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  “Open it,” I say, my pulse banging.

  He opens it. I push him forward, gripping his shoulder, pressing the Glock against his skull.

  Inside is darkness. An airy feel, like high ceilings; a wide space, but black as pitch.

  Can’t-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face dark.

  Sergio keeps walking. After two, three steps, I hold him up.

  “Turn on the lights.”

  “No lights in here.”

  “What? Bullshit.”

  “Not bullshit.”

  “You walk through a dark room?”

  “Yes. No choice.”

  It’s possible. Would make for a good hideout, a good place to stow your sex slaves, having a room like this that people wouldn’t think to traverse in the pitch dark.

  But a slight tremble to his voice, those last words.

  This is all wrong.

  I throw my arm around his neck, a choke hold, as he tries to slide out of my grasp.

  That’s when the first bullet buzzes my ear.

  Chapter 94

  I TIGHTEN my choke hold on Sergio as bullets shower down on us, pummeling his body, my human shield. It’s only seconds before he goes limp as bullets hit the floor behind us, too, and from different angles.

  Muzzle flashes from up high, at ten o’clock and two o’clock.

  Two shooters spread maybe thirty yards apart. From a high vantage point. With night vision.

  Every advantage.

  I can’t hold Sergio up forever. So I fall back, pulling him on top of me, and spray bullets from my Glock to my right, having no idea in this darkness where I’m shooting, just my best approximation of the source of the muzzle flash, hoping it’s close enough to make the shooter stop and duck for cover, at least temporarily.

  The bullets keep coming from the other side, automatic-weapon fire, AR-15 or something, peppering Sergio’s dead body, one hitting my forearm around his neck, searing pain, but I let go of Sergio and I’m dead.

  A moment of quiet, the after-hum from the gunfire, nothing more.

  They’re reloading.

  I aim my Glock toward the other shooter, the gunman at ten o’clock, and let off a few rounds. Then a few rounds to my right, two o’clock.

  Then my clip’s empty.

  With my free hand, I reach to my belt, every movement of my fingers reminding me of the bullet that just entered my forearm.

  I don’t reach for a new magazine for the Glock.

  I reach for the flashbang and toss it somewhere toward the center of the room.

  Close my eyes, cover one ear with my free hand, push my other ear against my shoulder. Duck my head behind Sergio’s body.

  The grenade drops and goes off, a thundering blast of sound, searing light coloring my eyelids, even with my face pressed into Sergio’s back.

  Two men wearing night-vision goggles, suddenly blinded.

  And immobilized, disoriented, at least for a few seconds, from the blast.

  My only chance. I pry myself loose of Sergio and stumble backward, squinting through the harsh light at the door I just entered.

  The light from the flashbang suddenly gone, dark again. The flashbang did a number on me, too, no matter how ready I was for it, so I’m not so coordinated, either. I stumble forward into darkness, my chin bouncing on hard tile, my Glock falling to the floor.

  Bullets spray the wall near me. They’re doing their best, but they’re disabled by the blast.

  That won’t last much longer. They’ll recover, and then I’m a sitting duck if I don’t make it through that door.

  I try to get back up, my head ringing, in total darkness.

  More gunfire spray, hitting the door I’m going for.

  Then a banging sound somewhere behind me, followed by a loud, efficient hum, and suddenly bright light surrounds me. Not grenade-caliber light but LED lighting. Someone flipped on the overhead lights.

  I close my eyes instinctively as fresh gunfire erupts, but different gunfire, in a different direction. Some of the heavy rifle fire, but also some poppy gunfire.

  Shots from a handgun.

  I force my eyes open, squinting in the overhead lighting, and look to my left. Rafters, just like a gymnasium, at the top of which one of the men drops his rifle, his throat splayed open, and falls backward.

  That’s the other guy, the taller one, the one who shot at me in Shiv’s house, the driver in the 4Runner in K-Town.

  I reach for the backup at my ankle and turn, squinting in the direction of the other set of rafters on the other side, my two o’clock, where a man is adiosing the scene, going through some door, some escape hatch, at the top of the rafters. I don’t get a look at him, just his back, a heavy limp as he exits.

  What, the one guy shot the other? With a handgun?

  No, of course not.

  I shake my head, get myself together, keeping my backup piece high just in case, and focus. I’m inside an old gymnasium, and a door is open on the other side of it.

  With a body leaning against it. A woman’s body. A body still moving but wounded, a streak of blood against the door she’s propping open.

  I jump over Sergio’s corpse and run the length of the gym toward her.

  She’s been hit, but she’s still trying to clear the scene.

  “Oh, no,” I whisper.

  The wound is up by her left shoulder, high and wide of the heart, but still a threat to bleed out.

  I pull out my cell phone.

  “Don’t call it in,” Carla says through a grimace. “Neither one of us wants to explain this.”

  Chapter 95

  “I’M…FINE,” Carla says through gritted teeth.

  “You’re not fine.”

  “You’re bleeding, too. Your arm.”

  I yank off my shirt, buttons flying everywhere, and rip it roughly in half. I tie one half around Carla’s shoulder and armpit, the best I can do to put temporary pressure on her wound, Carla crying out in pain as I do it.

