Chapter 42
CHARLIE
It feels as if I’ll never escape when I feel a small torque.
It’s not much, but it is something. I’m sweating through my clothes.
The hot air is working its usual evil magic on me.
My hands are slick, a line of sweat meandering its way down my forehead, threatening to sting my eyes.
The hair let loose from my bun is sticking to my face.
Another twist and the wheel gives a bit more. I grunt and will the lock to move with everything I have.
The lock releases and I push open the hatch.
Air.
Open air.
Sunlight.
I pop my head out of the hatch and come eye to eye with a perplexed rooster.
He pecks at the ground and then struts away.
I pull myself out and close the hatch behind me.
I want to lay down on the ground and soak in the beautiful daylight, taking gulps of the fresh morning air, but there’s no time.
I need to figure out where I am so I can get to safety.
I can’t stay here. Because Ian certainly wasn’t acting alone.
The sooner I can get to Declan, the better.
I spin and see a monument in the center of a park square. Centennial Park.
Ybor City is known for several things. Nightlife, but the bars and restaurants in my eyeline are closed. It’s also known for cigars, hence the safehouse in the rehabbed warehouse. It is a couple miles from Downtown Tampa. If I keep moving, maybe I can catch Declan on his way back to the safehouse.
I take off down one street that looks fine enough.
It’s too early for any of these businesses to be open yet.
My bare feet are sensitive on the brick sidewalks.
Most of the hexagon bricks are intact, but the broken ones jut out and hit the tender skin on my soles.
I used to run barefoot all the time at my dad’s insistence.
It helped me with excellent run form, but my callouses have long since healed.
I will myself to pick a direction. I stop again and survey the area. Think, Charlie, think! And then I remember my phone!
I pull it out and I have maybe five percent battery left. I do one quick search to help orient myself. Once I know where I am, I head left toward Downtown Tampa. If I can get to Kennedy Boulevard, I can figure out how to get to headquarters. Which will give out first, my feet or my phone battery?
I navigate to my contacts as I keep going down the sidewalk and turn left.
My thumb presses the button to dial Declan and give him an update before this phone dies on me.
When I round the corner, I run smack into someone and drop my phone.
It’s a man a few inches taller than me. He smells like the cologne my dad wears.
He steadies himself by holding my arms. This works and neither of us falls down.
“Oh my gosh! I am so, so sorry,” I apologize reflexively. I must look like a total mess, with mud and sweat all over my too big borrowed clothes.
“Gotta watch where you’re going,” the man says. He has kind hazel eyes set into sunworn skin; the kind of tan you get from years spent outside.
“I’m so sorry. I’m glad you’re not hurt,” I say, repeating my apology, before a plea begins to form on my lips, to ask this man for help, to explain that someone is after me.
Then everything begins to move slowly.
It’s a phenomenon I spent time looking up on one of my many hospital visits.
I would sense it just before my limbs would go numb.
When I told my doctors, they said it only seemed that time was moving slowly because my brain was busy capturing every facet of a stressful moment.
It happens to people during car accidents or other physical traumas.
They say they can recall every minute detail of the seconds leading up to it, the brain working in overdrive.
So when I could recount the exact patches of light peeking through the canopy, the leaves falling into puddles on the course, it wasn’t part of my condition.
It was a stress response to a traumatic event: losing all control of my limbs.
The first time my legs went completely numb on a training run, I was on a steep trail.
I hit the deck and rolled over tree roots and twigs.
I knew something was badly wrong. After crawling on my elbows to find the team, my dad hurried over with the first-aid kit.
The antiseptic wipes didn’t sting. Didn’t cool.
Didn’t do anything. I remember every terrifying millisecond of that ordeal and the moments just before.
The crunch of the leaves under me, the sound of my body thumping against the ground, the look on my teammates’ faces.
Right now, with this man’s hands on my arms, I experience the same sense of time drawing to a stop.
A bird flits from one magnolia tree to the next.
In the distance, a rooster is crowing. A white van rolls down the street.
But I can feel his hands on my arms. I can feel the scratchy gravel beneath my feet, warm but not hot enough to burn yet.
This isn’t an episode, so why does time feel like molasses?
“Oh, not a problem, Charlie. You’re just who I was looking for.”
The same heaviness I experienced last night at the bar with Blaed sets over me. The street spins while I stand still. In my periphery, the van slows to a stop and the door rolls open. The grip on my arms tightens like an arm-pressure cuff.
“It’s about time we were properly introduced. I’m Xander, but everyone calls me X.C.”
All my self-defense practice did nothing to prepare me for this encounter. My mind is telling me to wind my arms round and break his hold. But I’m frozen. All that practice and now I’m too terrified to use it.
He pulls something out of his jacket pocket and covers my face.
Oh, this is what chloroform smells like, I think before everything goes dark.