by J H Leigh
“Not lost, just biding my time.” I shoved the address into my back pocket and swung my jacket over my shoulders. “Let’s go. Hicks is bound to show up soon and I don’t want him to stop us from doing what needs to be done.”
Dylan nodded, grabbed her own jacket and we were out of there like the devil was tracking our steps. On the way, Dylan called Badger, gave him the address and told him to meet us there.
It was dark and wet outside. New York in the winter wasn’t all winter wonderland and picturesque postcards. It was a lot like New York in the summer except instead of sweltering with humidity, the streets were covered in dirty slush and it was colder than a witch’s tit. Also, the smell of the city never quite went away. Knowing what I knew now, I wondered if it was simply the rotten core of humanity leaching through to the atmosphere. Take a whiff of that corruption, ain’t it great?
The apartment building wasn’t far. We climbed the fire escape like monkeys, the rust coating the wet metal biting into my skin. The light drizzle quickly dampened our clothes but we climbed with single-minded focus. True to her claim, Badger was eager to play our dangerous game if it meant fucking up someone who had anything to do with Nova’s death.
There was no doubt Badger was a bad guy but his love for Nova had been real. Just like Dylan’s.
I was climbing that fire escape for Tana, Jilly and myself. I hungered for answers, but also for blood.
Badger lead the way. He stopped with the stealth of a ninja, signaling for us to wait as he jimmied the window lock open. The window slid up with a slight whine and we dropped inside the apartment on noiseless feet. My heart hammered in my chest, reminding me of the night we escaped the auction house.
Regina Baker, the only person we’d been able to identify from the auction house that wasn’t dead at this point, was going to give us answers if we had to pop every finger from the knuckle. Dylan was right, a savage did live inside me and Regina was going to regret awakening that beast.
But in an instant, everything changed with deadly speed.
Something swung and knocked Badger upside the head with a sickening crack. He dropped like a stone. I didn’t have time to do anything but react. I dove for the floor, tucking and rolling in the darkness, hoping to avoid whoever had known we were coming and started swinging like a fucking Major Leaguer.
Glass shattered and Dylan grunted. My eyes adjusted quickly to the dark and I saw the square build of Regina Baker. I kicked out with brutal rage, connecting with her knee. I watched her buckle with a scream as the knee went in the opposite direction. I rolled away from her and scrambled to my feet, searching for a light. My fumbling fingers found a light switch and I flipped it, flooding the apartment with light. Badger was face-down on the carpet, not moving and Dylan was holding her shoulder, her lips compressed in a tight grimace of quiet pain but it was Regina who was making a ridiculous racket, howling like a fucking banshee as she held her shattered kneecap. I ripped the cell phone charger wire free from the wall and tied Regina up while she writhed, then stuffed a dirty sock deep in her mouth to shut her squalling.
On her way to check Badger, Dylan wound up and kicked Regina square in her thick gut. “You fucking bitch,” she muttered. “Shoe’s on the other foot now, isn’t it?”
She kneeled by Badger and gently rolled him over. He had a nasty crack and it was bleeding like a motherfucker. I quickly found a towel and Dylan pressed it to his head. “Head wounds bleed bad but I think he’s going to be okay,” Dylan said as she not-so-gently tapped his cheek to wake him up. “C’mon fucker, you have work to do. No sleeping on the job.”
Badger’s eyes opened, two round orbs bouncing around in his skull like loose marbles for a second until his vision cleared and he struggled to sit up. “What the fuck…?” he grumbled, closing his eyes again as he got his bearing.
“She got the jump on us,” Dylan answered. “The bitch must have supersonic hearing because she was waiting for us the minute we cleared the window.”
I gestured to the thick block of a woman still on the floor, breathing hard against the pain. Dylan and I dragged Regina to a chair and tossed her into it. Badger rose unsteadily to his feet but I could tell he was regaining his focus and I didn’t feel bad for whatever Badger was going to dish out to the ugly cunt staring daggers at us.
Badger tossed the bloody towel even though his head wound continued to dribble. He leaned into Regina’s space with a menacing growl. “You fucking cracked my dome, bitch. That’s not very neighborly of you.”
