Chapter 3 Phoenix
Phoenix
The door seals again before my vein stops stinging from the blood draw Danner just forced on me. I press my finger against the spot to stem the little droplet of blood that persists in welling up. What the hell was that all about?
The room continues to hum with a low, indistinct sense of motion; the floor has that low pulse you feel more than hear. Engines. Current.
The implications make me curl my hands into fists by my side to keep my fingers still.
It’s just the river. I nod firmly, reinforcing the thought. We are docked and sitting on the river. I take a deep breath in through my nose, a long, calming one. Anything else is unthinkable, so I simply won’t think about it.
I breathe out, inhale once again, then move, starting another, more thorough inventory of my prison. I’ve done it once, but there’s nothing else to do.
I return to my chain first. Still the same eight to ten feet of thick links, with a thick steel half-link bolted into a steel plate that’s welded through the floor.
I test the play in it—forward, back, a slow grind to see if there’s a weak angle.
The bite at my skin tells me when to stop before anything important tears.
The door next. Handle, latch seam, the hinge. I test the give quietly without rattling it like a child. It’s all exterior-weight stuff—bars and padlocks I can’t begin to pick. I slide my palm down the seam anyway, feeling for a draft, a ridge…a kindness. Nothing.
Walls. They’re corrugated steel, thick and cold with sweat. I know we’re outside; I know we must be on the river—the slight motion tells me that.
There are no screws exposed except where the lamp clamp bites into a rib overhead. I jump to try to reach it, and the chain checks me, pulls me back. I land wrong, curse, jump again. The clamp holds. The bulb buzzes a warning and flickers but stays.
The faucet slow-drips into a rust-stained basin, and I cup my hands and collect a swallow. The water tastes like old pipe, and with a face I spit it back.
The chair is cheap metal with a thin vinyl seat. When I sit and shift, it ticks in protest. I rock it again. There—one leg wobbles. I flip the chair, run my fingers along the cross brace, and find a screw that’s not tight…a flat-head. I try with my nail, and it tears on a diagonal.
Damn it. That’s not happening.
My fingers go to my pocket before I think. The chip is there—Maverick’s, from that night in the kitchen when I couldn’t sleep from all the texts I kept getting. He’d stood there and talked me off a ledge, his feet bare, his hair a mess, a small chip that he kept sliding through his fingers.
Then he’d slid it across the counter.
"A marker," he’d said. "Not for the cage. For the call and the bullshit attached. If you need me, you put this chip anywhere, and I'll find you."
I didn’t consciously decide. I just kept it. It was one of the few things any of them had given me that felt meaningful.
They’d filled my closet with slutty clothes, sure, and given me a beautiful, comfortable place to stay…but all of that was just dressing. Contractual.
The poker chip was Maverick. I liked having a piece of him with me.
I turn the chip over in my hand. It’s heavy enough to be real—no novelty plastic—and the edges are crisp. Nothing obviously special about it, otherwise.
I set it sideways against the screw, find purchase, and start to turn. It slips on the first pass. On the second, it bites. I keep the pressure steady. The chip warms in my grip. One third turn, then a half. The screw crawls out slowly.
“Come on,” I whisper, because talking helps keep my hands from shaking.
Another turn. The screw clears and drops into my palm, maybe a quarter inch in diameter and a couple of inches in length. I close my fist around it, relief sharp enough to taste. It’s not much, but it’s something.
Something they don’t know about, something that’s mine.
I slide the chip back into my pocket and tuck the screw into the other. It’s something small I can hide, something that might come in handy because I am going to escape this place.
The mattress is stained and nasty. The chair is compromised and barely standing on its own at this point, so I ease down with my back to the wall and fold my legs, the chain clinking as it settles. The floor is cold against my legs and butt, but it’s better than that…that crime scene.
Needing something to occupy my hands, I pull the chip back out of my pocket and begin running it through my fingers the same way Maverick does—edge against thumb, turn, repeat—until the rhythm takes. My chest finally loosens enough for breath to go all the way in.
Don’t think, I tell myself. Thinking is going to lead to dealing with the pain of being taken. And I don’t have that luxury.
I can’t think of anything else.
Time is my worst enemy. With nothing to hold my attention, my mind walks into every secret corner and nightmare possibility.
I know what happens to girls like me, the ones no one cares to find. The damaged ones. The girls no one misses. With every passing moment, a sense of grim terror is beginning to push its way into my consciousness.
Trafficked. Kept. Raped. Disposed of when the novelty wears off. What the hell is Danner planning? And is it just him, or are there others? This feels like something way above that idiot’s pay grade. He mentioned ‘the boys’ earlier while he was drawing my blood.
The thoughts, the questions, the nightmares all arrive at once, one after another, and sit in a line.
Just waiting for me to acknowledge and deal with each and every one of them with all the time I’m going to have.
But I don’t want to deal with them. I don’t know the answers.
My stomach lifts and falls like I’m on a too-quick elevator.
A news story from a few years ago pops into my mind.
I think it was out of…North Carolina? South Carolina?
