Chapter 16

Matt watched from the rooftop on the other side of the street until Karen left the apartment building, then he followed her to ensure she made it home safely. He had been impatient for her and Nyah to wrap up their evening because he knew where he could find Detective Maroney and didn't want to lose him. Matt had been tracking him every night since the attack on Nyah but had yet to discover anything incriminating and he was getting frustrated at the lack of progress.

Once Karen was safely inside her apartment, he swung back by Nyah's to check on her one last time. Her lights were off, and everything indicated she was in bed, so he headed to the bar that Maroney had been frequenting almost every night since Matt had started stalking him.

Shortly after 1:00, his target walked out of the bar with another detective from the same precinct. Instead of crossing the street to his car, the two turned left and walked three blocks up the street before entering a dark alley. Matt followed from the rooftops above them.

Another man was waiting for them in the alley, half hidden in the shadows.

"What is so damn important?" Maroney demanded as the two detectives drew near the other man.

The man stepped out of the shadows and Matt saw that it was one of the men that had attacked Nyah. He stepped out onto the fire escape to get closer to the three men.

"We got to move the cargo tonight," the man answered Maroney.

"Why tonight?" asked the other detective.

The man shrugged, "don't know. I don't ask questions. I just do what I'm told."

"This is bullshit!" Maroney spat. "Everything is set up for Monday night."

"Do you want to call him and tell him no?" he asked.

"Fuck!" was the only answer he got.

Matt had crept down the fire escape and was directly over them, hidden in the shadows. So, Maroney wasn't in charge. He was just another goon following orders. Who was pulling the strings? He thought that if he could get the one man alone, he could take him out and get his cell phone. There might be something useful on it that could lead them to the ringleader.

Maroney's phone chimed, breaking the silence. He looked at the text and spat again.

"God damnit!" he snapped as he tapped out his response. He motioned to the other detective, "we gotta go. Now." He looked at the other man, "We'll make the arrangements. Have the cargo ready to go."

The two of them turned to leave, and Matt shifted to position himself to go after the lone guy. Suddenly, a car two blocks away backfired, the sound echoing through the night like a gunshot. All three men dropped into crouches and pulled their guns, scanning the alley for threats. Matt would have gone unnoticed in the shadows, but his luck was apparently shit that night because a car drove past the alley at that moment, and its lights bathed the fire escape he was on in light. The other detective spotted him.

"Hey!" he shouted, raising his gun and firing it at Matt. The other two followed suit.

Matt was trapped on the escape with no cover, so he took the only option available to him: he jumped off the escape into a dumpster two stories below him. Landing hard in the smelly confines of the dumpster, he was momentarily shielded by the steel sides from the gunfire, but that wouldn't last long. Pulling himself up, he vaulted out and launched himself at his closest opponent, the messenger.

Keeping the guy between him and the two detectives, he quickly disarmed him and tossed the guy deeper into the alley. A couple of well-placed punches and a good kick and the man went down; however, a lucky grab on his part had him ripping Matt's mask off his face. Now, he faced the armed men with nothing between them for cover and no mask to hide his identity from them. He dove to the side of the alley and dodged behind the dumpster. A bullet ricocheted off the side and clipped him in ribs before he could reach safety.

From his concealment, he could see a path down the side of the alley that kept in the shadows and behind piles of trash and two abandoned cars. Hearing the two men split up to circle his hiding place, he had to move fast. Shoving the dumpster hard and sending it careening into the man closest to him, he took off at a dead run down the side of the alley, dodging obstacles and trying to keep something between him and the men.

Shots rang out from behind him and he felt a sharp, burning pain in his left arm, but soon he reached the end of the alley and sprinted up the street to the next alley to put distance between him and his pursuers. Hidden in the darkness, he paused and listened for them.

He could hear them out on the street arguing over chasing him or investigating some kind of break in several blocks away. The second detective finally convinced Maroney that he was long gone, and they needed to go. He listened as they retraced their steps back down the alley, and up the street to the car.

After they had pulled away and he could no longer here the sound of the car, he made his way to the nearest fire escape and pulled himself up it. Neither of his wounds were serious, the one in his arm went completely through the muscle without damaging anything important and the one on his ribs was just a flesh wound, but they were both bleeding profusely and painful. Without his mask he couldn't risk going to see Claire at the hospital, so he would have to tend his wounds himself at home.

It took him longer than normal to traverse the blocks back to his apartment. Inside, he barely bandaged his wounds before the blood loss caught up with him and he collapsed on his couch. As the world faded around him, a thought nagged at the back of his mind: something was not right.

