I snapped the blade closed. “See, I’m a good man to have on your side, Cain. We can either be friends and help each other. Or we can be something else.” He turned and started walking toward the road, in the opposite direction of Maureen’s house. “I’ll let you think about it. Don’t take too long though.”
Then he disappeared down the street.
Maureen greeted me with a grimace and slammed the door behind me. “You’re late. I don’t like late.”
“Sorry, I—” Before I could even finish my sentence she started pushing me down the stairs toward my new post. “We need to talk about something.”
“Nothing to talk about.” She wore a royal blue dress with a red belt synched at the waist, and a red scarf around her neck. I started to open my mouth to tell her she looked beautiful, but she positioned me against the wall. “This is your post. Don’t leave it for the rest of the night. Got it?”
“Are you mad at me or something?”
“Shut up and stand there.” With that, she marched back up the stairs and slammed the door.
I found myself alone, but not alone. All the curtains were shut on the girls’ rooms, if you could even call them rooms. “Areas” is more like it. Sheets rustled against themselves and I could hear the soft scraping. The creaking of bed frames filled the hot basement air, which smelled of old sweat and new sex. At one point, my hands slammed against my ears trying to drown out the guttural moans of men and the breathy sighs of the young girls that lay all around me, letting themselves be taken, having their innocence stolen along with their bodies.
Maureen called them Courtesans, the epitome of female elegance and power. But all I saw was a gilded, tapestry-ridden palace of rape and manipulation. Sure, they agreed to it, but consent in order to avoid starvation on the streets didn’t sound that far off. I couldn’t understand how Maureen didn’t see that what she created was just a fantasy, built with curtains paid for by peddling drugs to the desperate.
The seconds ticked by, slowly, deliberately, like time wanted me to take in every detail. I’d had my fill of details from minute one, but it was another six hours before I was done with my shift. The only time I got a two-minute break was when one of the policemen was leaving and I had to hide in the shadows.
The sun peaked through the crack in the basement door, and the clients emerged from their fabric-covered caves, ascending the stairs with twisted shirts and belts hanging in the loops of their pants, flapping around with every step. Maureen stood at the top of the stairs, shaking each hand and pocketing each bill with a thank you and a peck on the cheek. I shuttered when I thought of the skin her lips were touching.
After they left, she was about to walk away from me too. I grabbed her hand. “What’s wrong?”
She avoided my eyes, and seemed to be talking to my mouth and not the rest of me. “Nothing.”
I kept hold of her hand. “You’ve been weird since we…”
“Since we what? Had sex?”
I looked at her quizzically. “I kind of think it was a little more than that.”
She smiled the same cruel smile I saw the day I met her, the one that told me she was ready to wound, as if she was loading a gun. “Oh, honey, that was your first time, wasn’t it? Everybody thinks the first time is special. Then they hit the second and the third and realize its recreation, something people have been doing to amuse themselves for years.” She patted the side of my cheek. “You’ll see, someday.”
She tried to pull her hand away but I gripped it tight. “Then kiss me.”
“What?” She still wouldn’t look me in the eyes.
“If it didn’t mean anything, then kiss me. Right now.”
“No.”
“Why not, if it’s just recreational?”
She gave one last tug and I pulled her close to me, placing my lips on hers. She seemed to part them unconsciously, inviting me there. I heard a sharp inhale and she wrapped her arms around my waist. “Are the children asleep?”
She nodded.
I carried her up to her room and locked the deadbolt behind us.
When I woke up, Maureen was staring at me, lips curled into a sad smile. “That wasn’t what we needed to talk about.”
We both laughed and I wrapped my arm around her. “Well, not just that.”
She reached over and brushed an eyelash from my cheek. “What is it?”
“Keegan. He knows what I did…knows what we did.”
Maureen sat up straight, the hair on her arms standing up at attention. “He’ll come for me.”
“No, he won’t. He knows he can’t get to you.”
Something in the way I said “you” made her stare at me. “He’s after you, isn’t he?”
“He wants me to tell him where the body is.” I grabbed her hand. “Maybe I should. Maybe then it could be over.” Even as I said it, I knew it wasn’t true.
“Are you crazy? Keegan’s the worst one. Once he gets what he wants, he’ll have no use for either of us. He’ll kill you where you stand, wherever he finds you.”
I smiled. “Well, I’ve discovered I can defend myself pretty well.”
Maureen leaped out of bed, closing the curtains that we hadn’t thought to close earlier. “What about me, then? What about the kids? They need you.”
“It’ll be okay.”
“No, it won’t. What if the bill doesn’t pass? Or worse yet, what if it does and it’s not what you thought. What then?”
I paused. The thought of the bill not being the answer had never occurred to me. I shook it from my mind and got up, grabbing Maureen by the waist. “It will. We’ll be okay. Once he figures out that I’ll never turn on you, he’ll leave us alone.”
The sad smile returned. “Us?”
“You know I’m not going anywhere, right?”
She turned away. “You say that now.”
