Finders/Keepers

Nineteen

“She’s alive, and she’s out there, waiting, and you two are going to help me bring her home,” or die trying.

Of course, she didn’t say that last part out loud, though she suspected they probably knew it already. She had seen people do worse things for the chance to make much, much less than a million dollars. For killers like Dwight and Reese, she had a feeling her proposition was not even close to being the most dangerous — or questionable — thing someone had offered to pay them to do.

If she had to, Allie would kill the both of them. Or finish the job, in the case of Reese. Whether they knew it or not, absolutely no one was going to miss the two of them if they disappeared from the planet tomorrow. She had a hard time imagining either one with loved ones waiting for them back home, wherever “home” was. England for Reese, but it was anyone’s guess where Dwight hailed from.

It was better she didn’t know too much about them anyway. It was easier if she just thought of them as bad men who had to be dealt with. Listening to them joke with one another, even with her, took away some of that edge, but all she had to do was remind herself that they were not her friends and that they were mercenaries who would do anything for money, even transport young girls to a miserable new life.

If they honored their part of the deal, she would, too. Two million was a steep price to pay, but it wasn’t as if the money belonged to her in the first place. The only reason she had taken it was to help ensure Lucy’s future, and there was still more than enough in the trust fund she had set up for the girl to do that. The fact that the money came in handy when she started searching for Faith was a bonus. It was nice to have, but she had gone through all her life without it, and she could do so again. After all, she hadn’t needed a cent of it to hunt down Beckard not all that long ago.

Allie reached into her jacket pocket now and took out the pill bottle Reese had given her and shook out two more of the white meds. She glimpsed Reese watching her in the rearview mirror (So what else is new?), probably alerted to the sound of the pills clinking in the bottle. She ignored him and chased the painkillers down with a bottle of water.

“Might want to take it easy with those,” Reese said.

“I don’t see you taking your own advice,” she said.

Reese smiled. “I was shot, remember?”

“And I was run over by a car. So what’s your point?”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Dwight said. “You jumped before I hit you. It was barely a glancing blow.”

She smirked. “Right. Glancing blow. Fuck you, Dwight.”

Dwight chuckled but didn’t reply.

The afternoon sunlight flashed by around them in a blur of green woods and flat farmland, with a roadside establishment every other mile or so. They had crossed the state line sometime in the early morning of last night, though neither man had bothered to tell her that until they left the motel behind. The white, unassuming pickup they were in now was another stolen vehicle, this one pinched from a rest stop, its license plates swapped with those of a black GMC’s. At the rate Dwight was going around stealing cars, they might have enough to start their own used car lot within a month.

She sat in the backseat, listening to the engine struggling against the smooth, paved road. Maybe Reese was right; maybe she had taken one painkiller too many, if the brief bouts of drowsiness were any indication, but there was no way around it and she wasn’t going to let him know that. Besides, parts of her body, especially from the waist down and all over her back, still throbbed and hurt too much when she moved even a little bit, and the continued dosage helped to ease a lot of it. Sooner or later she was going to have to visit a hospital to make sure nothing really was broken, but that could wait.

If nothing else, Reese was still moving with a hole in him, and she would be damned if she gave in to her injuries first, even if her insides did feel as if they had turned to mush.

They had been driving for the last five hours, most of it in silence. Reese was the type who didn’t need to occupy every single second of their traveling time with inane chatter, though she was surprised by Dwight’s mellow (and quiet) presence.

After a while, Allie said, “Juliet told me she never stayed with you guys long enough to reach the end of the line, and that was why she didn’t know where the girls were being taken. Was that a lie?”

“No,” Reese said. “She usually left us before we made the final deliveries.”

“Why?”

“I told you before; Juliet was smart, she preferred not to know all the details. The first time, we insisted she stick around to the very end, but it’s hard to make a woman with a gun do something she doesn’t want to.”

“And yet you brought her back again and again…”

“After a while, it just became a part of our modus operandi. It was working, so why change it? Besides, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Alice, but good help is very hard to find these days.”

“Really, really hard,” Dwight chimed in. “For instance, shit never hit the fan with Juliet around.”

Allie ignored him and stared at Reese and wondered if there was something he wasn’t telling her, something between him and Juliet that even Dwight might not know. Nothing about Juliet’s relationship with these two men really made sense even as Juliet was laying it out for her, but maybe Allie just didn’t fully understand the way their criminal minds worked.

Maybe sensing her stare, Reese turned in his seat to look back at her. “You said you were one-hundred percent sure the Faith girl is alive. How?”

“Her mother found her on social media almost a year after she went missing,” Allie said. “One of her johns secretly taped her in their motel room and uploaded a five-second video. It was a quick shot of her face and the quality wasn’t the best, and she looked older, with a lot of makeup, but it was enough for someone she knew to recognize her and contact her mother. Susan took the evidence to the authorities, including the FBI. The agent in charge did his best to push her back to the forefront, but the government is more concerned with devoting manpower to terrorism and other headline-making cases these days.”

