Savage Nights

by W. D. Gagliani

  She wondered, not for the first time, exactly who Brant was, and what he was up to. And whether his kidnapped niece was cover for some other kind of action. No, he seemed too genuinely concerned about the girl.

  She headed back to her car. At least there was now no evidence of her own lapse in judgment. It had been erased as easily as the thug's life. But she knew one man who would notice the missing thug. She wondered whether Brant would give Goran more to worry about. Sure he would.

  KIT

  There were a half dozen doors, three on each side of the hall, and all were unmarked. Kit was certain at least one was the Studio, but the others had to be more cells. She tried the first two.

  "Damn it, we need keys," she said, and ducked back into their cell to see Marissa going through the thin man's pockets. He was still now, either dead or unconscious, and bloody. He looked dead.

  "Looking for these?" Marissa held up a keychain. When Kit reached out, Marissa pulled them away. "No!"

  "Christ!" Kit swore and swung the gun sideways, catching Marissa hard on the shoulder and making her cry out. "Give me those!"

  Marissa scuttled away and Kit chased her down, not wanting to hurt her but needing the keys.

  In her mind, she was screaming her uncle's name over and over, but her lips were clenched and she tried to wrestle the other girl for the keys.

  "Hurry up! Just shoot her!" Anne Marie was at the door, and Kit had no doubt she would have done so if she'd held the gun.

  No way was Kit going to shoot another victim, no matter how fucked up she was.

  Marissa was fucked up, because she was fighting to keep the keys from Kit, windmilling her arms and catching Kit repeatedly in the face and shoulders. Finally Kit reached in and tapped her hard on the head with the gun. Marissa went down, stunned, and Kit ripped the keys from her hand. In a few seconds, she and Anne Marie were rushing from door to door, opening each and getting glimpses of several stunned, teary faces that stared. None of the other girls moved. Instead, they cowered in their corners and turned their heads away.

  In her own mind, Kit tried to short-circuit fear and thoughts of what they were doing. She kept an image of her Uncle Rich as firmly in mind as she could. Maybe it wouldn't help, but maybe it wouldn't hurt, either. At least he symbolized inspiration and hope.

  Help me, she thought. Help me, help me, help me.

  They headed for the door at the end of the hall. It was the door they'd been brought through, it had to be. Kit tried each key, her hand shaking. She flipped through the cell door keys, which looked alike. None of them worked. She had to force herself to breathe in order not to hyperventilate, but she could feel their window of opportunity shrinking. What if somebody looked at the camera feed from their cell, or if there was a camera in the hall?

  She slowed her breathing willfully, then tried to insert every other key into the lock, one after the other. None fit the lock at all. She stabbed the lock with each key over and over, but none slid into the opening. She slowed her movements and tried them all again.

  The door remained locked, a barrier to their freedom even though they held keys to almost every other door. Kit grasped the knob as if strength alone could turn tumblers.

  What would her uncle do?

  Jesus, Uncle Rich, this might be my last chance.

  Behind her, Anne Marie was breathing too fast. Kit turned and saw her new friend – she looked like a little girl now – breathing too fast, her eyes wide with terror, panic creeping up her features like a blush.

  "The door," Anne Marie said. She was crying, sobbing suddenly. "Open the door. Get the door." Repeating it like a mantra, only faster. She was rapidly losing control. "Get the door. Open the-"

  "It's locked. None of these keys work here." Kit was whispering. "Anne Marie, it's locked. Listen to me – it's locked. I can't just shoot it off." She wasn't even sure that bit of TV and movie cliché worked in the real world. "Can't shoot it off without bringing down the whole bunch. We don't know what's between us—"

  "Shoot it, shoot it, shoot it—"

  Kit slapped her friend hard. Anne Marie snorted loudly, but stopped blubbering. Her eyes were crazed. For a second they reminded Kit of Marissa.

  Jesus, is that what's going to happen to all of us? To me? Was catatonia the only way to deal with this situation in which they'd been trapped through no fault of their own? Kit felt heat flush through her hear like a sudden fever. Anne Marie's panic was contagious. They'd taken a step toward freedom, but here stood a road block. Here endeth the quest of Kit and Anne Marie. Here be monsters. Here lies Kit – "She lost it when it counted most."