I stood in front of her. When she went to turn again, I grabbed her face in my hands. “Your parents—honestly, I can’t speak for them—but I can speak for me. I am not leaving you.”
That time, she kissed me.
CHAPTER FIVE
A couple weeks went by without so much as a breath from Officer Keegan, or any of his friends, for that matter. With my work as a bodyguard, I was able to take in two more children. Because of our growing numbers, I had to use some of the money to buy them all blankets for the basement of the church. Maureen let them take the sleeping pads with them from her house, even though she claimed she was taking in children as soon as I was taking them out.
I never saw a new one to speak of after that. She tried to pretend she wasn’t softening, but when I looked at the children’s faces, I knew better.
Nyla and Maynard were twins, both with wavy brown hair and big blue eyes. Their parents died in a car accident and living with their uncle had given them bruises on their arms and legs. Their uncle had been a drug addict, so selling drugs didn’t seem like that far of a stretch to them.
They both cried when I took them out of the house.
I was just tucking them all into their beds when the phone rang in the upstairs apartment. That was the only phone in the church so I had to run as fast as I could. By the time I answered, I was out of breath.
The hospital nurse could hardly understand me.
“Father Dominic was brought in today from the jail. Asked me to call you.”
My stomach turned. “Why didn’t he call himself?”
The nurse paused. “Maybe it would be best if you just came down here.”
I couldn’t pop into the hospital without planning; I was still a fugitive. So I forced myself to wait till the late hours when I would normally be working at Maureen’s before I slipped in. The less people around, the better.
I glided through the hallways of the hospital, ducking around corners whenever someone passed by. I forced myself to take my time, taking in every noise, every footstep. Finally, I came to a storage room and slipped inside.
Jackpot.
Nurses’ sc
rubs and doctors’ jackets lined the walls. I had found the laundry room. I threw on some blue scrubs and slipped out of the door, keeping my head down.
When I found the nurse’s station, there was only one woman there. She happened to be talking on the phone so when I tapped her on the shoulder and asked for the room occupancy chart, she handed it to me over her shoulder without looking up.
Room 251.
I took a deep breath, but nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.
The strong, brave man who had wrapped his arm around my shoulder and taken me in off the street was now a swollen mass wrapped in white bandages. He sat in bed with white medical tape wrapped around his chest. The skin that I could see between them shone purple and seemed to expand past the bandages themselves. One eye was swollen shut, and his arm rested in a sling, hanging unnaturally from his shoulder. I took his hand with all the gentleness I could muster.
“Dom, oh my God, what have they done to you?”
A twinkle in his eye seemed was all that remained of the man who saved me that night, and every night since. “Cain, good to see you.”
I whispered. I couldn’t risk someone walking down the hallway and hearing my voice. But there was so much to talk about. “Keegan did this to you, didn’t he?”
Dom’s words came slowly, as if each syllable pushed against his broken ribs. “They told me…to warn you…I wouldn’t have risked…you coming otherwise.” Pain made his face stiffen.
“Don’t try to talk, save your strength.”
He shook his head. “No, Cain, I don’t know what they want from you but you’re in terrible danger. They said…give up…the girl?”
I sighed. “I can’t.”
He used all his strength to squeeze my hand. “I don’t know who this girl is…but they’re dangerous…they did this to me…all of them at once. I tried to stop…but they just kept coming.”
I felt my limbs start to tremble. I imagined a mass of men surrounding the man who had been there for me when I needed it most. They would have circled around him, tighter and tighter until oxygen itself would have had to fight its way in. My skin flushed hot. “I’m in trouble, Dom.”
He looked me straight in the eyes, and a little smile snuck onto the corner of his mouth. “Aren’t we all?”
Dom couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer, so as soon as I heard him breathing steadily, I pulled his blanket up tighter around him and slipped out of the hospital. Honestly, it worried me that I could have gotten in and out so easily. If I could, maybe Keegan could too.
I had just rounded the corner where the church comes into view when I heard a woman’s voice. Not the deep, silky voice of a woman who had aged into adulthood, but the high, bird-like voice of a young girl.
She was screaming.
I ran toward the alley that had changed my life so many months ago. But this time, it wasn’t me who was cowering between the brick and dirt: it was a young woman, barely bigger than Nick.
I got there just as a man with a beard and thick arms slammed her head against the wall, and I watched her slip limply into the dirt and garbage at her feet. His hand enveloped her skull; she hadn’t had a prayer of escaping him on her own.
The knives that I carried frightened me. Or maybe I scared myself. Each time they made an appearance, it seemed easier, inevitable, like they were gradually becoming less constrained with questions and quandaries.
The night I found her was the quickest draw of all.
The blades seemed to leave their holsters and enter his abdomen in one fluid motion, stopping only when steel met bone. The other knife swept across his throat, and when he landed on the ground, he splashed into a thick, wet puddle of rainwater and God knows what else. His vacant and still face pointed toward the sky, dead and climbing toward the stars.
I checked her pulse before I lifted her into my arms. She was out cold, but still breathing. Looking around, I ran as fast as I could toward the church door.
