Into the Shadows

by Carolyn Crane

  Richard had created the plan and brought it to the best freelancers in the business, talking them into working for spoils. They’d planned and watched and trained for months.

  She checked her watch. Five minutes.

  After they’d picked up the first group of women, after she’d looked into their eyes and talked with them, her rage against her father had doubled. As had her guilt for living in luxury on their backs for so long, even unwittingly. And the Slaters, the Quartet gang that had taken over that line of business, they needed to pay.

  Even Thorne wasn’t innocent. He’d suggested that he didn’t know everything about what was happening across the silos, and sure, Hangman was only money laundering, but that didn’t excuse him. How could she have let him touch her, knowing that he was aware, on some level, that this was going on? He had to be aware. Even if he wasn’t, Hangman would be laundering the Slaters’ money.

  She needed to find a way to erase her love for him. Though she knew now, after that bit in front of the fire, that it was easier said than done. Really, the best she could hope for was for Thorne to go away—fast.

  She looked at her watch. Seven minutes. What was taking so long?

  Boom!

  A gunshot ripped through the darkness.

  She stiffened. A gunshot. Not a dart shot—a gunshot.

  The boom seemed to echo endlessly as her heart banged in her chest.

  Her instructions were to stick to her post in the event of gunfire until she heard four gunshots. At four gunshots, her instructions were to abandon her post, run around the side, get in the souped-up truck, and pull it around back—at which point they’d likely be aborting the mission and getting the hell out.

  Breathe.

  She strained to listen for sirens. The shot had been so loud!

  She told herself that it could still be okay. She put Arty back in his holster and unclipped Lizzie.

  Another bang ripped apart the stillness.

  Two.

  Her heart pounded nearly out of her chest. People could be dying in there. Going up against all the gangs—Thorne had called it foolish. Nobody sane would be doing it, he’d said.

  Another shot.

  Three.

  This was really happening. She thought about Thorne, as she often did during these times. What would Thorne do?

  Stick to the plan. No, he wouldn’t have a plan. But she did.

  She waited for the fourth shot, her cue to get the truck.

  Just then, the door opened and a guard burst out. She rose up, aimed, squeezed the trigger, and popped him in the arm—or so she thought until she heard the pock of the dart hitting the ground. The man turned and shot just as she dove back down.

  Ignoring the intense feeling of a slap on her arm, she rolled and shot, tagging him in the cheek. He struck at the dart, but he was already getting drowsy. She got him again, in the belly, and he was out.

  Shit! Two shots of the stuff could stop his heart. She ran to him and pulled out one of the darts.

  Green came out. “Only one?”

  “Only one,” she said, touching the sleeve of Thorne’s old leather jacket and coming up with blood on her fingers.

  “Only one,” he said into his radio. He shoved it in his pocket and eyed her, bristly moustache partly visible through the mouth hole of his face mask. “You hit?”

  She was so wired that she could barely feel it. She pulled off the jacket. “It doesn’t seem like...”

  “Surface,” Green barked. “Surface is as surface does.” He whipped a bandana from his pocket and tied it around her arm. “Come on. Take his arms. Move it!” She put the jacket back on over the bandage and grabbed the guard’s legs. Green seemed upset. The hired guns weren’t supposed to be upset. She helped him drag the guard into the shadows. “Gold’s hit. Go deal with the women. We need to go fast.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “No.” He took off running into the dim lobby. She followed him through.

  Richard was down at the far end arguing with Black—she knew it just from their stances. As she neared, she caught phrases—shoulda been cash—box of china—figure it out.

  Black was pissed.

  Richard stalked over to her. He had three Uzis slung over his shoulder—the spoils of looting. Richard loved his guns—really, Richard wasn’t that far from a mercenary in a lot of ways. “Gold’s hurt. They have to get him out of here. One of the guards might have gotten a call out.”

  “Shit!”

  “And the women saw my face,” Richard added.

  It took her only a moment to process this—they couldn’t leave the women. Not alive.

