I couldn’t think, couldn’t come up with something to say. She was right. I didn’t know what she’d done. Or been through. Or sacrificed. I’d say this. I was raped by two men when I was fourteen and had managed to maintain a normal life. She was in a warehouse full of prisoners, shoving a knife into my thigh. I was going to guess she had been through hell and back to fall to this point.
She prodded, unhappy with my lack of response. “You think you KNOW ME?”
She pushed on the knife, and it effortlessly cut deeper into the muscle, severing nerves and lighting my thigh on fire. I screamed, the pain blotting out my vision, the intensity worse, so much worse, than the initial penetration had been.
“Please.” I wheezed out the word, my chained hand gripping my thigh just above the place where the knife jutted out of it. Blood bubbled around the blade, running down my muscle. Too much blood. Didn’t I have a major artery somewhere in my thigh? The femoral? What if she hit it? I could be minutes from bleeding out. Minutes from death.
“You think I killed Gwen? Please.” She stood. “YOU killed Gwen.” She lifted one boot and hovered it gently in the air about the knife. “Think I can get it to go all the way through? One hard stomp, I think it’ll do it. Can we at least try? I’ve always wanted to try.”
She giggled, then stopped, her silhouette suddenly illuminated in bright red light. Her head twisted around, the long blonde strands spinning out, and eyed the overhead bulb that had illuminated. I watched her boot carefully, my heart in my throat as the heavy black rubber sole swayed above the wooden handle. The light began to blink, dousing the room in black, then red, then black, then red.
Her head snapped toward the light and she paused for a moment, watching it flash. “Shit.”
There was a crash, a deep engine revving, and the terrible grind of metal against metal. I looked in the direction of the sound, trying to gauge how far away it was, hoping that it was somehow tied to the red light.
When I looked back, she was gone and I was alone in the room, the knife still protruding from my bloody thigh. I locked my free hand around my thigh and tried to staunch the bleeding.
Twenty-Six
THE REACTOR
Shit. Claudia ran up the stairs and to the small room at the top landing, entering the code and shoving open the door. She leaned over the desk, her eyes darting over the grid of camera screens until she found the right one. A Humvee had broken through the fence on the east end. The night vision camera showed bodies moving, crawling over the vehicle and stepping over the electric wire. She spun, looking at the cameras facing the opposite end of the property, and saw another set of SUVs pull up there. Motherfuckers.
She watched the men as they crossed into another camera’s line of vision, their guns drawn, night vision goggles on. The view went black, then static, the connection gone, the camera taken out. As she watched, another monitor flashed dark, then white. She was running out of time. She straightened, looking around the room, thinking through the evidence that may exist. There were no files, no names, nothing in the room that connected her to him. Her eyes fell on a scrap of magazine, one she’d taped to the desk. She reached forward and carefully pulled it off the surface. It was a photo of Robert, taken years ago, around the time he’d brought her in. It had been published in a Vegas social publication, the image taken at a benefit, and it was one of the few photos she’d ever seen of him. He was smiling in the photo. Genuinely smiling. It was a beautiful and rare thing for her to see, especially on him and she looked at it whenever she needed a reminder of the man that lurked behind the hard exterior.
In the last four years, he had become the focus of her entire world. A focus honed and sharpened in their joint pursuit of… She inhaled sharply, her mind unraveling, his lessons already flaking, dissolving, her mind twisting into knots ever since. She hadn’t killed Gwen. She couldn’t have killed Gwen. Everything that she had said to Bell Hartley was true.
She killed Gwen. They killed Gwen. They both, in evil concert with Nick Fentes, killed Gwen and then Robert. Her family. Her family, which she had been just days, just moments, away from fully joining.
The interior alarm blared, a motion sensor tripped, and they, this brigade of men and guns and disaster—were here.
She had only minutes to make a decision. Run? Fight? Or…
Her focus settled in. Deceive.
