Chapter 22
Naomi
They took us into a small, windowless room with two chairs and tied us tightly to them. Chopper said they’d get us to talk, one way or another.
They tortured Eli first, forcing me to watch helplessly while they tried to extract information from him, first with their fists and then with a bat.
My screams and cries to stop fell on deaf ears.
Unless I knew where Eli had hidden the information, I was useless to them.
When the bat slammed into his bad knee with a sickening crunch, dislocating it and tearing a primal scream from Eli, more animal than man, something inside me snapped.
“I know where it is, I’ll tell you,” I’d lied.
But when I gave a hiding spot in our house, they’d known that I was lying.
“We’ve already searched there, you lying bitch,” Chopper sneered.
The force of his backhand hitting me was enough to send my neck cracking to the side, and the chair and I went careening to the floor.
My head hit the concrete floor, and everything went black.
When I wake, I’m still on the cold ground.
My hair is stuck to my face with crusted blood.
My head is pounding, and my mouth is dry.
I groan, the sound coming out as a rasp.
Thirst consumes me, overriding the pain, gnawing at my insides.
My throat burns with every painful, dry swallow.
I blink, wincing in the harsh fluorescent light as I open my eyes.
My unfocused gaze scrambles to make sense of what I’m seeing, and my muddled mind tries to remember where I am.
“Mouse?” Eli moans, his words thick and slurred, as if his tongue grew two sizes too big. I crane my neck painfully, glimpsing my brother off to the side. He sags with relief. “Oh, thank god. I thought you were… I thought…” He can’t finish his sentence. His voice cracks, and he breaks into sobs.
From my distorted angle, I can see the damage they wreaked upon Eli while I was unconscious.
His face is swollen, making him almost unrecognizable, and a line of dried blood trails down his chin.
At my horrified expression, Eli tries to make light of it.
“I needed to go to the dentist anyway.” It’s then that I realize with horror that they’ve pulled some of his teeth out.
My eye lands on one of them, glinting like a pearl on the dirty floor.
We’re going to die here.
Out loud, I ask, “How long was I out?” It’s too painful trying to meet his eye, and I finally give up, resting my head back down.
“Too long,” Eli says, his words filled with concern. I don’t need to see him to know he’s giving me that same look he always does when he’s worrying about me. Only this time he’s right to.
“Where did they go?” I croak, each word a razor in my throat.
“I sent them on a wild goose chase to buy us time. They’ll be back soon, though, and they’ll be pissed.” I can hear the conflict in his tone. He doesn’t know if he made the right choice.
Buying us time was precisely the right choice.
If Eli tells them where it really is, they’ll kill us once they have it.
The longer we can hold them off, the longer we live.
Surely the guys will notice we’re gone and come looking for us?
“I wish there was a window in here, or some other way to tell the time,” I say.
“I’m wearing my watch, but I can’t see it. My hands are tied behind my back,” Eli explains.
I suddenly have a thought as I realize the implications. “Wait, did you say you’re wearing your watch? You didn’t leave it at home? They didn’t confiscate it?”
“No, I’m still wearing it.”
I grasp on for dear life to this new hope, a life raft, thrown seconds before drowning. “It’s a smartwatch! The guys can track it. Can’t they?”
“I hope they can. No offense, but they aren’t exactly the most tech minded.
” Despite our predicament I can hear the amusement in his voice.
“I usually keep tracking disabled, but when I realized something was wrong, I switched it on. The Rusted Scythes know shit about technology, so I figured they might not realize that it was a smartwatch.”
Hope bubbles up, and I have the urge to holler, “We’re saved!” Instead, I say, “You’re a genius, Eli!” My parched throat protests at the outburst, and I descend into dry, heaving coughs that wrack my body and make my head feel like it’s going to explode.
“Naomi!” Eli cries, sounding panicked and scared.
Eventually, the coughs subside, and I’m able to choke out a few words of assurance. “I’m okay. Thirsty.” I focus on breathing deeply to prevent another attack, and we fall into silence, knowing I can’t speak anymore.
