- Chapter Nine -

Heavy Is The Head

"She's not coming up..." Panicking that the young woman had yet to resurface from where she had fallen into the pool, the second boy looked to the third. For support, for answers, for some kind of directive to action. It was no use looking to the first, as he was the reason why she had gone under in the first place. "Tommy, she's not coming up! We need to get help, we gotta-"

Three seconds shy of flailing his arms around and running in a slanting circle like a chicken that had lost its head, the second boy had already seemed to conveniently forget his own role in the story. They were only trying to scare her, to have fun where there was none to be had, he wasn't out to hurt anyone! He was a good person - he donated when he could, and though the other guys didn't know it, his dog Thunder had been adopted from a shelter. Maybe he wasn't perfect, and perhaps the liquor was even largely to blame, but it never crossed his mind to genuinely harm the girl. He had a young nephew that he simply adored, and he was biracial too!

Less than amused by the cowardice on display after he had been the only one man enough to pay the bitch back, the leader shoved his long-time friend to the side and away from the miserable scene. In the back of his mind, there was still some hope remaining that if he were to separate them from the edge of the pool, they might just forget what they had witnessed and sack the hell up.

Finger flying into the second boy's chest, the first teen laid out the plan and interrupted the second thoughts in one flew swoop. "We ain't gotta do shit. I already gotta strike on my record, and I'm not about ta get another. If anyone asks, we were in the room the whole night. This chick just had too much ta drink and did it herself. I don't know shit, you don't know shit, Tommy don't know shit."

The third boy, Tommy, chimed in as he regained his feet, "But her head-"

Forcing himself to stare down into the water where the girl was slowly beginning to drown, eyes roving first from her prone form to the scarlet swirl by her temple that made it next to impossible to make out the gash, he was determined to burn the memory into his mind. He did this, and he didn't even feel that badly for it. There wasn't any joy in his marrow at the knowledge that he had caused a girl to no longer exist, no rush of power or hunger to do it again. Numb to the unfolding experience, he didn't feel anything, but why should he when she had brought it on herself?

His old man didn't accept weakness, and to turn away now would be the ultimate act. Striving to make his old man proud - even if he never knew about this incident - the big bad boss of the three man gang raised his hand to his friend and threated the other boy. It was bad enough if one of them was on the verge of cracking, they didn't need to both loose their nerve. "You want a matching one?"

Beta in every sense of the word, Tommy stepped down at the promise and looked to his friend for support. He agreed that it was best to just go along with what they were told, but he needed to know that he wasn't alone in giving up control of the situation.

Despite the best efforts of the alpha to get him away from the edge of the pool, the second boy's eyes darted to the blood that was clouding crimson and carmine around the girl. They might have done things that vilified them in the eyes of their peers, but he just couldn't cope with the guilt from this. Jumping in himself didn't occur to the boy, but he did remember that there was someone a few floors up that could help with with kind of thing. He'd never spoken to the guy himself, but he'd seen him around, and rumor was that he had helped Tommy's old man out of a jam once. He knew in his gut that he had to at least attempt to make this right.

"I gotta go!"

What he was doing was suicide: if not because he had acted on his accord, it was going to be his hide for snitching, however it had to be done. Ducking around the one they had elected to act in their best interest at all times, he missed the mad bull rush only to slip hard on the back splash of their crime. Kinda bad ass like in old 2d platformers, the second boy took the sideways dive in stride and hastily scrambled upright. Too bad there wasn't a working camera to catch all the action - stupid paranoid whales had seen to it that they wouldn't end up on the Discovery channel. Setting that aside to bemoan later when it wasn't his ass on the line, he darted out the door before they could catch him.

Filled with blind rage and thinking that he was going to report this to the authorities (or at the least someone else that would do it for him), the leader dashed after the second boy. "You're dead, Liam!" Liam was fast, but he didn't know the hotel layout as well. "You hear me?! We'll find you, and we're going to KILL you!" Exclaiming to the heavens, he would turn this into a massacre if he had to.

Tommy just stood there, half in awe that Liam would directly disobey orders for some girl that they didn't know (especially after she had given them every reason to just abandon her), half in horror that he was an accomplice to murder. The girl might not have been dead just yet, but it was just a matter of time. He privately agreed that they shouldn't just leave her there, but what else could they do? Given the order to turn on Liam after everything they had been through together, he had to erase what amounted to half his life just to make his legs move.

