When they’d finished with that, they followed Hiller’s directions to an old abandoned manufacturing area near the docks. They parked the car two streets over and set out on foot to see if they could locate where Whitfield had been holding the girls.
“What’s the plan?”
“You mean after you made Hiller wet his pants?”
Josh grinned. “Not such a tough guy around an adult.”
“An adult who snarls,” Skye said. “Great touch, by the way. Look, maybe we should call the police to get these girls out. If they’re still there at all, this could get messy real quick.”
He squeezed her hand. “We’ll play it by ear, how’s that? I don’t think we should call the cops until we know for sure they haven’t already shipped the girls out, otherwise it would just be another false lead to nowhere. This way, we check the place out, if they’re inside, we stick to the plan, then we make the call. How’s that sound?”
It turned out that the structure Hiller had told them about had once been used as a distribution center for a retail outlet that had gone out of business a decade earlier and was now owned by one R.W. Whitfield. The abandoned storefront hugged the waterfront. The front door had been boarded up and secured by a stretch of ironwork. Since there was no way of getting past that short of a blowtorch and a lot of noise, they decided the best approach was from the rear. But figuring out how to get into the warehouse without attracting attention would be tricky.
Once they reached the back of the facility, the structure was still a good seventy yards in the distance and across a concrete drainage canal in disrepair. Not only that, but it looked as though at one time it had been a gathering place for vagrants and taggers. The spot was loaded with graffiti and littered with broken bottles, trash of all kinds, and a layer of used condoms.
“The water’s no more than a foot deep.” Skye pointed out. But the drop off was at least eight feet down. “We can slide but how do we get up the embankment once we reach the other side?” Skye wanted to know.
“I’ll get us both up. Just be careful maneuvering over all the cracked concrete strewn on the bottom. That’s a great way to break an ankle. And we don’t know what’s in that murky water.” He sniffed the air, stared into the dirty stream. “See there. Snakes.”
“Just great,” Skye muttered as she followed Josh’s lead and slipped down the abutment, careful not to stay in one spot for long. They scrambled through the water using any jutting surface to step, balance, and then leap from one piece of cement to the other until they got to the other side where Josh vaulted up and onto the flat landing above. “Give me your hand and I’ll boost you up.”
“Showoff,” Skye grumbled slapping her hand into Josh’s. “Something tells me you could’ve just jumped this ditch on your own.”
He shot her a sly grin. “But you couldn’t.”
“Aw, thanks. You’re all heart. No one said being a spirit guide would be such a thankless task or a walk in the park, huh?” she said, grinning back.
“It has its advantages.” He scanned the area, taking his time to check out every possible way to get in closer without being spotted. After several long minutes, he pointed. “There, we approach through that grove of trees, stick to the side of the building until we find an opening where we can look inside.”
“Geez, that place must be what, a hundred thousand square feet? Whitfield owns this? The sex trade must be very lucrative.”
“Yeah. The sad thing is the guy probably picked up the property at a huge discount because of the downturn in the economy.”
“What about all those loading docks? Maybe you could pry one of the bays open.”
“We check those out, too. But right now we’re looking to make the least amount of noise we can, look for an open fire door, a busted window, anything that can get us in—quietly.”
“Split up?”
“No.”
Without saying another word, they started through the wooded area, sneaking up to the rear parking lot. After crossing over to a small loading area, they reached the building. Using hand gestures, Skye pointed to the busted glass littering the pavement. Then with her thumb she pointed upward to where the glass had likely come from, a window on the second story, and a way inside. She looked around for something to use for a ladder. In a whisper, she asked, “Can you reach that with your one-leap-in-a-single-bound trick or do you want to boost me up?”
His answer was to jump in the air and land on the roof.
Skye shook her head. How long would it take to get used to those kinds of antics? she wondered, while wishing she had that same ability.
From the roof of the warehouse, Josh leaned over the truss so he could see inside the broken window. He heard male voices in a heated argument discussing whether or not sufficient payment had already been deposited in an offshore account to cover their take. He listened as the discussion got more intense.
“Without Whitfield how do we know the money’s even there?” one man shouted.
“Well, I’m not walking away. I have too much time invested in this already to simply drop out and run. I want my goddamn money! We’ve been waiting for two weeks and now we’re fucked.”
For the first time the reality of the situation hit Josh. Inside this innocent-looking distribution center in broad daylight in a city the size of Seattle a group of men held out hope that they could still reconnect with the buyers, reestablish Whitfield’s link, and salvage the operation by going ahead and selling the teenage girls so they could make a profit.
Josh realized something else. There was no time to make a call to the cops. This would be up to the two of them to do without help. But they still had to find a way to get into the building.
About that time, he heard the faintest of steps coming from the opposite corner some thirty yards away. He watched Skye make her way onto the roof. Somehow she’d found something to use to climb up. He put his finger to his lips to indicate she needed to be quiet and then pointed down into the building. Using hand signals he motioned that there were at least five men inside.
