Chapter Twenty-Three
Noa
Oh, my head.
A sad little whimper escaped me as I tried to reach up to cradle my throbbing temples.
But I couldn’t.
My arms wouldn’t move.
And when I tried, something thick bit into my wrists.
My whole body stiffened.
I was cuffed.
How was I cuffed?
My eyes blinked open, staring at a dark room. Cinderblock walls. Cement floor. No windows. One door.
And I would bet good money that the person who cuffed me was on the other side of it, just waiting for me to try to make a break for it.
What happened?
My brain felt like soup.
The more I tried to remember, the thicker and more murky everything became.
I remembered being on the boat. Sun, water, food, Caymen .
How had I gotten from the boat to… wherever this was?
Had Caymen and I decided to go back to shore? If so, why? We’d been safer on the boat. No one for miles. No way for anyone to get to us.
Unless… unless there’d been some sort of development. Maybe the club called to say Arty found the camper? Had we headed back to go talk to the guys who stole back the shipment?
But if that was the case, why didn’t I remember it?
Had I been hit on the head?
That would explain the splitting headache. And the dizziness. The confusion. Even the nausea.
If I’d been hit on the head, though, it wasn’t just some accident. Clearly, someone had gotten to me.
Had they gotten to Caymen?
I knew in my heart that there was no way Caymen would have let me be taken. Not without one hell of a fight anyway. Was he out there somewhere hurt? Would his club brothers be able to find him? Would they be able to find me?
Panic unfurled in my chest, making my heartbeat kick into overdrive and my throat tighten.
No.
No, I had to focus.
Panicking wasn’t going to help me get out of this. And as things stood right then, I had to operate under the assumption that no one was coming to save me, that I had to get myself out of this.
As bad as this felt with what felt like two or three flex cuffs around my wrists and ankles, in a windowless room made of cement, nothing was impossible. Not really. I just had to be smart. Strategic. Lean into everything I was taught growing up.
One of those things was that next to handcuffs and duct tape, the easiest thing to get out of… was zip ties. Sure, the cuff kind was more difficult. And, yes, layering them on made everything more complicated.
It was still doable.
With that in mind, I rolled over onto my knees, trying to ignore the way my head spun and a sick feeling rose up my throat.
I leaned at an angle and tried to raise my arms. Only to find them lead-like.
Which couldn’t be explained by a blow to the head.
Connecting the dots with this new information produced a different picture.
Drugs.
I’d been drugged.
As crazy as it was, I was actually slightly more okay with that. At least there wasn’t some untreated injury I was dealing with. Drugs sucked. Instead of minutes, like with a blow to the head, I could have been dealing with the impacts for hours.
Judging by how I felt, I would bet good money on it being at least five or six hours. I was still weak, feeling hungover, dizzy, all the things, but I was able to think clearly. My vision was clear.
If it was that far out, I could only hope that the club had found Caymen. And that they were all working on leads.
But I wasn’t going to put my faith to rest in that.
Focusing on my arms, I forced them up, then brought them down as hard as possible onto my ass.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
The thick plastic bit into my wrists, but to no avail.
“Okay then,” I grumbled, sitting back on my heels.
With a sigh, I dropped my wrists down below my ass and then sat on my butt.
Then it was the short, painstaking process of trying to work my arms down toward my feet.
My shoulders screamed, and I needed to bite into my lip to keep from crying out. Risking dislocating your shoulders was not ideal. But staying completely bound was worse.
I pulled my legs in and yet again said a silent Thank you to my Pilates and yoga classes, as well as the genetics that made me slightly more bendy than the average person, when I finally, finally got my bound wrists around my feet and up toward the front of my body.
I was drenched in sweat and panting. My shoulders ached. But I was pretty sure I’d managed not to actually injure myself.
With my hands in front of me, I raised them toward my face, snagging the knot on my bracelet with my teeth and working it until I felt it loosen, then release, dropping a few feet of high-quality nylon rope into my lap.
When carefully wrapped up, it just looked like a neat, albeit slightly masculine, bracelet. When what it was, in practice, was a tactical escape option.
Everything felt unbearably slow as I worked with my bound wrists to form a loop with the cord, then another.
I put one loop around my wrist, wrapped the cord around the flex cuffs on my ankles, then put the other loop around my other wrist.
With that, I did a sort of ax-chopping motion over and over and over. Until, with a loosening, then a snap, the cord sawed through the flex cuffs and released me from them.
“Thank God,” I hissed.
I frantically moved the loops from my wrists to each of my feet, then dropped down onto my back, putting my legs up in the air, and doing a bicycle motion with them so they could saw through the cuffs at my wrists, doing my best to ignore the screaming pain up my ankle.
