“Well,” the second gun says, “our coyote thinks the two of you are late.”
“You been up to the house?” Roof asks them.
“We switched off with Harv and Mo and came down here about an hour ago,” he says. “The copter’s already landed, you know, behind.”
Roof says, “Girls ready to go?”
The first gun says, “In a manner of speaking.”
SEVENTY-SEVEN
ROOF STILL CAN’T even keep the girls’ names straight, at least not all of them.
The only thing he knows for sure is that the last four taken have all been blondes. Almost like the big Russian had ordered them up on his own dating app. As usual, they’re being shipped out in a group of four.
The one that’s been waiting longest to make the trip is Holly Ridenour. Leamon’s daughter.
Her name, Roof knows.
Pretty little thing. And a firecracker for a girl who just turned sixteen. If her daddy knew the things she could do, even after you got her settled down, it might kill him worse than his little girl being gone.
He and Lynyrd have kept souvenirs from all of them, partly for insurance. Mostly jewelry they were wearing when they brought them to the cabin. Lockets and necklaces and rings and charms. Like that. It had been a charm bracelet of Holly Ridenour that Roof had kept.
They keep them under control with the drugs. What was the word Nicky Petrov, the Russian’s point man, had used to describe it?Compliant. The drugs kept them compliant until it was time to go. And kept them just hooked enough, especially after the first couple of girls, once they got them up here to the farmhouse, tried to make a run for it when the guards got careless.
Not too high, not too low.
Roof thought it took too much of the fun out of fooling around.
But a job was a job, the best he and Lynyrd had ever had when the pay wasn’t coming from their father.
They can see how impatient Petrov is to get going once they’re past Harv and Mo and inside the cabin. Petrov is dark-complected, looking more like a greaser than a Russian if you asked Roof, wearing his usual dark suit and those pointy shoes he favored and smelling like a whorehouse.
Which, in a way, this is.
“You’re late,” Nicky Petrov says.
“By a few minutes, give me a break.”
“I need to get out of here and get to the plane. He changed his mind and wants them there tonight,” Petrov says.
“Where’s our money?” Roof says, getting to it.
Petrov always has one guard inside the farmhouse, in addition to his outside guys. The one working tonight is a guy named Ahmad, a Black guy who Roof knows by now used to play some football for Tulane when he had a different name, before he did that Muslim deal so many of them do these days. Roof wonders sometimes how Allah feels about him being a part of a deal like this, buying and selling young girls this way, almost like the rich guy in New Orleans gets them on one-day delivery with Prime.
Petrov nods at a briefcase sitting on a table in a corner of the front room, near the door to the bedroom.
Roof walks over, opens it, sees the cash, closes it back up.
Petrov says, “Aren’t you going to count it?”
“No need.”
“Then our business is concluded.”
“Just remember,” Roof says, grinning at him, “we have a strict no-return policy.”
Petrov looks at him with those mean, dark eyes of his but doesn’t say anything, just shakes his head, almost bored-like.