  She’s losing color. Shock is a real possibility as she loses blood.

  I tie the other half of my shirt, best as I can with one hand, around my left forearm, which has an entry and exit wound, a clean through-and-through.

  I pick Carla up and carry her like a bride across the gym, Carla keeping her weapon out just in case the surviving shooter decides to make a return appearance. We must be quite a sight.

  She’s toughing it out, but she’s in excruciating pain, wincing with every bounce as I run as fast as I can with a hundred pounds in my arms.

  The first guy, who called himself Sergio, has been shot so many times he looks more like a broken piñata than a human being. The guy on the rafters hasn’t moved an inch after Carla put one through his throat. I don’t have time to confirm it, but he’s down for the count.

  I scoop up my original Glock. Can’t leave that here. This place was chosen because it’s out of the way. Nobody would hear anything; nobody will be looking around here. This was the perfect ambush site. Also helpful for me, now, buying me some time before anyone knows what happened here.

  Just before we’re out of the gym, we both hear it behind us. The entrance on the other side, where I found Carla, the gym door banging open again, footsteps bounding on the gym floor toward us.

  Carla calls out, in a weak voice, “Don’t move,” before I spin around and see her.

  Sadie, in her tank top and shorts, sandals long gone, in bare feet.

  The girl who set us up. She sees Sergio and stops, freaks out, pedals backward. Looks up at the rafters at the other guy.

  “Sadie!” I shout. “Look at me! Don’t move and look at me!”

  She does, though she looks like it wouldn’t take much to send her running the other way.

  “Come with us. We can help you.”

  She slowly shakes her head.

  “You don’t have to be afraid anymore,” I say. “We can help you. Will you trust me and come with me?”

  She doesn’t know, stares at me with doe
eyes.

  “You can help your friends, too, Sadie. Evie’s gone, but you can help the rest of them. They need your help!”

  She starts to cry.

  “My friend is hurt,” I say. “I have to take her to the hospital. You have to decide right now. Will you come with us?”

  I can’t wait any longer. I turn and get through the door with Carla. It’s a long trip to my car, but I do the best I can, running with her, the pain it causes her. Her moans and cries are growing weaker. She’s losing blood.

  Finally, sweat burning my eyes, my body all but giving out, we reach my car, parked down the street. I put Carla in the back seat.

  “Billy,” she says to me, her voice growing fainter, as I’m reaching over to fasten the seat belt. “Billy, I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry for saving my life? I forgive you.” I close the door and get around to the other side. I know there’s more, much more to that apology, but now’s not the time.

  I put the car in gear. Grab my phone and dial it. Patti answers on the first ring.

  “Meet me at the ER at Little Company of Mary, Evergreen Park,” I say.

  I punch out the phone and start driving.

  Just as Sadie comes running out of the industrial park toward my car.

  Chapter 96

  DISCO BOUNDS down the back stairs from his escape hatch in the rafters, the pain in his foot screaming out, pure torture with every step.

  They will catch him. As slow as he’s moving, hobbled as he is, unable to take a step without lightning shots of pain. If they run up the rafters, go through this door, and come down the stairs, they’ll catch him within seconds.

  Adrenaline pounding through him. Blood oozing through the bandage and dressing with such force that his foot squishes inside the boot.

  He reaches the bottom of the stairs, opens the door into a long underground tunnel connected to the next building.

  His escape route, part of the plan. The tunnel runs beneath the entire length of the industrial park, nearly half a mile with all the turns and angles, at the end of which he will merely walk up the steps to the exit and find his car.

  Half a mile in pure, agonizing pain.

  Ahead of him, the tunnel, utter blackness, no lighting, artificial or otherwise.

  His night-vision goggles still around his neck. He puts them on. The tunnel lights up in a green glow.

  He listens. No footsteps pounding down the staircase behind him. They aren’t chasing him. There were injuries: Harney took one in the forearm he wrapped around Trev while using him as a shield. The other one, the woman, was hit by Nicolas.

  They’re hurt and probably headed to the hospital. He has some time.

  He drags his foot, shuffling forward. God, he can hardly move.

  This wasn’t supposed to be a problem. This was supposed to be a victory lap. Trev and Nicolas, they would carry him through this tunnel like a king after a successful ambush on Harney.

  Instead, Trev and Nicolas are dead. And Harney isn’t.

  He was supposed to come alone.

  Porter assured him that Harney would come alone.

  Disco’s fucked now—he knows it. The general, he doesn’t make idle threats. No chance he’ll let Disco live after this.

  He has to put Chicago in his rearview mirror, right now, and disappear.

  He must go on the run, with a severed toe that all but incapacitates him, with a boot full of blood, with pain so excruciating his eyes water, his jaw aches from clenching.

  He has to get to his car. He has to get his money.

  As he drags himself forward, firearm in one hand, he pulls out his burner phone, the face lighting up. Finds the caller ID for Porter. Dials it…

  No cell reception underground.

  He puts the phone in his pocket and keeps slogging forward.

  Chapter 97

  PORTER SITS inside the car, the police scanner squawking, staring at the burner phone in his hand.