She made ugly gagging noises as she tried to talk around the nasty ass sock stuffed in her mouth. Badger reached in and popped the sock free. Regina took a deep breath and immediately started screaming her head off but Badger was prepared this time and punched her hard. Blood gushed from her broken nose as it dribbled snotty red slime. He wagged his finger at her as she gulped her own gack, shuddering. “Do it again and I’ll bust your teeth out, you hear me? Are we understanding each other?” he asked in a silky tone that was creepy as fuck.
Regina jerked a short nod, remaining quiet even as she was probably in excruciating pain.
“That’s better,” Badger said, caressing her jaw. “See? We can be civil. It doesn’t have to be so nasty, does it?” He didn’t wait for her answer, adding ruefully, “Well, I mean, it will probably get nasty because you fucking cracked my skull open and I don’t suffer that kind of disrespect but that can wait a little bit. Maybe if you answer all my questions, I’ll feel more generous than I’m feeling right now. You feeling me? Yeah, I think you do.”
“I don’t fucking know you,” she said, her voice garbled but her gaze darted to me and Dylan and she knew exactly who we were even if Badger was a mystery. “You broke into my house and I was defending myself.”
“Bullshit,” I spat. “How’d you know we were coming?”
Her gaze narrowed. “I didn’t know you were coming. I thought you might be someone else.”
I narrowed my stare. “What do you mean?” The memory flashed of Asshole Darryl lying dead in his living room and I realized Madame Moirai might be doing a massive house cleaning, from top to bottom. “You thought Madame Moirai had sent someone to kill you,” I surmised, folding my arms across my chest. “Can’t say you don’t deserve it but why’s she trying to kill you? You were one of her crew.”
“You ruined everything,” Regina spat, spearing me with a look of hatred so intense it almost had form. “You fucked us all with your stupid escape.”
Rage curdled my insides and threatened to incinerate everything in its path. “Fuck you, I’m a victim and you’re a fucking predator,” I seethed, amazed that she saw herself as anything but a rotten person from the inside out. “How fucking dare you blame me for shit! Did you ever think of how many lives you were ruining with your little scheme? We were fucking kids, you psychopath!”
Dylan held me back, eyeing Regina. “So…what’s the deal? Madame Moirai is closing up shop and permanently retiring the employees?”
“Something like that,” she answered, her face pale from the pain. She shifted her gaze back to me with accusation. “You broke my fucking knee, you little cunt.”
I faked a sweet smile. “Well, I guess today’s my lucky day. Maybe I ought to play the Lottery, too.”
“I’m done with story hour,” Dylan muttered, grabbing Regina by the shirt drawing her close enough to smell her corrupt soul. “Listen up, you filthy fucking pedophile, we know all about your previous record for messing around with kids and that you only spent a fraction of time in prison when you should’ve rotted and died behind bars. Who the fuck is Madame Moirai that she can pull those kinds of strings?”
Regina’s mouth stretched in an ugly, blood-stained smile. “You think I’m stupid enough to tell you shit? Fuck you. You were never supposed to leave that house. You’re living on borrowed time so enjoy it. Once The Avalon has your number, you can never outrun their reach.”
“Who the fuck are The Avalon?” Dylan growled, shaking Regina
hard. “If you don’t fucking start talking, I’m going to let my friend bleed you dry, drop by drop until you’re nothing but a fucking dried up husk for the cops to find just like your friend, Asshole Darryl.” Her gaze widened as if she hadn’t known he was dead. Dylan grinned and shoved Regina out of her grasp. “Yeah, that fucker is dead, too. Who else is dead? You must’ve known that a massive house cleaning was happening otherwise you wouldn’t have been waiting for someone to sneak into your place in the middle of the night.”
“And why should I tell you?” Regina asked, breathing hard against the pain. “I got no loyalty to the merch.”
“The merch?” I repeated, a hot flush washing over me. “We are fucking human beings, you toxic cunt.”
