Into the Shadows

by Carolyn Crane

  She took her place at the front entrance in the shadow of a planter with Arty ready. Her job at this point was to shoot anybody who came out. This part she was good at—all those hours at the firing range were finally worth something. Blue would be picking the loading dock lock on the other side of the place by now.

  The mercenaries had dubbed this a “pod entry”—it meant they would secure the individual sections before going to the common areas.

  On the one raid they’d sent Nadia in wearing a wig, dressed up sexy, pretending to be from a company down the road from the co-op. They’d gotten her a logo hat, and she’d distributed drugged cookies.

  A fuck of a trick you can only use once and first, Richard had said.

  Blue’s text went across. Lock open.

  She’d insisted on no killing, but the mercenaries had countered with no killing unless necessary. They wouldn’t go otherwise. So far, they’d avoided it.

  The guys would be inside now. The mercenaries didn’t want her clearing with them. They drew the line at that.

  More tense waiting. She sometimes wondered if she would’ve had the balls to do this before Benny. When you had a kid, it woke something in you. You got tough. You learned how to step up.

  A crash inside.

  Her chest stilled mid-breath.

  Silence.

  It could’ve been a door.

  The first raid had been quiet and orderly.

  She pulled Thorne’s leather jacket tight around her, like it would give her power and confidence. Stupid—Thorne was a killer, just like her dad had been. Thorne had used her for sex and left her pregnant, yet she pulled his jacket on for strength, as if wearing the leather of the toughest fighter in the known world would make her brave.

  Yeah, she wasn’t pathetic!

  She’d give the jacket to Benny someday when she explained about things.

  Heart pounding, she adjusted her crouch to get a steadier aim, feeling like she was looking at herself from the outside. It seemed like a strange dream—her lurking around a warehouse in Thorne’s jacket, slinging a gun like a gangster.

  But then she thought about her mother’s gaze in the photo. The way her mother looked into her eyes. She needed her. They needed each other.

  Another crash. Something was going wrong.

  She resisted the urge to check her phone. Her bit was coming up.

  Suddenly, the door burst open and two guards ran out. She took a breath and squeezed the trigger.

  Pop. One in the neck.

  Pop. The other in the arm.

  Perfect hits. They were down instantly.

  Blue came out. “Go, go, go!”

  She followed him into the lobby. The only light was a fish tank full of bright fish swimming energetically around. She and Blue burst through a double door and into a low-ceilinged hall lined with fluorescent lights shining down on worn gray carpeting. Blue took off toward the back.

  “Pink!” Her job name. Richard pulled the bolt cutters from his pack. “Come on.”

  She kept up with Richard easily—she’d been doing long- and short-distance training for this job.

  Even from the hall she could smell the mixture of sweat and piss and deodorizer. Just like the other sweatshop. It filled her heart with rage.

  With his long legs, Richard cleared the slumped form of a guard easily. Nadia sped up and hurdled him. She followed Richard to the end of the hall and into a dank, dimly lit barracks with high ceilings. A dozen or so women huddled on cots separated by sewing stations.

  She scanned the dozen faces, swallowing hard as she saw that her mother wasn’t among them. Time to get to work.

  Most Russian language courses taught you how to order things in restaurants or how to ask directions. Nadia’s training focused on saying things like, We’re friends, and we’re here to get you out. Please don’t be scared. We will bring you to a place where you will be safe. Please be quiet. We have five minutes.

  Calming women who’d been treated abominably.

  Please hurry. Gather your things. Does anybody need to be carried?

  Richard used the bolt cutters to free the women while Nadia asked questions and thereby identified the leader, who in this case was a wiry, dark-haired woman named Anya. Please help. We don’t have much time, she said to Anya.

  Anya directed the women in Russian. Anya sent six out the door with Richard, instructing him to carry one woman. She argued with the oldest one, who clearly didn’t want to leave.

  Shit.

  Nadia stood by helplessly.

  She could see the hired guns running by with bags—loaded with iPhones and cash, probably. If there was time, they’d go back for the drugs and the guns.

  The older woman pointed at them. Scary men in masks out there.

  “It’s okay,” Nadia said. “Oni - druz’ja.” They are friends.

