Hunted (6 page)

They were far from out of the woods.

“Here we are,” he said.

Dusk sat still, looking out into the night. He climbed out, then turned and waited, holding his hand aloft. Finally, her hand reached up and clasped his. He couldn’t help but notice how cold and stiff her fingers were, how her hand trembled in his as he helped her out of the limo. She didn’t meet his eyes as she straightened that nonexistent skirt. He hurried her inside and hoped no one saw anything. As he opened the door, he said, stepping back, “We have a half an hour, give or take, maybe a bit longer.”

“Longer,” Becca interrupted. “She’s got long hair and I need some time to work on her disguise.” She dumped a bag in the entryway.

He glanced down at his watch, almost midnight. “Fine. You have an hour. I don’t want to push our luck.”

Becca motioned for Dusk to follow her. She stood just inside looking around, like a frightened orphan worried she’d be turned away. Bastards.

Shadow shut the door and said to her, “George, the driver, went to park the car. He is the doctor. He takes blood samples of all our girls and tests them for the normal STDs, HIV, pregnancy, and any other abnormalities.”

Something flickered in her eyes, but it was quickly masked. “That would be my luck. I escape hell only to suffer from some disease some asshole passed on while he raped me.” Dusk licked her lips. Her garish clothing was as out of place in the simple dwelling as a gambler at a church choir practice.

He fisted his hands, wishing he could ease her, knowing there was no way he could. And she was right. It wasn’t fair to escape, only to be told you had a disease. But little in life was fair, he knew.

“It’s all right,” John said. “You’re out. It’s a start. One thing at a time, then? Let’s get cleaned up and then do whatever else we have to.”

Her icy blue eyes met his across the room and something in him twisted at that chilled level look. “I just want to go home. You better get me home, because I
know
what he does to those who
try
to escape.”

He watched as Becca herded her up the stairs to the bathrooms.

John rubbed his hands over his face, paced the small living area complete with one lumpy couch and a couple of armchairs. Nothing anyone would notice. Just a lounge in a flat for singles of the college circuit.

What next? Had he covered everything? Yes. There was no trace of who he was and he hadn’t lied about only having an hour or so. Part of him wished they could have waited for this mission, but they’d finally found her and she’d been listed missing for over six bloody months. Six months. He didn’t want to think about what she’d endured. So they’d moved, even though a team had removed another American just two weeks ago. Risky, back to back, but the bosses spoke and everyone scrambled to obey.

Now if tonight would just go right. The coppers would need to identify the burnt corpse, run some numbers on the car, but then they’d obtained an untraceable one, so that was in their favor. Yet things had a way of appearing perfect and being tangled as bloody hell. He figured it was better to plan for the worst and hope it didn’t happen.

The front door opened and John whirled, pulling his gun. George.

Of course it was George. Blimey. He raked a hand through his hair.

“Someone is a bit on edge,” George muttered, locking the door behind him.

John ignored him. Shadow leaned against the wall.

None of the three downstairs said a word until they heard water running.

He paced back and forth and thought about what still lay ahead. Getting from here to the border and beyond. Everything was about timing. He’d lied when he told her not to worry. They should worry. If they didn’t get out of Prague before Jezek noticed he’d been duped, there would be someone at every rail station, airport and toll.

Organized crime was bleeding organized for a reason.

“Passports?” he asked, striding over to the table.

“Yes,” Shadow answered, pushing away from the wall. “After Becca gets done with her, we’ll take the photo and we’ll be ready to go.”

“She doesn’t show signs of being an addict,” George offered, striding into the kitchen. “Though I’m certain she was given something at some point. The question is what and when.”

Maybe, but he’d noticed the needle marks. “Not too long ago. There were recent track marks on her right arm. We’ll pray you’re right.”

He took a deep breath and smelled the smoke and filth from the club. The smoke from the cigars he and the Devil had shared. The filth? Probably his imagination, but he felt the need to shower and change.

“How long has she been in again?” George asked him.

Why was it all doctors asked questions they already had the answers to?