  Here was the end. Anne Marie was blubbering and Kit...

  Kit put her whole weight into it and smacked Anne Marie in the face again, twice. Anne Marie closed her mouth and looked at Kit with shock in her eyes.

  Kit found herself thinking, Well, it's better than insanity.

  Kit held up the gun. Maybe she could shoot the lock and be done with it. The gun felt large and heavy, but her uncle had taken her to an indoor range a few times. She actually knew what to do, if she collected herself and thought about it.

  Tears coursed down Anne Marie's cheeks, and Kit wrapped her in a quick hug. The younger girl was a thin, shivering skeleton.

  She looked over Anne Marie's shoulder down the hallway they'd come down and, for a second, she was confused. There was a door there no different from the one they were deciding to shoot at. Suddenly Kit felt disoriented. Maybe it was the lack of food and drink, or what they'd witnessed, or what had happened to them so long ago – was it only two days? – but Kit was no longer sure this was the way out.

  The other door beckoned. The other door would be open. Kit knew it as if her uncle had parted her hair and skin and skull and placed the knowledge directly into her brain pan.

  "The other door, Anne Marie. That's where we have to go."

  She turned the pliant girl around, sidestepping her, then took her hand and dragged her back the way they had come, past their door, past the other doors, past the Studio and the Sales Floor. Kit caught a glimpse of Marissa in their cell, weeping as she stared into her mirror, make-up running as if she stood in the rain.

  Kit and Anne Marie reached the other door and Kit grasped and turned the knob.

  The door swung open silently.

  It was bright beyond the door and it took a second for their eyes to focus.

  Anne Marie screamed, and wouldn't stop.

  Kit's knees melted and she barely managed to avoid collapsing.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The cell almost vibrated itself off the seat and he scooped it up before it landed on the mat.

  "Couple packages ready for pick up at the main terminal, about an hour."

  Brant grunted. "I'm not in the area."

  Sarge blew into his phone. "Took me some time to arrange this, but I can't make it myself. Just a pick-up, Loot."

  Brant sighed. "Fine, I'll skip by and drop them at your place."

  "No, they got a base. They'll know what to do."

  "Then why can't they get there themselves?"

  "Loot, they're gonna need some guidance. That's your thing, innit? You can fill them in while dropping them off. What's your time frame, anyway?"

  "Look, I got a complication."

  "Yeah? Something fucking happen?"

  "That's what I'm saying. The time frame's a lot smaller now. It's got to be tonight." This was an untraceable phone, so he elaborated. "Look, a little while ago I expedited somebody's trip home, and I'm pretty sure I crossed paths with a certain LEO right after."

  "Shit."

  "Yeah, shit."

  "So what do you expect?"

  "Right now, I'm operating in the clear. But not for long. Plus now it depends on what the LEO may have done. I don't think I have all that much time before the quail's in the crosshairs."

  "Probably not." Sarge seemed to be covering the mouthpiece, and Brant thought he heard voices. "Okay, you can bring them here. Can you l
ose your friend?"

  Brant hesitated, not wanting to say much more on an open line. He was still susceptible to interception, if somebody wanted to listen. And there was the question of whoever was there with Sarge. Brant had survived long on his instincts, and he wasn't even sure Colgrave had followed him. But there was a chance she had, then called Zimmerman and an APB was now issued for his head. But maybe Kampmann's team had been prompt and erased the crime scene evidence.

  Had Colgrave predicted what he planned to do next?

  "Call you later."

  He hung up and started the car, edging out of his space with a thoughtful look in his mirrors.

  Only one way to find out if Colgrave was on his tail.

  KIT

  Inside the new chamber, her roommate stood behind a metal table. Irina looked up at Kit and smiled a huge welcome. She was in full supermodel mode. She could have made the cover of Cosmo.

