Against the Sky (18 page)

Nick stretched his long legs out in front of him as best he could in the cramped interior of the car. It was late and the wind was blowing. It had been full dark since seven thirty.

The fish joint he'd stopped at with Samantha had been nearly empty. The soggy fish and chips they'd ordered had really sucked. After they'd finished eating, he'd stopped at a FoodMart and picked up some snacks and drinks for Samantha to have with her while she was stuck in the cabin.

At least the motel was nice there among the trees, nothing fancy, but being by the river made it pleasant. As soon as he dropped her off, he went back to the fish joint, parked, and just sat watching for a while. The building was old and poorly maintained, the blue paint faded, grass growing up between the cracks in the parking lot.

Only a very few customers and nothing much else going on. After a couple of hours, he went to the second location. It was poorly situated on a dead-end street without much traffic. Nothing seemed to be going on there, either. One thing for sure, neither of them was overwhelmed with business.

The third Captain Henry's caught his attention. Same run-down building, same poor business locale off on a side street. But here there was plenty of activity, particularly at the drive-up window, money being handed over, bags of “food” going out.

By the look of the disreputable clientele, there wasn't anything to eat in those bags, but there was plenty in there to get high on.

Drug money in. Massage it through the international banking system. Clean money out.

Nick watched for nearly an hour. Business was definitely good. And highly illegal. But unless you were looking for it, the place seemed pretty much like any other fast-food joint.

From the fish place, he headed downtown. It was late afternoon when he drove by each of the three motels, checked out the neighborhoods, the streets around them, the layout of the buildings in case he needed to get away in a hurry. He didn't expect trouble, but he was always prepared.

Just before dark, he went back to check on Samantha, make sure she was okay. She was working on her laptop, doing marketing research for The Perfect Pup.

“I'm fine,” she said with a smile. “Go find the bad guys.”

He kissed her hard and left, tried not to dwell on how he would rather be spending the night in bed with her than sitting in the car somewhere, freezing his ass off in the cold.

As soon as it was dark, he headed for the address Cord had given him for Dmitri Fedorko. It was an expensive, custom-built home on an oversized lot in an exclusive area west of town.

The lot was fairly open. It would be hard to get close enough to the house to see what was going on without being spotted, but through the expensive, high-powered Leupold binoculars he'd bought himself for his thirty-second birthday in July, he could see a soccer ball lying in the front yard next to an overturned bike. According to the info Cord had sent, Fedorko had two teenage sons.

He also had a mistress he kept in an apartment in Fairbanks.

Married, forty-five-years old, the guy had a rap sheet a mile long but he'd been clean for the past ten years. Or at least he hadn't been caught.

Nick watched till the lights all went out in the house. He never saw Fedorko, but Cord had e-mailed his photo. Dark hair, black eyes, rough skin, broad nose, and thick lips. He was ugly as mud. Nothing about him would attract the sexy, twenty-four-year-old blonde named Suzy Fox whose picture Cord had also sent.

Nothing except money.

Starting the engine, he eased away from the house and headed back toward town to check out the motels.

The first was a dive, The Snooze Inn. It was laid out in an L shape with parking spaces in front of the rooms. Curtains sagged at the windows and the once-brown doors had oxidized to beige.

It didn't take long to figure out what was going on. A car pulling up, a guy getting out and heading into one of the rooms, staying fifteen, twenty minutes, walking back out. Other cars, other guys, other rooms.

Prostitution was big business. Up here, nothing much happened in those rooms for less than three-hundred bucks, and a good working girl could churn through twenty guys a day.

Six grand. A helluva lot more if the lady was anything special.

He headed for the second motel. At The Waterfront, he spent an hour waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. It was after two when he left and headed for The Rest Haven.

The place was surprisingly neat and clean, a cut above the other two, recently painted, with shrubs planted in pots outside the doors. Same layout, but the glass in the windows was clean and the curtains weren't drooping.

Unlike the mostly empty rooms at The Waterfront, The Rest Haven was earning its keep. Better-dressed clientele, guys in jeans or slacks, and jackets from someplace other than the Salvation Army. The working girls here were undoubtedly a cut above, too, and each john was paying dearly for it.

Nick pushed the seat back and stretched his legs out in front of him, settled back to watch for a while, see if he could pick up something that might be useful. A couple of times, his eyes drifted shut and he damned near fell asleep. He wished he'd stopped for a cup of coffee.

He cracked a window so the cold would keep him awake and leaned back to watch. Maybe five more minutes had passed when one of the doors swung open and he caught a glimpse of the woman who worked inside. He trained his binoculars on the door, where she stood talking to the man who had gone in twenty minutes earlier.

Jesus. Not a woman. A girl.
Couldn't be more than twelve or thirteen. Alaska Native, dark-skinned and pretty, though her features were gaunt and her expression strained. She was wearing nothing but a pair of white panties, a slender young girl, with little more than nubbins for breasts.

Nick felt sick to his stomach.

The man headed for his car and the girl shut the door. Nick watched the sleazy bastard slide behind the wheel of an expensive, newer model Cadillac coupe. Nick jotted down the license plate number.

There was real money in prostituting kids, sick as it was. No wonder the bucks were flowing into Dragovich's bank accounts.

Deciding it was time to leave before someone spotted him, Nick started the engine and headed back to the rented cabin. Back to Samantha. And the clean, unsullied world she represented.

It scared him to realize how eager he was to get there.

 

 

Samantha couldn't sleep. She had dozed off and on, but she was worried about Nick. It was three thirty in the morning and he still wasn't back. What if something had happened?

Finally giving up, she slipped out of bed and pulled on her robe, padded over to the desk against the wall, where she had set up her laptop.

