Disruptor (5 page)

The too-big clothes were the best she could
get out of the shelter’s donation box, but even if she could have
found something that fit she would have taken the larger sizes to
hide her form. While she was far from looking like a body builder,
she had more muscle than a homeless and presumably malnourished
woman should. The kind of physique that would be noticed, remarked
upon, and worst of all – remembered. Angel always said they looked
like women UFC or MMA fighters, cut and solid. Nicole said they
looked like Amazons.

Dani didn’t care what she looked like, as
long as she could keep anyone from hurting her ever again.

Despite the poor nutrition and sporadic
workouts, her muscle tone was still good months after her escape.
That’s the way her body had been designed. Or rather, redesigned.
She’d been scrawny once, and weak. Vulnerable. The lab had changed
that. In a way she was grateful, but not enough to stay and keep
being the director’s favorite lab rat.

Warm-up done, Dani moved on to a circuit
workout of fast-paced, varied exercises. She missed the weights and
other equipment in the lab’s gym but did the best she could. Then
she moved on to the route she’d been using as a makeshift running
track, taking it easy on the first lap in case anything had been
moved. With every lap she ran faster, until she was dripping with
sweat and had lost count of how many times she’d been around the
track.

Next came her favorite part – parkour. She’d
never even heard the word before the lab. Once she began to accept
her body’s new abilities, she’d grown quickly to love the challenge
of parkour. She launched into the air, hands finding a hold on a
massive piece of industrial equipment left behind to rot. Finding
handholds and footholds, she climbed rapidly to the top. From there
she leapt to another structure, then back to the floor, then up and
over the remains of an assembly line. In and out of busted windows.
Somersaults over work stations. The adrenalin high rocketed through
her bloodstream and she realized she was grinning.

Dani worked her way through every level of
the factory until she came to a stop on the roof. She leaned over,
hands on her knees, and gulped in air. The cool breeze felt good on
her skin. From this vantage she could see the lake to the east and
Cabrini on all other sides. In the distance to the north, the
lights of downtown Point Sable beckoned. She turned away from that
sight and focused on her more immediate surroundings.

Accessing her night vision and dialing up her
hearing, she looked out over the lake first. A few ships, nothing
out of the ordinary. The water was placid and smelled faintly of
chemicals and organic rot.

This area of Cabrini was still relatively
quiet after the police raid on the factory. It would be a few more
hours before most would venture out of their bolt holes again. The
bass thump of hip-hop came from a club three blocks away. From
somewhere closer came the scent of marijuana drifting on the wind
and mixing with the smells from the lake. A car crawled by slowly,
too slowly. Dani tensed and tried to zero in on it. Something was
off with the engine, some kind of clunking noise. She relaxed and
the car limped along to its destination.

Dani shifted her senses back to normal and
returned to the ground floor of the factory. Still no one around,
her stuff right where she’d left it. She put on her t-shirt, pulled
the phone from her hoodie then draped the garment over her shoulder
and left. The night was just as quiet on street level. Good.

She’d been avoiding the shelter but now she
needed a shower. Surely he wouldn’t be returning. Rich guys like
that had lawyers who could get their community service moved to
somewhere safer. So maybe she could risk it. Scope the area for a
fancy car first, then go in and take a look around. Make sure he
wasn’t there. God, she wanted a shower and a meal, and to not have
to worry about stuff like this.

But she didn’t regret helping him. She didn’t
regret coming to the aid of any of the people she’d helped. It had
brought her trouble, minor injuries, too much attention. After
beating down nine members of the Dogtown crew, they were on the
lookout for her. That didn’t scare her, but it did make for an
annoyance. There were certain areas of Cabrini she now needed to
avoid unless she was in the mood for a fight.

As she headed toward the shelter she turned
on the phone. She’d been keeping it off to conserve the battery.
Once a day she checked it for messages. There were always several,
most from girls. Maybe this was the number he gave to the ones he
wasn’t seriously interested in seeing again. Whatever, there sure
were a lot of them, and they all sounded dumb as a box of rocks.
That fit with the media image of him as a rich, useless playboy. So
did the drunk and disorderly charge that got him community service.
But there was some elusive quality to the messages he’d left for
her that suggested there was more to Kevin Moynihan.

