Chapter 17
Matt was awakened the next morning by his cell phone ringing. He was still laying on his couch where he had passed out. He sat up, groaning, and put his head in his hands. He really needed a better suit, he mused, not for the first time. On the kitchen counter, his cell phone started ringing again. He pushed himself to his feet and walked slowly over to it.
"What's up?" he answered.
"We're on our way up," came Foggy's voice. He sounded breathless. "Open the door."
There was a knock at his door, so he hung up and crossed his apartment to open it. A Very distraught Foggy pushed past him to enter, but Karen paused and took in his makeshift bandages.
"What happened to you?" she asked with concern.
"Detective Maroney and a couple of friends," he replied, standing aside to let her enter before shutting the door behind her.
"So, you know already?" Karen asked, confused.
"Know what?" he was lost.
"About Nyah," Foggy answered as they joined him in the living room.
"About this," Karen said at the same time, waving what sounding like a piece of paper in the air.
"Ok," Matt said slowly, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. "Start from the beginning," he told them as he went to his kitchen and made himself a glass of water.
Karen took a deep breath and held up the piece of paper again. "When I got to the office this morning, this was waiting. It had been dropped off last night." There was the sound of the paper being unfolded and smoothed out on his table.
"It's from Nyah. She went to the women's center last night planning on being caught by the people that have been abducting all the women!" Her voice rose, close to being hysterical.
"What?" Matt said numbly, putting his glass down. He missed the edge of the counter and the glass fell to the floor, shattering and spraying glass and water over the kitchen floor. All three of them jumped at the sound but ignored the mess on the floor.
Karen continued, "she planned to get kidnapped!"
"That's insane," Matt said in disbelief. Then he held up his hand to forestall her answer and listened closely to the apartment above his. The familiar heartbeat wasn't present. The he remembered and pounded his fist on the counter. That was what bothered him last night before he passed out. Her apartment was quiet. He should have been able to hear her, but he had been so out of it, that it didn't register. Rage built up inside him. Of all the stupid….
"She had a plan, if that makes you feel any better," Foggy put in and Matt jerked his attention to him.
"What plan?" he ground out.
"According to this letter, she bought GPS trackers so she could be found by the police today. She left a key to her apartment and instructions on how to access the program on her computer." Karen held up the key.
Matt was already moving towards the door. When he got there, he turned back to his friends that were still standing in his living room. "Are you coming?"
The three of them hurried up the stairs. Karen had Nyah's computer up and running the GPS program in just a few minutes. The tracker marked 'car' was stationary in front of the police station. The other tracker was on the far side of Hell's Kitchen in the area that had borne the brunt of Fisk's insane plan and was still not completely recovered.
"Well, we know where she is. Now what?" Karen asked.
"We can't call the police, because we don't know how many are involved," Matt pointed out.
"If we can't call the police, what are we supposed to do? Go in ourselves with guns blazing?" Foggy asked pacing the room behind Matt and Karen.
"What about your contact that the precinct?" Karen turned and looked up at Matt.
He shook his head, "I don't know." He leaned back against the wall.
"We have to do something. We just can't leave her there. She's counting on us to come find her."
"She should have thought about that before she ran off without filling us in beforehand!" Matt responded heatedly.
"Um, if she had, we wouldn't have let her do this," Karen reasoned.
Matt struck the wall. "Damn right! And for good reason!"
Foggy put himself between them, "hold on a minute. We are thinking about this like Nyah is a normal person putting herself in danger. But she isn't. She can't be killed."
"Yes, she can," Karen corrected, "she just comes back."
"Okay, yes. But she does come back. Every time. She's doing this to save people. Matt, that's what you do all the time, and look at yourself right now!" He stopped and pointed at his best friend. "You are bleeding all over the wall just standing there!"
"She's putting you guys in danger!" Matt insisted.
"So do you!" Foggy countered. "Every time you go out, you take the chance of getting discovered and you put us in danger!"
"This is different!"
"No, it isn't!" Foggy exploded. "Are you so pissed at her because she took away your chance to go save the day? To be the hero? To go beat the shit out of the bad guys?"
"No!" Matt yelled back at him.
"Then what?" Foggy said in a softer voice. "Why are you so pissed?"
Matt didn't have an answer for him. Instead he sighed and said, "this isn't solving anything."
"No," Karen put in, "it isn't. While you guys were beating your chests and acting like idiots, I've been checking out the area around this building and I think I have an idea."
Both of them turned to her. "What?" asked Foggy.
"All of these buildings are in bad shape, right?" she gestured to the map on the computer screen.
"Yes, from the explosions," Matt agreed.
She pointed out the building next to the one with the GPS target on it, "this building is the only one that is really close. The other buildings have a pretty good clearance around them."
At Foggy's nod, she continued, "What if we start a fire in this building? That would bring the fire department and the police to the area without going directly to the police. They would check out this building next to it and discover Nyah and whoever else is being held in it as well as the people holding them." She looked at them expectantly.
"Or they might get spooked and try to move them," Foggy pointed out.
"Then we take pictures and follow them," she suggested. "Either way, we have the opportunity to nail them."
Matt and Foggy were silent, thinking about her idea.
"It might work," Matt finally said into the silence. "We are going to need supplies. And I need to make some phone calls."