  “It’s okay, we’ll grab them,” he said. “Come on.”

  Richard shot off the lock to the sweatshop area—no time for a soft entry now. He pulled the bolt cutters from his pack. “Deal with them. I’ll get the van.”

  Nadia walked into the stuffy, smelly sweatshop space, conscious of blood trickling down her arm. Surface, she told herself.

  The moon shone through a lone skylight, illuminating boxes and heaps of fabric. Everything was so still, she thought the place was empty of people, but then she made out a human form just five feet from the door—a woman flattened against the wall in the dark, scared eyes on her.

  “Ya droog.” I am a friend. She flipped on the light.

  The group was smaller than the others. Her mother wasn’t there. Again.

  One of the women stood up and said something demanding in Russian. She had gray braids pinned to the top of her head. And oh, she was pissed. The leader. Nadia went to her and started in on her Russian phrases. We’re friends. Please don’t be scared. We have only minutes to get away. Do you speak English?

  “Small English,” the woman said. She introduced herself as Rita, and just like that, she was on board. She spoke to the others in rapid Russian like a general, a warrior. Maybe that’s what she’d been before her captivity. The women began gathering things.

  “Okay.” Nadia was just about to cut the cable that linked Rita’s ankle to the wall when the woman put a sinewy hand on her arm.

  “Signal treevoga,” Rita said, alarmed, “signal treevoga.”

  “This will cut it.” Nadia cut the cable.

  And the world shattered in a shrill alarm. Shit. The cables were wired to set off an alarm when cut.

  Signal treevoga.

  The women all looked toward the hall.

  “It’s okay,” Nadia said, moving fast to clip everybody’s cord.

  Richard rushed in. “What the hell?” He started clearing the fire exit, pushing aside bolts of cloth and boxes piled high, then he pulled the door open. It was the fastest get-out ever, thanks to the earsplitting alarm, which made everybody move at top speed. Only one woman was having trouble, and two of her sisters were practically carrying her. Richard took her in his arms and the group of them burst out into the night.

  Chapter Ten

  The light appeared first as a soft flash, just a patch inside the entry to the great room, there then gone.

  Jerrod and the men had finally made it down to the middle level.

  Searching the hallways.

  Thorne stayed still as death up on his perch, willing himself to be part of the massive, industrial-sized light fixture.

  The flash came again. A new angle. The glint of a gun.

  The men below him moved quickly and stealthily into the greatroom, flicking flashlights on and off, which would certainly screw up Thorne’s eyes if he were down there. They flowed around tipped-over bookcases. One guy kicked at the pile of books, ensuring Thorne hadn’t buried himself in there.

  A few of them had packs. Could be a lot of things in there. Stun grenades. Gas masks. Flame thrower. Hooks and ropes.

  Someone flashed a beam above the door jambs. Another beam crossed the ceiling. Most people would tense as the possibility of discovery heightened. Just tensing could cause the chandelier to move, and then the game was up. The fighters down there would see that movement and li
kely open fire.

  Thorne took a breath, letting his mind be silent and open, letting himself become one with everything that was happening; relaxed, but ready. Bruce Lee had always instructed fighters not to confuse being tense with being ready.

  Thorne didn’t know if he’d pass a close inspection of the ceiling, or what he looked like up there, curled into a human ball above the chandelier. They wouldn’t know that the fixture was composed of iron bars that you could see through, rather than iron bars below an opaque form. In this way, it was a war of perception.

  On the upside, the bars and bulbs would reflect the light, announcing chandelier. I’m a chandelier, it would say to them, like words to a sleepwalker. Go back to bed.

  He squinted as another light passed over him. Loose. Ready.

  Being discovered would not be the end. It would simply change the flow of the fight.

  A shot. He let the shock of it pass through him.

  Another shot.

  He stayed as loose as water. More shots were fired and soon all of the flashlights were trained on an armoire with wooden doors. So that’s what they were shooting at.

