“Hello?”
“Xanthe!” I bellowed. “Did you fucking pick out this name?”
“Sorry?”
“Fucking Richard Darcy!”
Xanthe giggled. “Maybe.”
“Why would you do that to me?”
“Because everyone could call you Dick Darcy. It’s got a nice ring to it.”
I hung up on her snorting laughter, scowling at Deo.
Motherfucker.
Those two were too much alike to have to know both of them.
“Mr. Darcy is the fucking quintessential romance figure,” Ronen chimed in. “All women bow to his prideful demeanor, wanting the chance to be his Eliza—”
“Holy shit, please tell me some chick forced you to watch the movie. Did you actually
read
it?” Deo demanded.
Ronen turned red.
I grinned like a hungry wolf. “He fucking read it.”
“Yeah? Well, my name is still Ronen,
Dick
.”
“Fuck you. I’m Ricki.”
“Dick.”
“Ricki.”
“Dick.”
“Ricki. Say it again, and I’ll fucking shoot you, too.”
“You ain’t gonna shoot shit,” grumped Ronen. “We left all our artillery with Deo.”
Once again…true.
With a small carry-on each, Ronen and I hopped out of the van at Cardiff Airport.
Deo flipped us the bird. “See you later, Dick Darcy. And fuck you, Ronen. That smell has well funked up my uncle’s cottage.”
Ronen and I flipped Deo the bird back as he pulled the van from the curb.
I stowed my passport in my back pocket.
Ronen sighed dramatically. “I’m gonna miss him.”
We both were.
Deo had been such a huge part of my life for the last decade. I wasn’t sure what my life was going to be like without him in it on a daily basis.
Looking sketchy as fuck, Ronen and I went through security, being half-stripped and heavily frisked. Since Ronen wasn’t too bothered by this—apparently, it was normal for him—I just went with it and didn’t even break a sweat when we showed our boarding passes and IDs.
The flight wasn’t too eventful. It took a little less than two hours to arrive in Amsterdam. Then, completely clueless, Ronen and I stood in Arrivals like a couple of dipshits.
“What are we supposed to do?” Ronen whispered to me.
“How the fuck would I know?” I huffed.
“Excuse me?”
Together, we turned our attention to a little old lady who was timidly tugging on the sleeve of my jacket.
“Yeah?” I asked.
“Are you Richard and Ronen?”
“Who are you?” asked Ronen.
“I asked you first,” she snapped.
“Are you Ellen?” I whispered.
“Are you Richard?”
What a fucking spitfire.
Cute, too—not in
that
way! Just…shit, she was wearing holey jeans and a Frank Zappa T-shirt. She was cool as shit with her gray hair parted down the middle and wrapped into two buns, one on each side of her head.
I stuck my hand out. “Ricki Conklin.” Oddly, the name felt…natural.
“Ricki. Is that turd Ronen then?” she asked, shaking my hand.
“Yup!” said the turd.
“Come on. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”
After we followed her out of Arrivals, the three of us headed to the loading zone where Ellen marched us to a pea-green Mini Cooper.
“Shut the fuck up,” Ronen snorted.
“You got a fucking problem with your new car?” barked Ellen.
“What?” Ronen gasped.
“You think the new recruits get James Bond cars and shit? Get in the back, turd. You’re irritating me.”
As he snapped to his full height, Ronen’s eyes went wide behind his specs. “Yes, ma’am.”
Once inside the car, Ellen peeled out into traffic, and we left the airport behind us.
“What do you know about…well, everything? What are we a part of now?” I asked.
“A cause many people don’t have the stomach for, and even less know about it,” Ellen replied. “But, before I tell you two anything, I need you to swear to the utmost secrecy. The organization depends on it.”
“And you’re in it?” Ronen asked, sticking his head between the front seats.
“I’m not so much a big player anymore. I’m sixty-nine years old. Don’t have the speed and agility I used to. But I can still shoot a fucker dead and kick a pair of testes like no one’s business.”
I had no doubt, and I covered my genitalia with my clasped hands just in case she decided we needed a demonstration.
Slowing down at a red light, Ellen reached across me—I tightened my hold on my junk—and she flipped open the glove box. From a small leather pouch, she extracted a business card and handed it to me.
