been down in the gym either beating feet on the treadmill, working on their hand-to-hand skills,
or lifting weights. Megadeath’s, “Symphony of Destruction,” blared in the background. He had
caught movement out of the corner of his eye just as Jovan’s boxing glove made contact with his
chin and he fell to the floor.
“What the hell, Blake? You’re supposed to dodge it, not run into it!” Jovan had yelled at
him.
Blake moved his jaw around, making sure that it was still attached, his eyes never leaving
Annis. When he was certain that all of his teeth were intact and he wouldn’t be in need of any
serious dental work, he pushed himself off the mats.
Annis stood by the door in a white tank top and red sweatpants, her golden eyes staring
boldly at everyone in the gym. After a moment, the Warriors realized there was another presence
among them, and they stopped what they were doing. All their eyes were glowing their SR44
colors, staring at her.
None of them made a move.
They knew she was military, yet they seemed intimidated by that fact. They were used to
fighting their battles among men, and having a woman in the area of where they prepared to fight
those battles didn’t sit well with them. It was like Blake was thrown back to the 1950s. Or
considering how all the Warriors had at least a few hundred years on him, a return to the Stone
Age.
He had been the first to approach her, and in front of all the other Warriors she had held
her own, and maybe kicked his ass just a little bit. The next morning he had woken sore, so
perhaps it was a little more than a little bit.
After that, the other Warriors tentatively worked with her. Except Cohen. For reasons
unbeknownst to Blake, Cohen seemed to have a deep-seated hatred toward Annis, and that hatred
seemed to bloom with each passing day. Blake had caught him glaring at her more than once,
and often times Cohen would leave the room if he could. Blake had no idea what Annis had done
to get Cohen’s boxers in a knot, so he had asked.
“I don’t hate her,” Cohen had said.
“Then why are you such an asshole to her?”
“What are you talking about? I hardly speak to her!”
“Exactly.”
After a few minutes of back-and-forth, Cohen had threatened to dismember him and bury
him in the desert, and Blake had relented.
“The good thing about the snow is that everyone is staying indoors,” Annis said, breaking
into his thoughts.
She was right about that. The streets were deserted. Even the drug dealers and hookers
were smart enough to hunker down somewhere with a heater. He wondered what exactly that
said about his own intelligence.
Just then the door to the apartment complex opened, and a woman stepped out with a
teenage girl. The woman wore a heavy parka, and the girl was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, her
black hair swirling around her shoulders. Blake felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on
end, and he stepped back further into the shadows.
“Hello, Susan,” Annis whispered.
They could hear bits and pieces of the conversation between Susan and the girl, and it
became apparent that the girl was crying.
“Please,” the girl said.
“Shut up. He’ll be here soon. I’m getting a lot of money for your ass.”
“What did she just say?” Annis asked quietly.
“It sounded to me like Susan is about to sell the girl.” Holy shit, this was big stuff. Child
trafficking?
“Humans actually do such things? What will become of the girl?”
Blake was quiet for a moment. Most likely the girl would be sold into prostitution, put on
drugs, and spend the rest of her terrible life getting raped. “Nothing good,” he whispered.
“Well, then, we can’t let that girl go anywhere,” Annis said.
Hell no. “Agreed.”
Up the street, a black sedan slowly turned the corner and skidded on the snowy street.
The car crept closer, and Blake willed it to keep driving by. He wanted more time for
recon, but when the car came to a stop in front of Susan, the girl started to cry harder. The whole
watch-and-learn plan had gone right into the shitter.
“Fuck,” he whispered.
“Is this the buyer?”
“Probably.”
Annis stepped out of the shadows. “I’m going to kill them both.”
She might as well have announced she was going to do a load of whites.
Blake followed Annis across the street, catching the tail end of the conversation between
the guy in the car and Susan.
“I told you, two thousand dollars,” Susan said.
“And I’ve got fifteen hundred.”
The girl squirmed to try to get away from the grip Susan had on her upper arm, but she
couldn’t break free.
“Knock it off, you little bitch,” Susan hissed at the girl, who calmed immediately, a look
of defeat washing over her.
Susan leaned back into the car. “Fine. Give me my money and then you can go and enjoy
your new toy.”
The girl was the first to see their approach, her eyes growing wide. She glanced at Annis,
then over at Susan. She looked back over at Blake.
He shook his head slightly, hoping to convey that she was to remain silent of their
approach.
Apparently, she got the message and cast her eyes downward.
Annis arrived at the driver’s side door and flung it open, pulling out the man by the scruff
of the neck and took him down to the ground, the snow puffing up around him like smoke. Blake
briefly checked out the guy while on his way over to Susan. He was average height, average
build, and especially with the element of surprise on her side, the guy didn’t stand a change
against Annis as she straddled him and punched him in the face.
