A/N: I started to put this up earlier, then ran out of time to post it before an appointment. At least it's the right day this time? (I feel like is screwing me over with these last few updates, though. Are they even showing up for you guys? Sigh.) Same trigger warning as the previous chapter: graphic language/threats. Also, some torture lite. And since this note is already all over the place, Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian friends and readers!
Chapter 7.
Bespoke
. . .
She tried to run then, feeling the metal prongs dig into her side a moment too late, and her knees buckled before she made it more than a full step. At the bottom edge of her vision, she saw an aura of neon blue light sizzling in the vicinity of her ribs. Her first thought was of those bug-zapper lanterns that fried mosquitoes upon contact with the UV core. Amanda's grandmother had one hanging from an eave on her front porch, and it had blinked a Morse code signal the entire time they sat sipping lemonade on the porch swing that late-June evening—Olivia, Amanda, Grandmama Brooks, and Great-Aunt Ouise. (Was that really almost a year ago? How badly Olivia longed to be back there.)
Pain exploded in Olivia's side, her ribs igniting with a wildfire that spread rapidly throughout the forest system beneath her skin, consuming everything—branching veins, the sap that flowed there, the organs whose striations chronicled age and significant events—down to the root. She was being electrocuted, of that much she was convinced. During undergrad, she'd written a research paper on the death penalty and learned more about lethal injection, hanging, and the electric chair than she ever cared to know. Sometimes the eyes popped out when people got the chair. Occasionally the body burst into flames.
She was burning and any second now her heart would stop. A smell of scorched hair made her wonder if she had indeed burst into flames, but looking up from the garbage-strewn floor she saw that none of the paper or flammable junk around her was on fire. She'd fallen when the weird blue light sunk its teeth into her flank, and she stared dazedly at the Converse sneakers less than an inch from her face, trying to make sense of her new surroundings.
Groaning with the effort, she turned her head to gaze at the grinning man above—her Converse Kid. So, it had been old Chucky Boy, and not a lightning strike or her finger in a light socket. Whatever he had shocked her with was more powerful than a normal stun gun or Taser; years ago, when tasers had become NYPD regulation, she'd gone through the entire training program, including the capstone project: lining up to be tased herself. Though barely out of rookie blues, she was one of the few officers who didn't drop to her knees or squawk when the electrical current passed through her. She certainly hadn't pissed her pants like that one guy.
The jolt she had received this time was at least twice (possibly thrice) the voltage of that mid-90's Taser, wielded by a sniggering sergeant. Her eyes wandered to the Kid's hand, where she wasn't at all surprised to spy a clublike weapon with electrodes the size of the prongs on a washing machine plug at one end, and a pump handle at the other, for controlling the surge.
It was somewhat modified, but Olivia was definitely looking at the cattle prod the Crier had threatened to fuck her with. She'd come across similar devices in the handful of kill rooms she had helped process over the years; they were a favored method of torture among deviants, specifically designed for human victims, and thus banned in the United States. In theory, anyway. Its high voltage and low current meant it probably wouldn't kill her, just burn like a son of a bitch and hurt like a motherfucker.
The one consolation was that they hadn't used it on Amanda. It was bad enough that the detective had been tased, but Olivia couldn't bear to think of her in this much pain. (Had she traced the Taser by now? She must have, she was damn good at her job. First-grade material, maybe even sergeant, if she continued the level of work she'd done in the past year. She would come for Olivia. She would.)
(God, please.)
"Next one goes in your tits, you interrupt my happy-time snack again," the Kid warned, pointing toward the desk with the business end of his sadistic toy. He swung it back down and jabbed it into Olivia's breast, grinding cruelly, the electrodes biting at her flesh like vampire fangs. The smile never left his face.
That perpetual grin reminded her of The Joker, both the character and the song. Lewis had sung the latter while he jammed his finger inside her ("I get my lovin' on the run . . . "), and Noah had pouted for days when she refused to let him watch the movie Joker, with that actor whose name was a fictional bird. Phoenix something. The birds that self-immolated and were reborn from the ashes.
Olivia held her breath, waiting for the next shock, wondering if she would have the strength to rise from the ashes these men left of her. But the flash-fire pain didn't come, and when she nodded in response to the Kid's demanding, "Got it, Captain?" and another thrust from the cattle prod, he relented and practically skipped back over to partake of his happy-time snack.
