Chapter 4
T he trip from the library back to the hotel hadn’t been easy. The bus had broken down, and Ania had had to wait for another one to come. Then a rainstorm had blown through the area as she walked from the bus stop to her current lodging. So, by the time she got inside, she was trembling from the exhaustion of her day and from being wet and cold. She still had some food left, but it wouldn’t be enough for tonight and tomorrow.
As she walked in, the clerk took one look at her and frowned. “You’re dripping water all over the floor.” Still, he waved her over and handed her a brown paper bag.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Some clothes left behind by a previous occupant. You can’t keep wearing the same shirt and pants. Especially now that they are soaking wet.”
She took the bag and nodded. “This is very nice of you. I’ll be fine. I’ve got food up in my room. I’ll go eat, and I might survive this.”
He shook his head. “You shouldn’t have to survive anything.”
“I know that, but I gave up on fairy tales a long time ago.”
And just enough bitterness filled her tone for him to sigh. “You’re not the first person to say that either.”
She gave him a look. “It really doesn’t make me feel any better to know that I’m just following the path of other down-and-out but well-meaning people for the last God-only-knows how many years,” she grumbled, as she trudged to the stairs.
“Take a cup of coffee with you,” he called out.
She stopped and looked at him. “From where?”
He pointed to a cup that he had poured for her.
Such concern filled his expression that she felt a wave of gentleness wash over her. “Thank you.” She backtracked and picked up the coffee carefully, so as not to spill a drop. “You’re very kind. Trust me that I will enjoy this, after I get a shower.”
“Enjoy it first,” he suggested. “It won’t stay hot that long.”
Knowing he was right, she just nodded and climbed the stairs to her room. There, she sat down on the floor rather than getting the bed wet, from the rainstorm that had poured all over her. She sat here, with her eyes closed, trying desperately to hold back the tears. It hadn’t seemed so bad the first day, but something about the second day and knowing that she wouldn’t be allowed to return to her day gig had somehow made it even harder.
She could still show up there tomorrow, and maybe the warehouse owner would be nice and give her more work, but he’d made it pretty clear that he didn’t want her back and that she should go out and get a better life. How the hell she was supposed to manage that was beyond her though. She’d also seen some hard looks from some of the other people working there today, and maybe that’s what he’d been worried about. She certainly didn’t need more trouble, yet, as she realized just how hard it was to do this, she felt sympathy for all the women who had taken this path before.
It was devastating. No support system, no money, no friends, nobody who could step in and help her. It all made her appreciate the plight for others in a way she never had before. What did women do? And, of course, the answer was clearly what had been intimated downstairs, and that was something Ania was determined not to do.
She had a bloody degree, for crying out loud, so surely she could find a job somewhere. She had to, because the other option was not acceptable. Not today or tomorrow, and, if it wasn’t acceptable now, it wouldn’t be acceptable in the future. Yet she also knew that, if she got to the point of being so broke that she couldn’t eat or work, then pride might take a back seat, and she would do whatever it took to survive.
When this wave of absolute fury came at the thought, she had to laugh. “Okay, so much for that idea,” she muttered. “Definitely not going in that direction.”
With the coffee gone, she got up and had a hot shower. The hand-me-down clothes were actually in good shape and somewhat fit her. Her others were hanging on the shower rod, drying out. Feeling much better after that, she sat down with her cold dinner. No way to warm it up, although she probably could have gone downstairs and asked the clerk to do it, but she didn’t want to impose any more than she had to. At one point in time, she was afraid a price tag would be attached, but, so far, she’d managed to keep herself free and clear of those kinds of consequences. However, she wasn’t ready to push it and to take any chances.
Because she was so hungry, the cold food was just fine. By the time she was done, she had finished off the last bit of cold coffee and then curled up under a blanket, wondering if she dared go down and ask to use the laptop again. But she had his loaner phone, so, taking a chance, she quickly called Vanessa. When she answered, Ania spoke right off the bat. “Hey, I’ve managed to get a phone.”
“That’s a good thing.”
“Any sign of my father?”
“No, but more goons are in the village now, so I’m pretty sure it won’t be long before we see him too.”
“ Great , I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. He would be coming here, even if you hadn’t seen me, and now I can just tell him that I saw you.”
“Ouch, that won’t go well.”
“No, but he has no reason to get angry at me,” Vanessa argued. “It’s not as if he put out any alert to say it was illegal to help you, although I won’t mention that.”
Just enough humor in Vanessa’s tone made Ania smile. “I’m really glad for the help that you did give me,” she murmured. “I’m just starting to realize what life is like when you don’t have any friends nearby, or a support system, or money, or a job.”
