Chapter 17
17
Rogue
Melody left at dawn, waking me up just long enough to tell me she had to leave. Wouldn’t let me convince her to call in sick or something. Wouldn’t agree to come stay at the clubhouse until she finds a place to stay that’s not a cold, impersonal downtown hotel. Or until she decides to stay forever. Whichever comes first.
I’m gonna work on making it that second thing.
I slept better than I have in years just having her lie next to me. I can still taste her on my lips and her moans of pleasure still echo in my mind when I focus on them.
But that’s not what I should be focusing on.
We’ve been sitting on a dark hill, hidden behind a thorny bush that’s somehow not as dried-up as everything else around here, staking out one of Clive’s properties for the past three hours. Skye is as sure as she can be that the trafficked women we didn’t manage to save are being held here.
It’s a three-story house at the end of a residential street in a bad part of town that didn’t used to be such. The houses are spaced far apart and they all look abandoned some with caved in roofs, others with hanging porches and boarded up windows. All except the one we’re staking out are also dark.
This one has a peaked roof and used to be grand, but all that’s left of that is the peeling turquoise paint on its wooden walls and the lace curtains covering the few windows that aren’t boarded up. No one’s moving inside it and the light in one of the downstairs rooms is probably from a candle with the way it’s flickering. Maybe someone just forgot to blow it out. Maybe we came here for nothing.
“Those stairs are gonna creak real bad when we try to go in,” Blade says, peering through the night vision binoculars at the house. “And there’s no way to get closer to the house without being seen.”
He doesn’t sound like he’s trying to persuade me to call it off. But what he’s saying are stone cold facts too. Nothing’s growing near the house. Not so much as a rosebush to hide behind.
“That’s why it’s best we go in all at once, from all sides,” Alice says.
I’m glad to hear the fire to get this task done in her voice, and not more caution and warnings about how we’ll never get it done.
I brought ten members with me. Now I’m thinking I should’ve brought everyone.
“Here’s what we’ll do,” I say. “I’ll go up to the house and knock on the door. Alone. The sound of my hog should mask the sound the rest of you make as you approach. And draw the focus of whoever is in there.”
“What if they shoot first and ask questions later,” Creed says in his pondering voice. “They’ve been known to do that.”
Then Melody will patch me up again.
The thought makes me smile.
“Let’s hope they don’t. I’ll come up asking for directions,” I say. “Claim I’m just lost. Maybe I’ll knock on the downstairs window instead of the door.”
“I’ll come with you,” Blade says. “The rest of you be ready to swoop in.”
He sounds almost like his old self, from the time when no amount of life and death action was too much for him. I almost give him a huge bear hug, but settle for clapping him on the back.
“What he said,” I say, grinning widely, which they can’t see in the dark.
“All right, then let’s get to it,” Alice says.
I follow Blade to our bikes while the rest fan out to come at the house unseen from all sides. A couple of minutes later, Blade and I are riding down the deserted, dark street towards the house, the sound of our engines filling the nighttime silence.
I’m surprised that whoever’s in the house isn’t on the porch checking out the noise by the time we reach the house. But the only sign of life inside it is still just the flickering light in one of the downstairs rooms.
I stop curbside and Blade pulls up beside me.
“You think someone in there can tell us where we are?” I ask loudly for the benefit of whoever might be listening on the other side of the peeling wooden slabs of the house.
“Might as well go and see,” Blade responds in his booming voice.
From the shadows by the side of the house, Alice gives me the thumbs up, which means everyone is in position.
“Let’s,” I say and dismount, then stride up to the lit-up window.
As I suspected, the dining room beyond it is empty and the light is coming from a fat white candle in the middle of the table. It’s the kind that can burn for a few days and it’s almost burned out.
A stench is rising from the house. Dampness and rot. Stronger than I’d expect with this being just an old wooden house in a dry climate. But I don’t want to dwell on what that might mean.
“I’m going to knock on the door,” I announce loudly.
Nothing stirs. And the sound of our footsteps as we climb the creaking steps to get to the front door is the only sound I hear.
I bang on the door and knock it right off its top-most hinge. It’s hanging lopsided now and the stench of rot grows stronger.
“Anyone in here?” I call out as I open the door wider.
“No one living,” Blade mutters beside me, covering his mouth and nose with the back of his hand.
“We’re coming in,” I shout, more for the benefit of Alice and the rest of ours than because I’m hopeful there’s anyone inside to hear me.
The stench of decomp makes me retch as I walk in. All around I can hear windows breaking and boards cracking as the rest of the Angels enter the house. The sounds we’re making are the only sounds in the house.
The hallway is empty the light from the dining room barely reaching it. Blade turns on a flashlight and others in the various rooms do the same.
“Over here,” Alice shouts from a room to our left.
I follow on Blade’s heels as he runs towards it.
The flashlight illuminates two bodies slumped on the sofa, their hands and feet bound together. Two female bodies. The stench of decomp is overwhelming.
Blade’s light reveals three more bodies in other parts of the large room.
All female. All young. All dead.
“This one has a pulse,” Alice announces from over by the armchair next to the window.
“I have a live one in here too,” Creed calls from the other room.
By then I’m already dialing my cousin Manny’s number.
“Come quick,” I tell him after I rattle off the address and tell him what we found. “Bring ambulances.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” he snaps. “Didn’t we say you’re gonna stay out of this from now on.”
“That would’ve been a mistake,” I tell him. “Come quick. Some of these women might still make it. We were too late for most of them.”
Then I end the call before he can ask any more stupid questions and slow it all down.
We shouldn’t have waited a week before hitting the rest of Clive’s properties. If we hadn’t these young women might still be alive. It’s another thing that will stay on my conscience forever.
But this time, we’ll finish it right. Because now it’s personal. And Clive and those tight suit-wearing goons of his ain’t got a prayer trying to hide from me.