She eyed the broken cameras, imagining the soldiers circling the building, advancing closer. Guns drawn. Twenty or thirty of them against her. Escape would be all but impossible. Except that, she knew exactly how to do it.
Reaching up, she gripped the top of her head and yanked. The blonde wig peeled away and fell to the floor.
* * *
BELL
The red light stopped, the cell falling back into darkness. I held my breath and listened, straining my ears in the direction that the crash had come from. What had it been? It hadn’t come from inside the warehouse. It had sounded further away. Almost too far away. Maybe it was a car accident on the closest road.
I heard the clatter of shoes, pounding down a stairwell, inside the structure. I tensed, my eyes on the front of the cell, and waited for her to reappear.
Nothing happened. The footsteps ceased, her path taking her somewhere else. Silence grew, and I wondered why this place was so quiet. Didn’t the other women say anything? Did they all just sit there in silence, all day long?
My thigh throbbed with pain, drawing my attention back to the knife still sticking out from my thigh. I took a long, shuddering breath and gently touched the area around the wound. My fingers came away damp and warm and I felt lightheaded, unsure if it was due to blood loss or anxiety. I could feel the blood dripping down my thigh, a pool of it forming under my leg. How much blood could I lose? I took quick short breaths and regripped my upper thigh, second-guessing the motion when more blood seemed to pool around the blade.
Something banged once, twice, and then a loud third time. I stilled, my head raised, and listened. A battering ram? The quiet returned and I yanked at my cuffed hand, testing the restraint, my gaze frantically searching over the ground, the other cuff, looking for the handcuff key. She was going to come back. She was going to come back and she’d kill me. Kill me in the final second before they found us. I froze when, through the dark open door of the cell, a flashlight beam cut through the darkness. I straightened and watched as its beam floated over a concrete pillar. My chest constricted. I hesitated, warring between silence and screaming. I took in a deep breath. “Hello?”
In my head, my call of greeting had been a shout. But it came out weak, my voice wobbling on the final note, the end result something barely audible, and not nearly loud enough. The cell walls swallowed the call, and I repeated the word, this time louder, as loud as I could manage. The flashlight clicked off. A door creaked open. I held my breath as a dark body eased in front of my cell, one step carefully placed in front of the other, a gun held out, sweeping across my cell. A cop. I sank against the concrete wall, relief seizing my chest. The man held a finger in front of his mouth and I nodded. He stepped forward, continuing on. The next figure, even in the dark, even with goggles on and features obscured, I knew. I knew it in the broad width of his shoulders. The strength of his frame. The height. The confidence in his movements. He came into the cell with quick steps and crouched beside me, pulling me into his arms.
Dario.
He brought me into his chest and the scent of him, the strong squeeze of him …. I clutched at him with my free hand, a shuddering exhale bubbling out of me. He pulled off his night-vision goggles and kissed me everywhere. Strong presses of his lips on the top of my head, my forehead, cheeks, lips. He whispered my name and I cupped his face, my nails digging into the short stubble of his beard, then his shoulders, then across his chest.
He saw the knife and froze. “Oh my God. Bell.”
I gripped his shirt, pulling his eyes to mine. “It’s okay. It looks worse than it is.”
“It looks l
ike a shitload of blood. We need to get you to a doctor. I’ve got someone here, let me get him—” He started to stand and I yanked at his shirt, keeping him down.
“Don’t leave me. Please. Just wait.”
He kissed me again, his hand tightening on the back of my head. “I’ll stay. I love you. God, I love you so much.”
There was a shout and sudden activity. Metal doors banged open, a metallic hum sounded, and the main aisle flooded with light. A new body filled the doorway and I flinched, then perked up when I recognized him. “Laurent?”
“Yeah, chere.” The relaxed drawl of his Cajun dialect … it made me want to cry. He came to find me too.
