Ivan slammed her to the stovetop, pushed her down until the burner was just under her face. Elena hadn"t turned it off; she"d only moved the pan to save the pancakes. The medium heat wafted against her cheek; it made her eyes sting and water.
"Please!" she begged. "I was picked up when I went to the store!" The lies came hard and fast, pouring out of her. "I didn"t know why, but they only asked questions and I lied like we should." Please, oh, G.o.d, please . . .
"What did you tell them?" Ivan"s hand flattened on her head, forced her cheek closer to the burner. Closer still. The coiled metal plate blurred under her eye. Her back strained, every muscle in her shoulders and arms and neck screaming as she fought his powerful grip.
"Nothing," Katya sobbed. She didn"t have to fake her tears. One plopped on the burner, sizzled, smoked. "I told them I was staying with my sister and I did not work. Please, oh, please, believe me, I swear I told them nothing!"
His grip eased. Katya straightened so fast, the world around her flipped, but there was no time for relief. Ivan grabbed one hand, forced it behind her and pulled up hard enough that her shoulder popped. She screamed, gasping with it as he slammed her back against the stove.
"You are lying."
"No," she sobbed, but he wasn"t listening. He didn"t care. The realization sunk in on a tide of icy clarity.
Someone had sold her out. The dirty cop?
Who else?
"This is only a taste of what happens to disobedient girls," Ivan said over her. His hips pushed into her backside, pinning her to the stove"s edge. He"d shifted her away from the burner, but only just barely. She flinched as her elbow came down hard beside it, her skin warming alarmingly fast.
Flinched again as the obvious ridge of his erection pushed against her, hard enough to bruise.
Shame, terror, anger, and pain all gathered in her head. Her chest, her soul.
But it wasn"t the first time she"d ever been forced like this. He wasn"t the first man who"d ever hit her, or used her, or wanted her to lie to him. The price was high, but the payoff-freedom for her, for the other women-would be worth it.
It had to be. They didn"t have anyone else to help them.
She had to persevere.
Katya bit her lip as Ivan reached between them. As she heard the clank and hiss of a belt and zipper. Bit it harder as his fingers wrenched at the b.u.t.tons of her jeans.
She"d endure this one more time. When he was spent and satisfied, she"d bring him a cup of drugged coffee.
Beneath her tear-filled eyes, four dislodged pancakes cooled on a flat pan.
He was nearly to the Renton brothel when the road shifted out from under him.
Nigel"s SUV skidded across the wet asphalt, the ground flipped and rolled like a serpent, and it was all he could do to grab the wheel with both hands and fight to keep the car from sliding sideways.
Horns blasted. Metal crunched as drivers careened into poles, parked cars and each other. A boxy four-door slammed into the back of his vehicle. He swore desperately as he shot into a tailspin that carried his car across two lanes, narrowly missing a taxi and slamming into the side of a parked station wagon. Its windshield shattered.
Vibrations rippled through Nigel"s feet, the seats. Cautiously unpeeling his sweat-damp fingers from the steering wheel, he very carefully engaged his emergency brake.
That was close.
Brick clattered to the ground outside his window.
His heart began to slow from its frenetic pace, letting him suck in a deep, steadying breath. Too d.a.m.ned close. Thank G.o.d there"d been time to- The ground rumbled. The street reared in front of him.
It shuddered, rolling side to side, and Nigel slammed into the driver"s side door as the see-saw motion pitched him backwards. He cursed, grabbed the wheel for balance and froze.
A line of cars suddenly vanished.
His car shook violently. He heard screaming, watched a surge of people running toward him; away from the disappearing road.
No. Not disappearing.
Sinking.
"Jesus Christ!" Nigel jerked the locks up, manually forcing the mechanism free, and half-spilled out of the trembling car. The ground pitched wildly. The door slammed closed with the momentum, mere millimeters from his fingers.
Cars bounced and slid like toys on a rickety table.