Blake met Susan’s gaze, and it seemed that she finally registered what was going on. She
looked down at the girl, into the now-empty car, over at Blake, then took off down the street in a
dead run.
“Stay here,” Blake said to the girl. “We’re here to help you, and if you take off you’ll
freeze to death tonight.”
He ran, the boots crunching under his feet. Although he had lived in Phoenix for nineteen
years where you had to go to the high country to see any sign of snow, something from his
childhood of growing up in Alaska clicked in his mind, and his feet were able to hit the snow
without too much slipping and sliding.
Susan was obviously a native of maneuvering in the snow. She hauled ass about thirty
feet in front of him.
He cursed and put it into high gear.
After she turned down an alley, he lost sight of her. He hated going into the situation
blind. Susan could be waiting around the corner for him with a Smith & Wesson that carried a
bullet with his name on it. He hoped she was just trying to lose him.
The snow fell heavily while he stopped at the mouth of the alley, listening. The area was
silent except for the sound of something scurrying over by the dumpster and a man and woman
fighting above him in the apartment building.
Slowly, he looked around the corner into the alley but saw nothing. He noted that the
alley was open on the other end, but Susan wasn’t fast enough to have made it down there. She
was hiding in this a
lley somewhere.
He took a deep breath and exhaled, watching his breath float up into the air. He unzipped
his jacket, pulled the Glock from his holster, and decided to leave the jacket open. Despite the
temperatures dipping into the twenties, he was sweating.
Closing his eyes for a second, he threw up a small prayer for safety and spun into the
alley, gun first.
Nothing came back at him.
He moved forward, trying to silence the crunch of the snow under his boots.
Concentrating on the sounds around him, he wondered if the scurrying was a cat or a large rat,
and the yelling from above seemed to be escalating. If it continued, he had no doubt that the cops
would be called for a domestic, and that would just be perfect.
Or not.
As he stared down the alley, he counted three dumpsters, perfect places for hiding. He
gauged the alley space at about a hundred feet. When he reached the first dumpster, he paused,
listening again. There was something on the other side of the dumpster making noise just a foot
or so ahead of him.
He counted to three, took two steps, and spun around to the other side of the dumpster to
see what was making the noise.
A cat hissed at him, obviously pissed about having his dinner of rat a la mode disturbed.
“Sorry, dude,” Blake whispered.
snow into his face, the tiny crystals feeling like pinpoints hitting him over and over again.
Silently cursing, he crouched down on the side of the dumpster, giving himself a brief
reprieve of the facial onslaught.
Closing his eyes, he listened for any sign of movement, and heard none. Maybe Susan
had made it to the end of the alley undetected, or she was hunkered down just as he was.
It would have been nice to be able to observe her for a few days, to see if she carried
weapons, what her habits were, where she visited. However, he didn’t have that luxury, so it was
best to keep moving so he didn’t freeze to death. Being in the snow reminded him of why he
liked Phoenix.
Standing slowly, he peeked around the dumpster to the other end of the alley.
Annis stood at the mouth of the alley—her slim figure a black outline against the
streetlight—and his heart skipped a beat. She had removed her coat, and there was a childlike
figure leaning against the wall of the building to Annis’s left, bundled up. Annis had given the
girl her parka.
Annis said something to the girl, and she nodded. Annis moved down the alley, carefully
checking left and right, waiting for someone to pounce.
Blake whistled slightly and stepped out from behind the dumpster making himself
known. Annis gave a brief wave, then continued toward him.
They were going to flush out Susan sooner rather than later.
He was about twenty feet away from Annis when he saw movement out of the corner of
his eye. Out of the shadows came a figure that lunged for Annis.
Thankfully, Annis saw her coming and was ready.
Susan and Annis clashed in the middle of the alley, then hit the ground. Blake raised his
gun, but they rolled in the snow and he wasn’t about to risk putting a hole in Annis.
Annis quickly got the upper hand and straddled Susan, hitting her in the face. Blake ran
toward them and grabbed Annis’s raised hand that was ready to pummel Susan with another
punch.
“We need information,” he said as Annis glared at him over her shoulder.
They stared at each other a beat, then Annis nodded.
Blake crouched down next to Susan. “So tell me more about this sick, little kiddie ring
you have going on.”
Susan breathed heavily, puffs of air wafting up around her. Her eyes flitted from Blake’s
to Annis, then back to Blake. Her lip was split open, and blood trickled down her cheek to her
chin onto the snowy pavement. Blake thought she could be sporting a black eye in morning, but
that could have been a shadow.
“Who are you?” she asked.
