eyes and forced the churning acid back down where it belonged, eating a hole in my stomach. Elvis settled back into his seat, lowering the chassy by several inches, shifted into drive, and we were inside—just like that. It couldn’t have gone more perfectly if it had been scripted by fate itself.
The truck moved on at barely fifteen miles an hour for a short space until it pulled up next to a building; I could see the concrete base of the wall, plain and spare, in a dingy yellow artificial light. With the damn thing finally parked, I was able to unclench my fingers and with trembling arms let myself down to the ground. Every muscle in my body had taken on the consistency of overly boiled cabbage. Rolling over onto my stomach, I slid along the gravel to the edge of the undercarriage. I caught a glimpse of Elvis standing in an open door chatting up this place’s version of the lunch lady. Improbably red hair, pear-shaped butt, and thick hose on thick legs, she didn’t float my boat, but apparently she did something for Elvis. I didn’t judge. I simply recognized the chance and took it.
Propelling myself on my elbows, I crept out from under the truck and lunged into the shadows. Saul was hard on my heels, so hard in fact that he nearly ran me over. With a healthy sense of self-survival combined with those cutting-edge fashion skills of his, Saul was a true Renaissance man. With the building wall gritty against my back, I moved fast until I took a corner and passed into a deeper darkness.
“And that, Smirnoff, is why I refuse to marry. Once the ring is on, the ass immediately triples in size.”
The disgusted hiss was a puff of air against my ear. His comment on the mating habits of food servers and ex-Kings of Rock and Roll couldn’t have been heard from more than five inches away, but it didn’t stop me from jabbing a warning elbow into Skoczinsky’s ribs. It had passed from full twilight into early night and we were fairly well concealed by it, but there was no need to press our luck. Moving on, we found a stairwell framed by straggling bushes and concrete. It was thick with grime and dirt, indicating it hadn’t been used for some time. Settling down into it, we prepared to wait four or five hours until the place was tucked in for the night. There might be a few khakis on patrol on the inside of the walls, but at least the other personnel, including the maligned lunch lady, would be asleep. It made the process of breaking and entering a little less dangerous for us.
The hours passed. And that’s about the best that could be said, that they did pass. After ten years, you’d think a few hours was something I could handle; that in comparison it would be nothing—less than nothing; a drop in an angry, churning ocean. But it wasn’t. It was ten years all over again.
Finally a hand on my shoulder brought me out of a reverie of nothingness. “Time to go.” With his voice tight and controlled, Saul was all business now. He moved to the metal door and went to work with a skill that had me whistling low under my breath. Whatever branch of the service Skoczinsky had served in, he hadn’t spent his time peeling potatoes. It took nearly forty minutes, but he got us in, bypassing an alarm system I doubt I would’ve detected and cutting the glass from the tiny window set high on the door. After that it was a simple matter to manipulate a dead bolt with a long wire, and then we were in.
Out of the night and straight down the rabbit hole
It looked like a hospital operating room. There was the glitter of metal everywhere in the form of needles and probes, clamps and gurneys. Monitors upon monitors and trays of instruments put the finishing touches on the theme. And if that had been all in the room, it could’ve passed as a medical facility. But that wasn’t all; that was only half the picture. Recessed security lighting showed computers on standby, softly humming in oddly comforting song. It wasn’t one or two either, but an entire bank of them lining the wall. Screen after screen filled with a slowly rotating DNA strand shed a sickly green glow onto the shiny linoleum floor. That kind of tan and white checkerboard-patterned tile was cheap and easy to clean—especially of blood. I’d seen that theory proven true firsthand in the basement of Konstantin’s bar. A bucket of a water and bleach mixture and a mop and it was as easy as that . . . except for the cracks.
Close to the operating table, I knelt down and pressed a gloved finger to the thin brown line that ran between the tile. This place wasn’t just for looking pretty; they used it. Why was it I didn’t believe they were performing tonsillectomies down here?
“This is one creepy motherfucking place.”
