31. There Are No Children

T he club was uncharacteristically quiet as Kellen followed Alexei in through the main entrance and to the back stairway. The lights were on across the floor, and the space was deserted except for a few bouncers—none of whom gave Kellen and Alexei more than a glance.

The stillness had weight of its own as Kellen watched Alexei unlock the door to his apartment. Inside, there was music playing, and the lights were dimmed down. Soft, music box notes drifted through the air from a pink, glowing, fist-sized dome sitting on the floor at the center of the living room. Odd, rotating cartoon characters drifted across the walls and ceiling, projected by lights on the dome. And, leaning over and staring into the dome like it would reveal her fortune, sat a little girl with long dark hair.

Large dark eyes lifted to check Kellen and Alexei as they entered. Her hair was braided neatly this time, and she was wearing a set of pink flannel pajamas.

“Alexei?” She stood up, suspicious eyes flicking between the person she knew and the person she didn’t. Her arms dropped rigidly to her sides, her glare fixing Kellen.

Alexei was evidently wrong about her thinking nothing of a visitor. Kellen found himself split between introducing himself to the little girl and saying nothing to her. It was good she was wary around strange men.

“Alexei.” A whisper this time. Without further warning, the little girl broke into a run and crashed against Alexei, her small arms immediately wrapping his thighs. And then the tears began. Fast, panicked sobbing; high-pitched, unintelligible words amid distraught wailing.

Skyler had cried like that sometimes.

“What—Why are you crying?” Alexei lowered himself to face level with her and took her small shoulders in his hands.

More unintelligible wailing.

“She sounds tired,” Kellen spoke up. He shifted his backpack over his shoulder. It was like remembering something from a past life: all the times Skyler had burst into hysterical tears over next to nothing, and a long nap had served as the magical remedy.

But June didn’t appreciate Kellen’s input. She struck out an angry arm, finger pointed furiously at the stranger in the room. “They always hurt you!” she cried, suddenly making herself perfectly audible. “I just want them to go away! I just want them to stop! ”

Alexei clapped a hand over her mouth, a nervous smile darting across his lips. “Shh. What are you saying? What are you talking about, June? Jay is not going to hurt anybody. He’s a friend.”

“Not my friend,” June dictated through Alexei’s fingers. She crossed her arms at him, but it was Kellen she served another glare.

Kellen slipped his backpack off his shoulder and walked to the far wall. He sat down on the floor and dropped his backpack beside him. Silently, his eyes traced back to Alexei. “You have guys up here sometimes? Tricks or favors or whatever?”

“N-No…”

“ Swan! ” June exclaimed. Face red and teary, she turned to face Kellen. “He always hurts Alexei.”

Swan. Kellen’s eyes tracked back to where Alexei was kneeling, arms lowered, frozen, like June’s words shocked him.

“I wish Swan would die, ” June sentenced.

And faster than Kellen could see it coming, Alexei swung his arm out and slapped June hard across the face. So hard, she fell.

Kellen bolted to his feet. Alexei was already standing. Kellen saw him grab June by the arm, and he didn’t think twice. In an instant, Kellen had Alexei’s wrist in his hand, grip hard enough to bruise, enough adrenaline rushing through his body to throw Alexei into the wall. Voice barely controlled: “What the—are you doing? ”

Alexei released June’s arm, his other hand immediately moving to pry at Kellen’s fingers.

June ran for her room. The door shut with a slam behind her, and a full-blown tantrum erupted behind it.

Kellen’s grip loosened on Alexei, then released completely. “What the fuck!? You just hit her like that?”

“She could be fucking dead for what she just said,” Alexei responded coldly. “If she can’t control her mouth in front of people she doesn’t even know are trustworthy, she will end up dead.”

“You just told her I was trustworthy!” Kellen exclaimed. “You told her I was a friend!”

“She knows better.”

“She’s a— child! ”

“Yeah, well she can’t be,” Alexei snapped. He stood there, muscles twitching, blindfolded face pinned up at Kellen. “She can’t fucking be a child. There are no children here. They’ll throw her body in a dumpster just the same as an adult.”

