Extreme Danger (McClouds & Friends #5)(136)

Christ. That was a question he was afraid to consider. Especially since being penned in with them might mean that he and Carrie were now slated to share their fate. And looking around himself, he couldn’t imagine it was anything but bad.

His own fault. Falling for a lying whore. Reeled in like a fish on a hook, and the hook was his own stupid dick.

It made him cringe. He’d been such a butthead. Becca had tried so hard to warn him, and he’d given her nothing but attitude.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

Sveti bit her lip, looked doubtful, and shook her head.

“Why? What the f*ck is this place? What are they going to do to you?” He was shouting now, even though he knew it wasn’t fair.

She didn’t look offended. “First, Ukraina,” she said, in a low, halting voice. “Apartment. Many month. Then truck, boat, many days.” She made a face, a gagging gesture with her finger. “Bad, truck, bad, boat. Then, here.” She held up the hand that wasn’t supporting Rachel. Five fingers, a closed fist, four more fingers. “Days. Many days.”

“Nine days?” he said.

“Many,” she repeated. She sounded exhausted.

Josh pointed at the bruises on her face. “Who hit you?” God, how could anybody hit a face that looked that fragile?

Her face went blank and she turned away, putting the baby down. The kid started to whimper. He knew just how she felt. But it was time for him to man up. Do something. Anything.

He staggered towards the door, supporting himself against the wall. Seemed less energy consuming than asking complicated questions. The littler kids all followed him, in a straggling file. He was probably the first new thing they’d had to look at in months. He must be a hell of a spectacle, beat all to shit and streaked with blood. He tried the door. Locked, bolted. The one other door proved to be a bathroom. One filthy toilet, no toilet seat. A dirty sink. A cracked bar of yellow soap. An industrial-sized toilet paper dispenser. The stench of piss. That was all.

He crept slowly back, along the wall, to the spot next to Carrie, and sank down next to her. He felt queasy and terrified. He covered his eyes to block out the light and the penetrating gaze of all those thumb-sucking kids who were hunkered down to watch him.

A few moments later, he felt a tap on his knee. Sveti was holding out a little plastic tray, sort of like the meal you got in a plane. A shred of dry-looking meat, a dried, cracked glop of gluey mashed potatoes smeared with congealed gravy, gray vegetables, a half pint container of milk. A small bottle of filtered water.

It looked and smelled like a frozen meal that had been thawed and refrozen several times before the final insult of being micro-waved.

She patted her own belly. “Me, no eat. No hungry. You eat?”

That was it. His stomach was already roiling from the concussion, and the sight of that disgusting little meal slammed into him like a fist right into his gut.

He twisted to the side and vomited everything inside him, then hung over the foul mess he’d made, weeping for shame at his own weakness and for the pounding, crashing pain in his head.

Pat-pat, this time on his shoulder. Sveti shoved a handful of wet paper napkins into his hand and the bottle of filtered water into the other. She pushed at him, nudging until he understood that he was supposed to scoot closer to Carrie. Then she started cleaning up the vomit, like she was used to it.

He wiped his eyes, his mouth with the napkin. “Please don’t,” he forced out, through shaking lips. “I’ll…I’ll do it.”

She shot him a sidelong look. He could read it. You can’t even walk without falling on your face, and if I don’t, who will?

So you wake up in a completely white room. How do you feel?

He almost laughed at the random thought, but he stopped himself. It would hurt too much. How did he feel? He felt like he was already dead. So was Carrie, and Sveti, and the rest of these poor kids. All that was left was the actual, bloody separation from his body.

He let her clean up his stinking mess, trying hard not to cry.



This was not possible. It had to be some kind of bizarre joke.

But Nick didn’t joke at the best of times. He could not possibly be joking now. Becca’s mouth worked, stuttering out words that made no sense. “But I—but you—Nick, what on earth? T-t-take these off me, for God’s sake! We don’t have time for this!”

“You have time for it now.” He had that hateful cool tone that had been bothering her since he’d gotten back to the hotel that day. “You’ve got all the time in the world for the next couple of days.”

“But why are you doing this? Carrie and Josh are—”

“Figments of your imagination,” he said. “And as such, I’m not inclined to worry about them.”

She gaped at him until she found her voice again. “But that’s nuts! You know they exist! You talked to my brother on the phone!”

“Yeah, that call from Josh really had me going. For a long time. But we’ve reached the end of the line.”

“Why?” she demanded, frantically. “When? What happened?”

“It happened today,” he said. “At 1:16, when you got out of a taxi and went into Zhoglo’s town house.”

She floundered for a moment, bewildered. “Zhoglo’s—what? But I didn’t…oh, Nick. My God.” She clutched his arm with her free hand. “You mean, the Gavin Street house? That’s where I went to see Josh! Now it makes sense! Josh said Nadia was here on a student visa, but that place was way too nice to be foreign student housing. I knew there was something off. That’s how Zhoglo entrapped Josh! With Nadia! And Carrie was in that house the whole time!”