Chapter 9
Shane
Iwas in Mom’s garden. Dad was there, too. I ran toward them through the sunflowers, the hollyhocks, the tall corn.
“Mom! Dad!” I sprinted, heedless of pea-vines, beans, raspberry canes.
“Stop!” Mom held up her hand.
“Why? Why stop?” I reeled back, heart pumping. Bewildered.
“You can’t be here,” she said. “Baby, I’m sorry. But no.”
I was gripped by a terrible grief and betrayal. “Why not? You don’t want me?”
“Always,” she said. “But you’re not done. You can’t stay.”
I was frozen in disbelief. Not done? Where to even begin with that?
“Mom,” I said. “Get real. No one, in the history of being done, has ever been more done than me.”
She shook her head. “No, you’re not. Go back. You have to finish this, baby.”
I heard a whirring, the grinding, and suddenly the thick slab of glass was between us.
I was trapped behind it again. I pounded on it, yelling.
I couldn’t hear her through the glass, but I saw her reach out to touch the glass, like Red had done.
Her eyes looked so sad. Her lips were moving.
I love you, baby, she was saying. Sorry.
Then she transformed into Red in her pale green ball-gown, mouthing ‘I am so sorry, I am so sorry,’ as stark agony stung me in the throat, a thousand bees all stinging, inside, outside. Every part of me in burning, writhing pain…
I was screaming. Struggling to breathe, gasping, choking, fighting. Light blazed into my eyes. My arms and tried to flail, but couldn’t. I was bound in a straightjacket.
The convulsions slowly eased. I panted for breath. I was so cold. I shivered violently, as if I were naked in the snow. So much light. My eyes stung. The air smelled so different. I was swaddled in… what the hell? A sleeping bag? No. Colder. Tighter.
Red was huddled in against the wall of tiny room that I slowly realized was the back of a van. I saw daylight through the windows on the sides. She was still in her ball-gown, the skirt all puffed out in a circle around her. Her hair had come down.
What the fuck is this? I tried to say it, but I couldn’t make my mouth work. I tried again. “Red?” I coughed out.
She was crying, her face wildly smeared with makeup. She wore a shiny blue wrap around her shoulders. “I am so sorry,” she said. “But you have to help me now.”
Help her? She wanted me to help her? That was so messed up, I started to laugh, always a mistake. It made the wire across my throat saw savagely at my raw and swollen flesh. “For real? Have you seen me, Red? You’re hallucinating.”
“No. I’m not hallucinating, and neither are you,” she said. “I found out Halliwell was going to have you gassed to death, so I switched out the gas canisters. I loaded it with a sedative. They thought you were dead.”
“So... I’m free? That’s what you’re telling me?” I could hear the skepticism in my own voice.
“Almost.” She reached behind herself, and turned the door handle, pushing open the back door.
The rush almost knocked me out. Blazing outdoor light, the intensely perfumed, hyper-oxygenated outside air. The smell of earth, trees, stone, plants. The rustle of wind in the trees. I sat up, struggling to move in what I abruptly realized was a body bag.
Red pulled the van’s back door shut. The wind stopped, the light diminished. The cold made my teeth clack in my mouth.
I struggled to unzip the body bag and peel it off. “What does ‘almost’ mean?”
“You have to help me out with something first. And then you’ll be free.”
I puzzled over that for a second, then realized that she was trembling. Her lips were blue. Like she was afraid of me… or of what she had to do. What the fuck?
“Red,” I said. “I’m in no condition to help anyone. My resources are all tapped out. So open up that door and get the hell out of my way.”
“You have to help me,” she said, desperately. “My little sister is trapped in one of his clinics. He said he’d cure her, but I just found out that he was the one who made her sick in the first place. The son of a bitch. He scammed me.”
I waited for more. “And? So?”
“I have to save her!” she wailed. “As soon as he knows I busted you out, he’s going to punish me by hurting her!”
I shook my head. “How am I supposed to help you? Lady. I’m barefoot, half naked, drugged out of my gourd, fucked up in every possible way. I barely remember my own name. What the fuck do you want from me?”
“Anything! Anything you can do! You owe me!”
“I do?”
“Yes! I broke you out of that place! At great risk to myself! You have to help me now! You’re a Masters.
You guys are massively rich. Influential.
You know all kinds of people from the security company you ran before, right?
You could call people. You guys could stage a rescue for Reggie really fast, with the Masters security apparatus. ”
I shook my head. “I never made any deal with you.”
She waved her hand impatiently. “If I had come to you and said, ‘will you help me save my sister if I break you out of here,’ would you have accepted?”
