Vasily the Hammer (Baranov Duet #2)

Chapter 1

Everything is painful. And loud. And bright. It’s deafening, and it’s blinding. And every inch of my existence, inside and out, from my fingertips to my very soul, aches.

It hurts so much I can’t hold back my moan the second something happens in the world beyond me. The pain explodes. Even my moan hurts.

“Hey, hey, hey!” says a nearby voice. It is deep and raspy.

Masculine and rough in that gravelly way of a decade of chain-smoking and hard living but otherwise healthy.

Just winded. Adrenaline infused. It’s something I understand unquestionably.

I don’t need to see the man to know how his voice got that way.

And every barely-vocalized syllable flares a red-hot sear along my brain. “Are you back? ”

I don’t know what that means. I don’t know where I am or if I’ve been here before. I try to speak, but it’s another moan. I try to open my eyes, but the brightness I saw before wasn’t real. The light I actually get now is enough to make everything blip for a second.

A minute?

An eternity?

And then the Marlboro Man yells, “Hey, what’s her name?”

I don’t know who he’s talking to. There are other people talking near us. Someone’s crying. A few people, I think. There are wails, but there are also sniffles.

There are empty voices. Haunted voices. Voices of death.

I think I’m dead.

And no one answers the Marlboro Man.

“Shit, did they keep you from talking to each other?” he grits out.

One of the dead voices says, “We just never seen her before. They was nabbing her when... when...” Her voice falters, a glitch, a spark of life, before falling silent.

“Right, yeah.” His voice softens to a thoughtful, almost intimate level. A voice meant for me. “You must have been the one they were picking up. Are you from here?”

Once more, I attempt to open my eyes, but the light blinds again. “I can’t,” I whimper. “I—oh god.” I start to heave, whatever was in my gut evacuating however it can, and the Marlboro Man rolls me onto my side before I choke to death on my own vomit.

The bile eats away at what little of my body wasn’t already hurting. I retch so hard I suffocate, but the air I attempt to breathe ends up in my stomach, starting the process over again.

I think I’m going to die. I’m going to aspirate on nothing but a malfunctioning windpipe .

The Marlboro Man rubs my back, and I’m wishing he would whack it between the shoulder blades, like you would a baby who’s choking. I know exactly how to perform the Heimlich maneuver on an infant. I don’t know where I am, but if I survive and a baby swallows a button, I’m ready.

Finally, I take a breath. With my head down, I can open my eyes, even if it is to the sight of the mess I made. I don’t know where I am, and I don’t know what I ate last, but hopefully, it looked better last time I saw it.

“I think you got a concussion,” says the Marlboro Man, still rubbing my back.

One hand stays there the entire time, even as he passes me a damp towel to wash my face with and directs someone to come clean up.

He doesn’t move a hand until he wraps a blanket around me. “Do you think I can get you upright?”

I lift my head up enough to look around.

The floor is diamond plate. Next to me is a bench seat running the entire length of the twenty-foot galvanized steel wall.

The bench is filled with women wrapped in blankets.

Most of them are disheveled; a few are injured.

Then there are the men, all dressed in black tactical gear and moving around with the finesse of high-end line cooks wordlessly plowing through a Valentine’s Night dinner service.

I know how well-trained line cooks operate. I know baby Heimlich maneuver. I know voices gravelly from decades of cigarettes.

And I know I’m right in the middle of a vehicle. A tractor trailer, maybe? Or some sort of military transport? So I nod, figuring that if I can do that, the rest of my body is okay enough.

“Alright, on the count of three. One . . . two . . . three.”

He’s gentle. I know he is. I can see that he is. But I can’t keep in my wail of pain. He nearly sets me back down, but I fight him, needing to get into that seated position. Maybe I can curl up in a ball against the wall and cease to exist.

The man is big. Even in his head-to-toe black, I see bulk on him everywhere.

But he squats down low so that I can see him without lifting my head up.

Scary-looking. Rough shave, scars. Mid-thirties, I’d say, but battered.

Got a cut on his jaw and a yellowing circle around his eye that’s sure to blacken.

But I know better than to assume from a scary-looking face that a man is truly dangerous.

I know that. I know that big, rough, scary dudes can be teddy bears and men dressed head to toe in Tom Ford can be murderers.

I know how to tell if a suit is a Tom Ford. Or a Ralph Lauren or a Brioni or a Men’s Warehouse.

I know these things.

The Marlboro Man hands me a bottle of water, and there’s a soft, sympathetic smile. A glimmer in his eyes. The giant calloused hand he’s squeezing my knee with comforts me. I think he’s a good guy. I bet he doesn’t believe he is, but he is.

I drink the water slowly at his urging, and when my hand gets too shaky, he takes it back.

“We’re going to get you medical care just as soon as we get back to base, okay?”

“Thank you,” I manage. My voice isn’t just raspy; it’s barely there. It sounds like someone actually choked me.

He nods. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

I know that he is or used to be a smoker. I know the Heimlich maneuver and commercial kitchen efficiency. I know men’s designers, and I know the warning signs to look for with men.

I know what a voice sounds like after someone’s been choked.

