Bow Down(33)

Three girls were missing.

I frowned at Kasia. “What happened?”

“We should talk downstairs. Come on.”

We loaded onto the elevator, and I knew something awful had happened. I began to check the girl closest to me for any serious injuries. She was okay, so I moved onto the next girl.

The doors slid open. Kasia helped her fighter down the hall while the other girls followed. They didn’t seem too bad, though the girl Kasia had was leaving a trail of blood down the hallway.

“What happened?”

Girls were looking out of their rooms. Natasha came over to me.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “Come on. You can help.”

We moved quickly down into the room we used as the emergency room. Natasha and our doctor, Tanya, helped load the fighter onto a gurney, and the girls got to work.

Kasia met me outside of the room.

“It was an ambush,” she said.

“What?”

“They had far more men than we knew about. They were hiding downstairs just fucking waiting for us.”

“How did this happen?”

“It’s my fault. I didn’t know about those guys. My source didn’t tell me.”

“She was a plant.”

Kasia nodded slowly. “I think so.”

“Shit.”

“We’ll pick her up later.”

“Don’t bother. She’s not important.”

“We lost three girls.”

I sighed, leaning up against the wall. “Fuck.”

“I don’t think Leah in there is going to make it.”

“Did they take anyone?”

“Not alive.”

“Good.”

“But they’re getting better at countering us, Lou. We need more girls.”

“I know we do. I’m working on it.”

Kasia sighed and leaned up against the wall beside me. I saw her cringe.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine. Took some shrapnel. It’s nothing.”

I shook my head. Three girls dead, another seriously wounded. These were our best fighters, our most elite soldiers. If Kasia had taken more girls, I was willing to bet far more lives would have been lost.

Worse, the mob could have taken one of them. That was my biggest nightmare. If one of our soldiers gets interrogated and she breaks, which of course she will break, they could find all of our safe houses. Or at least they could find one or two; we kept most of them secret from anyone that doesn’t need to know about them.

This was our biggest loss since everything started. We’d lost a girl here or there, and even had one taken alive and interrogated. For the most part, though, we’d been lucky. Our losses were minimal because we took care to hit hard and move fast. We didn’t stick around to risk lives more than necessary.

We were small and nimble fighting an enormous giant. The chances were stacked against us but we still had to fight. We couldn’t slow down, not for a second. Even a loss like this couldn’t break us.

“Help the girls,” I said. I moved away, got back into the elevator, and headed upstairs.

I got into my bedroom and shut the door. Wyatt’s computer wasn’t on, but I could easily fix that. I broke into his network and sent a power signal to his laptop, booting it up.

When it was ready, I sent him a message.





19





Wyatt





I woke up around four in the morning to my computer beeping like fucking mad. I got out of bed, groggy and annoyed. It had somehow turned on, though I had no clue how.

I took it out into the living room and banged on Ethan’s door. Eventually he opened it.

“What the fuck?” he asked.

I held it up. “Why is my computer on?”

“Because you forgot to turn it off?” he grunted at me.

“No. It just turned on and started making this noise.”

“Throw it out the window.”

“Ethan.”

“Fine.” He took it from me and opened the lid. He looked up at me and grinned. “I think your girlfriend sent you a message.”

I looked at it and smiled. “I guess she’s all in.”

“Looks liked it.” Ethan handed me the computer and shut his door.

In big, bold letters, the screen said, “Arturo Barone must die.”

I carried the laptop into my bedroom and typed her a message. “Meet tomorrow.” I turned it off and shut the lid before going back to sleep, a smile on my face.



She showed up at my hotel door around three in the afternoon that next day.

I didn’t plan on seeing her. I didn’t hear a peep at all, and I figured she was just busy. I had my own shit to deal with: an important case in the south of the state had just opened up that was taking up some of my time.

Chief Herbert called around noon to tell me that they were making some arrests of the Chicago dealers, which was exactly what I wanted. Most of those guys were in competition with the Barones, so I figured I could use this to help better the city while winning some favor with him.