Eagle's Heart (26 page)

“Did you guys take that in?” he said to the bulletproof-vest-clad men in the back of the car, who grunted their replies. He knew a couple of them, Aimes and Nichols, but the others were strangers to him. They were bruisers, though, and as long as they could follow directions, they were fine by him.

Julian gave his opinion on the security situation and then waited for the assembled agents to voice any disagreement. When there wasn’t any, he continued.

“What are your thoughts, Yates?” he asked, trying not to jump out of his skin. At the forefront of his mind, a timer was ticking away every second Salomeh had been left alone with Alexi and Bardhyn. He had thought losing his family was torture, but they had already been dead when he arrived. Knowing there was a chance Salomeh would be hurt and that he wasn’t doing everything to prevent it made his chest feel as if it were collapsing. He felt the knowledge of Orpheus weigh upon him: to have his love so near to him but so close to death. He would be patient, though, and do this thing right. There was no other option for him.

“You’re deferring to me now, huh,” she said, but it was more of a statement than a question.

“I’m the smooth talker, you’re the ass kicker,” he said, trying to keep his voice level. “I’ll follow your lead.”

He left unspoken the fact that if he had to break off and go search for Salomeh, he didn’t want to waste time instructing the others on what to do.

She pushed the sunglasses up onto her forehead and regarded him for a few seconds. “Flattery will get you everywhere, Tamali. Aimes, Nichols, you go through the back with Julian. The rest of us will go through the front. I pulled some info about the place online—online review sites can be a surprisingly helpful source of information—and it looks like the main club is split up into one large room and some champagne rooms in the back. I don’t know anything about the upper levels, but judging from the shuttered windows, they’re keeping the girls there if any are on site. From previous similar busts, I’m going to guess there are several small rooms for housing the girls, and some central area or office that Bardhyn works out of where the cash and drugs are kept.

“Try not to shoot any girls, or anyone for that matter, since we need someone willing to give intel about what these fuckers are up to and we’re going to have enough to have to explain anyway. But if necessary, and I trust you to know if it’s necessary, blow away any asshole that gets in your way.”

Yates’s words filled the cabin of the car with a sudden thrumming tension. Julian’s adrenaline surged, reminding him of the frenetic high he used to feel before skirmishes with the Serbians. He hoped these agents were more careful than the men he had fought with then, because if one of them accidentally hurt Salomeh, he would rip his head off.

His stomach flipped at the thought and then from the impact of something heavy being slammed against it. A Kevlar vest, courtesy of Yates. As he shimmied into it, she dropped a double holster with two loaded GLOCKS into his lap.

“If you come across something bad in there, I’ll back you up on whatever you need to do to this asshole,” she said, her blue eyes wide and unreadable. “But make sure you don’t put any of my men at risk, and make sure we get something we can pin these guys with. I won’t have terrorists running free because you were bent on revenge.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, tightening the straps on his vest and shrugging on his holster. “Let’s do this.”

Julian waited for Yates’s word so they could storm into the building as a unit, but it felt unnatural, as if he were resisting some irresistible force that pulled at him from within the building. The intense feeling should have been overwhelming, but instead it grounded him.

She’s alive
, his instincts thrummed. He hoped he was right.

There was a moment of taut silence, and then Yates whispered, “Go.”

The team surged out of the car, Yates and her agents heading up the block and around the corner to the front door, Julian, Aimes, and Nichols heading to the rear entrance. They jogged down the grimy alleyway behind the building, slowing as they approached the back entrance. Julian gave the men a sharp look before testing the heavy steel door. It didn’t budge, as he knew it wouldn’t. He didn’t think blowing it off the hinges was a good idea if they were going for surprise, or if it would even work on such a heavily reinforced structure.

He was spared having to figure out how to get in thanks to a nicotine-addicted dishwasher. The cigarette that had been dangling from the man’s lips as he stepped outside dropped to the ground, and his dark eyes rounded in surprise. He looked up at Julian.

“INS?” he asked fearfully, his Spanish-accented voice shaking as his gaze darted to the guns pointed at him.