I know the longest river in the world.

I know algebra, and I know that I don’t know Calculus .

I’m pretty sure I know every word to Twelfth Night.

“I... I don’t know. I don’t know who I am.”

From the way the Marlboro Man— Gio— described it as a base, I expect triage: an open-air tent with flimsy cots and people with barely any medical training doing their best to sort out who was going to survive.

I don’t know, I guess it’s just the fact that none of the men’s uniforms have any sort of military or law enforcement insignia on them.

It takes at least twenty minutes to get to the base, and I learn in that time that I’ve been rescued from a sex trafficking ring, of all things.

I didn’t know that was even a real thing, at least in the sense that citizens of post-industrial countries could get nabbed while going about their day.

I thought it was more like people in developing regions getting sold into it.

I think? I don’t know. It’s crazy how I know so much about the world in general but I can’t say how old I am or where I was born or what my favorite food is.

I have a strong suspicion that these men who are ‘helping’ us aren’t on the right side of the law.

Gio might inherently be a good man, but he’s done bad things. Am I a bad person too?

But then we arrive at the base, and although the building is nondescript on the outside and seems to be a hodgepodge of offices, dorms, and paramilitary training, there’s a state-of-the-art medical wing that’s fully stocked and staffed.

The bed is plush and adjustable, allowing me to sit myself up just enough to not feel fully comatose but not get a headache from being too upright either.

A nurse comes in first to talk with me, get as much info as she can, and bully me into not apologizing when I don’t know anything.

The first doctor checks my vitals and orders some saline and imaging.

After the scans, a neurologist comes by to explain that I do have a concussion and there is some swelling in my brain, but there’s also bruising around my neck, indicating I was choked, and something in all of that is likely the culprit of the amnesia.

He tells me that, for now, the best course of action is to stabilize and monitor, that there’s typically not much to be done with amnesia except wait it out, but I knew that already too. I suspect from TV.

It’s awful. I have no idea who I am. I have no idea who’s missing me right now, if anyone is. I don’t know if there’s a pet who’s starving or... or...

I wait until the neurologist leaves to cry about it, though. I get it. I understand why we’re just stuck here. I’m hoping someone is checking for Missing Persons matching my description, but that’s not the neurologist’s gig.

The next people to visit are both a doctor and a nurse, and the pairing tells me who the doctor is before she even introduces herself

Before she shows me the SAEK she’s brought with her. Well, that’s what she calls it, but I know it by another name.

A rape kit.

My mouth — my bruised but not fractured hyoid bone — goes dry at that. “I . . . I have my panties. On. I don’t . . . I wouldn’t have them if . . .”

It’s the nurse who takes my hand. “It seems awful. We know. But we’re going to do this as fast as possible, and it won’t hurt any.

It won’t even be as bad as your usual gynecological visit.

And after that, I’m going to help you shower up.

If you’re hungry, we can get you food. The neurologist just wants you in here for observation for a few hours before he releases you—”

“To where?” My voice is wobbly, tears threatening.

“We have apartments in the south wing. You couldn’t have gotten rescued by a better bunch. There’s housing for everyone who works here, plenty of space for you until they find your people or you find something fulfilling to do here.”

“I don’t know what I can do. A baby kitten is less helpless than me.”

“Every day will be better than the last, I promise.”

The doctor nods in agreement. I take a deep breath, nod to them and myself, and undress.

It’s... not awful. I hate it, but it’s not awful.

And the way the doctor talks, it sounds like she thinks the tests will come back negative.

But as she performs the vaginal exam, something catches her eye.

She squints— which, hating that— and asks the nurse for a shaver.

She removes a patch of pubic hair and says, “Did you know you have a tattoo here?”

I cringe. “I didn’t think I was the type to tattoo my, uhhh, area , but...” I shrug. I guess I am. Or was at some point.

The nurse takes a picture and shows it to me. She’s cropped it enough it’s hard to tell where it’s located or even the size. It’s a simple drawing, a fancy V with a smaller B in the middle.

“Maybe it’s my initials? Maybe I’m a Veronica? Or a Bar-Bo-Ber-Beatrice?” I hate every B name that flies through my brain, so hopefully I’m a Veronica. Or Vivian. That’s a fun name.

The glances the doctor and the nurse exchange before looking back at my naked-from-the-waist-down self tells me they doubt this.

“Aww man, I really didn’t think I’d be the type to tattoo my boyfriend’s initials there. ”

Another doubtful look. The nurse coughs politely. “Do you mind if I send this photo to one of our experts? He’s discreet, I promise. This may be gang related.”

“I’m not in a gang,” I whine, but I agree to it. And by the time the exam is finished, her phone is already ringing. A couple of words, the nurse explaining I have amnesia so I genuinely don’t know how I ended up with that tattoo, and then the phone is thrust at me.

“Vy govori?te po-ru?sski?”

I blink a couple times, trying to make it make sense. There’s a warmth in me at the sound, a fluttering in me like I’ve heard this before, but I have no idea what it is. “What?”

The man on the other end curses, mutters about it being worth a try, and then asks, “Does the name Vasily Baranov mean anything to you?”