83
ANSON
“Oh, hell,” Vincent muttered. He watched the man run inside, then quickly turned back and barked instructions out to the group.
“Stay behind me! We’ll start at the ground floor and spread out, work our way up.
The only innocent people here are our friends and kids like them.
Take out anyone else you see. Don’t hesitate, just shoot.
If you don’t think you can do that and you have a gun, give the gun to someone else.
Hang back. There’s no shame in that. The rest of you, come with me! ”
This wasn’t the boy I knew from Finicky’s. This wasn’t even the boy I knew from the Quick. This was someone else entirely. He twisted back around and ran toward the door, grasping the rifle in the same two-handed grip I’d seen cops use. It seemed to come naturally to him.
Paul must have known what I was thinking; he was watching Vincent, too. “His dad, his real dad, was in the military,” Paul told me. “He was killed in the Middle East when Vincent was eleven. That’s how he ended up in the system.”
I frowned. “He told me he never met his dad.”
Paul’s eyes drooped. “He says that. I don’t know why. Maybe it helps him deal with the loss. I think he was really close with his father.”
“What about his mother? He said she was an addict.”
Again, Paul shook his head. “I heard she died when he was born. It was just him and his dad, then it was just him. Growing up on military bases, his father made sure he knew how to handle himself.” He turned back to me.
“Don’t take it too hard. He never told me the truth, either.
I heard it from Kristina. I think he just likes to keep his personal life .
. . personal.” Paul twisted the rifle in his hands, lacking Vincent’s certainty.
“Spartans, prepare for glory,” he said softly.
“Huh?”
“Just something I read in a comic once,” he replied. “Come on.”
We followed after Vincent, who had positioned himself with the barrel of his gun trained on the door. He signaled for me to open it. Paul, Ruddy, Lisco, the Kid, and all the others were behind us. The Kid was moving better now, but still slow. His face was covered in sweat.
I gripped the knob, silently counted to three, and yanked it open with a twist.
Vincent didn’t hesitate. He bounded through the opening and quickly put two rounds into the blond man who was standing there shouting into a phone.
Like something out of a video game. No emotion.
Not a word. The man dropped and Vincent moved past him, quickly sweeping the narrow hallway.
The gun wasn’t very loud, and I realized there was some kind of suppressor on the barrel to muffle the sound.
Paul’s rifle had one, too. One of the other boys scooped up the dead man’s handgun from the floor, and we kept going.
The hallway was riddled with old storage rooms and pieces of decrepit furniture.
Some were stacked against the walls, while others were left in piles.
Pieces from a time long past, covered in dust and grime.
At the end of the hall were two service elevators, and by the looks of them, they hadn’t run in fifty years.
The doors hung open on crooked tracks. The interior wallpaper was faded and torn, lit only by a single bare bulb strung from wires hanging out of the ceiling.
Silently, Vincent pointed toward a sign that read “Lobby” above a set of swinging doors on our left. He nudged through in complete silence, the rest of us behind him.
At first sight, it was clear the hotel had been abandoned for a number of years.
Although several chandeliers provided light from above, about half the bulbs were dead.
Thick cobwebs hung down in saggy sheets from the coffered ceiling.
And like the walls of the elevator, the once ornate wallpaper was faded and tinged with age.
There was a man behind the reception counter with his back turned, watching a video on a laptop.
Near the center of the expansive lobby, among the broken and discarded furniture, someone had arranged some of the undamaged chairs and tables in three small sitting clusters of four.
Only one of them was occupied. Two women and a man.
They hadn’t heard the gunfire in the hallway; their backs were to us, and they seemed to be in a heated conversation.
Vincent pointed at Ruddy, then at the man behind the counter watching the video, then back at himself, followed by a two-fingered gesture toward the three people in chairs. The rest of us followed a few paces back, doing our best not to make a sound.
There are no innocents here, I heard my father whisper a moment before Ruddy shot the man behind the counter. One bullet to the back of the head—he never saw it coming. Like Vincent’s rifle, Ruddy’s had a suppressor too; the shot was a soft thunk! Loud enough, though.
In the chairs, the man and two women startled, looked up, and saw Vincent hovering above them, the barrel of his rifle moving slowly from one to the next.
The man started to reach inside his jacket and Paul raised his rifle. “Don’t.”
