Chapter Two

 

I know Sergei intimately. I know the shape of him, every curve of his muscles, the broad spread of his chest, even the way he breathes. I can feel him before he walks into a room, an intimate connection that envelops me and pulls me to him with irresistible force.

The bastard in the mask is tall, broad and burly, but he’s not my Sergei.

My Sergei. That’s a bitterly unfunny joke. He was never mine.

I rub my head, still aching from being slammed on the sidewalk, and squint in the dim light.

The blonde is there, and she’s curled up in a ball, head lolling, sucking in gulping breaths.

There are two dark forms sprawled on the floor. Simon and Yakov. Their chests are rising and falling, and I don’t see or smell any blood. I realize that they must have been shot with tranquilizer darts. That’s why I didn’t hear any gunshots. The traffickers wanted them alive.

And it wasn’t out of mercy.

They’re keeping us alive to interrogate us, to find out everything they can about our anti-trafficking efforts. They’ll demand the names of all our friends. Our plans. Our methods. They’ll slash and stab and burn the flesh right off us, leave us weeping and pleading for death through shattered teeth.

Then Yakov and Simon will be murdered very slowly, and their bodies dumped in a public place, to set an example for the rest of the anti-trafficking community. As for the blonde girl and me, if we survive the interrogation with our looks reasonably intact, we’ll be raped by our captors, then sold to be raped by wealthy perverts for the rest of our shortened lives.

In a couple of hours, when we fail to check in with Akim, she’ll figure out that we were kidnapped and she’ll alert the police, but it will be too late.

We always tell her about our missions before we go out – in case we fail to return. Yes, her. Akim is a woman – named Ludmilla. The woman Sergei claimed to be married to. But Ludmilla isn’t married. I have no idea what Sergei’s lie means, and now I’ll probably never find out.

We’ll be martyrs. Akim will write our story, the tale of a brave team of vigilantes snatched up by traffickers. It’s a new twist on an age-old tale. The story of our disappearance will capture international attention. Once again the ugly reality of the modern-day slave trade will briefly singe the consciences of those sitting at home safe in their living rooms.

But it’s cold comfort, especially because I failed to save the girl.

Our only way out is suicide. We are always prepared for capture. We take cyanide pills on every rescue mission, and other hidden tools. I’ve got little blades and a handcuff key concealed in the hair extensions that I wore for this mission. Simon and Yakov wear leather bracelets with blades tucked inside.

Cataha hands his rifle to one of the other men, reaches into a black gym bag that’s lying at his feet, and pulls out a handful of syringes. My stomach curdles, and I huddle in on myself. There’s nowhere to run, and no fight left in me. As we bounce along the road, he kneels down and jabs Simon and then Yakov in the leg, through their pants.

Then he moves towards the blonde, who tries to crawl away from him, and he jabs her in the ass. She cries out in pain, scrabbling at the floor with her hands.

“Antidote,” he sneers. “It’ll wake you up, so you can enjoy what’s coming next.” I think his accent places him from Moscow. Something about his voice bothers me, but I can’t think what.

Now Simon and Yakov are sitting up and groaning in pain. Skinny young men, eyes huge with fright. They both volunteered because girls in their family have disappeared – Simon’s cousin, Yakov’s sister.

They’ll die for their bravery.

We ride in silence, the truck bouncing over the rutted road.

Huddled up in a ball, I sneak glances at Cataha through the curtain of my long, fake locks. He doesn’t say a word to us. Is he watching us? I can’t tell.

Much too soon, the truck comes to a stop and the back door clangs open, and one of the men growls, “Get out!” So we obey, stumbling out into the dirty snow.

I do a quick visual sweep of the area, trying to orient myself. We’re parked in front of a building with taped-up, cracked windows, and a sign identifying it as a tire shop. The chain link fence around the front yard sags, torn in places, and brown weeds poke up through the snow. The other buildings around us are even more decrepit. The only illumination is from the headlights of the truck we were in and three other trucks pulling up. There are no street lights, no lights in the windows, no sign of life. Nobody to hear us scream.

