Chapter 2 Cell/Phone
The sound of the metal door busting open startled Nicki.
“Say cheese!” a woman shouted, pointing a phone at Nicki through the bars.
Nicki winced at the bright, unexpected flash and held her hand up. The picture was enough to show that she was alive, just with a violet bruise along the left side of her forehead.
“Wait, please come back!” Nicki cried to the woman.
The woman turned around with a devilish smile.
“What can I do for you, little rat?”
Nicki recognized the woman as one of the fake uniformed police officers who arrested her. The woman’s black, low-cut shirt revealed a cursive L tattoo on the left side of her chest. Right over the heart.
“Um, where am I? Do I have to be down here? And where is my necklace?” Nicki asked.
“That’s what you’re worried about? Your necklace?” The woman sneered.
“It’s mine and I want it back!” Nicki stated, more confidently now.
The woman walked closer to Nicki. Her thick heel echoed against the cement floor. She leaned against the steel bars.
“You won’t need a necklace if you don’t have a neck,” she whispered. The words sent a chill down Nicki’s back.
She looked at the beaming woman plainly with narrow eyes.
“Then if you’re going to behead me, at least let me call Tyler before you do. Please!” Nicki begged.
The woman scoffed and left the room.
“Shit.”
She looked around again and shook the metal bars.
Solidly locked. There was nothing to reach and nothing she could try.
She checked all of her clothing again with no luck.
The same yoga pants and loose crew neck sweater she had on the day of the breakfast with the crew and her subsequent kidnapping.
Her purse was left with Tyler and Tico, when they thought she was getting arrested, along with her phone.
She had nothing.
Nicki would have to get what she needed brought inside to her. And she had an idea just how she was going to do it.
Tyler’s phone beeped.
He rushed to read the text message from Kane with a photo attached. Nicki wincing at the flash, with her face bruised, but she was OK.
Tyler gripped his chest tightly and took in a few deep breaths. An unsettling mixture of panic and relief flushed over him.
“There, see? I told you. She has to be OK, or they have nothing,” Tommy said.
“No, it’s not good enough, I need to talk to her.”
Tyler dialed to call Kane who answered after two rings.
“Happy now?” Kane teased.
“Put her on the fucking phone, that picture is shit,” Tyler demanded.
“Oh, you think you can just—”
Tyler hung up the phone.
“Tyler, man!” Tommy shouted in frustration.
“Aaaaaahh!” Tyler screamed out. He ran over to the punching bag to unleash a few vicious blows against the hard vinyl.
Tommy rubbed his eyes and pulled his hands through his hair out of defeat.
“They will call. They got the picture, so now they will call. Fucking animals,” Tyler brooded.
“Well maybe don’t fucking hang up on them next time!”
Vinnie ran down the stairs.
“Kane’s phone location is off. I can’t place where he is,” he said.
“FUCK!” Tyler yelled out impatiently. “Well keep trying!”
There was a hopeless tint to the air at the Compound and the sky was getting dark on the second night of Nicki’s absence.
The crew kept their positions locked outside of the two Leeman residences, focused on the houses from a distance and took turns keeping watch.
The brothers, Vinnie and Jake held tight at the Compound with the two armored Escalades, fully loaded and ready to roll out, just as soon as they got word of Nicki’s confirmed location. Their allies in the region were on high alert in case the crew needed reinforcements. The wait was excruciating.
Tyler looked at the photo again, trying to study every inch of Nicki’s face. The bruise on the side of her face made him nauseous but he held on to the fact that she was alive and relatively OK. Clothed.
“Hold on, my love, I’m going to find you and bring you home,” he whispered onto the screen.
Just before midnight, the woman returned to the dungeon and woke Nicki up by rattling the metal bars.
Nicki was curled up into a ball on the dirty floor and spent the whole time focusing on breathing calmly and picturing Tyler’s face.
She pretended to be half asleep as she turned toward the woman slowly and squinted her eyes more than she needed to.
“Come, it’s time for a phone call,” the woman said.
She motioned for Nicki to put her hands through the metal bars so that she could handcuff them again.
A cell phone was waiting on a table by the door.
Nicki stood up slowly and moped her way toward the woman as she was told to.
The cold metal cuffs clanked shut over her wrists.
The woman unlocked the door with a metal key that was attached to an extendable cord at her waistband. The cage door opened out with a creak and the woman led Nicki by her bound wrists toward the table, a few feet away.
“Sit down,” the woman instructed.
Nicki did so and waited patiently.
The woman picked up the cell phone and dialed a number, standing inches in front of Nicki, looking down at her with cold disgust.
Please let it be Tyler. Please let it be Tyler, Nicki prayed.
The woman put the phone on speaker and held it up in front of Nicki. It rang once.
“Yeah,” Tyler answered.
Nicki almost jumped up with excitement at the sound of his voice.