She couldn't watch as he and the Driver leaned over to snort the kaleidoscope of dust scattered on the desktop, tightly rolled bills from each of their pockets poised between their fingers. As a kid, she'd loved those little glass potion bottles you filled with layers of pigmented sand. Once, Serena had hurled one at the wall above Olivia's head, bent in study, her drunken aim off by a mile. The bottle exploded in a nebula of multicolored grit that resembled the crushed up drugs when it settled.
What a mess you have made, Serena said the next day, shaking her head at the rainbow smears she caught Olivia scrubbing off the wall and carpet, her own contribution to the disaster forgotten. Why can't you just behave yourself?
Forty-some years later, she hadn't learned her lesson, it seemed. She still didn't know how to behave herself, and the consequences were much more dire now than they had been when she was a bookish twelve-year-old who collected bottles of sand. She had the scorch mark on her side to prove it.
Lifting her head cautiously—somewhere in the span between shoulders, a muscle was strained, and her neck felt wobbly, weak—she peered down at the hot spot over her ribs, finding exactly what she'd expected. The holes in her shirt were bigger, the fabric singed in wider, darker circles, but the resemblance to cigarette burns was uncanny. Underneath, her flesh glowed a meaty, gristly shade of pink. Another brand, to go with all the rest. How had they known to use an instrument meant for livestock? What made her such choice meat for men like these?
Don't just lie here, you dumb cow. Move your ass. Right then, her internal voice, which normally sounded a lot like her mother, sounded more like Lewis instead. In a strange way it was comforting, and she didn't care to know why. Show them what you're really made of.
Struggling to sit up, she propped on one elbow and shoved off the floor, for a moment lingering in the space between like a sticky gauge. With a switch of the hips, she lurched fully upright, legs extended, and checked over her shoulder that the Kid and the Driver were otherwise engaged. They were bent over, snuffing powder off the desk in long, chalky lines, the woman on the floor all but forgotten.
Not so for her old pal Crier. When she turned back around, he was staring intently at her, his face betraying not a single emotion. He gave his phone a perfunctory glance before pocketing it and sidling towards Olivia with the body language of someone coming to taunt and intimidate. It was the way lifers approached fish in the prison yard, thugs approached rival gang members, bullies approached the smaller kids on the playground. (The way rapists approached their victims.) Same old song, and he knew all the words by heart.
As he drew near, about to squat down in front of her, Olivia counted to herself, trying to time the kick just right, align it perfectly with his groin. Her heart clenched up at the thought of what would happen if she missed—or didn't—and maybe that gave her away, some involuntary twitch on the outside alerting him to her next move.
He intercepted her foot when she thrust it forward with all her might, and gave it such a violent twist, she thought he meant to break her ankle. Maybe he did, but her shoe came off instead, her heel smacking heavily back to the wood floor. So he improvised, hurtling the tennis shoe at her with all his might, which was immense. Though lightweight, the Nike trainer felt like a cannonball hitting her in the sternum at that speed.
While she was still coughing and wheezing into the duct tape, he snatched up her other foot, ripped off her remaining shoe, and pelted her in the back with it as she huddled up protectively. It hit her with a hollow thump that resounded in her ears and her lungs, and she began to panic at the thought of another episode like before—that inability to catch her breath, to hold onto the small amount of air the tape and her fear permitted. The Crier solved the problem for her, jerking her head back by a fistful of hair and opening her constricted airway.
Distracted by the pain in her tormented, fiery scalp, Olivia forgot the need to cough and inhaled sharply, hot tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. "You keep making it worse and worse for yourself, you stupid slut," the Crier said in a confidential tone, as if imparting some deep wisdom for her ears only. "All that bad bitch bullshit you keep trying to pull? It's my job to fuck that out of you. Now, you see those assholes over there?"
He took Olivia's head between his hands, one at her brow, the other gripping her chin, and snapped it towards his cohorts. They were grinning and rubbing compulsively at their noses, probably trying to absorb every last bit of powder they had snorted. Enough to rape Olivia for at least a couple hours, continuously if they took turns during each other's refractory period. Even on drugs, men still couldn't get it up immediately after ejaculation. But with a break in between . . .
"They don't take this work as seriously as I do. The big one, he'll hurt you plenty with his fat sausage fingers, but the 'roids shrunk his dick, so you won't feel much when that's inside you. He only makes the really little girls scream. Guess they're too tight— Hey. Hey." The Crier shook Olivia's lower jaw, her top teeth screeching against the bottom, when she tried to pull away. "And the dumbass-looking Nancy boy is only here because his daddy's in charge, so he'll inherit this dump and the business someday. He wouldn't know a gourmet cunt like yours from a hole in the ground otherwise.