  Twenty-one minutes ago, Disco texted him, told him Harney was on his way into the building, just as they planned.

  Twenty-one minutes. And no follow-up.

  Nothing from Disco. Nothing from the scanner about an officer-involved shooting or the need for an ambulance.

  He sends a text message to Disco. A single question mark.

  Did Harney sniff out the ambush? Did he know he was being snookered?

  It wouldn’t surprise Porter. But it shouldn’t matter. Harney was alone, and he was facing heavily armed men with special-ops training.

  Edgy, anxious, he busies himself looking over the short dossier he has compiled on Harney, naming him as a dirty cop on the take, protecting human traffickers.

  Compiled might be a generous word. Porter made the whole thing up. Pure fiction. But who will contradict it if Harney’s dead or “disappears”?

  And if Harney somehow survived, well, Porter has that covered, too. That’s plan B.

  Porter always has a plan B.

  Chapter 98

  I PUT the cherry on my dashboard and race to the hospital.

  “Keep the pressure on it,” I tell Sadie, in the back seat with Carla.

  Carla’s head is back against the seat cushion, eyes closed, grimacing like she’s being tortured, as Sadie puts pressure on Carla’s left shoulder wound.

  “Who were they, Sadie?” I ask. “Those men who kept you?”

  “Trev and Nicolas and Disco,” she says, bracing herself in the back seat.

  “Which ones are dead?”

  “Trev was on floor. Nicolas was…up.”

  “So Disco got away? What’s his name? Full name?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “I do not know.”

  “They sent you to me. It was a setup.”

  “They sent me, yes. You…knew?”

  Not for sure, I didn’t. But it felt a little too easy. Either way, it didn’t matter. Ambush or otherwise, I wanted to meet them.

  We roll up to the drive of the ER. I pop out of the car, wave my star inside, get a gurney and medics to my car within seconds.

  I put my hand on Carla’s forehead as they place her on the gurney. “I’ll be right here,” I say.

  “Go.” She can hardly speak. “Do what you need to do.”

  They wheel her in, pop her through some doors, leave us behind in the main waiting area.

  “You need to be looked at, too, Officer,” says a nurse.

  My bloody forearm. Hurts like hell. “Give me a minute.”

  I pull Sadie to the side, whisper in her ear. “When was the last time you scored?”

  She shakes her head, denies it.

  “Sadie, I’m not looking to jam you up. I’m here to help you. Do you believe me?”

  She looks at me. I can imagine what’s running through her mind. She’s probably never been able to trust a man in her entire life.

  She makes a decision. Same one she made by getting into my car.

  “What’s your real name?” I ask.

  “Viviana.”

  “Viviana, when’s the last time you scored?”

  “Three hours ago. Is okay. Okay for a while.”

  For a while. And then she’ll start jonesing. Her skin will start to crawl as she itches for another fix.

  I dial my phone. “Sosh, are you sober?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. I’m at my nephew’s baseball game.”

  “I need a strike team. Tonight. I don’t have time to explain. I need you to start mobilizing. I’ll give you the details later.”

  I punch out the phone.

  “Officer, we need to look at that arm.”

  “Fine. She’s coming with me.”

  I take Viviana by the hand as they move me into a room behind a curtain. “You need to tell me everything,” I say to her.

  Chapter 99

  THE DOCTOR looks at my forearm. Not a bad place to be shot, if you’re gonna be shot. The bullet went clean through, so there’s nerve damage—probably phy
sical therapy and maybe surgery down the road. But I’m fine. The doc treats it to avoid an infection and dresses it.

  Viviana—“Sadie”—talks to me while I hold her hand. She stutters through her broken English, her tears and sobs. She tells me the different ways the girls come here—they’re abducted; they’re lured away from orphanages under false pretenses; they’re pulled off the street. They’re all young girls who won’t be missed—runaways or junkies who won’t have families looking for them.

  The beatings, the rapes, the men they’re sold to, night after night, but mostly the drugs.

  The drugs tie it all together. Oxycodone, it turns out, not heroin, taken in pill form, so these girls don’t rake up their arms with needle marks. Once they’re hooked, it’s all that matters. They’ll do anything for more. You don’t need an armada of men to keep them captive in some hideaway. Shit, you probably don’t even need to lock the door. You’ve got the only thing they want, the only thing they need, the only thing in the entire world they care about: the next fix. As long as you let them dress you up fancy, as long as you perform sex acts with some creep every night, those fixes will keep coming.

  You think, after you’ve been a cop for a long time, that nothing can affect you anymore.

  I call Sosh again. “How we doin’, brother?”

  “Getting a team together. Got an unmarked there now.”

  “Good. Wait for me if you can. Only if you can.”

  I punch out, hear a woman’s voice.

  “I’m a cop. And I’m his sister. You better step aside right now.”

  Patti, fighting her way through the medical staff to get to me. They try to stop her, they’re gonna need medical attention, too.

  She whips the curtain open and sizes me up, touches my arm, quickly looks me over, puts a hand on my face, studying me. “Just the arm?”

  “Yeah, and it’s fine.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”