  Kit's garbled brain wanted her to ask Irina what she was doing here, looking gorgeous as usual, but here, where Kit had been held prisoner what seemed a very long time. Because Irina was just about the last person she would have expected to find here, and the paradoxical logic of seeing her looking like a Cosmo girl here, in this – what was this, a butcher shop? There was a sort of contextual war being waged in Kit's brain, trying to process the images before her.

  What didn't fit Cosmo's style at all was the way Kit's father looked. Ralph Brant was strapped down on the metal table, naked and struggling feebly against the secure restraints. His face was tilted toward Kit but his mouth was gagged with a leather strip so he couldn't speak, though rivulets of drool had begun to stream down his chin, pooling on the table below. His eyes were liquid orbs, but they suddenly focused and met Kit's, widening with the shock of recognition. Locked in each other's gaze, they both felt the moment stretch into some sort of infinity, as if the world around them had turned to molasses. Kit simultaneously saw her father and, in her mind's eye, her uncle. There was a sharp burst of something like electricity, a jolt of connectivity that seemed to jump from one to the other, and for a moment it was as if the three of them were in another place together, away from here, away from this. She blinked and they were all back in the gruesome chamber, part of a strange tableau that made even the last two days' ordeal pale in Kit's mind. The logic of the images escaped her.

  Disparate details flashed like strobes, making her blink painfully.

  Metal hooks in rows set high in the walls.

  A walk-in freezer door, propped open. Ominous darkness behind it.

  Frosted air hovering near the door's dark open slit.

  Irina's hand, cupping her father's genitals.

  Incongruously, crazily, Kit noticed that Irina was playing the Egyptian princess again. Her make-up was elaborately over the top, only much more expertly applied than Marissa's.

  Sound seemed to rush into Kit's ears with a sudden roar, as painful as sharp jabs in her ear drums.

  The scalpel Irina held almost primly in one red-nailed, shapely hand, took one downward and sideways swipe and Ralph's eyes bulged in shock and pain as she severed his half-erect penis.

  Blood splattered her face and clothes, but she never stopped smiling at Kit, one hand holding the shriveling organ like a fragile teacup at a fancy party.

  Ralph's ragged screams were muffled by the tight leather, and his jerks up and sideways were severely curtailed by the straps that held him in place. His wide-open eyes looked at Kit, eyebrows raised as if asking a question, his wet mouth suddenly soundless, Irina watched, a dreamy expression flitting across her bloodied features.

  Ralph was rapidly bleeding to death under Irina's gaze.

  She licked her lips, prim tongue reaching out toward one corner of her lip to lap up a bloody splatter. She smirked at Kit while blood pooled beneath Ralph on the metal table, then tilted the table at a slight angle so it could drain cleanly.

  Kit screamed though she didn't know she was doing it. The voice she heard seemed to be coming from far away. Her limbs felt electrically charged and trembled as if racked with fever. She brought up and leveled the shaky pistol and pulled the trigger. Once, twice. Again.

  There was no explosion of gunfire.

  She stared at the blocky pistol as if it were a snake about to strike her. The screaming continued, but now her hearing was muffled.

  In her shock and revulsion and horror she had forgotten her uncle's lessons. She pulled the trigger again, and then again, but the safety did its job.

  Irina's smirk turned into a wide smile. She acknowledged her audience with a small curtsy.

  From far away, Kit heard someone else screaming. Anne Marie's voice blended with her own, and the three of them stood frozen watching Kit's father, while his curling body twitched like that of an epileptic.

  Sobbing, Kit watched her father die. Just before the light went out of his eyes, as his heart pumped the rest of his blood onto the floor, it seemed to Kit he wordlessly begged forgiveness. Behind him, her roommate grinned maniacally, all reason seemingly vacant from her wide-eyed gaze.

  Then rough hands grabbed them both from behind.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Colgrave entered the same diner she'd eaten lunch in for the last three years. Usually the smell of grease, fried food, and fresh coffee perked her right up no matter what her mood. She waved at Sarah, the lead waitress, but suddenly the food smell became a nostril-filling stench.

  She made it to the bathroom – never one of the cleanest around – and the vomit rose up suddenly in her throat. She leaned over the sink and managed to aim for the drain, a thin stream of acid bile, coffee, and decomposed toast from sometime earlier. She started to straighten, but another pang brought her back down to the stained porcelain.

