Chapter 37
THIRTY-SEVEN
Jessica woke up with a full body jerk. It drove her feet and head into hard metal. It hurt, and the crashing sound of her collision made her heart beat wildly.
She lay there, breathing fast, trying to figure out where she was.
It was dark. But she wasn’t in the trunk anymore. She was lying on her side, legs bent, on a cold floor. It was concrete. Gritty and damp and hard.
Something solid was pressing against the soles of her shoes and the top of her head. She tried to straighten her legs but couldn’t. When she tried to pull apart her hands, she found they were still bound with the zip ties.
Her eyes roamed around, feeling dilated, trying to make sense of her surroundings in the darkness.
A cage. She was in a fucking cage.
Panicking, she pushed herself into a sitting position, only to hit her head again on the top of the cage. It made a sound like cymbals crashing every time she struck it.
She tried to calm down and think for a moment, but her body was going haywire on her.
Her heart was galloping in her chest, and she couldn’t seem to get enough oxygen into her lungs.
She wasn’t claustrophobic, but the feeling of being trapped in the dark by unknown assailants was a primal fear.
Her body’s only response was pure panic.
She closed her eyes and rode the wave of terror until it slowly ebbed.
When she opened them again, she realized the room wasn’t as dark as she’d thought.
Light was filtering in from a rain splattered window to her left.
It was an artificial orange, which meant it came from a streetlight.
Which suggested she was in a town or a city.
She peered around the room. It looked like a kitchen. She could make out a sink and a counter that ran the length of the wall beneath the window. More shapes to the right took the form of a table and chairs. A darker gap beyond indicated a doorway.
The small lump pressing into her hip bone told her the gun was still there. She didn’t know how she’d get to it with her wrists tied—if she could at all—but just knowing it was there kept the panic from swallowing her whole.
She went to the bars of the cage and ran her hands over them. The metal strips were thin but closely spaced. It was, she realized, a large dog crate. She closed her fingers around the railings and pulled as hard as she could, but they didn’t even bend.
A good quality dog crate.
She followed the bars around until she found the opening. Shaking it, she discovered it was fastened with a length of galvanized chain and a chunky combination lock. She twirled the numbers a few times, knowing it was hopeless. Without some incredibly good luck, there was no way out via that door.
It was then that she realized her crate wasn’t the only one in the room. Butted up against hers was another.
And inside it was a person.
Pulse thudding in her ears, she gripped the bars and pressed her face against them. “Hello?” Her throat was so dry, the word came out as a croak. “Can you hear me?”
The person didn’t move. Maybe they were asleep. Or maybe they’d been drugged, like she’d been.
They were leaning against the side of their cage, their arm pressing against the bars, their head twisted in the opposite direction. Jessica stared hard into the darkness, trying to make out more details about the other prisoner. It was a woman. And she still wasn’t moving.
She pressed her palms together and wedged her hands through a gap in the bars. She reached through into the other cage and shook the woman’s shoulder.
She let go instantly and yanked her fingers back through the bars. The woman’s arm was bare. And cold. And stiff.
At the sudden jostling, the woman slumped further against the cage. Her head lolled to the other side, so she was now staring directly at Jessica.
With blank, dead eyes.
Sucking in a scream, Jessica scrambled to the far side of her cage. Her back hit it, making the thing clang loudly.
The dead woman’s eyes had followed her. The light from the window glinted off them, so that even through the darkness, Jessica could still see them staring right at her.
Run, they seemed to say. Run while you can.
But she couldn’t. There was no more running. It was over. She reached the end of the line.
Instead of fear, a part of her felt relief. I don’t want to run anymore, she’d told Ryan. So, in one way, she’d gotten what she wished for.
She pressed herself into the corner of her cage and lifted her knees to her chest, drawing some strength from the hard lump of her revolver.
* * *
Sitting in the darkness, her mind took strange turns down dark paths. She saw Daniel again, lying beside her in bed. Smiling at her. Then he became Ryan. Then the dead girl with the staring eyes. Then she was gazing at her own dead body.
