Wallbanger (19 page)

“Want me to follow?”

If she’s running, she found something. But
what?

“Need to know soon,” Marchande said. “We lose
range in a bit.”

Barefoot in the snow and half naked
.
Which meant she had to have a contact close to help her escape. But
she hadn’t had access to her phones or weapons since leaving
Panama; had been adamant about setting up the dummy line before
they’d left in case anyone in The Crew tried to track her. Those
dots didn’t connect.

There was only one other option.

“Where’s the closest Metro station?” Xander
asked, trying to keep a lid on his anger. Here he was concerned at
what he’d done to her and she’d screwed him over. Was playing him
from the start. It stung.

“Couple blocks. Definitely walking distance;
a few trains to choose from.”

The doorknob jiggled and Xander froze. “Hold
position, I’ve got company.” One hand slapped the monitor off; the
other disconnected the call. He dropped to the floor, using the
desk to hide when the door swung open. Peering around the edge, he
saw one of Sacha’s men silhouetted in the frame.

The guard took a tentative step in, head
swiveling in the darkness. He moved to turn on the lights when the
computer let out a soft
boop
. Hand on his pistol, he entered
fully and shut the door.

Even better.
Xander had been sitting
in the dark for a while now, his eyes already accustomed to the
lack of lighting. It would take the guard a moment to gain the same
advantage. Quietly unhinging the buckle of his belt, he heard the
man’s footfalls padding across the expanse, not even trying to mask
the sound, and easily pinpointed him approaching the desk from the
opposite side.

Careful to keep his shoes from dragging,
Xander silently crawled on hands and knees until he’d again put
himself at the edge of the table farthest from the pursuer. The man
kept spinning about, sweeping the gun out in front of him while he
checked to see what was happening with the machine.

Xander moved, slithering across the floor
like a crocodile, positioning himself at the front of the desk. He
took in quiet breaths through his nose; let them out through his
mouth. And he waited.

The guard’s phone rang, and the man hurried
to answer, the entire conversation held in Russian: “Hello…no, not
here…stupid alarm must be broken again…then he must have left and
you missed him…. Leaving now…Go handle the driver, then…. I know, I
know. Kill him.”

The call ended.

Xander waited.

The guard went back to his inspection,
turning on the monitor. He yanked the jump drive from the base and
quickly rushed past the desk. Two steps from the door Xander hooked
the man’s neck with his forearm, thrusting the sharp blade of the
knife with precision into the base of the skull.

Not a sound—dead before he hit the floor.

The kill didn’t faze Xander.

Without missing a beat he recovered the flash
drive and the man’s gun, went back to the computer and keyed in the
command to get the program running again.

“What’s the deal?” Phil asked when he
answered the phone.

“Seems we’ve moved down the food chain. You
should have a guard or two coming your way soon. They’re not
stopping in for tea.”

“Your ETA?”

He could hear the smile in Phil’s voice.
“Fifteen.”

“And Kizzie?”

Xander ground his teeth. Obviously she had a
secondary agenda as well. “Catch up with her later. And when I do,
she’s dead on sight.”

* * * *

Tonight would be her last. Zlata knew more
things than she ever cared to know about what went on in this
place, and if she didn’t get out now, she would be dead by
morning.

That’s what happened to the other puppet. The
girl had waited one day too long, and Sacha had killed her in the
Dungeon. With the rage he was in this evening, Zlata knew her fate
would be the same.

Perhaps that’s why she felt compelled to try
to warn Gigi. No one should be subjected to this kind of treatment,
and while the other girls were too far gone for her to save, she
could at least try to convince this one to stay with her Master
Duquesne. And if that didn’t work, she had decided to risk speaking
to the man herself. He was nice to his puppet—
was
she a
puppet? If she was, Zlata had never seen one treated so well. She
was not scarred and cut like Sacha’s set. And her affection for her
Master appeared to be genuine, not forced the way the Kukol´nik
made his girls behave.

But then that other Dom appeared, and Zlata
hadn’t been able to tell Gigi to leave. Now she wouldn’t get the
chance.

