Chapter Twenty-two
Day sixteen…
WILLOW
Even with the pain pills that the doctor gave me again this morning, my face throbs with pain, and I’m so sick and weak I can barely stand. I can’t breathe through my nose, which is crusted with blood. My hair is greasy and matted.
And Vasily doesn’t look much better than I do. He hasn’t shaved, and his white button-down shirt has yellow pit stains. We’re back in the room where they bring the women they want to rape.
Now there are only two of them. Darya and Ludmilla. The tables are about ten feet apart.
Ludmilla is a mass of bruises, splattered across her like a gruesome abstract painting.
Darya’s cough is worse, racking her body. She’s shivering uncontrollably in the chill air. Neither one of us is going to last much longer here.
Vasily’s men are nervous, biting their lips, sneaking glances at him and at each other. They follow a leader who’s going mad in front of their eyes, and they’re royally screwed. Cataha has made enemies everywhere, and anyone who is gunning for him will be gunning for them. And he’s barely holding on to sanity by a thread, so where will that leave them when he finally snaps?
There’s got to be a way I can use this.
But when I glance from guard to guard, when I try to catch their eyes, they all glare and avoid any connection to my gaze.
Vasily rolls a cart towards me. When I see what’s on it, sick terror floods through my body. There are knives, and a jar of some yellowish liquid. He opens the jar and sets the top down on the tray, and even through my clogged nose, I catch a whiff of something so acrid that it must be acid.
“Last chance,” he rasps at me. “Prove you’re worthy to work by my side. These aren’t women, they’re livestock. In this business, you need to be able to eliminate some of the livestock at any time. To set an example for the others, or because the livestock isn’t following orders, or the livestock tried to escape. Livestock can be replaced. So which one are you going to eliminate today?”
This is an evil, horrible choice. I didn’t think I had any tears left, but tears fill my eyes and spill onto my cheeks.
Ludmilla. It’s going to have to be her.
Slowly, I approach, and as I draw close to her I suck in a gasp of horror. One of her ears has been sliced off. Her face is swollen and puffy from beatings, and her mouth is agape, her eyes blank with shock.
She’d bedeviled Cataha’s operation, threatened it, exposed it, and now he’s taking his revenge.
I lean down.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper to her. And I am. I can’t even summon the strength to be angry with her anymore. I’m just deeply sad.
She looks up at me, and she husks out words that I don’t understand at first. “The weather is so bad today.”
That was the code-phrase we developed when I was helping girls escape traffickers.
It means help is on the way.
But that’s not possible.
If there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that Vasily did not ever give her the opportunity to call for help.
She’s hallucinating from pain and fear and shock. That’s the only explanation.
“I’m sorry,” I say to her again, choking on a sob.
I look at Vasily. “I pick Ludmilla. Give me a gun.”
Please, please be that stupid.
But instead he grabs a knife and pushes it into my hand.
“Why are you so weak? Did I raise you to be this weak?” He hauls off and slaps me, and my face explodes in agony, my nose throbbing anew. Tears of pain leak from my eyes and dribble down my cheeks.
My vision blurring, I cast a frantic glance at the guards. They’re standing there, impassive, stone-faced.
“How long are you going to follow a lunatic?” I shout at them, desperate, clenching the knife in my shaking hand. “He’ll lead you to your deaths!”
They ignore me.
Vasily punches me in the stomach so hard that I double over and drop the knife. He kicks me in the ribs, savagely, with his steel-toed boots. Every square inch of me pulses with pain. The room is spinning around me so fast that I vomit on the floor.
Then he grabs the knife.
“Say goodbye to your little friend!” His voice goes high and mad. He lets out a hysterical giggle. “Get it? From the movie?”
He moves towards Darya.
I pull up the last of my strength from somewhere deep inside me. I push through the pain and dizziness and stagger to my feet. “No!” I cry, my voice weak and wavery. I snatch the knife from him and stumble towards Ludmilla.
“Yes! Yes!” Vasily crows in triumph. “Gut her like a fish!”
I sway where I stand. Vasily has strangled time. It has slowed to a hideous crawl. Every second lasts forever.
The room is dead silent, except for the muffled sound of Darya’s sobs. Ludmilla’s eyes are vacant, her mouth slack. I don’t think she’s even conscious anymore.
I have to do this. It’s the only way to save Darya. Ludmilla’s dead anyway.
Horror floods through me, and I barely feel human. Instead of gutting Ludmilla, I force myself to slash her neck, slicing cleanly through her carotid artery. She jerks back to consciousness. I’m screaming as I do it.
Her gurgling cries destroy me, and I fall to my knees. “No, no, no!” I’m wailing. But I was the one who did it. I was the one who held the knife.
“You fucking bitch! Too easy, too easy! She needed to suffer!” Vasily lunges at me and grabs me by the throat. I drop the knife and my vision goes red. I’m so weak that I can barely slap at his hands.
Then he lets go and he’s spinning around in circles. Like a bloody lunatic. He claps his hands over his ears and shuts his eyes. “Just let me kill her! She’s a bitch, she’s a whore, she’s a traitor! It’s your fault she’s dead!”
He thinks my mother is speaking to him right here, right now. It’s enough to make me believe in ghosts. If my mother were a ghost, this is what she’d do. Torment him. Protect me.
The thought makes me sob even harder.
Sergei. Sergei. Come for me. Please.
I swear I can almost feel him near me. I’ve sensed it in the past. I’ve known when he was near me. Could he be here, in this dark place?
I make myself climb to my feet. I’m dizzy, I’m sick, I hurt all over, but fear is draining away from me now. I think I’m in shock.