“Yeah, it sucks,” Vanessa agreed, “and that’s why sometimes you just have to step up and help each other. I keep hoping that, by some miracle, there could be a day in the future when this is all behind you. Oh, by the way, I saw your aunt today.”
“And?”
“She wouldn’t even acknowledge me. She looked straight through me and raced on by.”
“Crap. That just means she’s terrified.”
“Yeah, she’s terrified all right, and had a busted lip to go along with her bruised cheek. She won’t talk to anybody, be it friend or foe. I don’t know whether it was your father hit her or one of his goons. Whatever happened between them, it’s obvious she’s running like a plucked chicken. If she had a place to go, I think she would be out of here as well.”
“She has nowhere else to go…” Ania muttered. “That’s where she and my mom grew up. In fact, she’s living in the same house.”
“So, chances are, she’s as stuck as the rest of us,” Vanessa replied glumly.
“Why? You didn’t want to leave too, did you?” Ania asked. “If I had known that, you could have come with me.”
“Yeah, sometimes I do envision leaving this place. Yet I thought I would be married by now, have a family, and not still be in my hometown. But, with no boyfriend in sight, no upcoming changes in my life, it’s just the same old, same old.”
“Yet you have a job, and that’s a lot to be grateful for right now.”
“Is it?” Vanessa asked. “I’ve saved up money, and I could probably go anywhere. However, it’s not as if I have anybody who wants to prod me out of this rut,” she teased. “I’m thankful that I’m not being hunted. Yet the craziness of the world out there scares me. Look at you and your aunt. I just don’t really have any place to go.”
“You could leave, you know.”
“I could, if I really wanted to.”
“I wish I had a place to go, but I don’t. So I’m still stuck in the city.”
“I don’t even know how you managed to get out of here,” Vanessa noted. “Will your father also be watching the airports and the major seaports?”
At that, Ania froze. “Good God, I don’t know,” she whispered, her voice catching in her throat.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“No, no, you may not have meant to, but it’s a good thing you mentioned that because I hadn’t even considered it. So I can’t fly out from here or catch a ride on a cargo ship. I’ll have to make my way farther on foot, I guess. Then maybe I can fly out from somewhere else.”
“If you made your way to Europe or somewhere, you could probably risk a flight. You always wanted to go to Italy, didn’t you? How about now?”
“Yeah, I would love to,” she replied, with a laugh. “I have my passport, but what I don’t have is any way to know how far my father’s reach is. By the looks of it, I’m stuck with ground transportation that takes cash, for now.”
After a few more minutes Ania ended the call, not knowing how many minutes were still available on her borrowed phone. She would have to keep tabs on that, saving some minutes for use in case of an emergency. Feeling a bit better, she went downstairs to return the coffee cup.
He motioned at the laptop and asked, “You want a few minutes?”
She grinned. “Absolutely I do. Thanks.” She quickly took the laptop and sat down at the small coffee table in the lobby and checked in on the latest news.
Absolutely nothing appeared about her in the news, which was perfect, not that there should be. She couldn’t imagine her father ever wanting to promote such public chaos or to put out a missing person’s report on her. Yet, if it suited him and his purposes, he would do it in a heartbeat. So that was one of Ania’s concerns.
After she’d spent a half hour online and sent off a few more emails, she headed up to her room with a Thank you to the clerk. She then curled up in bed, wondering what the hell she would do the next day. She would have to find another job, and that was starting to be the biggest thing in her world.
What she needed was to find another nice person, like the older man she had just done an inventory for, and see if they would give her a little bit of work for cash. As she started to drift off, she thought about Sanders, wondering if it really was him looking for her. She was rather desperate to believe it was. Yet it would be pretty easy to get it wrong. What if her father had utilized a sharp young man to make it look like somebody she might care about? Or at least somebody more pleasant than his usual goons, so people might respond better to their questions.
Her father would use a sledgehammer to get what he wanted, but he was smart enough to realize the time and the place mattered, and that just made him even more dangerous in this world.
Ania closed her eyes, exhausted, and fell into a deep sleep. When she woke up in the middle of the night, she heard her name being called out sharply. She bolted to her feet, staring around in a panic, and then whispered, “Who is it?” she cried out. “Who just called for me?”
Of course anybody else would think that Ania was nuts, and she didn’t want to even think that her father might be right about that. That was the last thing she needed. No one answered. Still, she noted a weird buzz in her head. She dropped to the floor, closed her eyes, and sent out a telepathic appeal for help. I don’t know who you are or where you are, but, if you’re there and if you can hear me, please let me know .