"Point is, kitty cat, they're just here to have fun and make bank. The more you fight them, the harder they'll get. But Gus chose me because he needed someone to really teach the girls. Someone who understands discipline and control. See, I don't get off on the squirming and flailing and shit. For me, it's about the pain. That's the only drug I need to get me going. And the longer it takes to break you, the more chances I'll have to get high.
"Oh, and I should warn you: I'm a biter," he concluded with a gnash of his teeth, jerking Olivia's face close enough that she felt the moisture from his breath on her cheek. He grazed it with his incisors, as if preparing to take a hefty chunk out of an apple, and when she whimpered a wordless plea, he licked the side of her face with an agonizingly slow stroke.
Olivia swallowed several times, forcing down the bile that coated the back of her throat like a hot, slippery algae. She wouldn't give him—any of them—the satisfaction of seeing her throw up and struggle not to aspirate behind the tape muzzle. If they thought she was that weak, they could think again. Four days of being hammered on vodka and pills, being pawed and licked and rutted against by that man-beast Lewis, and lying flat on her back when she wasn't getting tossed around like cheap luggage; all that, and not once had she vomited in his presence. She'd learned from the best. Serena passed out drunk on the regular and had never choked to death on her own vomit.
God knew Olivia sometimes wished she had.
Olivia wished the Crier dead, too. She hoped the Viagra backfired on the other men and gave them such painful erections they had to rush to the hospital and have the blood drained from their throbbing cocks with needles the size of ice picks. If she had some handy, she would perform the aspiration herself. Then she would lobotomize the Crier by inserting one of those same needles under his top eyelid and directly into his brain. She'd read about the procedure years ago, after a case involving a woman whose rapist lobotomized her (badly) and kept her as a sex slave. She remembered the steps vividly, but she would add a few extra stabs of the needle for the man before her.
How long she went on torturing and killing the men in her mind, Olivia didn't know, but she became increasingly aware of the Kid and the Driver's antsy, erratic behavior. They were laughing too loudly at nothing funny (the Kid's floppy, untied shoelace; a paper plate that sailed across the room like a flying saucer, after a kick from the Driver) and pacing like a pack of wild dogs awaiting instruction from the alpha male.
Estrus had been scented and the she-bitch was running out of time.
But the Crier had returned to his phone, and he barely glanced up when the other two started dragging the desk across the floor, unleashing a hawkish shriek. It sent a jolt through Olivia, as if she'd been touched with the cattle prod again, and it must have woken her up, because she suddenly spotted a large nail sticking up from the poorly hewn flooring a few inches away.
While her captors were looking elsewhere—the Crier intent on his phone, the two dipshits standing back to survey the screechy old desk, now bathed in light, as if they were propmen preparing a stage—she scooted closer to the nail, praying she didn't gather any splinters along the way. Honestly, a splinter in the ass would be the least of her worries right now, but she wanted nothing from this godforsaken place under her skin, not even the smallest piece of it in her. Somehow she managed to avoid being snared, and lowered her bound wrists over the sharp crook of metal behind her.
Cautiously, she began to whittle at the thick layers of tape, trying not to scrape her skin in the process, though it was almost inevitable. You can live with the scratches, she told herself. Worst case scenario, you'll need a tetanus shot. That's better than the shots you'll need for whatever STDs these scumbags give you if you don't get the hell out of here.
She was so focused on sawing through her restraints, stealing furtive glances between the trio of men, she barely noticed the shaft of light that joined the overbright lamp beams when the door opened to her right. At the opposite end of the container, two dark silhouettes entered in a sunburst of rays that first made Olivia squint, then made her cry out.
It couldn't be the cops already, not unless they had somehow tracked the van, but it might be help. Unsuspecting workers who stumbled upon an unlocked shipping container and would surely call 911 when they discovered what was inside? Or even just a couple of curious teens who would see the woman duct taped on the floor, her muffled screams scaring them off—but only far enough away to dial the police. Every teenager had a cell phone these days.
Her voice vibrated the roof of her mouth, blaring from her throat and colliding with the padded wall of her sealed lips. In the back of her mind, a murky memory surfaced: the soundproofed room with checkerboard walls, where Calvin Arliss had sexually assaulted her. It was inside her now. They all were—the dirty rooms she'd been assaulted in, the dirty men responsible. And not just assaulted. Raped. Maybe if she finally admitted it, this new nightmare would end. She couldn't have survived three rapists, just to become the victim of a gang rape. Not even fate was that cruel . . .
