Taken

  Jack put the bucket back in its corner, then went to the far wall and slumped beneath the boarded-over window. A young Korean man hurried to the bucket, and urinated as if he had been holding it for hours. His eyes were downcast in shame, and he tried to shield himself from view, but there he was, pissing in a bucket in plain view of a room filled with people. No one looked. Everyone had the good grace to ignore him. Next time, it would be them.

  Jack tried not to hear it and closed his eyes. He tried not to smell the stink of all these unwashed people. He concentrated on the hatch. If he had been stronger or braver, he might be dropping down the side of the house right now. He might be waving down a car, or using a neighbor’s phone to call the police. They might be free.

  When Jack opened his eyes, the tough Korean kid was watching him, Jack in his usual place below the boarded-over window, the Korean in his spot against the adjoining wall. After four days, everyone had their own personal space on the floor. Use the bathroom, get food, go with Rojas to make a call—everyone returned to their spot, the same spot, and no one ever took anyone else’s place. Your spot was your home.

  One of the Korean girls who spoke some English told Jack the tough kid’s name was Kwan. She didn’t know more than that, though they had been traveling together since their group boarded a plane in Seoul for Bogotá, Colombia. Kwan kept to himself, said little, and had nothing to do with the others.

  Jack met Kwan’s eyes, glanced away, then looked back. Jack nodded once, kind of like saying hi, but Kwan did not respond. His lean face was all planes and angles, and as warm as a granite mask. He also had a split lip and a heavy purple bruise on his cheek from the guards.

  Jack looked away, which is when the door opened and Krista came in. He knew something was wrong when he saw her. She carried herself stiffly, as if balancing a plate on her head, and her skin was the color of dough. He sat up, staring, as she came to him, and stood when she reached him because he thought she would fall. She shook like a leaf in high wind, closed her eyes tight, and pressed her forehead into his chest.

  Jack felt a flush of true panic.

  “What happened? Kris, are you all right?”

  She sank to the floor, and he sank with her, the two of them clinging to each other in their spot.

  “Krissy?”

  She pulled back just far enough to see him, keeping her voice low and her back to the others.

  “We have to go. We have to get out of here.”

  Jack’s panic spiraled into a head-splitting tornado.

  “Did they hurt you?”

  “The other girl. You didn’t hear her?”

  “What happened?”

  “He took her into the bathroom. You didn’t hear?”

  “Nothing. I didn’t hear anything.”

  “He used pliers on her. He hurt her with pliers. She was crying when she came out, all hunched to the side.”

  “Rojas?”

  “The one with the teeth. Medina.”

  The throbbing in Jack’s head eased.

  “We’re gonna go. We’ll get out of here soon. I’ll try the hatch again.”

  “The garage is better. Let’s just use the garage.”

  “Don’t panic, Krissy. C’mon. We’ve been over it a hundred times.”

  Maybe two hundred, since the first day when Krista told him about the door to the garage in the utility room, and the service hatch in the ceiling, they had planned and re-planned how they would escape, and had worked out two possible plans, one where they got into the garage and raised the garage door, and the other where Jack climbed into the attic and escaped through a vent. The garage door was slower and riskier, so Jack didn’t like it. The door from the utility room to the garage was locked except when the guards used it to take out garbage or bring in food, or come and go on their business. This meant Jack and Krista would have to be in the kitchen when the guards were using the door. They knew from experience there were brief windows of time when an incoming guard left the door unlocked while he stepped into another room. Plenty of time for Jack or Krista or both to step into the garage, but then they would have to open the garage door. The garage door was noisy. Krista heard it opening and closing when she was in the kitchen. You pressed the button, and the door lurched with a rattle. The little electric motor whined as it pulled the rattling door slowly up its squeaky tracks. They only had to wait for the door to rise a foot or so before they slipped under, but waiting those few seconds could take forever if the guards heard the door. And even if they made it under the door, Jack wasn’t sure they could run far enough fast enough before the guards chased them down. Especially Krista.

