Chapter 14 - Leverage

As 8.30am crept up, Alex continued with her ritualistic Thursday morning stock receipt. She knew to expect Nikki or Piper at any moment with her coffee. She yawned thinking back to the late night she'd had with Piper. They had now been "official" for two weeks, she smiled thinking back to their night under the stars. Since then they had been near inseparable. Piper had moved a lot of her non-essential belongings into storage while taking a casual attitude towards finding a new place to live.

Another hour passed and Alex checked the clock, disappointed that nobody had made an appearance with her coffee. Just as she was about to go upstairs and collect one for herself when she heard the door open and Rick, the manager of the coffee shop rushed over to her. "Nikki and Piper haven't turned up for work," he told her.

Alex frowned and looked up at the man, "what?"

It was unlike Piper to ever be late for anything, especially not work, but for her to not show up, something had to be wrong.

"Do you know where they are?" He asked impatiently.

"No," Alex felt her heart thudding hard in her chest, "let me see if I can get hold of them?"

Rick nodded and ran a hand through his hair. Alex ignored his mumbling about not being able to open the shop on his own and wiped her finger across the screen of her phone. She hit Piper's name and waited. And waited. It rang out and she heard the automated voice asking her to please leave a message after the tone. A lump formed in her throat, she took a deep breath trying to remain calm. There would be a rational explanation for this. It could be anything, perhaps the toaster had set on fire, or they couldn't find their keys, or something? She hit Nikki's name and waited. And waited. When Nikki's phone rang out, she hung up and began to pace. Ignoring Rick's gaze, she hit Piper's name once more. Voicemail again. A cold feeling puddled in her stomach. Something was wrong. She typed a quick text and sent it to them both.

"Something's wrong," she said out loud, her voice caught in her throat. Rick stared at her.

"I'll go back to the apartment," she suggested, "see what's going on." She pushed her phone back into her pocket and hurried up the stairs, asking Rick to let her manager know what was happening.

Alex ran as fast and as hard as she could, but the short journey home felt as though it was taking forever. Her heart hammering in her chest, she fumbled with her keys and the door, panting as she struggled to catch her breath. She had no idea what she would find on the other side of the door. She hoped that Piper and Nikki would be rushing to get to work, late as they had both slept through their alarms, but somehow she knew this wasn't the case. She took a breath and roughly pushed the door open. The apartment was silent. Still. She looked to the kitchen where Piper's bag and keys sat on the counter. Piper would never leave without her keys.

"Piper?" she called, she knew instinctively that she wouldn't receive a reply, "Nikki?"

Alex moved further into the apartment, she noticed a dent in the wall which hadn't been there before. Signs of a struggle. But who? Why? Then she noticed the bathroom door and the towel which lay on the floor. Piper's towel. She ran to the bathroom, her heart hammering so hard that she could hear the blood pulsing in her ears. There was nothing there, she couldn't decide if she felt scared or relieved.

"Pipes?!" She called out, her voice breaking.

Alex moved quickly, throwing open the door to Nikki's bedroom. Empty. She scanned the room and noticed a plate on the bed with a half eaten slice of toast. Nikki never skipped breakfast. She knew it already, but she wasn't ready to accept it. She moved to her own room and with the exception of ruffled bed sheets, she found it tidy but empty.

"Fuck," Alex looked at the phone on the end of her bed. Piper's phone.

Feeling nauseous, Alex sat on the edge of the bed. Her head was spinning, Piper wouldn't leave her bag, her keys and her phone. The towel on the floor. Nikki's part eaten breakfast. The dent in the wall. There was only one explanation. They'd been taken.

It was dark. Her head was pounding. The first thing Piper noticed as she woke up was the restriction of tape across her mouth. She could hear the sound of an engine, and the slight rickety motion beneath her told her that she was in the back of a truck. Next she noticed the friction of cable ties digging into the skin of her wrists which were tied behind her back. She moved her legs, hoping to sit herself up but found that they were tied together too. She panicked, moaning loudly into the tape, screaming through her nose. She stopped as she heard the sound of somebody else doing the same. Wildly she looked into the darkness around her, and through a small section of light shining between the truck doors she could see another pair of legs tied together. She followed the legs upwards where the light bounced from a familiar mane of bushy strawberry blonde hair. Nikki. She felt both comforted by her presence and scared for her, for them both. What the fuck was going on?!

