River of Glass (30 page)

“You didn’t ask why?”

“I didn’t want to know.”

“But you did know. And you did it, even though Sandra was waiting.”

“It would have been twice that, if I’d taken her back to the . . . the compound.”

“So you dropped her off, and Karlo killed her. And then you realized you had a dead girl’s blood all over your car.”

Billy pressed the pistol to Decker’s forehead and growled, “How about now?”

For the first time, I thought he might actually do it. For the first time, I thought I might actually let him.

Decker squeezed his eyes shut. Held his breath.

Billy’s finger hovered near the trigger.

“Not yet,” I said, grabbing Decker by the collar and hauling him to his feet. “First, he’s going to get us inside.”

40

W
e hustled him outside and dashed through the rain to the Silverado.

“They aren’t going to let you in, in this,” Decker said, pointing to the truck. “Or wearing that. And you think they aren’t going to notice that I’ve pissed myself?”

“Stand out here a minute longer,” Billy said, “and they won’t be able to tell piss from rain.”

“Okay, new plan,” I said to Decker. “We’re taking your Mercedes.”

We stopped at Burlington clothing store, and I left Billy guarding Decker while I went inside for a suit, two expensive raincoats, both black, and a new pair of pants for our hostage. “Don’t kill him while I’m gone,” I said, which under other circumstances, would have been a joke.

I came back out in my new duds and tossed Decker the bag with his pants in it. Looked at Billy. “Your turn.”

He came back in a gray suit and oversized raincoat, tugging at his tie. “Now I remember why I don’t wear these.”

Billy slid into the back seat behind Decker and said, “I know you’re thinking in your little perv brain that, when we get there, you’re going to give your friends some secret signal, and they’ll take us out and save your sorry ass. That’s a dangerous way to think.”

“I’m not thinking that. Seriously.”

“I’m glad to hear that, because at the first sign that your piece of shit buddies know something’s up, I promise you I’ll put a bullet in your head.”

“That’s not fair. I—”

“I don’t care if it’s fair. You want to talk about fair, we can start with all those women you’ve been helping rape for years.”

“I get it, I get it. I swear to God, I’m not going to double-cross you guys.”

“Maybe you better leave God out of it,” Billy said. “I got a feeling He’s not very happy with you right now.”

T
HE SMARTEST
thing to do would be to wait for the police to finish with the Executioner situation. The second smartest thing to do would be to wait until dark. But either choice meant a delay of hours, and Khanh might not have hours to spare. I tried not to think of the hours that had already ticked away while we tracked down the source and enlisted Decker’s reluctant assistance.

Did Sun really think I would walk away? It strained credulity, but why else would he give Ashleigh back? Buying time, maybe, while he worked out whether to try and preserve his little empire or cut his losses and run? Or maybe just buying time to run.

I texted Malone and Frank the address of the compound where the women were being held. When I put the phone back in my pocket, Decker said, “They’ll kill you, you know.”

“You can dance on my grave later. For now, I want to know everything about that compound. Cameras, security, entrances, exits, how many guards and where they’ll be. Everything.”

As he laid it out, it became clear that the bulk of Sun’s security was aimed more toward preventing escape from within and discovery from without than toward defending against an assault. Security cameras and a chain-link fence around the perimeter of the property kept out hunters and curious neighbors, while the smaller inner compound was hidden at the heart of a hundred and twenty wooded acres fifteen minutes from downtown.

Decker and his vetting system were their protection against infiltration. He brought them in slowly, monitoring their computers, reeling them in one small illegal digital transaction at a time. By the time a member was enrolled, he was culpable enough to be trusted. First-time entry was always through Decker. After that, each customer was given a photo membership card, which doubled as a key card for the outer gate.

The prisoners were contained by fear, despair, more security cameras, and the twenty-foot glass moat that lined the walls. Customers—“our members,” Decker called them—would be at a minimum on a weekday, and the on-site staff was small. For each of the three eight-hour shifts, there was a guard for the inner gate, a “concierge,” a chef, one guard manning the security cameras, and fourteen more guards whose sole purposes were to make the customers feel protected and reinforce the prisoners’ belief in the ultimate power of their captors.

Add Sun to the mix, and that made nineteen.

If we were lucky, Sun’s men were amateurs who would throw down their guns and surrender at the first sign of a fight. But you couldn’t depend on being lucky.

Since the escape, an additional fail-safe had been added. The guards outside and the guards manning the security monitors checked in with each other via two-way radio on the half-hour, which would give us a thirty-minute window after neutralizing the guards on the monitors.

It would have to be enough.

We stopped at the home improvement store, and I ran inside for two twenty-by-twenty heavy-duty industrial tarps, twenty-five microfiber washcloths, a pack of fourteen-inch industrial zip ties, rope, two rolls of duct tape, nineteen five-inch smoke alarms with lithium batteries, and a two-story fire escape ladder with antislip rungs.

I dumped them in the back seat, shook off the rain, and said to Billy, “We’re agreed on this, right? We’re here to get the women out. The police can worry about the rest.”

“That’s the plan, but you know what they say about plans.”

“Man plans, and God laughs.”

“I meant the one about the mice, but that’s a good one too.”