  Anya argued with the old woman some more. Richard came back for the next group. Anya grabbed Nadia’s arm and they followed Richard.

  “We go. She comes,” Anya whispered. So, she spoke English.

  They went, and sure enough, the woman followed them.

  The hired guns were still looting when she and Richard tore off in the van with the women.

  Nadia always rode in the back. Please don’t look out the windows. Please stay down. You have never seen our faces, just this mask, do you understand? You must never tell what we look like.

  The women held their things—papers and eyeglasses as well as dolls and animal figures made of scraps of cloth. She’d asked about the fanciful toys the first time, and one of the women had explained they made them as gifts for each other.

  “They were going back for another haul,” Richard called from the front, meaning the hired guns.

  Nadia frowned.

  The hired guns were paid through looting, like the Visigoths or something—that’s how these operations worked. The CD they’d found was a like a treasure map of the co-op warehouses, how to hit them, how to figure out the best times.

  During the last raid, the hired guys had cleared two million bucks with cash and iPhones from Hangman’s money laundering operations, the New Tong’s heroin, and the Dorsets’ guns.

  She hoped they hurried. That their greed wouldn’t get them caught. If all went well, the robbery wouldn’t be discovered until lunchtime the next day.

  She pulled the photo of her mother from her pocket and passed it to the fortysomething woman next to her. Her mother had looked sixteen in the photo; Nadia was thirty, which meant her mother would be in her forties. “Do you know her?”

  The woman shook her head. Nadia gestured to the next. The women passed it down. They didn’t recognize the woman holding the baby, but they recognized the shackle. “Ana moya mat,“ Nadia said. She is my mother.

  Anya pointed to the baby. “You?”

  “Da,” Nadia whispered, trying not to cry.

  Anya had grabbed her chin and looked at her fiercely. “Ti haroshah dootch,“ she said. A good daughter. Nadia wondered what Anya would say if she knew how Nadia and Kara had been living it up on the money that they’d been forced to earn on their backs, or through long hours at the sewing machines.

  Anya passed the photo down with a clipped phrase Nadia didn’t understand.

  One of the women poked a finger at the photo. “Da!” she said. “Ya videl yeeya!” I have seen her!

  Nadia knelt by her, trying not to overwhelm Anya with requests to translate. There wasn’t much after their flurry of back and forth. The woman had seen her mother the year before—maybe. She didn’t know where—she herself had been moved for fighting.

  All Nadia got was that her mother was a good woman. Nice. Pretty. The woman rubbed her hands, repeating a word Nadia didn’t know. The leader didn’t know it in English. Nadia used her smartphone to translate.

  Arthritis.

  “Oh, no,” Nadia said. But it was good news! Her mother had been alive a year ago. Arthritis wasn’t deadly.

  The women looked at each oth
er, as if Nadia wasn’t getting something about arthritis.

  Nadia put it together, then. A woman couldn’t sew with arthritis. Her mother would be no good to the Slaters, the gang in charge of the sweatshops. Victor was dead; they wouldn’t care about keeping her mother around.

  Anya conversed with the woman in rapid Russian; their tone sounded serious

  “What is it?” She braced as Richard took a corner a little too fast. “Do you think she’s still alive?” she cut in when Anya didn’t answer. She couldn’t think of the Russian word for alive, so she repeated it in English. “Alive? Living?”

  Anya regarded her blankly. She pulled out her phone and looked up the words, hands shaking. “Ana zhevoy?“ It was a hell of a thing to ask.

  They didn’t know—the gestures for that were universal.

  Nadia took back the photo. “Thank you.”

  Her mother wasn’t here, but she had these women to fight for now. She had another memorized Russian speech ready for this phase. She explained that they were on their way to a shelter associated with a Russian Orthodox church. A friend, Lorna, was waiting for them. People would try to find them sponsors or get them back home. They would figure out their options.

  Nadia wore a money belt with $50,000 in it to give Lorna to help defray costs of food and shelter and whatever else they needed. It was part of the money laundering cash held back from the first raid. It belonged to Hangman. Hangman could rot in hell. All the Quartet gangs could rot in hell.

  So could Thorne.

  “No police,” said Anya.

  “No police,” Nadia said.

