Eric Lustbader - Blood Trust

They had taken the children down from the burning, ruined school, out of Tetovo, and into the deepest part of the first-growth woods to the northwest, where, safely far enough from civilization, they made temporary camp in a small clearing. Thatë sent his remaining men out to gather wood for a fire. Restless, he put himself on guard duty, walking the perimeter.

Edon’s eyes searched Jack’s. “This is how it is, no danger to Xhafa or his people.”

“How about when he moves the girls around?”

Edon gave a bitter laugh. “He uses bribes and payoffs to local officials. You have to admire the machine Xhafa has put together. And he’s got something on everyone. The officials are taped taking their bribes—money, or sex from the little girls. I’ve seen some of the tapes because Xhafa would play them for his men while they drank and laughed. They were awful, disgusting—impossible to describe. Animals behave better. Afterward, Xhafa’s men would rape us, over and over.

“For the girls, this was nothing new. The idea is to break their spirit. They’re treated like trash, used and beaten. They’re starved if they resist, and God help them if they rebel. They’re tied up in a lightless room, beaten, drugged, and gang-raped. The real hard cases are shot up with heroin. Once hooked, they become instantly compliant; they’ll do anything for their next fix.”

She recited this litany of horror with an eerily detached voice, as if she were talking about a movie she had seen. But Alli was white-faced with rage. Jack could feel her trembling beside him.

“This happened to you?” Alli said in a hoarse voice.

“I was smarter than them,” Edon said. “I did what was asked of me, I ingratiated myself with them, just as Arjeta had done. I became a favorite, they fell in love with my face instead of my body. Oh, occasionally one of them would try to rape me, but Arian always stopped them. Once, he beat his own man to a bloody pulp and no one came near me again.”

Alli let out a long-held breath, but her fists were still tightly clenched and her eyes seemed to throw out sparks.

“Speaking of Xhafa,” Jack said, “when did you last see him?”

“Days ago,” Edon replied, “a week or more.”

“But one of his men said he’d left the school only a half hour or so before the attack.”

“He’s lying,” Edon said. “I saw him leave.”

There was no mistaking her certainty. Jack admired her core of inner strength. He wondered whether that was a trait all three sisters possessed. And that thought brought him to the question of whether or not this was the right moment to tell Edon that one of her sisters had been murdered. Deciding that there was no good time for that kind of news, he determined to tell her. But first he needed to ask her a question.

“Alli and I are friends of Annika’s.” He sensed Alli’s instant consternation, but she had the good sense to keep her mouth shut. “She’s mentioned your name.”

Edon’s face lit up. “You know Annika? That’s fantastic. My sisters and I love her.”

“How do you know her?”

Edon frowned. “Arjeta met her first, I think. Father has a terrible sickness—he can’t stop gambling. We were always in debt, sometimes horribly so. One time a representative of Xhafa’s came to him. He paid off his debt by selling Arjeta. Then it was my turn. By that time, Arjeta had become Dardan Xhafa’s favorite, and when Dardan was sent to America, Arjeta went with him.”

That explained a lot, Jack thought. More pieces of the puzzle falling into place, bringing with them a new and expanded view of the picture. Annika had been in Washington recently. A coincidence? He didn’t think so.

“Why did Annika contact Arjeta?”

“She wanted her to spy on Xhafa. If she did, Annika said, she’d make sure Arjeta would be free of Xhafa forever.”

And now Arjeta was, Jack thought, though not in the way Annika must have meant. And all at once, another possible piece slipped into place and he excused himself, went off alone, took out the cell phone Alli had taken from the locked drawer in Henry Holt Carson’s desk, and fired it up. Only two numbers in the directory, one marked A, the other D. Neither were U.S. numbers.

Could it be? he wondered. He pressed the key to dial the number attributed to A. After what seemed like an eternity, the connection went through and he heard it ring three, four, five times. No voice mail was engaged.

He was about to hang up when he heard her voice, and with his heart in his throat, said, “Hello, Annika.”

THE MOMENT Gunn left, Willowicz contacted O’Banion. He had finished brewing the coffee. It looked like sludge, but with six teaspoons of sugar, it tasted fine.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting laid,” O’Banion barked. “What the fuck d’you want?”

“Gunn.” He gulped down the coffee, savoring the intense sweetness along with the acid bite. “We have a job.”

“I told you.” O’Banion let out a series of rhythmic grunts. “I’m busy.”

Willowicz put the mug in the stainless-steel sink. The incriminating substances that had gone down its drain, he thought. “Triple our usual fee.”

“That should’ve been your lead.” O’Banion was breathing hard. “I’m in.”

“And now you need to get out.”

O’Banion wheezed a laugh, then let out a long, drawn-out groan. Willowicz heard a loud noise, then nothing.

“O’Banion?”

After a moment: “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I dropped the fucking phone.”

“That good, huh?”

“Meet?”

Willowicz gave him his instructions. “One hour,” he concluded. “Don’t be late.”

“When am I ever?”

Willowicz cut the connection, grabbed the paraphernalia he’d need, jammed it into the voluminous inside pockets of his custom-made overcoat, and went out into the hallway. As he pressed the call button for the elevator he thought about his partnership with O’Banion. It went back many years. Sometimes it seemed as if they had plowed through every shithole backwater of the Middle East, had climbed every dust-strewn mountain, stuck their necks out in every cave, and blown up half the Taliban. And still they came, like cockroaches overrunning an open box of sugar. He and O’Banion shared everything, there were no secrets in the mountains of Afghanistan and Western Pakistan where they had plied their bloody trade. They were closer than brothers; there wasn’t anything they wouldn’t do for each other.

But all bloody things come to an abrupt end. At some point, he and O’Banion had said fuck it. They had salted away enough money and they were tired of offing ignorant fanatics. Time for a change of scene. Which was when they’d come home, and almost immediately had hooked up with Gunn. He had shit for brains, just like all the ex-Marines who were now milking the government for millions. What they were doing wasn’t exactly rocket science. All you needed to do was produce torture and death, no questions asked, and the money showered down like manna. Oh, yeah, you needed the one thing he and O’Banion didn’t have—political connections. Gunn had them in spades, example in point: Henry Holt Carson’s patronage. On the other hand, as shit-for-brains bosses went, they could’ve done a lot worse than Gunn. At least he paid them top dollar, and he’d always been straight with them.

The elevator was still on the top floor. Cursing under his breath, he turned to the stairs door, pulled it open, and started down. Swinging around the landing, he saw a woman on the floor below. She was bending over, after having cracked off a heel of her lace-up boots. She was wearing a breathtakingly short skirt under which he could see that she was wearing nothing at all. Immediately, his second brain—the tiny, reptilian thing low down in his body—was activated. He felt a stirring in his trousers and, licking his lips, he strolled down the stairs.