Ever since they'd arrived in Fairbanks, she'd been thinking about those motels. If something criminal was going on, the obvious thing would involve prostitution. She was sure that's what Nick was thinking and just didn't want her to know.

After he'd left, she'd started digging, reading every article she could find on the illegal trade, how extensive it was in Alaska and just about everywhere else. One particular article had caught her eye.

It was published in the online version of the
Alaska Daily News.
Sex Trade Moves From Street To Web.

The article explained that prostitutes or pimps put ads on sites like craigslist. Using the Erotic Services section, posting faceless women's photos, they offered to
stimulate mind and body
, with the disclaimer that
any money exchanged is for companionship only. Anything else that happens is a matter of choice between consenting adults.

Samantha re-read the article now and bookmarked it to show Nick in the morning. She yawned. The king-size bed looked inviting. She only wished Nick was back to share it with her.

Turning off her laptop for the second time that night, she went to the bathroom, came out and headed for bed. The sound of a key in the lock sent a rush of relief running through her. She hurried over and pulled open the door, saw Nick standing on the other side and threw her arms around his neck.

“Thank God you're okay. I was really getting worried.”

“I'm all right.” He bent his head and kissed her cheek, unwound her arms from around his neck. She couldn't miss the worry on his face, or the feel of his pistol in the holster clipped to his belt.

“What happened?”

“I need to get back to Anchorage, but it's a long drive and I've got to get some sleep.” He looked down and seemed to see her for the first time. “They're running drugs and women,” he said darkly. “Only the women aren't women, they're underage girls.”

Samantha's insides twisted. “Oh, my God.” She tried not to think of her sister, that before Danielle had been murdered, she had been brutally raped. She rarely allowed herself to remember. “We have to stop them. We have to do something.”

“That's why I need to get back. We'll sleep for a couple of hours, then get on the road.”

She didn't tell him there was no way she could possibly sleep. Not when she knew what was going on in those motel rooms. “Why don't you sleep in the car? I'll drive for a few hours, then we can change places.”

His shook his head. “It's not an easy drive and the weather's getting worse.”

“I can handle it. It'll only be for a couple of hours; then you can take over.”

“It's sleeting. I've got a hunch it's going to snow.”

“I'll wake you if it starts snowing.”

He hesitated, finally nodded. “All right. At least there won't be any traffic. Get dressed and pack your stuff. As soon as you're ready, I'll load the car.”

She did so quickly, pulling on her jeans and a warm sweatshirt, tossing the robe and the rest of her clothes into the carry-on, putting her laptop in there with them. She could feel Nick's urgency. He needed to do something, take some kind of action. But he was bound by his promise to protect Jimmy and Mary.

He was a cop. He wanted to help those girls.

What he didn't know was that she felt exactly the same.

Five minutes later, they were packed and ready to leave. Nick grabbed his duffel and opened the door.

Out of nowhere, a barrage of gunshots rang out, hitting the door, sending woodchips flying, tearing into the metal frame. Samantha screamed and Nick slammed the door.

“Get down!” His gun was already in his hand. He moved to the window, used the barrel to break the glass and cracked off two answering shots. “Get behind the bed and stay there no matter what happens.”

More shots rang out, pounding into the walls of the cabin, knocking more glass out of the window.

“Call nine-one-one.” He caught hold of the dresser and pushed it in front of the door. “And stay down until I come back for you.”

“You can't leave! They'll shoot you!”

Nick's hard gaze fixed on her face. He looked like a man she had never seen before. “They'll shoot both of us if I don't get to them first.” He headed for the window in the bathroom. Frantically, she dragged her phone out of her pocket and dialed 9-1-1, watching in terror as Nick slid the frosted window open, knocked the screen off, levered himself up, and slipped silently through the opening. Then he was gone.

Samantha pressed herself flat on the floor and started praying. When the operator didn't come on the line, she looked down at the phone and realized the battery was dead. Oh, dear God!

There was a phone on the nightstand on the other side of the bed. She was crawling across the mattress when shots rang out and more glass flew into the room. Fighting back a scream, she took cover on the floor on the other side of the bed and heard more gunfire, shots blasting from what sounded like different locations.

Just as she reached for the phone, a man started shoving at the door. She caught a glimpse of him as the dresser began to move, a huge man using his massive shoulder as a battering ram. He'd be inside any minute.

With a cry locked in her throat, Samantha dragged the desk chair over, grabbed the lamp off the table, and climbed up on top of the dresser. As the man stuck his head through the door, she swung the lamp, hitting his shiny bald pate dead-on. The pottery base shattered, shards went flying, and for an instant, he froze.

Then he shook his head like a big wet dog, and a violent curse erupted in a language she didn't understand, followed by, “You bitch!” Which she understood completely.

Fear shot through her. Jumping down, she threw all her weight against the dresser, trying to keep him out, but it was no use.

Samantha screamed as the door burst open, knocking her across the room. She saw the fury in those cold black eyes and the ruthless twist of his lips as he raised his pistol and aimed straight at her.

Two quick gunshots rang out. For an instant, the world seemed to stop. She was sure she must have been hit, but she felt no pain. Then the man's barrel chest blossomed red with blood and he fell forward, landing facedown on the carpet. Two perfect round holes bored into his back where the bullets had entered and passed right through. Blood formed a spreading pool beneath him.

Samantha fought a wave of dizziness and gripped the dresser to steady herself. Her heart was thundering, her chest clamped down so hard she couldn't force a breath of air into her lungs.

Then Nick was shoving through the door, dragging her hard against him, holding her tight and driving away her fear. “Are you all right?”

She managed to nod.

“We need to go.” He cast a quick glance down at the man on the floor, caught sight of the lamp she had cracked over his skull, looked up at her in amazement. “Jeez. Nice work.”