Hide From Evil (38 page)

He’d been caught up in the firefight, but now he realized she hadn’t said anything since the shooting stopped. “Krista, answer me. Are you hurt? Tell me where you are.” Dread settled over him like a wet blanket when she didn’t respond.

But the voice that answered him wasn’t Krista’s.

Sean saw his own dread reflected in the others’ faces as they recognized the deep male voice that replied, “She’s with me. And now she’s going to find out firsthand what happens when you try to fuck with me.”

It had been torture for Krista to hunker in the dark like a coward. The shooting went on for only a couple of minutes, but to Krista it had been endless. When Jorgensen confirmed that some of the men were using armor-piercing bullets, she’d gone cold with fear and guilt.

She should be able to help. She was the one who’d dragged them all into this and she was hiding like a coward because Sean didn’t want to worry.

To be fair, Cole had also cautioned her to stay behind and watch for anyone else when the shooting started, but she felt lower than dirt, watching as he and the others ran into the thick of it while she stayed behind.

“Karev’s dead.” Relief mixed with anger at the news Maxwell’s thug had shot him. He was a disgusting, violent psychopath and the world was better off without him.

But she’d wanted Karev to have his day in court, for the murders of Nico and Aurelia Salvatore and for making money peddling underage girls.

But there was satisfaction in knowing Maxwell would have to suffer through a trial, watch his empire crumble as the truth of who he was and the atrocities he’d committed were revealed to the world. Margaret would get her due as well. Since she’d knowingly conspired with both her husband and Maxwell to traffic in young girls and used the money to finance her political campaign…Krista was thinking a hefty stay in a federal prison would be in order.

After the scene she’d witnessed in the warehouse, Krista had no illusions about the Maxwells presenting a united front. It would be fun to watch them go after each other like a couple of rabid wolverines.

But they needed to make it out of here first. She was frozen in place, listening so intently to the gunshots and the shouting that she didn’t even hear Maxwell until his gun was pressed to her head.

She started to yell but Maxwell’s hand clamped around her throat. He yanked off both her earpiece and her mic and fisted them in his hand. Krista struggled as he dragged her deeper into the shadows, away from the others.

Away from Sean.

She struggled and kicked, and landed a blow to his knee that made him stumble. She wrenched herself free of his hold and staggered as she tried to get her feet under her, and waited for the punch of a bullet hitting her in the back.

But it wasn’t a bullet that froze her in her tracks.

“Stop, or he’ll shoot her.”

Krista looked up and saw that a man—the big, bearded goon who tried to kill her and Sean before—stood just a few feet away, his arm locked around the neck of a terrified girl.

“Careful.” Maxwell’s whisper sent a tremor through her. “Safety is off, and Cushman has an itchy trigger finger.”

She felt the barrel of the gun in the base of her spine. “Walk,” he ordered. “And you,” he snapped to the whimpering girl. “Shut the fuck up.”

The girl’s whimpers faded to the occasional sniffle.

In the distance the gunfire went silent. She heard the tinny sound of a voice yelling into the earpiece Maxwell still held in his hand. As they walked, he held it up to his ear and chuckled. Krista cringed as he shoved the earpiece into her right ear. “He sounds worried. He should be.”

Tears stung the backs of her eyes when she heard Sean’s voice. “Krista, where are you? Answer me!” He was in control, not giving in to fear yet, trying not to think the worst. She tried to reply, but Maxwell already held the mic to his lips.

“She’s with me. And now she’s going to find out firsthand what happens when you try to fuck with me.”

Maxwell threw the earpiece and mic off into the darkness and forced Krista into a fast walk while Cushman kept hold of the girl. Maxwell kept the gun buried in her spine as he dragged her behind a building whose peeling sign read
JENSEN FORGE
, and made a phone call. “We need a pickup. Now. Behind the Forge office building.”

Krista tried to slow him down without being obvious. They weren’t far from the others, and they would be combing the darkness for any sign of her.

