Chapter 71 Kane
KANE
The hospital looks the part but there’s no other patients, unless the creepy skeleton sitting in the corner of the room counts.
The bones aren’t white or that strange yellow I’ve seen before.
They’re black. I’ve been left alone after the doctor cut away the infected flesh and snapped more of my bone to round out my limb.
The tube leading out of the gauze drains the excess fluid away as I continue staring at the skeleton in this windowless room, trying to work out why it’s painted black.
Thankfully, they’ve allowed me to keep my mask on. I don’t think they want to humanize me. Neither do I, so at least we have something in common. There’s a soft clatter in the hallway then the muttering I’ve had as company for the last three years. “Stupid idiot, making me find you.”
“Crazy pants?” I softly call out.
The door is roughly pushed open, and Sasha stands in her usual outfit of black with a normal balaclava instead of her rotting face. Pride wells in my chest at the sight of her learning to be around people like I’ve been slowly teaching her as I pat the bed. “Missed me?”
“No.” She grimaces despite the clear relief in her emerald eyes. Her steps are slow until she sits beside me on the opposite side to my severed arm, staring at the draining tubes.
Little red veins crawl out from the sides of her eyes, making me sigh. “Why didn’t you go to sleep?”
“You said you were coming back.”
“I’m sorry.” I gently pull her down, avoiding the IV in my arm as I kiss her crown. “Go to sleep. I’m here now.”
Her eyes close as I rest my cheek on the top of her head and rub her back. My other arm has the urge to move like my hand is still attached. I don’t know when my brain will understand that the appendage is no longer there. I hope it’s sooner rather than later.
Metallic clanging vibrates through the building, followed by rushed footsteps.
I tighten my arm around Sasha as the doctor and Decker enter the room. The gun hasn’t left his hand since he brought me here after knocking me unconscious.
“Who is she?” He waves the gun towards the little nutcase tucked into my side. “I thought you’d lost your wife?”
“She’s my sister,” I snap. “Don’t wave your gun at her again. I might have one hand, but I’ll use it to rip your fucking tongue out.”
The doctor doesn’t say anything as she steps forward to check the drainage tube. Her bedside manner is cold as fuck, along with her dead eyes. She must be a surgeon because her precision was immaculate. They also tend to be more arrogant, like Harkin.
“Your sister?” he asks, lowering his weapon.
Ignoring him, I turn to the doctor. “Is it infected?”
“No,” she says. “You can leave once it’s finished draining.”
“Where are the auctions?” I nod, hugging Sasha tighter as she keeps her eyes closed.
The doctor’s eyes harden as she looks over her shoulder at Decker like he owes her an explanation.
They both have dark hair, hers slightly darker, but their complexions are different, so I’m assuming they’re related as his hazel eyes soften along with his voice when he meets her hard, dark ones. “All done, Morty?”
“Done,” she says in the same cold manner before storming out of the room.
He closes the door, rolling a leather-padded stool in front of it when I can’t move.
If I had the energy, I’d roll my eyes at the gun still in his hand as he rests his forearms on his thighs.
Rude fucking cunt. I’m currently missing a forearm and hand, so he doesn’t need to flaunt that he has two.
“Do you want your sister to hear this?” he asks.
“She knows more about that place than anyone else.”
Sasha snaps her eyes open like a little demon. They’re bright red from her insomnia but her voice is childlike as she whispers, “I let you stay in the shower longer. You were funny when you were pretending to be in a movie.”
He nods slowly, disconcerted with the reminder of The Dollhouse before explaining, “The auctions have a buy-in. You’ll have to wear a mask, but he won’t be on site because of a security concern he hasn’t been able to get rid of.”
“Where is it?”
“The location isn’t revealed until twenty-four hours before.” Sweeping his assessing gaze from the top of my mask-covered head to my dirty boots, he asks, “Will you be able to afford it?”
Fuck. The Three killed me so all of my legal businesses are with Scarlet as the trustee.
I don’t think she’ll be in the mood to help me, given our last interaction.
The rest of the money I’ve managed to steal was left with Sasha.