“I don’t know a precise date.” John raked a hand through his hair and felt the brittle ends, not quite his own. He furrowed his forehead, gripped at the hairline, and pulled the blond wig, shorter hairline, and wider forehead off. “Longer than the last one we rescued. The other one still had lots of fight left in her. Roughly six months from the yellow notices. Which you bloody well know.”

Next he ripped the goatee and eyebrows off, leaving the lobes on his ears for last.

“In any case, she’s been in too long. From her file, she was a hellion. I think they probably broke her.” He hoped not, but he’d seen it too many times not to recognize the signs of a woman beaten and horrified into a submission she might resent but no longer even questioned.

He twisted his mouth, rubbing around his lips and chin to get the adhesive off.

“You’ve still got some makeup on. Might want to use the loo down here,” Shadow said.

“Like I couldn’t figure that one out on my own.”

Shadow shook his head and began removing some bread from a bag. Probably fixing a sandwich or God only knew what. The man was always bloody eating.

He walked down the hallway toward the back of the house to the small loo. John Reyer looked at himself in the mirror above the unleveled sink. His own eyes stared back at him. A bare bulb hung over the rust-rimmed sink. This was hardly the Ritz, but then it had been years since he’d been in the Ritz anyway, so it hardly mattered. This simple furnished flat served its purpose.

The adhesive rolled into little clumps against his fingers as he rubbed his jawline with water. He shoved his face and head under the faucet and let the cold water rush over him. He stood, shook his dark brown hair out and jerked the towel off the rod. It came out of the wall and clattered to the floor.

He left it there, tossed the towel in the sink and walked back out to the living room.

George had vials and syringes set out on the kitchen table along with tourniquets.

Shadow had made several sandwiches. Some carrot sticks and celery. John only raised a brow.

“She might be hungry,” he said.

John doubted it. He grabbed up one half of the sandwich and bit into it, not tasting what he was chewing. The water above had stopped. Becca’s laughter rang down the stairs and he wondered what they were doing.

* * *

Dusk looked in the mirror. The long black hair she’d had all her life lay on the floor in scattered wet clumps. She now had a really short bob. Not bob exactly. It was shorter in the back,
lots
shorter. The sides danced just below her cheekbones, almost touched her chin, and it kind of fluffed, or it did before Becca applied a tube of hair coloring. She turned her head one way then the other looking at her slicked new do, and vaguely wondered what it would look like finished.

The sunken eyes staring back at her were brown, thanks to colored contacts. Her eyes kept tearing up, but she was getting used to them.

She stared at the girl in the mirror and wondered who the hell she was.

Dark circles bruised her eyes, and her cheekbones, always prominent, bladed out, giving her a bulimic look.

“Okay, back in the shower with you. Wash it out and hurry into your clothes. John will be pacing and ready to go. You still have blood work to do. We don’t want to waste any time,” Becca said, her voice matter-of-fact and still Southern. At least there wasn’t the pretense with this woman that the man Reyer possessed.

But thinking about it all clawed the panic back to life.

No thoughts. Just actions. She’d lived by that for months. She could still do it.

Blood work. Shower. Dress. Blood work. The thought of more needles turned her stomach. Not paying attention to the hair, she climbed back in the shower and washed again, running the water as hot as it would get. She’d already used a good part of the hot water and now it was more tepid, but she didn’t care. It was a shower and no one was getting their jollies watching her.

Tears stung the back of her eyes, but she blinked them away. Don’t think. Just do. Move. Next step. Then the next. Next.

Hurrying, she scrubbed herself again, rinsed her hair out and quickly dried off, dressing in jeans and a white turtleneck. The undergarments were plain white cotton. It had been so long since she’d worn a bra, she just stared at it for a moment. She barely glanced at the woman in the mirror with old bruises mottling her exposed rib cage. Her hipbones, one sporting the vivid crescent scar, poked from her lower abdomen.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
Don’t think. Just do. Dress
. She wondered how they’d known her size, though the jeans were a little big, but the brown boots fit perfectly.

In the bedroom, Becca stood with a hair dryer. “Hurry. Time’s a wasting and we still need to get to the Metro.”

“What?” she asked, sitting back down.

