Chapter 40
Chapter Forty
Tatiana
I’m back in the warehouse where the masked men held me prisoner.
Oxo has just helped me to get cleaned up and dressed.
She opens a back door that leads from the bathroom.
Hulk pushes me into a courtyard with a concrete floor fenced in by barbed wire.
A lonely tree stands in a circle of soil in the middle, the branches bare.
Judging by the warehouses in the distance, we’re in an industrial area outside the city.
Overhead, the blue sky is cloudless and cheery.
Another man waits next to an SUV. Like Hulk, he’s dressed in a dark suit and a white shirt. He’s not wearing a ski mask, but something about him is familiar. It’s the smell of his cheap cologne, I realize when we get closer. It’s the man I christened Cheap.
I’m bundled into the back between the two men. Another one, who I baptized Smiley for his missing front tooth, drives. They all carry guns, which they leave in the car when we stop outside the bank, probably because we’ll have to go through scanners and a body search.
Hulk steps out of the vehicle and offers me a hand while scouting the surroundings. He’s not being polite. After starving me for days, not to mention the drug Oxo injected me with, he’s just making sure I don’t fall in case my legs give out. Cheap follows, giving me a handbag that matches my shoes.
Hulk turns me to face him. “One wrong move, Tatiana, and it’s you and that trunk until you rot inside it. No one will ever find you. Understand?”
Swallowing, I nod.
He escorts me across the road. Cheap acts as a bodyguard.
I tilt my face up at the building. The name is written across the front in golden cutout letters.
The shadows those letters throw on the wall lean toward eleven o’clock.
The black building with its golden fixtures is impressive.
It sparks a sudden recollection in which I see myself walking down the sidewalk to the big smoked-glass doors, wearing a pair of jeans with sneakers and my hair tucked under a baseball cap.
“Focus, Tatiana.” Hulk flicks his fingers in front of my face.
“I’m your fiancé.” He throws a thumb over his shoulder.
“And this is your personal bodyguard. Don’t worry about names.
I’ll introduce us when it’s necessary. All you have to say is that you want to give both of us access to your safe deposit box.
It holds your passport, among other things, which I may want to fetch when we’ll travel overseas on our honeymoon.
” He grins. “Plus, you never know what may happen. In the unlikely event that both of us are killed in a plane crash, you want your bodyguard to have access to your birth certificate and personal documents. Did you get all that?”
“Yes,” I say, doing my best to concentrate and remember what he said.
At the entrance, an electronic voice command asks me to look straight into the camera.
Hulk is tense next to me, looking left and right. He digs his fingers into my upper arm, a silent promise of retribution if I don’t play along.
Sweat trickles down my armpits. I’m nervous, but I try to do as he says. Holding my breath, I say a prayer as we wait, but then the glass doors click open.
A security guard walks briskly toward us. “Welcome back, Ms. Delacy. How may we be of assistance today?”
My voice is surprisingly steady, albeit hoarse. “I’d like to give my fiancé and bodyguard access to my safe deposit box.”
He indicates the security scanners. “Follow me, please.”
Once we’ve passed the check point, a private banker meets us.
He holds out a hand. “What a pleasure, Ms. Delacy. It’s been a while.” He eyes Hulk with suspicion. “Who are your guests?”
I tell him what Hulk told me to say.
“I see.” The banker straightens his tie. “If that’s what you want, it can be arranged.”
Hulk smiles at the banker. “My fiancée would like to visit the vault to show us the documents.”
“Oh.” The banker seems uncertain. “Security measures must be followed.”
Hulk takes an identity card from his pocket and hands it to the banker. “That won’t be a problem. It’s been so long, she hardly remembers what she left in the box.”
The banker looks at me.
I hope my smile appears normal. “That’s true.”
“You’ll have to sign a few forms—” the banker starts.
“That’s not an issue,” I say quickly.
Hulk points at the man who followed us inside. “My fiancée’s bodyguard will join us.”
The banker turns to me again. “If that’s what you want, Ms. Delacy.”
Hulk is all teeth as he pulls me close. “She does.”
Hulk kisses my cheek affectionately before slipping an arm around my waist. I blink up at him with a teary-eyed smile. It’s all I can do not to vomit on his shoes.
The banker must take my tears for sentimental ones because his expression softens.
“Newlyweds.” He sighs. “Enjoy it while it lasts. When the wedding is over and reality sets back in, the honeymoon wears off quickly.”
He sounds bitter, as if he’s talking from experience.
While he takes us to a standing desk in a big oval room with black marble walls and floors, Hulk tells him how it was love at first sight when we met during a business trip.
After the three of us have signed a dozen documents and the banker has taken the men’s biometrics and made copies of their ID cards, which are no doubt fake, we’re taken through a steel door into a room with rows of safe deposit boxes. A table and two chairs stand in the center.