There’s a generator hooked up to the building; the loud clanking thrum of its motor beats against my eardrums. So, an abandoned building without power.

The men are crowding around us. At least ten of them, because they’ve been joined by the men from the other three trucks. We’re marched inside, guns jabbing us in our ribcages to keep us moving. We exchange despairing glances; I hate the fear and hopelessness in Simon and Yakov’s eyes, because I know it mirrors my own.

The heat’s on, low, just enough to take the chill off the air. Then we’re moved down the hallway into a dark room with one lone fluorescent light flickering overhead, and forced to shed our coats at gunpoint.

The men pat us down, running their hands everywhere. Hands sliding between my legs, over my breasts, as I grit my teeth and restrain myself from crying out or flinching. I won’t give them the satisfaction.

They think they’re being thorough, and they search all the obvious places, but they miss a lot. My cyanide pill stays hidden in my hollow bracelet, my blades and handcuff key are still in my hair.

They’re stupid. They’re amateurs. That’s a good thing, right?

But there are so many of them, and we have no weapons.

Then one of the men barks “Sit!” and points at a row of folding chairs that face a blank wall. The blonde woman sits at the end of the row, I sit next to her, then Yakov, and Simon.

I glance at Yakov, and I see tears glittering in his eyes. He’s engaged to be married. She’s expecting.

He manages a woeful smile. “It’s all right,” he whispers miserably, but it isn’t, and we both know it.

As we settle in, I scan the room. Oil-stained concrete floor. A space-heater humming in the corner. A bunch of equipment that I don’t recognize at the back of the room.

Every second thunders by, jabbing at me. Our time is running out.

I’m in as little pain as I’m ever going to be in, from now until the end of my life.

That thought makes me furious. And it snaps me back to reality. I have to stop wallowing in hopelessness. I can’t focus on what might or might not happen to me in the future; I have no control over it. All I can do is look for opportunities. To escape, or to die quickly.

The blonde mutters something, and I lean in to hear what she said.

“That isn’t the real Cataha.”

“How do you know?” I whisper.

“Because I met him, before he started wearing his mask. This guy has a different body shape. And he smells different.”

I look at her in astonishment. “You met him and lived?”

“Barely.” Her voice is a bleak wasteland of despair. Because she was incredibly lucky to survive an encounter with him, and now her luck has run out.

I reach out and take her hand. “What’s your name?” I murmur.

“Darya.”

I roll the cyanide pill into her palm. “I’m Natasha,” I say, giving her the name on my fake papers. “Cyanide. Wait until the last second,” I whisper to her. “When you’re sure there’s no hope. You don’t have to use it if you don’t want to.”

She nods dully. “I’ll want to. You kept one for yourself?”

“Yes.”

I’m lying. But I am the one who failed to save this girl. I gave her hope, I promised her we’d be all right, and we still ended up here in the middle of a nightmare. I can’t free her, I can’t give her a future, a husband, children, freedom from terror. The only gift I can give her is to die on her own terms. It’s a horrible gift, a heartbreaking gift, but it’s better than letting the traffickers determine her fate.

I’ve got my little blades and a good working knowledge of human anatomy, and I hope I can puncture an artery and bleed out before the men start in on me.

I hear them moving around the back of the room, behind us. Why are they drawing this out?

I’m sick of feeling helpless.

I look at the fake Cataha and stretch my lips into a broad, deliberate smile. Nothing pisses off men like him more than seeing women who aren’t afraid. I should know; I was raised by exactly this kind of man.

He walks over and raps my head with the barrel of his gun. Not too hard; he must be saving the real pain for later.

“You think this is funny, bitch?” he snaps at me.

“We’ve got a friend who’s going to report us missing to the police. She’ll already have called.”

“Which police department? The Pevlovagrad police?” he sneers. He turns to the doorway behind us and calls, “Send him in!”

