Extreme Danger (36 page)

However, the chances were good that Diana was heading off to meet people associated with Zhoglo. And while Diana might be incompetent as a criminal, Zhoglo’s people were most definitely not.

And whatever unknown thing Diana was driving off to do both frightened and horrified her. Blood. Tissue typing.

Becca shuddered with a renewed thrill of fear. God, she wished Nick were with her. She wanted to call him, to tell him what she now knew: Mathes’s name, Diana’s license plate number, the cryptic conversation she had overheard in Marla’s office. But by the time it had occurred to her to call him, she was out of area.

She squirmed, uncomfortably. He needed that information, but she couldn’t stop at a pay phone to give it to him without losing Diana. Besides. She was dead sure, to the marrow of her bones, that Nick would not approve of what she was doing right now.

Hah. Talk about an understatement. His head would explode.

At least he had no clue where she was. For all Nick knew, she was still racing around at the club, working the banquet. She had until midnight before he started to worry and stew. Two and a half hours. She’d go a bit farther, and with luck, Diana would do whatever dreadful thing Mathes had ordered her to do quickly enough so that Becca could witness it and get back to Seattle in time for her date with Nick. Yeah. Right. That sounded real probable.

They were almost to a nothing special, could-be-anywhere rural area called Kimble when Diana’s black PT Cruiser started to signal. She pulled off onto a long strip mall, went a couple of miles, and signaled again right before a Days Inn.

Her first big dilemma. Becca circled around a big block, her mind racing. Jesus, now what? She could hardly follow the woman in.

She reasoned it out. The front was short-term parking. Guests parked in the bigger lot out back. Therefore, Diana would have to drive her car around to the back, no matter where her room was.

Once parked in the back, Becca fretted some more, chewing her nails. So now she could watch Diana walk from car to hotel. Big freaking deal. Becca got out, on impulse, and walked in the back door. The janitor had propped it open with a mop. Thanks, dude. No key card required.

Once inside, there were two wings that led to the guest rooms, one to the right and one to the left. She could see through the lobby corridor, past food and beverage machines, ice machines, bathrooms, all the way to the front desk. Diana was still at the desk, checking in. Her clerk was a woman with very big red hair.

Diana took her key card and went out to pull her car around. Becca got busy with her cell phone, making a big show of staring down into the display and texting a bogus message.

Diana came in the back door, and turned to the right.

Becca waited until she was sure the other woman was using the stairwell rather than the elevator, and sprinted after her. Best not to ask herself if this exercise was as stupid and pointless as it was dangerous.

Don’t ask. Don’t wonder. Don’t stop. Just do it, damnit.

She bounded up the stairs two at a time, peered out onto the second floor corridor. No one. Back to the stairs, two at a time, heart thudding. This time when she poked her head out of the stairwell, she saw a flash of beige, and a door closing. She exhaled. Her eyes locked onto it. Third from the end. She sneaked down the corridor. Room 317.

OK, great. She knew the room number. What she could do with that information was a complete blank. Her mind stalled out.

The next dilemma was what the hell to do with herself. She’d never before in her life lurked or loitered in a space where she had no right to be. Of course, she could simply check into the hotel, but then what? Hang around in the corridor till the woman came out?

Deflated, she headed downstairs and back out to the parking lot and sat in her car, staring at the hotel. Staring at her useless phone.

She was about to get out and go call Nick from the pay phone in the lobby when something blocked the light from the streetlamp. A gleaming black SUV with tinted windows swept past, pulling up in front of the back door.

Diana burst out, kicking over the propped mop, and got in. The SUV sped up towards the parking lot exit. Becca jolted into action, put her car in gear, and followed, but a Jeep Cherokee pulled into the exit and proceeded to sit there like a goddamn mountain while its driver decided what to do.

The black SUV with Diana in it accelerated on the main strip, went around the corner, and was lost to sight.

Becca screamed, honked, gestured madly. The driver, a soccer mom type, frowned at her as if to say, what’s your damn hurry, lady, and punished her by oh-so-sloooooowly driving into the parking lot.