“Why the hell don’t you get her out? ” Kellen snapped right back. “Where the fuck are her parents? ”

“She doesn’t have any.”

“She doesn’t have any?”

“I’m all she has, and―”

“This is no place for a child. You just said so yourself.”

There was a short silence. “I’ll get her out when it’s safe to.” Alexei’s voice was controlled, now, but the frustration was only a thin cover below the surface.

“Will you?” Kellen asked skeptically. “What exactly qualifies as unsafe, when being here is the alternative?”

“You fucking cops are all the same.” There was venom in Alexei’s voice. “You don’t think I haven’t thought about getting her out? How much better her life would be in a normal home with parents and a family and a fucking childhood?”

Kellen’s face froze. His throat halted on a retort seconds from coming out.

“It’s not safe. It’s not safe until this deal is through. Do you fucking understand?” Alexei took off his jacket and threw it on the corner sofa. “I’m fucking tired. I’m gonna take a shower. My room is at the end of the hallway. There’s a king-size with plenty of space.”

“I’ll sleep on the couch out here,” Kellen murmured, turning away.

“Fucking sleep on the bed with me, Kellen, fuck! ” He stood there frozen for three seconds, then abruptly turned and started down the hallway, past June’s room.

Kellen quickly followed him.

Alexei opened the door to a bathroom and switched on the exhaust fan. He continued to the next door over: a closet.

“Alexei―” Kellen caught the edge of the closet door before it hit him in the face from Alexei’s forceful swing.

There was a stack of towels in the closet, surely what Alexei was after. But he turned away from the closet and slammed Kellen’s shoulders with open hands.

The force of the unexpected blow knocked Kellen all the way back against the wall. Like a reflex, his hands shot up and seized Alexei’s wrists. In a split second, he had their positions reversed, Alexei pinned to the wall, wrists above his head.

Alexei gasped. He strained for several seconds, attempting to break his arms free. Then, relaxing suddenly, “Do it. Fucking do it.”

Kellen’s brow flinched.

“Do what you want. Do whatever the fuck you want. Just take it. I’ll fucking let you.”

Kellen’s grip loosened a little. “Do—Do what?” Heart racing, he took a small step backward, still holding Alexei’s wrist pinned over his head.

“Or I will,” Alexei said, his voice turning breathless. “Just give me permission. Just fucking give me permission.”

Kellen abruptly released Alexei’s wrists. He took several steps backward.

Silence. The sound of their quick breaths combined in the air.

Kellen flinched like something physically touched him. He glanced down at his hands, then quickly back at Alexei. “S-Sorry,” he whispered. Wordlessly, he started back for the living room where he had left his backpack.

“Hey, asshole! ” Alexei yelled suddenly.

Kellen froze in his tracks.

“Just sleep on the bed. I swear I’ll be quiet and won’t ask you for anything. Please.”

When the shower switched on in the bathroom, Kellen took his eyes off the orbiting cartoon characters on the living room ceiling and stood up off the floor. He picked up his backpack and carried it into the bedroom at the end of the small apartment hallway.

A plain room met his eyes when he switched on the light. There was a king-size bed pushed into the corner, a nightstand, a lonely chair by the opposite wall. Stark contrast to the fully furnished child’s room just up the hallway.

Kellen set his backpack on the floor at the foot of the bed. Silently, he looked over the ceiling and walls. No sign of surveillance. He stepped to the nightstand and lifted the alarm clock off it. He turned the device over a few times, then put it back. He opened the top drawer. Shut it, and opened the bottom drawer. He lifted out a pill bottle from beside a folded heating pad and turned it over. Blank. He popped off the lid and looked inside. More of those white pills.

Kellen put the bottle back and shut the drawer. He walked over to the closet and slid open the door. Clothing. Some more drawers. Kellen dipped his arm in between the hanging outfits and pressed the hangers aside. There. A wall safe. Guns, drugs, documents, money—whatever there was of value that Alexei wanted to keep here with him.

