by Jonas Saul
It was crazy how the brain stayed fresh in the moment. She heard the ricochet of the bullet at the other end of the warehouse, saw how Dekker was down on one knee above her, the gun beginning its descent toward her position. Like watching from the side, she saw herself rise up, the paddle swinging around for another blow, this time aimed at Dekker’s face. All of that registered. Then the paddle connected solidly with Dekker’s nose. The crack of the paddle vibrated her hand to the point where she almost dropped it. But the gun didn’t fire again. Dekker dropped it, his hands moving outward to break his fall as he fell in slow motion, Sarah watching it all, feeling it all, seeing it all.
It was a moment in Vivian’s eyes. The overseer. Like déjà vu. A glimpse of time, slowed. An overview that could only be captured when shown in slow motion on the movie screen. Yet Sarah saw it, felt it, rode with it, even during her panic and fear of being shot.
It reminded her in that hundredth of a second that her sister was there, watching, making sure Sarah was okay and would stay okay. Vivian was always there. Even when she remained silent for long periods of time, she was there, observing, staying close, ready to pop in when needed.
As Amber came into view above her and one of the doors in the far corner of the warehouse banged open, Sarah felt warmth envelope her. Vivian loved her and was here to protect her. It would all work out. Even when she discovered the whole truth about this situation, everything would work out. When dark days came, Vivian would be there.
It will always work out, resonated in her head.
Then Vivian’s presence ushered away like a fan blowing smoke down a corridor, leaving Sarah shaken up.
“Get on your feet,” Amber yelled at Dekker.
Sarah rolled to the side, winced at the shoulder wound as she, pushed off the floor, and got to her feet. She dropped the cricket paddle when she saw Amber had Dekker under control.
Dekker used the shelf beside him to get to one knee but stopped there.
“My knee,” he pleaded. “Aches like a bitch.” He looked up. “Reminds me of you.”
Amber kicked at him. Dekker grunted.
As soon as Dekker’s backup arrived, they’d all be arrested. The only other person in the warehouse was Madam. She was walking across the floor toward them.
“How many cops are coming?” Sarah asked Madam as she stopped in front of Dekker. “Did you see them outside?”
“My girls have halted their approach.”
“Impossible,” Dekker whispered from one knee.
“I have to admit,” Sarah said. “I’m a little surprised. Your girls are good.”
Madam didn’t seem to be listening. All her attention was on Dekker.
“Long time,” she said to him. Her voice had changed. It was deeper, stronger. Like some dark memory had surfaced and she was steeling herself to speak about it. “I see you’ve been up to your old ways.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Dekker said. “You don’t know me anymore.”
Something had been going on from the beginning, just as Sarah had suspected. The reason Madam and Amber were willing to help was to get to Dekker. Kidnapping a cop to force a meeting with Lars Dekker hadn’t scared them off. She should’ve dug deeper, but they were helping her when she needed it, so she went with it.
Now it was easy to tell that Dekker knew them and had history with them. Madam and Amber had set this up, and somehow Dekker’s backup was waiting outside. But how could girls who worked Madam’s brothel stop the authorities from entering the warehouse after their boss ordered them inside?
“What’s going on here?” Sarah asked, her frown deepening.
“Inspector Lars Dekker,” Madam said, “didn’t make it to the top on his back. He did it with us on our backs. He loaned me money thirty years ago and when things were tough, took it back in trade. According to him, I always owed money. My girls paid for that. When I refused him entry to the brothel, Sven brought him around. If it wasn’t Sven trafficking the girls and raping whom he wanted, it was Dekker.”
“Come on, ladies,” Dekker said, one hand out. “It was only sex. You’re females. That’s what you’re supposed to be doing. You enjoyed it. Admit it.”
Madam’s eyes watered in anger. Amber’s gun wavered in her hands.
“Dekker, you might want to shut up now,” Sarah said.
“Let me plead my case,” he barked. “You have customers all day, in and out of that brothel. What’s the difference? To you gals, I’m just one more cock. I mean, really, who cares?” He shook his head and looked down at the floor. Then he met Madam’s gaze. “I get it. None of the girls liked bareback. But I told you, if I’m the only one doing bareback, nobody gets a disease since I’m clean. It’s all fucking rational. Why don’t you fucking whores get it?”
“Dekker,” Sarah said, her voice urging caution. “Conjure up an image of how you look right now. On bended knee, pleading for your life and you’re egging them on.” She turned to Madam. “He can’t hurt your girls anymore. It’s over. But I can’t let you kill him. I need what he has on James Wong.”
“Fuck you, Sarah,” Dekker shouted. “I’ll never give Wong to you. I’ve known him too long. And he pays better than the Dutch government. And damn, those fringe benefits.” He glanced at Sarah and winked. “You can’t beat them.”
