Finders/Keepers

Twenty-One

Dwight was dead, his body still warm in the stairwell behind her as Allie pushed on, stepping over the young man in jeans who had shot Dwight in the head. It was a good shot from twenty yards, while he was in a crouch, and maybe the guy was enjoying the moment just a little too much when Allie killed him, because he really did look surprised by what had happened.

The tenth-floor hallway resembled every other apartment she had ever been to, with numbered doors on both sides. Reese’s words echoed in her head—

“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.”

— and she pushed forward, the Glock gripped tightly in her hands. Putting down Dwight’s killer stayed with her for just a second before she was past it. She wished she could have said the ability to do that was new, that it made her uneasy, but it would have been a lie on both counts.

Beckard…

Dan’s men at the cabin…

None of this was new to her, and she’d honed her skills even further since those men. Even so, she couldn’t ignore the pounding in her chest, the tightness in her legs and arms and fingers as she moved ahead. Her eyes snapped from door to door, waiting, just waiting for someone to come out, for the first click to signal opposition.

The pain had lessened since the shooting began, more a direct result of the adrenaline coursing through her than anything else. Even the meds she’d downed before hitting the apartment hadn’t prevented the sensations of fire from engulfing her legs as they moved up the stairs. It had been all she could do not to scream out in pain with every step. The only thing that had kept her from acknowledging the misery was being squeezed in between Dwight and Reese, and refusing — simply refusing — to look weak in front of them. Reese had a hole in his side, and if he could grit it out, then dammit, so could she.

So she had moved on until the adrenaline kicked in when the shooting began. After that, she simply didn’t have time for the pain anymore. And it worked, too — until she stepped into the tenth-floor hallway and it suddenly returned, though not nearly with the same intensity as back in the stairwell.

She clenched her teeth and pushed through it, telling herself that Faith was somewhere in here and she had to find her, or find evidence of her existence, because if she didn’t do it, then no one else would. Not the cops, not the Feds, no one. It might not have been the absolute truth, but it was just enough motivation to keep her going.

Allie heard everything (footsteps in the rooms, frightened and confused whispers), saw everything (a section of the wallpaper peeling, a pen’s misplaced cap), even smelled the dirty carpet under her, and something that might have been perfume coming from the door she had just passed.

Then, out of nowhere, Reese’s voice was cutting through her sensory overload: “Remember, last door up the hallway to your left.”

Last door up the hallway to your left, she repeated to herself, and picked up her pace.

She was three doors down from her objective when the door clicked open and a woman stuck her head out and looked down the hallway—

Allie fired a shot over the woman’s head, splintering the doorframe behind her.

“Get on your knees now!” she shouted.

The woman, the caretaker that Reese had mentioned, hurried to obey, putting both arms over her head without having to be told, as if she had been in this situation many times before. She sneaked a look as Allie rushed to her, the Glock in her hands shifting from the woman’s overly made-up face to the room behind her, more parts of the living room coming into view as she got closer. The woman watched Allie the entire time. She might have been in her early forties, but the clown makeup made her look much older.

Allie finally reached the apartment and grabbed the older woman by her coiffed hair, jerking her back up to her feet. The woman let out a squeal but didn’t try to get away. Allie turned her around until they were facing the room, then clutched the back of the caretaker’s blouse and led her inside. The woman was a few inches shorter than her, despite wearing pumps, which allowed Allie to survey the room unobstructed.

Framed landscape oil paintings dotted the walls and the furniture looked new, including a coffee table with stacks of magazines that were just too perfectly staged to have ever been picked up. A hallway in the back led into the bedrooms, and there was a kitchen to her left.

“Alice,” Reese said from behind her.

She glanced back. He remained outside the door, the MP5K pointing back down the hallway. There were no other doors behind him, so he would have a perfect view of the floor all the way to the elevator and stairwell at the other end.

“Here,” he said, and reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his cell phone and tossed it to her. “Faith’s photo,” he added, because apparently she had given him a blank look.

Right. Faith’s photo.

Allie pocketed the burner phone and turning back around, got a good grip on the caretaker’s hair and pulled her head — just her head — backward. The woman let out another pained squeal.