“Tyler! Tyler, it’s me!” Nicki shouted.
“Nicki! Thank God! Are you OK?” he yelled through the phone, pacing again.
“I’m OK!” Nicki managed, leaning into the phone before the woman pulled it away, swinging her arm back.
Nicki didn’t waste a single second.
She leaped at the woman and snatched the phone with both of her bound hands before bolting back into the cell and pulling the door behind her. The lock clinked loudly.
The woman ran after her but was a second too late. The door had slammed shut and Nicki ran to the far corner of the cell where the woman couldn’t reach her.
“Tyler! Are you there?” Nicki shouted into the phone.
“I’m here, my angel, I’m here!”
Just then, the woman shoved the key into the door and turned it, only for Nicki to kick the metal bars as hard as she could.
“Hold on, Tyler!” Nicki yelled out, placing the phone down on the ground by the far wall.
She continued kicking the metal bars with all her might which made the door shake and rattle loudly.
The woman struggled with the key in the lock.
Nicki’s ankle was starting to pain but she kept kicking.
“You stupid bitch!” the woman yelled.
“Fuck you!” Nicki yelled back, and paused her kicking to reach through the bars and twist the woman’s fingers as she made her final attempt to unlock the door.
“Aaaaah!” the woman screamed in pain as Nicki bent her fingers backward and heard one of them crack.
Tyler and Tommy heard the painful shriek on the speaker phone on their end.
“NICKI!” Tyler yelled into the phone, picturing the worst.
The key snapped back onto the waistband of the woman as she abandoned the lock and focused on her fingers.
“You fucking bitch! You’re going to pay for that!” the woman promised with a ripping scream.
She ran out of the bunker, holding her hand.
Nicki rushed back to the phone, out of breath, but super-charged on adrenaline and disbelief over what she just did.
“Tyler!” she cried into the phone.
“Baby, where are you? What do you see?” Tyler managed, breathing loudly himself, hurrying to get as much information from her as quickly as possible.
Tommy paced beside him in anticipation, holding his praying hands at his lips.
“I’m in a basement of some sort. But I don’t know where, they put a bag over my head in the car…. uh, I could feel the drive was mostly highway… um, what else? I could see a bit of the ground when I got out of the car. There were black cobblestones I think, but I’m not sure.”
“How long was the drive?” Tyler demanded.
“I don’t know, but I think more than an hour. They’re going to come and kick my ass cause of what I just did to that woman!”
“She’s likely at the Leeman mansion, tell the boys,” Tyler whispered over to Jake who got on the phone right away.
Luca and Rex started making their way from the cabin toward the Leeman mansion, a couple of hours away.
“Um, I don’t know what else,” Nicki said. “Wait! Let me try to send you a ping on the phone!”
Nicki carefully manoeuvred on the phone to find the map app and send Tyler a live location.
“Did you get it?!” she pleaded as she stared wide-eyed at the basement door.
The location took several seconds to load due to the bad underground reception.
“I got it sweetheart; you are so smart, baby. We know exactly where you are. We’re coming to get you!” Tyler said.
“I think I broke that woman’s fingers; she’s going to send someone down here any minute now,” Nicki said, now trembling.
“Her fingers will be her smallest problem, baby; I’m going to smash her fucking face. Stay on the phone with me, honey,” Tyler instructed as he and Tommy jumped into the first Escalade.
Vinnie and Jake jumped into the second.
“Listen to me, baby. We are on the way, and we are about an hour out. But Tico and Trevor are there right now, OK? They are outside at the end of the driveway in Tico’s truck.” Tyler tried his best to have her calm down.
“Oh, God, I think I hear someone outside of the door, Tyler. I’m scared!” Nicki whispered into the phone, shaking.
“Breathe, baby. We are on the way and we will be there soon. Just breathe, Nicki,” Tyler said as steadily as he could while racing down the street and onto the highway.
Nicki nodded, with the phone at her ear and held her breath.
The door blew open and two large men barged into the room.
“Look at this smart bitch!” one said in a rough voice.
The other inserted the key into the cell door and opened it.
Nicki couldn’t speak. The cell phone released from her handcuffed hands and slid down her body as the two men stepped inside the cell and yanked her out of it.
“Nicki!” Tyler tried again, only for the phone to hang up, the other end producing nothing but blaring silence.
It gutted both brothers.
“FUCK!” Tyler yelled out.
“It’s OK! She’s OK, we know where she is, just focus on the road, Alpha!” Tommy yelled out.
Tommy texted the crew’s group chat.
Tico and Trevor, keep your eyes on the house in case they try to move her out. We’ll be there soon.
Tommy turned back to Tyler.
“It’s going to be fine, brother. We will give them Canada in exchange for Nicki. Then, when she is safely back with us, we will blow up their fucking house.”