  Over and over.

  Thorne would’ve been killed five times over if he had hidden in there. Even a mouse wouldn’t have survived in there.

  Thorne had heard of people attending their own funerals, enjoying the things that were said about them, and this birds-eye view of guys searching a room for him struck him as something like that. They were hunters acting like the hunted. This Thorne could use. He didn’t know how, but he clearly wasn’t exploiting their fear enough.

  Thorne held his breath as Jerrod picked up a fireplace poker and strolled over to the bullet-ridden armoire, gun drawn. He made a hand signal. “Zzzzt.”

  Four other fighters came up to flank Jerrod, creating a semicircle. The men’s faces glowed in the flashlights' reflections on the shiny wood and the windows beyond. Jerrod was the tallest in his semicircle of men, and the tall puff of brown curls at the top of his otherwise close-shorn head made him even taller. Jerrod used the poker to catch the knob. He yanked, and the doors swung open. Everybody backed up. Somebody fired, spooked by the movement.

  Just electronics.

  The men were using their flashlights more liberally now, scanning the rest of the room.

  Jerrod himself swept the flashlight over the ceiling, stopping a long time on Thorne. Thorne imagined the light flowing through him, the way it would flow through water. And then the light was gone.

  “Check the chimney,” Jerrod grumbled.

  “Chimney is clear,” somebody said.

  “Check again.”

  Jerrod sensed him.

  Thorne wouldn’t expect anything less.

  Thorne followed the men with strands of awareness as they searched on. Six men to the study and six to the kitchen. The men in the study continued to the office wing. The others went to the main floor guestrooms. After that, they would clear the top floor, the bedrooms. Realizing he’d be hanging there for a while, he went off readiness mode and allowed himself the indulgence of going back over the night, gazing down at the rug where they’d lain together, marveling at her finding an image of her mother after all these years.

  He really was happy she’d found the photo, even if she didn’t want him laying eyes on it. She didn’t want him in her personal business. He could understand that.

  There had been times when he imagined Nadia returned his feelings, or at least that she cared. It had been strange to think she cared because it had made him happy. The happiness had been crazy-making because he couldn’t quite trust it, but he couldn’t turn it off, either.

  All of that happiness had evaporated the day he’d accidentally overheard Nadia’s conversation with Kara. Catching that conversation had been a relief in a lot of ways.

  It had been toward the end of Victor’s days; Thorne had the entire mansion bugged by then; he heard everything that went on.

  He’d been sitting in the mobile unit Dax had supplied him with— an upscale grocery delivery van where he could monitor the feeds, a vehicle that belonged in that part of town.

  When the sisters entered the sunroom talking about towels, he realized he’d booted up the wrong feed—he’d been going for the upper sunroom, not the lower sunroom off the pool. He’d tried never to listen to Nadia’s private conversations as a point of honor. But he was on another console, isolating a clip, and he needed to keep his place or he’d have to start the process over.

  Kara: Fuck, I forgot my sunglasses.

  He always pictured the recordings as the transcripts they would become once they were run through Dax’s operation.

  Nadia: Hurry up. Go.

  Dax’s bugging equipment was first rate—impossible to detect with normal sweeping equipment, and it perfectly captured the rich openness of her voice, silk with an edge of humor, always ready to break into that easy laugh, magnetic as a snake charmer’s flute.

  The telltale shuffle of somebody leaving.

  He’d listened to that conversation so often, he could follow along exactly, perfectly re-living the journey his heart had taken. During this first part, his heart had felt light—he’d been trapped at a different console, hurrying to finish a task and switch the feeds, enjoying the unexpected sound of her voice, like a gift.

  Because he loved her.

  He loved her crying on the roof, he loved her in the bathtub, he loved her when they met out in secret when she’d given Richard the slip. They had a favorite park, they had a favorite taco truck, they both liked action movies. And, God, he loved her so much. He even loved her winning at Scrabble, a game he hated with a passion.