Amber fired at the second Dekker lifted a gun. The bullet exited the side of Dekker’s head in a spray of brain matter, chunks of bone and blood. Inspector Lars Dekker slipped sideways, tilted farther, then fell over and bled out onto the floor of the warehouse until his heart stopped.
Sarah had gasped and jumped back. What now? She’d seen enough people die to stay clear-headed. Madam and Amber hovered over him and watched Dekker die. His eyes remained open, unseeing. Madam stepped closer and spat onto his face. Thoughts of DNA ran through Sarah’s mind and how Amber and Madam would face consequences for the murder of an inspector with the Dutch police.
“Where did the gun in his hand come from?” Sarah asked when she found her voice.
“Ankle holster,” Amber said. “We knew he had one there from when he spent time at the brothel. That’s why he wouldn’t stand up. He was waiting for his opportunity to pull it out. I was waiting, too.”
“Obviously.” Sarah swallowed and took in a deep breath. “You both planned this from the beginning.” It was more a statement than a question. “You used me to get to Dekker.”
“We didn’t use you,” Madam said. “Your agenda fit ours nicely. All we did was help each other find a common end.”
“I’ve got nothing, though. No names or places on Wong.” She pointed at Dekker’s body. “He knew how to locate Wong.”
Someone near the back of the warehouse began clapping. It was so dark now that even Amber and Madam’s faces were hard to see. How Amber saw Dekker go for his gun in this gloom amazed Sarah.
“Who’s clapping?” Amber shouted, her gun up at a forty-five degree angle, both hands wrapped around the butt of the weapon.
Suddenly the back doors opened. Sarah spun around in a crouch. Men in riot gear and masks entered, pushing Madam’s girls in front of them. Up along the side of the building another door banged open and more men filed in behind the rest of the girls.
Amber pointed the gun at the ceiling and slowly lowered it to the floor.
Hopelessness settled in over Sarah. They would be arrested and detained forever. Getting to Aaron was over. Learning who took her parents and why was a dream now.
Doing the right thing isn’t going so well for me, Sis. A little help here.
The clapping at the back of the warehouse started up again. Approximately twenty armed men escorted the girls to Madam where they huddled close to Dekker’s body. The men in riot gear surrounded the women, forming a semi-circle.
That clapping was maddening. Whoever was doing it seemed to be enjoying themselves all too much.
Out of the gloom, a man edged closer. He wore a white suit, white shoes. He stopped before his face materialized.
>
“Well done,” he said.
Casper!
“You’ve saved me a lot of time,” Casper added. “Death is often the easier way to go with my job.” He moved closer until his face came into view. It would be completely dark in the warehouse within minutes. Without flashlights, everyone would have to leave by feel. “You know Sarah, I once thought it would be better for me if you were dead, too. But now that’s not the best option.”
Sarah advanced on Casper until she was a foot away from him. “It would be better for me if you were dead. Then you would match that nickname of yours. Although, maybe not. You’re not that friendly.”
“I’ve saved your life tonight, Sarah. You could be a little nicer.”
Sarah pointed at Amber and Madam. “They saved my life tonight.”
Casper was shaking his head. “No. The American government has been investigating James Wong along with many others in his criminal enterprise. Lars Dekker was just another pawn. My men, your countrymen, Americans, kept Dekker’s backup out of the way while you frolicked around in here.”
That answered her doubt about prostitutes holding the authorities back. It had been Casper’s men from the beginning.
“And how did you know that I would survive? Or them for that matter?” She pointed at Amber and Madam.
“Dekker has a history in Amsterdam. I knew his file inside and out. Madam and Amber and these other ladies have been abused by Dekker for a long time. When I saw you come to the warehouse earlier this afternoon in that terrible wig, I was sure you’d added enough insurance to certify a win against Dekker that I let you have your say with him.”
“It was still touch and go.”
“I’m sure Vivian would’ve pulled something out of her celestial hat if things got bad.” He smirked like it was an inside secret. “Take Gabi, Porsche, Melissa and Amber back to their place of business,” Casper said to his men. “Madam, go with them. Put the guns away. Sven’s dead. Dekker’s dead. Wong’s on the run. Go about your business. I don’t think anyone will trouble you for some time.”
Madam’s nod was so subtle in the dark that Sarah almost missed it.
The semi-circle of beefy men in riot gear opened. Amber walked away without so much as a look back at Sarah. The dark swallowed them up and a moment later, Casper and Sarah were alone.
She didn’t know whether or not to kick his ass or listen to what he had to say. He knew something about Aaron and Mexico and he knew a hell of a lot more about everything else than he was letting on. A lot of people were using each other and getting away with it. But so far, only the bad guys were ending up dead.
“Sarah, I find you very annoying at times,” Casper said.
