Chapter 41
Sleep and I had a difficult relationship.
I tended to get so immersed in my projects—whether it was creating a new formula, pairing perfumes, learning a new language by watching an obscene number of soap operas, or stalking my husband—that I often woke up in the middle of lucid dreams with no idea where I was.
Those long, terrifying seconds before I got my bearings threw me for a loop each time.
But waking up in the confined trunk of an unknown car? That was substantially worse. Not because it was dark or tight, stale or cloying. It was worse because the reality didn’t change.
When my eyes fluttered open to blinding darkness and suffocating heat under the rumble of a moving engine, I waited for my mind to catch up. Twenty seconds in, forty seconds, a minute later, I remained in the trunk, but not the same open-spaced trunk I vaguely remembered being shoved into.
Garbled music vibrated at my back. Road grit crunched and popped loudly over the repeated squeaking of worn suspensions as my body swayed and jolted with sudden drops, lurches, and jerks. Sharp aches shot up my skull from every thwack of my cheek against the hard, felt-lined flooring.
With a groan, I reached up to press my fingers to my temples, but zip ties cinched my wrists together, the same for my ankles. Every jerk of my limbs dug the ties deeper into my skin as panic seized my lungs.
“This was what you wanted,” I whispered to myself.
Lies, a cruel voice croaked back. That’s nothing but a dirty twist of the truth.
I had only planned to get captured for a short time. Long enough for my brother to consider this hit on Cillian a threat to my safety and force his hand in eliminating Sosa. Then I’d make a quick escape.
Except the drugging caught me off guard. Ironic for someone who made a secondary career out of weaponizing chemicals, but here I was. Trapped in the dark, tied up, vulnerable, and alone. With only me, myself, and I to rely on while a dozen different scenarios carouseled in my thoughts.
Hit in the skull with a shovel. Buried in a ditch. My head severed from my body. My manicured fingernails pulled out. My legs broken. My limbs chopped off. My body burnt to a crisp.
Nausea roller-coastered its way up and down my throat, and my heart raced against the swoosh of blood in my clogged ears.
Each beat pitched over the other. Each one demanded more air to feed its work.
More air that I couldn’t supply. My lungs burned as the car sounds dissipated into a muffled droning against my head.
The clatter of my teeth and knocking of my knees against the trunk was all I could hear.
The mashing of my bloody lips between my teeth was all I could taste.
Before one little detail kicked back in. Pain.
The more my body jerked, the more the zip ties bit into my skin. They chafed and chafed until the numbness faded. Until the sharp sting spasmed up my limbs, and every ache and throb in my body sparked back to life.
I lived, they reminded me. Nothing was set yet.
I was a resilient, capable woman. The badass Toxic Fiend with a perfume empire to expand and the beginnings of a loving relationship to fully explore.
I hadn’t finished learning Gaelic yet, and I wanted to give Arabic a try.
I hadn’t yet won a Fragrance of the Year, Universal Prestige award.
Plus, I wanted kids one day. This was not how my story ended.
As that truth settled into my bones, the panic lulled. Sounds filtered back in. My stomach settled.
“Just another challenge to overcome,” I panted.
I took a breather to assess myself. Cillian’s knife remained as a lump in my shoe.
My clothes were intact and untouched, which meant I hadn’t been searched.
I still had the emergency miniature knife in my bra lining, my transmitting belly-ring locator, the vials in the rubber heels of my tennis shoes, and the sharp pins in my hair.
In this situation, I took zero offense to being underestimated. It was their loss.
With a little contortion, I pulled out a hairpin. I fiddled it against the locking tab of the tie around my hands, but with one hard jolt from the road, the hairpin slipped from between my teeth and fell to the floor.
“Merde. Come on,” I muttered. Sweat beaded my brow as I dug out another hairpin and stuck it in my mouth to try again.
With a tiny downward shove of the pin against the lock, the zip tie tail loosened. I tugged my wrists free, then my feet.
The next step was to escape. I fumbled around the trunk.
An emergency trunk-release latch built into the side panel behind me glowed dimly in the dark.
I reached for it but hesitated. Pulling it was easy.
Harder was knowing when the car’s velocity was just right to pop the trunk open and jump out.
