My heart thunders. All this time I imagined she was on a mission. That my hands-off stance helped her. That she could protect herself if it came to it…
“What does she do when they mistreat her?”
“Um…have you ever seen that bumper sticker ‘What Would Jesus Do?’”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s a nun, dude. She doesn’t give a crap if they shove her around.”
The room swims before my eyes. Tanechka had a temper. She never allowed people to mistreat her.
These men could do anything to her, and she wouldn’t be able to stop them. Maybe they have done things.
I put her in this place sure as anything the day I threw her into the gorge. Predatel, I called her. Traitor. Betrayer.
“And then there’s what her buyer will do,” Nikki continues. “Though my money’s on Charles in Charge doing the nun way before that.”
I stiffen. “Charles in Charge?”
“The psycho that runs this place. He makes her eat with him sometimes, like this sicko date thing. You know that movie where there’s a devil boy and all the animals run away from him? Add twenty years and Axe body spray and you get Charles. Everybody’s all about the nun. The guard who let you in here with the beard like biker Santa Claus? We think he wants to throw up those black skirts too—they demoted him here to the basement. Who knew the hot blonde nun thing was so powerful with guys? Everyone wants a piece of nun ass, and now here you come—”
“Enough.”
I stand and look at my watch. Thirteen minutes. I gave my word that I wouldn’t grab Tanechka unless she was in danger.
“She is in danger.” I say it aloud.
Nikki begins again to speak, calling me Sherlock.
“Quiet—let me think.”
Nikki quiets.
I pinch the sides of my nose. Aleksio and the gang are probably in the neighborhood by now. The plan was that I would leave the way I came, allowing these people to blindfold me and drive me back. Aleksio and the gang were to follow.
This is no longer the plan. It cannot be.
I go and put my ear to the door. “You said the guard with the big white Santa beard is obsessed with the nun?”
Nikki nods.
“What kind of guy is he? Would he do anything impulsive? Stupid?”
“Besides being a guard at a virgin brothel?”
“How obsessed is he? Does everyone think it?”
“Like I said, they moved him down off her floor. Didn’t trust him around her. Seriously, what is it about a blonde nun?”
“She’s up and two rooms to the right?”
Nikki narrows her eyes. “How do you know?”
I pull off my belt.
Her eyes go wide. “What are you doing?”
I peel a pair of plastic shivs from the inside of it. “It’s your lucky day. You’re getting out of here. You know how to defend yourself?”
“Fuck yeah.”
“Tell me. Tell me what you can do. Can you shoot a gun? Be honest.”
“You got a gun?”
“Not yet.”
She gives me a slow smile. “Sure, I can shoot.”
I cut the ropes from her wrists and feet. “Pocket these. We can’t leave them.”
“I don’t have pockets but…” She loops the rope loosely around her neck and ties bits together and stuffs it all under her dress. Good. Obeying without question. This can work. I can save Tanechka and the mission.
“You ever hold up a place?”
She nods.
“Successfully?”
“Yeah,” she says. “I was in the Lady Sixx. You know who that is? It’s a girl gang.”
“You ever shoot anyone?”
She gives me a look—steady and straight and right into my eyes. “I’m a hundred percent. Whatever you need.”
Good enough.
“I’m going to break the nun out and make it look like the Santa guard took her. We’ll make it look like you got lucky and grabbed your chance to escape.”
“Why the nun? The nun’s gonna be dead weight.”
I eye her, turning the shiv over and over, an extension of my hand. “Maybe you’re dead weight.”
“Okay, okay.”
“Santa beard is going to come and knock to warn me in two minutes. Will he come alone?”
“Yeah,” she says. “But there have been times when the men don’t want to go when their two hours are up, and then they come in with three guards. But that’s after.”
“Okay.” I draw a map of the basement on the carpet with my finger. Nikki helps me do the next floor and together we develop a plan. The girl’s good; she’s been paying attention to her environment, making plans of her own. She knows about a large duct. It’s good information that I didn’t have.
We decide she’ll hold the obsessed guard at gunpoint inside this room while I get Tanechka. I stress that her job is to hold him and keep him quiet until I’m back.
“I got it,” she says.
I nod at the shiv in her hand. “You may have to use that. We may have to get bloody before this is over.”
She nods. This girl will lose no sleep over getting bloody in this place.
“The gun is the last resort. Any noise will fuck up our escape.”