“
Lawful Opposition of the Criminally Abhorrent League
,” I read aloud. Then, I snorted. “Seriously? What is this? The Justice League of Amsterdam?”
Handing Ronen the card for him to have a look, I was slacking, and Ellen punched me in my privates.
Stars exploded behind my vision, and the air whooshed from my lungs. Fiery cramps throbbed from my groin to my gut, and I curled up into the fetal position in the front seat of the Mini. Desperately, I gasped for oxygen as Ronen lost his shit in the backseat.
“We’re goddamn
global
, you little shit,” snapped Ellen. “And, yeah, we’re the ones who get justice for those who can’t get it for themselves. The kidnapped, tortured, and raped. The nameless, faceless poor who are taken advantage of because their lives are deemed worthless. Like your fucking mother,
Jamey
.”
Sucking in a deep breath, I managed to groan, “I’m Ricki.”
“That’s right,” Ellen fired back. “Ricki fucking Conklin is a soldier dedicated to saving as many of these unfortunate souls as he can. He’s smart, resourceful, and ready for anything. Are you Ricki, or are you the pissant shit son of The Godwin?”
“James is dead.”
Fuck if I could think around this fucking pain…
“This isn’t a fucking
job
, Ricki. It’s our whole fucking life. Max Godwin told us the two of you were dedicated and loyal to this cause. Are you?”
“Yes,” I wheezed.
“And you, turd?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good,” she grunted. “How are your frank and beans, boy?”
“I don’t want to cry,” I whispered.
“Made my point then.”
Zipping through the streets in the tiny car, Ellen finally pulled up in front of a little store. Flight of Fancy was painted in a swirling script on the broad window, and behind it was a display of books.
“This is our stop. I live above my bookstore. Until you two find a place, you’ll be staying with me. Get out now.”
Gingerly, I made my way out of the car. Ronen hopped out, happy his bits weren’t bruised at all. With a slight limp, I followed Ellen and Ronen into the shop.
“The shop’s yours?” asked Ronen.
“It is,” Ellen replied, a note of pride ringing in her voice. “We all need to look normal to the public, you know? I run my bookstore; I’m just a regular law-abiding citizen. Once you’re up to snuff with training, you’ll find your place, too. You tattoo, right, Ronen?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“You sure?”
“Ronen is brilliant,” I told her. “He’s inked me in the last week.”
“Is that so?” Ellen came up to me and inspected Ronen’s handiwork for herself. “I see. Yes, it’s quite fantastic.”
“Thank you,” Ronen replied, looking around the shop.
“What do you do?” she asked me.
“Don’t you know?” I asked.
She seemed to know everything.
“Your father didn’t allow you a higher education because he was afraid you’d go all queer as an artist. You graduated from school a slightly above average student. Your drawing and painting got you noticed by your teachers. When you graduated, your father set fire to nearly all of your work.”
“How—”
“We make it our priority to know whom we’re recruiting.”
“We, uh…we didn’t know what we were supposed to do when we got here,” said Ronen. “So, I asked if Ja—Ricki—”
Ellen cracked up at Ronen’s slip. “Ja-Ricki? Say that in a Jamaican accent for me.”
“Erm…
Ja-Ricki
!”
Throwing her head back, Ellen roared with an old-lady cackle that had me and Ronen gasping for breath.
By the time we simmered down, Ellen asked, “Now, what were you saying?”
Wiping tears from behind his specs, Ronen giggled. “Oh, yeah. Ricki’s gonna be my apprentice.”
“Sounds like a plan. We Locals like having thugs on our payroll.”
“Locals?” asked Ronen.
“Yeah. Lawful Opposition of the Criminally Abhorrent League.
Locals
. You slow on the uptake or something?”
“So it would seem,” Ronen grumbled.
“Come on. I’ll show you the lay of the land then.”
Ellen was the coolest fucking woman on the planet. Her flat was shit straight out of the ’70s. She showed us to two tiny rooms with small beds where Ronen and I dropped off our crap.
“Sorry they’re not much bigger than closets. There are times when we need rooms for victims who are acclimating back into society, and when that happens, I have a little space. I give ’em jobs working in the store until it’s time for them to move on.”
“Are you the only one in Amsterdam who does that for victims?”
“Hell no,” Ellen replied.
We all sat down in her living room, and she pulled out a box that held a fat bag of weed, rolling papers, and an ashtray. This woman was just full of surprises.