Laurent moved aside as two more men shouldered in. The three of them blocked the light from the hall and I had to squint to see their features in the dark. At the sight of Rick and Lance’s pinched and concerned faces, I could no longer hold in the emotion. The pain, the exhaustion, the fear … the relief of it all broke a dam in my heart. I lowered my forehead to Dario’s chest and started to cry.
* * *
THE PRISONER
She swung open the door of the fourth cell, meeting the wary eyes of the blonde. The girl wasn’t chained, her shackles removed months ago in exchange for her obedience. It was a shame. Given a little more time, she might have become something worthy. Instead, she’d be the ticket to Claudia’s escape.
The blonde’s gaze flicked to Claudia’s shaved head, her eyes widening at the fresh haircut.
Claudia stepped inside and pointed the Taser. “Let’s go.”
The box had been installed first, the six-foot square cavity dug into the ground for the purpose of holding the fireproof box. An air pipe left the box and ran a quarter mile east, then came to the surface on the edge of a field. The warehouse had been built on top of the box, the entrance concealed in the concrete stairwell that led up to the second-floor office. Inside the box was a feed into the security cams and enough bottled water and provisions to support someone for several weeks, assuming they could deal with the boredom and the smell of their own excrement.
Robert’s plan had always been simple. If the warehouse was discovered, if a threat came on property that was too big to overcome—get in the box and blow the place apart. Escape later, once the attention dies down.
The plan had always sucked, though she hadn’t voiced that opinion to him. Now, she shoved the girl forward along the hall, out of the view of the other cells.
Entering the stairwell, she nodded toward the open hole in the ground, the box’s interior dark, the blinking red lights of the security system giving an occasional blood-red peek. “Jump in.” The girl hesitated and she pressed the Taser into her shoulder. “GO. Don’t make me hurt you.”
* * *
Back in the cell, she stripped off the T-shirt, then grabbed fistfuls of mud and rubbed it over her breasts and along her arms and the front of her jeans. She’d changed shortly after arriving and securing Bell Hartley. She’d washed off the clown makeup and ditched the Realtor costume, leaving the blonde wig on just in case. Just in case had been a good precaution, and the ratty jeans now worked well for her cause. She ran her dirty hands over her face and her shaved head, taking the oldest cell in the back and locking the ankle restraints into place. Her hands… she hesitated, and then left them free.
It had been four years since Robert first shackled her and Tanaka up in this exact same cell. Claudia had pulled at her restraints for weeks. Every girl in that place had only had one form of restraints, their wrists or ankles. She hadn’t understood why, out of everyone there, he’d used both arm and leg restraints on her. When she’d earned her way out of the leg restraints, she’d cried. The arm restraints had taken so much longer. Tanaka had died before Claudia had been able to leave her place by the wall and move around freely, without the iron weight dragging her hands down.
Over three years had passed since her shackles had been removed, and she still couldn’t have anything around her wrists. A bracelet, a watch, even a hairband caused her chest to tighten and her panic to swell. Now, she tested each ankles shackle, making sure they were convincingly secure. From a distance, one of the women called out, the sound echoing along the warehouse. Taking a deep breath, Claudia slid down the wall, her tailbone knocking painfully against the concrete floor, and brought her knees to her chest. They must be inside. They were probably creeping slowly through the building. Looking for her.
It was to her benefit that she’d spent those two days running from Robert. Skipping meals, torturing herself with guilt. In just days, her cheeks had thinned, her belly distended. Her muscles, developed from several years of strenuous workouts, had wilted.
She looked like death. Had felt like it. Earlier, when she’d lifted Bell Hartley over her shoulder to carry her out of the house, she’d struggled, the weight almost too much for her.
Close by, a footstep crunched. She immediately tensed, her arms wrapping around her knees, her face hidden behind her forearms. A man eased into the doorway, his head sweeping left to right, examining the small cell, and returned to her. She peeked out at him, and he lifted a finger, telling her to stay quiet.