41

W
hile Billy covered Decker, I squinted through the windshield and crept along Briley to the Brick Church exit. Turned and turned again. Missed a street sign obscured by the rain and did a U-turn in the parking lot of a boarded-over filling station. A few more turns, and Billy hauled Decker out to unlock a chained security gate flanked by
No Trespassing
signs. Billy shoved Decker back into the front seat, and I pulled through the gate onto a gravel road called Timber Creek. Alongside it ran the real Timber Creek, dark and swollen, churning with whitecaps that threatened to overflow its banks. We came to a dip in the road, and I eased the Mercedes through two inches of swirling, muddy water.

Decker had said he could sell wool to a sheep, and it seemed to be true, because he sold the gate guard on Billy and me. Maybe it was fear of Billy that inspired him. Maybe it was just that a sale was a sale to him, no matter what it was. His success with the guard seemed to fortify him, and he sat up a little straighter.

The guard, a friendly looking guy in his midforties winked and waved us through. “Have a good time, boys.”

We passed between a double row of small bamboo houses with thatched roofs, three on each side. Billy smacked the back of Decker’s head and said, “What are those? You didn’t mention those.”

“Those don’t matter. There’re no guards there, they’re just theme huts. That one’s the geisha fantasy. That one’s the Japanese schoolgirl or anime fantasy. That one’s bondage and discipline. They each have a wet bar and big-screen TV with on-demand, in-house video, but other than that, the decor is designed to support the fantasy. Big bucks.”

I said, “Do the women live in there?”

“No, a member gets a fantasy package and picks the actress he wants from the catalog.”

Billy growled. “That’s what we’re calling them now? Actresses?”

We parked in front of the main house. Billy tossed me the home improvement bag, and we went inside. Impressive. Flagstone floors, high ceilings, chandeliers, a bronze and copper wall fountain.

Decker said, “There are rooms upstairs for members, and a community area. A wine room, a cigar room. Indoor and outdoor pools. The . . . actresses . . . live out back. Before they’re allowed to service members, they’re all trained in massage.”

Billy’s jaw clenched. “You’re not selling us a membership, Decker. Best you remember that.”

T
HE SECURITY
monitors were in a back room on the ground floor. Decker pushed the door open and flashed a grin at the guy behind the monitors. It wasn’t a convincing grin, for my money, but by the time the guard had time to process it, Billy had stuffed a washcloth in his mouth, and I’d bound his hands and feet with zip ties.

One down.

I ripped open his shirt and, blocking his view with my body, attached a smoke alarm to his hairless chest with two strips of duct tape. Billy said to him, “You know what this is?”

He shook his head, mumbled something around the gag.

“This here’s an explosive device. There’s a motion sensor attached. You try to get loose, or one of your buddies tries to get you loose . . . boom.”

The guard’s eyes went wide. He shook his head.

“You might not believe me,” Billy said. His eyes looked feral, like a tiger’s. “Maybe this is some elaborate joke. But you have to ask yourself, like Dirty Harry used to say, ‘
Do you feel lucky today
?’ ”

The guard shook his head.

“Where are the others?” I asked Decker.

“I don’t know.” At Billy’s scowl, he hurried to add, “Honest to God! The concierge is probably in his office. The chef’s in the kitchen. The other guards could be anywhere.”

“Where are the women?”

“There are two big sheds out back. Sturdy. Metal. Like Quonset huts.” He stepped over to the monitors and pointed. “The more experienced ones, the ones we can trust, stay in the larger one. They have a lot more perks there. Good food, nice clothes, a real bathroom. The new ones stay in the smaller hut.”

“How new is new?”

“Sometimes a month, sometimes a few months. Depends how fast they learn.”

Billy reached behind the monitors, ripping out wires. With the butt of his gun, he smashed the glass of each monitor. Blinding them.

Decker’s presence was as good as a movie pass. Within eight minutes, the chef and the concierge were gagged and zip-tied in the security control room, each with a simulated explosive device attached to his chest. We locked them in and, three minutes later, we were heading out the back door, back into the rain, home-improvement bags in hand.

The two sheds were set back from the house, well hidden by the landscaping. Apparently, men who bought and paid for sex slaves didn’t care to be reminded that their paramours were frightened women brutalized into submission.

Beside the smaller shed was an open pit, and just beyond that, a mound of freshly turned earth that could only be a grave. I walked to the pit and looked in. It was deep, maybe twelve feet. In one corner, a small pile of human bones jutted from the muddy water. I looked at Decker, and something in my face made him recoil.

The clock in my head ticked on. No time to think about the pit or what might have happened there. I found my voice and said to Billy, “Around back. I want the shed between us and the main house.”

While Billy kept a watch on Decker, I laid one tarp across the glass and tossed one end of the other over the fence. Careful to place my hands only on the tarp, I climbed over and used the rope to secure one end of the ladder to a nearby tree. Then I climbed back with the other end.

I said, “There’s nothing on this side to secure it to, so I’ll hold this end and help the women climb over. You’ll be on the other side of the wall to help them down and lead them out of here.”

“What about Decker?” Billy asked.

“On top of the wall. He helps them over, and we can both keep an eye on him.”

“We should have brought a bus,” Billy said, reaching for his cell phone. “I’m gonna call Tommy and have him bring us one.”

“Tell him to park out of sight of the cameras. We passed a Jiffy Mart not far from here. Tell him to park it there.”