I twist around to see…and the Pevlovagrad police chief, Jakob Ivanov, walks through the doorway. The shock hits me like a tidal wave of ice-cold water. Rage at his betrayal chokes me.

Akim has always told us he is one of the good ones.

I glare at him in disgust, then return my attention to the fake Cataha. “There’s more than one police chief. More than one department.”

“And this is the woman you think will call the police for you?” He yells out again. “Send her in.”

I can’t keep the dismay and fear from my face.

No.

But yes.

Akim-Ludmilla walks through the door, her slate-gray eyes as cold as ice as she flicks me an indifferent glance, and my throat closes in horror. A pretty woman of about thirty years old, she has dark auburn hair, high cheekbones, and lines on her forehead. Her hair has a streak of gray. I’ve been told that happened after her sister was abducted years ago.

Yakov and Simon jerk in shock when they recognize her, their chairs squeaking. They flash me panicked looks.

Why would she do this to us? Why? Was Ludmilla bribed? Threatened?

She looks calm and unruffled.

I cannot believe this.

I had utter and complete faith in her. That’s why I sought her out when we started going on our rescue missions. She knows the contact information of most of our volunteers; she’s done anonymous interviews with them that were featured in Reforma. And now they’ll be hunted down and killed.

“Enjoy the show,” the fake Cataha barks. Suddenly I realize what’s bothering me about his voice – it’s completely normal. I’d heard that Cataha’s voice was raspy from the attack.

Darya’s right, he is a fake.

Then the movie starts playing, projected on the wall in front of us, and I go stiff with rage and disgust. The video shows a nude woman with a noose around her neck, in a brightly lit white room that’s devoid of furniture or decoration. Her hands are tied behind her back. There’s a beam running across the ceiling, and the rope is strung over it. Cataha is standing next to her, holding the end of the rope.

Darya stiffens with fear and looks at the screen. “I think that’s the real one,” she whispers to me.

On the screen, Cataha starts pulling the rope, grunting with effort, and horror floods through me.

The naked woman is lifted off the ground, and her legs kick frantically, then she’s lowered again seconds later. Cataha loosens the noose with his fingers.

She gasps and wheezes and makes inarticulate noises, her eyes enormous pools of despair. Cataha pulls the end of the rope again, and she’s hauled back into the air. Her legs thrash, and Cataha throws his head back and barks out a hideous laugh.

Yakov is sobbing, his shoulders shaking. Simon vomits on the floor. Tears stream down Darya’s face, but she doesn’t make a sound.

This is what they do to people who cross them.

I try to look away, and one of the men raps the gun against my head and snarls, “Watch!”

The hell with this. I’ve been taking self-defense classes continuously for almost a year now, and while I’m no match for these men in hand-to-hand combat, I have one thing to my advantage: the element of surprise. Nobody looks at skinny, nondescript me and thinks I have any fight in me. So while they’re busy underestimating me, I’m good for a quick, disabling strike, although after that I’m a dead girl walking.

I spring to my feet and kick him in the crotch before he has time to react, and yank the gun out of his hand. I will go down shooting. We all will.

I aim the gun at his throat and squeeze the trigger – and am shocked to see that it’s firing darts, not bullets.

Do all their guns have tranquilizer darts instead of bullets? Why? The only thing my panicked brain can come up with is that they are determined to keep us alive for the interrogation. It still feels off, but I don’t have time to ponder that right now.

The room explodes into chaos. Darya falls to the ground and crawls away on her hands and knees. Simon launches himself at one of our captors, and they crash to the ground in a tangle of limbs. I shoot Ludmilla in the chest, the dart quivering right above her left breast. The other men are shouting, rushing towards me.

I feel a strange crackling in the air, a nervous anticipation. There’s only one person who makes me feel that way.

Then the door flies open, and a man barrels through and bellows, “Enough!” And my heart stops in my chest.

Because the man is Sergei.