She looked blank, and I added, “Do you remember following the sedan from the nightclub?”
She tried to nod, and winced.“Yes.We went to check out the house.”She lifted a hand to check the back of her head, and her face twisted.“Ow.”
“Sorry,” I said.
She tried to raise herself on one elbow and seemed to think better of it.“How come you’re not flat on your back?”
“I don’t think they hit me as hard as they hit you,” I said.“Or one guy didn’t hit as hard as the other guy.I got lucky.I’ve been awake for most of it.”
If you could call it lucky.My head still hurt, and had been hurting since they hit me.Rachel had only woken up to the pain now.
She looked around, moving mostly just her eyes.They lingered on the low window high on the wall.“Basement room?”
I nodded.“Looks like they boarded up the window.”That was why we hadn’t been able to see even a strip of light when we were outside.A thick sheet of plywood was nailed to the window frame all the way around.With a lot of nails.
“What are we going to do?”She decided to try to sit up again.I gave her a hand, and managed to haul her upright.She slumped against the wall, but at least she was awake and mostly aware.
“We hadn’t gotten to that part yet,” I said.“Turns out the Russian girl really was Steven’s daughter.Or so it seems.He helped her get away from the guys who run the club.They brought her and these other three girls—” I gestured to them, “here from Russia to work at Stella’s.”
Rachel nodded.
“They beat up Zachary because he’d seen Anastasia and they wanted to know what he knew about her.But we don’t know whether they have found Anastasia and Steven or not.”
One of the girls said something, and Tatiana nodded.“They would have told us if they found Anastasia.They would want us to know that we can’t get away.That they’ll find us.”
Good point.“They probably don’t have them, then,” I told Rachel.
“But they have us,” she responded.
And of course they did.
She added, “What are they going to do with us?”
I had no idea.It wasn’t as if they could make us work in the club, the way the girls did.And I didn’t like to consider any of the alternatives.
“We probably won’t be here long,” I said, trying to inject some optimism I wasn’t feeling into my voice.
“We’ve been here more than a month,” Tatiana told me.
“Yes, but nobody knew you were here.”Other than the patrons at the club, and the kinds of men who went to a nightclub to purchase sex from young women couldn’t really be expected to care about those girls’ wellbeing.“My car is parked in the driveway across the street.With my dog in it.Once your neighbors wake up and find it, I’m sure they’ll call the police.”
“Unless Yuri moved it already,” Tatiana said.
I dug in my pocket.“I have the key.”
“My car is parked around the corner,” Rachel added.“Someone will probably notice that, too.”
And chances were, when Diana tried to get in touch with me tomorrow morning, which I hoped she’d do, to hear that recording of Steven, and when she found the office empty, and she couldn’t raise me on the phone, she’d call Mendoza and tell him I was missing.I had to trust that she’d do that, and that he’d take action.He might know me well enough by now that he’d realize I would have taken an interest in the nightclub and the girls.
Although that put our rescue out another day, since Mendoza couldn’t very well follow Konstantin and Yuri home from the club until they’d actually been to the club for another night.
And that was if they wanted to take the risk of bringing the girls there tomorrow night.After tonight, they might think things had gotten a little too hot for that.And they wouldn’t be wrong.But that meant Mendoza had no way of finding them—or us—at all.
If that happened, we could be here a while.Unless we found a way out on our own.
“I suppose you’ve tried to take the plywood off the window?”
Tatiana nodded.“The first day we were here.We can never get enough of the nails out in one night to get out, and the next day they always nail them back in.”
