Objectify Me: A Fireworks Novella (The Fireworks Novellas) (7 page)

“Did you say something?”

“No.” She presses the bell. Nothing obvious happens. Do we go and wait by the door, or stay here? I wish I had taken the time to talk to that bouncer, but I was so eager to get the hell out.

The kitten, or whatever it is, mews again.

“That! Did you hear that?”

Charlotte turns her head towards the back wall of the locker, pressing her ear onto the metal when another faint noise seeps through.

“Is it a cat?”

She shushes me, listening. “Someone is crying.”

I join her on the wall, my ear to the cold steel. Behind the wall, someone is definitely crying. A girl.

“Okay, fuck. How would we get to the locker behind this one?”

Charlotte looks at me like I’m stupid. “It will be the seventeenth locker down in the next row.”

“Duh. Of course. Come on.”

We run. Since we’ve rung the bell, there’s no telling who is on their way down to spring us. Or me. I’m starting to put together a picture in my head of how this place works, and it’s making me sick. There are girls locked up in here. Girls put to work upstairs. Girls brought down from the party to these fucked up “suites” for whatever kinky shit people are willing to pay for. Underage girls. I fight an urge to puke as we tear down the next aisle.

Charlotte skids to a halt in front of locker 217. It’s bolted with a padlock, just like the other one. I knock gently on the door.

“Hello?”

There’s whimpering from behind the door. I tug at the padlock, as though my outrage might have given me the strength to tear it open with my bare hands. Sadly not. “We’ll get you out. Just wait.”

Charlotte is already running back to the end of the aisle, looking around. “Here!” she yells, and disappears for a moment. She comes back with a heavy fire extinguisher. Perfect! I take it from her and whack it down on the padlock. It takes three blows, but finally the lock breaks open. I tear it off and throw it aside. Steeling myself, I pull the door open.

The smell hits me first, and as my eyes adjust to the light, I see the source. A bucket of waste in the far corner. In the other corner, a half-naked girl, chained to a bolt on the wall.

“God, no,” Charlotte says, and pushes past me.

Chapter Ten - Charlotte

I step slowly towards the girl, my hands raised so as not to frighten her. Levi hangs back – a good instinct. This girl probably doesn’t have much trust for men.

“It’s okay,” I say. “We’re here to help you.”

She presses herself into the corner, eyes wide, skinny arms wrapped around her narrow chest. She doesn’t look to be even full grown, much less over eighteen.

“What’s your name?” I say.

The girl shrinks away from me as I crouch in front of her. Her chain scrapes along the concrete floor as she moves.

“Levi, can you break the bolt?”

His shadow disappears out the door and reappears with the fire extinguisher. I shield the girl with my body as he attacks the bolt on the wall. It comes away after one solid whack. Levi sighs and looks down at the girl.

“Do you speak English?” he says. The girl barely reacts. “
Ty govoriš' po-russki
?”

Her eyes don’t exactly light up, but some life dribbles back into them as she nods.

“
Kak vas zovut?”
Levi says. “
Men'a zovut Levi.”
He points to his own chest. “Levi. This is Charlotte. Charlotte.
Kak vas zovut?”

“Walentina.”

“Valentina?” Levi says. “Are you named after the astronaut? Valentina Tereshkova?
Da
?
Kosmonashka
?”

The girl offers a little smile at last. “
P
olitsiju
?”

“
Nyet. Nyet.
Drugh.
Friend.”

Valentina looks at me for confirmation.

“Yes. Friends. We’re friends. It’s okay.” I hold out my hand, and after what feels like forever, Valentina takes it. She gets shakily to her feet as I pull her up. God, she’s skinny. Her rib bones strain against skin so pale it looks transparent. And she’s shivering, wearing nothing but a skimpy bra and panties. Levi slips off his hoodie and puts it around her shoulders. It hangs halfway to her knees. I don’t even think she’s five feet tall. I’m aching to ask her age, but on the whole, I think knowing might just make this nightmare that much worse.

We step out of the storage locker, Valentina blinking in the bright light. Her chain is slung over her arm like a train.

“Now what?” I ask.

Levi pulls out his phone. “I’m calling the police. If Buck and Omar haven’t gotten themselves out of this scene yet, then they deserve to get arrested.”

I hear the distinctive beeps of 911 as he dials. “Come on, come on…” he says, pacing. While he waits, I check Valentina over properly, taking her hands and gently turning her wrists outward so I can check the inside of her elbows her for needle marks. I push up one sleeve of the loose hoodie and the other while she watches me. The skin on her arms is as pale and smooth as the rest of her. Whatever drugs they’ve been giving her, it hasn’t been by injection. Thank god.

