Chapter Ten: ETA 3 Hours
As the isolated cabin remained quiet while Lia and Bane slept, hours away on the freshly paved highway, the well-paid militant driving the luxury car with Talia and the unconscious Stryver and Daggett, turned onto the dirt road that Talia pointed out.
The armed soldier of fortune at the wheel, Lawrence "Larry" Rogowski had failed to make the cut for professional hockey and turned his attention to guns and protection of the homeland. He glanced up in the rearview mirror and smirked at Daggett and Stryver collapsed against the plush leather seats.
Daggett was drooling long ropes of saliva onto his baby blue tie while Stryver had been taken under by the opiate before he could tuck his cock back into his pants. His length had heavily deflated and lay flaccid against the inside of his thigh, the shriveled head stuck in a glistening snail trail of his spilled, sticky seed.
Talia shifted and squirmed on the passenger seat, a veritable cat on a hot tin roof as she shimmed into a pair of well-fitting jeans, long-sleeved cotton blouse, low-heeled boots and a thin leather coat as Larry moved the big vehicle onto the poorly paved shortcut to the cabin.
"Why knock em' out, ain't they good for the money?" he asked as he glanced over at Talia as she tapped out a message on her smartphone.
Talia didn't look up as she answered. "I don't want them to know where we are, Daggett must be watched."
"And the pale shrimp?" Larry asked and glanced up at again at Stryver slumped against the leather seat, spread-eagled with his puny flaccid cock, displayed in all its miniscule glory.
Talia chuckled. "I needed to work off some excess energy," she murmured and finished her message before tapping the send arrow.
As Talia's electronic message was disseminated and sent to its recipient, back in Gotham City, Gordon watched Blake cross the street and start chatting up a few men with broad shoulders and hooded eyes as they cupped their large palms around steaming paper bowls of steel-cut oatmeal. The cathedral had received a donation of blueberries from a grocery store that were past being able to sell but offered colorful dots to the men and women's breakfast as they stood outside in the harsh morning cold.
Gordon grew restless as he waited for Blake to return with reinforcements. His mind drifted to Sara and then to Lia from the moment she came into the world.
Gordon closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the seat as he remembered the emergency call to a shitty part of Gotham City on a call of domestic abuse.
Jim's partner at the time was Linda Kiprusoff, having ten years under her belt over the fresh-faced Gordon.
Linda had called in their location and ETA to where the 9-1-1 call originated.
"Watch your corners rookie," Linda said as they approached the ramshackle apartment where a woman's piercing wails permeated outwards from the walls put together with spit and chewed bubble gum.
Gordon nodded as Linda pounded on the door.
"Gotham PD. Open the door!"
Gordon and Linda both ducked sideways and hugged the walls as four gunshot blasts came through the door, splintering it to pieces before the shooter began to reload.
Linda stayed on the ground and whipped herself around and unloaded her magazine into the tall, skinny shirtless man who was lowering the barrel of the shotgun to the head of a very hysterical, very pregnant woman sobbing on the dirty floor littered with broken beer bottles and cigarette butts.
Bloody holes, open gaping red maws bloomed on the man's midsection and he was clinically dead before his corpse hit the floor, landing heavily next to the howling pregnant woman.
Gordon rushed to the woman's side and saw it was a young teenager upon closer examination. The young blonde girl with black roots had her hands clutched to her crotch and belly and Gordon could see blood flowing freely from her, splashing onto the floor, and staining the inside of her quivering thighs.
"Plea…please mister, don't let my….don't let me baby die," the young girl cried as she reached and clutched Gordon with a bloody hand.
Gordon watched Linda check the dead man's pulse before calling for an ambulance.
Linda was soon on the other side of the girl's gesticulating body as the labor process grew stronger and her body practically bent as she gave a guttural shriek and her face twisted into one of sheer agony.
"Shit Gordon, the baby is almost out," Linda whispered as she pushed the girl's thighs apart and found the still, greyish face and upper shoulders of the baby being born.
Linda stripped off her coat and positioned herself between the girl's shaking thighs and urged her to keep pushing.
Gordon squeezed the sweaty-faced girl's hand as she floated in and out of consciousness.
"Please…please…please," she murmured before her words emerged too low for Gordon to hear.
"Stay with me," Gordon urged and brushed her sweat-soaked hair off her clammy forehead as her eyes started rolling in their sockets. "What's your name?" he asked and squeezed her hand tighter, beginning to feel the warmth of her spilled blood begin to soak into the knees and lower legs of his uniform's slacks.
"Save my baby, sav," the teenager gurgled before she slumped heavily against the floor, as dead as her would-be murderer and father of her baby.
Gordon pressed his fingertips to the girl's pallid neck, anxious for any flutter of a beat.
He was palpating every part of her neck and even laying his ear over her chest when the squalling sound of the newborn reached his ears.
Gordon looked over as Linda cradled the crying baby close to her chest and swaddled it in her GPD jacket.
For a few minutes, the three of them sat in silence, save for the babies cries as the ambulance grew closer, the lights and sirens suddenly illuminated the place where the baby was conceived and born, saved from drowning in a pool of her mother's dying blood, never given a name, and buried at the county's expense in an anonymous grave marked, Baby Girl.