"Run!" he shouted. He grabbed a teenager shocked into stillness, shoved him forward as he ran back the way he"d driven. The kid stumbled, his earphones falling out of his hoodie, and Nigel grabbed him bodily around the waist, swinging him half over his shoulder as he sprinted away from the trench rapidly gaining ground.
The buildings swayed dangerously, shrapnel clattered to the ground; brick, cement, gla.s.s, and wood. Shrieks filled the air, drowned out by the ear-shattering crack of crumbling rock as the street all but vanished behind him.
The screams filled his head. His bones.
Dust billowed into the air, a cloud of choking debris. And then, as suddenly as it started, everything fell still.
The tremors stopped, the ground settled.
Remnants of old mortar and loose brick clattered to the street. There was a moment of raw, terrible silence, and then voices rose again. Shocked, this time. Helpless and frightened.
Nigel put the teenager down. "You okay?"
The kid stared at him, wide-eyed. No, not at him, Nigel realized. Behind him.
He turned.
However long the street used to be, it"d just gained another twenty-three yards.
"Holy f.u.c.k," the kid whispered hoa.r.s.ely.
The skeleton of buildings caught along the ledge of the newly formed chasm hung listlessly over the side, as if sawed in half. Sparks flickered from torn wires and loose beams.
Cars hung half over the edge. People stared, sobbed. Screamed for help.
And on the other side of that hole in the earth, a dust cloud roiled. It came from the same neighborhood as Katya"s prison.
"Son of a b.i.t.c.h!"
Nigel took off, already retrieving his cell from the clip on his belt. "Call Maylene Granger," he said into the voice command. It dialed, and as he waited for it to connect, he sprinted across the street. Into an alley and around the block.
The line rang. And rang.
"Come on, come on," he muttered through clenched teeth. He dodged the scrambling crowds, bypa.s.sed huddled people staring at the wreckage of their shaken buildings. Debris cluttered the roads and sidewalks, but there was nothing like the trench that had just swallowed his car.
"d.a.m.n it!" He punched a b.u.t.ton. "Call work."
The phone hit a busy signal.
"f.u.c.k!" Nigel clipped his cell to his belt, lowered his head and concentrated on running like h.e.l.l to the squat neighborhood with its cloud of dust.
The block wasn"t built for earthquakes. Buildings lay in heaps as he barreled down the sidewalk. People gathered, ambulances were already on the scene-a small consolation. He saw b.l.o.o.d.y faces and rubble where homes used to be.
He saw cars crunched together, soldered by the impact, and as he rounded the corner, he saw a knot of women all holding each other outside the skeleton of a broken-down house. Familiar women.
Familiar f.u.c.king house.
But no Katya.
He staggered to a halt beside them, grabbing a redhead by the arm. "Where"s Katya?" he demanded.
She pointed a shaking finger at the house. Dust smudged her cheek, coated the others" hair and clothing. "Inside," she said in thick English. "She is inside. We called and called!"
"Katya," sobbed a girl that couldn"t have been much older than his own daughter.
Nigel gritted his teeth. "Cross the street," he ordered. "All of you, get away from the house. I"ll be right out. Don"t-" A gunshot splintered the air.
It echoed like a sonic boom in the stillness that followed.
"Katya!" shrieked the little girl.
He sprinted toward the house. He didn"t bother with the front door-the whole living room had torn open, exposed to the street behind him and covered in plaster and insulation so old it disintegrated.
He grabbed the gun from his shoulder holster, held it as he cleared the living room. The hall. His feet crunched on the remnants of walls and ceiling. "Katya?" he called. "Ekaterina!"
The destruction only made the house look like a dollhouse gone to h.e.l.l.
Flinching as the light fixture cracked and sparked, he hurried down the hall and burst through the kitchen archway. "Katya-"
He careened to a stop, one arm holding his Beretta steady even as he found himself staring down the barrel of a very large Desert Eagle.
Like David versus Goliath, but with guns. Jesus Christ.
