Greg Rucka - Walking dead

Then she ran into traffic, looking back at me as she did so, and that meant she didn't see the white minibus heading straight for her. The screech of its brakes and the howl of its horn snapped her attention around, and she panicked and stopped dead. The bus came to a halt with perhaps an inch between her and its front fender, and I'd caught up by then. I put a hand on her shoulder and another on her arm, and led her back off the street as more horns called furiously after us for disrupting traffic.

The shock of the near miss let me get her off the road, but the moment we were clear, she tried to yank free from me again. I kept my grip on her, aware that by doing so I was only making matters worse, only scaring her more. I couldn't imagine the number of unwanted hands that had been on her body, and now I was just one more pair of them.

"I'm not going to hurt you!" I told her in Russian. "You have to calm down!"

"Fuck you! Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you let me go!"

I turned her to look at me. The run had made the bloody nose worse, a flow of crimson that ran off her chin and into her shirt. The T-shirt, I saw now, was pink, with a faded silver star on it, and the word porn printed above it in English. She struggled like a bird against my grip, and maybe weighed as much.

"I'm not going to hurt you," I said again. "You need money? I have money, I can give you money. Please, calm down."

She stared at me, furious and hateful, but went still. Then she tried to break my grip again, hoping that I'd bought the change. I hadn't, and I didn't let her go.

"I have money," I told her. "And you don't have to give me your body to get it. Please. Believe me."

Then I released my hold on her, stepping back, showing her my palms before dropping my hands to my sides.

She looked horribly unsure then. On either side of us, pedestrian traffic hustled past, barely giving us a glance.

"You'll give me money?"

"Yeah."

"What do I have to do?"

"Answer a question or two, that's all."

She tasted the blood running over her lips, wiped at her nose and saw the result on her hand.

"Oh God," she breathed. "I'm bleeding."

"Let me take you somewhere. You tell me where."

The suggestion confused her. "Where?"

"You pick," I said. "Someplace you'll feel safe."

"I don't know where that is."

I looked around, saw a restaurant, a sign in Turkish and English telling me its name was Petek. I pointed to it. "In there? You can use the bathroom. I'll buy you lunch."

I handed her back her missing shoe.

"Okay?" I asked.

She nodded miserably, still trapped. Petek wasn't much of a restaurant, but they had a bathroom, and they let her use it. I bought two kebabs and a couple of cans of Fanta, waited for her at a table, trying not to be impatient. I hadn't followed her for obvious reasons, and if there was a rear exit to the restaurant and she wanted to hoof it, I wasn't going to try and stop her.

She was gone for nearly half an hour, but eventually she joined me at my table. She'd cleaned herself as best as she could, dried blood clinging to the inside of her nostrils. Her shirt was still a mess. There was no sign of the bag of dried fruits, and I realized that she must have eaten them all before returning, before someone could take them from her.

"How much will you pay me?"

"How much do you need to get home?" I asked her.

She looked at me incredulously.

"A thousand?" I asked. "Will a thousand be enough?"

"I can't go home."

"You don't remember me, do you?"

She shook her head.

"We met a couple weeks ago. Arzu told you to keep me company."

His name made her mouth tighten, her eyes narrow, and she gave me another appraisal. Then she nodded. "The man who didn't answer his phone."

"That was me."

"You said… your name is David?"

"Right. And you said your name is Natasha. I couldn't tell if that was a joke."

"Vasylyna." She took one of the cans of Fanta, the grape, and cracked the top. "You will give me the money to go back to Kiev?"

"I can't control what you do with it. But I'll give you the money."

"Just for my help?" Vasylyna asked, then gulped at her soda.

"I'm trying to find Arzu," I said, deflecting the question. "I need to talk to him. Do you know where he is?"

She set the can down, eyeing the kebabs. I nudged them closer to her.

"The money first," she bargained, quietly. "You give me the money first."

"You think I won't give it to you after?"

"What if you don't like what I tell you?"

I brought out my wallet, emptied it of cash into my hand, then folded over the bills and slid them to her. "You have your passport?"

"Arzu took it. I don't know where it is."

"I can take care of that, too. We can get you a new one. Tell me where I can find him."

"You can't." She choked on a sob, caught herself, staring at the money on the table. "You can't find him."

"He's dead?"

"In jail. He got arrested a couple of weeks ago, but they let him go, he paid the police. But then he got into a fight last week, with another pimp, and he was arrested again." She pushed the money back at me, tears shining in her eyes. "You won't let me have it."

I pushed the money right back.

"Vasylyna," I said, "you're going home."

Twenty-four The man who ran Trabzon's jail was a Turk named Besim Celik, in his early forties, average in height and maybe twenty pounds overweight. He carried it well enough, and when we met at the Trabzonspor Club two days after I'd promised Vasylyna a way home, he moved himself with the certainty of a man used to pushing around others. The bar was the clubhouse of Trabzon's football team, and despite the fact that there was no match in the offing, the place was bustling when I arrived, and I was afraid I'd have trouble spotting him, but I needn't have worried. He was the only person in the place wearing a police officer's uniform.

"Anthony Shephard?" He spoke in heavily accented English.

"Captain Celik?"

He picked up his glass of beer and motioned to the back doors of the clubhouse that opened onto the patio. I nodded and followed him, and we took seats at one of the corners. It was quieter outside, but almost as crowded, patrons enjoying the pleasant July weather.

"I appreciate you coming to meet with me, Captain."

"The message-yes, message?-my assistant gave me made me curious. You want to talk about a prisoner?"

I nodded. It had taken the rest of the previous day and another five hundred euros to simply get this far, and I was having a hard time controlling my mounting impatience. Every hour that passed seemed to take Tiasa further away from me, not closer.

"What is it I can do for you, Mr. Shephard?"

"You're holding a friend of a friend of mine. His name is Arzu Kaya."

Celik pursed his lips, then took a sip of his beer. "We have this man."

"My friend is very worried about Arzu. I hate seeing him like this, I really do, and I was hoping I could discuss with you some means of getting them together, if only for a few hours. Maybe by making a donation to a charity you support, something along those lines."

With absolute seriousness, he remarked, "It would need to be a large donation."

"I was thinking around ten thousand euros," I said.

"That would be an acceptable amount."

"The thing is," I said, "I want to surprise them both, Arzu and my friend. I want it to be a gift."

"A gift?"

"Yeah. Maybe I could even get it wrapped."

Celik didn't blink. "Gift-wrapping is extra."

"I'd expect it would be." I took out the piece of paper I'd been carrying folded in my pocket, handing it over. "If I could get him delivered to this address."

He took the paper, opening it one-handed. "Not a very busy location."