“And you confirmed it was her?”

Allie nodded. “Five months ago.”

“How?”

“Does it matter?”

“Maybe it does, and maybe it doesn’t. We won’t know until you tell us.”

“Maybe you’re sending us on a wild goose chase, hoping we’ll get capped along the way and you won’t have to pay us,” Dwight said.

“Is he always this paranoid?” she asked Reese.

Reese shrugged. “It’s one of his better qualities, actually.”

Dwight grunted but didn’t say anything else.

“One of the men who handled her appointments confirmed to me that she’s still alive,” Allie said. “I found him through the john who posted the five-second video.”

“The handler just confirmed it because you asked?”

“I didn’t exactly give him a choice.”

“Of course you didn’t.”

“But he didn’t know where she came from or where she went after she passed through his area. He was just a freelancer, like you two. He did, though, give me a name.”

“Juliet,” Reese said.

She nodded. “They crossed paths enough times that he knew where to find her when she wasn’t working.”

“And Juliet set you up with us.”

“It was awfully nice of her to do me the favor,” Allie said, remembering how seething with rage Juliet had been in that unflattering Mexican prison jumpsuit when they first met in person.

“Right. Favor,” Dwight smirked. “Remind me never to cross you.”

“All of this from a grainy five-second video on social media,” Reese said.

“It’s the digital age,” Allie said. “You can find out anything on anyone if you look hard and long enough.”

And know the right people to dig through all the virtual trash heaps and other unsavory things, for a price.

“This is why I stay off Twitter,” Dwight said. “Well, one of many reasons.”

“I thought it was because you couldn’t type?” Reese said.

“That too. But mostly the whole lack of privacy. Makes my skin crawl.”

That makes your skin crawl? Allie wanted to ask him, but bit her tongue.

Reese had taken out the cheap burner phone with the black and white photo of Faith and showed it to her, as if she didn’t already have every inch of the girl’s face etched into her mind. “Just to make sure you understand, we’re looking for this girl and no one else.”

“Didn’t we already go over this at the motel?” she asked.

He ignored her and continued: “We’re not going in there for any other reason. If the other girls at the house take the opportunity to flee while we’re there, so be it, but we’re not spending even one second rounding them up and delivering them to a women’s shelter or anything similarly altruistic. That’s the deal. Now, I need you to tell me you understand the perimeters of our partnership.”

Allie clenched her teeth. “Agreed.”

“Just as long as we understand each other.” Reese turned back around in his seat. “This is probably a stupid question, but I don’t suppose I have to tell you not to hesitate if you get one of the house enforcers in your crosshairs?”

“What do you think?” she asked, staring back at him in the rearview mirror.

“These aren’t pissant lowlife criminals off the streets,” Dwight said. “The hombres they have babysitting these houses don’t fuck around, and they sure as hell weren’t hired because of their looks. The more blood you have on your hands, the higher your standing in the organization. That’s how fucked up they are. Why do you think Reese and I were ready to tuck our tails between our legs and run?”

“Dwight isn’t exaggerating,” Reese said. “They’re the kind of pricks that will cut their losses if they think an operation has been compromised. For example: back at the truck stop with the girls, or with us at the previous motel. They’re ruthless, Alice. You need to absolutely understand that. So when we go in there, don’t hesitate. Because they won’t.”

“Are you both done?” she asked, staring at one, then the other.

“Just as long as you know what we’ll be facing,” Reese said.

“I understood it the first fifty times. You can both shut the fuck up now.”

Dwight chuckled. “Man, I like this Alice way better than that other bitch from yesterday.”

Reese and Dwight didn’t have to tell her anything she didn’t already know or hadn’t thought about countless times on the long road just to get to this point. She’d always known the odds were against her, but it wasn’t in her DNA to let go or give up. If it were, she would never have caught Carmen’s killer ten years after the sonofabitch took her little sister.

Burn in hell, Beckard.

She was drifting off again, the pills playing havoc with her concentration, and she almost missed Reese talking in front of her. She sat up in the backseat and forced herself to zero in on the here and now, on the sound of his grating voice:

“If this doesn’t work and she’s not in there, or if we can’t find traces of her, this might be our only chance. After this, they’ll put the other houses on alert and you might have to rely on those slow-moving Fed dinosaurs after all. The people in there might not trust technology, but they aren’t living in caves, either. They do have phones.”

“The only way to keep them from calling it in would be to kill everyone on site,” Dwight said.

“There’s that,” Reese nodded.

“And even then, there are no guarantees someone won’t notice the house going dark.”

“Even if she’s not in there, there might be information we can use to find her. Names, places, maybe money trails.”

“Great, paperwork,” Dwight said. “Just what I signed up for.”

“You signed up for adventure and a big payday. Guess what, partner? You’re about to get both.”

“Oh, gee, how did I end up so lucky?” Dwight said, and rolled his eyes.

Allie tuned them out and concentrated on the structure about fifty yards in front and across the street. The “house” was a brick-and-mortar apartment building, brown with time and the elements on the outside, and at least ten stories tall. The only way in, as far as she could see, was the front lobby.