More weird ringing came in her ears. She tried again and then once more. Finally, after half an hour of this crazy buzzing—almost as if somebody was tuning a ham radio—a voice came through. It was clear as a bell.
Ania, is that you?
“Yes,” she cried out, bouncing to her feet and looking around the room. “Who is this?”
When the answer came, she couldn’t hardly believe it. She let out a whoop and danced around the room. “Sanders, is that you? Is that really you?”
Yes, it’s me .
*
Sanders grinned, the smile splitting his face from ear to ear, as he looked over at Riff. “I got her.”
Riff turned and his eyebrows shot up. “Got her what?”
He tapped his head. “I just contacted her telepathically. She’s here.”
“Where is here ?” Riff asked, walking closer. “Where can we get her?”
He closed his eyes, struggling with the reception. Where are you? Let me know so we can come and get you .
In a hotel .
What hotel?
And again the message was garbled. He frowned at that, looking over at Riff. “I’m getting really shitty reception here.”
Riff shook his head. “You do know that there isn’t great reception when drugs are involved, as in this case, yours and likely hers. Any drugging of Ania may be messing things up. If you tell me what telepathic wave she’s on, I could join the conversation.”
Sanders blinked at Riff, not understanding any part of what he’d asked.
Riff waved his hand. “Never mind. Just work on where she is, so we can go pick her up.”
Sanders sent back another message. Where are you? I need to find you . He winced because she was screaming in his ear.
Sanders. Sanders! Where are you? Where are you?
And then came silence. He swore and looked over at Riff. “Whether it’s drugs or not, I just lost her.”
Fascinated, Riff half smiled and nodded. “This isn’t like a phone communication. You won’t just drop a call. That isn’t how telepathy works.”
Sanders stared at him, his lips twitching. “You may say that, but it’s what it feels like right now.”
“That’s because something is going on between you guys, whether it’s her end or yours. Whatever it is, some weakness is causing this disconnect. You need to deal with that, in order to reconnect with her.”
“That’s what I meant.”
“ Uh-huh .” Riff just shook his head and headed back to doing whatever he was doing. “Let me know if you reconnect.”
Sanders remained in the same position for the next hour, trying to connect to Ania again.
Meanwhile, Riff was using his telepathy to connect with Terk, as he searched the ethers for hotel rooms, inns, and other places, looking for her, but all of that had been for naught. “According to Terk, we don’t have anybody in the city registered as Ania, at least so far. They’ve got another couple hundred rooms for hire to check out,” he added, with an eye roll. “Yet she won’t be using her real name anywhere though. So chances are, she’ll be at a dive where they really don’t care, as long as she pays in cash.”
“Right, and those are the first places we should be checking on foot, with her photo to prod their memory.”
Riff nodded. “You just connect with her again. We need her to tell us more, and an address would be a great start.”
That’s what Sanders had been attempting to do. Finally he got up in frustration and grumbled, “It’s just not working.”
“I hate to tell you but you’re trying too hard.”
Sanders turned and frowned at him. “Didn’t you just tell me to try?”
“I did, but I guess you don’t have much training with this, do you?”
“No, I don’t have any training at this at all. I tried to tell the bloody Russian government that, but they didn’t care. They figured they had something special in me and didn’t want to hear that I wasn’t that special. Special enough was okay for those morons.”
Riff’s lips twitched at that. “You’re definitely special,” he replied, “and, with a little bit of training, you’ll probably be damn wicked. However, at the moment, you’re still sick and weak, and your system is fighting everything.” His words may have been harsh, but his tone was nothing but kind. “So, that little bit that you’re managing to do is pretty impressive.”
“ Huh ?”
“Yeah. I would suggest you cut yourself some slack and realize that this is a huge breakthrough and that we will find her. We also have a tracker on the team, Langdon. He’s searching for Ania, too, by her energy signature. So, right now, while everybody else is doing all their shit, I’ll go crash. We need not all be exhausted.” With that said, he got up and walked over to his bed and threw himself down.
As far as Sanders could see, Riff was asleep almost immediately. Yet Sanders knew that sleep would be completely impossible for him. What he could do though was lie down and send Ania messages of love and connection and joy. He felt confident that he could send these emotions, even if he couldn’t speak telepathically with her. When she got these energies, they would let her know that she wasn’t alone. Then maybe she could reconnect or could find that same vibration that they’d had before. Maybe she would recognize this transmission for what it was.
Sanders hated to admit it, but this was starting to sound a little sappily like real love, not just a connection with somebody who was in trouble. That’s what he’d always chalked it up to before—just a connection between two people who maybe, just maybe, cared about each other. At least he hoped so. It would really suck if all the caring was just on his side.