Chapter 2
Chapter Two
L orelai…
“What’s your last name, Lorelai?” he asked me and I struggled against him. Any time I relaxed and he began to, the moment I tried to stir, to fight, his arms would tighten around me like steel bands and there was no winning against him. His friends had left what had felt like hours ago but was probably only minutes. This strange man I didn’t know and I remained on the floor in the corner, his shirt wrapped around me like a strait jacket, the cage of his strong arms imprisoning me. During our struggle, I had somehow wound up with my back to his front and he had wound around me like a thick Wysteria vine. His touch was light when I stopped fighting, but strong and unbreakable the moment I even thought about trying to twitch a muscle.
I groped into the empty darkness that was my head for the answer to his question and told the truth, an icy finger of dread swiping across my heart.
“I don’t know,” I said and my breath was still and quiet, barely audible as I swallowed hard and shuddered against him. His arms tightened.
“Okay,” he said carefully, and I couldn’t tell if he believed me or not. Tears sprang to my eyes, my face growing hot with a fresh wave of panic as I realized I didn’t know .
I mean, who doesn’t know their own name?
“Easy,” he said as I started to pant in panic once more.
“Where am I?” I demanded in a high, tight voice, and I hated it – I hated that I sounded so frightened and the fear only compounded the further I tried to grope through the miasma and haze to know anything about myself…
“Funeral home,” he said quietly. “You were, for all intents and purposes, dead.”
I swallowed hard.
“That didn’t stop your friend…” I whispered and he snorted.
“Reaper’s… different. Not an excuse, but it’s the best explanation I’ve got.”
“Let me go,” I pleaded.
“Can’t do that,” he said. “Not until we figure out who you are and where you came from.”
I heard myself whimper as I winced and my voice was tight when I said, “I don’t know anything!”
He sighed and said, “I believe you. Relax. We’ll get things sorted out.”
“Who are you?” I asked. “What’s your name?”
“They call me Hangman,” he said. “You can, too.”
I froze, the breath stilling in my lungs, as what he said sank in through my hazy and sluggish thought process.
Hangman… I knew what a hangman was, but I couldn’t tell you how I knew or who I was, or where I came from. It was like there was this strange block of darkness in my head. Like I knew how to talk, how to read, how to write, what things were, and how they worked, but everything else was blank. I didn’t know anything about me… I didn’t know my name or if Lorelai was even it. I didn’t know where I lived, my address, my phone number, my parents, where I went to school, or what city I was in or where I’d come from or how I’d gotten here. It was just all an eerily unpleasant blank .
“Why do they call you that?” I whispered.
“Never mind that for right now,” he said. “Just try to focus. What do you remember?”
I tried to scrape any kind of cohesive thought or memory out of the dark of my mind and I said, “I had a dog growing up, Mitzi… she was an Australian Shepherd. When she died, I swore I would never have a dog again. I never have.”
“Seriously?” he asked, as tears gathered and threatened to spill from my eyes.
“You asked, I told you!” I snapped. “I don’t remember! ”
Something must have been in my voice because his arms tightened marginally and his voice took on that soothing tone as he said softly, “Okay, it’s okay. That’s good enough for now… just… keep trying.”
I scoffed and sniffed, paralyzed with fear. Not knowing anything but that these men could and would hurt me and that I’d just seemingly woken from being supposedly dead and that I wasn’t eager to go back to it.
He held me fast while the other one I hadn’t woken up to with his cock in my hand strode up to us, his dress shoes sounding in smart reports against the shiny waxed floor.
“You got her?” he demanded, running a hand over his hair, and putting a hand over his mouth as though he was fit to be tied… him… wasn’t that just something?
“Yeah, go figure out what the fuck this is,” the man holding me demanded. “And take Reap with you!” he called at the man in the suit’s back. The man in the suit, with the dark hair, went over to his companion who was stiffly lumbering to his feet and took him by the elbow, winding back and forth up the switchback ramp and disappearing through the double doors.
“Just stay here, stay calm, while we figure out what the hell just happened,” the man holding me said.
“That’s easy for you to say,” I murmured, and I felt him nod once, his bearded chin tapping lightly on my hair but just shy of contacting my head.
“What year is it?” he asked me and I frowned and rattled off the number.
“Who is the president of the United States?” he asked. I told him that too.
“How can you know all that, but not know your last name or anything else?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, worried.
“What do you know?” he asked, and I tried once again to push through the swirling empty miasma that were my muddled memories.
“I used to live in a house. It was white. There’s a woman with dark brown hair and a man who is a ginger – I think they’re my parents. I don’t really know more than that. I can’t explain it.”
“Okay, so childhood memories, that’s not bad. Just keep going through them if you can for the important stuff.”
“I’m not even sure Lorelai is my name,” I said with a wince. “I mean, I don’t know if I want it to be or if I like it.”
“Just sit tight,” he said. “It’ll get figured out.”
“Why not just let me go?” I asked.
“And do what? And go where?” he asked.
“I won’t tell,” I said. “On your friend or whatever. I won’t say what he did.”
His arms tightened around me and he swore softly, “Shit.”
He sighed, and it was a heavy thing that stirred the hair on the top of my head.
“No,” he said. “You won’t.”
I swallowed hard at the undercurrent of threat in his tone, but then, surprisingly, it softened some, and he whispered gently, “I’m sorry he did that to you. I don’t know what he was thinking.”
I swallowed hard and asked him honestly, “Do you really want to?”
He snorted.
“No. No, I do not.”
We were silent for a long time as I shivered in his grasp and I tried again. “Please, just let me go. Call the police or whatever you would normally do in a situation like this. We’ll just say I woke up and scared your friend and he scared me and that will be it. I’ll – I’ll go to the hospital or something and it will all get figured out and we’ll never have to see each other ever again.”
“Just wait for Grim to get back and we’ll go from there – yeah?” he said.
I felt myself shrink in his grasp with defeat and we sat for a long time still before the echoing sound of approaching footsteps, a single set, had me stiffening in his hold again.
One of the double doors swung open and the man with dark hair and serious five-o’clock shadow stepped back in, pulling his tie loose from around his neck.
“Houston, we have a problem,” he said flatly, and his voice held the bitter tang of iron and displeasure.
“What’s that?” Hangman asked as the man stood atop the three steps leading down here, the door swinging idly behind him.
“She’s a special case,” he said. “A Jane Doe, set for cremation.”
“Fuck,” Hangman muttered.
“What does that mean?” I asked, staring across the big room at him.
“It means until we do some more digging, you’re staying right where you are,” he said, his dark gaze stormy where it settled on me.
“Please,” I said and I lunged, but Hangman was too fast. He wrapped his arms and legs around me and held me fast as I screamed and fought and cried, but all the dark-haired one he’d called Grim did was stand there with his arms crossed, wincing at the noise I made.
Not good.