Nick saw me coming. I worried about his propensity to stare out the window. He was too much like me, but that night I was grateful for it. As soon as he opened the door, the rest of the children scurried down the stairs to see what I’d brought them. “Who is she?” Nick asked as he practically pushed me up the stairs to the apartment.
“I don’t know.”
I laid her down gently on top of the bed while Nick took off her shoes. When he was done, I threw the blankets over her, and stuck a bandage on her forehead where it had hit the wall. I didn’t even realize until I was done that the other children had been rustling through the kitchen. Alexis thrust me a plate with a turkey sandwich on it and Felix proudly handed me a glass of water. “For when she wakes up.”
I smiled and took both gifts, sitting them on the nightstand. “Thank you. But now you all have to go to bed.”
A chorus of buts erupted.
“You can meet whoever this is in the morning.” They all looked at me with the same horror reserved for hearing Santa isn’t real, as if I took their magic away. With only mild protests, they formed a line behind Nick and followed him back down to the basement.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want them with us; I just had no idea who I had brought into our home. Sure, she was a young girl, but she was also a stranger. So I forced myself to ignore their frowns and sunken faces and send them downstairs until I knew what I was dealing with.
The girl was wearing a tight black dress that ended a good foot above her knees. After seeing her six-inch red heels, and considering where I found her, I knew there was a possibility that she was a prostitute. Long lashes rested on the edge of her lids, and after seeing enough fake ones at Maureen’s I could tell hers were real. Her dark hair was pulled back in a tight braid, and I gently moved it so she didn’t have to lay her head on top of it.
She didn’t look more than fourteen.
I had no idea what to do until she woke up, so I sat in Dom’s chair and grabbed the first book on the shelf below it. I smiled when I realized it was the Bible.
Dom would be in the hospital for quite a while. I supposed that was the only good thing about what happened to him: he could serve the rest of his time in a hospital instead of jail. Although hospitals are similar to jails if you think about it: people in uniforms, watching your every move, telling you when you can pee and what you can’t eat.
But no one would be plunging their fists against his ribs.
I hadn’t considered what to do if the bill didn’t get passed by the time Dom got back. I was sure the woman on the TV would come through for me eventually, but I couldn’t be sure if she could do it in the next month. I couldn’t keep them down in the basement forever. And as mad at me as he might be, I didn’t like the idea of keeping anything from Dom after all he had done. I would not repay his kindness with lies.
Way to get yourself in an impossible mess, Cain. Well done.
An hour later, the girl’s long lashes fluttered and I saw the dark brown eyes beneath them. At first, she jerked up and scooted as far away from me as she could. “Who are you? Where am I?”
I stayed in my chair, and sat the Bible down next to me, flashing the cover at her as I put it away.
Hey, couldn’t hurt.
“My name is Cain. A man was trying to hurt you earlier. Slammed your head against a wall. I stopped him.”
She reached her hand to her forehead and ran her fingers over the fresh bandage. “How do I know you aren’t him?”
I smiled. “Would a man who would hurt you that bad be nice enough to bandage you up?’
She thought about it. “Fair enough.” She glanced over at the table. “Is that turkey?”
I nodded. She grabbed the sandwich and seemed to swallow it whole. During bites, she asked, “So what is this place?”
“You’re in an apartment in the upper part of a church.”
Little bits of white bread sprayed from her mouth. “Ha, a church? You’re serious?”
“Are you surprised?”
“Yeah,
that I haven’t burst into flame.” She kept chewing. “You know what I am, right?”
I nodded. She sat the plate down and sipped from the glass of water. “Just surprised I’m not on fire, is all.” She sat the glass back on the nightstand. “So, what’s your deal?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you look a little young to be a priest. No offense.”
“You look a little young to be a prostitute, no offense.”
She smirked. “Good point. And none taken. Fuckin’s the most natural thing in the world. I get paid for it, and Maureen feeds me. For a runaway like me, it’s like the fuckin’ Ritz.”
I stiffened. “You work for Maureen? How come you’re out here? I would have seen you if you worked for her.”
“Why?”
“Because I do too.”
She leapt out of bed and then thought the better of it, falling to her knees and clasping her head in her hands with a groan.
I got up and helped her find the mattress again. “Better just stay here for now.”
She didn’t protest. “What do you do?”
“Bodyguard.”
The girl’s smile stretched across her face, mischief twinkling in her eyes. “Real piece of work, isn’t she?”
I smiled back and found myself glancing at the floor.
She noticed and her mouth fell open. “Oh my God, you’re into her, aren’t you? Fuckin’ lunatic. Straight up coo coo for cocoa puffs is what you are. Don’t get me wrong, I love her for taking me in, but she’s in orbit, man. Straight up orbit.”
“Maybe that’s what I like about her.”
She curled up in bed and threw the covers over her head. “If you like ‘em crazy, more power to you. I’m going to sleep.”
The girl was snoring in seconds. She was sleeping in my bed (well, Dom’s bed) and she hadn’t even told me her name.
Between the Cracks and Burning Doors: Book 2 of The Extraction List Series Page 8
