10. Chapter 10
Chapter ten
Remington
For hours, I tossed and turned before finally falling into a restless sleep.
I was kept awake by haunting, invasive images—those men being shot, the fear that Danny may have been detected while he was inside the mansion, and the attendees in their expensive clothes lacking any conscience about buying and selling human beings for their depraved pleasure.
I’m not sure what makes me snap awake. It’s still dark. I’m disoriented and half asleep. When I sit up and listen, I hear a man’s voice muffled through the closed door.
It’s possible Danny’s on the phone. Maybe, like me, he couldn’t sleep and got up to work on his story, made some calls to other parts of the world where it isn’t the middle of the night.
I’m trying to decide if I want to give up on sleep or try for a few more hours of shuteye when my bedroom door is kicked open so violently it splinters on its hinges. I flinch and scream simultaneously at the invasion.
Two men rush into the room. I recognize one of them. He was the henchman who gave the man in the suit the gun he used to shoot those men.
Icy tendrils of fear and panic coil around me.
My adrenaline immediately spikes to maximum levels.
I scrabble away, but in my fear and haste, I get tangled in the sheets and fall out of bed.
As soon as my ass hits the floor, I scramble backward in a frantic crab-crawl until my back slams into the wall. I have no escape.
The bigger of the two—a massive mountain of a man who stands at least six-seven, weighs in at three hundred pounds, and has muscles on top of muscles—grabs a fistful of my hair and jerks me to my feet. The man reeks of danger.
Instinct takes over. I fight without thinking, thrashing and squirming, kicking as hard as I can. Somehow, my knee makes a lucky, solid connection with his groin.
He releases me with a grunt, slamming his boulder-sized fist into my face. The force rocks me backward, my back once again hitting the wall. My knees buckle, and I slide down to the floor, my legs sprawling akimbo in front of me. My eye socket feels like it exploded, and my cheek throbs in pain.
The behemoth bends his massive body over me, one meaty hand closing around my throat in an unrelenting grip. I grab his wrist as he lifts and dangles me off the floor like I weigh nothing.
He holds me there while I desperately claw and scratch at him. His angry eyes glare at me while his giant hand cuts off my air until my vision begins to go dark.
My grip weakens as my body’s deprived of life-saving oxygen. Only then does he release me. I drop to the floor again, coughing and sputtering. My hand automatically goes to my throat while my lungs desperately gasp and wheeze, gulping for air.
He towers over me, scowling. “Get up.”
There’s a promise of mayhem in his expression, and those two words have me scrambling to my feet, not wanting to find out what happens if I disobey him.
The giant grabs me by the bicep, towing me behind him into the living room.
When I’m dragged out, Danny’s already there, under guard of two more henchmen.
Two kitchen chairs have been moved to the center of the room, about three feet apart. Danny is sitting in one of them. Like mine, his face is bruised and bloody.
I’m shoved down, my ass landing hard in the seat of the unforgiving wooden chair. Danny and I sit face-to-face, our knees separated by only half a foot or so. We stare at each other. Our fear is palpable, rolling off both of us. I know the terror in his expression is reflected in my own.
“I’m sorry,” Danny mouths.
I give him a quick shake of my head, hoping he understands it isn’t his fault and I don’t hold him responsible.
One of our assailants lifts his gun. It looks like the same nickel-plated weapon the man in the suit used to execute those men. Turns out, it is a Desert Eagle. He presses the barrel against Danny’s temple. Danny’s eyes drift closed, and he releases a long, stuttering breath.
The leader levels an intimidating glare at me. “Where is the camera?”
I don’t feign ignorance or hesitate. I tell him where he can find it. He glances at one of the others and jerks his head toward the hallway. Without a word, the man exits and returns moments later, holding the expensive piece of equipment.
He turns my camera over in his hands. The longer he examines it, the deeper his frown grows. Then he glances up at the lead goon, shaking his head.
“Where is the memory card?” the leader demands. He takes the camera from his friend and shoves it at me. “Take out the memory card.”
I clutch the camera against my chest. “There is no memory card.”
“Your denial is pointless. Do you think I won’t get what I want? Where is it?!”
“Look, I’m telling you, there aren’t any memory cards,” I respond, my voice shaking. I turn the camera this way and that. “See for yourself. There’s no slot. It’s not digital. Whatever memory cards you want, we don’t have them. You’ve made a terrible mistake.”
He stares at me with such a menacing look of savagery, it makes me shift in my seat. Then he tilts his head, nodding to the man holding the gun against Danny’s temple.
A sudden, vulgar crack of gunfire shatters the air. The blast from the big gun is deafening, echoing through the room and causing me to jerk and gasp. Danny’s head explodes, and he falls sideways, crumpling lifeless to the floor with half his head missing.
The sight takes several seconds to register. When it does, I can’t hold back my scream. I shake. I hyperventilate. My ears ring. My heart thrashes against my ribcage at an unhealthy pace. Fear and uncertainty consume me.
The man in charge smiles. “The story is dead now, no?” He leans in close enough I can smell his fetid breath. My head instinctively jerks away from him.“Now, tell me where the memory cards are.”
These men killed and buried all those people at the mansion.
They shot Danny right in front of me. I have no illusions they won’t hesitate to kill me too.
The only thing keeping me alive are my pictures.
As soon as I tell them where they are, I’m dead.
I can only guess what they plan to do with me until they get what they want, and that terrifies me.
Still, I can’t give him what I don’t have.
I struggle to breathe. When I finally speak, my voice trembles, “I…I told you, th-there are no memory cards.”
Somewhere in the distance, I hear sirens wailing, and if I’m not mistaken, they’re getting closer.
For a heartbeat, a glimmer of hope flickers. But the feeling is fleeting. It vanishes like vapor when the leader barks, “Bring her.”
The human mountain yanks me out of the chair. I glance down at Danny’s body lying so still, the puddle of blood growing around his head.
When I realize they intend to take me with them, my alarm overrides my fear. If I’m taken hostage, there’s a very good chance I’ll never be seen again. I start jerking and twisting, violently trying to break free of Goliath’s grasp, but he’s too big, too strong, and his grip is too tight.
“Let me go!”
I don’t like the grin the man in charge is sporting. “She wants you to let her go, Esteban.”
Goliath, whose real name is apparently Esteban, grins back at his friend, then hoists me up off the floor and over his head like a barbell until I bump the ceiling. Scant seconds later he hurls me down onto the coffee table.
The table shatters on impact. The wind is knocked out of me and pain tears through my body. Something’s wrong with my arm, and I don’t need to look to know it’s broken. The four men form a semicircle, grinning down at me.
With no fight left, I’m easily lifted off the floor. I sway on my feet, my vision fading around the edges from the pain.
Ignoring my injuries, they slap a black hood over my head. Dizziness assaults me. Nausea rolls through me, and another scream rips from my lungs when my arms are wrenched behind my back and my wrists are zip-tied.
I can’t see anything. I’m panting from pain and fear, and even with the small air hole in the hood, I’m rebreathing my own breath.
Without warning, I’m hit in the face. The metallic tang of blood explodes in my mouth. I feel it, warm and wet, dripping from my nose and mouth, running down my chin.
I’m hit again. This time the sweet relief of unconsciousness—where there is no fear or pain—sucks me into oblivion.