Chapter 13 Brooks #2
The rooms where my father’s men caught me when I was only thirteen and seeing them for the first time.
“There are one hundred here. Fifty of them are meant to be shipped out tonight. Obviously those are the more important ones, but I have no way of knowing which are being shipped and which aren’t. So we’re going to have to get them all out.”
There’s a beat of silence behind me, and then I hear Camille’s voice.
“I told you we should have brought more vans.”
“We brought five!” Kate’s voice snaps back. “I thought that would be plenty!”
I know the vans they’re talking about–because that was part of the earlier conversation–and do some quick math. I figure each van probably has seats for around ten people. Five in the back seat, three in the middle, and one to two in the front.
Shit.
Though if we’re saving girls’ lives, I don’t think we really need to worry about seats. Technically speaking, we don’t even need seat belts.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “They can sit on each other’s laps for all I care. Twice the number of girls in each van. Do you have drivers?”
Camille snorts. “How else do you think we would have gotten the vans here?”
I get to the first door and turn to my friends. “Where are the vans?”
Kate is the one that meets my eyes and answers first. “Right outside the wall. Ready and waiting. Do you have any other questions or can we get this show on the road?”
God, I love my friends. Kate was inside the dungeons with me earlier this week and knows exactly what she’s going to see when we open the door. She knows we have less than no time to get this done, and that we’re going to find a bunch of girls who’ve lost hope of ever getting out alive.
And she’s ready to kill someone if it means getting them out.
I glance at Camille, my more genteel friend, and see that she’s also ready to go. I have no idea what Kate might have told her, but it worked.
They’re both committed to the cause.
I give them a quick grin, then throw open the door to the first room and walk in, ready to rescue some girls.
There are about thirty girls inside, and they’re...
Clean.
They’re clean and well-dressed and obviously well-bred, and I know some of them, and that catches me so off-guard that I pause for a moment.
These girls are meant to be shipping out, so they should be dressed in traveling clothes that make them hard to tell apart. Instead, they’re dressed up like they’re going to a fucking ball. The ones I recognize are the daughters of the heads of families. Politicians. City leaders.
These aren’t mafia or society girls. They’re a whole lot bigger.
Kate, who doesn’t move in the same circles as I have, doesn’t seem to notice anything, because she doesn’t pause.
She shoots right past me, grabs the first girl, and hisses something to the others.
The girls, God bless them, don’t hesitate.
As soon as Kate gives them a way out, they start to take it.
They file through the door and toward the end of the hall without arguing, and I don’t wait to see how they do.
Kate has taken control of this group and I don’t need to watch her to know she’s going to do her job.
Instead, Camille and I move quickly to the next room.
Here we find more girls who are dressed to the nines and look like they’re going to a party.
This time, I don’t pause because I’ve already seen this.
I don’t know why these girls are dressed up, but it doesn’t matter.
All that matters is getting them out of here before any guards decide to check on them–or my father realizes that I’ve left the party upstairs.
I send these girls out with Camille, and then move to the next room.
In this room, I find girls dressed in anonymous sack dresses, their faces devoid of makeup and their hair tangled with snarls and dirt.
Here are the girls meant for the shipping containers, then.
I don’t hesitate, but run for the first girl, grabbing for her hand.
“We’re getting you out,” I hiss. “Get out into the hallway, turn left, and head for the door at the end. Someone will be there to take you to vans. I’ll make sure all the girls are out, and then bring up the rear.”
She gives me one sharp, confused glance, but her brain is evidently still working because she doesn’t hesitate.
She’s running for the door seconds later, her hand on one of the other girls and her eyes on the hallway beyond.
I wait long enough to see her turn left, and then I turn and rush through the room, hissing the same set of instructions and hustling all the girls for the doorway.
When the place is empty, I turn to the door and make for the hallway myself.
My job now is to make sure the girls are all outside with Camille or Kate–whoever came to collect them–and that the door to the outside world is closed.
I rush after the last girl, my hand on her back and my mind flying through the plan, and once she hits the steps, I follow her there, too.
Kate is standing at the top, ushering the girls toward the bottom of the driveway, and I look to see Camille down there, pushing the girls toward what I assume are vans outside the gates.
God, if this works, we’re going to be insanely lucky.
“Take the girls to the apartments in the French Quarter, right?” I tell Kate.
“Keep them there until you hear from me. My father will be looking for them, and I’m guessing the first place he’ll look is back with their families.
We can’t afford for them to be caught again. He’ll kill them. I’m sure of it.”
“And what are you going to do when he discovers they’re missing?” Kate asks, her voice low and intense. “He’s going to suspect you, and he’s going to end up killing you.”
I send her a grin. “Not if he thinks I’ve been in the bathroom off the main hall, recovering from taking around $5000 off one of his Russian friends.
With any luck, he’ll think the girls have found their own way to the door.
With even more luck, he won’t mention it at all.
He’s going to be worried about his business partners finding out that he lost girls. I bet he’ll try to hide it.”
Kate looks at me like she bets differently, but doesn’t say anything. She gets up on her toes and presses a kiss to my cheek. “Please be careful, for fuck’s sake. Call us tomorrow.”
Then she’s gone, melting away into the darkness in her ridiculous disguise, and I’m stepping back into the hallway. I close and lock the door behind me, praying for my friends, and then I run back down the hallway, headed for the door at the other and and the stairs where I left my shoes.
When I reach the door, I turn and cast a look back into the hallway, suddenly positive that there might still be girls left down here.
I don’t know why I think it, but my senses are screaming that we didn’t get everyone.
That there are still girls trapped in the rooms. I want to go back through, but I know my time is already up.
I have to get back upstairs and into the bathroom off the foyer before anyone sees me.
I need to be there when my father passes by on his way back into the party from the meeting I saw him taking before I left.
I open the door and get inside, my eyes still on the hallway behind me and the clock in my head screeching about how much time I’ve already wasted.
I’m just about to close the door behind me when my eyes catch movement in the room across from the door and I realize I was right. There’s someone over there. Someone left behind.
Only when they move, they’re not some anonymous kidnapping victim.
It’s my brother.
And Corinne Boudreaux.
He moves so quickly I barely see it, and seconds later the door is slammed in my face.
And when I try it again, it’s been locked from the other side.