“They’ll be looking for you,” Becca explained as she brushed out and dried Dusk’s hair. “We’re splitting up here. The rest of us will meet you and John at a later location, then we’ll all head to London and lay low. Go through detox if you have to.”

Detox. Drugs. Was there a program to rid the rest of the poison the bastards had inflicted on her? Some way to purge it all out of her?

“John and I?” She watched in the mirror as the girl with the tired eyes and fawn-colored hair began to cry.

“Yeah, you and John.”

Alone with the man. The image of him slashed in her brain as she’d first seen him, standing in the room with Mikhail. She’d seen something flash in his dark eyes before his finger had reached out and caressed her cheek, before he’d said something about appreciating beauty. For one instant, she thought it had been rage, but his voice, calm and smooth, had made her think he was just like the others. All the uncaring others.

But he hadn’t been. The flicker of rage had been real and quickly hidden.

Rage for her?

One long tear trickled down her cheek and she didn’t even move to wipe it away.

Another followed. And then another.

No. No. If she cried, she gave them something else.

Sniffing hard, she didn’t think about the future or the past. Just the now.

She noticed Becca had even died her eyebrows. How had she missed that?

Concentrating on things around her, she noticed the scarred dresser, the simple single bed, bare floors, motel art on the walls.

Enough to look livable, but only for appearance sake. There were locks on the doors, beds, food, and warm water.

This was, after all, a safe house.

When the dryer stopped, Dusk gave herself one quick glance. Same hollow eyes, sharp cheekbones, thin neck. But the hair, a light reddish brown color, danced in soft waves around her head. Turning, she stood and followed Becca downstairs where the men were waiting.

Voices filtered from further back in the house. She hadn’t really paid attention to her surroundings when they’d arrived, but she noticed the downstairs was about the same as the upstairs, simple, no frills. Functional. The wooden floors were bare and her boots echoed softly down the tiny hallway to the voices.

Kitchen.

The men were around the counter and a simple squared wooden table. They stopped talking when she and Becca entered. Shadow laid his palms on the counter and glared at John. She wondered why.

John Reyer. He’d changed. His blond hair and the goatee were gone. Something else . . . Now his hair was dark, either black or almost so, short with a widow’s peak.

Dusk looked to the table where vials and syringes lay and felt the monster stir.

“What are you on?” George asked without preamble, motioning her to the chair.

She shrugged. “I don’t know.” Then rubbing her arm where Mikhail had jabbed the needle only as punishment, she said, “He . . . he wouldn’t let them give my anything. Not regularly anyway.” She shuddered. “Dame slipped me some X a few times, but he knew and she wasn’t allowed to give me anything else.”

John frowned, his eyes piercing her. “Why?”

“He wanted me to know . . . ” She sniffed and lowered her gaze. “To know everything. No floaters or soothers for me. There were the times he sent me on his trips. I got the special treat of his K trips.”

“His K trips? Ketamine?” Reyer asked, his voice edged.

She nodded, jerkily, and swiped at her nose. “Yeah. Another punishment, a game, enjoyment, whatever.” She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

George motioned to the chair again, frowning, and said, “I’m going to take some blood. I can run a quick tox screen and let John know. Your urine didn’t show any narcotics. No heroin. No speed. No X. Anything else, other than the K, you know of?”

She shook her head. Watched as he tied her arm off with the pinching elastic band and took a syringe for blood.

“Well, the good news is that if you’re all clear, then you can go through a simple antibiotic and antiviral regime.” His voice was soft and flattened New England. His appearance hadn’t changed either from when she met him. Only Reyer had changed a disguise. Mr. Doctor/Driver George still had fair hair and concerned eyes. He bent toward her studying her veins.

She watched as he slid the needle under her skin and hit the vein his first try. Thank God. He capped the vial on the end and released the band. Her blood ebbed into the vial. She looked away and to the kitchen. Utilitarian. No life, no warmth. The white refrigerator was several decades old. The counters were painted blue, but yellow and red peeked through the chipped paint in places. She watched the water drip from the faucet. The long fall of the water as it gathered before it
dwamped
in the sink.