Keeper comes down the stairs and assists Wrangler to drag the body.
“This one’s going to go bye-bye for a while.” She stabs a syringe in the other thug’s neck. His eyes go wide and then he drops to the floor. “Keeps them quiet for transport,” she says conversationally.
Something about Swift must warn Devon he’s in the presence of no normal woman. It might be the way her eyes are so hard, or that she’s regarding him like a specimen in a jar, but he tries to back away, coming up against Kink.
“What are you going to do to me?” he cries.
“Nothing less than you deserve,” Swift promises, “which gives me a lot of scope.” She winks at me. “Before I put you to sleep like the animal you are, are you sure there’s nothing you need to tell us?” She glances around. “This place isn’t lived in, so what do you use it for?”
“Meetings! Just meetings!” Devon cries out.
Swift too must realise he’d happily leave the kids starving and crying out for help that never comes, so she smashes her fist into his stomach. “Motherfucker, I wish I was sending you to rot in hell.” She raises her hand with the syringe, but then hesitates. “But then, a living death might have you suffering longer.” She uses another syringe in the neck of the man who’s still hunched over. That punch must have hurt.
I hope she’s damaged something vital.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Grumbler
As two limp bodies are dragged out to the truck, Swift approaches me. “Where are the kids?”
I point to the trap door she’s all but standing on and point downward. “There.”
“Where’s the entrance?”
I fight a smile as I tell her again, pointing to the same spot. “There.”
Bemused, she drops to her hands and knees. I help her out, raising the loose planks and showing her the hatch. “Are we going to let them out now?”
“Yeah. I told Wrangler to bring the truck straight back.”
“What’s going to happen to the kids?” I narrow my eyes. Border security did wrong by them once, it doesn’t feel right to just hand them back. Whatever the rights and wrongs of allowing illegal immigrants in are, the best these kids could expect would be to be housed potentially in cages and that just feels off.
“I’ve contacted some social workers who help get kids like this off the streets. They’ll get them fostered out until any adults with them get their immigration status sorted. Oh, and she’s expecting four, not six. I’ve called the aunt, and she’s beside herself with relief. Jorge and his sister will go straight there.”
I suppose that’s all we can do.
Bolt comes over, his face bemused as he sees the more than adequate soundproofing on the hatch.
“Fuck.” He wipes his hands over his face. “We might never have known they were there. Make that bastard hurt, Swift.”
She turns such a cold look on him. It’s in that moment I get the first glimpse of Utah’s enforcer. “I know ways,” she tells him in an icy tone, “that won’t leave a fuckin’ mark, but which will scar him forever.”
If she can, then she’ll be good in my books.
Niran’s head appears at the top of the ladder. “Didn’t hear a fuckin’ thing down there. All good?”
“Bad guys gone,” I tell him, grinning. “You had it easy.”
“Easy? You know how often these fuckin’ kids pee?”
I hadn’t thought of that and hadn’t noticed any receptacle down there. “What do they use?”
“There’s a compartment where a bucket is stored. Doesn’t do much to reduce the stink, but the kids know what it’s for.” Niran clambers out. “Come on, kids, you can come out now.”
The oldest girl is the first to reach the top, leaning back her hand to help the others. Jorge comes up last after his sister.
“We go see my aunt now?” he asks.
“Yeah, kid. She knows you’re here and is waiting for you. Just need to organise someone to drive you there.” His little face brightens, and he turns and speaks to his sister, updating her in Spanish.
Then, well, fuck me, the little kid throws herself at my legs and hugs me as well as she can. “Good man. Good man.”
Swift meets my eyes and smirks.
Bolt goes toward the front door and picks up a bag he’d left there. He returns and opens it. How they got a hold of the items inside, I can’t imagine, but it’s filled to the brim with sandwiches, bags of chips and chocolate. He empties it out and hunkers down.
“Why don’t we have a picnic while we wait for the transport?” He rises and steps back, waving his hands in invitation.
The older girl says something in her own language. To my surprise, Bolt responds. He seems to be quite fluent. There’s a lot of gesturing, and at first her face falls, then she straightens her back and nods.
When I raise my eyebrow toward him, he satisfies my curiosity. “I explained she was going to live with an American family. That has to be better than where she expected to be, which was begging on the streets.”
“You can trust these people?” I glare, worried about sending the kids from the frying pan into the fire.
“Emphatically. We’ve done favours for them before.”
Which is the way the world works. I can appreciate that.
A vehicle pulls up outside, and in walks Connor. “Someone want a ride to San Francisco?” He waggles the car keys he holds in his hands.
“Me!” Jorge leaps up and runs toward him, stopping abruptly before getting too close. “Are you taking us to our aunt?”
“Yeah, little man.” Connor gets down to his level. “You’ve got to be good, alright? You and your sister sit in the back and do everything I tell you. There’s a blanket on the back seat. If I tell you to get on the floor and cover yourselves with it, are you going to be able to do
