Doranna Durgin - Survival Instinct

Her hand tightened around Dave’s Ruger, then released. She couldn’t see through the window well enough to risk shooting through it-there was no telling exactly where the kid was located. Not to mention that the noise might get someone’s attention. The wrong someone.

She remembered the parking lot on the other side of the building, full of chunky-edged asphalt. Keeping an eye out for unwanted visitors-with a kid here, who knew when Longsford or one of his minions might appear-she sprinted around the building to prowl the edges of the lot. She spotted a fist-size chunk of asphalt and pried it loose. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” she muttered under her breath as she ran back to the door. With another quick glance to assure herself she was still alone, she smashed the man-made rock against the window, ducking away from the shards that fell outward.

Yeah, she was gonna be in big trouble if this was a cat after all.

But with the noise of breaking glass the cries renewed, and there was no mistaking that frantic if muffled howling for anything but a human child. Karin pulled her sleeve over her hand for protection as she scraped the asphalt chunk along the window frame, crushing the glass she couldn’t knock out. If she got the kid loose she’d have to send him right back out through this window, and she didn’t want him sliced and diced on the way.

Finally, swiping away glass dust with her protected hand and blowing off what she could, she tossed the asphalt inside the building. No telling how many doors she’d have to go through on her way to finding the kid.

For a moment, then, she stepped back to consider the window. Leap, grab, shove…she’d have to wiggle her way through and hope she had the momentum to do it.

She pictured it in her head, decided she was crazy, and reminded herself that she’d climbed a wall of kudzu not so long ago. Also not one of those things she had pictured herself able to do.

A few quick breaths, a glance around to make sure no one would see her ass disappearing through the window, and she went for it. Three steps, a leap, her casted wrist awkward enough to slip and skew her to the side-

She made it as far as her hips, folding over the window frame with half of herself on either side. But a curse and a wiggle and a shove and suddenly she was falling onto a short set of wooden steps. Karin tucked her shoulder and bumped down to the cement floor. The dingy old foot mat did nothing to soften her landing. She flopped over to her back and stared up through the dim interior to the high ceiling. “Aw, crap.”

But she had no sense of any real injury, so she checked the door-yup, it needed a key on this side, too-and crawled to her feet to take her first good look around, scooping up her rock along the way. Lots of old pallets and a roller spool conveyer led back to the freezer units.

Surely not. Surely they wouldn’t put a kid into such a dark, airless place. Not for any length of time.

But it was the first thing she checked anyway. She found the doors not even latched, the interior emitting permanent mustiness. Strike one, and glad of it.

She veered to the right and found an office. The customer counter window had been boarded shut, and when she nudged the unlocked door open she found a surprising sight.

A child’s bedroom. A boy’s bedroom, all bold colors and little-boy images-race-car posters on the wall, a plastic toy box at the end of the bed. Longsford’s little playroom.

But of course the boy wasn’t here. A child left unsupervised might do something to mar this perfect little cubicle of the way things were. “I’ve got news for you,” she muttered to Longsford, wherever he was. “Not even Beaver’s room was this perfect.”

She left the room as it was, knowing she had to do this as quickly as possible. “Where are you?” she called, aiming it at the high ceiling for lack of even a best guess.

The muffled cries of reply were no help. They echoed inside the building, leaving her as disoriented as she’d started. Somewhere back beyond the freezer units. She broke into a run, rounding the end of the giant freezer, and found herself confronted with a lineup of exotic machinery. Rows of it, painted a worn but cheery shade of blue. And beyond that, steel devices with tall aluminum columns, steel boxes with ominous silhouettes…

With a blink, it all came together. Dry-ice presses for the fifty-pound blocks, pelletizers, CO 2gas recovery and recycling units.

“¡Ayúdeme! ¡Ayúdeme!” The voice was high and thin and much closer now.

And speaking Spanish.

Was that how Longsford had evaded the news of another kidnapping? Chosen a family who didn’t speak English?

No, that didn’t make sense. The family could have spoken Vulcan and there’d have been a way to handle it.

Unless…

“God, you’re evil,” Karin told the absent Longsford. “Not even Saint Fillan would deal with your brand of insanity.”

Immigrants. Illegal immigrants. Afraid of the law, afraid of even those who would help them save their child. He’d had a child stolen off the streets, replacing his ideal park-snatched victim with one he knew would give him time to linger. Bastard.

“¿Dónde está usted?” she shouted, calling on marginal Spanish skills that had only ever been enough to get her by on southern California streets.

He responded even before her words died away. “¡En la jaula!”

In the…not jail. Cage. Great. To a kid locked up, anything could be a cage.

As if he sensed her urgency and frustration, he started screaming wordlessly at her. Or if there were words, she had no chance of deciphering them, even had they been in English. “¡Calma!” she shouted. “¡Calma!” As if that was going to do any good.

It didn’t.

She gave an anxious glance over her shoulder, knowing she was moving ahead only on luck…and not believing in luck at all. If you did manage a little of it, someone like Longsford came along and took it. Or someone like Rumsey.

Or someone like Karin herself.

She threaded her way through the machines, beyond the tall columns and the plastic sheeting that had served as a back wall. There were a few stray carbon dioxide containers, big gray steel cylinders she assumed would be empty. There was a pile of junk under a tarp, and an odd, puzzling area of broken concrete flooring beyond it. And there, in the corner, was a maintenance area behind a steel-mesh cage. Jaula. He’d meant just that.

He saw her and flung himself against the mesh, fingers sticking through to reach out to her. She ran to him, forgetting her Spanish. “Hey, hey there. It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay. I’ll get you out of there.” He clutched at her through the mesh-skinny, dressed in clothes too big, as adorable as any kid with huge dark eyes and thick black hair could ever be. No visible signs of abuse. Maybe it was too soon. God, please let it be too soon. She twined her fingers through his as best she could. “I’m gonna get you out of there. No worries. It’s gonna be okay.”

He sobbed, his grip on her hands amazingly strong. Not fearful now, unless it was fear that she might give up. Just relieved. Just looking at her with those big dark eyes shining, innocent hope blazed across his features.

Karin’s heart started racing again, catching her by surprise. Her throat seemed too big for itself and she suddenly felt strong enough to do anything. Anything.

She knew what it was like to be not-rescued. And since Dave’s arrival in her life and that one sweet moment of safety on the cliff, she knew what being rescued felt like.

But she hadn’t realized what it would feel like to be the one who came to the rescue.

She floundered for a moment. The kid’s not rescued yet, Sommers. Not with that big fat padlock still hanging from the door. She scrambled for the asphalt rock she’d dropped when she’d rushed to the kid’s side, slamming it against the stout padlock. Within a few blows the asphalt crumbled into pieces, leaving Karin with bleeding knuckles and not much else to show for her efforts. She threw the remnants away and kicked the door in disgust, if not hard enough to damage any toes. She might need those toes to finish getting them out of here.