They traveled deeper into the maze of empty buildings and Krista kept her gaze straight ahead, as her brain wrapped around the fact that David Maxwell, who’d sat across a dinner table and asked her high school self about her college plans, was now marching her through the darkness at gunpoint. She prayed for the sound of footsteps, a shout, any sign that Sean and the others were close.

An engine roared as a car approached.
Please let it be them.
Her meager hopes died a swift death as a dark sedan screeched to a halt in front of them. The trunk popped open and Maxwell, surprisingly strong and solid under his cashmere coat, muscled her over to it.

She had a random flashback to a self-defense course she had taken in college after Nicole’s attack.
Never get in the car.

If she had been alone, she might have tried to make a break for it. But Maxwell’s goon was squeezing the girl’s neck, the muzzle of his gun pressed tightly to her head.

She didn’t resist as Maxwell shoved her into the trunk. The girl started struggling in earnest.

The thug tumbled the girl in on top of her and slammed the lid shut. The girl’s soft whimpers filled the dark space. Krista reached out and found her hand in the tangle of arms and legs. Thin fingers clutched Krista’s hand in a desperate grip.

“It’s going to be okay,” Krista said. “They’re going to find us.”

She didn’t believe it for a second, but there was nothing else she could think to say.

Sean took off at a dead run in the direction of Krista’s last known position. He heard shouting behind him, but he couldn’t make out the words over the roaring in his head. All he could think of was Krista with that slime bag.

She’s going to find out firsthand what happens when you try to fuck with me
.
God, Sean didn’t want to think about what that might mean, but that didn’t stop the horror show in his head.

Please let her be okay.
It was like a mantra in his head as he ran his flashlight beam through the darkness, looking for any sign of them. Footsteps crunched behind him and Brooks and Ibarra joined him to search the immediate area.

“Footprints,” Brooks said, illuminating where the gravel had been disturbed. “Looks like he dragged her a little here.” Sean saw the grooves in the dirt where Krista’s feet had slid.

“Someone else is with them,” Ibarra said as his light picked up another set of drag marks.

“It’s the girl,” Sean said grimly. “The one who ran off from the truck.”

They took off in the direction of the footsteps. Maxwell had only one man with him—better than decent odds if they could find an angle to get a clear shot. He heard voices up ahead and picked up his pace.

Sirens wailed in the distance, signaling the approach of the paramedics and crime scene techs. All they had to do was catch up.

There was the roar of an engine, a car screaming to a stop. A female voice crying, pleading in Russian.
“Please don’t put me in there. Please not in the dark again.”

They switched direction, toward the street and pounded as fast as they could go. “They’re on Marginal Way. They’re being forced into a vehicle,” Sean gasped.

He heard the unmistakable
thunk
of a trunk slamming closed and willed his body to go faster.

Tires squealed as he rounded the side of a building. Sean drew his Glock but the Mercedes was going so fast he knew that if he managed to hit the driver or blow out a tire the ensuing accident would kill Krista as easily as a bullet would have.

He watched helplessly as the taillights disappeared into the darkness.

“Driver is in a black Mercedes headed north on East Marginal Way.” Ibarra’s voice snapped Sean out of his inertia. He had to get his head back into the game. Detach himself as much as he could and treat it like it was any other mission.

He summoned up that layer of calm, used it to muffle the panic screaming inside him at the thought of where Maxwell was taking Krista and what he was going to do to her.

“I need to get down to the station to get the girls processed,” Cole said over the earpiece, his voice grim. “Petersen, take a team out to Maxwell’s house and I’ll send another team to his downtown offices.”

“He knows we’re onto him. You really think he’s going to take her to his house?” Sean snapped as he, Ibarra, and Brooks took off at a jog toward their car.

“No,” Cole said calmly, “but if we can get a hold of his wife or any of his associates, they might be able to provide a lead. Until we nail down the car’s location, it’s our only option.”

“The three of us will head out—” Sean started, only to be interrupted by Cole.

“No, take my car and meet me down at the station. You need to let me handle this, Sean,” Cole said. “There are going to be enough questions and problems with what happened tonight. When we take Maxwell, I want to make sure it’s by the book.”

