Chapter 1 Phoenix #2
Then why am I here in a box with my name on it and a pretend toilet to piss in?
I set the recorder down before I throw it. I breathe in through my nose until the salt stops burning my eyes, out through my teeth until the shake in my hands becomes small enough to hide. It doesn’t matter that I heard it already. It still rearranges the room.
Outside, the metal locks click, forcing my head up and my gaze to train sharply on the door. One…two…three locks tumble and groan. They need oil.
I’m already moving, shifting my weight, timing it, looking for an angle where I can turn my body into a weapon within a six-foot radius. It’s not enough space, but I’ve survived in less.
The door opens a hand’s breadth, then all the way, light from outside spilling in like a cold slap.
He fills the threshold: the protector’s uniform without the protector’s soul, shirt stretched over a belly that comes from sitting too much in a patrol car.
Salt and pepper stubble scrapes a jaw that wants to be squared and isn’t.
His hair is cut regulation-short, and his eyes are the wrong kind of pale—boiled-egg whites around pig-blue irises.
Danner.
The corrupt cop who leered at me once in our kitchen and saw a girl-shaped opportunity.
He looks me over like I’m inventory he ordered from some store, and not a human.
“Well, hey there, sweetheart,” he drawls, his Savannah accent trying to flirt with his pathology. His teeth are too small for his mouth. “Welcome aboard.”
I don’t give him the flinch he’s fishing for.
I don’t give him anything.
He steps in, dragging the smell of cold coffee and aftershave with him. The door scrapes shut behind him, and the locks nestle back into place, one after another. He does it without looking, the gesture practiced.
The thought settles uncomfortably. I don’t like that it’s second nature for him to be so careful with the locks, to shut the doors behind him without even thinking about it.
“You look cozy,” he says, leering like I’m sprawled out before him with my legs open and a smile on my lips. His gaze slides to the mattress, then back to my face, slow as syrup. “We try to make our guests comfortable.”
“Is that what I am? A guest?” I tilt my chin at the toilet. “I reckon this is the Hilton? I preferred the Titan-Wynn.”
He grins. It lands like a thumb on a bruise. “That mouth. I remember that smart mouth.”
He reaches, slow and deliberate, like he’s granting me the favor of anticipation. Two fingers aim for a lock of my hair. I jerk away, and he tracks the movement, amused. “I told the boys you had a little fight in you. They like that. I like that.”
His fingers grab hold of my hair near the scalp and hold, because he’s decided he’s going to touch me, and that I’m not going to do anything about it.
That I can’t do anything about it. And the worst thing about all of this is that I can’t. I can’t do anything to stop him. Not in this metal box, with this chain around my ankle.
His touch is firm but almost gentle at the same time, and that makes bile rise faster than a slap.
“Don’t,” I say, anyway, useless. He ignores me and pops the cap off a syringe in his other palm.
“Be still,” he cautions. “I need to draw a little blood, and if you wiggle around this is definitely gonna hurt you more’n does me.”
I think about struggling, but in the end, I don’t like needles, and I don’t like blood. I stand still as he pulls my hand out and sticks my finger, holding a plastic tube to it to collect a blood specimen quickly and efficiently.
“What is that for?”
“All in good time.” His smile widens, and he pockets the tube, never removing his other hand from my head. Instead, he digs his fingers into my hair and twists, fisting a portion at the base of my skull and yanking. Hard.
The world tilts.
And suddenly I’m not here.
I’m there.
I’m in the service corridor with the stuttering fluorescent light, the one I told myself to remember because the cameras blinked dead in the blind spot and no one ever thinks to look behind the linen carts. The carpet there eats sound. My shoes don’t make a noise as I head toward the lobby.
I’m almost past the door when it blows open.
He grabs me the same way then, from the side—hand in my hair, knuckles punishing, the other arm banding low around my ribs as he drags me back into the dark between the cameras. His breath is in my ear. I taste peppermint and cigarettes and rot.
“Gotcha,” he says, delighted, because his kind adore the hunt more than the catch.
“ZEUS,” I gasp, but the dog is already moving.
My dog hits him like a fired shell. Forty-five pounds of muscle and pure love turned into teeth. The sound Danner makes—shock, then pain—lives alarmingly close to laughter. Zeus’s jaws clamp on Danner’s calf just above the boot. The meat gives.
Danner buckles, swears, lashes out with his knee.
Zeus doesn’t let go. Blood slicks his fur.
I twist, kick back, rake the back of my heel down Danner’s shin.
He grunts. I go for his eyes with my nails but only catch his cheek.
He jerks my head again; my vision goes white-hot then black at the edges.
“Little bitch,” he snarls, and oh, the joy.
He reaches for his gun. I don’t see it, but I know the body mechanics of it—the way a shoulder dips, the way his center of gravity changes.
A hard object punches my kidney from behind and all the breath leaves me.
Another hand from someone I didn’t know was there clamps over my mouth.
The hallway collapses down to a single point of my breath choking in my throat.
Don’t panic, don’t panic.
All the good training in the world falters when your skull meets painted cinderblock at speed.
He slams my head into the wall. Light explodes.
I smell blood. Zeus’s snarl gurgles. Danner’s leg thuds into him.
The second man—there was always a second man—drives an elbow into Zeus’s ribs, once, twice, until the sound changes.
I try to scream and squeak like a mouse against the hand at my mouth.
Con, I think, stupidly, like it’s a prayer. Conrad is going to think I left him again.
The thought detaches and floats away like a balloon cut free. Darkness swallows the string.
When I come back, I’m on my knees in a metal box and my ankle hates me. The tape recorder sits on its little throne. The air tastes like salt and metal. The door is real. Danner is real.
So is the hand in my hair.
I blink, and the container snaps back into focus with a violence that leaves me lightheaded. Danner’s face swims before me, pig-blue eyes bright with the fascination men like him always reserve for the moment you remember who holds your leash.
“Ahh,” he says softly, pulling harder. Tears prick at my eyes where the hair pulls free at the root. “There it is. It’s all coming back to you now, isn’t it?”
I plant my palm against his chest where his badge used to sit and push. The clamp light buzzes above us.
I meet his eyes and make my voice steady, because if I can’t stop what’s next, I can at least refuse to give him the theater he wants.
“What the fuck did you do to my dog?”