The only sounds in our prison is our breathing. My breaths labored and rasping, and Eli’s wet and rattling. He doesn’t sound good. If help doesn’t come soon, I don’t know how long we’ll last.
The muffled sound of approaching motorcycles fills me with hope, and I pray that rescue has arrived. But when the door groans open, the heavy footsteps belong to Chopper.
“Think you’re fucking smart, do ya?” he snarls as he strides over to Eli.
There’s a violent thud, the sound of boot meeting bone, and a soft, wet grunt that escapes Eli as Chopper kicks him.
“No, please, don’t hurt him anymore!” The words tear from me in a fiery rasp.
“Well, look who’s awake,” Chopper says cheerfully, his wrath against Eli momentarily forgotten.
The world spins for a moment as he pulls the chair upright in one sudden movement, leaving me reeling.
My head slumps forward, unable to take its own weight.
He grips my chin, tilting my neck back to look at my face, and tuts.
“What a mess. I doubt The Road Renegades would pay thirty thousand for you now.”
“Please,” I rasp.
He tilts his head coquettishly, his voice mocking. “What’s that? I can’t hear you, speak up.”
“She needs water,” Eli says.
Chopper’s eyes glint with devious intent. “Well, why didn’t you just ask?” he says with a hollow, evil laugh that makes the hairs on the back of my arms stand up.
He drops my chin, and my head slumps back down like a rag doll.
When he returns moments later, we realize with sick dread what he’s about to do.
Mine and Eli’s screams of protest and fear blur into surreal disbelief as Chopper and his goons move me so I’m lying on my back with a cloth over my face, covering my nose and mouth.
I hear the water sloshing in the bucket above me.
My heart is thumping so hard it might explode.
“You want water? Here you go,” Chopper says delightedly.
The water cascades down in a torrent, slapping me with force before it starts to drown me. I gasp and splutter, but I can’t get any air; there’s only the relentless gush of water suffocating me. I’m going to drown on dry land.
I lose all sense of time. The torture feels like it lasts an eternity. But then it stops.
“Please, please, just stop! I’ll tell you where it is,” Eli begs.
“If you’re lying, I will kill her. I will rape her and kill her while you watch,” Chopper promises, his voice laced with sinister intent.
“If I tell you, she lives, no matter what. Naomi knows nothing of the contents of that tape. She can live. She won’t talk.
She lives,” Eli insists firmly. I can tell by his voice that he doesn’t expect that he’ll be given the same immunity.
He’s accepting that they’ll kill him, but he wants them to promise that I will live.
“No, Eli, you can’t tell them, they’ll kill you,” I sputter. The cloth is still covering my face, and I can’t see anything.
“I don’t care, as long as you live,” Eli insists. “Promise me, Chopper.”
“Deal,” Chopper replies, too quickly. I don’t trust him to fulfill his promise.
Eli’s voice is sad and resigned when he finally admits, “I buried it with our parents. I can take you there.”
“Naomi knows where that is, doesn’t she?
She can show us the way. If it’s not there, I’ll bury her alive with them, a nice little family reunion.
Then we can take you back once we’ve finally found it and you can join them, after we’ve had fun with sis—dead or alive.
” The threat is so sickening, so beyond what I thought anyone capable of, I can’t quite believe it, but I can tell from his tone he’s deadly serious.
“No. I can go,” Eli insists.
“With that fucked knee? You’ll be lucky if you walk again, kid. No, Naomi comes. For her sake, you’d better not have lied to me,” Chopper says.
I don’t know where Eli hid the memory stick. I’ve no way of knowing whether it’s true or not. As Chopper and his goons roughly untie me and lead me away, I try to look at Eli, to see if I can tell the truth in his eyes. I’ve no idea if I’m heading toward my death.
I do know that this is probably the last time Eli and I will ever see each other. One of us is about to die.