  Jack thought the service hatch was safer. The heat in these desert attics was hellacious, so the heat had to be vented. The bays between the rafters would be packed with thick insulation, and air-conditioning ducts would twist through the attic, but Jack knew these older desert homes had large vents cut into the gables. If he could get into the attic, he could push out a vent cover, drop to the ground, and run to a neighboring house where he would call the police.

  The attic was safer, faster, and better than using the garage, only he hadn’t been able to open the hatch.

  Krissy said, “Tomorrow morning.”

  “What?”

  Jack had been thinking about the attic.

  “When you empty the bucket tomorrow morning. Miguel told me they’re bringing more toilet paper and cooking oil and things in the morning. He’s going to come get me to put it away. You can empty the bucket, and come for more soap. If they leave us alone when the door is unlocked, I want us to go.”

  “I want to try the hatch again.”

  “We have to go.”

  “We’ll go. I just want to try the hatch again.”

  Krissy started crying.

  “We have to go as soon as we can. We cannot stay here.”

  “We’ll go. We’ll go as soon as we can however we can, I just want to try the hatch again. If I can’t get it open, we’re stuck with the garage anyway. Okay?”

  “I don’t want to wait, Jack. He hurt that girl with these pliers. He showed them to me. He pointed at me.”

  Her eyes were red, and wet, and the wet ran free down her beautiful face.

  He held her arms, and nodded as he tried to calm her.

  “The first chance we get. If we can get in the garage, we’ll run right out that door. Okay? We’ll do it, Kris. The first chance we get.”

  “I want to go.”

  “If you can get into the garage without me, get in and go. Don’t wait for me, okay? If you’re in the kitchen and they leave the door unlocked, you get in and go. Take off. I mean it.”

  She cried harder, and nodded, and Jack sensed she was coming apart.

  He held her close and stroked her hair. She had the softest hair in the world. Softer than any hair ever in the entire history of the world.

  Kwan said, “You need purpose?”

  Jack looked over, and Kwan was watching. His granite face was unreadable.

  Jack didn’t understand, and shook his head.

  Kwan said, “For guards. You want go kitchen?”

  He glanced toward the kitchen, then came back to Jack. Jack wondered how much Kwan had heard, and how much he understood.

  “Yes. I need to go back to the kitchen.”

  Kwan stared as if Jack’s words were settling through deep water to reach him.

  He said, “O. Kay.”

  His face closed like a fierce steel trap, and he pushed to his feet. A middle-aged Korean man was now using the bucket, but Kwan stalked across the room, jerked him away, and scooped up the bucket. He brought it to the door, and pounded hard with his fist, shouting aggressively. When the guard pulled open the door, Kwan threw the piss on him, tossed the bucket aside, and shouted at the guards in Korean. They swarmed him as they had before, driving him backward into the room and onto the people who were huddled in the center of the room.

  The guards came in hard, and beat down Kwan. It took f
our of them to subdue him, and when it was done, Medina looked at the piss all over the floor.

  Jack said, “I’ll get the paper towels and a plastic bag. I’ll get some soap.”

  Medina waved him past, then spun toward Kwan and kicked him hard in the side while the other guards held him. Medina kicked him three times, then dropped to his knees and punched. He punched so hard he grunted each time he threw a shot, but Kwan only stared into the floor and took it. It was crazy the way that kid took it.

  Jack locked eyes with Krista, then hurried down the hall to the kitchen. He scooped up the Dawn and a roll of paper towels, then ducked into the utility room.

  Jack’s heart pounded. He didn’t want to leave Krista, but if he could get into the garage, he was going to slap the button to open the big door and run like hell—dive under the opening door, slide through, and run into the street screaming and shouting and waving his arms, stop a car if he could or run to the closest house.

  The door to the garage was locked. He shook the knob and twisted, but the guards had thrown the deadbolt.