Nikki had managed to sit herself up, her back against the side of the truck. She wasn't struggling, she had moaned into the tape across her mouth to tell Piper that she wasn't alone. Nikki brought her knees up to steady herself as she swayed with rocky movement of the moving truck. Piper shuffled, so that she was beside her room-mate and struggled to sit herself up. There was a dull ache in the side of her arm where a needle had sedated her. She had no idea how long she had been out, long enough to be tied up and chucked into the back of a truck. The grogginess that she felt indicated she may have been asleep for a few hours, but the light shining between the doors meant that it was still day.

Piper closed her eyes as she forced herself to remember what had happened. It was a Thursday, so Alex had already left for work by the time she and Nikki had began their morning routine. She'd walked out of the bathroom and had been shocked to find a man with his arm bent across bending her arm across Nikki's head as he held her to the floor. Another man appeared suddenly from the bedroom and walked towards her. The men didn't speak to them or each other, not once. Piper looked around wildly before making a dive for the bathroom. She'd attempted to slam the door shut, horrified as a steel capped boot swiftly moved into the frame. Instinctively she began to scream, she pushed forward in an attempt to run past the man but an arm caught her around her stomach and a large hand covered her mouth. She continued to struggle but he was strong and quick, within seconds her face was pressed against the cold tiles of the bathroom floor. Through the gap in the door she could see a man pressing a needle into Nikki's arm. The man holding her down was fidgeting with something in his hand, she knew it would a needle and she tried to break free once more, but the large muscled arm pressing against her cheek allowed no for no movement. She was trapped. A needle forcefully jabbed into her arm and within seconds her vision blurred, she tried to focus on the fading outline of the sink basin, tried to fight the sleepiness consuming her, she felt her body become limp and then she was gone..

Now she found herself and Nikki in the back of a truck, abducted. Hours crawled by, although she had no way of counting the time, the light shining through the doors had began to fade. Wherever they were being taken was far away from home, and she had the dreaded feeling that she wouldn't ever be seeing home again, that this was it, the end. So much had happened so quickly, she and Alex had been official for just two weeks. She wondered about Alex, had she discovered they were missing yet? Surely she would have noticed they hadn't turned up for work? Or had Alex been taken too? There had to be a reason she and Nikki had been taken, a calculated reason. People didn't just get taken from their homes at random. It became glaringly obvious to her that this was the work of the Cartel. But why them?

Alex picked up Pipers abandoned phone and tried to calm her thoughts. She needed to think logically, she needed to come up with a plan. But a million and one questions were running wild through her head. She felt certain that she knew the "who" and even the "why" but variations of "when", "where" and "what" were rushing through her mind. With a large slam she threw the phone back down to the bed and her balled fist into the bedroom door, "FUCK SHIT FUCK FUCK!"

She began to pace up and down, it had been so long since she had worked in the cartel for her to have any idea how they operated these days, she imagined they would be just as dangerous, perhaps even more so. If it had been so easy to find her and take Piper and Nikki, then why hadn't they done so before? She thought back to her dream two weeks ago, had it been a premonition? And then she thought back to the men she had seen outside her apartment, and the man she had seen in New York and then again as she'd landed back in LA. They had been watching her. They'd been waiting. But why? Why now? Why did they take them?

Piper's phone began to ring, she picked it up and looked at the screen. Unknown number.

She hesitated before answering, "hello?"

"Alex Vause," the voice was deep but familiar.

"Who's this?"

"An old friend," the voice spoke. It wasn't Kubra, but she felt certain she had heard that voice before. It was one of the cartel, someone who worked very close to Kubra. She tried to put a face to the voice but couldn't.

"I strongly advise that you keep quiet, if we even hear a police siren then Blondies brains here will be all over your friends face. Got it?"

"It's me that you want," Alex spat angrily, "why have you taken them? They didn't do anything."

"Keep it shut, we ask the questions, not you."

Alex sighed impatiently, she knew to do as the voice told her, she knew she had no choice but to do anything and everything that they asked of her. And then it came to her, the reason the Cartel had taken Nikki and Piper was simple. Leverage. At some point they were going to ask Alex to do something that she wouldn't want to do, and she would have no choice but to do it, whatever it was.

"What do you want from me?" Her hands were shaking but her voice remained steady. She couldn't afford to sound scared.

"Don't move from the apartment Vause, we are closer than you think," the voice warned, "I will call you back soon with a location, Kubra wants to talk." The line went dead.

Alex replayed the words in her head. Closer than you think. How close? Was somebody in the apartment with her? She stood up and moved through the apartment with defiant attitude, she opened every door and cupboard, looking under the beds, anywhere a person could hide. But she was alone.

