Girl Undercover 8 & 9: Traitor & The Smiley Killer (17 page)

He sighed, putting a hand over mine and squeezing it. “I guess you’re right. Even so, to not have given her a gun…” He gazed before him with empty eyes.

“Even so, nothing. I’m sure Alyssa would’ve found a way to get to her anyway. She did with Burt, whom you
had
provided with a gun. The question is, what do we do now? Look through the rest of the house again? Should we check the garage? The shed?”

We had parked Ian’s Honda in front of the two-car garage next to the house.

“Yeah, let’s start with the garage and the shed, then we can go through the house again. Not that I think they’re in here, but it doesn’t hurt to give it a closer look.”

As Ian started walking toward the doorway leading out to the spacious hallway, the sound of a door opening reached our ears. We stopped dead in our tracks, gazing at one another.

“That was the front door, wasn’t it?” I whispered to Ian.

“It sure sounded like it.” He brought his gun up to his chin and approached the wide opening that led out to the long foyer. I did the same with my own gun, following him as he neared the kitchen entry way.

Something heavy crashing to the ground outside the kitchen made us both pause. Ian threw a glance at me, having placed his back against the wall right before the doorway, getting ready to face who or what hid on the other side. He rounded the corner and, legs spread wide apart, pointed his gun at whoever was out there.

He lowered the gun and rushed toward the front door. I turned the corner and saw Ian squatting next to Burt, who was lying on the floor, face up and bleeding.

I ran up to them, squatting myself beside Ian. Burt was panting on the ground, the blood coming from several stab wounds I noted as my gaze moved down his body.

“Go get some towels and sheets so we can stop the bleeding,” Ian said to me. “Upstairs. But be careful. She may be here.”

“Yes…” Burt mumbled. “Be careful… she’s crazy and will say and do anything. I was stupid enough to believe her…”

Chapter 6

Torn between listening to what Burt was telling us and getting materials to stop his bleeding, I stared at him as he spoke, his dark skin having taken on a sickly ashen tone. I forced myself to get to my feet and run up the stairs, keeping Burt’s words at the front of my mind. Alyssa could be anywhere, maybe in the house even. I squeezed my gun in my hand as I entered the bedroom where Ian had brought Nadja and grabbed as many towels and sheets as I could find, then dashed down the stairs again. Ian remained next to Burt’s splayed body, pressing his hands against what appeared to be the biggest of the black man’s wounds.

I handed Ian the biggest towel I had found and ripped the sheets into smaller, more manageable pieces.

Instantly attuned to what I was doing, Ian tied the long segments of sheet around Burt’s smaller wounds, having placed the towel over the big one and making Burt press on it. When I was done shredding the sheets, I pressed a couple of the smaller towels against the wounds.

“What happened, Burt?” I asked, trying to look into his half-closed snake eyes. Sweat coated his face and it seemed to get paler by the second. “Can you talk?”

He made a downward move with his head, barely a nod, then, “Alyssa came to the house…”

“When?” Ian asked. “Why didn’t you call me?”

Burt’s tongue came out and he tried to lick his lips. “She told me if I wanted to save Nadja, I had to come with her right away and leave the gun here… So I went… I know it was stupid, but I wanted to save Nadja… You have to go there… save Nadja… She’s still alive.”

“Where is she?” I asked, pressing the towel harder against Burt’s wound. Our efforts seemed to be helping because he was looking a tiny bit better and no blood was coming out.

“In the woods… tied to a tree… Behind the garage… There’s a creek there… She is in the glade, beneath the mountain. You need to go help her. Alyssa will kill her…”

“Where is Alyssa?” Ian asked, putting a folded towel under Burt’s head.

“I don’t know… I just woke up… When I got to the tree where she’d tied Nadja, she hit me in the head with something and I passed out.” He sucked in a breath. “When I woke up, I was bleeding from several cuts. She must have stabbed me, but not enough to kill me. Kill me immediately. She was gone, so I made my way back to the house to call you… She’ll kill Nadja… you must go back and save her…”

Ian and I gazed at each other over Burt’s body.

“We need to get him to an emergency room ASAP,” I said. “If we just drop him there, he’ll be admitted as a John Doe. Or, even better, he can give a false name and claim to have lost his wallet. When he’s been given enough care, we can come get him.” I glanced down at Burt. “You can call us from the hospital.”

