by B. B. Hamel
Kasia was stalking along her fighters, cheering them on. Emma finished communicating with the girls, all of who looked fucking terrified as all hell.
I held up my weapon and steadied myself.
“Okay!” Kasia called out. “Brooks, you ready?”
“Roger that,” I said.
Kasia got this wicked fucking grin on her face. “Girls, light it the fuck up.”
Suddenly the fighters all began firing at once. Kasia held up her hand, keeping us in place as we gathered at the back door.
“Now!” she yelled.
Three fighters appeared at the windows with shoulder-mounted rocket launchers. I stared at them, shocked, as they fired the rockets out into the forest.
Explosions concussed the whole area, laying low trees. A fire raged out in the forest, and I could hear men screaming.
The fighters doubled down on their firing, filling the air with lead.
“Go, go, go!” Kasia yelled, throwing the door open.
I was the first one out. I had my rifle up, aiming forward, running like all hell. I could feel Emma and the girls on my heels, moving just behind me.
The backyard was a short slope of short grass. There was about twenty or thirty feet of open air before we got to the burning woods.
Bullets began to bite the air around me. I fired at the muzzle flashes I saw, but I couldn’t stop, couldn’t slow down. I went straight for the forked tree, searching for the path.
And I found it. The fires were raging on either side of the path, since clearly the fighters had aimed away from our escape route. I spotted a gun thug and fired a few rounds into him just as I burst into the forest and onto the path.
I heard some girls screaming and yelling. I looked back and noticed one had stumbled and fallen.
“Fuck, come on!” I yelled. I spotted another thug and filled him with lead, his body exploding with red.
I turned and went back, pushing the other girls forward along the path. I grabbed the fallen girl by the arm and lifted her up. The girls that had been helping her along were both dead.
I didn’t have time to help them. I threw the girl over my shoulder, grunting under her weight, and then stood. I moved, gun up, following Emma and the girls.
It was total chaos. I fired my weapon, but I wasn’t sure if I hit anything as bullets continued to rain down around us. We followed the path, running like hell, and soon enough the sound of clattering gunfire began to recede into the distance.
We weren’t safe yet, not by a long shot. The thugs were likely coming after us. I caught up to the main group and moved through them, carrying the girl on my shoulder. Emma nodded at me as I took over the lead and continued down along the path.
The forest was deep and dark. The only light we had was from the half-full moon up above us. We were lucky that it was a clear night at least as we picked our way along the path. It was narrow and barely used, but I was able to follow its twists and turns through the thickets and the pines.
We ran that way for maybe fifteen minutes before I finally burst out into a clearing. I stood there for a second, looking around.
There was no fucking van. There were only more trees, some bushes, and grass.
“Fuck!” I yelled. “There should be a van here.”
“There,” Emma said, pointing.
It was just a large mount of bushes and branches, but as I moved closer, I could see a headlight peeking out from the front.
I put the girl down gently on the grass and then started clearing the brush off. “Help me,” I called out.
The girls joined in. We had the vehicle uncovered in another minute.
It wasn’t a fucking van. It was a fucking small school bus.
“Get in,” I growled and tore the door open. The girls quickly piled in, carrying those that were hurt or couldn’t get in themselves.
Emma got on last, and I started up the steps. Suddenly gunfire erupted from the trees.
“Fuck,” I grunted, returning fire. I retreated into the bus, sitting in the driver’s seat. I found the key already in the ignition.
I turned it and the bus roared to life. I fired a few more shots out the window and then floored it.
I heard men yelling in the tree line, but I didn’t care. “Stay down!” I yelled at the girls as more bullets hit the bus.
Up ahead was a break in the trees. I noticed two ruts in the ground, and knew that this must have been an old dirt path at some point. I hit the path going thirty and flew out between the trees, driving wildly. I put the high beams on and tore down the path, not letting up on the gas one bit.
After ten more minutes of driving down the bumpy, winding track, I burst out of the tree line. I had to slam on the brakes as we skidded out onto a paved road.
The bus stopped there, engine running. I stood up. “Who’s hurt?” I called out.
Several girls raised their hands. I looked at Emma. “Take the wheel. Just drive for a while. We’ll figure out the rest.”
Emma nodded and got into the driver’s seat. I went to the back of the bus and started helping the girls as best I could.
My heart was hammering in my chest. I couldn’t believe we had made it. From my count, we had lost three girls, which was a fucking miracle. Many more of them were shot, but only one of them was in any serious danger.
I wasn’t a surgeon or a doctor, but I had training in battlefield first aid. I tied off bandages, stopped bleeding, did what I could.
We’d risked a lot to help these girls. I wasn’t about to let them bleed out in the back of some fucking bus.
I glanced up at Emma, and she caught my eye in the big mirror. I grinned at her and nodded. She smiled and nodded back.
I was fucking proud of her. That was for sure. She’d kept her shit together and done exactly what she’d needed to do. She was smart and fast and didn’t hesitate, even under fire, even when things looked dire.