“Then stop finding me.” She turned to leave.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To look for Wong.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know. Kill him.”
“You’ll need me.”
His footsteps echoed throughout the warehouse as he began to follow her.
“Why? I’ve gotten by well enough without you so far.” She was almost to the shelf that held the second cricket paddle. It had gotten so dark now that she was afraid she’d walk right into the shelving unit.
“I know where Wong has gone.”
That almost stopped Sarah. She could get Vivian to tell her. If so, why hadn’t Vivian already told her? It had to be because Sarah needed to work with Casper. If Casper worked for the government, like he said on the plane before it crashed, and it was government men who took her parents, then he probably knew where they were. Taking her parents out of their house at six in the morning could only mean one thing.
Leverage.
The government wanted something from her. Something they didn’t think she would agree to. She had been in this place before and didn’t acquiesce then. Add Aaron, Parkman and her parents into the arrangement and things would change. She would have to listen to them.
Unless she changed things first.
“Come on, Sarah. There’s more.”
A second before she head-butted the shelves and jammed a knee into a lower one, they materialized. In this part of the warehouse, there was a tiny bit more light from a street lamp that had turned on outside.
“Leave the paddle alone,” Casper said. “I let you walk over here. I could’ve killed you at any time. Turn around with your hands empty.”
Sarah saw the paddle, studied its handle, felt her hand twitch. But if he had a gun, reaching for it was pointless.
She turned around. His hands were empty.
“Where’s Aaron? My parents? Parkman? Tell me what you know of Wong. Give it all up because you have to convince me to keep standing here. So far you’ve been an enigma.” She was working herself up. At any moment she would smack him or punch him or crush his balls with her knee, anything to see him writhing on the floor of the warehouse. “You let me walk into this warehouse with Sven Spaans. I almost died then. If it wasn’t for Amber, I was a goner.”
“That was a mistake. Dekker was supposed to inform me where the meet was set up for. I was late and two blocks away. Forgive me that one. The plan was for me to swoop in and save you. Get you to trust me.”
“You set me up on that plane and then helped me move those people. Why?”
“I didn’t believe you were really psychic.”
“What was that part about me being dead and how it might have been better for you? Why is that not the case anymore?”
“Can we talk on the way to the airfield? We’re running out of time.”
“Airfield?”
“I’ve got a U.S. military plane waiting to fly us to Athens, Greece. James Wong has fled there and as far as I know, he’s got his little black book with him. He took out the trash here in Amsterdam and my intel says he’s going to do the same in Athens. But we can stop him. Together.” Casper started away from her in the dark. “Come on. We’ll talk in the plane.”
Everything in her being told her to go. But what if he was lying and they were flying her to a laboratory that would make a Nazi doctor’s lab pale in comparison? They could poke, prod and operate on her for years without anyone finding out. Maybe that was why they took her parents, Aaron and Parkman. So there would be no one to come looking for her when she disappeared. Mexico was a good place to hide them.
“Sarah?” he called from the open door along the side of the warehouse. He stood silhouetted in the street light. “You coming?”
“I don’t trust you. I don’t trust anyone.”
“I know where Aaron is,” Casper said.
That sentence stabbed her. She felt lightheaded. Her fear of the unknown, what was happening to Aaron, was only suppressed by the fact that Vivian hadn’t directed her toward him in whatever plight had befallen him. Vivian had warmed her earlier with the notion that everything would work out, everything would be okay.
“I can help you bring him home,” Casper said. “That’s why I’m here. Your parents are safe. We have them in the witness protection program until everything settles down. Parkman was hard to pick up in Toronto, but we got him. Tell me, what is it with him and those fucking toothpicks?” Sarah smiled in the dark as Casper prattled on. “Don’t let me leave you here in this warehouse with a dead Dutch inspector. You won’t get Wong and Aaron will die without your help.”
Numbed by his words, Sarah had to decide. Amsterdam was a hotbed now. She was supposed to meet Dekker in a warehouse tonight. Dekker’s dead now. She kidnapped Officer Prins who was probably still locked up in Madam’s dungeon. Even with Amber’s cell phone video coverage of Sven’s murder, the Dutch authorities would want to talk to her, with high odds that she would be charged with offenses that would take years of court to battle.
On the other hand, Casper was powerful enough to keep Dekker’s backup at bay in Dekker’s own city while the warehouse meeting took place. And he had a U.S. military plane waiting. Best case scenario, she ends up in Greece and can disappear from
there, leaving Amsterdam behind. Worst case scenario, Casper’s lying. In that case, she could just kill him. One more body. No one would notice.
Sarah stared at his shadowy figure in the doorway. Kill him fast and move on to find Aaron on her own. Vivian would help. At least she hoped so.
Go with him …
Vivian’s now familiar voice echoed throughout her head. That felt better. Decision made. Easy.