Was it?
She yelled herself hoarse behind the duct tape, or would have, if the Crier hadn't taken several swift strides forward, almost appearing to spring from one side of the room to the other, and backhanded her across the face with such force it knocked her sideways. She felt something drag across the nail and rip, but it was just her skin, not the tape. Tape didn't bleed. Wrists and the insides of cheeks did, especially when a hand came out of nowhere and slapped the living hell out of you. Olivia had learned that lesson at a young age, and still she hadn't been prepared for such a vicious blow. On her side like that, pain emanating from her cheek, scalp, chest, and abdomen, she couldn't even find the strength to sit up right away.
"Enough," boomed a voice, almost as loud as the blood pounding in Olivia's skull. She flinched involuntarily, knees curling in tight towards her chest. There was a time that yelling men didn't frighten her, when big noises hardly made her jump at all, but those days were over. Lewis saw to that, as he had so many of the alterations to her life, her soul, over the last nine years.
A life bespoke by monsters.
And here was the next in a long line of men-shaped beasts who would control Olivia's fate. She recognized his power without even seeing his face; the moment he had shouted, the Crier halted his attack—boot cocked back, about to drive into Olivia's gut like he was the kicker and she the football—and retreated. Whoever the new man was (not help, that much she realized), he had authority over the Crier and his buddies, whose laughter had cut short abruptly at the sound of his voice. Didn't they say everything went silent right before the tornado hit?
"What's the meaning of this?" Despite the demand, his gait was casual, his shoes barely scuffing the floor upon entry. Someone followed along behind him, plodding heavily and awkwardly with each step. "Was I unclear when I told you no damage to the face? Do you want this deal to fall through, after all it took to make it happen?"
"Bitch was screaming," the Crier said in a vaguely military tone. Olivia didn't lift her head to look, but she imagined him standing at attention, fists behind his back, stance wide. A regular goddamned soldier. "Had to shut her up somehow. She can take a hit, and it worked didn't it? Look at her, curled up all nice and quiet, like the good little pussy she is."
Olivia unfurled from her defensive ball and slowly dragged herself upright, every movement a struggle for her strained muscles, which were still glitchy from the paralytic and the electric shock. She felt like an old VHS tape with bad tracking, her inner reels snarled beyond repair. But she would not lie on the floor and be compared to a fucking animal (although she was certain there were other connotations to that particular choice of species) while four men stood around, licking their chops. Five, she saw, when she straightened her shoulders and raised her chin with defiance.
The fifth was a boy. Younger than the Kid, to whom he bore a strong resemblance, but his crooked baseball cap and LEGO Star Wars t-shirt were oddly juvenile for a boy of his size. He lagged behind the taller, older man, openly gawking at his surroundings and playing with the zipper of his red windbreaker. "It stinks in here, Dad," he commented, wrinkling his nose when he caught a whiff of the bucket in the far corner.
His father ignored him, eyes on Olivia, though he hadn't finished with the Crier yet. The two older men were practically toe to toe, and though the Crier wasn't exactly using the soldier's posture that Olivia had envisioned, he gave a clipped nod when his boss said, "Touch her face again, you're out."
"Hey, bro!" the boy called, waving at the men by the desk.
"Hey, man," the Kid replied, sauntering over to the new arrivals, hands in his pockets. He whipped one out and slapped the brim of the boy's hat, knocking it down over his eyes. "What're you doing here?"
"Dad said I could come." The boy adjusted his hat, grinning as if he'd received a good-natured whack on the back rather than a bullying gesture. "I'm eighteen now. It's time I learn the business too. Right, Dad?"
The Kid looked to the man who was obviously his father as well—they were the same height and build, sharp-featured, with those creepy penetrating eyes—and cocked his head, dubious. "Seriously? You didn't let me join in till a few months ago."
"That's because you're careless and impulsive," said the father. If Olivia remembered correctly, the Crier had said his name was Gus. He seemed familiar somehow, but her thoughts were too disjointed, her nervous system too fried, for her to place him. She probably wouldn't even recognize her own face in the mirror right then.
"You were already making trouble for yourself and all those young women by the time you were fifteen, anyway. Now it's time to shape up and teach your brother how to become a man."
The Kid swiped the flat of his sneaker along the floor, sending up a dust cloud worthy of a dirt driveway. He thrust his hands into his pockets again and frowned at his father, looking like a child pouting over a confiscated toy. Noah made that face when his video game privileges were revoked. "Come on, Pops, you really think this is the best one for him to learn on? You said it yourself, this job needs to go smooth. Can't he wait till we've got some little nobody?"