Kubra was not the kind of man to waste time and resource, this was not just a "pay back", she owed him a debt, and he was collecting. He didn't care for the welfare of Piper and Nikki, they were merely a bargaining tool, there was nothing stopping him from having all three of them killed once he'd taken what he wanted from Alex. Alex knew better than to expect Kubra would want just the $70,000 she had taken during her escape, he would want at least double plus interest. The only way she could save Piper and Nikki would be to kill Kubra. Easier said than done. Kubra had protection.

She rushed back to her bedroom and pulled out various storage boxes from her wardrobe, she began to empty them until she came across a small tatty book. It looked more like a teenagers diary than anything else.

She opened the book and flicked through pages of her untidy scrawl. It was an book of old notes, phone numbers and account numbers and passwords. Computers were too easily hacked, but this inconspicuous note book held all the information she had once needed without looking important at all. The book was cryptic, made up of obscure notes, numbers and symbols. She never wrote all the information on the same page, instead she had a system of spreading it across pages, almost like a code. She flicked through the pages and stopped at a four digit number, she flicked four more pages and then entered a three digit number before flicking the book by three pages and finding a five digit number. Together the 11 digits made up a phone number. She double checked to make sure she had found the correct pages and then she rang the number.

"Chow's pet store, how may I help?" a female voice called.

"Can I speak to Kim?" Alex asked.

Kim worked for a rival cartel, he wasn't the head but he wasn't far from.

"Kim is a little busy at the moment, can I take a message?"

"Tell Kim that this is urgent, he doesn't want to miss my call. Tell him that Vause called and that I want to help him bring down Kubra."

"Alex Vause?"

"Yes, tell him it is Alex Vause."

There were a few minutes before a male voice answered the phone.

"You tell Kubra that I'm not playing games anymore."

"I'm not working for Kubra," Alex hissed impatiently. She'd know it would be difficult to win Kim's trust.

"I haven't worked for him for years," she told him, though she was sure he must have heard of her escape, "but he's after me, and he's taken two of my friends."

"Is there a point to any of this?" the voice sounded bored and a little aggravated.

"I can bring you to Kubra."

"How?" the voice seemed sceptical.

"Because at some point they're going to kidnap me too, and they're going to take me right to him."

"And?"

"And if you can have some of your guys in the right place at the right time, then you're free to him."

"You want us to be your bodyguards?" the man seemed amused.

"No. I want you to watch me, and then when they take me, I want you to follow them, and there you will find Kubra."

"Sounds too simple."

"That's the beauty of it."

There was a silence.

"How does this help you?"

"Well if you kill him before he kills me, I can rescue my friends."

"They must be very good friends."

"They are."

"I'm going to need to meet you first," the voice spoke.

"There's no time, they've told me not to leave the apartment until they contact me."

There was another long pause.

"I want you to hang up. The next call you receive will be a video request, accept it." The line went dead. Alex stared at the screen of her phone and answered the incoming video call immediately. She couldn't see anybody on her screen, the camera had been blocked, but they could see her.

"Yes, that's her, that's Vause," she could hear a voice in the background of the call.

"Look, this isn't a set up," Alex spoke holding the screen up so that they could clearly see she was alone, "I need your help."

"Where are you?"

She relayed her address and waited patiently. She knew this could be a massive mistake, but this was her only chance. She couldn't bring Kubra down on her own..

"Do you remember Smith?" the voice asked.

Smith had worked for Kubra many years ago. Alex had never met him, but everybody knew the story. Samuel Smith had been involved in an attempt to bring down the rival cartel, by order of Kubra. The concept of their plot was simple, feed enough information to the feds to lead to their arrest. Of course, Kubra couldn't risk getting too close to the feds, so information was captured by camera and bugging devices. Sam had been the "plant". He infiltrated the rival cartel and gathered information, evidence which they would use to tip off the feds. One morning Kubra received a special delivery, and when he opened the box, he found Smiths head. It was a message to Kubra that the cartel was not to be messed with.

"The decapitated guy?"

"Some of my best work," the voice spoke, "if we find out that this is another one of Kubra's silly little tricks, make no mistake that the next time Fed Ex knock on his door, it will be your head in the box."

Alex rolled her eyes. "Got it," she answered.

"We have somebody watching your apartment," Kim said, "when they call you, you call me. Any time you change your location, you call me. Got it?"

"Yes."

The line went dead.

