Pistol drawn, Evan stood perfectly still outside the room for a full ten minutes. No sounds of breathing within, no creaking of the floorboards.
Finally he threw one bolt. The muted clank of metal against metal might as well have been a clap of thunder.
Standing to the side of the door, he waited.
Nothing happened, and then more nothing.
The next two locks he unbolted in rapid succession. He bladed his body. Let the door creak inward. Leading with the 1911, he nosed around the jamb. A nicely made bed, lavender comforter, brand-new TV on a stand.
A lovely room, aside from the plate of sheet metal drilled over the window. When Evan shouldered the door to step inside, he felt it to be heavier than the others. Solid core.
The holding pen.
No one inside. The room — bare, pristine, equipped with only the basics — seemed like a diorama. In fact, the whole place had a dollhouse feel.
It had been designed with one purpose in mind: comfortable functionality.
Hector Contrell had to ensure that the merchandise wasn’t damaged before delivery.
The bathroom door remained closed. Evan tried the doorknob, but it didn’t budge. Seating the pistol in his holster, he took out his tension wrench again. The cheaper lock required only a hook pick and a few jiggles.
As the door swung inward, the smell hit him first.
A smooth leg, mottled blue-purple, hooked over the brim of the bathtub. A mass of tangled black hair covered the face, leaving only a delicate ivory chin exposed. He put the body as older than most of Contrell’s “eligibles.” Late teens, early twenties. Probably designated for a buyer looking for variety.
Until Contrell’s operation had been blown and his middlemen decided to liquidate the inventory.
She’d been alive when he killed Contrell. She’d been alive when he went home and poured himself a glass of vodka and drank to a job well done.
Evan lowered the pick set.
That was when he heard the footsteps behind him.
Two men, no doubt the inhabitants of the roomy clothes in the wardrobe of the master bedroom. The one nearest Evan gripped a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special and gripped it well. Firmed wrists, locked elbows. A second pistol hung in a cheap nylon holster under his left armpit, semiauto backup in case five bullets weren’t sufficient.
The man behind him carried a healthy gut and a SIG Sauer. His gun was also raised, but he could afford to be less on point given that his buddy had Evan pinned down. Evan couldn’t get a clear look around the front man’s barrel chest. The man seemed to block everything out. It wasn’t just his girth but the way he canted in aerodynamically at Evan. Thrusting chin, ledged brow, chest and biceps tugging him forward on his frame so it seemed that only the balls of his feet were holding him back — a bullet train made incarnate.
“Who’s been sleeping in our beds?” he said.
Evan lowered his hands slightly. The S&W followed the motion, stopped level with his heart.
“Goldilocks?” Evan said. “Really?”
“I gotta agree, Claude,” the man by the door said. “Not your finest work.”
Claude’s features rearranged themselves. His cheeks looked shiny, as if he’d recently shaved, but stubble was already pushing its way through again. His face, the target demographic for five-blade razors.
“I just thought, you know, the whole breaking-and-entering thing,” Claude said. “Us coming home, catching you. Plus the Goldilocks reference, it’s demeaning.”
“Because she’s a girl,” Evan said.
Claude nodded.
Evan held his hands in place. “You know what they say. If you have to explain the joke…”
The man in the back flicked his SIG at Evan. “Gun on the ground.”
Evan complied.
As he squatted, he gauged the distance to the tips of Claude’s shoes. Maybe five feet. Evan could close the space in a single lunge. Easy enough, if he didn’t have two guns aimed at his critical mass.
Rising, he eyed the barrel of the Chief’s Special. Since Claude was muscle-bound and right-handed, Evan’s first move would be to juke left, make him swing the gun inward across that barrel chest. The compression of delt and pec might slow his arm, buy Evan a half second.
That would be all he’d need.
His stare dropped to Claude’s second gun, the one slung in the loose-fitting underarm holster. A Browning Hi-Power. It was cocked and locked — hammer back, safety engaged. The safety lever peeked out beneath the retention strap of the nylon holster. Good presentation.
The odor wafted from the bathroom over Evan’s shoulder, precipitating on the taste buds at the back of his tongue. Just past the threshold in the hall, he saw the bright red of a few plastic gasoline jugs; the men had set them down quietly. “You guys cleaning up the operation?”
“Contrell was the CEO,” Claude said. “We’re just workaday guys. Glorified babysitters, really. Sit around, eat pizza, watch the tube. Beats digging ditches.”
Evan flipped the tiny hook pick around his thumb, pinched it again. “Those were the only options, huh? Sell girls or dig ditches?”
Claude smiled with sudden awareness, his magnificent jaw jutting out all the more. “You’re the guy who put us out of work.”
With a flick of his wrist, Evan flipped the hook pick at Claude’s eyes, lunging left just before the gunshot. The bullet cracked past his ear. He dove not so much at Claude as into him, using him as a shield, getting inside the range of the revolver. Evan’s right hand flew at that Browning in the underarm holster, and then he smacked into the big man, pressing chest to chest, a dance move gone wrong.
It happened very fast.
Evan’s thumb shoved the safety lever off as his forefinger curled around the trigger. He rode the gun back in the sling and fired straight through the holster from beneath Claude’s armpit. The man behind them took the shot through the cheek, blood welling like struck oil. The pistol in his fist barked twice as he flew back. Evan felt both impacts ripple Claude’s flesh, friendly-fire smacks to the spine.
Claude dropped fast and lay still.
The other man had wound up sitting next to the bed, slumped forward over his gut, one hand clutching the lavender comforter. A perfect stillness claimed the room.
The whole thing had gone down in about a second and a half.
Evan picked up his gun and started out. Though the neighboring houses were far, the noise of a firefight would carry.
As he stepped over Claude, he noticed a yellow slip peeking from the inner lapel pocket of the laid-open jacket. Instinct halted him there above the body, told him to crouch and reach for it. He teased it out.
A customer copy of a shipping bill, rendered on thin yellow carbonless copy paper.
All at once the air felt brittle, as if it might shatter if he moved wrong.
His eyes pulled to the bed. Queen-size.
Big enough for roommates.
He looked back at the form, taking in the data.
Origin: Long Beach, CA
Destination: Jacksonville, FL
ETA: Oct 29, 11:37pm
Distance: 5141.11 miles (8273.82 km)
That was not the distance a package would travel by truck or plane. Not even close. That distance would be two thousand miles and change. This package was traveling down around the bottom of the continent and through the Panama Canal.
He scanned farther down the form.
Sure enough, a twenty-foot ISO-standard container had been secured on a midsize bulk carrier called the Horizon Express. An additional port fee of $120 was to be paid upon delivery to the Jacksonville Port Authority.
At the bottom of the form, something was written in pen, the blue ink distinct from the black dye pressed through from the other sheets. A name. And an age.