Chapter 14 #2
He had resources back home. Pirat, the best hacker in Russia. Nikitin had no idea where he lived or even what his name was. It made no difference. Pirat was a genius and always came back with an answer.
Except now. Pirat had hacked into all the hospitals, all the police stations, all the news feeds, because surely two men could not just disappear into nothing? And yet they had.
Nikitin desperately needed to keep this news from the vory back home. The deal with the Meteor Club was the first of a massive invasion planned. Lots of money was involved and the vory did not want even a hint of trouble.
Losing two men into the void was the very definition of trouble.
Chert!
This whore had to know something. “Again,” he said.
Dmitri placed the cloth on her face.
The whore started keening with terror, which was exactly what he wanted. He watched dispassionately as the water was poured, the cloth sucked in as she tried to breathe. He judged the right moment, just before drowning…ah. He lifted his finger and Dmitiri lifted the cloth.
Tears were streaming down the whore’s face, she was choking for air, trembling all over. She was screaming, but had very little breath, so it came out more a gurgle than a scream. She was terrified.
And she wasn’t talking.
Dmitri moved to place the cloth over her face again but Nikitin held up a hand. Dmitri stopped, obediently.
Nikitin inched his stool closer. “Tell me everything about this woman who is spreading discontent among you. Her name is Chloe. Chloe what?”
Even bound, she was able to shrug one shoulder.
“Mason. I think.” He opened his mouth to tell Dmitri to start again when she spoke.
“No one uses last names at the shelter. It’s forbidden.
So I don’t know her last name for sure and no one else would.
I just saw an envelope in her purse once.
It said ‘For Chloe Mason. That’s all I know. ”
“She’s a volunteer?”
The whore nodded. “They all are.”
Nikitin didn’t truly understand that. Volunteer to work with whores?
For free? What would she get out of it? But he had long since resigned himself to the stupidity of humankind.
Volunteering to work with whores was right up there with the men he’d seen who’d destroyed themselves over the love of a woman. Or what they thought was love.
Nikitin didn’t understand that, either.
No matter, there were plenty of things he did understand just fine.
“What else?” Because there was something else, he could tell. “What else do you know about this woman?”
The prostitute’s throat worked, the sign of words not wanting to come out. “Again,” he said quietly to Dmitri.
“No!” The prostitute screamed. The skin over her left breast was trembling with the rapid beating of her heart. “There’s something else, the only thing I know.”
Nikitin didn’t answer. He simply waited. She could see Dmitri holding the cloth behind him. He didn’t have to talk.
“There’s—there’s a man. He comes for her almost every day she’s there. He’s like her shadow.” She coughed, a paroxysm that lasted several minutes.
Yes! Nikitin didn’t move a muscle. Merely asked, quietly, “Who is he?”
“I don’t know,” she wheezed. “But he’s a big man. Not tall, but big. Like a weight lifter.”
“What did he drive?”
A frown appeared between her eyebrows. She coughed again. “I don’t know. One of those big gringo cars.”
“An SUV?”
She nodded. “Tell me the model.”
She shook her head. Nikitin restrained himself from slapping her hard. It wouldn’t help. She didn’t know. The whores didn’t drive. Weren’t allowed to learn. A driver’s license in the hands of a whore could be very dangerous.
“And where does this Chloe live?”
She shook her head but her eyes flickered.
She knew. The bitch knew. Nikitin leaned right over her, gazing directly into her eyes.
Out of her line of sight, he signaled to Dmitri.
He dropped a cloth over her face and started pouring.
She didn’t have time to prepare herself and breathed in sharply.
The only effect was to tighten the grip of the cloth over her face.
She started choking immediately, kicking madly against the restraints, mewling sounds coming from under the cloth.
If he took a blood sample right now, the carbon dioxide level would be extremely high.
Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. He looked at Dmitri who lifted the cloth.
Her eyes were wild, unfocused. She’d been convinced that she was going to die.
Nikitin had once seen a Special Forces soldier, an Amerikansky, resist hours of waterboarding, but he’d been trained.
He hadn’t talked but he had been reduced to an animal and had been shot later, almost as an act of pity.
