“I don't know. Are you sure you saw him!?” Lily was exasperated as she turned towards Kingsley. He nodded.
“I saw him. He was here, just a couple hours ago. No one has left since then. Not a single person. Could he have been hiding, and then gone out the front?” he asked. She shook her head.
“The alarm would have gone off. Where the fuck is he!?” she shouted. Marc suddenly pushed past her, storming into the bedroom. He marched up to Roksana and grabbed her by the hair.
“Where is he!?” he demanded.
All he got was Russian and more spitting.
Lily wasn't sure how to feel. Tired. Sad. Angry. Upset. Defeated. She slumped against a wall and closed her eyes, rubbing her hands over her face.
I don't. I really, really don't want to be this person anymore. I want it all to end. I just want him to be dead, and for it to be over.
“Something is wrong here,” Kingsley mumbled, and she laughed.
“Are you kidding!? Everything! Everything is wrong! Name one thing that's right!” she yelled at him, dropping her hands so she could glare at him. But he wasn't looking at her; he was pacing the length of the closet.
“Remember those blueprints, darling?” he asked, then moved to walk the perimeter of the closet.
Lily stood up right and glanced around. She pictured the blueprints in her mind, then laid them over the apartment as she'd seen it so far. A foyer with a bathroom and cloak room – where the bodyguards had been hiding. Then the hallway leading to the living room and kitchen. Finally, the master bedroom, complete with its built in aquarium, its walk in closet, and its en suite bathroom.
Wait a minute …
“Where the fuck is the bathroom?” Lily asked, turning in a circle. When she came back around, it was to see Kingsley staring at the wall opposite the doors. There was shelving in front of him with a clothes rod in the middle.
“I could be mistaken, but I think it's behind this wall,” he commented, then he reached out and brushed his fingers against the paint. He ran them back and forth for a second before sharply knocking with his fist. The sound reverberated through the room.
Hollow.
“What's going on?” Marc asked, appearing next to her.
“It's a fake wall, hiding the en suite bathroom,” she explained. Kingsley had moved closer and was inspecting all the shelving, feeling around where the wood met the wall.
“Panic room,” Marc whispered. Lily winced.
“Jesus, I hope not. We could burn the place down, and he'd be fine,” she said in a soft voice.
“I guess we'll see! Darling, come here please,” Kingsley called out, and she moved up next to him. “See this seam? It goes all the way around. I think we can pull this wall forward, and then it'll slide open, covering the shelves next to it. If it's a panic room, there will be a lovely metal door behind it. But if it's not ...”
Marc turned off the lights in the closet, and Lily held up her gun again and nodded.
“Ready.”
It was heavy, it took both men to pull the fake wall out of place. It came forward almost two whole feet, and then they were able to slide it to the side. Lily moved with it, staying out of sight. It was obvious there was no scary panic room door behind the wall – as they moved it, light spilled into the dark closet. When the wall came to a stop, she dropped to a crouch. She took a couple deep breaths, said a prayer to anyone who might be listening, then she cautiously peeked around the edge of the false wall.
From what she could see, the room was unfinished. The floor was bare concrete, and an island had been built in the middle of it, but was unpainted. Odd, for a bathroom or a panic room. The walls were bare sheet rock, and that was all she could see. She gritted her teeth and made a decision. She jumped across the open doorway, slamming into the wall next to her and pointing her gun straight into the room. There was that same slow motion, that same four and a half pounds of pressure on the trigger. So close. She was so close to pulling the trigger.
Don't.
Lily gasped and dropped her gun. She heard Marc shout at her and then he was by her side, demanding to know what the fuck she was thinking. But then his gun lowered, too. Kingsley didn't bother with his own weapon and he stood behind them, shocked into silence.
Children. There were five children, crowded together in the furthest corner of the room. She couldn't quite place their ages, she wasn't used to kids. None of them could have been older than ten, and maybe the youngest was four. The oldest were Asian, and the two youngest were white. All looked terrified, and all of them were crying.