“How many men do you have in the building?” she asked the woman.

The woman said something in Spanish.

“She’s lying,” Reese said. “Bitch can speak English better than Dwight could.”

Allie tightened her hold on the older woman’s hair and jerked it back again until her neck was straining. “How many?”

“Six,” the woman said, this time in perfect English.

Six men. How many had they killed just getting up here? Reese had shot two on the way up. Dwight had killed another one when he sprayed the ninth floor stairwell door. Then there was the one who had shot Dwight, whom she shot in return.

“Two left,” Allie said, looking back at Reese.

He nodded. “They’re probably waiting for us downstairs. Go get what you need, but hurry.”

“The cops?”

“Eventually, but I’m more worried about reinforcements.”

She nodded and turned back to the caretaker. “Where is it?”

“Where is what?” the woman asked through clenched teeth. If she was scared even a little bit, Allie couldn’t read it in her voice.

“The records of all the girls here, that have been through here. Where are they?”

“I don’t know—”

Allie pressed the Glock into the back of the woman’s neck, and her body stiffened. “I’m going to ask you just one more time: Where are they?”

“In the last room,” the woman said.

“Go,” Allie said, and pushed the older woman into the bedroom hallway.

The caretaker stumbled, caught herself, and glanced back at Allie. “They’re going to kill you for this.”

Allie ignored her, said, “What’s your name?”

“Melinda.”

“Shut the fuck up and take me to the records, Melinda.”

The older woman grinned back at her, the sight almost comical with her smeared lipstick. “You’ll never make it out of this building alive.”

Allie pointed the gun in her face. “Then neither will you.”

The woman grunted, still showing none of the fear — or, at the very least, some doubt — that Allie was hoping to see.

What’s it going to take to scare this woman?

Melinda led her into a room at the back of the apartment — some kind of office with a large oak desk in the center.

“Stop,” Allie said when they were inside. She took out the phone, made sure Faith’s black and white photo was on the screen, and showed it to Melinda. “Do you recognize her?”

The other woman squinted at the photo. “Who is she?”

“Do you recognize her?”

“I don’t know. There are a lot of girls here. A lot of girls come and go. I can’t keep track of all of them. Anyway, they all look the same, especially the white girls.”

“Her name’s Faith.”

“That doesn’t help. They all get new names before they come to me.”

Allie stared at her. Was she lying? She couldn’t tell. Maybe it was the caked makeup or the bitch face looking back at her, but Allie couldn’t read Melinda at all.

Shit.

“Show me the records,” Allie said.

Melinda walked around the desk and reached for the top shelf—

“Slowly,” Allie said, pointing the gun in her face again, this time from across the desk. “If you think being a woman means I won’t pull this trigger, you better think again.”

The older woman didn’t respond. Instead, she pulled open the drawer and reached inside, taking out a stack of manila folders and putting them on the desktop one at a time. A Polaroid of a young girl with blonde hair slid out from one of the folders. It wasn’t Faith, though she looked much younger than Faith had been when she was taken. Fifteen years old at the most.

“How many?” Allie asked.

“What?” Melinda said, moving to the next drawer.

“How many girls are in this place?”

“Fifty.”

“In the rooms?”

“Yes.”

“Permanently?”

“Some of them. Some are in transit.”

“In transit to where?”

Melinda dumped another pile of folders on the desk. “I don’t know. Once they leave here, they’re no longer my responsibility. I don’t know where they go or what happens to them.”

“Slowly,” Allie said, even as Melinda pulled another drawer open and reached inside and looked up—

Allie saw her eyes. They were dark and black and unsmiling — the eyes of a woman who had seen and done evil things, and didn’t care. And there was something else — a twinkle of mischief — that flared across her face.

“Don’t,” Allie said, but before she could get out the rest of the warning, Melinda lifted her right hand and Allie shot her once, then a second time, in the chest.

The caretaker staggered backward, bumped into the chair, and collapsed out of view behind the large desk.

Allie hurried around the furniture and looked down at Melinda, gasping on the floor. She was gripping a black revolver in her right hand, still trying to lift it even though she barely had the strength to breathe. The older woman’s eyes stared up at Allie the entire time, refusing to let go.