Blake shrugged. “Someone who doesn’t like kids being bought and sold like a package of
cheese from the deli.”
“So you’re not the police?”
“Nope.”
Susan licked the blood from her lips, then smiled. “Well, then you can go fuck yourself.”
Annis slapped her across the face. “Mind your manners, Susan,” she said.
Blake smiled down at her. “We’re worse than the police, Susan,” he said, “because we
don’t exist. We could kill you right now, and no one would be the wiser. So I suggest that you
cooperate a little bit and you may make it out of here with a few bumps, bruises, and that cut
lip.”
Okay, so he was a liar. But he was a good one, of that he was certain. Susan wasn’t going
anywhere but to meet her Maker, and then hopefully on a one-way ticket to Hell where she
would burn for the rest of eternity, if he had his say in the matter.
“I don’t believe you.”
Annis sighed and looked over at Blake. Okay, apparently he wasn’t as skilled of a liar as
he thought.
Annis removed the knife from her boot and turned back to Susan. The lights from the
apartment buildings gleamed from above, glinting off the steel of the blade. The night was silent
except for the low hum of the TVs playing in the apartments above them. Even the cat by the
dumpster was quiet.
“His threats are empty. Mine are real,” Annis said in a soft voice, gazing back at Susan.
In the quiet night, it sounded like Satan himself had arrived.
“Look. There’s no need to take this any further,” Susan stammered at the sight of the
knife.
“So you’ll start talking?” Blake asked.
about you.”
Annis laughed. It was a deep, throaty sound indicating that she didn’t find a damn thing
funny about any of it. She turned to Blake. “There’s a diner about a block down that looked like
it was open. Take the girl there, and I’ll see you in about twenty minutes.”
Blake stared at her for a beat, then looked down the mouth of the alley where the girl
stood. He could see her shaking and guessed she was cold and scared half to death. But this side
of Annis was a little worrisome. Yeah, Susan needed to die, but he just thought he would be the
one to do it. It was the caveman within him talking, but Annis was more than capable of taking
care of herself and doing away with Susan with little fanfare or drama. Quiet efficiency was their
friend.
He shrugged his shoulders. “Okay. See you in a few.”
Moving down the alley, he heard hushed whispers behind him, but focused on what was
in front of him. As he approached the girl, he smiled his best I’m-your-friend look he had
mastered while working for the FBI.
“You look cold,” he said.
She nodded and looked past him toward the alley.
“You hungry?” he asked.
She studied him, and the silence stretched.
“Yes,” she finally said in a quiet voice.
She was young—he guessed about fifteen or sixteen— and beautiful with milky-white
clear skin, long black hair, piercing blue eyes, and a long, lithe body. He couldn’t help but
wonder
how she had ended up with Susan about to be sold to some fat-fuck pervert.
“I’m Blake, by the way, and the woman I’m with is Annis. She asked me to take you to
the diner about a block from here, and she’ll meet us shortly.”
Her eyes narrowed, as if she were trying to make a judgment on whether he was safe or
not. He didn’t blame her and plastered his best I’m-not-a-threat smile on his mug.
“Okay,” she said after a very pregnant pause.
They headed out of the alley without looking back.
Chapter 5
They walked down the street in silence; the only sound the whistle of the wind kicking up
every now and then. Jesus, it was so cold Blake’s balls were making a hike for warmer ground—
like the lower right ventricle of his heart.
Yeah, he wanted to hear the girl’s story, but he figured he’d wait for Annis. His curiosity
was in high gear though, and he might as well get the basics.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Laura.”
They entered the diner, and Blake headed toward the back. He slid into the booth, the
cracked plastic crunching under his weight. The blue Formica tabletop had seen better days, as
had the dull silverware.
Laura sat across from him, avoiding his gaze and holding the menu up in front of her
face. Blake decided he would love a little whiskey right now, but put that idea off until he was
back at the hotel. Coffee would have to do.
“You get whatever you want, okay Laura?”
There wasn’t an answer.
Blake perused the menu and decided on the artery-clogging, cholesterol-building ham
and cheese omelet.
“What can I get you two?”
Their waitress was in her thirties and looked happy to have some customers. Her green
eyes crinkled slightly in the corners, and she had a friendly smile. Her tan-and-white uniform
was outdated, but she wore it well, and her brown hair was pulled up into a severe ponytail that
hung to her lower back.
“I’ll have the ham and cheese omelet,” Blake said, “with a side of bacon. And coffee.
Black.”
Might as well really make the meal enjoyable and hope the arteries could handle the load
in a sufficient manner.
“And for you, hon?”
From behind the menu, Laura’s soft voice said, “I’ll have the same, but with a blueberry
muffin, please.”