Alex wasn't sure whether she could rely on the rival cartel to keep to their word, but it was the best shot she had. She knew how badly they would want to take him down. With Kubra gone, the company would collapse and his valuable business would be up for the taking. Millions of dollars worth of business. She knew that the rivals would be at least curious about her proposition.

She sat and waited for the phone to ring.

The engine stopped. Piper felt tired and thirsty, her body felt bruised and achy. She couldn't be sure how long they had been locked in the back of the truck but there hadn't been any light shining in the gap between the doors for a long time. She guessed that it was late in the evening, perhaps past midnight. Listening out, she could hear the sound of the carriage doors opening and closing, and then she could hear footsteps making their way around the truck, deep voices talking hurriedly in an accent that she didn't recognise. The doors flew open and the first of the two men hoisted himself up and into the truck. He shone a torch onto them, and they winced up into the bright light at the silhouette figure. He took a blade from his pocket and sliced the cables at their feet.

"Up!" He demanded.

Piper and Nikki pushed against their feet, stumbling as they stood up. Pipers rolled her shoulders in attempt to wake her arms which had felt like dead weights for some time now.

The man pointed his torch out of the truck and to the pavement, "Out!"

They shuffled forwards hesitantly. Somehow the darkness in the back of the truck felt safer than whatever could be awaiting them outside.

"Come on," the man spoke impatiently. His accent was heavily eastern European.

Nikki jumped first, the second man held out his arms to catch her. Piper jumped next, and felt her body crash into the man. She steadied herself and stood away from him, turning around to look at their location. They were parked outside a boarded up abandoned apartment building, the surrounding buildings were either derelict or severely run down. One had been partly demolished. There were no other cars, and no sign that anybody lived or ever visited the ghost town.

Piper looked from one man to the other. They looked very similar, as though they might be brothers. They both had crew cut styled dark hair and stubble, both were well built but Piper noted that the one who had pinned her to the bathroom floor was notably more dangerous looking, he was more muscular, and had a thick scar that ran down one side of his face.

One of the men walked towards the chained up entrance of the building. He slipped a key into the padlock and dropped the thick chain to the floor, stepping over it as he pushed open the door. Piper's mouth felt dry as she looked at the decaying building. Was this where she was going to die? A hand roughly pushed Piper her forward and she walked towards the building. As she stepped over the chain and into the doorway she was hit by the distinct smell of damp, and urine. She jumped at the sudden flicker of light as the strip light above dimly lit the corridor. The floor was littered with burned aerosol cans and empty snack wrappers. She heard a scurrying. Rats. Piper watched her footing carefully, knowing that there was every chance of stepping on rat or a used needle. She noticed the graffiti on the walls, not art like she had seen on the graffiti walls at Venice Beach, but "tags" and names. She passed a double elevator, one of which had the doors open and cable leading into the darkness of the basement. She shivered as she wondered why they were here. The practicality of using this abandoned building in an abandoned town to house hostages was obvious. But why were they hostages? What did they want from Alex? Even as she faced inescapable danger herself, and the likelihood of murder, she couldn't help but worry for Alex. The light flickered, buzzing loudly as it threatened to die any moment. She looked behind her to see Nikki being shoved forward. She looked back at the man leading the way and noticed that he was now pushing the door open to the fire exit.

She continued to follow, climbing the stairs up four floors until the man stopped outside door 407, and pushed a key into the lock. She felt herself being pushed into the darkness of the apartment, and then the man stepped in and flicked the light switch. By comparison to the what she had seen so far, the apartment seemed relatively clean. Empty, dusty but untouched by graffiti or litter. She could see into the small kitchen, there was a gap where an oven and dishwasher should be, but there was a refrigerator, and on the surfaces she could see a microwave and a travel kettle beside two mugs. The living room was bare except for two stools and an old radio. She and Nikki were guided into a room at the back of the apartment which was empty except for a mattress in the corner, beneath a window boarded with metal.

"Home sweet home," the largest man grumbled.

Piper stared at the mattress, half expecting a rat to run out from under it. Nikki, however, simply sat down on it. She grumbled loudly into the tape across her mouth.

"You scream, and I will put a bullet right.. there," the man with the scarred face spoke, prodding his large stubby finger in the space between Nikki's eyebrows. She nodded in response, and he ripped the tape from her mouth.

Stretching her face, Nikki rubbed her lips before she spoke. "Where the fuck are we?"

Neither of the men bothered to answer her.

Piper moaned into the tape across her own mouth.

"Same goes for you Blondie," the man warned and pulled the tape from her mouth.

"Where's Alex?" Piper asked immediately.