"You never did like to share," said Gus, a faint smile belying his disapproving tone. He reached up and cupped a hand firmly to the back of the Kid's neck. Not rough, but certainly not gentle, either. "You'll teach him. And you'll make sure there are no mistakes, like when you got out of hand with that pretty little immigrant girl. I lost a lot of money on that one, son. You know I don't like to lose money."
The last bit sounded like a warning—or a threat—but Olivia was too busy trying to process the part about the little immigrant girl to decide which. How little? What had these animals done with her? Was she in a shallow grave somewhere nearby (or maybe another shipping container like this one, filled with decomposing bodies, more money lost); had she survived the Kid's overzealous attentions and been too damaged to fulfill her duties as a pretty little girl anymore, thus discarded for Olivia and her squad to find, to try and piece back together?
Olivia suddenly felt more afraid for the girl than for herself. She had to get out of this place and look for her. Even if she only found a corpse, the ME could still identify the body and put it to rest. Someone somewhere had to be searching for their lost daughter, sister, niece, cousin, friend . . . Women and girls didn't just go missing, without at least one person looking for them. There was always somebody who loved them, wasn't there?
It was like trying to get up with an anchor tied around her neck, weighing her down to the floor, but she made it onto her knees and summoned the strength to rise fully. Where she would go from there, she didn't know; she only knew that all it took was one stroke of good luck: a well-placed kick that knocked the jagged bottle away, a metal bar that came loose with a final desperate tug, a perfectly chambered bullet, a cliffside that beckoned in the deep dark wood.
(But there's five of them and only one of you.)
No matter. She had escaped Lewis, who seemed to have the power and wherewithal of five men, or even ten. By the time she was through with him, his face was a misshapen mask of blood, the dents in his skull sunken in like shallow graves, limbs twisted at odd angles. She had broken him on the inside, just like he'd done to her. The difference was, his wounds healed.
Parts of Olivia would always remain broken—her inability to be approached from behind, to walk into a dark apartment alone, to feed her children cake batter from the bowl, to trust herself not to go too far—she had accepted that years ago. But she couldn't let it happen again. She couldn't let these men shatter what she had so delicately and painstakingly reconstructed for her wife and children's sakes.
Maybe one of the men had a gun on him. Probably Gus, since he was the ringleader. It wouldn't do to put firearms in the hands of the Kid or the Crier. Little Brother, obviously intellectually disabled in some way, would probably end up shooting himself if given a weapon. The father was her best bet, though how she could break her bonds, wrest an unseen gun from him, and not be overtaken by the others was a terrible riddle she had no time to solve. She would just have to think on her feet, as she had always done since first learning they could carry her far away from her mother.
But in her haste to stand and run, she had forgotten about the Driver over by the desk. From the corner of her eye, she saw his muscular form coming at her, not with a gun in his hand, but with the cattle prod from before. He was too quick for her, his movements surprisingly spry for someone so large. Well, at least I know it's coming this time, she thought, as the metal teeth of the weapon bit into the soft, bare flesh at her inner elbow.
It didn't hurt any less than the first zap, even with that fleeting moment of preparation. She tried not to cry out, and failed, as the current ripped its way through her like a buzzsaw going up her spinal cord. Luckily the Driver didn't have quite the happy trigger finger that his younger partner had demonstrated, and he eased off within a second or two. The burn wouldn't be as bad as the one to her side, and she only fell to her knees now, instead of kissing the filthy floor. Perhaps she was already building up a tolerance.
Please, God.
"Wait," said Gus, his hand going up when the Driver repositioned the prod at Olivia's hip, probably intending to lay her out flat with a second shock. She wondered why her jaw hurt so badly, and realized she was clenching her teeth in anticipation of another jolt. She attempted to relax her body, especially the jaw, fearing it would lock up entirely like it sometimes did when she chewed, but she couldn't let down her guard with Gus approaching.
Olivia eyed him warily as he drew near, a placid smile on his lips. Whereas his son grinned too wide and too much, this man's expression barely touched the surface. A formality for his guest, and nothing more. He wasn't a bad-looking man—at one time, she might have smiled back to find him watching her in a bar or a restaurant; she might even have been flattered that someone so attractive and well-dressed had noticed her. Now, she shied away, unable to fully recoil with the Driver gripping her shoulder and aiming the cattle prod at the opposite side of her neck.