She jerked out of the half-dream, making the cage rattle.
Through the window above the sink, she saw that the sky had lightened to a soft gray, and the streetlights had turned off. Rain still streaked the glass. It was probably the remnants of the hurricane she’d survived many miles to the south.
Thinking about the storm made her think about Ryan. Where he was now. If the authorities had caught up with him and, if so, what was going to happen to him. And then she found herself wondering why she cared.
And yet she did. For reasons she didn’t have the strength or the desire to examine any further.
As the sky grew lighter, she could make out more details of her surroundings.
The kitchen was in terrible shape. There were no appliances left, just gaps in the counter where once an oven and a fridge might have been.
Most of the countertop itself was gone, the chipboard eaten away as if a giant rat had gnawed it, exposing the wooden framework beneath.
Every cupboard door had been ripped from its hinges and the linoleum floor had been torn up in large strips.
The whole place stunk like mildew, unwashed clothing, and urine.
She glanced at the dead woman in the cage next to hers.
And death, too.
With the increasing light, the sounds of the traffic outside grew, too. Cars, trucks, the distant rattle of a city rail. The rain kept up a steady patter. Then, those noises were joined by a much nearer one. A sound coming from within the house. A sound getting closer.
Footsteps.
Jessica took slow, controlled breaths, determined not to succumb to panic again. She held her hands close to her waistband, resisting the urge to tug the gun out.
A dark figure appeared in the doorway. Bald head, shoulders so wide they brushed each side of the frame.
Made even wider by the bulky military jacket he was wearing.
She would have recognized him from his shape alone, but as soon as he came further into the kitchen, there was no doubt who he was.
A spiderweb tattooed, now faded, covered his pale scalp.
The infamous Terry.
At his feet was a humongous black dog. It was a German Shepard, with enormous paws that clipped as it walked. It stopped when Terry stopped. Stared when Terry stared.
The man squatted down in front of her cage. Smiled at her. “Well, hi there, darling.”
She stayed in the far corner, feeling lightheaded. She tried to keep still, but her whole body was shaking.
He smiled again. Like she’d confirmed something for him. “Yeah, Daniel always had a weakness for the pretty girls.” He pushed himself to his feet with a groan. “I told him it would be his downfall one day. But he wouldn’t listen.” He chuckled. “Stubborn son of a bitch, wasn’t he?”
He turned to the table. She noticed it was littered with bulky objects. There were several power tools, their cords draped over the edge and plugged into a powerstrip. One was a circular saw; the other, an angle grinder. Like they were doing renovations on the kitchen.
There were several guns, too. Very big ones.
He picked one up. It was a military rifle. He held it in both hands and gave a low whistle. “An AR-15. Nice” He looked at the other weapon on the table. Some kind of pump-action shotgun. “And a Remington 870. Your marshal had some very fine firearms.”
So, he’d found Ryan’s rifle bag. She swallowed the hard lump in her throat and said hoarsely, “If you’re going to kill me, you might as well get it over with.”
He chuckled like she’d said something funny.
Then pulled out the chair and turned it so it was facing her.
“I ain’t gonna kill you, darling.” He sat down, bracing the rifle across his knees.
“Though it’s not like I ain’t got a whole bunch of reasons to.
Ten of ’em, actually. One for every year I spent in that fucking place. ”
He was talking about prison. Jessica hadn’t followed the trial of the twelve La Mano Negra gang members after she’d helped to indict them.
She’d had no interest in what became of Daniel’s so-called friends.
Not after what they’d done to him. But she learned from a vague source, possibly Inez or maybe just from idle online scrolling, that all of them had been convicted.
Their sentences had varied from a couple of years to fifteen, and she’d heard Terry had received a lengthier one.
He leaned forward and said, “But you see, I now got a better reason to keep you alive. Borya Sokolov has agreed to pay me a lot of money for you.”
Sokolov. That name conjured the image Jessica still carried around in the back of her mind of Sasha Sokolov’s brain matter splattered behind him.
Daniel’s handiwork.