's was, too.
37
Maya
I leaned forward, wincing as the couch groaned and squealed with every inch. "Alina, tell me. Is there a child here?"
Her face was as guileless as a toddler's. She wrung her hands together like an old washerwoman, and I saw her jaw clench and face grimace as she tried to work out what to say. I knew the bind she was in, and so did she. She was between a rock and a hard place. It wasn't me who was the rock, but Massey, his presence as good a threat as any – even if I never meant it that way.
A tear crept into the corner of her left eye, and then another, and another until both were wet and a stream ran down a lined face that was entirely free of makeup. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she cried. "I knew it was wrong, I knew that I should have called police. But Mister Victor –"
"Alina," I interrupted. "I understand. Believe me, I understand. I know it wasn't your fault. I know you didn't have a choice. But tell me the truth. There's a baby here, isn't there?"
She nodded, like a child on the verge of a flood of tears, as though she didn't trust her voice not to betray her.
"In that bedroom?" I asked, jutting my chin at the only door it could be, the only other door in here.
Alina nodded.
"Okay, Alina," I said, speaking to her softly, slowly, as if I was speaking to a child. "You see, I have to thank you for everything you've done to keep him safe. But he's my friend's son, and I need to take him home. You understand that, don't you?"