Without turning on the light, she slid the
few items of clothing off the metal pole in the closet, shoved her
fingers into one round end to retrieve the money she’d stashed
there. Exactly 96 Euros—just enough for a bus ticket and a small
meal for the ride. She’d quietly stolen the change Sacha sometimes
left out, only taking small amounts that would go unnoticed. Other
times she risked sneaking through the tunnels to avoid the alarm at
his office door. He often left the safe behind the painting
unlocked, and it took a good deal of restraint for her to filch
only the lesser bills. She wanted to grab every cent and run. Only
reason she hadn’t was that she had no place to go—he’d find her
back in Sertolova.

The last rolled Euro took a little longer to
remove, the trove a result of sixteen months of theft. She needed
more; had no idea how she’d get through customs without a passport
and wasn’t sure where she was headed. But if she did not leave
tonight she never would.

Those few seconds in the hallway were the
last she knew of Sacha’s movements, and the apprehension Zlata felt
about not knowing exactly where he was nearly stopped her from
leaving. If he caught her away from his office again—

Courage
. It was all that had gotten
her through those sessions in his dungeon; the driving force that
made her chance being caught stealing. Hope fled the first day he’d
raped her, but courage had seen her through.

She just needed a bit more now.

Not bothering to remove the ropes, Zlata
tugged on the jeans she’d arrived in eighteen months before. Huge
now that she’d lost so much weight, the thin shirt hung like a
tent, the only benefit being it had long sleeves. They were all the
clothes she had, and to be in them again after so long made this
moment real.

Zlata slid into her tennis shoes; the arches
making her usually bare feet feel funny. Then she shoved the money
into her pocket and made her way into the tunnels.

Immediately fear paralyzed her. Sacha was
there—she could hear his screaming, and felt bad for whichever
puppet he tugged on tonight. But she had to save herself.

Staying to the outskirts, she located the
first path she needed to traverse, bringing the noise louder. A few
more minutes of travelling and she chose the next channel. His
cries increased. She slapped her hands over her ears to keep it
away, walking quickly to the hidden path that would finally take
her from this place.

* * * *

Still a bit groggy, Kizzie stared at the
madman before her. Sacha was completely out of touch with reality,
screaming one minute, totally calm the next—if a man coked out of
his mind could really be called calm. More like paranoid, dilated
pupils darting about. The slightest noise made him jump; his own
voice echoing through the cavern, the strained creak of tense
ropes. That’s when he’d slap her, back of the hand, downward angle.
The first blow was the most solid, everything after just a graze.
But the cumulative effect took its toll.

“Your owner,” Sacha said, selecting a knife
from his arsenal, “did not punish you to my liking. Who are you to
touch a Master, hmm? You bitches are all alike—don’t know your
place anymore.”

Kizzie let him rant, never once taking her
eyes off of him, but her mind focused on a way out. Her fingers
were going numb, circulation sluggish with them being above her
head. The only benefit was that eventually her injured right
shoulder would be numb too. Aside from that, everything was in
pain. Grunting, she curled her left fist around the rope it was
bound to, digging deep to do a single-armed lift of her body
weight. It shifted the airplane control, and she decided to try to
bring it down.

“Stop moving!” Sacha screamed. “Syestra, you
fucking bitch!” The rage left just as quickly as it arrived, and he
approached her with a serrated blade. “I’m going to carve my name
into your face.”

Sweat trickled down her nose, and Sacha
roughly clutched her cheeks in his clammy hand, fingers digging in.
The sharp tip of the knife trailed under her eye.

“I don’t like the way you look at me. You
can’t be trusted. None of you!” He burrowed the point into the skin
of her lower lid, just enough to feel the bite. “What if I cut this
out? Hmm?”

He backed off, stepping off the platform and
walking to his tools. Then he spun quickly and hurled the knife at
her.

It happened so fast Kizzie couldn’t move, and
the only thing that saved her from catching the point in her
stomach was Sacha’s intoxicated aim. It clattered to the floor
behind her just as another knife, smaller, came toward her hilt
over blade, and she yanked hard with her right arm, barely getting
out of the way.

“Yes, syestra! Dance! Dance for your
Master!”