I only have eyes for the carafe of water set out with glasses on the table, but Hulk cuts his nails so hard into my flesh that he must be breaking skin.
The banker bows. “I’ll leave you to it. Just press the call button when you’re done or if you need me.”
“Thank you,” I say, giving him another serene smile despite feeling jittery and out of sorts.
The minute he’s closed the door behind him, Hulk pushes me deeper into the room. “Delacy, huh? That was clever—using a false name.”
Cheap laughs. “No wonder we didn’t find anything. We were searching under the wrong name.”
Hulk clicks his tongue. “You’re a dark horse, Tatiana.”
I look around, already knowing there are no cameras in here.
“You have a minute,” Hulk says.
I blink, perspiring more profusely. Turning in a circle, I take in the room.
The boxes can only be opened with a code.
They don’t have keys. It’s more convenient for people who tend to misplace or lose keys.
I’m not sure how I know that. The knowledge is simply a part of me. It’s like knowing the earth is round.
I don’t remember the safe box number, but my feet carry me to where it feels familiar.
“Is this it?” Hulk asks next to me when I stop in front of a safe box.
I don’t know how I know this either. I just do.
I nod.
He pulls out the box and carries it to the table. I eye the water again, but he wipes an arm across the tabletop and knocks down the carafe.
I stare at the puddle that grows around the broken crystal on the floor, wanting to go down on my knees and lap it up.
Hulk’s command is clipped. “Do it.”
“Wait.” Cheap catches his arm. “She may have a gun stashed in there. It’s best if you open it.”
“Good point.” Hulk curls his fingers over my shoulder and shoves me a few feet back. “Give me the code.”
I close my eyes. The four numbers flash like a stuttering tungsten light through my mind. I hesitate but only for a second. I’ll do anything not to go back into the trunk.
“Zero, six, one, two.”
Noah’s birthday, I register.
Hulk punches the numbers on the code pad. The red light turns to green.
He shoots Cheap a grin. “I told you I’d break her.”
The latter pushes closer, both of them fighting for space as Hulk opens the box.
Boom!
A deafening explosion rocks the space, sending my body flying into the metal boxes behind me. I crumple to the floor in a stupor, my ears ringing and my body shaking.
Hulk and his accomplice lie a distance from me. Most of the thinner man’s face is blown away. Something gray shows through the huge hole in Hulk’s skull, the metal lid of the box still lodged in his head.
Alarms blare in the space.
I push myself up, coughing through the thick smoke as I battle to stand.
The door opens and security guards rush through.
“What happened?”
“I—” I wipe away something wet on my temple. My hand comes away with blood. “I don’t know.”
The guard who addressed me speaks into a two-way radio. “Call an ambulance.”
Another guard approaches me. “Are you all right?”
I shake my head.
He takes my elbow and helps me outside. “Wait here. An ambulance is on the way. You need stitches.”
What he doesn’t say is that the police will want to question me, but I can see suspicion mixed with confusion and concern on his face before he hurries back into the vault.
I don’t wait. I notice a WC sign in the lobby.
In the chaos that follows, I slip into the bathroom and lock the door.
The face staring back at me from the reflection in the mirror is ghastly white with dark circles around its eyes.
A trickle of blood runs down the side of my cheek from a gash in my temple.
I must’ve knocked my head on the boxes when the blast propelled my body through the air.
I look for the handbag. Maybe there’s make-up in there I can use to disguise my face.
Oh.
I don’t have the handbag any longer. I must’ve dropped it in the explosion.
My hands won’t stop shaking as I wet a stack of paper towels and dab the blood away as best as I can. Then I straighten my clothes and square my shoulders.
There aren’t windows in the bathroom, so I don’t have a choice but to walk back into the lobby. People are yelling and running everywhere. Security guards are evacuating staff and clients through a side exit even as medics hurry inside with stretchers.
Inserting myself into the middle of the screaming, shoving horde, I let the stampede carry me outside. Everyone is being herded to a cordoned-off area where a police official is ticking off names on a list. Another officer is instructing us to line up and stay calm.
Spectators have gathered around the building, crowding the sidewalks.
The police have their hands full in separating the bank’s clients and the passersby.
Swallowed by the masses, I slip away quickly and go in the opposite direction.
I force myself to walk at a normal pace and not to break into a run, but when no one grabs me or calls me back, I turn the corner into a side street.
I walk until the noise of the sirens is a faint sound in the distance before I duck into a clothing store. The sales lady takes one look at me and grabs her phone from behind the counter.
“Please,” I say. “I need help. I need a phone.”
She unlocks the screen and hands me the phone without arguing.
I see it all as clear as daylight, as if it’s happening right now.
That’s when I dialed the only number I remembered.