  He’d known from the start that what they had was glitter in the junkyard, destined to be crushed or covered or more likely, obliterated by his own death. It wasn’t just the danger of his mission. It was how he functioned in the world; Thorne knew that he unsettled and even frightened people, like a wild animal loose in the attic. He didn’t want to be like that, but he couldn’t help it. He lived life with a target on his back.

  Nadia had been an outsider like him; she didn’t have anybody, not really. Her sister was unkind to her. Her father didn’t bother with her. Her mother was dead.

  The darkness had made the shine of what they had more beautiful, somehow.

  Nadia: Gimme that.

  Thorne had determined that Kara had returned with her sunglasses and a bottle of champagne. Kara loved to walk around with champagne—because it went with her hair, Thorne suspected. He found Kara to be selfish and ungenerous toward Nadia, as though Kara was the motherless sister. Though to be fair, what kind of mother would let Victor raise her kid? And what did he know about mothers?

  Kara: Where’s your towel?

  Nadia: Here.

  Clinks. A bag placed near the bug.

  Kara: At least somebody is in a sharing mood.

  Nadia: What?

  Rustling. Thuds. That was shoes. He’d gotten good, over the months, at identifying incidental noises.

  No response from Kara, but he could just picture her pout going full bore. He’d seen the way it worked on guys; there was something about her extreme beauty with those big blue doll-eyes that made her pout strangely effective, as if it caused guys physical harm for such a face to be marred by a frown.

  He’d isolated his last clip at this point; he was waiting for the bar to fill so he could put it away and switch the feed. A minute faster and he wouldn’t have heard it all.

  Nadia: What?

  Kara: I want details.

  Nadia: There’s nothing to tell.

  Kara: There must be something. You’re fucking him.

  Him.

  He’d frozen there at the console. Nobody was supposed to know—he and Nadia had agreed on that. She’d told Kara of all people? Kara?

  Nadia: So?

  Kara: Must be something to him.

  Nadia: There’s nothing to him. I just don’t like a closed door. Neither do you.

 
; Kara: I think there’s something you’re holding back.

  Nadia: Sometimes a closed door is closed for a reason. [rustling] If you know what I’m saying.

  Kara: [laugh] Guys need signs on them. Closed for repair. Nobody home. C’mon. Spill.

  Nadia:. There’s nothing to tell. He does as well as anyone.

  Kara: Tell me. Do I have to fuck him myself? Is that it?

  Nadia: You should. Wait—you should. You have to. He does these little things—I’d love a second opinion. He’d fuck you in a minute.

  Thorne remembered how the smile in Nadia’s voice made him ill.

  Kara: What would Thorne’s door sign be?

  Nadia: Come on, fuck him for me and we’ll discuss. I’ll set it up. He’ll go for you. He’d kill to fuck you. He’s not that bad.

  Kara: What would his door sign be?

  Nadia: I’m not telling. You have to find out yourself, and then we’ll compare notes.

  Kara: Fuck you.

  There had been shuffling.

  Nadia: Come on, do him for me—please? It’ll be fun to see what we each have to say…

  The feed had gone silent there. It meant they’d walked out of the room, out to the pool. He remembered staring at the line on the monitor afterwards; tiny blips indicating ambient sound. Nothing compared to the seismic destruction of his heart.

  He remembered how violently ugly his scarred hand looked in the dome light of the delivery van as he reached over and flipped off the feed.

  He and Nadia had planned to meet that evening in her room. He’d said he’d be there at six exactly.

  Sitting there in the van full of lights and levers, he vowed to himself that he wouldn’t. He was finished with her. Done. He wouldn’t be passed around like a baseball card.

  He focused on his mission, listening to recordings of Victor dealing with the Slaters, Victor dealing with the New Tong lieutenant. Victor had been like a giant tree in the forest with lumberjacks hacking away at him. Thorne hadn’t been hacking so much as guiding the direction of the fall. His goal was to be the neutral one who got to split the silos.