"She is.. otherwise engaged," the larger man answered.

"Where?"

No answer.

"Is she OK?"

No answer.

"What the fuck is going on?!" Nikki loudly demanded.

"Keep it down," the other man warned, he gave them a look at the gun tucked into the inside of his jacket. Piper wasn't sure why he demanded them to be quiet, even if she screamed, there was nobody around to hear them.

"Can you untie my wrists?" She asked.

No answer.

"Ok, well can't you just tie them to the front instead of behind my back?"

The larger of the two men took Nikki's wrists and unclasped the plastic. She moved her wrists in-front of her and held them back together obediently. He retied them and then did the same for Piper.

She took a place on the mattress beside Nikki.

"Friendly pair, arent they?" Nikki said, trying to make some humour of their situation. But there was nothing funny about this.

"They work for Kubra," Piper spoke in a whisper, although she knew the men would be able to hear her, "the guy who Alex used to work for."

"The drug king pin dude?"

"Exactly. They're using us to get to Alex. I'm assuming our lives depend on her doing something to pay back her debt."

"Fuck," Nikki said, resting her head against the wall.

"Yeah, fuck."

"Alex will come through," Nikki said trying to remain positive, "she loves you."

Piper nodded, she was sure that Alex would do all that she could to guarantee their safety, but she didn't know if that mattered for anything. While she had never had much to do with the Cartel during her travels with Alex, she knew that a lot went on which Alex chose not to discuss with her. Alex kept Piper at a distance from the business, with the exception of once using her as a mule to move drug money into Belgium. But Piper knew that these men were dangerous. That Kubra never got blood on his hands, he paid other's to do his dirty work, and the men who had abducted her and Nikki, these were the men who did his dirty work. They were the dirty work.

"These guys are dangerous," she told Nikki, "Alex could do whatever they want, she could do it perfectly, but it doesn't mean it will matter for shit. People like us, hostages, we're nothing but bodies to them."

Nikki closed her eyes and rested her head against the wall. "I was a junkie once, you know?" She didn't know how much Alex had told Piper about her.

"I didn't know that," Piper looked surprised, "how long have you been clean?"

"About a year before I met Alex," Nikki said, "ended up in hospital for a second time, some infection from a dirty needle," she spoke casually, "I didn't give two fucks about what happened to me.. but my shit head of a mother came to visit me in the Hospital. She actually looked as though she cared. Not in the way that most mothers would care, you know? She was never affectionate, I was always an inconvenience rather than a daughter. But she came back early from her vacation to see me in the hospital, and she actually looked scared for me. So I made a promise to stay clean."

Piper nodded, she wasn't sure why Nikki was telling her this. Perhaps just to pass the time.

"When I met Alex, she was living in a motel room at the edge of town, you know the cheap $30 a night rooms that prostitutes use to run their business. Yeah well they're fairly decent places to score drugs. It was my birthday and my Mom didn't even bother to call, I went there for a hit, but instead I bumped into this fucking mess of a woman. Crying her eyes out as she downed cheap vodka. She doesn't know it but she saved me that night."

"That's what's fucked up," Nikki spoke, her voice a little louder, "if she hadn't ran away from that fucker, she wouldn't have been there that night and I would have injected that shit into veins and would probably be dead by now..."

"And now you're here because of Alex and none of it even matters because you're probably going to die anyway?" Piper summarised.

It sounded cold, cruel, bitter and angry, but it was true.

"Something like that," Nikki agreed.

Silence fell between them. It was hard not to be angry with Alex. Angry at her and scared, and scared for her too.

"I hope she's OK," Nikki thought out loud.

"Me too," Piper sighed. Wherever Alex was, whatever she was doing, she knew the woman was not OK.

A/N –

As always, thank you for your reviews. I felt quite un-confident about that last chapter, and I was surprised by the positivity it received. I hadn't even intended or thought of it as being cute, but I am happy you enjoyed it. I'm a sucker for stars and romantic mush.

As you may have guessed from this Chapter, I have no clue how an international drugs cartel works. So if by any chance you are reading this and your career involves the movement of vast amounts of illegal substances then I apologise for my lack of working knowledge in this subject area.

Apologies if there are any typing mistakes. I have written and edited and re-edited this so many times, that it's likely that I have missed something or bodged it up somehow. But I literally don't think I can read through it again without driving myself insane. I'm sure the plot has plenty of holes in it and probably wouldn't happen how I've written it but I'm enjoying writing it, and I hope you continue to enjoy reading it.

Thank you,

S x