The meaning was clear: one false move, bitch.
"Whose idea was this?" Gus asked, pointing to the tape slashed across Olivia's mouth. He glanced at each of the kidnappers in turn, an expectant look on his flinty features. "You really think it's a wise idea to close off the airway of someone to whom you've administered a paralytic agent? You're lucky she's still breathing."
"I didn't put it on her until after the shit was wearing off," the Crier said gruffly. "She was being a mouthy little cunt, so I shut her up. That's what we're supposed to do. These bitches don't learn if you play nice, boss."
The honorific was anything but, and Gus turned a cold glare on the other man, the room gone deathly quiet. In the distance, a muffled chiseling from the construction site was just detectable. "You've seen what duct tape does to the skin. You want to be the one who explains to the buyer why she's got a rash on her face?"
"I don't see what the big deal is. It's just a face. Unless this guy only wants blowjobs, there's other more important parts of her. Speaking of which, can we speed this up? I'm losing my woody over here."
At the mention of blowjobs, Olivia's pulse kept time with the jackhammer across the water. She tried to jerk free of the Driver, but he had her trick shoulder in his large, unrelenting grasp. He was standing close enough to headbutt in the genitals—Gus, too—if only she could twist in the right direction. As if he had read her mind, the Driver moved his hand to the back of her neck, squeezing at either side and giving a vicious shake. For a moment, she felt like a cat being lifted by the scruff. Bad pussy.
"See? She's ready and rarin' to go," the Crier said, grabbing his crotch as if his cock was already out and wagging at her. "Can't wait to feel this glide between her cheeks."
He didn't elaborate, but Olivia had a pretty good idea which cheeks he meant. Even so, she gagged at the thought of him putting it anywhere close to her mouth, and the spasm nearly brought up her breakfast coffee. (She wondered vaguely if her children had gotten their bagels, and if not, what had they been fed? The thought of them going hungry was too much to bear; worse, almost, than knowing what was about to happen to her.)
Feeling another coughing fit coming on, now with the added challenge of the Driver keeping her in place, his ball-peen fingertips digging into the slope of flesh on either side of her neck, Olivia started to panic. The room was suddenly too small, the air too thick. It was like the inside of a broom closet—or a tomb. There were ways out of those places (hadn't Jesus risen from the tomb after three days?), but not out of here.
Beads of sweat sprouted on her forehead as she fought back a giant whooping cough, and just as she was about to begin choking in earnest, a hand appeared and whisked aside the tape from her lips. She took in a gush of air that whistled in the back of her throat, a strong wind through the eaves, and spluttered it out again, hacking until she produced a deep bronchial rattle. Noah used to sound like that with his frequent respiratory infections and lung issues; sometimes he still did, if he caught a bad enough cold. It always put Olivia on edge, her own lungs growing tight, throat constricting, as she tried to breathe for him. Tried to breathe. Couldn't.
She couldn't breathe.
Someone thumped her on the back with an open palm, as if she had a piece of food lodged in her windpipe. She realized then that the Driver's hand was no longer at the nape of her neck—he was probably the one who hit her—but she was too busy guzzling all the rancid, shit-scented air she could get to do more than hobble a few paces on her knees. The room shimmered in her teary vision, a mirage in the vast and fiery desert, though one she wanted to run away from, not towards. And ahead, a dark figure emerged from the light and the wavering aura, like a terrible angel, bending down to Olivia's level.
"Shh, shh. Get hold of yourself," said Gus. His voice was unique from the others, calm and soft-spoken. Soothing, almost. Perfect for reading bedtime stories and last rites alike. He swam into Olivia's watery gaze, lifting her face in his hands and swiping away the tears with his abnormally long thumbs. All his fingers were extraterrestrial in length, and ice cold. "Is that any way for a seasoned NYPD officer to behave? I've seen you in action, Captain Benson, and you're quite impressive. Frankly, this is beneath you."
He smoothed her hair with his palms, tucking it behind her ears, then licked the pad of his thumb and wiped a sore spot on her cheek. The Crier must have broken skin with one of his ugly skull rings when he hit her. Again she imagined tearing loose of her bonds, this time seizing the cattle prod from the Driver, and—after she'd zapped him and Gus in the balls—using it to bash the Crier's skull in. Just like she did to Lewis. Next, she would tell Little Brother to run before taking care of the Kid. Just like she did with the housekeeper and her daughter. And Lewis.
