Chapter 7
seven
. . .
Mia
I open my eyes, it’s still dark. I’m in the fetal position, my body screaming. I stretch out my arm and hit a stiff panel covered in carpet. Above, metal.
The whole structure bounces and I go airborne. I come down hard, the breath knocked out of my lungs.
Car trunk.
We’re moving. Fast. I grope around for the release handle.
There isn’t one. Either it’s been removed or the car’s too old.
I brace myself to kick through the car seats, but my movements turn slow and thick. My head spins. After effects of the taser.
I fight to recall basic details of the attacker or the car. Nothing.
The crook of my arm twinges, raw and angry. I swipe at it, and I knock a syringe out of my arm.
Fuck.
I feel around in the darkness until my fingers find it and trace its outline.
It’s been plunged. Whatever was inside the needle is inside me.
I wake up getting dragged, my bare heels scraping across asphalt, carpet, cold concrete, the smell of sulphur so strong it burns my nostrils.
I struggle to open my eyes. When I finally blink them open, a strong backhand cracks me in the face.
My head contacts the surface behind, there’s a warm trickle down my neck, and the darkness takes me.
I wake up to the feel of leather and cold steel around my wrists and ankles.
Restraints and chains.
What I can’t feel is my hands and feet. I’m upright, sagged hard against the restraints. I don’t move, and I keep my eyes closed. I’ve got to get it together before they know I’m conscious again. I have to decide what my line is, how to act depending on who’s got me.
But the fog of whatever they’ve dosed me with is too strong. I don’t hurt enough for all they’ve done to me, and I’m slipping under. My breaths are short and shallow.
I force my eyes open. I can’t lose consciousness again. I’ve got to fight through whatever grimy drugs I’m on, or I might not wake up at all.
“Fuck off,” I shout, as loud as I can. The force of my words falls off quick, swallowed up by a wheezing pain in my lungs.
It’s an old warehouse I’m in, garage doors opposite me.
Some dirty oil smears on the ground and empty metal shelves lining one wall.
Other than that, nothing. I listen. The buzzing of the fluorescent lights above is the only sound.
Except for me, and I’m alone.
I turn my head as far as it can go. They’ve chained me to a big red X. Same as the ones Harvey used to have at the Victory Mills club.
Harvey.
If he’s behind this, I’m not gonna make it out alive.
If today’s the day I die, I want to know now. I rattle my wrists as hard as I can, clanging the chains against the corrugated metal. “Hey!” I yell.
There’s one closed door over to my left. I strain to listen for anybody inside.
I kick my legs, struggling at the restraints and chains around my ankles. Padlocked. If they did a shit job of drilling this cross in, maybe I can bust out. I pull and strain, leaning forward with all my weight. Nothing budges.
The doorknob turns, and the door creaks open.
I’m not alone after all.
A wormy little guy walks out. Tiny spectacles. Dirty cardigan.
The guy from the Aerie, the one Armin took shots at. Probably would have killed him, too, if I hadn’t screamed until he stood down.
All so I didn’t have to report a body count during ops.
This is what I get for running from the paperwork.
“Looks like we’ve both been up all night,” I slur.
“Shut up, you fucking slut.”
Okay, so he’s conversational. Great. Now I just gotta keep him talking until—
Until what? Nobody knows I’m here, and I drugged the only person in this town who might have actually given a damn.
He stoops to rummage around in the corner.
“Listen,” I say. It’s a tough go of it to keep talking, not to nod off. “This seems super fun, and I’m not against it, but all orders go through Harvey.”
“I’m not here to fuck, whore.” He walks over with a jug in one hand, uncaps it, and splashes its contents in my face, across my arms, down my body. A scream tears from me. I become a stinging, burning mass. “Gotta clean you up.” His tone is conversational. “Manning’s on his way.”
I pant through the pain in short, frantic bursts. Isopropyl alcohol, I reassure myself, my eyes squeezed shut. Not hydrochloric acid. I turn my head and shrug my shoulder as high as I can to try and blot at my eyes, but I can’t quite reach.
The crash of metal on glass on concrete surprises us both. I blink one eye open in time to watch the garage door explode inward.
“What the fuck.” My captor drops his jug of isopropyl.
Guess it’s not Manning.
It’s a familiar SUV.
Armin emerges, steps into the dust and the wreckage.
He crosses the garage at a run, no gun in his hand, no weapon at all, nothing.
I jerk my hands against the restraints, reflex, but there’s no escape.
He grabs one of the empty shelves along the wall and he slams it hard into my cardigan assassin, until he’s pinned up against the wall.
Armin yanks it back, a screech of metal on concrete, and hits the guy in his jaw. That’s all it takes, and he’s down.
He turns to me, his eyes lit with anger.
“He said his boss is coming.”
He runs over, kicks the jug out of the way and sets to struggling with the chains.
