Chapter 11
eleven
. . .
Armin
I reach for Mia again, but she’s just outside my grasp. As usual.
She clubs me hard in the ribs, a blunt and crushing blow that knocks me breathless.
I’m surprised. She could get fierce, especially during sex, but this is over the top, even for her.
I snap my eyes open. Only one does the trick. A white hot spark fires off in the other eye.
Swollen shut. I reach to touch it, but the reaching was only an unconscious illusion.
So was Mia.
My arms are restrained behind me. I pivot my head around in the direction of the blow. It’s not easy, nothing is. I see the shadow of a man way in my periphery, like he’s hiding. There’s a backroom chatter, too, from somewhere behind me.
Is Mia here, though? Have they hurt her? Panic floods me, and I swivel my head in all directions to find her despite the pain tearing through my neck and head.
I’m tied to a chair in the middle of a warehouse, dark and rusted, surrounded by the smell of saltwater rotting metal for years and years.
My lacerations from the initial attack in Mia’s apartment have mostly clotted up, except for the mean gash down my leg, still oozing and raw. The cheap tequila bottle damaged the other guy more than me.
You should see the other guy, I imagine telling her.
And then I remember my original thought: is she here? Where is she? Is she safe?
I hadn’t managed to get a warning out to her or to the office before they laid me out in the kitchen.
“Who you looking for, Sheriff?”
Another voice from the shadows. This one I recognize. Harvey.
“His girlfriend.”
I scan the darkness.
“Oh. He doesn’t know.” Harvey steps forward, into the light. He’s unscathed, of course. No, Harvey Blagas wouldn’t be on the front lines of his own crimes. No sign of whoever I cut up in Mia’s kitchen.
I lunge forward in the chair before I can stop myself. “Know what, you bastard?” My voice is choked, suffocated, but I don’t care. If he’s killed her, I’ll kill him. I’ll find a way.
My lunge is punished with a lead pipe to the ribs, same side as before. I see it coming, this time, and I tense my abs to deflect the blow as best I can, despite the fire that spreads across my midsection.
It’s not enough.
There’s a loud crunch that contracts my whole body in on itself, as if it’s trying to close up shop, and it forces a dry heave out of me.
I’m unable to pull in a breath, not anymore, and the dim light recedes from my good eye as I strain against the zip ties cutting into my wrists, panting my mouth dry.
I can’t get free, and I can’t keep my eye open.
I pray to God they haven’t killed her, my Mia.
I wake up to the sound of the ocean, and I imagine her next to me, her fingers playing in my hair the way she’d do when she was really tired and fighting sleep for no reason.
There’s a warm spot under my cheek. I raise my head as much as I can, and I don’t get far. It’s a small puddle of my own blood.
I force my eyes open and it steps hard on my memory, again, that only one eye opens now. I struggle to stand, but my arms are tied behind me where I lay on the concrete floor, and the middle of my body can’t move at all, anymore.
“Do it,” A voice says. Harvey.
There’s a loud and unmistakable click above me.
The door explodes open, the crash tearing through the warehouse in a loud and drawn out echo. Heavy footsteps stream through the smoke.
“Freeze! FBI!”
Now I know the whole thing is a hallucination, a dying man’s dream. Because it looks like Mia, the figure in the lead, yes.
Oh God, I’d know that face anywhere.
But she’s wearing an FBI uniform in my vision, gun drawn, fierce and fiery in her eyes, focused on the men I can’t quite see anymore.
Two shots rip through the air.