I can hear the strain in Levi’s voice as he gives details to the 911 operator – the address, everything we found here. Stuff he probably never thought he’d see in a million years. I don’t know why, but somehow I feel guilty – as though it’s my fault that his stupid friends dragged him out to this party. Maybe I’m just bearing the guilt of the whole of New Orleans right now. All the seedy side anyway. The shady, steamy, and sketchy. I’m as proud of our
laissez faire
image as the next person, but sometimes I think that image might not be worth it. Maybe the people rolling underneath the cocktails and feathers and beads aren’t having such good times.

“We’re on the second floor,” Levi says into the phone. “It’s like a self-storage type place… No, there’s no one down here but us. We’ll just hide somewhere and wait for the cops….okay…soon okay? This girl is only a child.” He hangs up, turning to us. “We should get out of sight.”

A locker? But they’re all locked except number seventeen, and the one where we found Valentina. And those would be the first place the goons upstairs would go during a raid. I switch on my engineering brain, trying to see the layout of the building.

“Downstairs,” I say. “Under the last stairway. No one will go down there, because they know it’s bolted, and no one ever looks under stairs.”

“Good idea.”

I tug Valentina back down to the end of the aisle with Levi following close behind. I notice he’s carrying the fire extinguisher. I imagine it might come in handy again tonight. Tonight? I look at my watch. It’s after six AM. At least that improves the odds somewhat that the cops will actually check this out.

We reach the T junction and turn back to the exit. But before we even get there, the door opens and the giant bouncer from the top of the stairs appears. He bends down and picks up my shoe, just as Levi pulls us back the way we came. We run back down the second aisle. When Valentina stumbles, Levi drops the fire extinguisher and just picks her up, slinging her over his shoulder like a sack.

I can hear the bouncer running after us, shouting in Russian. We get to the end of the aisle and turn right, around the corner and back up the first aisle. Levi suddenly skids to a stop, drags me back into locker seventeen. He slams the door behind us and pushes me down onto the floor by the wall, letting Valentina slide down into my lap. Tipping over the basket of sex toys, he finds a few pairs of handcuffs.

The Russian yelling gets closer. Levi stares at the door latch and the handcuffs in his hand.

“Engineering help?” he says.

I jump up and grab the handcuffs. By hooking one end over the handle and locking the other side around the light-switch cable, I manage a pretty weak security system. It will buy us a minute or two. To do what, I don’t know. We’re rats in a cage.

Levi drags me back down to the floor by the door. He kneels down and puts his hand on my cheek.

“I really like you, Charlotte,” he says.

Boom!

The Russian guy kicks the door. The handcuffs rattle and stretch as the door strains to open.

“I really like you too, Levi.” Why we’re saying these things now is too complicated to even think about. It feels right. Maybe that’s all that matters.

We both look at Valentina, who is starting to seem like some kind of magical child Levi and I birthed and raised and lost and rescued all in the twelve hours that we’ve known each other. I put my arms around her and hold her close. Levi touches her cheek and smiles.

“
Ne boysya, Kosmonashka,
” he says

Valentina clings to me.

Boom!

Levi leaps up just as the door flies open. The first thing I see is a hand with a gun in it. Levi grabs the Russian guy by the wrist and yanks him forward. Then it all seems to happen so fast. And it’s strangely quiet – not at all like the fights on TV and movies with all their added sound effects. The Russian’s free fist flies through the air. I don’t see what it hits. Still holding the Russian’s other wrist, Levi steps back and kicks him in the groin. When the Russian lunges forward from that, Levi hits him twice, hard, in the back of the skull. Then as though it’s not enough that the big dude is crumpling to the floor like a human avalanche, Levi twists around and slams the guy’s wrist against the wall until he’s able to pull the pistol out of his hand.

There’s no need, though, because when the Russian hits the floor, he does not get up. Levi takes two steps back and raises the gun, holding it on the unconscious Russian with both hands. I let a few seconds go past, watching Levi’s chest rising and falling.

“Holy crap,” I finally say. “Was that Jiu Jitsu?”

He shakes his head, blinking. He’s so pale, I’d be surprised to find any blood in his head at all. “Krav Maga,” he says. “Israeli martial arts.”

He lets one hand fall away from the gun and rests it on his ribs, wincing.

“Did he hit you?”

“I’m fine,” Levi says. I can see he’s trembling. “I’ve never held a real gun before.”

I give Valentina a reassuring look and stand up. “Better give it to me then,” I say. “I’ve got one just like that at home.” I take the gun from him slowly, aiming it away as he uncurls his fingers. Then I engage the safety and check the clip, like a good licensed firearm owner should. Full clip. Locked and loaded. I tuck it into the back of my jeans. “Now what?”