The details are fuzzy. A woman went to look at some property with her boyfriend.
A serial killer killed the boyfriend, then chained the girl up in a container—kind of like this one—and kept her there for over six months, repeatedly raping her until she managed to escape.
I can’t remember how she managed to get out, though. Some mistake her captor made, a trick, an opening. The blanks in my memory sting worse than the parts I recall, because I need to know how she escaped, damn it. Tears prick, making my eyes burn.
No.
I press the heels of my hands, hard, into my eye sockets until fireworks go off behind my lids, then let go before I make it worse. Crying wastes salt and precious time I need to make a plan.
I’ll cry later. Not now.
I work the chip again in my fingers again and try to think about the men I left behind. The ones I need to fight to get back to.
Conrad first, because he’s always first when things go wrong. I bet he’s slicing the world into tasks so he doesn’t break in half because I left him again.
He’d sooner die before admitting it, but I know I broke him. I didn’t mean to. I just…the only voice I could hear back then was the one saying I wasn’t enough. He was better without me.
Especially as tangled up as I was in my feelings for all of them.
That voice is dimmer now, but it’s still there. I can still hear it, especially after finding out my fucking father sold me. God-Jesus.
Conrad will have Zeus. I bet he’s turning the vet clinic into a war room because that’s all he can control right now. He’s probably so damn mad at me.
Atticus will already be in the hotel computer system, working it like it’s a special kind of playground.
In my head, he’s talking in timestamps and paths, fingers moving fast, his eyes blank and bright behind those glasses that make my mouth water.
He’ll find the camera that looked the other way and make it tell him a story anyway.
He’ll build a map to find me out of missing frames and sounds that don’t make sense.
Maverick is smiling in that Cheshire-cat way he has at people who don’t deserve it, and when they stop being useful to him he’ll stop smiling.
He’ll call in markers and burn those who deny him to ash.
He’ll leave the ashes neat, though. He’s polite like that, and won't want to make a mess for someone else to clean up.
Storm… Well Storm is busy watching everyone’s backs and counting exits, his knives in hand. He’s ready to go to battle for me. He’s just waiting for the signal that turns him into a monster. He’s waiting to kill anything and everything in his path.
And then I think about Zeus, and my throat closes from the agony of what he must be experiencing.
I drag a breath in around the pain. He got his teeth into Danner’s flesh.
He did his job. If there’s any justice left, Conrad has the vet brushing his fur right now and telling him he’s the world’s most perfect, bestest boy.
The hum under the floor seems to widen for a second, turn, and settle. The room shifts almost imperceptibly as weight moves on weight. Water I think again. It’s just the water shifting under us.
I keep working the chip because idle hands are invitations. The edge has left a tender groove in my thumb. Good. Something that belongs to me.
The locks start up again long enough after Danner left that my sense of time feels dumb. One, two. The door opens. He fills it with his bad breath and a tray.
“Dinner.” He says the word in the same tone he might say “collar.”
The tray has a plastic cup of water, a sandwich in cling wrap, and a bruised apple. He sets it on the crate-table and looks down at me. His gaze finds the chip in my hand because he’s trained to find things people hold tight.
“What’s that?” He doesn’t wait. He steps in, quick, and snatches.
I lunge, chain stopping me a half-second too soon. The cuff bites bone. I swallow my protest, unwilling to let him hear my pain.
He holds the chip up between two fingers, reading it like a label. He grins, all small teeth. “Oh, sweetheart. This won’t do you any good. You can’t buy your freedom here.”
He flicks it toward the far corner. It skitters across the steel, loops once, and disappears against the wall’s edge.
He wants me to make a scene. He wants me to act like I’ve got nowhere to go and nothing to do except what he wants. I keep my eyes on his instead and give him nothing.
“Eat,” he says. “Keep your strength up. You’ll need it.”
He lets the threat hang and leaves. The locks replay the same ugly music as they clang into place.
I’m moving before the last one settles.
The chain checks me with an ugly little jerk, but I flatten out, cheek to floor, and stretch my fingers. I extend until my ribs protest, turn my hand sideways, and feel with my fingertips for the thin little circle I know as well as my own pulse.
Nothing. I push impossibly further.
My shoulder scrapes steel. I exhale to get another half-inch of reach. The cuff bites against my skin again. A brush—smooth rim, then the milled edge. My fingers close, lose it, close again, and this time hold.
I drag it to me and roll onto my back, breath coming faster than I want it to. I sit up, tuck the chip deep into my pocket, then rethink and tuck it inside my bra, under the seam, where fingers won’t go without warning. The screw stays in the pocket.
The sandwich waits. The thought of food makes me nauseous, but I peel back the plastic and force myself to eat half. I drink all the water and hold the cup to catch the drip from the tap.
When the shaking returns, I set the cup down, put my shoulders to the wall again, and square my head.
Keep it together.
Breathe.
Count.
Remember who I am and who the Titans are, the power they have. They will come.
Conrad is building a plan. Atticus is building a trail. Maverick is building pressure. Storm…Storm is simply building.
My job is simple. Stay alive long enough to meet them halfway.