“
No, no somos de INS
,” Julian reassured the man in Spanish, not wanting to deal with the inevitable
No hablo ingles
conversation. “Is there a meeting going on inside? Where is it at? Tell us, and we won’t send you back.”

The man shook his head, his fear of Bardhyn obviously warring with his fear of deportation.

“
Dígame
,” Julian commanded, his patience wearing thin. “Tell me,” he repeated, “or deportation will be the least of your problems.”

“Upstairs,” the man said. “Go up the back way, and they won’t see you.
Pero
my family, I can’t go back—”

“Okay,” Julian said and then pointed at a Dumpster. “Go stand over there. You better be here when I get back.”

The man nodded and hurried over to the Dumpster, his face drawn in dismay. Julian felt a twinge of regret, but he didn’t exactly have time to find nice accommodations for the guy. He doubted the man would still be there when he returned, but he had to at least try to retain a witness.

Julian stepped into the club’s kitchen, quickly scouring it for danger before they headed toward the stairwell the dishwasher had pointed out. Julian didn’t hear any commotion, so he didn’t know if Yates was inside or not, but he’d have to trust that her skills had gotten her through the front door.

He was strangely calm as he climbed the stairs, the only noise the quiet breathing of the agents behind him. His entire being was focused on completing this task and finding Salomeh.

As they reached the top of the steps, a voice nearly as familiar to him as his own cut through the silence, turning his blood to ice. The voice was deeper and more confident than the last time Julian had heard it, the accent nearly erased, but it was definitely Bardhyn’s. Something had disturbed his meeting, and he was none too happy about it.

“This is not the time, Linda,” Bardhyn said. “I’ll deal with this after the meeting is completed. If you really want to be useful, you would extricate the information about Julian’s whereabouts yourself instead of wasting these gentlemen’s valuable time.”

There was a sharp yelp, one he had heard recently when their car had spiraled out of control.

Salomeh.

A door slammed. In the silence, Julian gave his agents the signal to move forward and took a deep breath before they burst through the door.

Several heads turned in their direction: Alexi and a couple of Bardhyn’s men, as well as the men he had seen enter the club.

Only one person moved with ease, as if this interruption had been completely expected.

Cold blue eyes latched on to Julian’s from across the room, sending a riot of emotions ranging from disgust to nostalgia roaring through him.

“Julian,” Bardhyn said in a ruthlessly quiet voice as he rose from his desk. “Welcome back.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Salomeh shook with rage and fear as Linda escorted her from the office where Bardhyn had just calmly dismissed them. He had looked at the women as if they were the hired help interrupting a dinner party, despite the fact that Linda held a gun aimed at Salomeh with shaking hands.

The woman was unhinged, her eyes glassy and flat but her behavior manic as she pulled Salomeh away from the meeting. Salomeh was waiting for the right moment to put up a fight, but it hadn’t arrived. So she let herself be dragged to another office, this one smaller and less opulent, and flung onto a chair.

She stared at Linda as the woman walked over to a desk, pulled open a drawer, and snatched up a bottle of prescription pills. She could hear the susurration of the pills moving against the bottle in Linda’s trembling grip. After a brief struggle with the childproof cap, the woman knocked a pill into her palm and swallowed it dry.

As she watched the obviously disturbed woman, Salomeh couldn’t help but think of how Julian’s face had softened with pain when he had talked of his parents and sister. How would he feel when he realized just what his sister had become? Salomeh was counting on him to show up and save the day but wished he could do it without having to see this shell of a woman who claimed to be his sister.

“So you don’t go by Ryli anymore?” Salomeh asked in calming tones as if she were talking a cat down from a tree. The woman’s gaze darted to her, and Salomeh’s heart hurt with how much she looked like her brother in that moment.

“Julian told you about me?” Linda asked. Her voice had returned to its refined coolness or a slightly slurred version of it, but there was a hint of surprise in her tone. “I didn’t think he’d have the nerve to mention my name after what he did to me.”

Salomeh leaned forward in her seat. “What did he do to you?” she asked. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, Saint Julian didn’t tell you what happened to his family?” Linda asked. “How he sentenced my parents to death? And, of course, sold his darling little sister into slavery.”