They had entered the city of Summerville almost two hours ago, and on the way over here Allie couldn’t help but notice that the only time she saw police of any type was when they passed two uniformed deputies chatting in front of a food truck parked at a busy intersection about twenty minutes back. The buildings around them were tagged with gang signs and murals, including the apartment they were looking at. She couldn’t see a name, only fading white numbers over a gated front door that a Hispanic woman with a stroller was punching a code into before disappearing inside.

“This is it?” she asked.

“This is one of them,” Reese said. “This is where they bring the smaller deliveries — say, a lone girl snatched from a neighboring state. The last time we delivered here, we babysat a van. They take the semitrailers to bigger locations where there aren’t so many people around.”

“You’ve been inside?”

“All the way up to the tenth floor.”

“Five or so meatheads the last time we were here,” Dwight said. “That we could see, anyway.”

“Probably more than five,” Reese added.

“Will they recognize the two of you?” she asked.

“That’s what we’re hoping,” Reese said. “They won’t know what we’re doing back, and hopefully that’ll confuse them just long enough for us to make headway up to the tenth floor without incident.”

“You really believe that?” Dwight asked.

“I’m hoping.”

“Daydreaming’s more like it.”

“Either/or,” Reese said.

Dwight snorted but didn’t take his eyes away from the apartment tenement up the street.

“I saw a woman go inside with a stroller,” Allie said.

“They own the building and lease out the bottom seven floors,” Reese said. “The remaining top three are theirs. The super works for them, and he has a key that controls the elevator. One of the benefits of owning the place is the ability to lease to whoever they want. What did you notice while we were driving through this part of town?”

She didn’t have to think about it for very long. She remembered the flashes of storefront displays, the people on the sidewalks, the gang tags on the sides of buildings…

“They’re mostly Spanish speakers,” she said.

“First-generation South Americans,” Reese said. “Most of them are migrants who may or may not be here legally. That’s the kind of people that tend to avoid the police and keep their heads down. The rent is cheap and the organization doesn’t bother them. It all looks legitimate from the outside, because it is.”

“Well, mostly,” Dwight said.

“What about the girls?” Allie asked. “How does it work?”

“They’re just housed here. What’s that expression, ‘Don’t shit where you work?’ This is how they’ve stayed under the radar for so long. Of course, bribing the locals to look the other way probably helps, too.”

“So we can’t count on the cops?”

Dwight chuckled. “Not around here. At least, not until you’re long dead and screwed.”

“No, but that’s a good thing, because it means we have room to work.” Reese unzipped a pack he had sitting on the floor between his feet and handed her two spare magazines. “Just in case.”

She put them away while he fished a pill bottle out of his pocket and downed two more with a sip of water.

Dwight looked over at his partner. “Didn’t you just tell Alice in Wonderland to go easy with those?”

“I was shot, remember?” Reese said.

“Excuses, excuses. You gonna make it across the street?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“Aw, I didn’t know you cared,” Reese said, grinning back at Dwight.

Dwight snorted. “Fuck off.”

If Allie didn’t know any better, she could almost believe that Dwight really was concerned about Reese. Maybe all that back-and-forth between them wasn’t just a joke after all; maybe they really did care about one another, as hard as that was for her to believe.

Bullshit. They’re bad guys. Killers. When you get the chance, take them both out.

“They’ll keep the girls on the top floor,” Reese said, looking back at her. “Along with the guys who run the place, so that’s where we need to be.”

“What about the eighth and ninth?” she asked.

“They should be empty.”

“Under construction,” Dwight said.

“It’s been ‘under construction’ since they moved in,” Reese said. “Their way of letting the residents know they shouldn’t wander past the seventh floor. We’ll have to take the stairs all the way up to the top.”

“What about the elevator?” Allie asked.

“They have cameras inside, and the bad guys can control them remotely.”

“What he means is, if they don’t like the way we look, they can stop us wherever they want and lock us in,” Dwight said. “It’s gotta be the stairs.”

Allie winced at the thought of having to take all ten floors’ worth of stairs in her current situation, but she didn’t let them know that. Reese was probably in even worse shape than her and if he wasn’t going to complain, she wasn’t going to, either.

“What’s our target once we’re inside?” she asked. “I mean, besides hitting the tenth floor. I assume searching every room for Faith, or evidence of Faith, would take too long.”

“Way too long,” Reese said. “Too many rooms, too many meatheads with guns to worry about. If Faith is there, or was there, the caretaker will have records of her. So our goal should be her office, located at the very end of the hallway.”

“It’s a woman?”

“Uh huh.”

“Is there a reason for that?”

“Probably the same reason we brought you along,” Reese said.

Allie nodded. “How are we getting inside? I’m assuming they’re not just going to open the door even if they do recognize you.”

“Nope. Not without a scheduled delivery.”

“So how, then?”

“I have a plan,” Reese said.

“Is it a good plan?” Dwight asked.

“Eh,” Reese shrugged.