“First you need to go save Nadja,” Burt said, his voice weak. “Then take me… I’ll be fine now.”

“He’s right,” I said to Ian. “We need to get Nadja away from Alyssa’s clutches. The longer she’s with her, the bigger the chance that she’ll die. How about you go look for Nadja and I stay here with Burt? You know the geography better than me around here.”

“No, go both,” Burt murmured. “It’s better. If you’re two, you’ll be able to defend yourself if she tries something… She won’t be able to take you out the way she did with me…”

Ian sighed. “It’s true. It’s better if we go together. The darkness will make it a lot riskier what with her being a hybrid. Her night vision might be better than ours.”

“You know where the glade is that he’s talking about?” I asked.

“Yes, I think so.” He glanced down at Burt. “It’s close, isn’t it?”

“Yes, only about five minutes’ walk straight behind the garage…” Burt managed to say.

“Okay,” Ian said and got to his feet. “We’ll bring the spotlight with us. Let’s go. It shouldn’t take very long for us to get her back to the house. Provided she’s in the same spot still.”

I looked down at the black man, who had stopped sweating so profusely now, not feeling good about leaving Burt there all alone, but I also wasn’t comfortable about Ian going out in the dark woods on his own. But Burt was right; we stood a better chance if we went to get Nadja together.

“Let’s move him into a corner and put a gun in his hands,” I said. “That way he can defend himself if she all of a sudden decides to show up here and tries to kill him.”

Ian nodded and, together, we carefully lifted Burt and positioned him so that his back was placed against one of the corners in the hallway, facing the front door. Then we went to pick up the handgun Burt had left on a kitchen chair per Alyssa’s request and placed it in his hands. Shortly thereafter, Ian and I left via the front door.

The full moon was hiding behind a few gauzy clouds now, making it darker outside, but with the spotlight in our hands, we had all the light we needed. Ian took the lead, going around the wide garage attached to the house, shining the light before us all the while. The trees started to grow only feet after the garage ended, and there were many of them, growing close to one another, most of them tall and their branches thick with needles or leaves.

Ian brushed aside a few branches, but before he entered the woods, he paused and turned to me. “Be sure to stay close to me.”

“I will,” I said, then, urging him on by placing a hand on his back, I added, “Let’s hurry. The sooner we can find Nadja, the sooner we can get back to Burt and get him medical attention.”

“Right,” Ian said. He pushed forth between the trees, me following right behind. It soon became clear that others had walked the path we were on.

We quickly advanced deeper into the woods, neither of us saying a word and keeping our guns at the ready. I could sense that Ian was tense like a wire, just like I was. Alyssa had an advantage over us wherever she was—due to the strong light in Ian’s hand, she’d instantly spot us. From several yards away. Not only that, like Ian had already mentioned, unlike us regular humans, she might also have better night vision, exactly like Burt had claimed to have. She definitely had the upper hand.

Much to my relief and maybe surprise, we soon heard what sounded like water trickling forth somewhere. We must be getting close to the glade.

“Do you think that’s the creek he mentioned?” I asked Ian.

“Yes,” he replied. “The glade should come up soon.
Arghh…”

Ian suddenly fell to the ground and the spotlight bounced off, ending up a few yards away from us. Terror shot through me.
What the fuck just happened?

“Ouch, my bloody foot…” Ian moaned.

I sank down beside him. He was sitting up, hugging his knee.

“I think I broke my bloody ankle,” he moaned. “Fucking cunt!”

I relaxed somewhat as Ian kept cursing like the worst kind of sailor. It seemed he’d tripped on something and twisted his ankle.

“What happened?” I said as I went over to pick up the big flashlight to get a better view of Ian.

“I stepped into some fucking hole or something… Goddamn, it hurt. But I’m fine now.” He pressed out a grin that didn’t quite convince me he was fine.

“You scared the living hell out of me. Let me help you up.” I shone the light on Ian, who was trying to push himself up into a standing position, struggling to do so.

“Here,” I said and put his arm around my shoulders. “Just grab on to me. You ready?”

On the count of three we got him back up into a standing position.

“Ouch!” he moaned again.