I snorted. “I would have said you were full of shit.”
“Well, as you clearly see, I’m not. So? You owe me. This what I need in return.”
I felt a bizarre urge to smile at her wacky reasoning. “Doesn’t work that way, beautiful. You never offered me a bargain. I never accepted one. I am not bound by your convoluted reasoning, or a deal that you dreamed up in your head.”
“Goddamn it, Masters.” Her shaking voice was low, furious. “You fucking owe me this, at the very least. You could get me the help I need. We both know it.”
“Why should I put my people in harm’s way? It could be a trap.”
“What would be the point?” she yelled. “All Halliwell wants is SmokeScreen. Your team wouldn’t have that to give him. It would be stupid to set a trap like that. He’s not stupid.”
I shook my head. “I won’t be your tool, Red. I’m very sorry for your problems, and I’ve got nothing against your little sister. But no. Fuck, no.”
She shook her head, eyes streaming with tears. Her mouth shook as she reached into a bag under her skirt… and pulled out a white plastic remote control.
My head buzzed, my belly flopped, my whole body tightened in anticipatory agony. “So,” I ground out. “It’s like that, huh?”
“It… it doesn’t have to be.” Her hand, holding the remote, shook as hard as her mouth. “Don’t make me do this. Please. This isn’t who I am. I’m not like him. I don’t enjoy hurting people. I don’t get off on control.”
“No?”
“No, I fucking do not! I just want to save Reggie! My innocent little ten-year-old sister! I have money, Masters. As soon as I get access to it, when this is over, I’ll give you whatever you want.
Hell, I’ll give you everything I have. I truly do not give a fuck about any of it.
All I care about is Reggie. And I need your help to save her! Please!”
I studied her mascara-smeared face as I pondered my next words. “Pro tip, Red,” I told her. “Don’t cry and plead when you’re holding a mortal weapon on someone. It confuses the living shit out of the person you’re trying to compel.”
“Oh, fuck you,” she snarled. “I’m just asking you to help me save a sweet, awesome little girl. She’s a great kid, and she’s all I have in the world, and I would do anything to save her. Absolutely anything, okay? Including hurting you. If I have to.”
I studied her for a moment, the snarled hair, the heaving bosom, the wild, wet eyes, the red-stained lips. She was a chaotic bundle of emotions. She was not in control.
“No,” I said.
Her lips tightened in fierce resolve. “I swear, I will use this on you, Shane. I don’t want to, but I will.”
“Go ahead,” I said. “Do your worst. I’m done being jerked around. I was ready to die back in my cell. I’m still ready. So go ahead. Really.”
She just blinked at me, mouth hanging open.
“What’s your preference? To fry me with the electricity?
Or to garrote me with the wire? There’s a lot of water in here, so consider the dangers of conductivity before you pick the electrical option.
But the wire, oh man. That’ll make a big fucking mess, so brace yourself for it.
It’ll look like a slaughterhouse. Five quarts of blood in a human body, but it looks like a lot more when it comes shooting out under pressure. ”
Her face crumpled, and she wiped her eyes angrily with the backs of her hands. “Goddamn you to hell, Masters.”
“I’m all ready for hell. My papers are in order. Do it. I’m sick of waiting.”
She stared at the remote that was clutched in her hand for a long moment.
Her fingers went limp. The remote thudded down onto the floor of the van.
I let out a slow, even breath, and put my hand up onto the collar. “Can you get this thing off me?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I thought it would kill me if I left that place. Isn’t that what you told me?”
“It would have, but I entered Vincent’s deactivation codes before we left.”
I puzzled out the ramifications of that with some difficulty, as fogged with pain and drugs as I was. “So you were bluffing all along?”
She nodded, her mouth tight.
“The remote wouldn’t have sent a signal? The collar doesn’t work?”
“It’s not even the right remote,” she admitted. “This was the remote he used to activate the gas in your cell. I swiped it before I left.”
“To use as a prop,” I said. “To jerk me around.”
“That’s right,” she said stiffly.
“Can you get it off?”
“Take it off yourself. I unlocked the mechanism before we left Halliwell’s complex. Pull the sides apart from the back. The hinge in front will open now.”
I reached back, my battered, sore shoulders screaming in pain as I felt for that seam with my fingertips. I’d tried to open it before, of course, way back in the day. Many, many times. But it had always held as firm as a rigid, solid ring of steel.
This time, it opened easily, with a gentle, barely audible click.
I lifted the thing carefully off myself, hissing with pain as the scabbed skin that had adhered to the metal pulled, tore, stung. Fuck, that hurt.