“Am I allowed to have a cigarette in here?” I asked.
She jerked her head toward a window. “Only if you hang your head out. Don’t like the smell too much. You don’t want some green?”
“He doesn’t smoke weed,” Ronen informed her. “It makes him paranoid.”
“Shame,” grunted Ellen. “What about you, turd?”
“I smoke the green.”
“Yeah…I bet. PTSD can be a bitch, right?”
Ronen stiffened but then relaxed back into the sofa. “Yes.”
“How many battles you fought?”
“I was in combat in the Middle East for a couple of years before they put me in intelligence.”
“I know that, son. I was asking how many battles.”
“I don’t even know. I try to forget.”
“Seven. You were in seven battles, and you made it out of each one. I’m sure the shit you’ve gone through, what you’ve seen, would have made a lesser turd look for a way out.”
Ronen had fought in the Israel Defense Forces. Five years older than myself, Ronen had gone through some shit. Some of it, he had been willing to tell me about. Some shit…not so much. I knew he had nightmares. Spending the last week and some days in the same room had made it hard to miss that.
“When the two of you came here last year to bust out Sarai—”
“Don’t fucking say her name,” warned Ronen.
Ellen narrowed her eyes at him, shrewd and calculating. I fished out my pack of smokes and opened the window. Glancing out over the street, I saw the everyday waffle milling around.
“All right,” conceded Ellen. “Last year, you boys came and busted out a victim. You caught the eyes of the Locals. You actually wounded the almighty hell out of one; we have thugs on the inside of operations. Ulrich still walks with a limp, Ricki. The knife you stuck in his rump damaged nerves. He’s been on desk duty, and he’s pretty bitter about it.”
Blowing out my smoke, I looked back at her. She had a twinkle in her eye that put me at ease.
“So, the two of you got your person out, but you neglected to get three others. Why’d you leave them behind?”
Ronen shook his head. “We just killed a bunch of motherfuckers. We saw her, grabbed her, and got the fuck out. Didn’t think too much about anything or anyone else.”
Ellen nodded. “We saved them—well, their bodies. Their minds are still on the mend. Will be for the rest of their lives. But we have people working with them. Your person could have had the same.”
She handed Ronen a fat joint. Ronen was silent.
“You didn’t know, son,” she said gently. “But we did. We need people like you. You know what happens to them, what
will
happen if they don’t get help. You both are brave, a little reckless, and ready to fight for humanity. You have no compassion for the evil in the world even though you’ve been touched by it. You won’t hesitate to annihilate those who are intent on abusing the innocent. The Locals need people like you two.”
“You said it was a global organization?” I asked.
Ellen nodded. “We’re everywhere, and we’re not nearly enough. Amsterdam is a huge dumping ground for these unfortunate souls. By the time they arrive here…they’re already damaged to the point that they no longer question what happened to them. They’ve accepted it. The sex trade here is mind-boggling. There are those who volunteer to become sex workers, and that’s all well and good. But there are those who have been forced into this, and there’s only so much we can do. The bad guys outweigh us five to one.”
“What do you expect us to do then?”
“Save as many as you can, and kill the fuckers who put them in that situation.”
“Sanctified murder?” asked Ronen.
“Call it what you want. Our intel will give you concrete cases of individuals who need to go down. Rapists and murderers, the thieves of humanity. You’ll become the jury, judge, and executioners. You get the unfortunates to us, and we’ll do our best to rehabilitate them, even send them home if they want.”
“What if they don’t want to go home? What happens then?” I asked.
“Most of them don’t. They’re ashamed, and for many, they want their families to think they died. Then, since it’s all they know anymore, they go back to being sex workers. This time, under legit means and with a sense of having control in their lives. The Locals run several brothels in De Wallen for this express purpose—to provide them with a safe, legal environment to continue their forced career choice.”
“Damn,” whispered Ronen.
My heart felt the same way. Flicking my butt out the window, I looked around the room, my eyes zeroing in on a familiar sight—David, a child version of Xanthe, and a dead wife.
I pointed to the framed picture. “How do you know them?” I demanded.
What the fuck is this woman doing with that photo?
Ellen followed my finger with her eyes, and she smiled. “I’ve heard how protective you’ve become with my nephew-in-law and great niece.”