My little nutcase buries her face into my shoulder to hide her whisper. “Your money is in the car.”
I kiss her temple in gratitude, the movement drawing Decker’s full attention. He softens the longer my lips are on that small patch of her face.
“Money isn’t an issue,” I answer.
“How will you give me Rowan?”
“Easy. He’ll stop hiding to attend his mother’s funeral, so when I kill that bitch, you’ll have your opportunity to kill him.”
“He has a mother?” he spits.
“Don’t we all?” I close my eyes as the drugs work through the IV. “I remember you. You kept leaving chocolate bars in my cell when we were going through the plea information.”
“I haven’t been a prosecutor in years.”
“I know. I was eighteen.” Opening my eyes, I look at him as he examines me. I gently lift my mask to see if he recognizes me, to see how far away I am from the innocent eighteen-year-old child who was crying in a cell.
“You killed your brother,” he whispers.
“Wrong, Mr. Prosecutor. Rowan put me there. I have more reasons than you to want him dead.”
“I always thought it didn’t make sense,” he says, lowering the gun.
“I’d sat opposite cold-blooded murders more times than I could count at that point, but you weren’t like them.
They’re usually arrogant, believing they’re untouchable.
In all the police interviews, court proceedings, you weren’t.
You even cried when they showed his body to the jury. ”
“He was my brother.”
“I still am,” Asher hisses.
“Just because we weren’t close,” I whisper as Sasha’s soft snoring reaches my ear, “doesn’t mean I wanted him dead.”
“Family,” he says gently, with understanding. “Die for them, die with them.”
Sasha has become my pharmacist, keeping track of how many milligrams of ketamine she’s administered and when. Sleeping in a car isn’t the most conducive environment to healing but it’s better than a dusty, abandoned building with rodents.
“It’s been four hours and thirty-seven minutes,” I say when she restarts counting on her fingers.
“So, you have…” She tilts her head, squinting. “Erm, sixty-three minutes left.”
“Twenty-three,” I correct. “There’s only sixty minutes in an hour.”
“That’s stupid,” she spits. “Everything else is in hundreds.”
I have one more day until I’ll have Delilah, so I don’t argue with her as she drives.
Back in her rotting mask, she almost looks normal with her hair covering the edges.
She doesn’t speed or drive through heavy traffic areas as she searches for something to eat.
A fucked up part of me wishes I kept my severed limb.
At least she wouldn’t be hungry, and it would have a use rather than being a trophy for the Wards to keep.
The car is equipped with everything we’ll need since Decker was feeling charitable. I wince as I reach into the backseat for a protein bar. I have to use my teeth to open it before passing it to my driver. She’s cute as fuck, humming as she bites into it. “Chocolate cake.”
As per my new compulsion, I check my pocket to make sure the card is still there. I haven’t been able to see what the location is but the bloody puddle the bitch put it in activated the chemicals, so it’ll be waiting for me.
We turn towards a row of rundown warehouses as Sasha whispers, “Is this okay?”
“Yeah. Park anywhere. Climb in the back to go to sleep.”
She pulls into a warehouse lot, drives around the familiar grey building, then parks at the back. Her seat smoothly lowers until it’s flat. She’s so excited about all the luxury she presses random buttons on the dash until she turns on the massage function.
“Having fun, crazy pants?”
“It’s warm.” She quickly nods, pushing back in the seat. “The first time you turned it on, I thought I pissed myself.”
“Do you piss yourself often?” I laugh as I recline my seat, staring at my phone.
“No.” She lifts her hand to punch me, then thinks better of it to avoid my injured arm. “You piss yourself.”
“No, I fucking don’t. That was you when you grabbed the steering wheel.” I make my voice high-pitched and squeaky. “Kane. I need to stop.”
“I don’t sound like that,” she says, deepening her voice.
“You do. Especially when you say you’re hungry.”
“Well, well, erm,” she stutters, searching the ceiling for an insult. “You look stupid.” She turns over, facing the door. “And your voice tastes like shit.”
“How would you know how my voice tastes?”