He straightened slowly, met glazed blue eyes over the unsteady weapon. "Put the gun down, Katya."
She was covered in plaster dust, her hair tangled and T-shirt filthy. Blood smeared across her cheek. Oozed sluggishly from a cut at her lower lip. The dust turned it nearly black.
The bruise swelling her right cheek kicked concern into a vicious need for violence. Who the f.u.c.k had put his hands on her?
In a brothel? Everybody.
He lowered his gun. "Katya, it"s Nigel. Remember me?"
Her blue eyes flickered.
"I"m police, remember? It"s okay. You"re safe. I"m not going to hurt you."
The gun in her straining arms lowered slowly. "You . . . Truth."
What? He frowned. A glance around the ruined, cluttered kitchen was enough to tell him what happened. The man who had brokered the deal with Nigel the day before lay on the floor, his chest crimson. A griddle pan lay upended beside him, and what looked like half a torn pancake flopped in the scuffed rubble strewn across the floor.
Katya"s jeans were unfastened, askew enough to reveal a twisted lavender swatch of cheap-looking lace and a glimpse of golden hair.
That f.u.c.king b.a.s.t.a.r.d.
Blood splattered her T-shirt. Her blood, Ivan"s; Nigel didn"t know. He hoped to h.e.l.l it was Ivan"s. The son of a b.i.t.c.h.
It took monumental effort to force his voice to calm. "It"s okay. It"s over." He holstered his gun, splayed his hands. "Come on, we need to get you out of here."
She blinked slowly. As if focusing on him through a heavy fog. "Out . . . The girls? Are they safe? Did they get out?"
Her accent wasn"t nearly so p.r.o.nounced today. Despite the violence struggling for dominance in his skin, despite the corpse he desperately wanted to plug full of holes for what Ivan had done-tried to do?-to her, he couldn"t help a faint, wry smile.
The little liar.
"They"re safe," he told her, ignoring her miraculously improved English. "Just give me the gun."
Much to his surprise, she didn"t argue. Reversing her grip on the Desert Eagle, much too large for her small hands, she offered the weapon.
Her eyes, still filled with shock, settled on the corpse at her feet. "He . . . I-" Her voice broke.
"It"s okay," he said softly, removing the gun from her outstretched hands. "He won"t hurt you again. Fix your jeans, Katya."
She looked down at herself. At her bloodstained T-shirt and the obvious evidence of what she"d just gone through, and her cheeks reddened. Quickly, with shaking fingers, she fastened the b.u.t.tons. "Nothing happened," she said quickly. "I hit him."
"Good girl." He took her hand before she could withdraw. "The others are waiting for you. Let"s go-"
The black and white tile cracked. Katya staggered as the kitchen floor shifted beneath her, and Nigel swore. Hauling on her hand, he ordered, "Get out!"
She moved fast, for a civilian. As if shaking off whatever fog of shock clung to her, she sprinted for the door. He gripped her hand tight, helped her when she stumbled, handed her through the fallen wall and started across the street.
She stopped. "We have a van." She let go of his hand, darted down the sidewalk; her arms splayed for balance as the cement bucked beneath her.
"Katya, d.a.m.n it!" Nigel whistled loud enough that the sound pierced through the rumble. The women saw him, screamed too much for him to decipher.
He waved them over. "Get to the van," he roared. "Go."
Thank G.o.d, they knew where it was. Katya beat them all to it, warmed the engine. As Nigel followed them, the shuddering tremors slammed into overdrive, pitching the ground this way and that. The house collapsed behind him, joined by the structures on each side.
The redhead opened the back doors, helped the women inside. "In, in," she yelled, gesturing at Nigel.
He rounded the front of the battered white vehicle, wrenched open the front door and half-pushed, half-lifted Katya across the front seat. "I drive," he said tersely, and threw the vehicle into gear.
The d.a.m.ned dust cloud exploded into a field of debris as he slammed the gas pedal to the floor.