Her tires squealed as she zoomed onto the empty street, turned right, looked for taillights. Nothing. There was a cross street up ahead, at the light. She peered to the right, the left, straight ahead.

Fuck. She chose a direction at random. She came back, tried all the others, already knowing it was futile. She’d lost them.

After over a half hour of aimless driving around, staring at parking lots and cars parked on residential streets, she finally gave up and went back to the Days Inn. She slumped down in the seat and stared out at the blank, prefab building, feeling foolish and glum. Thwarted by a soccer mom from hell. How dumb.

So should she wait? Diana could be gone all night. For that matter, she could be gone for days, or for good. This involved Zhoglo, after all. She glanced at her watch. 10:40. She would wait another half hour before calling Nick, just in case Diana’s errand was a quick one. Not that Becca had any clue what to do if the other woman did come back.

Oh, well. One thing at a time. She shouldn’t expect this to be easy or obvious. Diana’s car was her only point of reference. She had to come back to it sometime. Becca would chew her nails, wait, and watch.

God, how she’d love to have something concrete to offer Nick when she finally saw him to offset the craziness of this stunt. Maybe he’d be too astonished to yell at her. Maybe he’d be impressed with her nerve and her initiative. Maybe he’d even be happy for the help.

Uh-huh. And maybe pigs in pink tutus ice-skated in hell.

Chapter
20

S veti and little Rachel were the last ones to go into the examining room to see the American lady doctor. The oldest, and the youngest. The others had gone in, one after the other, clutching their containers of pee. Marina had passed out the containers that morning, and it had been Sveti’s stinky job to supervise the spraying and splashing of the little ones. Her one pair of pants had gotten soaked with everyone’s piss. Not that they could get much dirtier or smellier.

All but Rachel. Marina had given her plastic bags with stickum to put over Rachel’s privates inside her diaper to collect the baby’s urine, but Rachel had tugged at them all day. None of the bags were more than slightly damp, but her diapers were soaked.

They’d tried to send Sveti in first, but Rachel clutched and screamed so hard, Yuri shoved her back and grabbed Sasha instead. Rachel got clingier every day. Sveti couldn’t even go into the toilet without her anymore. Her back ached from carrying the baby around.

Sasha had been back a quarter of an hour later, and slanted her an eyes-rolling grimace, making a syringe gesture at his elbow.

Blood taking. Again. Sveti wanted to cry. The little ones would be screaming, and she was the one they all turned to for comfort. It scared her to death and it made her feel guilty. Couldn’t they understand that she was as helpless, as desperate and powerless as they were?

But they didn’t. They clung, as if she could protect them somehow. And she couldn’t bring herself to be cold and push them away.

She wished she could think of a way to rescue them all. Find parents for everyone. Parents like hers. Wonderful parents.

God, how she wanted her mother.

Yuri came out, holding Mikhail under his arm. The boy dangled, head down, unconscious. “Smelly little shithead. He fainted.” Yuri grunted and tossed the child on the nearest cot. Mikhail shivered and moaned.

“She’s next,” he said, gesturing at Rachel, who was sucking her thumb, eyes huge in her little face.

He grabbed Rachel and tried to pull her off Sveti’s lap, but Rachel clutched Sveti’s T-shirt and a handful of her hair, mouth opening to emit a sound so shrill and loud, Yuri jerked back, and tried to slap her. Sveti flinched to cover Rachel’s body with her own and took the blow on the side of her head. For a moment, she could hardly even hear Rachel’s ear-splitting shrieks.

When her vision and hearing cleared, Yuri was shouting at her.

“…brat calmed down, and bring her in with you! The doctor bitch can do the two of you together. What the fuck do I care?”

It took frantic minutes of soothing and crooning and jiggling and cuddling, until Rachel’s shrieks damped down to hiccupping sobs. Her hot, thin little body shook in Sveti’s arms. Both of them were shaking. Rachel’s screaming jarred her badly. Sveti had grown numb to many things, but the toddler’s desperation sliced through her numbness and got to her. Probably because it was so much like her own.