Excitement fills her bright eyes as she whips around, staring at me over her shoulder. “I can taste sounds, but your voice changes a lot.”
“It does?”
“Yeah.” Laying on her back, she explains, “When you’re like this, it tastes like caramel. Sometimes, when you’re talking to yourself, it tastes like cigarettes.”
“Smoke?”
“No, like eating the ashy part. Remember when I drank out of the bottle you put the stub in?”
I nod.
“It tastes like that. When you talk about Delilah, it’s a new taste, like all the sugar in the world has been mixed with salt so I can’t tell what’s sweet and what’s bitter.”
“Neither can I,” I whisper, rolling the window down an inch. The heated seats will stop her from being cold, but I can’t sleep in case I miss the location of the auction, so I clumsily take a cigarette out and dip my head to light it since I can’t cup the flame to protect it from the breeze.
Sasha turns off the massage function as she turns on her side, facing me. “Can I try?”
“No. It’s bad for you.” I roll the window down a little more, holding the cigarette out of the car. “You can get cancer and shit.”
“Why do you do it then?”
“Because I do.”
If she was a cat, her ears would be pricked as she reaches between the seats, curling her fingers around her knife.
I slowly turn my head to see what’s scaring her, realizing why the warehouse is familiar when the large, tattooed man stares down at me from his place beside a metal door.
It’s the same fucker who tortured me three years ago.
“The first one you promised Rowan to.”
I lazily bring the cigarette to my lips, taking a drag as I place my other hand on Sasha’s. Only, my empty sleeve slips into the crack between us.
“I thought you’d died,” Vlad says, glaring at me.
“Didn’t you get my letters?” I blow out the smoke in a line to distract from the fact I’ve promised Rowan’s life to two people. I’ll give them the same information, whoever finds him first can have dibs. It can be a game of “hunt the predator” to keep him distracted while I drown in Delilah.
A car I fucking followed after making Decker think I’d taken his wife pulls into the empty lot. These fuckers know each other. They respectfully nod at each other as the latter gets out of his car, then both try to look at Sasha as another car rolls through the open gates.
I lean forward, blocking her. “Is this a support group?”
The fully black SUV stops on the other side of the duo and the back passenger window rolls down, so I can see the suited arm of a man as he sits on the furthest side behind the driver.
He must be a fucking giant because he doesn’t move from his seat as he passes Decker a manila folder.
No words are exchanged that I can hear. They leave as quickly as they arrived.
I catch sight of the man in the back with the strangest eyes I’ve ever seen.
The shadowed cab covers the majority of his face, but his eyes are too light, almost glowing in the dark.
I take another drag, allowing the smoke to swirl around the car in an effort to obstruct Sasha as I keep their attention on me. “He didn’t survive, so he’s not allowed to stay?”
“Here.” Decker pushes the folder through the open window. “It’s the location, buy-in, and rules. You’ll need a suit, but I’m sure you have the masks figured out.”
Sasha’s creepy ass human mask is going to make them rescind their help, so I lie, “Yeah, we went to a Halloween store.” She’s intelligent enough to pull her hood over her head, sitting back as I flick through the pages showing the various categories available.
Children, women, men. There’s nothing off-limits.
There in the middle of it all is my beautiful wife as she glares at the fucker taking her photo.
Ash flakes away from the glowing cherry dangling from my lips as I use my middle finger to stroke the side of her face.
Three years of only seeing her through recordings she didn’t know I had.
Three years of not seeing my wife age. Three fucking years and I don’t have to imagine if she has wrinkles or how her hair grew back.
The last time I saw my wife, she was bald.
Now she’s angry with hair down to her shoulders.
Vlad walks to Decker’s car and pops the trunk while I continue staring at the photo of my wife.
Sasha tenses as the annoying fucking captive leans into the car, whispering, “I know your name and what happened to you when you were inside, Kane. Whatever you do, don’t lose yourself because of the memories. ”
He steps back as the imposing Russian returns, pushing two suit bags through the window. “Leave. Don’t try dying again. It won’t absolve you of our deal.”
“You wound me,” I say lightly. “I thought we were friends?”