I briefly wondered how the fighters back at the farmhouse were doing. I guessed most of them were trying to escape at this point, and I hoped they survived.
But more likely, they had sacrificed their lives to get these girls to safety. That alone spoke volumes about the Spiders. Maybe I hadn’t trusted them before, but I couldn’t deny their good intentions anymore.
And somehow they’d roped me into their fucking game. It was never my intention to save fucking lives. I was still a killer, still trained to murder men for a living, and yet there I was trying to keep a bunch of terrified girls alive.
Events had gotten out of my control. I needed to get back in the game, get some semblance of control back. But it seemed as though things had grown beyond me, had gotten bigger than just me and Emma. There was a whole war in this fucking city.
Louisa Barone and the Spiders against her fucking family.
And somehow I was in the middle of it all.
20
Emma
As I drove, I couldn’t get the memory of the gunshots and the screams of the girls who didn’t make it out of my head.
I had been terrified, absolutely terrified. Running into that burning forest felt like running into the mouth of hell. Bullets were flying through the air. Everything was chaos.
The only thing keeping me sane was Brooks. He seemed so calm as he shot his gun off at the other men, killing them when he could. And when the girls went down, he even went back to save one.
I couldn’t believe it. I knew Brooks didn’t hurt women, and I knew he was a good person underneath his shitty life, but I never imagined he was the type of man to go back for a total stranger in the middle of a hell storm.
But that was exactly who he was. He saved lives and fought for these girls when he really didn’t have to.
And beyond that, I didn’t know I had this kind of strength inside me. I’d wanted to stop, to curl down on the ground and cry, but I didn’t. I kept myself moving, pushed through the fear and the terror. I knew what needed to be done and I did it.
As I drove the bus along the em
pty road, not knowing where I was going, I felt terrible and elated. We had saved these girls. They had nobody else, and we had stepped up and gotten them out. A lot of people made a lot of sacrifices, and I couldn’t forget that, but I was proud of myself and of Brooks for doing the right thing.
As I drove alone, Brooks came up next to me. “Girls seem okay,” he said. “One needs a real doctor in the next hour or I think we’ll lose her.”
“What are we going to do?”
He shook his head. “We need to figure out where we are. Then we’ll drop the girl at a hospital.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we’ll dump her outside the ER.”
“We can’t do that.”
“We can’t stay with her, Emma. The mafia will be looking for us, and the first place they’ll check is the local emergency room.”
I frowned and nodded. “Okay. I get it. But we have to get her there at least.”
“We will. Maybe one of the other girls will stay with her.”
“I don’t want to ask that of them.”
He grinned at me. “Look at you, so worried and nurturing.”
I laughed. “You’re the one playing nurse back there.”
He leaned forward. “I’d rather play nurse with you, strip you down, check your body over and over.”
I blushed but was distracted by the sound of a ringing phone.
Brooks’s head snapped toward the girls.
“Who has the phone?” he called out.
They stared back at him, wide-eyed and surprised. Slowly, one of the girls pulled the phone from her pocket and held it up.
Brooks quickly walked over and took it out of her hand. He silenced it and then sat back down behind me.
The phone started making that horrible noise from before, the same noise Brooks’s phone had made in his apartment. He frowned at it and then slowly held it up to his ear.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Brooks,” the same altered voice said as the phone came on speaker.
Brooks sighed. “Warn me next time.”
“Sorry about that. This line isn’t secure, so we must be brief.”
“What happened back there?”
“I’m sorry. Our shared enemy hit many of our safe houses tonight. It was a coincidence, I promise.”
“A coincidence,” Brooks said, his jaw clenched. “I don’t like that sort of excuse.”
“Many girls lost their lives tonight, Brooks. It’s only because of you that your little group made it out. Many other safe houses weren’t so lucky.”
“What do you want?”
“First, do you have injured?”
“One. She needs help soon.”
“I will send you directions to the hospital. After that, I will send another location. Please drop the rest of the girls there.”
“I’m not a fucking bus driver,” he grunted.
“Please. Do this, and then I will help you.”
“Fine. Send the locations.”
“Thank you, Brooks.”
The phone hung up. He shook his head and looked at me. “I trust them now, but I don’t like them.”
“I don’t blame you,” I admitted, “but we have to drop them off.”
“Yeah,” he said, “we do.” His phone buzzed and he passed it off to me. “Get us here while I help the girls.”
I nodded and took the phone. The GPS application was already running, and a blue line stretched along a small map, showing me exactly where I needed to go.
I followed the GPS through quiet suburban streets. It was late and there weren’t any other cars on the road, but the streetlights were on and helped guide the way. I was exhausted, but there was an edge of adrenaline still jolting through my veins, keeping me awake and alert.
It took us about ten minutes to get to the hospital. I slowly pulled up the driveway toward the emergency room.
Brooks helped the girl up front. She’d been shot in the stomach, and blood was slowly dripping down from the bandage he had shoved against the wound.