  Jack glanced up at the hatch, then climbed onto the washer. He paused, listening to hear if anyone was coming, hunched under the hatch and put his shoulder under it. He pushed with his legs as hard as he could. He pushed so hard the washer rocked, and slid an inch with a squeal.

  Jack’s heart clutched at the noise, and once more he listened.

  Nothing.

  Jack set his shoulder to the hatch, and tried again. They would come looking for him soon, but he had to try. He couldn’t just quit.

  He pushed as hard as he could. He pushed harder, and kept pushing. He pushed so hard his vision blurred and his head throbbed, and the washing machine suddenly squealed sideways. Jack lost his balance, teetered, and dropped to the floor.

  The washer had twisted a foot out of whack.

  Miguel’s voice came from the entry.

  “Get this shit cleaned up. Where them towels?”

  Jack shouted back.

  “I’m getting the plastic bags.”

  He put his weight to the washer, frantic to push it back into position, and that’s when he saw a slender black shape matted with the years of dust.

  Jack slid it from beneath the washer, and discovered he had found an old fisherman’s knife with a black plastic handle. It had a cutting edge on the bottom of the blade and a file edge on top for scaling fish.

  Miguel’s voice was close.

  “Them bags are right on the washer.”

  Jack pushed the washer into place, and snatched up the box of garbage bags as Miguel appeared in the door.

  Jack held up the box.

  “Found’m. I thought they were in the kitchen.”

  “C’mon, clean up this mess. The whole fuckin’ house smells like piss. Don’t forget that soap.”

  Miguel had already turned away.

  Jack slipped the knife into his pants, and followed Miguel back into hell.

  Jon Stone:

  three days before Cole is taken

  20.

  This time of morning, still more than an hour before sunrise, Jon Stone watched Los Angeles turn gold from his home in the hills above the Sunset Strip. The ocean to his right was a black smudge dissolving into a murky night sky as the first glow of the new day seeped over the horizon. Soon, the eastern faces of downtown skyscrapers would catch the light, and as Jon watched, their golden fire would jump to Wilshire Corridor high-rises to the buildings along Hollywood Boulevard and on to the twin towers of Century City.

  Jon stood naked on the tile deck at the edge of his pool, raised his hands to the city, and shouted as loud as he could.

  “KISS. MY. ASS.”

  Then Jon Stone shouted even more loudly.

  “KISS! MYY! ASSSS!”

  Jon loved Los Angeles, he loved his house, and he loved being home. It was great to be back.

  Then he lowered his arms, and spoke quietly in a soft voice.

  “Made it again, you bitches.”

  Jon did a forward flip into his pool, tucked in tight for a fast rotation, hit the cold water, touched bottom, then pushed up and out in a single motion, back on the deck no problemo, dripping. It was a small pool, but still—Jon was built like a diver, but had never dived or swum competitively. He had played football and baseball in college, pole-vaulted all four years, and was captain of the judo and fencing teams. Junior and senior years, he part-timed as a bouncer. Jon Stone was good with his body, and enjoyed being physical.

  Jon padded inside to his living room bar, and dug around in the fridge for a carton of apple juice. His house was dark except for the royal blue LED strip under the bar and bar cabinets. Mood lighting, to bounce off the steel tile and black marble counter. Earlier, Jon had pushed the four heavy glass doors into their wall pocket, joining the terrazzo interior with the tile deck to open his home to the pool and the city beyond.

  Jon had purchased his house at the beginning of a down market: a twelve-hundred-square-foot, two-bedroom fixer on a tiny lot on a small street off Sunset Plaza Drive with an epic view and stellar privacy. Jon made a good living, but the house had been beyond his means, both then and now, so he funneled almost all his earnings into its re-creation. Floor-to-ceiling glass sliding doors, terrazzo floors, Italian tile deck, and French gray pool. The two tiny bedrooms had been transformed into an amazing master suite with a view of the city, a whirlpool tub, an oversized steam shower, and a walk-in, walnut, twenty-foot closet in which hung almost no clothes. Check out Casa Stone: black marble counters, German fixtures, Japanese toilets, and a full-on commercial kitchen. State-of-the-art, computer-controlled audio, video, climate, and alarms. Jon put his money into the house. It was his passion. A work of art in progress. An obsession with a home in which he did not live.