  Chapter Two

  Thorne swung his beer back and forth by the neck like a pendulum, swinging it loosely in time to the pounding whomp of the industrial music, trying to let the sound of Norbert’s terrified breathing wash over him like water.

  Norbert was an aging surfer-hoodlum type with stringy blond hair, and he’d been in over his head the minute he tried to join Hangman. And now he was on the wrong end of Jerrod’s mother-of-pearl-inlaid roulette revolver, gulping in big, open-mouthed breaths like a man who’d spent too long punching the heavy bag.

  Thorne kept his body and his fingers loose—that was key. You had to let the feelings exist. If and when the time came, he would transmute his rage into pure emotional content, channeled into lethal strikes and shots.

  A lot of guys had a tell with holding bottles and glasses—the fingernails would get a rosy hue in the middle and go white at the tips. It came from the pressure of a too-tight grip. It showed you were hiding strong emotions.

  Jerrod would notice that sort of thing. As the leader of a multimillion-dollar criminal enterprise, Jerrod was more likely to wear business suits than leather jackets, but he liked to hang with the rank and file. It made them nervous. And it gave him an outlet for his sadistic games.

  Thorne turned lazily to watch. Miguel’s meaty hands were clamped onto Norbert’s upper arms. Jerrod nudged Norbert’s head with the revolver.

  “Jerrod, man. Come on, man!” Norbert, who up until five minutes ago was Jerrod’s assistant, had insulted Jerrod in some minor way. But really, Jerrod liked pushing and breaking people. Jerrod furrowed his brows, watching Norbert’s face with remote interest, as if Norbert was a mildly interesting TV show.

  Out of the corner of Thorne’s eye, pictures flashed across the giant TV on the wall. Hockey intermission. Sound muted. Thorne hadn’t been surprised when Jerrod had asked him to grab his revolver. A lot of Hangman’s hockey Sundays went bad during intermissions.

  Thorne swung his beer, keeping his mind empty and alert, as Bruce Lee always taught. He would control this scene by flowing with it. Bruce Lee probably hadn’t intended his wisdom as a survival guide for being undercover inside a ruthless criminal gang, but Thorne found that it worked well for that.

  Thorne had stayed alive inside Hangman for two years by staying perfectly relaxed and non-attached, trusting that the tools to strike would be there if he needed them.

  They always were.

  But this scene was unusually hard. He’d liked Norbert.

  Thorne let his awareness rest lightly on the fifteen or so gang members sprawled on leather furniture, deadly plants in Jerrod’s dangerous jungle. Nobody would go so far as to exchange glances, but Thorne sensed who was enjoying this display and who wasn’t. He stopped swinging his beer and took a sip, wishing Norbert would quit begging and showing such terror. If Norbert would just calm down, Jerrod would finally feel bored and pull the trigger and the game would be over.

  Jerrod would only pull the trigger once. That was the game.

  Now and then Norbert squirmed halfheartedly in Miguel’s grip. Halfheartedly, because he knew he couldn’t get away; Miguel was like a granite statue—thick arms. Set jaw. Faraway eyes. Jerrod’s dark henchman.

  “Please, Jerrod,” Norbert said. “I didn’t mean it, man.” This new round of begging was powered from deep in the gut. His animal nature was coming out.

  Thorne’s sister Sandi had begged like that, where it had sounded like another voice coming out of her. The memory of it was still raw inside him. Jerrod hadn’t killed Thorne’s sister, but he’d helped. Of the ten men who’d helped kill his sister, Jerrod was the only one still alive.

  Thorne took another sip of beer, holding the bottle loosely from the neck, willing himself to be formless as water.

  Norbert had tattoos up and down his muscular, suntanned arms; his T-shirt advertised a car show and his jeans were perfectly broken in. He’d been excited to be allowed into the Hangman circle. He’d expected a different type of experience.

  Jerrod turned the gun counterclockwise, as if it was a key that might unlock Norbert’s skull, which in a way, it was. Norbert jerked wildly in Miguel’s iron clutches; Jerrod stayed perfectly still, watching the man’s eyes with a keen, almost invasive interest, frown set low on his lantern-shaped face. Jerrod styled his hair with a mass of brown curls at the crown of his forehead and short everywhere else. The style had a slight rockabilly edge, and it served to elongate his already longish face. He wasn’t exactly handsome, but lots of women were drawn to him because of his unapologetic evil. It felt like strength to the damaged ones.