Now, she reared back, hawking up a wad of phlegm and saliva and expelling it directly into Gus's face. Just like Lewis. That had been the first and only time she'd ever spat on anyone, until this very moment. It didn't do a damn bit of good, in fact it probably hurt her cause grievously, but right then she didn't care. She had few weapons in her arsenal, other than screaming and fighting, and you didn't roll over and expose your belly to the wolf, unless you were prepared for him to tear out your intestines.
If nothing else, it put her DNA on him, should he be questioned in her disappearance. He wasn't new to organized crime, that much was evident from his calm, self-possessed exterior and the way each man kept referring to "the business" he ran. Maybe NYPD already had eyes on him. The FBI might even be involved, if trafficking and child pornography were his bread and butter, as it had been suggested. Olivia wouldn't argue jurisdiction with the feebs on this one, as long as these men never saw the light of day again.
She expected another blow to the face, or at least another bone-rattling, skin-sizzling jolt from the cattle prod, especially when the Driver clapped a hand to her shoulder, squeezed until she thought her collarbone might snap, and nuzzled the fanged end of the prod into the side of her breast. Before she could cry out or beg him not to turn on the juice, Gus called the man off again. He gestured for the Driver to step back, and after a reluctant glance down, the man released Olivia and faded into her peripheral vision.
The others were gazing at her with anticipation and open hostility, waiting for Gus to deliver whatever punishment was befitting a faceful of sputum. Calmly, he brought forth a handkerchief from his pants pocket and used it to polish his forehead and cheeks. Of course he would have one of those. The only other person Olivia had ever known who kept a handkerchief was her mother. Serena's all had her initials—SGB—embroidered in the corner, though Olivia had never seen her pick up a needle and thread. Those were the implements of housewives and domestics, certainly not of Serena Grace Benson.
Tucking away the hanky, now crawling with Olivia's DNA, Gus hitched up the legs of his trousers and squatted in front of her. If her hands were free, if she weren't kneeling and nursing an inflamed, aching torso, she might have been able to take him down—claw out his intense, creepy eyes; uppercut him in the big brass balls he hefted around; or maybe just rely on her old standby, an elbow to the face.
But her self-defense options were limited and she could barely muster the strength to stay balanced on her knees, let alone pull off some feat of athleticism and coordination. She was fooling herself about being able to overpower five grown men, each individually stronger than she, perhaps with the exception of Little Brother. Feeble-minded didn't necessarily mean feeble-bodied, however, and he shared his father and brother's physicality.
She hadn't felt Gus pressed up against her yet, hadn't been hauled around by him like a sack of garbage headed for the incinerator, but she sensed that the frame before her was well-toned beneath the crisp trousers, chambray shirt, and leather jacket. His power emanated from him the way some guy's put off a heavy, oppressive cologne scent. As if they bathed in it.
Left with no other means of defending herself, Olivia turned to the method that seldom worked in these situations—in her experience, at least—and tried to use her voice, not for screaming but for appealing to Gus's humanity, assuming he had any. But when she opened her mouth to speak, the only word she could think of, the only one she could summon from her strained and raspy throat, was, "Why?"
"Why?" Gus cocked his head, giving the impression of sympathy, as if he had happened upon an animal with its leg caught in a trap. Never mind that he was the one who laid the trap to begin with. "Why you, is that what you mean?"
Olivia nodded. She supposed it was what she meant. Not in the woe-is-me sense or even in a "why do bad things happen to good people?" way (she'd stopped asking that question long ago), she genuinely wanted to know why she had been chosen for this hell. It wasn't a random kidnapping, she was here for a specific reason—a buyer wanted her, face intact, but the rest of her broken. Those kinds of sadistic requests usually sent a message to someone. It was the type of revenge torture she and her squad encountered in drug cartel cases, typically with dismembered body parts playing a significant role, or gang wars. Weaponized rape with a twist.
But if she was the target of the buyer's revenge, why leave her face untouched? What lesson did that teach her? That was a lesson for lovers, for the person who had to look on their beloved's face and know that their sins had been taken out on the flesh below it.
Why?
"Because, Olivia, you caught the attention of a really big fish. Someone with a lot of friends in this town. A lot of pull." Gus reached for a strand of hair that fluttered next to Olivia's cheek, gliding it over her shoulder between his fingers.
His gentleness was unnerving. Olivia almost preferred the manhandling to being touched as if they were about to share a romantic kiss. Calvin had touched her like that—intimately, lovingly; Lewis a few times, too. Those were the touches that didn't wash off, afterwards. The ones that stuck in your mind when the pain was long gone, the way women were said to forget the pain of childbirth with that first glimpse into their newborn's eyes.