Her eyes were rolling around in her head, like an animal’s. Nikitin clasped her jaw tightly, painfully, and turned her head to him. “Listen to me.” He waited until her eyes focused on him. She was breathing in short, ragged breaths, her entire body shuddering.
Good.
“Where. Does. Chloe. Live.”
Nikitin deliberately looked up at Dmitri, who stood ready. She saw that and shuddered. The whore’s body would be telling her she wouldn’t survive another round. She would, but she wouldn’t understand that. There would be very little reasoning bouncing around in her head, just dark primal fears.
The whore opened her mouth but only clicking sounds came out of her throat, the sounds of sheer terror. Nikitin waited. No use punishing her when her body wouldn’t let her talk. He waited, watching her eyes carefully. He recognized the exact moment in which she came back into herself.
“Where?” he repeated.
There was no resistance in her. None. Her body had almost died and had come back, the most primal experience a living being can have. Next to that, there was nothing she could do.
“Coronado Shores,” the whore gasped. “That’s what I heard some of the other girls say. La Torre.” She wheezed, her body trying to pull in air.
Nikitin didn’t press. He had a vague idea of where—and above all what—Coronado Shores was. A place for the rich. La Torre. He had to tuck that name away and find out later. He merely nodded, as if confirming what he already knew.
“What else?” he asked, keeping his tone low and bored. As if what she was saying were of little significance. “What else do you know about her?”
Now she was looking confused. She gazed right into his eyes, something a chernye, a whore, should never do. And they didn’t. The women at the Club were trained not to look a man in the eyes until they were having sex.
This one was looking straight at him, training forgotten, terrified. “Nothing. I know nothing else.” Her voice was low, shock still in the tones. And truth in every syllable.
Nikitin knew truth and he knew lies. He’d broken enough men to know the difference. The woman had no more information to give. She didn’t know where his men were. If she had any information at all, she’d have given it. She was useless to him.
“Three more times,” he growled to Dmitri in Russian.
Three more would break her. The bitch deserved it.
If she hadn’t started acting up, he would never have had to send his men on a mission that had inexplicably swallowed them whole, leaving him with one man in a foreign country, with the vory back home expecting everything to be ready for the arrival of the first shipment in four days’ time.
He stood and looked down at the woman who was so much trouble. If she hadn’t been worth money to his backers, he’d have had her killed, and not slowly.
“Three more,” he said again and left the room, closing the sound-proofed door behind him.
Consuelo came to her senses slowly. She was cold. Terribly cold, down to her bones, in a way she’d never been before. Born in Tijuana, living in San Diego, she’d never experienced true cold, had never seen snow. Now, it was as if she were encased in ice.
She opened her eyes, at first not recognizing what she was seeing. A flat expanse, a reflecting surface. She stared for a long time until she finally understood. Water. Water all over.
She blinked and things started to come into focus. She was lying on the floor, naked, in a pool of water. She shivered convulsively, mind blank.
She had no idea how long she lay there, shivering and shaking on the cold tile floor, moving only her eyes. Nothing made sense. She was used to being naked—that was how she worked, after all—but not like this. She felt more than naked, she felt stripped bare of everything, even her humanity.
It was coming back in slow, painful stages. The cruelty of the Russian’s eyes, the endless questions, the near drownings.
She couldn’t remember how many times that horrible cloth had been put over her face but she did remember that desperate shock of knowing that she was drowning, being on the verge of death, then brought back to life at the last possible second, gasping and shaking, numb with fear.
And the Russian, carefully watching her, with no expression on his face.
It was almost worse than some of her customers who secretly liked inflicting pain.
They had a sly smile as they sneaked in a hard pinch, pulled her hair too hard.
There was always a secretive smile, because they were doing what they liked best—hurting.
This was nothing like that. The Russian didn’t like what he was doing to her.
He didn’t dislike it, either. He was totally indifferent.
There was no doubt that, if he felt it helped him in any way, he’d have ordered his man to keep pouring water over the cloth until she drowned for real.
But she still earned the Meteor Club good money, so she wasn’t killed.
None of it meant anything to him.