“No, you’re the property of The Avalon and they never let go of property they’ve purchased,” Regina returned with a cold stare. “And they’ve got connections you can’t even fathom. You’re all going to die.”
“What if we offered you protection from Madame Moirai…would you help us?” I asked, swallowing my hatred.
“Ain’t no one safe from her and The Avalon, don’t you get it? They’re fucking global. There’s nowhere you can run, nowhere you can hide. Eventually, she’ll find you and put you where you were always destined to be — in the ground.”
Fear prickled my skin. “Tell us who she is. Give us a fighting fucking chance,” I said. “For once, do something good in your life. Help us!”
But Regina wasn’t going to help. She wanted to see us suffer. I should’ve known she got off on the idea of our fear.
“I hope you die screaming,” Regina said, her mouth twisting with cruelty. My heart stuttered a beat at the pure wickedness in her stare. She wasn’t sorry for anything she’d done and she wanted to inflict as much pain as possible before dying.
My voice shook as I promised, “You’re going to die here.”
Undeterred, Regina leaned forward, straining against the ties binding her to the chair, focusing on me. “Did he rip you open when he fucked your ass? Did you like it? Your buyer must’ve really been into you…he rarely puts in a bid for elevation…except for you…you were different. You should’ve taken the deal.”
Henri’s hateful face popped into my memory and I started to shake, my vision blurring.
Badger stepped forward and pushed me and Dylan aside, his eyes hard as flint. Playtime was over. I didn’t feel bad for Regina. She deserved to suffer but the malicious energy radiating from Badger’s gaze told me things were about to get real messy…and super painful.
He got real close and personal into Regina’s face. “Here’s the thing, love…under ordinary circumstances, I stay out of other people’s playgrounds but your little operation killed my sister…and she was the only thing keeping that tiny spark of humanity alive inside me. Now that she’s gone…I feel next to nothing for nobody. Almost like…my soul was snuffed out, you feeling me? So, your time’s up and I’m done with your bullshit if you ain’t got nothing worth listening to.”
Before she could babble a response, I handed him the sock and he stuffed it hard back into her mouth. Her eyes bugged with fear as he pulled a long switchblade from his back pocket.
I felt Dylan’s hand slip into mine and squeeze in silent solidarity.
And then, I watched with cold dispassion as he proceeded to carve Regina Baker like a Christmas turkey.
Some people deserved exactly what they got — and sometimes, you were lucky enough to witness karma in all its gory glory at work.
24
The following day, Kerri burst into the apartment, eyes blazing as she said, “Regina Baker is fucking dead. Anyone in this rat-infested apartment know anything about that?”
Hicks swore under his breath as he narrowed his gaze at me and Dylan, knowing in that instant exactly what Kerri suspected. “You little shits couldn’t stay put for two fucking seconds, could you?”
“You don’t know what they did to us,” Dylan returned coldly, not bothering to deny anything. “You’ve got no room to judge.”
“Did you kill her?” Kerri asked.
“I did not,” Dylan answered with fake innocence.
“Neither did I,” I volunteered with the same tone.
Not a lie. Badger killed her. We simply did nothing to save her…just as she’d done nothing to save us.
A fucked up eye-for-an-eye scenario but appropriate, if you asked me.
“Well, good job girls, you may have just fucked our only goddamn lead,” Kerri spat, dropping onto the lumpy sofa as if she’d just crumpled beneath the weight of our situation. “I can’t fucking help you if you keep going behind my back and making things harder for me to make any headway.”
I felt a smidge of guilt for Kerri but I wasn’t capable of feeling guilty for what’d happened to Regina. The world was better off without her.
“Do they know who killed Regina?” I asked.
“No leads,” Kerri answered pointedly, which told me she must’ve removed anything that might’ve pointed in our direction. It wasn’t fair of us to expect Kerri to put her career on the line for us but we were already walking this path and we couldn’t double-back, which is probably what Kerri recognized, too. In for a penny, in for a pound as Gran would say. Kerri added gruffly, “The woman had plenty of enemies. No telling who cut her to pieces but I do know…whoever did it, is a fucking psychopath.”