“Alice!” Reese shouted from across the apartment.

“I’m fine!” she shouted back.

“What happened?”

“She reached for a gun!”

Allie kicked the pistol out of Melinda’s hand and stepped over her to rifle through the drawers, pulling out enough folders to make two more stacks on the desktop. When she looked down again, Melinda had gone still, even though her eyes were still open and staring up at the ceiling.

“That was a stupid thing to do,” Allie said quietly to no one in particular.

She looked back at the stacks of folders. Six in all. There had to be at least twenty — maybe thirty — in each pile. She processed the numbers in her head but stopped after they became too much and grabbed the first one.

Every folder contained a Polaroid of a different girl posed against a wall — maybe even this very apartment — with a single piece of college-rule paper filled with the girl’s name, age, and identifying marks. Americans, Mexicans, South Americans girls. They were tall, short, but always slender and young. That was the thing that nagged at Allie the most — their age. They weren’t just young, they looked like little girls, too.

She battled through the nausea so she could keep going, but it quickly became apparent she wasn’t making enough headway at a fast enough rate, and there were still too goddamn many folders left. After a while she started only looking for blonde hair, feeling sick to her stomach as she tossed aside the ones with brunettes, redheads, girls with dark black hair…

“Alice!” Reese again, still shouting from the hallway by the sound of his voice.

“I need more time!” she shouted back.

“You don’t have more time! We’ve been here too long! Just grab what you can and let’s get the hell gone!”

She concentrated on the remaining stacks of folders. There were five of them. She hadn’t even managed to finish the first one yet, and there were still five left. The sheer number of folders horrified her. How long had this “house” been in existence? How many girls had come through this hellhole? All the other houses she knew about, and the ones even Reese didn’t know existed? How many were snatched off the streets? How many would never see their friends and family and boyfriends ever again?

Reese again, sounding even more urgent this time: “Alice! We gotta go!”

She stared at the folders, trying to think of a better way. A faster way. There had to be. But how? How?

She finally abandoned the folders and ran outside.

Reese was visible in the hallway through the open front door. He looked over when he heard her coming. “Did you find her?”

She shook her head and darted past him and into the hallway and began moving up it, shouting, “Faith! Faith, if you can hear me, come outside! Your mother sent me! Faith, are you here? Can you hear me? Faith!”

“This is not a good idea,” Reese said behind her.

She ignored him and continued shouting at the top of her lungs, stopping every time she reached a new set of doors and banging on them. “Faith! Your mother sent me to find you! Faith! Can you hear me? Come outside if you can hear me! Your mother sent me! Faith!”

No one answered, and there was just the sound of her own voice echoing up and down the hallway. She didn’t know why she was so surprised that no one was responding. Why would they? In their shoes, she would come across as a crazy woman shouting someone’s name over and over again, minutes after what had clearly been a gun battle. You would have to be insane to answer something like that. Even if Faith was here, what were the chances she would risk coming out?

But Allie didn’t have any choice, and she kept at it, doing her very best to ignore the slightly crazed sound of her own voice.

“Faith! Come out, Faith! Your mom sent me! Faith! I’m here to take you home! Faith!”

“What about the folders?” Reese asked behind her.

She stopped screaming and moving up the hallway just long enough to answer him. “There’s too many of them. Too many girls…”

“I’m sorry, but we have to go. We’ve already spent too much time here. There are still two more somewhere inside the building, remember? Alice, are you listening to me?”

But she wasn’t listening to him, not really. She was too busy shouting Faith’s name and could hear the strain starting to appear in her voice. It just made her shout louder and bang on the doors even harder.

“Faith! Come outside! Your mother sent me! Faith!”

“Alice, she’s not—” Reese started to say, when there was a click! from behind them, and they both spun around.

Reese aimed his MP5K at a head peering out of one of the apartment doors. It was a girl, frightened, her hand shaking as she gripped the doorknob. She stared at Allie and Reese with large blue eyes, and she was just the right size, the right age, and the right shade of long blonde hair…

But it wasn’t Faith.

“Faith’s gone,” the girl said, her voice trembling slightly, but it was clear she was trying very hard to fight through it. “But if you take me with you, I know where you can find her.”