The Devil's Beauty (Crime Lord Interconnected Standalone Book 2) (25 page)

The girl was never brought back. The men didn’t return either. Not for a while. Just long enough to allow the false sense of safety to set in. When they came, two girls went with them.

Then, five girls.

Each time, none were returned.

Their numbers were dwindling. Ava wondered if that was deliberate. Drug peddles never touched their own product to keep their sales numbers high. Maybe human traffickers didn’t follow that rule. They certainly weren’t trying to keep as many girls as possible, which made Ava wonder what they were going to do with them if not sell them. In no way was the thought comforting.

Someone coughed. The deep, guttural sound turned Ava’s head. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard it. A few of the girls had been coughing and tossing in their sleep. It wouldn’t have been anything unusual, except each time, it was somehow deeper, thicker, almost wet in the lungs. She prayed to God no one was getting sick. There was no telling how much longer they would be trapped together and she didn’t want to die from something as common as a cold. It didn’t help that there were no windows and the air circulating was filthy and—now—contaminated. There was a girl not far from where she and Ilsa sat who Ava wasn’t even sure was still alive. She hadn’t moved in days, not even to cough or shift in her sleep. If she gave off a smell, it was masked by the buckets that hadn’t been cleaned in longer than was sanitary and the fifty unwashed girls. But she hadn’t started decomposing, so Ava had hope.

“Should we check on her?” Ava wondered out loud.

Ilsa glanced at the girl, then shrugged. “Won’t make a difference if she’s dead.”

Willing to risk it, Ava shifted over and lightly touched the girl’s shoulder. Gingerly, she reached past the collar of her t-shirt and lightly pressed two fingers to the girl’s cold, clammy neck. She held her breath and waited.

The patter of her own heart masked the beat she was searching for. The vibrations around them did the rest. It took some fondling and readjusting until she found what she was searching for.

“She’s okay,” she told Ilsa, returning to her spot.

“For now,” Ilsa mumbled.

Ignoring that, Ava turned to the girl staring vacantly at her tattered sneakers. “Tell me about where you’re from.”

Ilsa barely glanced up. “Frankfurt.” She took a deep breath and went on a bit dryly. “It’s a city in Germany.”

Ava already knew that. It was the same thing she’d been told the first time she’d tried to draw the girl into conversation.

“I think it’s awesome that you don’t have an accent.”

Ilsa tugged on her filthy laces. “My parents moved to America when I was five for my dad’s work. We moved back last year when they promoted him.”

“Do you like Germany?”

Ilsa shrugged. “German is hard.”

Ava chuckled. “My stepdad tried to get me to learn French when I was younger. I learned five words in six months. I was very impressed with myself.”

Ilsa’s head lifted. “Which words?”

Ava squinted off into the distance. “I have no idea.”

Ilsa snorted what could have passed for a laugh. “My dad says I’m young and I’ll learn, but…”

“You will. I didn’t really learn French until I moved to Paris and heard other people talking.”

Green eyes lifted. They shone in the dimness.

“What if we never leave this boat?”

Ava reached over and took her small, cold hand. “It’s going to be okay.”

Ilsa sniffled. “How do you know?”

“Because Dimitri will never stop looking for me.”

The girl swiped at a stray tear. “I just want to go home.”

Ava squeezed her fingers. “I know. Me too.”

They returned that night. They pushed through the door in a cluster of five and stood surveying the room. The one in the middle, the tall, lanky one, stepped forward. His hands clasped in front of him as he addressed the room.

“I’m happy to announce that we will be docking in a few hours. It’s been a long journey, but we made it.”

He made no mention of where they made it to or how many days it had been or what would happen to them once they docked. He merely smiled as he surveyed the terrified faces peering back at him. He rubbed his hands together once before he spoke again.

“To celebrate, we will be selecting a small group of you to join us in our quarters for some light entertainment. The rest, we will see later this evening.” He rubbed his palms together again. “Gentlemen?”

As before, they fanned out. Ava shifted her position slightly, not too fast, until she’d successfully blocked Ilsa from view. The girl had balled herself into the corner, head buried against her raised knees. Her breathing was so loud, Ava heard it. Fear of being heard kept her from telling her to stop.

A girl cried out on the other side of the ship. A tiny Asian with enormous eyes. She was hauled up by her elbows and forcibly dragged to the door. Her screams echoed for what felt like hours before something banged and immediate silence dropped.

Ava tried not to think about what was happening to her, tried not to imagine that being all their fates. She was still having a hard time believing it was all actually happening, yet, when the second girl cried out, there was no denying it. But they just had to hold out this one last time. Then they’d be on land and the possibility of escape would increase. They just needed to…

One of the men spotted Ilsa. Ava didn’t know what had alerted him to her, didn’t know what could have possibly caught his eye, but his fat, bald head turned as though Ilsa had jumped up and started singing at the top of her lungs. His stubbled face broke into a grin, delighted by the girl’s terror. He pivoted on his heel, away from the others and started forward.