Zipping passed a scandalized-looking detective that was too run down from the job to care what the young hooligan was up to to be running through the halls, Liam bolted from the pool and took the stairs up two at a time. He had no clue how long someone could last while drowning, but he suspected that it wasn't long. Weighing what was worse to motive himself to move faster, ultimately he couldn't decide if brain damage beat a slow demise. He only knew that neither was a good way to be.

Half-way up the hotspot for smoking on rainy days such as these - or really the place to go to do anything that you didn't want to get busted doing - the teen paused to catch his breath when he saw a lost-looking man. Haste and devouring consternation enough to blur away the face of his own mother, the young man didn't recognize the very person he was looking for. Mind set on bringing the body to the right place rather than to the individual he'd find behind the door, all he saw was graying hair and an agitated expression. Surmising the lanky old fart to be misplaced and senile, it seemed as if he was searching quite adamantly for something or someone. Probably his dentures or his Viagra.

"Hey you," once a brunette before the gray had crept in, the dark-eyed figure accosted Liam from five steps away, "have you seen a girl? Dark hair, roughly your age?"

Any other day of the week, Liam would have rolled his eyes and given some sarcastic retort, but that description (vague as it was) was eerily too close to the vest. Not caring if his scattered mind was using the old idiom appropriately, the teen boy nodded his head with a sharp pull on his own neck, "Pool." Lungs on fire, he could only manage short sentences of about a word each, but it was enough to get the ball rolling. So what if this wasn't that guy he was looking for? Anyone that wasn't the police would have been helpful under the circumstances. "Hurry!"

Search yielding nothing as of yet, Sam knew that to better hunt his prey, he had to understand his prey. Frankly the ex-con had no idea if the girl understood how to find her bearings in a situation or not (he would guess not), but based on the kind of luck that she was having it made sense that she would get turned around. Taking fortune's hand a step further, the thief would go so far as to assume that somehow or other the heiress would find herself in harms way. Stumbling across his first legitimate lead was promising, but from how shaken the kid was he knew that it wasn't going to be a fairy tale ending.

Throwing open the undecorated door to the emergency fire escape, two more boys the same approximate age of the girl barreled into the crowded stairwell. "Liam, get your ass-!" Screaming for the boy that had been kind enough to offer the free tip of where to look next, the two paused when they saw that their friend had company.

It wasn't difficult to guess what had happened.

Leslie and his little friends would be dealt with later, at his own discretion and in a manner fitting of the part they had played. With a single scowl at the bickering children that shut down any and all fight, the grizzled brunette was deathly silent all the way to the indoor swimming hole. So far as the boys were concerned, he'd left the trio in the stairwell to sort their business amongst themselves. For one thing he just didn't have the time to spare on their bullshit, and for another it was clear at a single glance that none of them had the balls to stick around to see this thing through to the end. Was it just a generational thing he wondered, or were there just no real men left in the world?

Bursting through the door like the ultimate deus ex machina, the man scanned the room for signs of the heiress, but there was no trace of her. Unless... Gutted by a fist of stone and fearing what was waiting for him, Sam went to the tiled edge of the pool and was immediately greeted by a distorted ruby bloom that had swallowed a darker pod. Unmoving beneath the rippling surface and emitting the faintest of bubbles at odd intervals, the heiress sank deeper down to the floor of the deep end.

Without a second thought, he dove into the rectangular pit and swam with all his might towards the body. Brain putting together that at least one of the three boys had done something to injury the young woman before she had gone for a dip, he was more focused on the task at hand. Parting to his level strokes, the chlorine saturated depths were for his mission in that he felt little resistance, yet at the same time she seemed to be descending faster and faster the closer he got. Reaching the girl after what seemed like twelve feet more than any pool had, he seized her wrist to reel her in. Weighing next to nothing as she floated into his arms, he grabbed the girl by the armpit once she was close enough and he dragged her back to the surface, to oxygen and life.

Ascent unassisted, her head rolled to the side when they broke against the burning mirror to the surface. Rescue much less dramatic when he realized that they had risen at a slant and were then that far from the deep end, he stood up at his full height and carried the girl through the rest of the water and set her on the pale white tile. Soaked shirt making it that much harder to tell if she was breathing, he climbed up the side of the pool to kneel at her side. Shift in angles doing little enough to prove one way or another if it was too late, as he hunched directly over the girl's prone figure he could just barely distinguish the gentle rise and fall of her ribcage. That was a promising sign, but he could tell that something was still off.