Too fast, I’d end up as a splat of roadkill.
Too slow, they’d catch up too quickly after my jump. So I waited, heart in my throat.
As the car swerved around a bend in the road, it slowed.
I took the chance. With one harsh tug on the latch, the trunk popped open to a sweltering moonlit night.
Night? I didn’t question it for more than a second.
I scrambled out, tripping over the ledge, and thudded onto hardened dirt tracks.
The bullet graze across my shoulders flared on impact, sparks of pain shooting up my spine.
Behind me, the crackling of dirt beneath tires continued for a few seconds before the squeak of brakes hit.
Just long enough for me to get to my feet and run.
I sprinted through damp brush and stumbled over stones, all while shoving past thick, long leaves. I veered left, then right, fast and nonstop, in whatever direction got me away from them.
The oppressive, thick air congested my lungs. Every heavy breath became more difficult to pull in. My long sleeves and thermal pants stuck to my skin like glue, and a creamy fruity aroma clung to my tongue. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
Within minutes, my muscles burned. My dry mouth and throat protested, but their yells spurred me on.
Leaves slapped behind me. Running steps thudded at my back over the crackle of dried leaves.
Beams from flashlights gleamed up and down dirt paths between rows of thin trunks.
I hid behind what I thought was a tree, tall and erect, but the waxy trunk yielded beneath the push of my fingers with a rustled crinkling, dry bits peeling away.
Lightning burst through the sky overhead and lit up a bank of clouds headed for the full moon.
“There,” a man yelled.
A flashlight pointed my way and lit up the woods. No, not woods. A banana plantation…in the United States?
I rushed down a path between banana stalks, peeking over my shoulder as those steps clobbered closer and closer. One flashlight bounced six banana stalks down. The other was to the far left, much further back.
Thunder cracked and grumbled around me. The storm was closing in, and from the sound, it was sizable. I needed shelter and fast, but not with my tail.
I stopped behind the nearest banana stalk, that fruity smell almost overwhelming, and retrieved a paralytic vial from my left heel. I smacked my lips together, mouth dry and sticky. I needed water and soon.
Something crept over my shoulder. Tiny legs tapped over my sleeve, and I clamped a whimper down behind clenched teeth as the beam of a flashlight drew nearer.
“Come on out, and we won’t hurt you.”
Imbécile, like I’d believe that.
Another flash of lightning lit him up. His balaclava was gone, and he was dressed for the summer with a build of about one and a half mine, but our heights were evenly matched. He twisted his body away from me and searched to his right before slowly swiveling my way.
I pounced and swiped his legs out from under him.
The flashlight tumbled between us and ghouled his features.
I jumped atop him, landing one punch to the head to disorient him.
Another to the throat forced his mouth open, and I shoved the vial in.
By the time he reacted and pushed against me, my fist struck up into his jaw.
The glass shattered between his teeth, and he screamed. Blood spewed from between his lips.
I hawked dry spit at him. “I hope that hurts.”
The paralytic generally took a minute to spread to the rest of the body but immobilized the point of contact within seconds.
No more talking, no more swallowing, and in time, no more breathing or moving.
It worked best intravenously, but I’d altered the composition of this particular compound to permeate cell walls through osmosis to get into the bloodstream.
A sensation of creepy crawlies snapped my attention to my arm. A big, brown, hairy spider crept over my elbow, its four front legs raised.
I yelped and whacked it away. It landed atop the man as I scrambled off him.
The flashlight projected its large shadow against another banana stalk as it dug its fangs into his abdomen.
Immediately, a muffled squeal of pain grunted out of his locked jaw as he thrashed from side to side, bending over, then straightening back out.
I picked up his flashlight as his body tensed and his back arched. Blood and vomit dribbled out of his mouth, and he gurgled nonsense. Worse, an erection tented his pants. None of those were symptoms of my paralytic.
I reached down to pick up his gun before his partner caught up, but that spider, the size of my palm, veered up on its back legs and lunged at me.
Luckily, I jerked away in time to avoid its bite.
Screw the weapon. I still had more vials: one with another paralytic, one with cyanide, and another filled with a fast-acting, highly concentrated hydrofluoric acid.