Because there was no other way. I just had to grit it out.
They released with a flourish, making me fall back, arms and legs spread, as I panted for breath.
I needed to buy a hundred of those damn bracelets and pass them out to every woman I met.
I let myself have one minute, telling myself it was because I’d be useless at an escape attempt when I was already so breathless. In reality, I kind of just wanted a few seconds to bask in my success and wallow in my misery.
Because it wasn’t just the effects of the drugs I was feeling. My wound in my shoulder was on fire. There was dried blood all through my bandage and down my arm. My feet were hurting. My side was sore from hip to shoulder.
Clearly, I hadn’t been completely compliant. Or I’d been grossly mishandled.
I took a small amount of comfort in the fact that I was still dressed. Well, as dressed as I’d been when I’d gone to bed. Which was only in a silky short and tank set.
But it was still on.
So at least someone hadn’t taken advantage of my unconsciousness.
With one final sharp exhale, I folded up, then carefully got to my feet.
I took a second to wrap the bracelet around my wrist and secure it with a loose bow.
In case of more imprisonment, sure, but also…
the bracelet was hiding that piano string, so it was strong as fuck.
Not only could it saw through plastic or rope, but you could wrap it around your hands and use it to strangle someone.
Would it be easy, given how thin it was?
No. But it was doable. And it was the only weapon I had.
Which was what my mind was on as I hobbled around the filthy floor, trying not to fret too much about the cuts on my feet that may or may not be open still. When I got out of this, I could worry about infection. Until then, it was low on my list of worries.
The place was pretty cleaned out, but there was a trash can toward the back corner.
I didn’t revel in the act of digging through garbage, but if there was a bottle in there, or even an aluminum can, I could fashion a weapon. I could defend myself.
The can itself was plastic. Which, yeah, if I had a week to cut it down and sand it into a shiv. But I hoped I didn’t have that kind of time.
The more I moved around, the clearer my mind was getting, like it was helping my body metabolize the lingering effects of the drugs.
So I pumped my legs as I stood over the trash can, pulling each item out one by one.
Lots of paper, old food wrappers, salt packets.
But also… a single plastic fork. Not a premium weapon by any stretch of the imagination.
But anything could do serious damage when stabbed into the unprotected globe of someone’s eyeball.
I slid that into my waistband, then went back to the trash.
“Ugh, gross,” I grumbled as my hand met something wet and slimy.
A pile of pickles.
Like they’d been picked off that burger from the wrapper I’d already come across.
The pickles were fresh, though.
So this garbage, it was new.
Did that mean this space was operational? Was there a chance that someone might happen upon me? Or had my kidnapper simply stopped for a burger after taking me?
Whoever he was, he hated pickles.
There was a twist in my stomach at that, but I couldn’t figure out why, what about that caused that immediate reaction. Had there been something about this guy I’d noted before the drugs consumed my memory?
I picked up the pickles with the wrapper, twisted it up, and dropped it on the ground so I could continue on.
There were several more papers. Newspapers. Oddly crisp.
I set those aside, then continued down the trash can, finding plastic bottles for sodas, a mostly used ring of masking tape, and a keychain charm that elicited another weird sensation in my stomach.
I set it with the papers to think on later.
But when I finally got to the bottom of the trash can, all I found were… small rocks? A shit ton of small rocks.
I glanced at the soda bottles, then the pennies, then dropped down and slowly dumped the rocks into a pile.
Then I carefully shoved all the rocks into the bottle, twisted the lid on, and felt the weight of it.
A blunt instrument.
A plastic fork for eye gouging.
And a string of nylon.
It wasn’t a bad makeshift arsenal.
I kept the bottle right at my side, then reached for the keychain, inspecting the funny shape. It only took a few seconds to recognize the mainland and the upper peninsula of Michigan.
So.
A Michigan keychain.
That felt… almost pointed?
Was this about an old job?
I’d done, I think, three in Michigan early on in my career. All of them went well. At least they had to me. But did someone else get screwed over in the process? It was impossible to know if there were pressure points that might snap when I helped broker deals between organizations.
Did I accidentally screw someone over? Was this their revenge?
I put the keychain to the side and reached for the newspapers instead.
This felt like more confirmation.
Because they were all newspapers from Michigan—Detroit, specifically. And none of them were current. They were papers from years and years ago. So far back, in fact, that they couldn’t have been connected to any job I’d worked.
What the hell was going on here?
These were clearly clues, but I wasn’t connecting them the way I was meant to.
Michigan keychain.
Detroit newspapers from years ago.
But then it hit me.
The pickles.
The fucking pickles.
The door slid open.
And there he was.
“You son of a bitch.”