Kellen shut the closet. He walked back to the bed and pulled back the blanket. He slipped both hands under the mattress and felt down the outer edge of it. He lifted the pillows and put them back. Then stopped—there was the narrow silver line of a hinge barely visible below the upholstered backrest of the headboard.

Kellen’s fingers traced the edge of the backrest until he found a small gap at the top. The headboard opened outward like a miniature tailgate to a small storage space. And inside, hung on a metal bracket, a USP full-size.

Kellen shut the secret cabinet and straightened. Brushing a hand down the lower half of his face, he glanced around the room again. He walked back out into the hallway.

There was one more door on the left that he hadn’t seen behind. Kellen dropped a hand to the doorknob and turned it. Unlocked. He pressed the door open just a little.

A gym room. Mirrors, exercise equipment, and front and center: a silver pole fixed from ceiling to floor.

Kellen shut the door again.

June had gone quiet some time ago. The shower was still running in the bathroom.

Kellen walked back into Alexei’s room. He glanced at the bed, then turned to a dresser and began checking the drawers. More clothing, bathroom supplies, a million loose makeup articles that all looked partially used—

A laptop.

Kellen lifted out the device, rotating it sideways slightly when he saw a small flashing light. The computer was on.

Kellen set the laptop on the chair in the room and opened it. He hit the enter key.

A lockscreen lit up, the background of which looked like a pre-loaded Microsoft photo. The screen wanted a pin.

With a cautious glance over his shoulder, Kellen lifted out his phone. He switched on the flashlight and shone it over the computer keys. He lifted the base of the laptop and rotated it a little.

A sometimes-blind person wasn’t likely to use a passcode that was overly complex.

All the numbers on the keypad looked well-used. But there was only one number in the line at the top of the letters that had the oil finger marks of many presses: 7 .

How many digits is a Windows laptop passcode? Kellen typed the question into a search browser on his phone. Four or six, was the answer.

Kellen’s finger hovered a few seconds over the 7 key on the laptop. Can’t be that easy. He hit the key six times.

The screen unlocked.

What the fuck. Kellen glanced over his shoulder again. The shower was still running in the bathroom. His finger lowered to the touchpad, and he moved the cursor to the taskbar. One window was open. A Chrome browser. Kellen clicked on it.

A Gmail inbox opened. The name on the account was a key slam of numbers and letters. But there was one unopened email in the inbox from “SoryaEncrypted.” Kellen silently shifted the cursor to it and clicked on the email.

“A log entry has been submitted for your approval,” the single line in the email read. There was a link.

That almost sounded like an entry had been made on a ledger. Alexei had said he didn’t have access to the master ledger. But he had, in fact, said nothing about Exotix possibly feeding data into that master ledger—or, whether or not he was the one managing that feed.

Kellen clicked the link.

A login screen loaded. Kellen shifted the cursor and clicked into the username field. An error message immediately popped up: “Biometric authentication required.”

There was a fingerprint reader on the corner of the laptop.

The shower shut off in the bathroom.

Kellen closed the login window and swiftly opened a “reply all” message on the original email. He copied in the account’s address, then blind copied a burner address of his own. Hit Send. Then deleted the email from the inbox, Sent Mail, and Deleted Items. He reset the original email to unread and closed the laptop.

Kellen replaced everything as it had been and paced over to the bed. He dropped a hand to the blanket. Pressed gradually into the mattress.

A slow exhale escaped Kellen’s chest as he sat down. “Damn, this is a nice mattress,” he murmured to the empty room. He dropped slowly backward until his head hit the stitched pattern of the quilt. For a long moment, he stared up at the ceiling.

Was Alexei’s blindfold off right now? Could he see right now?

“I don’t think it would really work like that,” Alexei had said.

Kellen’s hand lifted absently to his face. His fingers pressed the bridge of his nose, eyes slowly closing. Why the fuck not?

“For a few minutes.”

“And then what happens?”

“I put the blindfold back on.”

I’m so…fucking…tired…

Kellen opened his eyes to that same view of the ceiling, blurry now. Maybe he could give in. Just this once. Just stop fighting everything this one time. Just roll over onto the other side of this bed, leave plenty of room for Alexei, and sleep for a few hours.