Everything fleeing from his mind, he could barely even remember the CPR lessons that Nathan and Elena had insisted that he take when Cassie was born, let alone why saving this girl mattered so much. Gazing down at her as she laid there defenseless and inert, Sam just knew that he had to.

Pressing his palms to her chest to pump the water out of her lungs, he allowed half a millisecond to pass before beginning chest compressions. Pushing hard and fast down on the center, he did everything right yet she continued to just lay there. Trying again but with more urgency, he proceeded to give the teen mouth-to-mouth. Tilting her head back at the chin to keep from touching the fresh wound on her scalp, the active historian pinched the nose and covered her mouth with his own before blowing. Feeling a sudden surge of gratitude that giving up smoking had allowed him the capacity to do this without killing them both, he gave two breaths before pumping her chest again, keeping it up until her body responded.

Sputtering the water out in bleached waves and coughing away the rest, a barely conscious Daniella finally opened her eyes the slightest bit as the air returned to her lungs. Not positive of how long she was out of it, only that she was still far from alright, the teen couldn't keep her eyes open from the excruciating sting throbbing continually in her head from where the bottle had smashed into the side of her face. Pretty sure that it had been the stranger that had been the one to save her, she brushed her fingertip against the back of his wrist before she was out of it.

Halo of pearl surrounding him, he had looked like an angel...

Overwhelmed, the girl had swooned before he got the chance to ask her if she would be alright. Aware of just how redundant the question was, Sam peered at the scarlet smear staining the side of her face. The midnight swim had probably made it look a lot worse than what it was, but he wasn't about to take any chances. True to his selfish wish for action at the expense of the young girl, the convict would have to move her quickly to patch her up. For now though, the question was where exactly to take her? No doubt her mother would be up in arms and declare that the teen be taken to the hospital, but as a seasoned adventurer that lived under the radar for a reason, he knew that that would be a bad idea for a number of reasons.

Usual means of care off the table, the remaining options were to carry her back to his room or to kill two birds with one stone and use this opportunity to transport her to the safe house. Pulling out the tried-and-true method of crafting a list of pros and cons, if he were to bring the girl back upstairs that would be considerably closer, however medical supplies were on the scarce side. On the other side of that coin, the safe house was always well stocked for any situation, and this could have been serious. The downside there was that it was a ways off, and the heiress wasn't out of the woods just yet.

Glad that he remembered to always keep his phone on hand, Drake opened his speed dial and rung up Victor. His parter had hardly had time to accept the call before he started, "I found her, but it's not looking good. There's a lot of blood here. Victor, you still got that ol' piece of crap?"

Sullivan opted to ignore the dig at the trusty Dodge he had lifted some years back, instead adding up what Samuel was getting at. "Called one of those lift services. Why?" With his boys, he knew that he wasn't going to like the answer.

"I'll explain on the way." Really it was a short enough story to just tell the old man that the Princess here had decided to make some new friends and take a swim, however he was more interested in not making the job of her enemies that much easier. Making sure that she was holding on, even if it was a paltry effort on her part, the man sat up straight, "Right now we just need to get someplace I can patch her up."

Apparently on speaker phone - one of the hazards of losing your hearing he supposed - the surfer piped up and said the most useful thing he probably ever said in his whole life. "I have a truck. I'll take you wherever ya need to go."

"Great." Tone betraying the chagrin that it was becoming more and more unlikely that they would be rid of the blonde any time soon, at the same time Sam was genuinely relieved that someone there had their own ride. "Someone needs to find her mother so we can get a move on." Dealing with Bai was going to be a headache, but as he picked up the teen - who was now much heavier and quite the strain on his back as it turned out - in a messed up way this might have been just what they needed. "Better idea, just leave a note telling the harpy that we had to step out." With her underground network, it would be easy enough to track them down.

And if that were true for the businesswoman, it was likely even more true for the two fractions that wanted her daughter. It was a good thing he didn't plan on staying long.

Shifting the girl around in his arms so that her injury wouldn't draw too much attention when they strolled through the lobby, he hung up the phone with one hand and rested it across her stomach. Clashing elements outside cracking in rage and sorrow, he changed his mind about that placement and slipped the device up her sleeve. In hindsight it probably would have been easier to just set her down and put it away in his pocket the right way, but he wasn't enchanted by the notion of having to pick her up a second time. "You know, if I were you I'd ask if the chef was feeding you enough."