“What the fuck is this?” Lily breathed, her eye wandering over them. They were wearing white underwear and white t-shirts, and nothing else. Their feet were filthy, as were their hands. They huddled together, and none of them said a word. She frowned and went to step into the room, but Kingsley grabbed her arm.
“No, I'll go,” he said, and she heard him cock his gun. She gaped at him.
“Are you joking? They're kids, for fuck's sake!” she snapped. He glared down at her.
“In Afghanistan, the Taliban were known to strap bombs to children and send them over our lines. The same trick was used in the Vietnam war. So you will wait here, and I will investigate,” he growled, then pushed past her.
Lily was a little blown away. How did he know all that? Hadn't he said “our lines”? Was Kingsley ex-military? What the fuck had he witnessed that made him paranoid about little kids!?
Marc moved to stand in front of her and he trained his gun on the children, as well. Kingsley tried English, then French. Mandarin came next – she hadn't even known he could speak that language, but she was glad, because one of the kids finally answered. A small exchange took place, with Kingsley having them all lift their shirts and turn in a circle. After he was confident that there were no hidden weapons or devices, he lowered his gun.
“The two blondes? They're from Amsterdam,” he sighed, stepping away from the kids. “The tall ones are from mainland China, and the one who spoke to me is from Hong Kong.”
“Why are they here? Where's Stankovski?” Lily asked, hurrying into the room.
“What is going on!?” Marc demanded from behind her.
She wasn't a particularly maternal person; she much preferred the idea of shooting something over going to a PTA meeting. But she was human, and she was compassionate, and they were children. They were innocent. She dropped to her knees in front of them and ran her hands over arms and legs, checking for bruises or injuries. Was Stankovski setting up a sweat shop? She had joked about it the other day; maybe it had been true.
The little boy from Hong Kong let out a wail, shocking her, then he fell against her front. His arms wrapped tightly around her neck and he sobbed into her chest. Lily didn't know what to do, so she wrapped her arms around him, as well. She smoothed her hand over his hair and rocked from side to side.
“You're alright,” she whispered, her eyes wandering over the little boys who still stood in front of her. “No matter what, you're alright now. We'll help you.”
She let him cry for a minute or two, then gently pulled the little boy away. She smiled into his face and wiped away his tears. When he seemed calm enough, she stood up and gently moved him back to stand with his friends.
There were papers scattered across the island in the room and they rifled through them. There were addresses and dates, but none of it meant anything to them. There were names, but when Kingsley asked the kids about them, they said they didn't know anything. They'd been taken from their homes, from parents who couldn't pay debts, or simply snatched off of streets, and brought a long distance to a strange place. A cold place. Somewhere with lots of other kids, like them. They'd only been brought to the city recently.
There was a file cabinet in the corner across from the open doorway, and while the men went through the papers on the island, Lily started tearing through the files. The top drawer was filled with information that to her looked like code for diamond heists. Maybe that
was the real reason why Stankovski wanted a spot in the diamond district; not just a place to peddle his dirty goods, but a home base for a theft ring.
She found the pictures in the third drawer. There were folders full of papers, a lot of addresses and a lot of dates. More of the same. She figured it was useless, and was about to close the drawer when a file in the very back fell open. She pulled it out and opened it.
Oh. My. God.
She had seen a lot of sick shit over the past five years. Hell, she'd blown a guy's head off with a sawed off shotgun, at point blank rage. That hadn't been pretty. Then she'd cut open Ivanov's stomach, with a blade that had been sticking out of her arm. Pretty nasty. But nothing compared to what she saw in those pictures in Stankovski's filing cabinet.
“He's selling them,” she whispered.
“What?” Marc grunted, not looking up from the piece of paper he was reading.
“They're for sale,” she cleared her throat before she spoke. It caught their attention, and both men looked at her.
“He's selling children?” Kingsley asked, but she kept staring at Marc.