Nyah was just beginning to doze off along with the other three women, when the door to their prison banged open and a voice said, "get up! We're leaving!"

Her three cellmates clambered to their feet quickly, but Nyah groped the edge of her mattress in panic. They were being moved. She needed the GPS tracker. Her fingers found the edge of the hole where she had hidden it and she dug her fingers into it trying to find the chain it was attached to. She felt it with the tip of her finger, but a rough hand grabbed her by the hair and yanked hard, bringing tears to her eyes.

"I said, get the fuck up!" he snarled at her as he drug her to her feet and shoved her towards the door so violently, that she stumbled and fell to her knees, scraping them and her hands of the rough concrete floor. He came up behind her and pulled her to her feet with a bruising grip on her arm and pulled her out into the room with the others.

Besides the three women she had been locked up with, there were two other women huddled with them. All were young and pretty. As expected from her accent, Juanita was Latina, her dark eyes soulful despite the fear she could see in them and the dark circles under them. Both women from the other cell were African American, one short and voluptuous, the other tall and willowy. Becky was blonde with blue eyes with a calculating look on her face. Her arms had scaring on them that spoke of drug abuse in the past, but no recent marks, so she was probably in recovery. Megan was a small brunette with big brown eyes and was sporting a swollen lip and a bruise on her cheek. Her eyes were bloodshot and her nose red from crying.

"Ok, we are going to go for a ride," Maroney said, dragging her attention from the women. "You are going to be quiet and not give us any trouble or we will put a bullet in your head and dump your body in a ditch. Understand?" He pointed his gun at them for emphasis.

When all the women had nodded their understanding, the three men quickly cuffed all six of them, then he motioned to the other man to open the door and lead the way out. There was one other man with them, the one with the broken nose from her attack.

He glared at her as she passed. "Go ahead and run, Bitch. I dare you," he sneered.

She ignored him, staring straight ahead. What was she going to do now? Her plan hinged on the GPS leading others to her location. If she wasn't here, would they be able to track her to the new location? She had no idea, but there wasn't anything she could do without putting one or more of the others in danger. She would just have to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

They were herded into a van and cuffed them to bars welded to the sides. Broken Nose climbed in with them while the other two got into the front. As the van started and pulled out onto the street, Nyah once again questioned the wisdom of her plan. Once they were on the road, Broken Nose, moved through the captive women, rubbing his body against them and fondling them. When he reached Nyah, he pressed her against the side of the van and grabbed both her breasts and squeezed them painfully.

"I can do anything I want to you and you can't do anything about it," he breathed in her ear, his stale breath hot on the side of her face. He trailed on of his hands down to the waistband of her jeans and slid it inside them. The feeling of his clammy hand against her made her skin crawl, but she had been through worse over the centuries; this she could endure. He pinched the tender flesh hard, making her flinch, then licked the side of her face, leaving a sticky trail of spittle from her jaw to her eye.

Before he could do more to satisfy his sadistic nature, the van turned and he was jostled away from her and into Juanita, who caught his elbow in the side of her face and cried out in pain.

Maroney turned around in the passenger seat and glared at Broken Nose, "don't damage the good, damnit! Nobody wants a woman all bloodied up, you idiot!"

"Some of them don't give a damn what they look like as long as they can do whatever they want to them," he retorted. But he walked back to his place at the end of the van for the rest of the ride.

After an indeterminant amount of time, the van slowed and pulled to a stop. Maroney and the driver got out and came around to open the door in the back. He tossed Broken Nose the keys to the cuffs and moved back to wait for each of them to step out of the vehicle as they were uncuffed from the bar.

When Nyah stepped out, she looked around. They were parked inside another, much cleaner warehouse that had a row of cages approximately 6X6 set up in the middle of the open space. A table nearby was set up with computers and cameras, with an older, balding man sitting at it typing on one of the keyboards. Two more armed men were approaching their group.

"You're late," the one in front, a tall man with a long greasy ponytail and goatee said.

"We had a late delivery," Maroney answered.

Goatee surveyed the women and frowned, "there's only supposed to be five."

Maroney grabbed her and drug her forward. "The director had us pick up this one tonight. She's causing a lot of trouble, but she's young and pretty, so might as well make some money with her instead of putting a bullet in her head."

Goatee moved to stand in front of her and grabbed her by the chin and turned her head from side to side. "She's a little roughed up, but she will do." He tightened his grip on her chin, forcing her head up to look at him, "but if you cause trouble her, you will get a bullet in the head. Understand?"

She managed a bit of a nod and he shoved her away in dismissal. "Put them in holding. We go live at noon."