She smiled, the gesture hidden behind her knees. Idiot.
Twenty-Seven
THE RESCUED
Agent King peered at Claudia. “Name?”
She stayed quiet, picking incessantly at the sleeve of the long-sleeve shirt that someone had provided. Glancing around, her eyes picked up on all of the details. White walls. Cramped corners. A sterile scent that reeked of bleach. She’d kept her fingerprints to herself so far, pulling at the shirt sleeves and tucking her fists in them.
The other agent, a woman, leaned forward. She wore a name tag, one that said Marcantonio, though she’d told her to call her Gina—her tone the soothing sort typically reserved for toddlers. “Why did he shave your head?” She circled the edge of the table, peering at Claudia as if she was a window display. “None of the other women have shaved heads.”
Claudia lifted her chin and met the woman’s inquisitive stare. “Punishment.”
That, paired with an irritated look from the head agent, shut her up. The woman folded her arms across her chest in an irritated fashion that made Claudia like her a little more. She stole a glance at the woman’s watch and did the math. Fifty-four minutes had passed since she’d locked the blond in the box. Good thing she’d set the timer for an hour.
So far, in the half hour since they’d carefully brought her out of the cell, she’d been given a stack of Oreos and some water. She’d ignored half of their questions and given only short responses when she had responded. They hadn’t pushed. They seemed to have the opinion that being kept prisoner weakened an individual’s mental state. And maybe, in other camps and with other keepers, it did. But Robert Hawk was different. Under him, she had grown stronger—both mentally and physically. They were handling her with kid gloves when they should have brought out machetes.
She threw the first breadcrumb out. “How close are we to the warehouse?”
The agents exchanged a look, and the man responded. “About fifty feet.”
She bound her hands across her midsection and glanced toward the door in her best impression of a nervous woman. “We should move.”
The female agent got the hint, one she’d practically spray painted across the walls for them. “Why should we move?”
She didn’t respond, taking the moment to begin rocking, her chin tucked, eyes down.
“Miss.” He leaned forward, across the table, and when he reached a hand out toward her, she flinched as if she’d been shot. He retreated at the same time that the female agent advanced.
“Why do you want to be farther away from the warehouse?”
That was the thing about cops. Push them into the direction of a question, and then don’t answer the question? They’d swarm on that topic like piranhas.
She swallowed, then threw them a giant, juicy bone. “I saw her, wiring the explosives.” For theatrical
fun, she took another fearful glance in the direction of the door, her rocking motion increasing in speed. “We should move further away.”
Three minutes. Three minutes, and then it’d all be over with.
* * *
BELL
The moon swayed with each of Dario’s steps. I gripped his neck and rested my head against his chest, listening to the solid beat of his heart. It didn’t feel real, being reunited with him, being out of that place. I squeezed his neck muscles, inhaled the scent of him, and curled tighter into his hold.
“We’re almost there. Just hold on.”
I could see the ambulance ahead of us, its lights reflecting against his shirt, the doors open. An EMT ran beside Dario, trying to assist him, but I wouldn’t let go of him, not until we got to the ambulance. They’d already prepped me for what would happen there: the removal of the knife. I was almost looking forward to it. The pain had dulled to a screaming throb, one that seemed to shriek with every step Dario took.
I squeezed his neck to get his attention. “Did they find the blonde? The one who took me?”
He looked down at me, and I watched his features harden. “Not yet. But don’t worry, they will. That place is surrounded and the FBI just showed up. They’ll get her, wherever she’s hiding.”
I nodded, my nerves bound tight. I watched the dark fields, the night enveloping us the moment we stepped away from the building. I needed them to find her. I needed her to be behind bars. I needed them to question her and find out what her motivations were, and why she was hell-bent on punishing us.
“Stop worrying. I’m here.” His voice was gruff and his body curved around me, his mouth pressing a kiss against my forehead. I closed my eyes, my hand tightening on his arm.