“Who.”
“I don’t know,” I lie. “I don’t want to find out.”
Armin shrugs. “So I’ll hit him in the face too.”
“Please.” My voice breaks. I’m cold, all of a sudden. My skin prickles with a clammy sweat. “Just get me out of here.” He leaves me to pat down my dropped attacker and comes up short, then runs into the office. I struggle to keep upright, but my legs give out.
I hang by my arms and listen to Armin curse and destroy whatever’s in that room.
It’s soothing.
That’s probably the drugs.
Or maybe that’s Armin.
I nod off to the distant and satisfying crash of what must be a file cabinet and another string of expletives.
I wake up to a much closer set of curse words. They get louder and louder until I fall forward, and I force my eyes open, gasping. I strain forward with my hands, still stuck, chained up. There’s no way to catch my fall.
But I don’t have to. Armin’s torn me and my cross off the wall with his bare hands. He drags me over to the SUV and props me up against the door while he climbs in back to lower the seats for me and my new getup.
“You’re a real handful sometimes,” he says. “You know that?”
I shrug, my chains rattling.
Armin drags me and my cross over the threshold, tilting me sideways so I fit through the door.
“I guess we should have stuck with the code names,” I rasp. My throat’s gone dry. It’s been a long night since I left this apartment. And it’s not over yet.
“Mia, stop.” He’s mad. He drags me all the way inside and kicks the door shut.
“You like me like this. All tied down. Admit it.”
He lowers me down on the floor, slow and careful. “It’s the only way you stay put.” His eyes have a sheen to them. “Otherwise you’re only a beautiful memory.”
Armin’s in a bad way. I must be more banged up than the last time he pulled me out of a near-death experience.
I want to say a few more clever things to lighten the mood, but my ribs are too bruised for a lot of chit-chat and the drugs are a chemical muzzle.
Plus he’s busy sawing away at these chains anyway.
So I stay quiet.
Finally, the last ankle bracelet clangs to the floor. “Bath?”
“Yeah. Just. I need a minute.”
He nods, and lifts me up off the cross, and slides me into bed.
I struggle to raise up the corner of the blanket with a shaky hand. Armin stands there, looking down on me. Doesn’t budge. Maybe he’s done with me. This was it, the final nail in the coffin of Armin’s patience.
And it’s for the best.
But no. He swipes at his eyes and climbs in next to me.
It’s not nighttime after all: it’s dark because it’s raining outside. I can hear it drumming on the roof. Armin grabs a remote from the end table and hits a button, and the tint on the windows lightens so we can see outside.
I hold my breath to brace against the pain and readjust my body to lean on him, his broad chest warm against my back. I get there in no less than two groans.
“If only they’d hooked me up with another dose,” I quip.
“Ssshhh.” He turns my arm over to reveal a smattering of blue splotches around an angry injection site. “No more of this.” He shakes his head.
I sigh. I’ll have to go get a full blood panel. Can’t expect a cheap murderer to use a clean needle.
I don’t have time for this bullshit. I messed up. Now instead of tightening the rope around Harvey’s neck like I should be I’m laid out and nodding off.
Maybe I don’t have what it takes to see this case through. Maybe that fucking pissant Supervisory Agent was right.
“I’m sorry I drugged you,” I blurt out.
“Me too,” he says. That’s fair. I’ve got no follow up, and I sure as hell don’t have the strength or the presence of mind to begin to discuss anything that’s happened in the past 24 hours.
I manage to rest my head on Armin without another yelp escaping me.
He strokes my hair back from my face, extra gentle around the lacerations and bruises, all the swollen and broken parts.
My eyes are still stinging, too. I can’t imagine what I look like, and I don’t have the inclination to check myself out in a mirror.
That’s a horror show for tomorrow.
“HPG has a doctor on call. I’ll have him come by.”
I don’t argue.
Armin hums a song I don’t recognize, the melody a low rumble in his throat. All the other parts of me are waking up from the fentanyl or heroin or whatever it was, little by little, to hum with a new pain of their own. I have to ignore it, or I’m never going to make it through this night.
I drowse, and I think of her. God, she loved the rain.
I remember when Hurricane Bertha hit our little town.
Nicole thought it was such a great idea for us to go dance outside in the rain and the gale-force winds.
Mom and dad were so pissed. And they were right.
It wasn’t a smart thing to do. But hell, it was fun.
I used to think, if they’d’ve only lightened up, maybe she would have stayed with us, with me.
Maybe she wouldn’t have been conned by a monster like Harvey Blagas. Maybe she would still be alive. I was eleven when my big sister disappeared. She was sixteen.
“Mia?” Armin touches my good arm, a gentle brush with the backs of his knuckles, and it jolts me back to reality. “What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing.” I stare out the window, and I watch the raindrops hit and fall.