“Fuck that. While you’re following the rules, you’re going to get Krista killed,” Sean snapped.

“Don’t forget you’re still wanted in connection with the murder of that deputy. I’ll lock you up in a holding cell if it’s what I have to do to keep you from interfering.”

They reached the car. Good thing Cole wasn’t riding with them. Sean didn’t think he’d be able to resist the urge to pound the shit out of his sister’s fiancé. His jaw pulsed as they climbed into the car, Ibarra driving, Sean shotgun, Brooks in the back.

“I care about Krista too, Sean,” Cole said. “I don’t want to see anything happen to her any more than you do.”

Sean ripped the earpiece out of his ear, feeling like his head was going to explode. He wanted to scream at Cole not to fucking patronize him. He had no idea what Sean was feeling right now. How Krista had somehow ripped away the fog of numbness he hadn’t been able to escape from since his release from prison.

How just being around her had dragged him kicking and screaming back to life and now he was afraid he’d lose his fucking mind for good if he lost her.

How he was nearly paralyzed with terror at the idea of that monster getting his hands on her, at the idea that she might die and he’d never have the chance to tell her that everything he’d said in anger was bullshit. That really he thought she was the most beautiful, brave, amazing woman to ever barrel into his life. That while he’d never been in love before, as crazy as it sounded, he was pretty sure if he ever did it would feel a hell of a lot like this.

When he brought his hand to his face it was shaking. He rolled his window down several inches and sucked in a lungful of cool night air. “I don’t like this. Sitting on our asses waiting for the police to handle it when we’re ten times better prepared to handle something like this.”

“True,” Brooks’s voice came from the back seat. “But there’s nothing we can do until we get a lead on her location. And for now, the cops are the best resource.”

The darkness closed in on Krista like a fist, the air thick as the sound of panicked breathing from both herself and the girl filled the trunk. Where was he taking them? She was totally disoriented, had no idea what direction they were headed, and was already having trouble figuring out how long they’d been driving.

Five minutes? Fifteen? Impossible to tell, as her body struggled to process what was happening to her.

The way they were smashed together, Krista could feel the girl’s heartbeat pounding as fast as her own. She wondered where she was from, how she had ended up on that truck to be delivered to Maxwell and Karev. “What’s your name?”

The girl sniffed and said, “Nadia.”

“Are you from Russia?”

Another sniff. “
Respublika Gruziya
, Georgia,” she said in English. “From Sukhumi, small city on the Black Sea.”

“Your English is really good.”

“We learn in school,” she replied. It wasn’t much but the small talk somehow managed to calm them both, adding a dash of normalcy to this entirely messed up situation.

“How old are you?” Krista said, almost afraid to hear the answer.

“Fifteen.” The same age as Mark’s oldest, Hannah. But instead of private schools and beach houses, this girl was going to be sold like a farm animal.

“How did you end up on that truck?”

“In my city I go to special music school. A woman, she come in and say she is auditioning students for special trip to come perform in the U.S. Is great opportunity, she says and if we do well we can even get scholarship to go to school.”

“Are all the girls from your school?”

“No, from my school there are only two, me and my friend, Olga. Our parents, they were so excited, they have big party before we go.”

Krista could hear fresh tears in the girl’s voice. Her stomach curled as she thought of Nadia and her friend being so excited for the so-called opportunity, having no idea what kind of monsters they were putting their trust in.

“But instead of going to U.S., we fly to Canada. And when we get off the plane we go to hotel and they take our passports. They tell us if we run away, they will kill our parents back home.”

Though it could have easily been an empty threat, Krista knew it wasn’t uncommon to keep tabs on the families of the girls they trafficked. Threatening their loved ones was one of the easiest ways to keep the girls under control.

“I have a little brother, Georg. He is twelve. They tell me if I run away or tell anyone, they will sell him to
izvrashchenets
, a
pedofil
. But I couldn’t help it—we were in that truck, in the dark, for so long—”

“Shh,” Krista said, squeezing Nadia’s hand harder. “The police here will make sure nothing will happen to your family—”