Gordon was shook to consciousness as Blake returned to the car, flanked by three men who were as tall as professional basketball players.
He stared down at the wrinkles on the tops of his hands and simple wedding band as he remembered being able to adopt the orphan newborn. Linda had been instrumental in pulling the right strings and getting Jim and Sara's Gordon's adoption papers to the top of the list.
Gordon blew out a sharp breath as Blake opened the driver's side door and the trio of men packed the back seat, introducing themselves as Scott Meinhardt, Alex Fields, and Jorge Barnard.
Gordon couldn't find words of gratitude to the three strangers who were willing to stop everything they were doing to help them. Men he recognized from being picked up for an odd theft or carjacking over the decades.
Scott, the tallest of the three, laid a strong hand over Gordon's shoulder. "Blake caught us up, we'll get your daughter back and ensure people face the consequences."
Gordon nodded and briefly met the eyes of the other two solemn men before he faced forward in the seat as Blake read through a secure message from a tech-wizard at Gotham PD that supplemented her income on the side looking up and passing along information to the highest-bidder.
Blake groaned as he stared down at the message from office Marybeth Mitchell.
"What is it son?" Gordon asked, concern creasing his own forehead.
Blake blew out a sharp breath before answering. "All MM came up with so far is a cell tower a couple hours north, she's still tracing the signal, but it'll take more time."
"Let's head north then," Scott said from the backseat and pounded the back of the seat.
Blake met Scott's eyes in the rearview mirror and nodded, gripping his fingers tighter around the wheel as he felt his excitement grow wanting to dispense justice without the legalities of a preparator having any semblance of rights.
As the mobile muscle car of judge, jury and executioners headed north with the hopes that MM would have her hands on a more specific location soon, Gordon glanced over at Blake who was occupied navigating the onramp traffic and surreptitiously tapped out a quick message to Bruce Wayne, knowing his best chance for a location would not be with any technician no matter how fluent they were in binary code but in the billionaire who wore many hats and a stiff cowl.
Hours away, at the other end of the winding shortcut, Bane's burner phone buzzed as Talia's message arrived.
Bane grunted and stirred awake at the sound. His shoulder joints popped as he reached for the phone, the plastic rectangle looked like a baby bird nestled in his massive palm. His eyes moved over Talia's message and he felt a foreign, tingling sensation trickle into his brain and rape his thought processing center as he said her words aloud on a musical whisper.
"En route, ETA 3 hours, clean everything, we leave immediately after the sale."
Bane stood and stretched his arms to their full width; he pulled in several deep breaths and kept the medicated oxygen trapped in his lungs before he narrowed his eyes on the center HD screen of Lia huddled under the thin sheets.
Bane opened the door that adjoined the two rooms and walked across the room with stealthy silence for a man of his size and stature.
He stood at the foot of the bed and stared down at where Lia was in the barest grip of sleep.
Bane reached out a hand and traced the rough pads of his fingertips down the side of her exposed calf and traced a circle around the protruding bump of her ankle bone.
He knew the precise moment that she began to rise from unconsciousness and felt a surge of irritation that she kept her eyes squeezed shut and continued the charade of sleep.
As Bane continued to stare down at her wordlessly, Lia could hear his ragged breathing increase as she kept her eyes squeezed shut and her body rigid.
As she started counting in her head, anything to focus on other than his wheezing potential, Bane reread Talia's message and found a well of resentment that had burrowed deep inside, spill forth in furious anger at being directed around by Talia, being her dangerous chess piece to play with as she pleased or keep stored on a shelf when she couldn't tarry any attention.
Bane was suddenly starving for more than Venom at that moment and shoved the phone deep in his hip pocket as he found himself craving something indescribable to even himself.
He felt a tingling throughout his groin as the feelings weren't primitive, weren't akin to naked, aggressive rutting in the dirt. Bane had a perverse thought that paralyzed his touch on her as he cupped her heel. He wasn't wanting to force painful groans from her but entertained the fleeting fantasy of sighs and breathless gasps brought on without pain and suffering.
As Bane and Lia's exhalations become synchronized as she feigned sleep and he was stuck in a foreign thought hurricane, three hours away, Talia glanced down at her phone as it blipped from her coat pocket.
"Goddammit Gordon," Talia said with gritted teeth as she read a message from her billionaire bat fuck boy Bruce.
"Keep this to yourself, Gordon's in trouble. I'm going to contact my masked friend. I'll miss the gala, but I promise I'll make it up to you. Monaco?"
"What is it?" Larry asked as Talia seethed with the ferocity of a volcano moments before explosion.
"Gordon contacted Bruce; I threatened his daughter's life if he did that. I'm surprised," she said honestly before her anger returned and she tapped out a message to Bruce in Miranda's even dulcet-toned texting.
"Bruce, please be safe, I'll be home waiting for your return. I can't possibly attend that gala while you might be in danger. Drinks in Monaco would be wonderful darling."
Talia shoved her phone back in her pocket and adjusted the heater vents. "There's a hefty cash bonus if you get us there faster and don't hesitate when I point and tell you to pull the trigger."
Larry couldn't agree fast enough and downshifted the large engine and was soon moving them much quicker and cutting down on their arrival time.