“He's selling them. Like he bought my sister, he bought these kids, and he's selling them. Did you know?” she demanded.
“Huh!?” his gaze bounced between her and Kingsley. She stepped closer to him.
“He's fucking selling children to pedophiles!” she shouted. “Did you know about this!? When you went to work for this asshole, did you goddamn know he sold little boys to rapists!? Did you fucking know!?”
She was shrieking by the end, and all she could think about was what Marc had once said to her, “...I'm not of those 'no women, no kids' mercenaries …”, long ago. Over the months, Lily had often wondered if she'd somehow fallen in love with Marc during their short time together. She accepted him for what he was, a ruthless killer and a cunning conman.
But if he had knowingly helped Stankovski buy and sell children for sex, so help her, she really would shoot him in the head.
“How could you ask me that!?” Marc shouted back. She threw the folder at him and the photos went flying around the room.
“You'd do anything for the right price, right!? How could you fucking work for him!? They're children! At least my sister had a fighting chance! At least they took her against her will! They're kids, De Sant! They're just kids!” she screamed at him.
He moved fast, and before she could even put up a fight, his arms were around her. She held onto him and cried into his shoulder.
“I didn't know, sweetheart. You know I wouldn't do that. I'm an awful goddamn person, but I would never do something like that,” Marc told her.
“Jesus, these are sick,” Kingsley groaned from behind them.
“How could one person be so evil? Why isn't anything enough for him?” Lily whispered, struggling to catch her breath.
“I don't know. But we're going to find him, and we're going to make him pay. Pull yourself together and let's go get this asshole.”
Lily nodded and pushed away from him. She wiped at her eyes and glanced at the island top. So many pictures, of so many little boys, all in various poses. Some clothed. Some not clothed. Some alone. Most not alone. And in more than a few of them, in all her bleached blonde glory, was the Russian bombshell herself. Laughing into the camera, a child's face pinched in her hand. In one, she was forcing a kid to bend over. Another one featured her whip.
Lily was in the bedroom before she even realized she was moving. Roksana was where they'd left her, tied up in her chair. Her nose had stopped bleeding, but her face from the nostrils down was still coated in blood. She smirked, her eyes full of condemnation.
“What's wrong with you?” Lily asked, standing a few feet back. Roksana lifted one shoulder in a shrug, as if she were bored.
“I could ask you the same question,” she replied. Lily felt like she couldn't catch her breath.
“They're children. The diamonds, the women, the drugs, I get all that, I really do. But … children,” Lily stressed. Roksana finally looked her in the eye, and she smiled broadly.
“You see children. I see dollar signs. Did you like the pictures? My own personal collection is in a scrapbook I keep in my safe. Better than anything you saw in there, I assure you.”
Lily's Glock held fifteen bullets in its clip.
She emptied fourteen of them into Roksana Stankovski.
“One left,” Lily whispered, looking down at her gun. The gun that's bullets had never hit anything, until that night.
“Sweetheart,” Marc sighed, walking up next to her. She just kept staring down at her gun, till she felt his hand come to rest against her back. Then she jerked her head up and slid the gun into its holster.
“One bullet left. Let's get the fuck out of here.”
DAY TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY-ONE
They left the kids on the street, with Kingsley giving them strict instructions on what to tell the police. Shockingly, not much time had elapsed since they'd entered the building, but they could hear sirens in the distance. Marc and Kingsley said goodbye to the kids, laughing and joking with them, but Lily kept her distance. Too much rage was still flowing through her veins. She'd finally become the person she'd never wanted to be; the kind of person who definitely shouldn't be around children.
She took off before the men, and by the time they caught up to her, she was in the Escalade, turning the ignition. Kingsley climbed into the backseat, with Marc automatically taking the shotgun position.
“Lily, maybe we should -”
She burned rubber while peeling out of the parking spot.