In that instant, Paul looked as confident in his abilities as Vincent, although I spotted a thin bead of sweat slip down the back of his neck.
The man lowered his hands to his lap. “What is this?” He spoke in a heavy accent. Russian, maybe. “This” came out as “dis.” He caught the rest of us standing behind him, this mob of kids, and frowned. “Who let you out of your hole?”
Vincent shot him.
A single bullet to the right side of his head. It went in with a small hole, but took out a good portion of his skull on the way out. Hair, bone, and brain matter sprayed the side of the wingback chair, and the man slumped.
One of the women opened her mouth to scream, but went quiet when Vincent swung the rifle toward her.
The other woman had remained silent. Calm, even.
She was maybe fifty, with a stoic face, subtle makeup, and shortly cropped dark hair.
She slowly leaned back in her chair and pressed her palms together under her chin.
At first, I thought she was praying, then I realized she was contemplating her situation.
“Viktor always was a bit of an ass. He won’t be missed,” she said in an accent similar to the man’s, but different.
Not Russian—maybe Ukrainian, or another neighboring country.
“It’s best you consider his death a victory and leave this place with that feather in your cap.
Only misery awaits should you decide to stay. ”
Although there were nearly forty of us, we’d held the silence of the truck. Her words carried to every person in that lobby.
Spread out on the table between the three people were Polaroids.
Maybe twenty in total. Pictures of boys and girls, anywhere from nine or ten to their late teens.
I knew if I were to turn them over, I would find codes such as “WF15 5k EC,” “WM15 4k AD,” or “WF15 6k MP” written on the backs of each—descriptions, ages, price tags, and initials.
The simple coded language I’d seen before.
One that seemed to transcend dialect in a place like this—a simple code understood by all.
The two women had been drinking coffee. The man had some kind of cocktail.
They were bartering—buying, selling, or trading children right here.
Out in the open. No different than if they were swapping baseball cards.
The first woman, the one who nearly screamed, had slowly slipped her hand down her thigh to the slit in her dress.
Found something and began to take it out.
She had made the move slowly, over the course of a minute.
Nearly unnoticeable. But I noticed. Vincent did, too.
He shot her with the efficiency he had used to dispatch the man she’d been speaking to.
The Ukrainian woman didn’t flinch as the last of her companions died.
If she was frightened, she showed no sign.
She simply tilted her head slightly to the side and looked up at Vincent.
“There is no need for further violence. Perhaps we can help each other. If you wish to leave, you are welcome to take my car. Or my plane; it’s waiting for me at the airport.
You’re free to go anywhere in the world.
” She spoke to him as if they were the only two people in the room.
“I have more than a million dollars in U.S. currency aboard. Several gems, too, in a safe behind the headboard in the bedroom. You are welcome to take it all. Consider it a gift from me to you. Simply walk away.” She studied our numbers for a moment. “There is room for all of you.”
Vincent kept the gun on her. His eyes, too. He didn’t trust her enough to look away. “Do you see them, Anson? Are their pictures on the table?”
I had already checked the photographs. I didn’t recognize any of the kids in the Polaroids. “They’re not there.”
“Show her, Paul,” Vincent said through clenched teeth. Again, without looking away.
Paul reached into the pocket of his jeans and took out a piece of paper. He unfolded a sketch of Tegan, Libby, and Kristina and placed it on the table in front of the woman.
“Them,” Vincent told her. “Where can we find them?”
She smoothed the paper out with slender fingers and glanced at Paul. “This is impressive. You drew it?”
Vincent pressed the barrel against her temple. “Where are they?”
The words came out the second time with more force than the first, and if the woman planned to stall for time, she realized that was no longer an option. “They are quite beautiful. I’m sure they’ll fetch top dollar if they haven’t already. I could buy them for you, if you’d like.”
“Just kill her, Vincent,” Paul said. “She’s not going to tell us anything. We’re wasting time.”
She looked back at Paul, her lips curling into a smile.
Paul frowned. “Something funny?”
“You honestly believe you have the upper hand.”
Vincent drilled the barrel harder against the side of her head. “If you don’t know where they are, you’re dead.”
The smile never left her face. They could have been discussing the weather. “They’ll be in their room upstairs, of course. Where else would beautiful girls prepare for the evening?”
From behind the reception desk, the Kid called my name. When I saw his face, I knew something was horribly wrong.