  Thorne glanced at the clock. Ten minutes until the third period. Somebody cranked the Hypnodeath. More noise and chaos.

  “Thorne,” Jerrod said.

  Thorne thrust his chin in Jerrod’s direction.

  “Did you check the cylinder before you spun it?” Jerrod asked.

  Norbert sucked in a breath.

  Thorne nodded. He certainly had. In fact, he’d removed the one bullet before he spun the thing and snapped it into place. The bullet was in his pocket.

  “Hey, shhh,” Jerrod said to Norbert in a voice that sounded almost kind—as if somebody else were forcing them to play this game, and he would do his best to make it pleasant. He gazed at him with a creepy look of love. “There’s only one bullet in there. That’s an 83 percent chance of survival.”

  Jerrod had very specific opinions on Russian roulette. He always had somebody else spin the chamber, as if that made it extra fair. He kept his roulette revolver in a special box, always loaded with one live round. When somebody lost the game, another live round would go in.

  “Please,” Norbert whispered.

  “Miguel,” Jerrod asked. “How many people have died playing this game? Died versus lived?”

  Miguel rattled off the numbers. Twelve out of seventy. Jerrod launched into his speech about odds. Miguel looked bored, staring out the window as he held Norbert in place. Miguel was young and thick and dark—Armenian and Mexican. He had rosy lips and a wide face that always looked curiously blank; it made Thorne feel like the man had no soul.

  But Jerrod was the evil one.

  You got to lead a gang like Hangman in one of two ways: by being allied, or by being a sociopath—ruthless and unpredictable. Jerrod was a rare combination of both: an allied sociopath. That’s why he was the leader.

 
Sooner or later, Jerrod would die. If Thorne had his way, it would be sooner, and Jerrod would die slowly and painfully. But for now, Thorne had to work side by side with the man, watching, waiting, climbing the ranks, presenting a calm exterior as the rage and hatred roiled inside him. He had a job to do before he could kill him.

  Suddenly, Jerrod did something unexpected: he tipped up the revolver and pointed it at the ceiling. “Never mind,” he said.

  Norbert gasped, holding perfectly still, panting.

  Miguel looked to Jerrod for further instruction.

  “Let him go.” Jerrod set the revolver next to the bowl of Bugles.

  Damn. Thorne’s heart began to pound.

  Miguel let Norbert go and the kid stumbled back, looking around. Then he laughed uncertainly. “What a rush.” Trying to get back his cool and his cred, but Thorne knew that was the least of his problems.

  Damn. Damn. Damn. Thorne let the bottle swing loosely.

  This was bad.

  The only other time Jerrod had let a guy go, he’d shown the man the inside of the cylinder to reveal if he would’ve lived or died, like a sick game show. That’s how it would go now. He would show Norbert the inside of the cylinder. And everybody would see that there were no cartridges.

  Damn.

  Jerrod would know that Thorne had emptied it, of course. He would know that Thorne wanted to save the kid. Jerrod’s retaliation would be bloody. He’d kill Norbert in a brutal way, just to punish Thorne. And then, of course, that would be the excuse he needed to kill Thorne.

  “Okay,” Norbert whispered, thinking he was free, not realizing Thorne had just doomed him in trying to save him.

  Thorne closed his eyes, swinging the bottle. Perfect emptiness. Perfect alertness.

  Jerrod had wanted to kill Thorne for a month now, maybe two. Thorne could tell by the way he watched him and the kinds of questions he asked, fishing to find infractions. This would give him the perfect excuse.

  Hangman was all about chaos and senseless violence, but there were a few hard rules. For example, Jerrod couldn’t simply execute his number two without a reason.

  Thorne had gotten so far on his mission; he’d risen up the ranks the way he fought: in harmony with the darkness of the gang instead of in opposition to it. Maybe Jerrod had finally sensed Thorne’s absolute hatred of him. All information in the universe was available to all minds at all times, even Jerrod’s.