Traffic at six in the morning in New York wasn't exactly smooth, but Lily broke more than a few laws while driving back to South Bronx.
“Darling, I appreciate that you're a little upset, but maybe you should take it easy?” Kingsley suggested from behind her. She glared and pressed down harder on the gas pedal.
“Slow the fuck down!” Marc demanded, bracing his hands against the dashboard as she took a corner too fast.
“I don't have time to slow down! That asshole was there! How the fuck did he get out!? He knew we would find out his little side business – we have to get to him,” Lily growled, taking another corner.
“Lily, he's probably already on a plane. He probably had a secret staircase built in a wall, or an escape route through the sewer. He ditched out after the first gun shot. He's on a plane to Moscow right now,” Marc told her. Lily shook her head, yanking the wheel. They drifted through a stop light and she hit the gas. The tires squealed, urging the car towards the house they'd left behind only an hour before.
Has it really been an hour? How many days have I have been doing this? Days of sand, and jungle, and roads, and fighting, and killing. So much.
She didn't bother parking in the driveway; they jumped the curb and skidded on the grass, coming to a stop just before the edge of the porch. Both Kingsley and Marc were shouting at her, but she ignored them and leapt out of the car, sprinting for the door.
Kingsley had a put a padlock on it, but a couple well placed kicks and one violent thrust with her shoulder, and she was in the building. She took the stairs two at a time, ignoring Marc as he yelled and followed behind her.
She immediately grabbed the blanket off their make shift bed and she carried it into the front bedroom, tossing it onto the floor. Then she began dropping guns into the center of it, fully intending to carry their entire arsenal to Stankovski.
“Take a fucking breath!” Marc snapped as he grabbed her shoulders and whirled her around. She shoved at his chest.
“I don't have time! If you don't want to help, fine, but then stay the fuck out of my way!”
“He's gone, Lily! He's gone!”
Marc was shouting in her face, and his hands were gripping her arms so tight, they hurt. Still, she continued to struggle against his hold, even as he pulled her closer.
“He's not. There's still time. There's still time, De Sant. He's not gone, and we're the only ones that c
an stop him,” she panted against his shoulder.
“My name is Marc,” he whispered in her ear. She chuckled and finally stopped moving. She curled her fingers around the sides of his vest, squeezing so tight her nails bent backwards.
“How could we not know?” she whispered back, staring at the wall across from them. “How … after all this time? I thought I knew everything about him. For fuck's sake, I know when his baptism was! I knew his home address in Moscow, I knew about his diamond smuggling, I know where he went to school, how he met Roksana. How could I have not found this?”
“He's good at hiding things, sweetheart. Better than we thought.”
“He doesn't hide any of his other dirty deeds.”
“This one was dirtier than most.”
“I know we're bad people,” she started. Marc began to argue, but she pulled away from him and shook her head. “We are. Maybe that doesn't give me the right to judge. But there's thing I won't do, things I won't be a part of. I like getting paid as much as the next guy, but I would never steal another human being and sell them. I would never sell a child.”
They stared at each other for a long moment. She could hear the floorboards creak as Kingsley paced in the hall, but she kept her eyes on Marc.
“Neither would I,” he finally agreed. “My morals are definitely looser than yours, but I'd rather just kill someone than sell them into a life of torture.”
“Good. Then we can keep moving,” she said, and turned back to her pile of guns. She heard Kingsley finally enter the room.
“And where exactly do you propose we move to?” he asked, moving to stand next to her.
“Ithaca,” she replied.
“I'm sorry, did you say Ithaca? As in upstate New York?”
“Yes.”
“As in four hours away, if we're lucky with the traffic?”
“Yes.”
“As in we're going to drive -”
“Kingsley.”
“I'm sorry, but what the fuck is going on? Why are you so sure Stankovski hasn't left? And why the fuck are we going to Ithaca, New York?” he demanded, taking a rifle out of her hands.
Out of Plans (The Mercenaries #2) Page 24