Levi looks a lot better since I relieved him of the gun. “Well, we’re armed now,” he says, awkwardly handcuffing the Russian to the lighting cable. He winces again as he does it. The big guy must have landed at least one good hit. Maybe in the ribs. Levi seems pretty stoic about it. He feels the Russian’s neck before he gets up. “We should still hide, though. As soon as the police arrive, those thugs are going to come down here.”

“Do you think there are other girls here?” I ask. I know there must be. What I’m really asking is what we should do about it.

Levi sighs heavily. “I imagine there is. Let’s wait for the police though. They have a much better chance that way.”

He’s probably right. We need a helluva backup. So we’ll hide and hope none of the bad guys comes looking for us. I have a gun. Levi needs a weapon. I dig into my tote bag until I find what I’m looking for. “Mace,” I say, handing him the small pink can.

He looks at it distastefully. “And now I feel
completely
emasculated.”

“Emasculated? Baby, you just disarmed and knocked out a guy twice your size with your bare hands. You could be wearing my bra and panties and you’d still be more of a man than anyone I’ve ever met.”

Valentina puts her hands over her mouth, laughing.

Levi smiles at her as he pockets the mace. “You understand more than you let on, don’t you, Astro-girl?”

“
Da
,” she says. “Panties.”

I think she must be about thirteen. I catch Levi’s eyes and see him blink away tears.

“Let’s get out of here,” he says, his voice gruff.

Levi won’t let me lead, even though I have the gun. We tiptoe along the lockers until we reach a row leading to the exit. Levi pokes his head around and gives the all-clear. I turn to hustle Valentina along and find she’s holding my shoe, the one the Russian guy picked up. She hands it to me with a smile.

“Thanks,” I say, tucking it into my tote bag. Later, if she wants them, I’ll give her those shoes.

There’s no one in the stairwell, thank God.

“Maybe we could shoot the bolts off the door,” I say as we head down to the first level.

“That doesn’t work. I saw it on Mythbusters.”

Damn, I want to marry this boy one day. If we get out of this alive, I might just propose.

As I expected, the space under the last stairway is dark, damp and full of crud. Levi finds a piece of cardboard and sets it into the darkest corner for me and Valentina to sit on. I take the gun out of my jeans and hold it on my knees. Levi crouches in front of us, digging the mace out of his pocket. And we wait in a silence that seems to stretch out like a shadow.

After an eternity, there are noises upstairs, yelling. Valentina clings to me as heavy footsteps thump down the stairs above us. Levi tenses, and seconds later, a big guy in a suit comes barreling past us. He jangles a handful of keys by the bolted door, muttering to himself, presumably in Russian. So taken with trying to find the right key, he doesn’t look behind him, and therefore, doesn’t see us. But his search isn’t going well. He tries three or four keys without any luck. Upstairs, there’s more yelling and doors slamming open.

The guy struggles with his keys, growing frantic. At any moment, he’s going to turn and see us, and then we’re fucked. Because what could this scumbag use more right now than a trio of hostages? Levi turns and gives me a look. I shake my head, carefully pulling the safety back on the pistol. I’ve never fired a gun in the direction of anything but a paper target or a tin can before. I don’t even like those targets with people on them – they’re way too morbid for me. But this guy is certainly armed. It’s him or us. Do I just shoot him in the back? Can I do that?

Heavy feet thump on the stairs.

“Get down! Police! Get down!”

The guy turns from the door, pulling a pistol out of the front of his pants.

And Levi leaps.

They crash down in a heap. There’s a revolting cracking noise as the guy’s gun arm breaks against the concrete floor. The pistol flies out of his hand as he screams and lashes out with his other fist. Levi jerks back, but a millisecond later, he is on his feet. And bizarrely, since he’s obviously some kind of street-fighting superhero, Levi decides to hit this dude with the girl-mace instead. A full spray in his face and he’s screaming like he’s been castrated, scraping his eyes frantically.

I dive out from under the stairs and grab the other pistol, holding it as Levi untangles himself, his eyes watering.

“Police! Drop your weapons!”

I throw the guns down and turn, raising my hands as four uniformed cops bear down on us.

“Get down on your knees!”

Valentina looks terrified under the stairs.

“
Ne boysya, ne boysya,”
Levi says. I glance over at him. He’s kneeling sort of lopsided with his hands on his head. For a West Coast boy, he sure knows how to behave around the police. Thank goodness. Cops around here can get pretty trigger happy.