“God, if she could have just waited a little longer,” Ananke said, her voice a pained whisper.
A million different emotions churned through Quinn, but he kept them all in check and headed out of the cell.
“Do…do I get the plastic?” Nate asked.
“No,” Quinn grunted.
He opened cell one next. The woman inside jumped back, confused and frightened, as the door swung wide.
Quinn touched Ananke on the arm and motioned with his eyes for her to take the lead.
“This isn’t my kind of thing,” she whispered.
“It’s not like it’s ours, either,” Quinn said.
“I wouldn’t even know what to say.”
He frowned. “If you’re not going to help, then go into the other room and make sure no one comes down.”
“Just what I was thinking.” Ananke left the hallway.
Quinn turned his attention back to the cell. He made a quick examination of the woman for any weapons, but her hands were empty and she was wearing no clothes to hide anything in. “You can come out.”
The woman pressed herself against the back wall. “You’re the ones who’ve come to take us away, aren’t you? The ones Mr. Black told us about.”
“Tell me, is Mr. Black a short, skinny guy, losing his hair?” Quinn asked.
The look in her eyes confirmed that Mr. Black was Edmondson.
“I don’t work for or with Mr. Black,” he told her. “But I can tell you he’s not going to be bothering you anymore. The only place you’ll be going from here is home.”
She didn’t move.
“How about this?” he said. “We’ll leave the door open. Come out when you’re ready. No one’s going to force you to do anything.”
He nodded for Nate to follow him to cell three.
As he opened that door, the woman inside rushed out. He braced himself, thinking she would try to tackle him, but instead she dropped to her knees and threw her arms around his waist.
“Please! I’ll do anything. Please just—”
He peeled her arms off and pulled her to her feet. “No one’s going to do anything to you. Whatever was going on here is over. You won’t be seeing Mr. Black again.”
In her eyes, he could see she was having a hard time processing this.
“Get her some clothes,” he said to Nate.
“From where?”
Quinn nodded back toward the large room. “Ask Ananke. She’ll show you where to find them.”
As Nate escorted the woman into the other room, the captive in cell one yelled, “Don’t listen to them! They’re going to take you away like the others.”
Quinn headed over to cell four and looked through the window. The prisoner was still sitting on the mattress. Instead of glaring at him, though, she was now staring at the opposite wall. He unlocked the door and opened it.
Without looking at him, she said, “What do you want?”
“I don’t want anything. I’m just letting you out.”
“I heard what you told the others. I know you’re lying. You’re not here to rescue us.”
Technically, she was right. They were here to deal with Edmondson’s termination, not to act as liberators of the man’s…whatever this was.
“We have zero interest in harming you,” he said. “We didn’t even know you were here until a few minutes ago.”
She looked at him and sneered. “So I just follow you out?”
“That’s up to you.”
“Like I really have a choice.” She pushed to her feet and started to cover her chest, but then dropped her arm as if she wasn’t going to let her nakedness embarrass her.
She wasn’t like the other two. She still had fight in her. Either she was a new arrival and hadn’t been beaten down yet or was stronger than her prison mates.
When she reached the door, she held her wrists out, hands clasped together. Quinn didn’t move.
“No cuffs?” she asked.
“I told you, we’re here to free you.”
Another grunt. “All right, then. What now?”
“Now we get you something to wear.”
He purposefully went first so that his back was to her, putting her in a position of control and hoping it would gain him a little trust. When they reached the larger room, he saw that the other woman was already wearing a shirt and was pulling on a pair of pants.
“What size are you?” Quinn asked the woman from cell four.
She looked over at the open cabinets full of clothes. “I don’t want any of those. I want mine.”
“I have no idea where yours are.”
She nodded toward the other end of the room. “In the lockers. Mine’s number seventeen.”
Quinn pulled out the keys and opened the indicated locker. Inside were a pair of jeans, a long-sleeve dark brown T-shirt, a maroon hoodie, panties, bra, ankle socks, and a pair of sneakers. Sitting at the bottom was an empty messenger bag, the few items that had apparently been inside sealed in a clear plastic bag lying next to it.
“Yours?” he asked the woman.
She nodded.
“Are the other lockers the same?”
“How should I know?” she said. A pause. “Can I get dressed now? Or are you still enjoying the view?”
“Sorry.” He’d been lost in thought, wondering about the other lockers.
He moved to the one next to hers and opened it. A single set of clothes and some personal items. He tried another. Same.
Like trophy cases, he thought, sickened.
Twenty-three of the thirty lockers were secured. If four belonged to the women he and Ananke found, that left nineteen unclaimed. He tried not to think what that meant, but failed.
This was way beyond his contractual obligation.
Wanting to have as much information as he could before contacting Helen, he took cell four’s wallet from her personal items while she had her back to him, and then hunted through the next few lockers for more intel.
As he opened another one, the girl from cell three said, “That’s my shirt!”
Quinn pulled her clothes out and tossed them to her, and then added her ID to the others he’d taken. He had five now and decided that was enough.
“Please help these ladies with anything they might need,” he said to Nate and Ananke. “I’ll be right back.”
“What I need is to go home,” the woman from cell three said.
“That’s what I’m working on,” Quinn told her.
He went up to the garage and pulled out his phone, but hesitated before dialing. He needed guidance from Helen, but he also needed to let Orlando know what was going on. In fact, it would be best to have her on the line when he talked to their client.
The phone rang five times before Orlando answered. “What?” she asked in a whisper. He could hear other noises — music and amplified voices.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“Hold on,” she said.
For the next several seconds, he could hear the muffled sound of movement.
When she spoke again, the music and other voices were gone and she was no longer whispering. “Okay, I can talk now.”
“Where are you?” he asked again.
“I’m at the movies.”
“It’s almost midnight. You should be in bed,” he said.
“I couldn’t sleep, all right? We need to get a new mattress. Our bed is horrible. I can’t get comfortable.”
“The mattress is fine.”
“Well, then, you get fat and sleep on it.”
“You’re not fat.”
“You obviously haven’t looked at me in a while. But who could blame you?”
Pregnancy was getting in the way of Orlando’s usually active life. Thankfully, it would be over soon.
“Why are you calling?” she asked. “Is something wrong?”
“You might say that.”
“Dammit. It was Ananke, wasn’t it? She screwed something up.”