“What now?” I asked.

“Bloody hell, I think I may have in fact broken it. I can’t walk on it.” He sighed heavily. “This is just what we needed.”

“It’ll be okay,” I said even if I couldn’t agree with him more; that
was
the last we’d needed. But we had to make the best of the situation. “I’ll help you walk. Just keep that arm around my neck.”

I made him swing it over my shoulders again, and then we started to walk again, Ian holding the spotlight as I was busy holding onto him and my gun. I thanked my lucky stars for being such a gym rat; if not, we would have been so screwed right now.

We reached the glade a couple of minutes later, the close-growing trees suddenly giving way to a wide open space. As we walked into it, we saw the moss-covered side of a low mountain at the other end, some trees at the bottom of it.

Stopping a few steps into the clearing, Ian shone the spotlight slowly over the trees that surrounded the glade like a wall on either side of the mountain. What must be the creek glittered behind a couple of trees as the light slid over the water. He stopped the light as it hit what appeared to be a human form around one of the trees in front of the mountain. We had to get closer to be sure it was indeed a person because of the leafy branches that partly covered the body, all the while worrying about Alyssa seeing us, me having to help a hurt Ian walk. I consoled myself with the fact that she probably didn’t have a gun at least, or she’d have used that to get Burt to go with her to see Nadja, not resorting to emotional blackmail.

Exactly like Burt had described, there was Nadja, looking like she was tied to a tree and her mouth covered by a gag. Her head hung, which suggested that she was unconscious.

“You see her?” Ian asked me as we were a few yards away.

“Yes.”

We walked toward her, both mindful of Alyssa suddenly jumping out from somewhere. With Ian handicapped now, we were a lot more vulnerable. She might not have a gun, but she obviously had some kind of knife that she had used to stab Burt repeatedly, not to mention a weapon she had used to slug him over the head. While his wounds had been bloody, they didn’t seem to be immediately life-threatening. Had it been her intention for him to survive them?

Only she would know.

As we neared her, we could see that Nadja’s eyes were closed, further indicating that she must be out. She was wearing one of the T-shirts and shorts I had given her. There were a few scratches on her arms and a couple on her legs. What must be coagulated blood streaked one of her cheeks. Rope encircled her ankles and her arms were pulled backward. From our current vantage point, we couldn’t see if her hands were also tied around the thick tree trunk, but they probably were.

“Hold this,” Ian said, handing me the flashlight as we reached her, “and hold it so it doesn’t shine directly into her face. And keep an eye open for Alyssa.” As long as he didn’t have to walk, putting all the weight on one foot, he was okay on his own.

He turned his attention to Nadja, removing the gag that was tied around her head. She didn’t seem to notice his actions. He threw the white material aside and slapped her cheeks lightly. “Nadja, wake up!”

She gave a light moan, turning her head, but she kept her eyes closed. Ian slapped her cheek harder. “Nadja! Can you hear me?”

She moaned again, and she finally opened her eyes.

“Nadja,” I said, my gaze flicking between our surroundings and Nadja now, my gun at the ready. “It’s me and Ian. Wake up. We’re going to help you get out of this.”

“Shine the light behind the tree,” Ian said and hobbled around the trunk, using the tree trunk for support. “I need to see how she’s tied up and untie her.”

Taking a few steps around the tree to see what was going on back there myself, I shone the light behind it. Both Nadja’s hands and feet were tied around the thick trunk with white rope, and the person who had done it had used several knots. In fact, there were so many of them and they were so intricate-looking, I wasn’t sure we’d be able to ever undo them.

“How are we going to open up those?” I asked Ian, who was inspecting them closely in the light I provided him. “We should’ve brought a knife.”

“Let me give them a try,” he said and sank down to his haunches. “As you know, I’m pretty dexterous, so maybe I’ll get lucky...” He grinned at me, his eyes gleaming with mischief.

I rolled my eyes, not about to deign his silliness with a comment of my own.

“If I fail,” he continued, “you can go back to the house and get a knife. I can use the flashlight on my cell to see back here and keep trying in the meantime. But give me a minute before you leave.”

He pulled out his cell and switched on the light, illuminating the knots at the bottom of the trunk while sitting cross-legged on the ground now.