By 10:30, they had their plan worked out and all the supplies they needed to make it happen. They took the bus as close as possible then walked the last few blocks. When they got close enough to see the warehouse, Matt had Foggy and Karen wait for him while he went ahead to check it out. He skirted around the side of the second building, alert to the hum of electronics that would announce surveillance cameras and came up the alley between the buildings.
Ignoring his injuries, he climbed up a decrepit ladder that was still barely attached to the side of the warehouse, until he reached the roof. On the roof, he had to tread carefully to avoid soft spots and places that had already caved in. At one of the holes he stopped to survey the interior of the building and heard nothing from below. He could make out a separate area in the back, though, and slipped through one of the holes onto a dropped ceiling.
Below him was a larger room and three smaller rooms with no one in them. In fact, the whole building was deserted.
Pulling out his cell phone, he called Foggy. "It's deserted," he said when Foggy answered. "Nobody's in there. Meet me inside."
When they met him, all three of them entered the back room. The room was stale and stank of cigarettes, beer, and body odor. Karen was holding her cell phone following the GPS signal from an app she had downloaded and led them to one of the three doors against the far back wall.
"This is where they were keeping the women," she said in a whisper, looking at the dirty mattresses littering the floor and the foul-smelling bucket in the corner. Her phone led her to one of the mattresses. "This is where the signal is coming from."
Matt went to the mattress and felt around the edge until he found the tear and fished out the pendant. He turned and held it up for the others to see. "She was here."
"But she's not here anymore," Foggy stated the obvious. "What now?"
"Tonight's the new moon," Karen said. "I guess we wait."
"And we have a tracker in the car to follow," Matt said darkly.
Nyah and the other women had been locked in the cages in the middle of the warehouse and then Maroney and the other two left, leaving just the three new men alone with the women. The cages had nothing at all in them, so the women were forced to stand or sit on the concrete floor as they waited. Their guards would not let them sit close to each other and they were not allowed to talk, so Nyah lay down on the hard floor and fitfully dozed throughout the morning.
Sometime late in the morning, Goatee approached the first cage in the line, containing Juanita, unlocked it and motioned her out. He escorted her over to a table with a mirror, makeup and a hairbrush and told her to make herself presentable. When she only put on minimum makeup, he commanded her to put on more 'like she was going on a date'. Once he deemed her suitably made-up, he handed her a dress and told her to change into it.
Juanita looked around, "Where?"
Goatee laughed, "where do you think? Right here. Now!" he yelled and pointed the gun at her when she didn't immediately comply.
Cringing, Juanita stripped out of her jeans and tee shirt and put the short, clingy dress on. Both guards stared, but the computer guy never looked up. When Juanita was finished, Goatee walked her over to stand in front of a camera to await further instructions. The other guy unlocked the next cage in the line and repeated the process.
The computer guy finally turned his attention to Juanita. "Okay, Sweetheart, we are going live in 60 seconds. Smile into the camera when I tell you and don't stop smiling until I tell you. Got it?"
When she nodded hesitantly, he turned and clicked something on the computer.
"Start smiling…now," he commanded.
Juanita plastered a fake smile on her face and stood still for a few moments. The computer guy told her to turn in a circle a couple of times, then had her stand still for a bit longer. Finally, he told her she was done, and goatee led her back to her cage, made her change back into her clothes, then locked her back up.
On it went until it was Nyah's turn. She didn't protest or blush when she was forced to strip in front of everyone. The dress she was given was too big on her, but none of the men seemed to care. When she was marched over to stand in front of the camera, she could see the computer monitor. There was a list of usernames and while she was being filmed, dollar amounts began to appear next to the names. They were being sold to the highest bidder apparently.
She was honestly starting to worry. By now, someone should have found the warehouse where they were being held earlier, but as the day wore on, the odds of help arriving was diminishing. She was kicking herself for getting rid of the tracker so fast at the first warehouse. She was the only hope these women had and she had blown it by acting too quickly.
Now the possibility of being held captive through the coming night was becoming more real. She was not looking forward to it. In fact, she was terrified of it. There had only been three times that she had been physically unable to respond to her curse; that undeniable urge to find someone in need of saving. All three times she had been a prisoner of some sort, locked up in a cell; even chained to a wall once. The urge was thwarted by her inability to leave, but as the night wore on, she had been gripped by an overwhelming pain. It started in her head; a pounding headache followed by blinding stabs of pain, nosebleeds, and a deafening ringing in her ears. Then it spread downward, suffocating pressure in her chest, crippling cramps, and body wide muscle spasms powerful enough to break bones. By the time the sun peaked over the horizon, she had been screaming for hours, not even able to pass out to obtain relief. When her body dissolved, she felt every molecule separate until she was completely gone. She had woken up still screaming in pain when she resurrected three nights later.
After the first time it happened, she tried to ensure she was either killed before being taken captive or she drove her captors to execute her before the night of the new moon. Unfortunately, this time there were other lives at stake. There was no way she could be sure these men would not harm any of the other women if she incensed them. They didn't seem like the types to be overly fair when doling out punishment. And now that she had been sold to the highest bidder, killing her would cost them their profit, so they were less likely to just shoot her. All she could do was wait and hope that her friends would come through for her and the others.
