Chapter 47
Liz leaves the bunker… alone, driving down the winding road, running the plan through her head over and over again.
Her eyes still sting from the “fight” she had with Riley.
If there is one thing she’s sure of, it’s whoever hears that recording will believe she’s done with him.
She looks over at the small bag she packed, thinking back to the last time she had a bag packed to leave like this.
Liz pulls into the small parking lot off the side of the road, put off by how empty it is.
She makes sure there is no one around before resting her head on the steering wheel and screaming, putting the last two years of pain and fighting into it.
She keeps her head down, giving herself a moment to sob, letting go of everything she has been holding onto.
She lifts her head, wipes her tears, and takes a big breath before opening the door and stepping out.
Liz nears the wooden porch of the bar, looking around as she walks up the creaky steps. A sense of unease stirs in her gut amidst the silence. She reassures herself it’s just nerves, attributing her apprehension to the anticipation of her first real mission, and steps inside.
The bar is almost completely empty, a few people she’s never seen before sitting at a table across the small room. Liz crosses the small space and sits at the bar, smiling at Mitch.
“Vodka cranberry please,” she says, sniffling.
She watches him disappear down to the other end before coming back with her deep red drink.
She thanks him and hands him some money before taking a long sip.
As she’s sitting there, trying to calm her nerves, her vision starts to blur, thinking she’s already getting a small buzz, she pushes her drink away.
Liz hears shoes clicking across the floor a second before the hair on the back of her neck stands up.
From too close, she hears a voice she hoped she would never hear again.
“I’m glad you accepted my drink this time.”
Liz spins on the stool, turning to come face to face with Dmitri. She looks back to Mitch, someone she thought she could trust, understanding why her head is spinning; the bastard spiked her drink.
“You are free to go,” Dmitri says, his thick Russian accent making her skin crawl.
Liz jumps from her seat, seeing spots from whatever was put in her drink.
She reaches for one of her guns, but his men are too fast, grabbing her arms before she can.
Dmitri walks over to her and pulls the guns from their holsters, tossing them behind the bar.
Liz tries to fight her way away from the men, using every technique she’s learned, only to be met with a hard slap to her face, sending her flying to the floor.
One of the men picks her back up, whatever they drugged her with already making it hard for her to stand, luckily she stopped at a sip.
“What do you want with me?” she asks, trying to fight against the drug seeping its way into her system. She knows if she can hold out for a little longer Riley will be here.
“Your brother told me all about you. Before someone killed him, he told me you know how to get me what I want,” Dmitri says, walking to one of the empty tables and taking a seat, glaring at her through the scar across his eye.
“I don’t care what he told you. We haven’t talked since we were kids and I don’t know shit about getting weapons,” Liz says, still trying to rip her arms away from the men holding her.
“That does not matter, my pet. I’m not looking for weapons. What I really want… is that freak in the mask who took you from me and destroyed my home.”
“That’s what this is about? You want Reaper?” Liz asks, laughing through the panic. They all thought this was about her, that she would be safe because he needed her. If Dmitri doesn’t kill her, Riley definitely will when he finds out how wrong she was.
Dmitri stands back up, pacing around the bar, his cheap, musky cologne wafting toward her with every step. Liz watches him, looking for any opening to get away.
“I had plans, pet. Big plans. And when that… thing… escaped, after trying to kill me, he started killing everything I was building. It took years to build my empire. When he came looking for you, he ruined all those carefully laid plans. He was not so subtle trying to find you, so I let it slip where you were. You’re all fools to think I do not know I have double agents in my ranks.
Even more foolish to think I don’t have my own in yours. ”
Dimitri stops his pacing and snaps his fingers.
The two men holding Liz push her over to the table and force her into a chair, tying her wrists tightly behind her.
Liz takes a deep breath, trying to focus on anything but the ropes around her wrists.
She can’t stop her mind from going into the dark place she fought so hard to claw her way out of.
“I did not know what he wanted with you, but I let him have you. Lucky for me, I had someone watching your every move, making sure he felt like he needed to keep you around,” he mocks. “I’ll admit, he made more of a mess than I had planned, that’s why it took me so long to get you.”
He walks to the bar, his shoes clacking on the beat-up wooden floor.
He pours himself a drink and paces back to where Liz is restrained.
Stroking her braid, he continues, “I didn’t expect you to be so well…
protected. That was an unfortunate bump in the road, but now that I have my pet back, I will have a way to control your Reaper,” he says the last word like it makes him sick.
“You almost had me convinced, watching you at the lake, but it wasn’t hard to get one of his men to talk.
Poor little pet, falling in love with a man not capable of loving her back,” he snickers at her.
“So, what’s the point then, asshole? What’s the fucking point of taking me again if you want him? You said it yourself, he’s never going to love me back, so you taking me means nothing to him,” she snaps before her head goes flying to the side, Dmitri’s slap making her ears ring.
“Because, my pet, if I take you back, then everything he did was for nothing. All the people he killed, all his men who died, all the orders he disobeyed will have been for nothing. So, he will come for you, and when he does… I will kill him.”