Skye nodded, signaled that he could add three more by her count, standing guard at the front of the building which meant two against eight. She didn’t like those odds. When she said as much through more sign language, Josh shook her off.
In a crawl, she made her way over to Josh. “Are you nuts?” she whispered.
“Listen. They’ve come to a parting of the ways. It’s either now or never.”
That’s when Skye cocked her head and heard the second group of men talking about doing away with the girls.
“I vote we move the merchandise now or else we kill them all,” one of the men suggested.
“Same here. They’ve seen our faces and it’s too risky to hang onto them without knowing if the ship’s ready or not. I didn’t sign on for getting caught. No way am I going back to prison for a fucked-up plan that never had a chance of working without Whitfield.”
“This whole thing has gone south. I’m for slitting their throats, right here, right now,” another man stated, weighing in with his opinion.
Skye grabbed Josh’s arm. “You’re right, they sound desperate. Who knows what they’d do in the next five minutes? How many have guns?” Skye wanted to know.
“The two advocating the throat-slitting. But we have surprise in our favor.”
She gave him a withering stare. “Remember what Travis said. Don’t let your wolf instincts take over and get us both killed. Try to think logically, intelligently, both of which you possess in spades. This is just plain crazy,” Skye muttered. “There’s eight of them and only two of us.”
“Not if we draw a few of them out first.”
With that, Josh grabbed her hand, wrapped her to his chest. “Hold on.” They both went off the roof, dropped to the ground, feet first.
Skye rolled her eyes. “There was a perfectly good fire escape on the other side. How do you think I got up there?”
“We’ll argue about it later. Rig
ht now, follow my lead.” He kissed her on the mouth before, bold as brass, he knocked on the back door.
Inside, the group of men were still in an intense debate when one of them held up a hand. “What was that? Did you hear that?”
“The only thing I hear is your gums flapping,” the other replied.
But the two that were armed with weapons ignored the others and moved to the back door. One flung it open and both men burst outside where Skye and Josh were waiting on either side.
Skye let the first man take two steps before she elbowed him in the ribs and kicked out with her leg, knocking the nine-millimeter Smith and Wesson from his hand. Josh did the same with the man holding the Ruger revolver. Unarmed now, both men came up swinging.
Skye drew a knife from her boot, heaved it end over end until it flew through the air, hitting its mark. The blade landed in the man’s heart.
Josh’s arms went around the other man he held up against his chest. With one twist, Josh broke the man’s neck.
That left three to rush outside to see what was happening. When two advanced on Josh at once, he took out the first one with a kick to the man’s jaw and throat. The man dropped like a rock. The other, Josh picked up and simply threw the guy into the side of the building where bone crunched against concrete as his body slid down into a crumpled mass.
A third man tried to come at Josh from behind, but Skye took care of him by drawing a second knife from inside her coat and flinging it into the guy’s throat. He staggered back, his hands trying to pull out the knife before collapsing on the ground.
By that time, three other men rounded the corner of the building from the opposite end to check out the commotion. They spotted Skye and Josh standing over the littered bodies and took off back the way they’d come, ostensibly to their cars.
“I’ve got this,” Josh said as he hustled after the trio. Over his shoulder, he shouted, “Go see if you can find the girls.”
With speed unknown to him before the transformation, Josh easily caught up with two of the three men who were out of shape and much older. Josh sprang at both, taking them down face first into the concrete. The two fell hard and while they tried to untangle a mass of limbs, Josh snapped the neck of one before turning to the other to repeat the process. He got to his feet and went after the one scurrying to one of the vehicles parked in front.
“You can’t leave now, the fun’s just getting started,” Josh bellowed before he pounced onto the guy’s back, took his head in his hands, and once again, broke the guy’s neck.
Inside her prison, Heather knew something was up because there was a ton of shouting coming from outside her locked doorway. Were they getting ready to move them? It sounded like chaos to her. All morning the voices had indicated some of the men were panicking. She’d even heard fighting among the men where there had been only unity two days before. But then her captors had been acting weird for more days than she could count.
Skye stepped into the vast building and cast her eyes around, cautious in case they’d overlooked anyone they hadn’t accounted for yet. But Skye saw nothing to indicate that. Instead, the large and rather stark distribution center seemed empty. As she moved through the layout, checking out rooms that used to be former offices, a funny odor hit her nostrils. The smell of urine and feces almost knocked her down.
She walked past restrooms, down a narrow hallway that led to individual storage units that once had held items waiting for their inspections from customs. At least that was her first impression. Here, she picked up the odor of death.
Skye counted twelve bright orange, metal roll-up doors each with its own heavy padlock—which explained the orange in her dream. On impulse she called out, “Lucy! Heather! Elena! Anyone! Are you here?”
Skye heard shrieks, gasps, and then voices coming from behind at least six of the locked rooms at almost the same time.
“Here!”
“I’m in here!” said a girl’s quivering voice.
“Please, please let me out, please!” another begged in a pitiful moan.
