First she smelled bleach. Then she tasted blood.
Natalia blinked groggily. The light gave her a headache. She felt her pulse at the front of her head. Her neck was stiff from her head hanging down for... how long?
She tried to talk, but was stopped by a gag. She blinked more. Her hands and feet were bound to a chair. She shook her head, her vision clearing.
"So she's awake," a voice said. Her ears rang with the soft New England consonants, "Ugly business, isn't it?"
She turned her head toward the voice. A man, late fifties, with a kind face and voice, bellied with a sinister aura. He smiled, kindly and predatory. Walk into my parlor, said the Spider to the Fly.
She faced serial killers, mobsters, and mass murderers. And none of them scared her as much as this man.
"You see," he said, picking up a scalpel, "You've been unlucky enough to have been dragged into a game. A little like hide and go seek. Except, we do more than hide, you see," he chuckled at that.
"Now, this whole mess has shown a distressing amount of light on me," he continued, examining the scalpel in the light, "Now, what better way to shove attention away than to frame someone for killing a cop?"
He leaned down to her eye level and laid the scalpel on her cheek, "Now, I am very sorry. This isn't personal," he didn't sound sorry, and Natalia felt it was very personal.
He moved the scalpel slowly down her cheek to her neck. Her heart, dulled by the drugs began to beat frantically. Her breathing hitched. She felt the blade dig into her skin. Her life began to flash before her-
The blade with drew from her skin. With amazing quickness, the man pulled a gun from the table beside her and aimed at the figure standing in the doorway.
"You go with 'Hide and go Seek'?" the figure said. He was a tallish, brown hair, bright green eyes, Average White Guy in his mid thirties leaning on the frame, wearing suede boots, blue jeans, green t-shirt, and black windbreaker with an oddly shaped bulge on the left side. And he was eating Circus Animals. He spoke in an odd accent, more Midwest than West.
"You look pretty good for someone who just transversed a swamp," the old man said.
"I know a guy," he said, "Same guy who loaned you this apartment."
"I paid him a hefty sum to kill you."
He munched on a white elephant, "I never said he was still breathing."
"A shame that three people had to die today, because of you," again, the old man didn't seem that sorry.
"Please, Nelson- may I call you Nelson?" he asked. The old man paled a bit, "That's right. When I questioned your boys, I heard quite a bit about you."
"They'd never talk," he growled, all trace of kindness gone.
Pierce laughed. While "Nelson" was a spider, Pierce was a snake, "After a few chemically induced heart attacks, they sang like birds. Some, well, actually, almost every, medical professional says that heart attacks are the most painful thing a person can endure."
"You think your so smart, don't you?" he said, "I have the gun, and I'll kill you, then her, and this whole mess goes away."
"Really?" he said in mock surprise, "Then I must have missed the fact that ten of Giovanni's men are going to come in guns blazing in oh," he looked at his watch and clicked his tongue, "Thirty seconds?"
"You lie."
"Let's face it," he said, "Giovanni hates me, and he actually sorta likes you. Why would he send that many for little old me when a bomb would do just fine? Hmm? They're after the both of us. That's right, your bosses are cleaning up your mess, with you in it."
"What's your game?" he said.
"You don't have the firepower to take down ten," Pierce said, "The only way you have a chance of living, is giving me the lady, and the location of your insurance policy."
"I don't know what your talking about."
Pierce munched on another circus animal, "Bullshit. I want the documents linking everyone together. Every Senator, businessman, lawyer, and dumbfuck who ruined my week."
The old man growled and cocked his gun. His breathing was as heavy as Natalia's was when he held the knife to her throat. His gun shook. In another room, the door burst open.
"The TRAVCO Octavian, container 555-88974!" he shouted.
"Damn," Pierce said, "I own TRAVCO, too," he sighed, reached into his coat, pushed down, and an MP5K appeared almost out of nowhere. He leveled it at someone in the hall and fired a three round burst. And he still hasn't dropped his Circus Animals.
He and Nelson disappeared down the hall. The sound of gunfire filled the air. She jerked at her bonds to no avail. She couldn't even ground her teeth with the gag in her mouth. Involuntarily, tears filled her eyes. She was trapped. At the mercy of a psychopath and a terrorist.
Pierce dragged Nelson, who was firing at some unseen target in the hall with a weapon he didn't have going out, back into the room.
A grenade rolled in.
Pierce kicked it to the wall outside. It was still in view of the room. In view meant the it could hit them.
Seconds turned to eternities.
Pierce leaped at Natalia, grabbed her chair, threw it sideways, and covered her body with his.
BOOM!
The air was acrid under that of Pierce's dried sweat. He groaned and rolled off of her. He gasped in pain and looked at his leg. The air now had the coppery tang of Pierce's blood. He had taken shrapnel to his right leg.
"If you say 'Arrow to the knee', I'll fuckin kill ya," he said, the pain evident in his voice. He removed her gag, "Ya okay?"
"I'm fine," she said. She looked at Nelson. He had been in the more direct path of the grenade. His desperate attempt at life had failed. He'd be bothering no one ever again.
Pierce pulled out a knife and began, carefully, cutting her bonds. After he freed one hand he gave her the knife and pulled out his cell. It looked oddly familiar...
It was Horatio's phone.
"How'd you get that?" she asked. He offered her the bag of Circus Animals. She shook her head, "No the phone."
"That old bastard's good at fightin'," he said, "I pulled it off of him from out face off in the swamps," he offered her the cookies again, "Come on, your blood sugar has gotta be low."
She finished with her other arm and leaned "down" awkwardly to begin on her legs, "Shouldn't you be running away?"
"Think I can run in this condition?" he said, "I have shrapnel in my leg. Some of it could be dangerously close to my femoral artery. Can't move it," he dialed Horatio's phone, "Lieutenant, I'm delivering on my promise..."
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