Tonight’s message was no different. “Hi, it’s
Kevin. How are you?” He laughed. “Stupid question, huh? So I guess
you’re not going to call me back at this point. I try to tell
myself I’m not stalking you, since I’m basically talking into a
void here. But it does feel weird to keep calling when you’ve had
time to call back and haven’t. So I’m going to stop. I’m going to
try to stop. I feel compelled to check on you. Repay this debt I
owe you. You saved my life, saved me from serious injury. I don’t
even know your name, and I can’t thank you in person. All I can do
is hope you’ve listened to at least one of these messages, and that
you know how grateful I am. And that my offer stands. If you need
help, all you have to do is call.” He paused for so long that she
thought he might have hung up.

But he hadn’t. “I hope you’re safe. Good
night, whoever you are.” She thought she could detect a smile in
his voice and remembered his smile from the time she’d seen him in
the shelter’s kitchen.

Just a rich, useless playboy. That’s all he
was.

She shut off the phone and tucked it in her
pocket. Not much battery left. She might as well sell it soon.
Right now a shower and a meal at the shelter was all she
wanted.

A scream split open the night, breaking her
plans for a peaceful evening. Dani kicked her senses into high gear
and located the sounds of a scuffle two blocks away, at the lake
shore. As she ran, she shrugged into her hoodie and pulled the hood
up to hide her face.

Another scream sounded, a female voice. Dani
skidded to a halt and took cover behind the edge of a building to
survey the situation. Three men, dark clothes, hard faces, and
guns. Four women. More like girls, really, they looked so young.
The girls had their hands tied and wore skimpy clothes, cheap
cocktail dresses, short shorts and tank tops, wobbly high heels.
Smeared eye make-up and terror on their faces. They were being
herded from a boat into a panel van at gunpoint.

A fire burned in Dani’s gut, fueled by
memories. Five years ago she was one of those girls. Her and Nicole
and Angel and poor, dead Cassidy. They were sold to be lab rats
instead of sex slaves, but that didn’t make them any less property.
What the lab had given Dani didn’t outweigh her lack of choice in
the matter, the loss of her freedom. When she escaped just a few
months ago, she’d sworn she’d never be anyone’s property again.

And she wouldn’t stand to see anyone else
forced into that role either.

One of the girls still had some defiance
under her tears and smeared make-up. She let loose with a torrent
of angry-sounding…Russian, maybe? That was Dani’s best guess. One
of the men raised his hand to hit her but was stopped by another.
Dani balled her hands into fists and stepped out from behind the
building. She’d have to keep an eye on the guns and do this fast,
but she knew she could do it.

The man who’d stopped one from hitting the
girl took something out of his jacket and pressed it to the girl’s
stomach. She screamed and dropped to her knees.

A stun gun. He had a stun gun. Dani
froze.

Another burst of Russian, this time from the
man with the stun gun. He leaned over the girl he’d shocked, yanked
her hair back so she was forced to look up at him. More Russian,
quieter this time, menacing. A threat of more harm, probably.

The other two men shoved the girls into the
panel van. The man with the stun gun turned. Dani ducked behind the
building. Shame filled her, and fear. The urge to run, the need to
escape, the absolute terror of electric shock – it all churned
together in a nauseating mix that nearly had her throwing up in the
alley.

Get a grip. Get a fucking grip.

The van started and the back door was slammed
shut. Dani peeked around the chipped brick and got a clear line of
sight on the man with the stun gun. She’d bet money he was the
leader, if she had any. Quickly, she activated the camera in her
left eye and snapped a picture of him. She had no way of
downloading it right now, much less running any kind of search, but
she wanted the image anyway. He climbed into the passenger seat of
the van and the vehicle drove away.

Time for more parkour. Dani followed via
rooftops.

Kevin felt the weight of his mother’s gaze
but chose to stare into his seltzer water rather than meet her
eyes.