“More like a sociopath,” I murmured in disagreement, then shrugged, adding, “but who knows? Like you said, the woman had enemies.”
Hicks was annoyed as fuck because he figured out we’d swiped the address from his desk, saying tersely, “Let’s cut the shit, what’d you learn?”
“Nothing,” I answered morosely. “She didn’t tell us anything. Just that The Avalon was never going to let us go, and that after our escape Madame Moirai started cleaning house. Regina was expecting someone to put a bullet in her brain but she wasn’t going to go down without a fight.”
“You hurt?” Kerri asked.
I shook my head, declining to mention that Badger had a nasty concussion and Dylan had a vicious bruise on her arm from taking a whack from the steel pipe Regina had been wielding. Honestly, I was shocked that Regina hadn’t broken Dylan’s arm and killed Badger but as I was starting to realize, they were fucking hard to kill.
Point in our favor.
“Damn it,” Kerri grumbled, still fuming but she needed to keep moving. “I got something to share.”
That perked us up. “Yeah? What?”
“Look, what I’m about to tell you isn’t great but it proves the hunch that whoever the fuck this Madame Moirai and her network is, it’s pretty damn connected.”
“Yeah, fucking global, as Regina put it,” Dylan said.
“Well, she wasn’t lying, which makes our odds pretty bleak.”
I shrugged, refusing to let the fear souring my gut show in my expression. “Yeah, so? It’s not like we thought we had good odds going into this. What did you find out?”
“When I was doing a missing person search within specific perimeters, I found a disturbing pattern…one that was missed before. Seven missing girls fit the criteria. All seven were later identified in the morgue through police records, including…a girl named Nova Kasey.”
Dylan stilled, her face paling. “You found Nova?”
Kerri nodded. “The official cause of death was listed as a drug overdose.”
“Bullshit. Nova didn’t do drugs,” Dylan said, her voice strangled. “They fucking lied.”
“Are you sure? Maybe you didn’t know Nova as well as you think you did,” Kerri said, trying to be gentle but Dylan wasn’t having it.
“Fuck you, Kerri. Don’t pull that shit with me. I’m telling you right now, Nova didn’t do fucking drugs. The girl wouldn’t even touch alcohol. If they found drugs in her system, they put them there.”
Dylan’s eyes were dry but I felt her anguish. “If she was found and autopsied…that means she’s buried somewhere, right?” I asked.
>
“Yeah, the city contracts with several private mortuaries for unclaimed bodies. They pay a reduced amount for each body and the deceased are afforded some modicum of dignity. Nova was buried by Lawson & Bergstein Mortuary, according to the file.”
“She has a grave somewhere?” Dylan asked, blinking rapidly. “You mean, like someplace we could visit her?”
“Technically, yeah — assuming the information is accurate. Sometimes people get sloppy when there isn’t outside accountability.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means that if no one is gonna ask about a dead drug addict, then, sometimes details get lost or mixed up,” Hicks answered, shaking his head. “I’ve seen it happen back when I was on the force. I was chasing down a lead on a dead prostitute, kinda similar story. The original cause of death was listed as an accidental overdose but I found new evidence that suggested she was murdered. I tried to have the body exhumed but the body wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Turns out the person responsible for typing up the report wasn’t paying attention to details and ended up losing the burial information and just guessed, figuring no one was going to follow up.”
“That’s fucked up,” I said, disturbed by how little others cared about people. “What happened?”
“Nothing. The case went cold again. We couldn’t narrow down where her body might’ve ended up. My superior told me to wrap it up and let it go. I didn’t have a choice but to do as I was told. We were understaffed and overworked as it was…no one had my back when I tried pushing against orders.”
“Because no one cares about dead prostitutes, right?” Dylan guessed with a hard look. “Good enough to fuck but not good enough to care if they die?”
“Sorry kid, I wish the truth wasn’t so shitty,” Hicks said.
We were lumped up into that category. Good enough to spend a shit-ton of money on for that first dip but then, thrown away like trash when they were done.
“I want to see where she’s buried,” Dylan said, wiping at her eyes.