“She doesn’t speak English,” he said to me, frowning, “but this is going to have to be good enough. Pull up here, open the door, and as soon as she’s out, you have to drive away.”
“Can’t we make sure she gets in?”
“Absolutely not. They have cameras all over the place.”
I hated this, but I knew he was right. I pulled up out front of the emergency room and Brooks whispered something to the girl. She seemed to understand and nodded.
I opened the doors and Brooks gently helped the girl down the stairs. As soon as she hit the ground, Brooks closed the doors.
“Go,” he said, his face calm.
I hated it, but I pulled away. The last time I ever saw that girl was in the rearview mirror. She watched us drive off, a sad look on her face.
“Come on,” he said, “we have to focus. Where’s the next place?”
I turned out from the hospital and checked the phone. It was already guiding me to a new destination. “Somewhere in the city,” I said.
“Let me drive. You should rest.”
“No,” I said. “I’m good.”
He grinned at me and sat down in the seat behind me, sighing. “How long?”
“Forty minutes, looks like.”
“Okay then.” He leaned back and sighed. “This is what this sort of work is, mostly.”
“What, running through a burning forest?”
“No,” he said softly. “Making hard choices between long stretches of boredom.”
I nodded. “I get that.”
“Leaving her wasn’t an easy choice, but it was the right one.”
“I know.”
“I want you to understand that. Maybe one day in the future you might wonder about her, but you need to remind yourself that you made the right choice today in leaving her behind.”
I nodded but didn’t answer. He was looking out the window, a serious expression on his face.
He was right. I was already having second thoughts about leaving her there, but I knew this was the right thing. They could save her life at the hospital, and we couldn’t risk everyone else for her. It was hard enough getting her there and leaving her without someone staying behind.
Besides, most of these girls were here illegally. They’d be thrown out of the country as soon as the police found them, though that would be a good thing compared to what the mafia would do to them if they got to them first.
No, this was the right choice. Like Brooks said, it was the hard choice, but it was the right one. I couldn’t start to second-guess myself.
I wished I could go back with him, press myself against his body, and feel his strength. I needed some of that strength in me, needed some of his cocky smile and his confidence.
But tonight, I had to be the source of my own strength. After what I went through, I was beginning to believe that I could make it through anything. I survived my father, I survived his killers, and I survived that house.
I was a survivor. I had to keep going.
The drive went relatively fast. Once we were in Chicago again, we had to be pretty careful. We were driving around in a small school bus full of illegal girls, most of them with small injuries. We were about as conspicuous as it got.
But we reached the safe house without any issues. It was a small place tucked in the back corner of a quiet residential neighborhood in a very nice part of town. The streets were all clean, the lights were all working, and the homes were nicely manicured. It was essentially the opposite of my own neighborhood. These houses were worth millions of dollars, at least.
I stopped outside the place. Brooks stood next to me. “You sure?”
“Look.” I showed him the phone. “See? This is the place.”
“Nice fucking neighborhood,” he said. “Stay here.” He climbed off the bus.
I watched as he walked up the stoop and rang the bell. He’d left his rifle behind, but I knew he at least had his knife. The door op
ened and he stepped inside.
He was gone for a few nerve-wracking minutes. The girls were looking around like frightened birds, and I smiled at them to try to calm them down. That probably just looked creepy, though, since they couldn’t really understand me. One managed to smile back weakly, which gave me hope.
Brooks came back out a minute later. He marched to the bus and opened the door. “Let’s go, ladies,” he said.
I stood up. “This is it?”
“Sure is. Get them in there.”
“Come on,” I said, gesturing. “Come on. Let’s go.”
The girls slowly got up and followed. We were a sorry-looking bunch of half-starved sex slaves, ex-junkies, and beat-up humans, but we were all survivors.
The girls walked up the steps and slowly filed into the house. I went to follow, but Brooks held me back. “We stay here,” he said.
“What?”
“We have one more stop to make.”
“Why?”
He smiled. “Just wait.”
Once the last girl was in, the door shut. We stood there together in silence, listening to the night’s quiet deepen around us. It felt strange just standing there, but I trusted Brooks more than ever.
Soon, the door opened again.
Louisa Barone stepped out.
“Thanks for coming,” she said.
Brooks nodded. “As you instructed.”
“Hi, Emma,” Louisa said, smiling at me. “I’m glad you made it.”
“Me too. Thanks for helping us.”
She shook her head and leaned up against the door. “No. I should thank you. I’m sorry this happened. Someone must have talked and given away our locations. Whoever it was will be found and dealt with.”
“I don’t care about your internal troubles, Louisa,” Brooks cut in. “I need to know what you plan on doing for us before we walk away from this forever.”
“Well, Brooks, it’s simple. I want you to come to the compound.”
He stared at her silently for a second. “You’re fucking joking, right?”
“I’m not joking.”
“What’s the compound?” I asked.
“It’s what we call the Barone family mansion,” Brooks said. “It’s like the mafia’s fucking home base. It’s the last place we’d ever want to be.”
