Survival Instinct (21 page)

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
₂
gas 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.

Karin eyed the door hinges, feeling her pockets for any sign of a tool that might pry them free…racking her brains for the memory of anything she might have glimpsed on her way through the building. Her penknife would break at the first application.

Doubt crept into the boy’s expression.

“Hey,” Karin said. “I’m Karin. What’s your name, kid?”

The boy sniffled. His face was filthy from the standard mix of kid tears, snot and grime. Karin had the sudden thought that Longsford would have someone clean him up. He obviously had a backup crew who knew about his recreational activities. And someone else had probably dumped that body so carelessly, someone panicked by pressure from the feebs. Longsford had been doing this for too many years to get such a simple thing wrong.

It would explain why the ex-boxer and his pal had been so insistent at their first meeting on Ellen’s farm, and so persistent afterward. They hadn’t just been sent on a blind errand; they understood the stakes.

“Atilio,” the boy said, prodding her from her thoughts.

“Okay, Atilio. Just hang tight. I’ll think of something.”

Yeah, like a call to 911.
I was just walking past, Officer, and I heard someone crying inside. So I broke into the Fortress of Solitude and I found this kid and oh, by the way, I’m outta here! And say, can you delay your arrival till I can climb my way back out of this building and make myself scarce? Leaving this terrified kid by himself till you get here?

And yet she’d already used too much time. Even if she had no reason to believe anyone would arrive so soon after the last guy had been here, she’d just taken too much darned time.

“All right,” she said out loud. “I’ve got one thing to try. If this doesn’t work, kiddo, I’ll make the call and take my chances.” She pushed away from the mesh door and went to check out the CO
₂
cylinders. Yep, the gauges all read empty. Just as well. She gave one an experimental heft and discovered it weighed half as much as she did. But she’d been hauling fifty-pound sacks of feed for a year now, and knew how to use leverage to her best advantage. She played with her grip on the awkward thing, knowing she’d have to rest it on her forearm behind the cast and knowing the whole exercise would be useless if she didn’t get up enough speed.

Screw breaking the lock. She’d try to warp the door enough so that skinny little kid could wiggle his way out.
“¡Al revés!”
she said, hoping she was telling him to move back away from the door. She gestured wildly at his hesitation and he slowly complied, clearly not quite understanding her intent. She only hoped he’d get the idea once she came charging at him with her modern-day battering ram.

And then, suddenly inspired, she pulled out her cell phone. The photos it took might not be high quality, but they’d do the trick. She snapped several of Atilio huddled in his cage, a few of the equipment to help establish location, and stuffed the phone back into the breast pocket of her field jacket, making the mental note to take pics of the creepy boy’s room on the way out.

Atilio said something querulous and Karin muttered, “Hold on, kid,” as she bent over the cylinder.

Oh. My. Gawd.
Her first effort to lift the thing garnered her nothing more than a grunt. “Okay, Florentius,” she said, figuring the patron saint against ruptures was her best bet. “It’s you and me….” And with a loud grunt of effort, she got the thing off the ground, staggering back and forth as she tried to find its balance point. Her cast scrabbled against cold gray steel and she shifted the cylinder onto her forearm with no little effort—and then it started to tip forward.

Rather than lose it and start all over again, Karin mustered a warrior’s battle cry and staggered into a run.
The brief image of Atilio’s startled face, the rush of looming mesh…stunning impact.
She immediately lost her grip on the cylinder and flung herself sideways, out from beneath it. Her head and ears rang and when she hit the floor it wasn’t quite where she’d expected it to be.

And then, finally, silence.

She lay facedown on the cold, hard concrete, and when she opened her eyes she discovered just how dirty the floor was.
Gross.
Slowly, she pulled her knees beneath herself and climbed to her feet, patting herself for lumps and bumps. Everything seemed to be in its proper place. “Hey, Florentius! Way to go!” She straightened herself out and checked Atilio’s cage.

She barely had time to register that the impact of her improvised self-powered missile had indeed warped the door when he slammed into her, wrapping his arms around her low waist with all the strength of a full-grown bear. “Hey, hey!” she said, delighted; she knelt to hug him in return. “Let’s say we get the hell outta here, huh?” She stood, held out her hand to him and wasted no time navigating through the machinery and past the freezer. There she told him to wait and ducked inside Longsford’s creepy playroom, snapping a few quick phone pics.

When she emerged, Atilio was gone.

“Hey,” she said, trying not to raise her voice too loudly, or let the sudden tight anxiety come through in her voice. “C’mon, kid, where are you?”

He whimpered. She found him crouched behind the roller conveyer, and relief washed through her body in a startling wave of weakness. “Don’t do that to me, kid,” she told him, but froze as he pointed frantically at the door.

I am so not meant for slinking.
She wasn’t used to checking doors or keeping an eye out for sly intrusions. She was used to being on the front line, bold as brass and running the show. It hadn’t occurred to her to check for movement at the window before emerging from the special little room.

And yeah. There it was. Movement. While she stood out in the open like a deer in the headlights. Too little too late…she dashed for the wall beside the stairs, where the angle was too sharp for anyone to see her through that window.

It occurred to her then that if Longsford’s men had arrived, they ought to be fussing about that window. They ought to be putting their keys into the lock and bursting in to take charge instead of rattling around the door in an experimental way. Huh.

She glanced over to catch Atilio’s eye and put her finger to her lips. He stared back, deer-in-the-headlights. He did, at least, stay put and stay quiet as she moved closer to the stairs…close enough to catch a muttered French phrase of badness.

She hadn’t known she could grin quite so broadly until this moment. She leaned toward the door and said, “Pssst. Hey, little boy. You wanna cheap deal on some watches?”

The door noises stopped. “Karin?”

“You got my phone message?”

“Your what—?” She caught a glimpse of his head as he shook it. “No. I’ve been keeping an eye on the tracker, just in case you went back for it. I got back into the car at the gym and saw the thing was on the move…I just followed you here. What’s going on? How the hell did you get in there?”

He’d kept an eye on the tracker.
Bless you.
“How about we get out of here first? I’ve got a friend with me. An unwilling young visitor, let’s say.” She paused long enough for him to work through his favorite phrase all over again, then said, “I came in through that window. I’m sure we can get Atilio out that way, but there are stairs on this side of the door…I’m not so sure I can get up to the window.”

“We’ll figure it out,” he said, his words determined. The voice of a man who truly believed he could make things work if only he tried hard enough. “Did you try kicking it in?”

“I thought a little quiet glass-breaking would draw less attention,” she said, not mentioning that she didn’t think for a minute she’d get through that sturdy metal door and wasn’t so certain he could, either. “But heck, now that you’re here—have at it.” She turned back to Atilio. “It’s okay, kid. He’s our amigo.”

Atilio probably took in one word of ten from the conversation he’d heard, but her tone and manner did the trick. His frightened features relaxed, and if his eyes didn’t shine with hope, they once again showed some spark.

Wham.
The impact of foot against door shook the frame, but nothing seemed inclined to break.

“Hit it at the lock,” Karin suggested, knowing just how well such suggestions were likely to go over.

“Oh, right. Hit it at the lock,” Dave said, breathless. “Hadn’t thought of that.”
Wham!