His sister Olivia said, “Did Paulson get your
community service moved?”

Paulson, the lawyer who handled the family’s
personal affairs, had indeed called Kevin to discuss exactly that.
Kevin had declined, insisting he would return to the shelter when
cleared by his doctor. “It’s not necessary.”

Olivia gaped. “You were nearly beaten to
death! How can it not be necessary?”

Kevin had long ago mastered the perfect
breezy, insouciant smile. He deployed it now. “Some bruises and a
couple of broken ribs hardly equals nearly beaten to death. Don’t
be so melodramatic, Liv.”

His sister glared. “I was in the emergency
room, brat. And I’m a doctor. I know what condition you were in, so
don’t call me melodramatic. And don’t call me
Liv
, either.
You know I hate that.”

Dorothy Moynihan broke her silence. “Kevin, I
do hope you’ll at least have a driver take you from now on. One
with security experience. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to
finish out your service at the shelter, but there’s also no need to
pretend this didn’t happen.”

Her tempered response surprised Kevin.
Usually their mother was just as hard on him as his siblings. “I’ll
think about that, Mom. Thank you for the suggestion.” He gave
Olivia a pointed look. “And for being the voice of reason.”

“I’m just glad to hear you’re not going to
try using this as an excuse to weasel out of your community
service,” Dorothy said.

Kevin couldn’t help but feel deflated. Had
they really thought he would try to get out of the rest of his
hours? Did they think so little of him? Sean entered the parlor
with half-hearted greetings for all. Dorothy rose from her seat to
join him at the small wet bar by the bay window.

“Grace is still at her parents,” Olivia said
quietly, her gaze on their older brother.

Kevin drew his eyebrows together. “Is it
spring break? Where’s the kids?”

“With Grace. She took them out of
school.”

Uh oh. That didn’t sound good. All of a
sudden his wounded ego didn’t seem so important.

A member of the staff announced dinner. Sean
led their mother to the dining room. Olivia followed. Kevin stood
to do the same, pain twinging in his chest. If he was going to use
his injuries to get out of anything, it would have been this
dinner. But Olivia had insisted that their mother was worried about
him, so he’d reluctantly agreed to attend. Now he had to wonder if
there was any truth to that. Dorothy wasn’t the most demonstrative
of mothers. Even so, he’d expected more than a backhanded
compliment that was more of an insult.

His phone rang and he stopped in the foyer to
answer it.

“Did you mean what you said about helping
me?”

A strange thrill shot through him. “You’re
the girl who saved me, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” A pause, and for a moment he was
afraid she’d hung up. “I need information about an address. Who
owns it. Police reports about it. Whatever you can find.”

“Uh.” That was not what he’d expected. “I
don’t understand.”

“There’s not much battery left on this phone.
I don’t have time to run a decent search. Can you do it?”

He had a hundred questions but asked only
one. “How do I get back in touch with you if the phone dies?”

“Find me at the shelter.” She gave him the
address she wanted investigated and ended the call.

Kevin memorized it and headed for the door.
On his way out he found a maid and said to her, “Tell my family I
had to go. A friend needs me.”

The address was in Lincoln Heights. Russian
mob territory. He had a bad feeling about this.

***

Dani was perched on the roof next door to
where the girls had been taken. The traffickers – she knew in her
bones that’s what they were – had the run of an old brownstone,
four stories high and in crap shape on the outside. She’d made a
quiet circuit of all four sides, learning what she could.

None of it was good.

Two men guarded the front door, two others on
the back. All armed. Numerous men were inside the brownstone.
Fine-tuning her hearing, she could make out three different
televisions, a cash-counting machine, and various conversations.
Mostly in Russian, though one guy sounded like he was practicing
his English along with the TV. A card game on the second floor and
someone cooking in the first floor kitchen.

It was safer to assume they were all armed.
Hell, they were Russian. It was a given. Dani stuck mostly to the
Cabrini area but she knew Lincoln Heights belonged to the Russian
gangsters. Staying out of their territory was the smart thing to
do.