Below Zero by C. J. Box Page A

away.
    She was surprised the evening Ed knocked on her bedroom door and told her to get dressed. “Wear something nice,” he said. “Something cute.”
    So in her best second- or third-hand dress and sandals, she followed him out to his car. Although he’d told her not to pack a bag or bring anything along, she took a small leather pocketbook with a few papers and one-dollar bills—her savings. She knew Mary Ann was out for the evening—Thursday was her bingo night—and when she reached for the handle of the back door, Ed had said, “What’re you doing? You can sit up front with me.”
    She thought she knew what would come next. She was wrong. But it turned out to be worse.
    They drove through downtown Chicago and out the other side in Ed’s rattletrap station wagon. They crossed the river to the west side, and she saw a battered street sign that read DIVISION and she thought about that. She turned around in her seat and watched out the back window as the sun dropped and the buildings downtown burst with color, the glass and steel towers lighting up fire orange and magenta. The vibrancy of the colors reminded her of sunset in the mountain west and how long it had been since she’d seen one like that. Then, as suddenly as it started, the light and colors doused as if a curtain had been pulled and the buildings became buildings again. Dark, metal, and cold.
    Ed was saying, “This is all for the best, all for the best.”
    “Are you taking me back to the agency?”
    “Something like that,” Ed said.
    She was scared but resigned to whatever would happen next. She wished her foster sister were with her. But, as always, she was alone.
    He parked on a street of old buildings. There were women in revealing clothes on the corners and knots of young black and Hispanic men on stoops and playing basketball on a cracked court with chain nets that sang when a ball passed through them. When she and Ed got out of the car, a couple of the boys saw her, stopped playing, and hooted like those friends of her “brother” outside the window well.
    “Follow me,” Ed said, taking her hand.
    They went through a heavy door and up narrow stairs. At the top of the landing was a single bare bulb. She detected a new smell on Ed to go along with the cigarettes, motor oil, and bacon: whiskey. He held her hand too tightly, and she tried to jerk away.
    He turned on her, his eyes blazing. “Follow me,” he said.
    “You hurt me.”
    “Don’t try to run,” he said.
    “Where would I run?”
    “And cheer up. Try to look cute, like I told you. Wet your lips.”
    She licked her lips.
    “Okay,” he said.
    At the top of the stairs Ed rapped out a series of taps on a door that could only have been some kind of code. She heard locks being thrown and the door opened.
    “I’m Eddie V,” Ed said. “I’ve got her with me.”
    A tall man in a suit with shallow, badly pockmarked cheeks ignored Ed and peered around him to look at her. But he didn’t so much look at as size her up, the way a man looks at a car he might buy. His eyes narrowed and he nodded to himself, humming. Then, “Come in.”
    The tall man shut the door behind them. The room was nothing like what the building and the hallway suggested it might be like. There were soft lights and empty chairs and couches upholstered in buttery leather. There was a desk with a green shade. Music played in the background from invisible speakers. A bar in the corner had dozens of bottles on it and the liquid in them looked warm and delicious.
    The tall man continued to look her over. He walked around her, appraising.
    “We can do business,” the man said to Ed.
    Ed let out his breath, obviously relieved. He turned to her and bent forward, lightly grasping her arms, and stared into her eyes.
    “You’re going to be staying here for a little while, do you understand?”
    She nodded.
    “We’re doing this to protect you,” Ed lied. “Mary Ann was going to send you back to the agency anyway.