Alonzo stared into Reizvolles for a moment drawn out with tension and unspoken judgment. Then, he suddenly laughed big and booming, flashing two pearly rows with eyes glimmering in the light. He looked young, then. Too young to lead a criminal organization.
"You have good taste, my friend. If it's girls you want, I can get you the very best. Except her. That little piece is mine." All traces of laughter evaporated from his face as did his amicable tone. What was left was a stony faced young man that would brook no argument. It was clear in his eyes that the girl would only be parted from his cold, dead hands, and he dared Reizvolles to try.
Before Alonzo was to officially discover if the Russian was friend or foe, the door to his office swung open without a prior knock and a large man lumbered in without announcement. It was nothing but unspoken urgency and it snatched Alonzo's attention away from Reiz so he would stop and listen when the man tipped his head to his ear. Alonzo's tanned face went from stone to storm in a matter of seconds. His lips were drawn tight over his teeth when he spoke.
"It was a pleasure doing business with you, Reizvolles," he said while he made his way to the door. "Please, escort our guest out," was nearly lost when he walked out and disappeared around the door frame and into the hallway. The large man's bulldog face was tense, his dark eyes clouded with distracted thoughts when they shifted to the Russian.
"Follow me," he said, and his bulk led the way through the door, turning in the opposite direction Alonzo rushed off to.
▬ • ▬
After going back to pat down Dog for his cellphone (and finding nothing), she snuck back to the room she was held in and found a sleek, black phone sitting on the table behind the camera. She snatched it up, but caught herself staring at the chair in the center of the empty room, perfectly in frame for the video camera. For a moment, she felt outside of herself, looking at a girl tied to a chair, head lolling dumbly as the camera rolled to record a message to her father. She hadn't even looked distressed, but drunk, high, helpless, and useless. She didn't even know where she was. Teeth clenched, she was hard pressed to find out.
But first, she had to get out of this room before someone stopped by and found her where she most definitely did not belong.
▬ • ▬
"People don't just disappear," Chief Nelson boomed from the center of the pit of the police station. He was chewing through a bag of sunflower seeds, which he did when he was stressed.
"Don't people disappear all the time, sir?"
"Holy fucking Mary, mother of Christ, Goldbloom. One more word out of you and you'll be writing parking tickets until you retire."
The officer whose name the Chief could never remember, which always changed when spoken to, shut his mouth so fast his teeth clacked.
"To answer your dumbass question," Chief Nelson continued from where he stood, leaning against a desk in front of the investigation board, which was covered with so many photos and files that the actual board underneath could no longer be seen. It was just Velazquez, his associates, and his victims. At the center of it all was Helvetica Storm, smiling in a photo pulled from her social media page.
The Chief pointed to the photo, his bushy, red mustache drooping in a snarl around his mouth. "People go missing all the time. Kids, fiends, hookers, and crazy people. Constantly. But people like
her don't disappear off the map. She's somewhere out there, and the only way to find her is to find Velazquez."
"Sir, I've been looking at Velazquez's most recent activity, and I may have triangulated a possible location," said Officer Jordan. She was up at the investigation board, pinning a map over the faces of Velazquez's buddies. She didn't even wait for the Chief to respond as she picked up a marker and began drawing lines and circles over the map.
"Velazquez may work globally, but he still has points of operation whenever he's in a region. While these locations change whenever he jets out of town, he still shows his hand whenever he's seen somewhere more than twice." She stabbed the marker at a spot of land within an aggressively looped, thick, black circle. "Local authorities have spotted him in this city more than a handful of times in the past month alone. I'd bet any money that he's there."
Chief Nelson squinted at the circled point on the map and grunted. "What the hell is Ravenblack City? Trust a felon to squirrel away to some unknown shit stain on the map."
"Sir!"
"What did I tell you, Henderson? You'll be writing tickets for powered chairs in the nursing home before you know it."
"No, sir! It's the girl. She's on the phone."
The Chief's eyes grew big and round like blueberries and everyone scrambled to the station operator's desk. He was a round man squeezed into his desk and chair with a mess of tech sitting before him. The main piece of technology was the computer whose screen was streaming a single line wiggling to the sound of Helvetica's voice.
"I need to talk to the chief," she said, her voice tinny over the line.
The Chief took the phone from the operator's hands, pressed it to his ear, and spat out, "Speaking. Where the hell are you?"
"Is my father there?"
Everyone exchanged glances. The Associate Justice had spent many unnecessary hours at the station, angry, stressed, and in the way until Chief Nelson told him to go so he could be angry and stressed at home and out of the way.
"Someone's contacting him now," the Chief supplied. "He's on his way. I need you to tell me where you are, Miss Storm. Right now."
It took a moment before her voice was heard from the speakers again. "I think it's a warehouse. I was tied to a chair in an empty room up until now, so I haven't exactly gotten the grand tour."
"Never mind that," Chief Nelson snapped. He spat sunflower seed shells into the trash bin next to the operator's desk and tried to blunt a few of the edges of his next words. "Do you hear anything or see anything interesting? Anything is helpful at this point. Anything that can help us pinpoint exactly where you are."
"Difficult thing to accomplish from inside of a closet."
The Chief growled, frustrated. "Miss Storm--"
"I think I hear footsteps." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "I think they're looking for me."
"Look. Stay calm and stay hidden. We have an idea of where you are. We're on our way."
"I think someone is coming."
"Miss Storm..."
"..."
"Miss--" Gunshots exploded through the speakers, followed by footsteps, rustling, then silence as the line went dead. Chief Nelson stared at the phone like it held all the secrets to life and Officer Jordan pointed to the computer screen.
"We have her, sir." The point on the map pulsed green beneath her finger over the location of a warehouse in Ravenblack City's industrial district.
The Chief slammed the phone down and gestured to everyone clustered around the operator's desk. "Let's go, people! We have a plane to catch!"
▬ • ▬
Helvetica stared at the holes in the wall next to the door of the closet she was just dragged from. Warning shots, not to threaten, but to promise. The man with the smoking gun was Alonzo Velazquez, who had two guns harnessed beneath his suit jacket and others secreted away on his person. He looked at Helvetica down the length of the barrel of the gun with the kind of detached interest a child has when burning ants under the sun.
"Where do you think you're going,
chica? There's still twenty four hours on the clock and
papi juez hasn't paid his tab yet."
Helvetica ripped her eyes from the holes in the wall to stare at Alonzo who was flanked by yesmen in expensive suits and bling, flashing shiny new guns at their hips. Arms like steel bars were restraining her against a brick wall of a man, but she tipped her chin up like she stood looking at them from the judge's seat in court.
"If that's the case, you should kill me now and save yourself the trouble."