At all the cries for help, Skye had to shout over the din, “I have to find the keys first. It’s okay. You’re safe now. Just give me a minute to get these locks open.” She started running back down the hallway, but Josh was already standing there holding a crowbar. Skye slid to a stop. Their eyes met. She grabbed his arm, put a finger to her lips, and whispered, “They might be scared to hear a man’s voice right about now.”
Josh nodded and said in a low whisper, “Can’t say I blame them after spending time in this hellhole. The smell in here is awful. Is it just me or do you smell—death?”
“No, it’s here,” Skye whispered before pitching her voice louder. “Okay, listen to me, girls. I brought a strong guy with me to help you. Don’t freak. He’s one of the good guys. We’re going to get you out. Here’s what I want you to do though. You need to move all the way back into your cell, away from the door, as far as you can get.”
“They have us chained up,” a weak voice explained from behind one of the doors. “It’s hard to move around.”
“Like animals,” sobbed another.
“Then get as far back as you can away from the opening,” Skye suggested.
“Those men kept giving us drugs but they ran out a couple of days ago. We’ve been awake ever since.”
“We’ve all been praying for someone to come help us and take us out of this place.”
At the first unit, Josh wedged the iron rod into the space between the lock and the sliding latch. With all the strength he possessed he forced the iron down until the lock and latch broke loose from the frame. With a grinding screech, metal separated from metal.
Skye quickly yanked up the door on its tracks to reveal a filthy single mattress, and ten-year-old Elena Palomar hiding beneath the cot.
Josh did the same thing with the next unit, where they discovered Lucy Border, huddling against the wall. Inside the adjacent unit, they found Heather Moore crouched in the corner. He continued to the fourth, and on and on, until he had broken into each unit. Some were blessedly empty. They freed three other girls they didn’t recognize. It took a bolt cutter to cut through the chains that shackled all of them to their beds.
Once Skye led the girls out into the hallway, Josh instructed, “You want to take them out through that side door over there and lead them out into the parking lot. Get them a good thirty yards away. At least,” Josh suggested in a low voice. “I’ll pull the bodies back into the warehouse before I set the explosive device to blow.”
Skye nodded. “I spotted two laptops on a desk in their office area. Grab those. There might be something we can use.”
“Got it.”
With that, Skye started herding the group outside and into what was blinding sunlight for those who hadn’t seen daylight in several weeks.
As they marched away from the building, it soon became clear all of the girls, especially the younger ones, were still in shock. They were all crying and couldn’t seem to stop. Despite that though, the older ones seemed unable to keep quiet after such a long time penned up.
“Who are you?” one of the little ones asked.
“We get to go home now, right? You aren’t here to hurt us?” Heather Moore wanted to know.
“You’re all going home soon,” Skye said, touching the girl’s cheek. “Your mother is worried sick.”
“You talked to her?”
“I did. You’ll be home in time for your brother’s birthday.”
“Did you kill those horrible men?” one of the girls piped up in a trembling voice.
“I hope they’re all dead, every last one of them. They raped us. They were going to sell us and ship us out of the country,” a brown-haired girl of about fourteen added.
“No, I heard them. They’d already decided to kill us,” Lucy corrected.
Since Josh had mentioned the same, Skye reassured them, “I promise they won’t do anything to you now.”
“What happened to the bad
men?” Elena finally spoke, her eyes darting around in fear before squinting them closed at the sun. “Are they still here? Will they grab me again?”
“It’s okay,” Skye told the youngest one. “I promise you, they won’t hurt you ever again.”
“It’s so great to be outside, to see the sun,” Heather said taking a huge breath of fresh air. She picked up Skye’s hand. “Are you a cop?”
“No. In fact, I want all of you to put your hands over your ears.” Skye glanced at her watch. “In about two minutes there’s going to be a huge explosion. I don’t want you to be scared.”
“You’re blowing up the building?” Heather asked. “That is so cool. I never want to see this place again.”
When Skye spotted Josh strolling across the lot to join them, she knew the time had come. “I don’t believe that’ll be a problem. Okay, girls, let’s huddle together, hands over your ears, prepare to hear a very large boom. In three, two, one—”
About that time, a blast ripped the air, shaking the ground.
“It’s time to go,” Josh uttered as soon as he reached the group.
“I know but...”
Josh shook his head, leaned in where only Skye could hear. “No buts, I’m making the nine-one-one call now.” He withdrew a disposable cell phone from his jacket pocket. “Come on, we talked about this. I know it’s tough to leave them but we need to move. Now! Choppers will be airborne in less than fifteen minutes, be over this area in less than twenty. The girls will be okay for that long.”
When Skye started to get up to follow Josh, one of the girls screamed, “Wait! Don’t go! Please don’t leave us. Take us with you.”
Skye picked up her hand, soothing her as best she could. “The cops and fire department are on their way. Stay back from that building. Don’t leave this spot. You stay right here until they come for you. As soon as they get here, you’ll all go to a hospital so you’ll each get checked out. You’ll all get to see your families again…very soon. I promise.”
Skye Cree Boxed Set Books 1 - 3 Page 29
