As Olivia shrank away from his lips on her neck, Lewis pulled her backward. The small amount of light he had in a flashlight was all she needed to know that he had a room to himself. More than one, no doubt. The concrete walls separated both Olivia and the little girl from escape.
"Look." Lewis whispered in her ear from behind her as he shined his light around the space.
There was an old, ratted mattress lying on the floor. Upon it sat a bag. No doubt those were his tools this time. A few bottles of alcohol sat in the corner, full. A wide-eyed doll lay face up on the dusty floor just inches from the mattress. Hopefully all Lewis had done there was sleep.
The little girl was in the grip of Lewis' other arm as he held Olivia. She didn't say anything. Her chest was rising and falling at an uneven, rapid pace. Her long sleeves did noting to keep her from trembling.
"You tell Olivia what your name is." Lewis moved the gun to the girl's head again as Olivia looked over at her.
A tear fell from the brim of her small eye. "Emily."
Obviously, the small hope that Olivia was there to save her had flickered into her sad eyes. Even in the darkness, Olivia could clearly see it. She spoke, knowing it would earn her nothing more than a heavy blow.
"It's going to be ok."
Emily nodded, believing her new hero without question.
"Is it?" Lewis was infuriated easily by her outburst of reassurance. He swung his fist around to her front and jammed it, gun and all, upward into her ribs. The pain of the punch spread like wildfire from Olivia's ribs into her lungs and heart. The breathing she'd been already tiring of became even more trying. She coughed to try and get the air back into her body.
Emily made a small screech of a noise as Lewis tightened the cuffs behind Olivia. The feeling of the metal bit into her skin created another thing that she had to relive.
"Your guys at BX9 made sure we had everything we needed. Emily, bring me the bag." The girl's movements seemed robotic as she grabbed the bag from the ratted mattress on the floor.
Lewis let go of Olivia completely as she still gasped for air, blinking to try and rid her eyes of the blurring, unshed tears that had formed.
"I know you loved the blowtorch - a knife - and this." He held it up in front of his light. An old-style can opener shown in the beam.
"Emily. Go sit." The way he pointed his gun at Emily was enough to make her go and sit down without question.
"Let's loosen you up a bit." He shoved Olivia with force down to her knees and grabbed her face, pushing it upward.
The nose of the bottle hit her front teeth hard before scraping the top of her tongue. The burning alcohol suffocated her as it went down. The coughing and gurgling the liquid did in her throat did nothing to alleviate the reality that she was running out of time.
She knew what she had done. Brian would know when he arrived home from work where she was, what had happened. But she had to get Emily out before backup arrived. Otherwise, Lewis would take them both with him as casualties of an intense standoff.
The storm rolled past the city, leaving a damp, dark trail in its wake. The streets were shiny with moisture as puddles remained still beneath the lights.
Fin sat awake in his bed, still waiting for sleep to come when 10:42 rolled around. He had no way of knowing his commanding officer, his best friend was being choked with alcohol at the very minute he thought she was safe at home.
His eyes were closed as he thought about everything he wished he would have done the first time they'd encountered Lewis. Back then, no one on the squad knew what a monster he'd become, terrorizing to no end the strongest woman they knew.
Olivia was crumbling beneath all she had on her plate. Fin desperately wished to do something, anything to relieve her of at least some of the weight she was carrying. Fin took a deep breath. He really should have shot Lewis when he'd had the chance.
Brian, looking ahead to working until morning light, rested his weary head in his hand as he went through the stack of paperwork on his desk. He glanced at his phone, wishing to get a text from Olivia. Nothing came. The longer he stared at the black screen, the worse he felt. He knew what she was doing - at least he thought he did.
She was at home, their home, popping the lid off another bottle of wine with no restraint. His heart sunk. If only she knew how much he wanted to be at home every minute she was. Now she was turning to the bottle, just like her mother had.
When Lewis had made Olivia down almost half a bottle of vodka, he turned and slapped the protesting child. She had come uprooted from her spot in the corner, her arms on his jacket sleeve, tugging on him while she cried. "Please stop. Stop!"
His slap left her stunned, her hand on her cheek as she stumbled backward. Olivia vomited the majority of the vile liquid that had been forced down her throat as Lewis turned back from Emily to watch the effects his first action had on his most precious victim.
"No it's ok. It's alright, Emily." Olivia coughed the words out as she recovered.
He smiled in satisfaction. Emily was helping him get everything he needed out of his system. With a young life on the line, Olivia would do anything and everything Lewis had wished to do before, but ran out of time for.
"You said you'd let her go if you had me." She looked up at him with fury in her eyes. Lewis' smile gave her nothing more than further frustration.
"But then what would make you comply to what I want? I'm going to hang on to her for a little while longer." When Lewis let go of her again, Olivia got to her feet.