I stagger towards the tray, reaching for the weapons. I need a knife. I will kill Vasily, and consequences be damned. We’re all dead here anyway.
As I fumble for a knife, Vasily lunges for the jar of acid and grabs it. He runs over to Darya and flings it at her face. It sizzles and bubbles on her skin, and she makes a sound that I’ve near heard before, a scream of pure agony that rips me in two. Her body convulses on the table. The right side of her face is burning.
“Call the doctor, call the doctor!” I cry out to Vasily. I’ve got a knife in my hand again, but the room is full of armed men, and if I stab him, they’ll come after me and they won’t help Darya. “My mother wants you to call the doctor!”
“Did she talk to you?” His eyes are wild. “Right now? What did she say?”
I force myself to mouth a lie that makes me sick. “She said she loves you.”
He nods eagerly. “What else?”
“She wants you to get help for Darya!”
Darya isn’t screaming anymore. Why isn’t she screaming? She’s gone limp. Is she dead? I can’t think that she’s dead; I won’t accept it.
“Lies!” he shrieks at me.
Vasily falls to his knees and hugs himself, rocking and wailing.
“Liar! Liar! Liar! She would never say that! She wouldn’t dare!” he hisses. He stares at me. “Make her come back! Make her be here! Bring her back!” His eyes are wild with hope, as if I could actually do such a thing.
Vasily’s men are muttering among themselves.
I call out to them, desperate. “For God’s sake, he’s gone insane! He’s talking to his dead wife! He’ll be the death of you! Let us go now, and Sergei won’t kill you!”
They look back and forth from me to him.
A couple of them start edging for the door.
“If I tell Sergei to spare you, he will!” I’m pleading now. I look over at Darya. She isn’t moving at all, and I can’t tell if she’s even breathing.
And then I hear shouts, and gunshots, and I lunge for the knife that’s lying on the floor.
* * *
SERGEI
Icy wind whips my face as my men and I rush towards the old pulp mill. Dozens of us, clad in body armor, bristling with weapons.
It’s an excellent bet that this is where Cataha and his men have taken Willow. It fits the description that Sabina gave us, down to the chemical smell.
And it’s where Ludmilla’s GPS tracker led us.
She was the one who sent us the email this morning. Or rather, she set it up for auto-delivery days ago.
Sergei, if you get this, it means that Cataha has betrayed me. I delivered Willow to Cataha so that he would return my sister to me. I used Darya as bait. In case Cataha double crosses me, I put a GPS tracker in my body and set up this email to be sent to you if I don’t return home. Here are the coordinates. She listed a string of numbers. I know I will burn in hell for this, but I had to do whatever I needed to do, to save my sister.
I am praying that Willow is here. And that her father hasn’t murdered her yet.
She is alive, she must be. I’d feel it if she were dead.
Ludmilla will be here too. That treacherous whore. If she’s alive, she won’t be for long.
Andrei leads the charge, blasting open the door that leads into the building.
As we make our way in, four men are rushing down the hall towards us, hands in the air, their faces wild with terror. “We surrender!” one of them screams. “Willow said if we helped you, you wouldn’t kill us! We’ll take you to her, we’ll do it!”
What the hell is going on in there?
We keep our guns trained on them as we run down the hallway, turn right, down another hallway, and into a room that stinks of blood and acid and burning flesh.
Two women on tables. One dead, her throat gaping open – Ludmilla. Half of Darya’s face is abraded and raw, the skin burned away.
Vasily’s men are standing back, watching – as Willow stabs Vasily in the gut. Her face is battered and swollen, there’s a filthy bandage taped to her nose, and I barely recognize her. Her hair is sticking up at crazy angles, the extensions gone.
As my men and I rush in, the guards don’t even try to put up a fight. They all throw their arms up and sink to their knees.
Vasily’s face is dumb with shock. The front of his shirt is dark with his blood.
Willow is screaming at him as she raises the knife again, wordlessly, like a wild beast, her face twisted into a horrible mask, and I feel as if the knife is going into my own heart. Because this is my fault. I failed to keep her safe.
The knife plunges into his stomach one more time, and he howls in agony. I reach them, and Andrei pulls her off Vasily.
Then I unleash my full fury on her father, fists and boots. His screams rip the air apart and call to the savage beast inside me.
Bones are snapping. Blood sprays in hot, wet arcs.
This isn’t my usual slow, deliberate kill. I’ve lost all control. Pyotr’s shrill cries are in my ears again, and I am crushing and stamping like a madman. Slavik is by my side, stomping Vasily’s leg so hard that bones protrude. Slavik was Vasily’s victim too. His back still bears the scars of the men who got off on stubbing out their cigars on his flesh.
Vasily is gurgling out pleas for mercy. Mercy of the kind his family never showed to me.
Until all too soon he’s silent. A pulped, bloody mess on the floor, a human shit-pile.
I glance up at Andrei. He’s shielding Willow with his body as she sags against him, her eyes unfocused. Darya is gone – my men must have taken her from the room already.
I hurry over and gather Willow into my arms, lifting her like a child, and a million-ton weight lifts from my shoulders. She rests her battered face on my shoulder with a whimper that tears my heart.
As I leave, I flick a glance at Andrei. “Restrain the guards.”
“She said you wouldn’t kill us!” one of them screams in protest. I see six in this room, all on their knees. One of them reaches for his gun, and Andrei blows his head off before I can even blink.
I only hire the best.
“I won’t kill you. We’re turning you in to the police for kidnapping, assault and rape. Enjoy prison, bitches,” I growl, and I hurry from the room. We have a helicopter waiting outside, and my Willow needs to be in the hospital.