  He kept his guns elsewhere.

  Most of them.

  Jon grabbed a carton of juice, then returned to the deck where he dropped onto a chaise lounge, still wet from the pool. The pool had been cold, and the pre-dawn air even colder, but Jon didn’t mind. He had spent twenty of the past twenty-one days above 12,000 feet in the Hindu Kush of Afghanistan, not far from the Khyber Pass and close to the Pakistan border. It had been a lot colder than his beautiful house high above the Sunset Strip. He could see the Whisky from here. He could see the big red, blue, and green buildings of the Pacific Design Center on Melrose where he had bought most of his furniture for cash.

  Jon Stone was a professional military contractor—a PMC, also known as a mercenary. These days, he made most of his money by placing other professionals in contract jobs for a fifteen percent fee, though occasionally he still worked as a special teams operator for certain corporations and governments, namely the good ol’ U.S. of A.

  Stone had the credentials to do this, and, like many elite soldiers, his credentials were surprising. He had attended Princeton University on a National Merit Scholarship, where he studied history and philosophy, though most of his time was spent drinking beer and playing sports. His course work was an afterthought, but completed with honors, after which he enlisted in the United States Army. No-brainer. His passion in history had been the great wars and generals, and the monumental land and naval campaigns that carved world history and elevated some few men to greatness.

  God DAMN, but Jon loved that stuff!

  OCS. Airborne, Ranger, Special Forces, Delta. Delta was a bitch, but everything else had been pretty easy. High-speed assault. Explosive entry. Hostage rescue. Jon ate it up. Loved being a soldier, loved the company of like-minded men, loved the noise and the skills and the crazy wild-ass adventure lesser men feared.

  Lesser.

  Men.

  Made Jon smile, even now, gazing out over his city.

  Thirteen years in service, the last four with Delta, and Jon had gone private. Time to see and do something else. Get a little diversity in his life. Jon had been married six times. Long-term commitments weren’t high on his list. He loved having a mission, and completing that mission,
and if he got to kick a little ass along the way and make a few bucks, so be it. If things got hairy and his pulse spooled up, it was better than getting clogged arteries.

  Now, eighteen hours off the plane from Afghanistan, and Jon was already thinking about what would come next, there on his deck as the city twinkled and his slug-butt neighbors slept.

  His phone vibrated. A faraway buzz on the tile beneath the chaise lounge.

  Stone checked the Caller ID, recognized Pike’s number, and immediately answered. Jon had booked Joe Pike in the past, and had worked with him, too. Jon could book Pike at two thousand a day, twenty G minimum, up front and guaranteed. Special assignments, the sky had no limit. And Pike was very, very special.

  “Let’s go make some money, bro. I’m smellin’ green.”

  Pike’s low voice came back.

  “You speak Korean, right?”

  “Juh nun han gook mal ul mae woo jal hap ni da, moo aht ul al go ship eu sae yo?”

  Jon saying he spoke Korean perfectly, and asking what Pike wanted to know.

  “How about Korean organized crime?”

  Jon had spent time in both South and North Korea, and could read Hangul, the modern Korean script. But coming out of the blue like this, the question made Jon wary.

  “Depends. Here or in Korea?”

  “I’m watching a place on Olympic. The people I’m on could be OC.”

  Stone tried to sound noncommittal. He knew Koreatown well. Liked the women. Liked karaoke. The Koreans were big on noraebang.

  “I might know something. I’d have to see.”

  “You know something or not?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You good with Arabic?”

  Bam! Out of left field, and now Stone was smiling. There were many Arabic dialects, from Moroccan Arabic with Berber words which often did not even sound Arabic, to the aristocratic Arabic spoken by the Saudi royal family, which was different from the Arabic spoken in the streets.