The American lady doctor didn’t look like a doctor at all. Sveti was momentarily dazzled. The woman was the first beautiful thing she’d seen in months. She looked like a magazine model or a Hollywood actress, with perfect white skin and made-up eyes. Glossy dark hair that bobbed and swung like hair on TV ads.

She wasn’t smiling like a TV ad, though. She looked scared and tense. Sveti was skilled at gauging the emotional states of the people around her. Advance warning could save a pinch, or slap, or kick in the leg that left a bruise as big as a saucer.

But the American lady doctor didn’t look like she would be violent or cruel. She was sweating, and it was fear sweat. Sveti could smell her as she examined Rachel. Heart, lungs, throat, temperature. She murmured in a low, musical voice into a shiny rod, recording numbers.

She pawed through Rachel’s urine bags, and frowned at Sveti as if it were her fault Rachel had not peed. She wore a silver-gray silk shirt that had iridescent highlights. It looked so soft Sveti longed to touch it. There were dark, crumpled sweat crescents under the doctor’s arms. Her forehead was shiny. And her red painted lips shook with tension.

Then she began preparing the needle and vials for the blood drawing. Rachel, unfortunately, knew exactly what was coming, and began to flop and shriek. Rachel was incredibly strong for such a tiny person. It took all Sveti had to hold the baby still. By the time the doctor finally got some blood out of her, Sveti was sobbing too.

The doctor looked shaken. She had to lean over, put her head down. She looked pale, sick. Maybe she was a nicer person than the guards, Sveti thought. Maybe this was a chance. For help.

Sveti struggled to remember the English she had learned from Arkady, her father’s handsome friend. Arkady had lived so many years in America, he was practically American himself. She’d learned many words from him, but a lot of what she knew had slipped away.

She thought to ask the doctor for help with Rachel’s rashes, her ear infections. The blood that Sveti sometimes found in her diaper when she changed her. And there was more that she was forgetting. Always more. She thrashed her tired, foggy brain, trying to remember it all.

“Baby, ear. Hurt,” she tried.

The woman looked at her blankly and her gaze slid quickly away.

Sveti tried again, tapping Rachel’s ear. “Baby, ear,” she repeated. She tapped Rachel’s forehead. “Hot. Night. Cries, cries, cries.”

The woman still would not meet her eyes. She was pretending she didn’t understand. She resumed muttering into her recorder.

Sveti lifted Rachel’s grubby little shirt to show her the angry rash on the child’s belly and chest, and spoke more loudly. “Hurts,” she said. “Medicine? Baby, medicine?” Her voice was starting to quiver.

The lady doctor shook her head, made an irritated gesture. She said something that sounded final into the shiny rod, and made an impatient come-here gesture to Sveti, patting the examining table.

Her turn. Sveti sighed and swallowed back her frustration, and placed the whimpering Rachel gently on the floor. She climbed up onto the examining table and stared straight into the doctor’s face, waiting for a chance to catch her eye again, but the lady was careful to keep her gaze averted. She tugged gingerly at the stained, grayish T-shirt Sveti wore and Sveti reluctantly pulled it off, revealing the grubby strip of ragged T-shirt wrapped around her chest.

The doctor went around the table, brushed aside Sveti’s long, tangled dark hair, and started picking at the knots.

Back before she was taken, she hadn’t had breasts at all, Sveti thought. Months ago, she could hardly wait to get them. Breasts would mean that she was finally starting to grow up, and if she could do that fast enough, she might be able to catch up with Arkady, and he could marry her. Take her to America to live with him, where she would be happy forever. What a stupid little girl she’d been. Stupid little girl daydreams. Hah.

Now she had breasts, and she wished they would go away. They were big enough to jiggle under her shirt. She had begged Sasha for a strip of his T-shirt, which was so large it hung halfway down his legs.

Sasha had understood perfectly, even though he would not speak. He’d torn off a strip from the bottom, and helped her tie it around her ribs as tight as they could pull it, even though it itched and chafed.