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Nick and Tam gave chase. A door slammed. They peered around the corner. They were blocked by heavy duty doors, with a small window of wire reinforced glass. They sprinted for it. Locked and barred.
Beyond the window there appeared to be nothing other than still more of that endless fucking corridor. Nick smashed the glass with the butt of his gun. There were kids wailing, far away down the corridor.
Nick slammed the door with his fists. “We’ve got to get in there! He’ll kill them so that they can’t testify!”
Tam yanked his elbow. “Get back around the corner.” She lifted the gem studded grenade necklace off her neck. “It will blow the door, but that’s all. The kids are far enough away to risk using this.”
She pulled out the jeweled pin as they turned the corner, and bowled it on the fly with graceful skill. It slid to the end of the corridor and came to rest against the door.
Tam sank down next to him. “Five…four…three…ears,Nikolai!” He stuck his fingers in his ears as she mouthedone.
Just in time. The sound slammed every molecule of his body against every other molecule. They looked around the corner. There was a jagged, twisted hole where the door had been. Cinder-block rubble, a cloud of choking dust. They sprinted through it. The yellow-haired man lay on his face about thirty feet from the door, screaming hoarsely in Ukrainian.
“My ears! My ears!” he howled.
Blood ran out of both his ears and down his neck. He pawed at the air like a maddened animal and stared at his bloody hands, trying to grab them as they passed. “My ears!”
“Where are the children?” Nick yelled in Ukrainian.
The guy just reared up onto his knees, howling and gabbling and sobbing. Tam made a disgusted sound, plucked out one of her earrings, gave it a brisk twist. She stabbed it into his shoulder.
He groaned, toppled slowly to the ground and lay still.
They ran on, slowing to listen as a new sound became audible. A baby, wailing behind a door. More than one. The closer they came, the stronger it got.
The door with the screaming behind it was locked and bolted. They threw the bolt, but the lock was a good one that would take an expert hours to pick. He couldn’t shoot it out with kids behind it.
Movement, flashing in the corner of his eye. He and Tam turned, and took off after a big, bulky blonde woman who was sneaking out a door and sprinting towards the hole they’d blasted.
Panic made the woman fast, but she was heavy and stubby-legged, no match for the infuriated Nick and a thoroughbred racehorse like Tam, even when the chick was sporting four-inch silver heels.
They caught up with her at the stairwell. Nick took her down with a flying tackle. She grunted as he landed on top of her. She was soaked with sweat. “Not so fast, lady. I want the key to that door,” he told her.
“No understand,” she said. “No speak English.”
A garnet-handled knife suddenly appeared in Tam’s fist. She grabbed the woman’s coarse blond hair and wrenched her head back, and screamed in Ukrainian. “The key, bitch!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about—”
The tip dug in. Blood welled up, trickled down the woman’s neck. “I suggest you figure it out, before I cut off your ear,” Tam hissed.
“No! No cut. I give you keys,” the woman gasped out in English. She struggled under Nick’s weight to get her hand into one of her pockets, dragged out a small bunch of keys. “Here. Keys. Take. Take.”
Nick and Tam glanced at each other.
“We’ll let you open the door, you donkey-faced hell-witch,” Tam said. “If you gave us the wrong key, we can renegotiate, no? Maybe I’ll go for an eye.”
They hauled the woman to her feet and frog-marched her back to the door with the screaming kids behind it.
“I did nothing wrong,” the woman protested, sounding put upon. “I take care of children, I feed, I wipe bottoms, I no hurt!”
“Shut up,” Nick snarled.
They shoved her up to the door. As soon as the locks gave way and the door handle turned, Tam pulled out her hair clip, twisted a small nozzle, and squirted the woman’s face.
She fell sideways against the wall, eyes rolled to the whites, and slid down. Good. Two down, ready for custody.
Nick blew out a sharp breath, and pushed the door open.