Ava couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t even move. All she could do was sit there and watch as he grew closer, her mind stuck on an endless loop of
how?
How had he seen her? How could he possibly know she was there? How could he be doing this? How could he not have a shred of decency? So many questions and still, she was frozen. Frozen until Ilsa’s sharp cry broke her.

Ava jolted just as Ilsa was being dragged to her feet. The girl’s struggles meant nothing to a man three times her size in height and weight. Her hair came undone of its braid, something it hadn’t done since the beginning and something about that spurred Ava into action.

She grabbed Ilsa and smacked at his hand on her.

The crack momentarily silenced everything. Heads turned in their direction, all in surprise and wonder. Ava felt a jolt in the pit of her stomach, that sensation that she’d royally just fucked up. But she met the man’s stunned expression with venom.

“Let go of her!”

The man seemed as stunned as everyone else by her bravado. He stared at her with the look of someone, well, slapped. But he came out of his shock with a bellow. He spat something at Ava in Spanish that definitely didn’t sound friendly. He wrenched Ilsa from her and started away.

“No!”

With a scream that tore from the very depths of her soul, Ava sprung to her feet and tore after them. Adrenaline pumped in wild waves through her, shadowing her exhaustion, hunger, and fears. She leaped into the air and launched herself to the man’s back. Her arms circled his fat, sweaty neck. Her bunched fists rammed into his Adam’s apple, just like Dimitri had taught her, fully prepared to kill him. She pressed until he was choking and flailing and had released Ilsa from his grip. She screamed into his ear, a high, deafening wail that was sure to have been rattling his eyeballs.

He bellowed. His body twisted violently from side to side, a desperate attempt to shake her off, but Ava wasn’t letting go.

Someone grabbed her from behind. Angry hands fisted into her clothes and she was dragged off. She hit the steel floor with a crash that sang up her entire side. The steel toed boot connected with her ribs, flooding her with excruciating pain. Another one caught the back of her thigh. She might have cried out. But the third blow was right in her jaw. Her teeth cracked together. Her head snapped back. Everything flickered. All the sounds muted, except Ilsa’s scream.

Then there was nothing.

“We’ll backpack across Europe first.”

Reclined across her rumpled sheets, bare chested and beautifully tussled, Dimitri took the post card she handed him and peered at the two backpackers trudging up the side of some mountain.

“Why?”

“Why not?”

She took down a magazine clipping of Paris’s
Pont Des Arts
Bridge
and the thousands of locks glittering in the sunlight.

“Because we’re not nature people,” he reminded her.

Clipping in hand, she went back to him. She climbed into his lap, straddling his sprawled legs and sat comfortably on his thighs.

“I want to do this,” she whispered, turning the photo around for him to see. “More than anything else. This is what I want.”

He took the picture from her and looked it over.

“I want to put our names on a lock and hang it on each of the lock bridges around the world.”

“You’re not allowed to anymore,” he reminded her, still eyeing the photo.

“I know.” She took it back from him and peered at it longingly. “But I have this whole scenario in my head where we dress up in black and sneak onto all the bridges ninja style, snap on the locks and run away before we’re caught.”

He arched an eyebrow, his eyes dancing in the gold light of her bedside lamp. “You want to commit a dozen felons in several foreign countries?”

“But think about it,” she pleaded. “Our locks will be there forever … or until the whole lot tumbles into the water, but…” She sighed heavily. “We’ll have done it, you and me. A piece of us, of what we have will be out there in the world. Besides,” she grinned at him. “It’s only a felony if we’re caught.”

He took the photo from her and studied it a bit longer. She watched him watch it and nibbled her lip anxiously, waiting for an answer.

“This is what you want?”

Ava nodded enthusiastically. “More than anything.”

He pursed his lips. “All right,” he said finally. “Then we’ll do it.”

Euphoric, she squealed and punched the air above her head.

“Shh!” Laughing, he hooked her middle with his arms and tackled her down onto the mattress, stifling her high pitched sounds with his mouth. “You’re going to get John Paul in here,” he said once he’d properly silenced her.

Still giggling and squealing, but quieter, Ava hugged him, practically choking him. “I don’t care. I am so happy!”

He gathered her in close and kissed her until she stopped her flailing. Once he was certain she wasn’t going to start screaming again, he raised his head. He smoothed hairs off her cheeks and peered into her eyes.

“I like seeing you happy,” he remarked softly.

She continued to grin wide enough to make her face hurt. “But did you mean it? You’ll really go with me?”

He gave her a droll glower. “Well, I clearly can’t let you go alone. What if you get caught and thrown into some Turkish prison?”

Ava laughed. “Exactly! Yes, you need to come with me and we’ll travel the whole of Europe together and see everything and make love everywhere possible and—”

“Christ, woman, how many laws do you plan on breaking during this expedition?”