The pain was enormous but focusing on that
would not solve her problem. Fighting through the ache, Kizzie
tugged insistently at the ropes, hoping it was doing some damage up
there that she couldn’t see. Any minute now he’d cut her, and she
rather liked her skin in tact.

“Stop moving, you filthy bitch!”

She didn’t stop; worked harder, swinging back
and forth.

Sacha pounced, gripping her about the neck.
Thumbs pressed in, slowly cut off her air supply. Then he dragged
his tongue up her sweaty face.

“Fear…I taste it, syestra. That’s what I want
from you.” His forehead met her cheek; harsh breaths rasped her
skin. One hand loosened from her neck, trailing to cup her breast.
He crushed the rounded flesh and released it. “I want to feel it
while I fuck you, want you to feed me your terror,” he whispered.
His fingers continued down her body, slowly, just grazing her skin,
moving over her mons.

Kizzie jerked, seeming to snap whatever
trance he was in. “No! You will take it!” His closed fist met her
exposed ribs with bruising force. “You will not move while I fuck
you, or I will make your death slower, Nikolay! You and the
American and the Japanese!”

Disgusted, he spat on the floor, then turned
from her and hopped from the platform, stumbling to land although
the lift wasn’t high. Kizzie took the time to tug, stopped once
he’d faced her again. Another tool came from the table, and he
returned with lightning quickness.

Talking in a lilting tone he said, “You are
not the perfect puppet. Every one of you has to be molded,
sculpted.” He brandished a scalpel, holding up the tiny blade for
her to see. “I will cut out those bad parts of you, the parts that
make you disobey. The parts that made him think you are better than
me, syestra. And when I am done, you will be…so pretty,” he
whispered in a voice gone soft and hazy. “You will stay on your
knees and bow like a good bitch.”

Movement in the hallway caught Kizzie’s eye.
Xander? Oh, please, God, be Xander.
Now would be a
really
good time for “caring Dom” to show up.

The figure came in stealthily, and her heart
dropped. Two against one made already slim chances slimmer. Didn’t
mean she wouldn’t fight.

She pulled harder at the restraints, and
Sacha’s raging increased. “What did I say? I said don’t move! Do
you want the prod again, father?” He jabbed the sharp knife into
the biceps of her left arm, the incision swift and surgical. It
took a moment for the blood to spill, but the pain that followed
finally made her scream.

“Yeeeeeeeeessssss!” Sacha announced. “Fear!
Bleed it out!”

She didn’t quit, went back to swinging the
airplane controller, hearing the rope strain. The skin at her
wrists was raw, hands fully numb, but she had to keep trying.

He was in front of her again, yelling,
raging. He blocked her view of the person behind, busy with the
task of sliding the tip of the scalpel along her belly. “Must be
careful not to take out too much too soon, yes? We’ll go slow.”

Gripping the tool in his fist, he lifted his
arm high, prepared to slash it downward when something stopped him.
Kizzie knew that blessed sound—the wet retort of flesh suction.
Sacha jerked forward, eyes widened with surprise. He turned,
showing Kizzie his back, and the handle protruding from his
shoulder blade.

A frightened Zlata stood just below the low
riser, steadily inching back toward the wall. Sacha lurched at her,
and then he seemed to register there was a knife in him. He tried
to reach it but failed, the movement causing him to yell.

Zlata raced to the lift controls, and moments
later Kizzie’s right foot was on the ground. She didn’t know it
yet—it was numb. Feeling streaked through like a million tiny
needles, bringing awareness to her foot. Arms lowered, the pain of
feeling so intense it paralyzed, but she had never been more
thankful for the burn. She crumbled to the ground, able to shift
her limbs but not her stiff digits, and, bracing her elbows against
her sides, she shook out her hands to speed up the process. The
threat of the bomb Sumi mentioned lingered in the back of her mind.
They had to move.

The other woman was in a panic, eyes darting
constantly between Kizzie and Sacha. She tried working the knots,
but the extended hang time made them impossible to unfasten in the
short reprieve they had. With shaky hands Zlata grabbed a knife,
started sawing through the rope.