  Christ, she hoped everybody would keep out.

  She waited for the spasm to pass.

  She ran the tepid water and watched the drain, devoid of a trap, take most of what her throat muscles had dredged up. She couldn't do anything about the acid taste permeating her mouth.

  In the mirror, the woman who stared back at Colgrave seemed accusatory. "What the fuck are you doing? Why are you fucking up my life?"

  Colgrave watched the woman try to restore some order to her hair. She grinned without mirth and checked the woman's gums. Nothing showed, but she cupped her hands and drew a mouthful of tepid water, swished and spit. Sure enough, the tendrils of blood mocked her.

  She rinsed again and her saliva cleared. Maybe the vomiting had irritated her gums. Maybe she had contracted some exotic infection. Maybe she was dying. Or maybe she was trying to tell herself she was crazy for what she was about to do. She fixed herself up a little, and soon the woman in the mirror didn't seem like such a decrepit stranger.

  She hoped the puke smell wouldn't follow her into the dining room.

  But no one dined there, really. They just ate.

  "You all right, honey?" Sarah said, a wisp of loose hair dangling over her jowly face. She intersected Colgrave halfway into the dining room, holding a carafe of hot coffee in one hand and a pad in the other.

  Colgrave could smell the strong coffee. "Yeah, fine," she lied. "Can I get one of those?"

  "Betcha. Sit right here, hon." She flipped over a mug and filled it.

  To her relief, Colgrave took another noseful and her stomach did not spasm. The taste didn't do it either, and she was flooded with relief.

  She wondered about her gums and swished coffee around. World's best medicinal.

  She wanted to go back into the bathroom and answer that woman in the mirror. Problem was, her only response was the mental image of Richard Brant her mind kept in front of her.

  How had he become so stuck in her mind, so quickly?

  He was older. He talked softly, and not a lot. He dressed like an average Joe.

  She sensed he wasn't average, no, not at all. He seemed intense. Hard to anger, but deadly when riled. Zim hated him, so he had to be one of the good guys, she reasoned. And his concern for his niece,
visible behind the anger in his eyes, struck her as attractive, too. Real. Fatherly, as if she were his daughter, not his idiot brother's.

  But Richard Brant was disturbed. She'd sensed that, too. He had been, not broken by Viet Nam, but tainted. That was it.

  The experience had tainted him in ways she could only guess at. Maybe he'd been further tainted afterwards. Her curiosity surprised her; it proved he had gotten to her. That she wanted to learn about him was a clear signal. After all, dozens of men crossed her path – some cops, some victims, some stuck somewhere in-between – and she didn't wonder much about any of them.

  But the majority of those people didn't kill in cold blood, either, her mind's tiny voice roared at her. Get over this thing you feel before it affects your judgment. Or ruins your career.

  It was too late. She shook her head. She'd let him walk away from what was essentially murder. She was already a criminal.

  She drank her coffee, bolstered by the recovery her stomach seemed to have made. The word criminal didn't make her heave, though it did make her hair stand on end. She sipped again then stirred in one more sugar packet, as if knowing she needed the energy. Maybe she would...

  She unfolded the sheet on which she'd written Lynn's information. The Serb owned clubs, a couple private residences including a mansion on the exclusive end of Lake Drive, several businesses, and a warehouse. The warehouse stood out, of course, but was that where Brant would head next?

  She tried to think like him. How would a lone wolf go about reducing the size of the enemy pack?

  Colgrave drank, thought, and let her eyes go out of focus.

  The lone wolf.

  He would go it alone, like some neocon's version of an avenging angel. But this lone wolf had also been part of a team in Vietnam. He'd become accustomed to someone watching his back while he took point and risked everything in those cursed enemy tunnels. She hadn't been able to find much on him after Vietnam, but Lynn had uncovered plenty about his Tunnel Rat days that was public record. Maybe he'd changed. Maybe he wouldn't go it alone in a case like this, where the snake was more like an octopus. Maybe he'd want someone to watch his back. And it wouldn't be his brother, that was certain.