Salomeh’s blood ran cold. For the briefest instant she considered the story, but then she pushed the possibility away. She might have only known Julian for a short while, but the man she knew, the man she had come to care about, would never do such a thing.

“You think he sold you to Bardhyn?” Salomeh asked carefully.

“I know he sold me,” Linda said vehemently. “It was Bardhyn who saved me when Julian ran off with the bounty of his betrayal.”

“That’s not true,” Salomeh said and wished she had kept her thought to herself. But the words had slipped out before she could censor them.

“I see my brother can still wield that charm to get whatever he wants.” Linda laughed grimly. “I suppose you think he’s some kind of hero. I used to think he was too. When you wake up to the smell of your parents’ burning flesh, you start to reevaluate bestowing such titles so easily.”

Salomeh looked at the pain etched into the woman’s face and was nearly overcome with despair. Linda believed it. She really thought her own brother had sanctioned the horror that had befallen her, and because of that she was willing to do anything Bardhyn told her to.

Salomeh had to keep her talking, and she had to make her see the truth. If she failed at either, she would likely be dead very soon. “Linda, I don’t know what you think, but Julian told me a very different version of that story.”

“Of course he would,” Linda spat. “He’s a lying dog.” Her voice rose on the last words as if she were trying to convince Salomeh—or herself.

“He’d told Bardhyn he wanted to leave their gang and go straight, and Bardhyn didn’t want to hear it,” Salomeh said, summarizing Julian’s interrogation room confession. “Bardhyn hated that he couldn’t have his way, so he told others that Julian had broken the Besa. It was Bardhyn—”

“You lie!” Linda exploded, tightening her grip on the gun and pointing it in Salomeh’s direction. “You know nothing but what he’s told you. You have no idea what I’ve been through, and it’s all Julian’s fault! Bardhyn told me the truth of what happened!”

“And you believe him? A man who makes his money from shredding people’s souls?” Salomeh gestured in the general direction of the bedroom where they had left Yelena. “A man who keeps girls chained to beds and plies them with drugs? Do you really believe his story over your brother’s, the brother who has spent his life trying to avenge what happened to you?”

Linda screamed in frustration, and Salomeh thought she had found the moment to attack, but then Linda’s eyes were on her, dark and unreadable. When she spoke, her voice had lost its veneer of refinement; she sounded eerily like a young girl.

“It doesn’t matter what happened that day,” she said. “He left me to this life, and he never came back for me.”

“He’s coming now,” Salomeh said gently, hoping to assuage the woman’s anger.

Linda stalked over to Salomeh, quaking with emotion. Salomeh couldn’t tell which one.

“Stand up,” she said, a sneer marring her pale face.

“Why?” Salomeh asked, stalling.

“Because I’m going to take you into one of the rooms and let Alexi stick his dick into whatever orifice he wants. After that, if you can walk out and tell me that everything will be just fine when Julian arrives, maybe then I’ll consider anything you say worthwhile.”

Salomeh’s stomach plummeted.

“No, please don’t,” she said, pressing herself down into her chair as if sheer will could keep her there.

“Doesn’t sound so appealing, does it?” Linda asked tartly. “Imagine being violated in that way for years, body and soul, and then ask me why I should care about Julian Tamali.”

Salomeh felt her head spinning. She had failed at the one thing that could help her obtain her freedom, and worse, she understood exactly where Linda was coming from. But that didn’t excuse her aiding and abetting Birdie for all this time.

“If it was so terrible for you, how could you do it to all these other girls?” Salomeh asked. “How could you force that life on them?”

Linda’s lips trembled, and a tear slipped down her cheek.

Finally, I’m getting through to her, Salomeh thought.

“You can judge me as you wish,” Linda said in a thick voice. “But if I weren’t here, do you think it would be better for these girls? I know what happens when their survival is at Bardhyn’s whim, or at that of any other man. So I took charge of that. I take care of them.”

Salomeh felt a bit of sympathy for the woman, but it was quickly eclipsed by anger. She had spent her life trying to help children, trying to set them on the right track so that they wouldn’t have to suffer the Bardhyns of the world. Salomeh couldn’t understand why Linda hadn’t just done the simple thing.