He walked to Emily, who's little blue eyes silently begged him to let her go. Olivia's heart pounded. Tears began to form again in her eyes. Lewis didn't care about the damage he caused. He'd kill both her and Emily without a second thought or a feeling of remorse.
"Back against the wall, Sweetheart."
Emily sat down, obviously having been through the drill before. The twisted metal that a concrete slab used to cover sat directly where her hands went behind her back. With the crumbling of the building, it made dangerous areas of the terminal deadly. He knelt down next to her and used another pair of handcuffs to restrain her.
Olivia's brain went a thousand miles per minute, trying to reason where he'd gotten the handcuffs, what he'd just said. BX9 had helped him. That threat she'd gotten from Carlos, it hadn't been an empty one.
"How about we have some fun?"
Munch, retired Sergeant Munch was still up, sitting by the light of a lamp in his apartment. He flipped through the pages of his collection of newspaper articles about different conspiracy theories of the century. It was all he could do to keep his mind from wandering back to when he'd first seen Olivia in the hospital following her attack.
Lewis' scarred face, the smile he wore could haunt even an old veteran like Munch. An article made Munch stop and pause for a second. The JFK assassination - it was an article about that day. Skimming it briefly, Munch liked to believe that times had changed. It seemed like such an old thing - violence. With the new attitudes and views held widely by Americans, it sickened Munch how much barbaric violence there still was.
Someone had to have the job of putting that away. And he knew firsthand that his kind of profession was one where the repercussions of bringing light to the world could be not only devastating, but unfair. The protectors shouldn't have to worry about becoming a victim of the very crimes they sought to stop. The world just didn't seem fair.
William Lewis rose to his feet again. He stopped to study the fiery expression on Olivia's face. Her chest rose and fell rhythmically and slow, making him aware of her mindset. She had been ready for this. But he had been even more ready. He'd planned the whole thing. While she'd been absorbed in her work, her family, he'd been sitting thinking about her. He had needed her back.
"Lewis you're not getting out of this one alive." She shook with anger while she looked at him.
Her fingers probed the handcuffs behind her. "Well here's the thing - neither are you." He replied easily, pacing to the side. When he caught her arm he took her out of the room, through the doorway. They were out of the sight of Emily.
"I know. As long as you're gone -" she took a shuddering breath. She couldn't believe it had come to this. "I don't care what happens to me."
Lewis seemed amused by the words. "That's the attitude." He grinned.
"But if you hurt that little girl -" she lowered her voice as she took a step toward him. She had nothing to be afraid of. She was ready for whatever he wanted to hand her. "- it'll be a hell of a lot worse for you."
Her eyes narrowed. Lewis remembered what had always turned him on about her: her fire. The confidence she carried herself with drew his attention to her like no one else ever had. He'd take the last of that confidence away.
"You're not really in a position to make threats here, Honey." He shrugged as he walked a ways away from her and raised his gun.
"So shoot me. It'll save you a lot of trouble." She gritted her teeth, ready for the bullet. She would welcome any end to her constant fear. She couldn't live like that anymore.
A flame came up in Lewis' eyes. He approached her, pressing the barrel of the gun into her forehead. The fact that she didn't shy away from it only fanned that flame.
The metal dug into her skin, but Olivia didn't notice. She stared her attacker in the face, knowing the anger it caused him.
"Oh it wouldn't save me any trouble." He let the gun fall from her head. "I have more fun with warm bodies."
Olivia swallowed, knowing what that meant. There was no avoiding it now. He would take every bit of her as the last blow to her confidence and authority before he took her life.
"But like I said before - I'll still do you cold." The surge of fury he felt had him raising his hand, swinging the gun at Olivia's face.
The cracking it did when it made contact with her cheekbone preceded the pain for only a moment. Her balance was thrown as her eyes blinded her with unintentional and unstoppable tears. Olivia felt the sparks of agony shooting up into her head and down into every inch of her jaw. She had no hand to cover the wound, making it even worse. When she was able to look back at him, she gasped.
"Is that it?" She knew that if he got too angry, he'd lose perceptive and his judgement would slip. Maybe then, even with her hands behind her back, she'd have a chance.
Lewis read her eerily. "Not even close."
Roughly, he put a tight grip on her arm, pulling her toward the wall the he'd been standing near. The broken glass left only metal cages as barriers from the outside. Lewis hurt her when he pried the key from his pocket and turned her violently around so that her back was to the wall. The handcuffs came off her left hand, bring relocated to tighten around her hand through one of the metal bars in the window.
"I'll be back." He let her go then, disappearing and leaving her in the pit of darkness. The metal was too strong. Even though it seemed to be decomposing itself, there were no weak spots in it.
Olivia knew she was about to suffer. Her heart rate rose again as the only light that came out of the room again was a handheld blowtorch that Lewis carried, illuminating a small area around itself. Just the sound it made had the excruciating pain returning to Olivia's mind.