I looked over at the whisper to see a child-sized hospital gown cascading from Saul’s hand in a fall of pale turquoise. It was an oddly forlorn sight, that scrap of material. Despite its cleanliness—there wasn’t a drop of anything on it, including blood—the sight of it made my stomach twist all the same. “Anything on the computers?” I asked, shifting my eyes to the safer target. I knew enough to surf the Net, but that was about the extent of my knowledge. On the other hand, Saul’s business depended on his expertise with the technical as well as the physical.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Saul shrug and move to take a seat at the nearest computer. Grunting at the spinning screen saver, he started typing. “Reminds me of biology class. Bacteria and fetal pigs; I’ve had better times,” he said.
Then and now, I was assuming. Remaining silent as he worked, I explored the rest of the room. I was loath to call it an infirmary. People were meant to be healed in those types of rooms. I didn’t see healing going on in this place. Along the far wall I found a massive refrigerator, easily the size of a restaurant walk-in model. But while the size might be similar, there was one immediately noticeable difference: the lock. This unit was sealed with a computerized pad that awaited a code key. Hissing in annoyance, I turned back to Saul. “Well?”
With some annoyance of his own, he slapped his hand on the side of the terminal. “It’s locked up tighter than grandma’s panties. I need either a password or a good week to work on it. Since we don’t have either, I suggest we get moving.”
It shouldn’t have mattered, the impenetrable computer and tightly sealed refrigerator. It wasn’t why we were here. I was here to retrieve Lukas, first, last and everything in between. Finding out who had taken him and why would be useful, damn useful, but we didn’t have the time to spend on anything more than a quick and dirty search. We’d already done that now and it was time to move on. That didn’t stop me from looking over my shoulder at the firefly glow of the computer monitors and thinking I was making a mistake walking away so quickly. That DNA molecule, boldly displayed, gnawed at me. What the hell were they doing here?
Saul’s hand on my shoulder pushed me on through the next door. This one was locked as well, but from the inside . . . our side. I was able to handle that without resorting to Skoczinsky’s felonious talents. From there we went upstairs to the first level. The level of illumination remained the same: shadowed gloom interspersed with dim security lights near floor level. We had come out into a long hall. There were doors scattered evenly on either side and the floor was the same bland tile. Past midnight, the place appeared deserted, but I decided it still was time to bring my favorite boy out to play. Some equated guns to women. That bald bastard Sevastian called his Glock Lolita. Not only was he a bastard but a pervert as well. I never saw weapons that way. The ability to do violence isn’t exclusively linked to the male gender, but I couldn’t deny I thought we had a leg up on it. I had never named my 9mm, but I did think of it as male—ruthlessly, amorally, unapologetically male.
Jerking a thumb toward one end of the hall, Saul drifted that way on silent feet with his own gun at the ready. I took the other end and the strength it took to hold the Steyr in my hand was only a fraction of what it took to trigger that first door latch. Aside from the basement, the building, although sprawling, was only one level. The children had to be here, if not in this hall then in the next—or the next. What had been a dream for a good portion of my life had become a reality just beyond my fingertips. Whatever I found here, for good or for bad, was going to irrevocably change who I’d been. It made opening that first door a little like dying.
The metal might have been cool to the touch, but I felt nothing through my glove. Even without the shielding material I don’t think I would’ve felt anything but an icy ghost of a sensation. My nerves, mental and physical, had gone into hibernation for this excursion. It was the only way to function, the only way to survive. And when I opened that first door to see two sleeping boys with coal black hair, I did survive. I survived, breathed in and out like the living do, and then closed the door quietly to move on to the next one.
Each room was equipped with two beds. Sometimes both were filled with either boys or girls and sometimes one would be empty—until I tried the fourth room. As I pulled open the door there, someone was waiting for me. Out of bed and just within reach of the doorway, a little girl looked up at me. She couldn’t have been more than seven, eight at the most. Petite and dressed in plain white pajamas, she had a sweet, heart-shaped face and silver blond hair that was phantom pale in the low light. Innocent and lost, she belonged in a four-poster bed cuddling a furry teddy bear. She belonged with her mother and father, not here; not in this sterile and clinical prison. I clenched my jaw. Goddamnit. She wasn’t my brother and could very well be a distraction that doomed us, but I couldn’t stop myself. She wasn’t mine and she wasn’t Saul’s Rosemary, but she was someone’s. Someone’s heart was ripped out, their life ruined beyond repair because she had been taken. I holstered my gun and held out my hand to her. She didn’t move, didn’t cry out or scream, but only watched me with impassively shadowed eyes. It