It was true. Sweaty blond hair plastered to her head, cheeks as pink as rosacea, Amanda had wept and laughed while they held a minutes-old Samantha, her tiny fists and tiny wails piercing the air. The detective had never looked happier than in that moment. And in their daughter's deep brown eyes—which knew nothing of suffering or cruelty, hurt or sadness—Olivia had found an unimaginable peace that drove out even the darkest thoughts, the worst memories. Amanda had forgotten the labor pains, but with Sammie in her arms, Olivia forgot every trauma, every maltreatment, including the kind disguised as tenderness, of the past fifty-odd years.
Until today.
"Or I suppose your wife caught their attention, and you?" The man offered that regretful look again, the one you gave a likable insect— ladybug or butterfly—before swatting it dead. He grazed his knuckles across the gouge on her cheek from the Crier's ring. "You're just collateral damage. It's unfortunate. As I said, you're quite impressive, not only as a beautiful woman, but as a cop. And I don't say that lightly. The NYPD and I aren't exactly on the best of terms. But I've come to think of you as a worthy opponent. You've ruined quite a few of my operations over the years without even knowing it."
He tapped her under the chin with his fingertip. It was an oddly affectionate gesture that made her cringe. "We grew up together, you and I. I remember you in your little sleeveless tops when you were still a third-grade. So cute and so green. Half the time I couldn't decide whether to court you or kill you, you were such a pain in my ass. Pardon the language.
"In the end, I liked knowing you were out there, balancing the scales. Challenging me. But you can see why I was so intrigued by the call to bring you in. The only thing better than having such a formidable foe is finally besting her."
Most of the speech was lost on Olivia, who had heard little else after the mention of Amanda. It was the same old spiel crime bosses and narcissistic, presumptuous men had been giving her for years—how deeply connected to her they were, how alike; how the woman in her brought out the man in them, and on and on ad nauseam. But this was the first time one of the bloviating assholes had made a direct reference (or threat, came the unbidden thought) to Amanda.
"What about my wife?" she asked, failing to mask the fear and concern in her voice. It didn't help that she could barely speak above a hoarse whisper, her throat still scratchy from the intense coughing spell and the dust. She sounded weak, small. "Whose attention did she catch? Is she— is she in danger? Please, I have to—"
"Ah-ah," Gus said discouragingly, wagging his finger like a strict school-teacher admonishing an unruly student. "Nice try, but I'm not going to spoil the surprise. Besides that, my clientele expect anonymity with their transactions—I only know the pertinent details of this one myself. Your wife pissed off the wrong person. She's going to pay a steep price. Not out of her own pocket, at least not yet. You, Ms. Benson, are the first installment towards paying off her debt."
Though she had listened carefully this time, analyzing every nuance and inflection, Olivia couldn't make sense of the words. She and her squad received countless threats on a regular basis, most of them nothing more than big talk from desperate, angry people who were about to go down hard. Occasionally someone tried to make good, but only the extremely wealthy or extremely powerful ever got close. And William Lewis.
Olivia racked her brain for a name or a face who fit that description; someone Amanda had been instrumental in capturing and whose threats Olivia most certainly would have taken seriously. No one in the past year. It was a bit underhanded and perhaps a tad unethical, but she had played favorites with her detectives during Amanda's pregnancy. Any case that sounded potentially risky or strenuous had gone to Fin and Kat, or to Olivia herself, while Amanda was given the lighter duties of a sergeant, to be conducted from the squad room as much as possible. The detective had commented on not being in the field as much, but she'd been so consumed by her new leadership duties and her impending duties as mother to a newborn, she hadn't seemed aware of Olivia's ulterior motive: protecting her.
That was always Olivia's top priority.
There were past busts, some of them high profile, and Amanda did play a major role in that sting at the brothel a few years ago. Many of the girls had been underaged victims of trafficking. But the man in charge got himself blown to kingdom come by opening fire on the detective, and therefore the SWAT team and half of the one-six who served as backup. No one had mourned that guy, certainly not enough to orchestrate something like this as revenge.
The harder she grasped at an answer, skimming through eleven years worth of cases stored in her memory like microfiche, the farther it receded from her whirring, flickering brain. She truly felt as if she were getting motion sickness from her rapidly flashing thoughts, and as the bile crept up her throat again, so arose a realization that filled her with stark, white-hot terror. If she was just the first installment, what—or who—were the rest?
"Is everything in place?" Gus stood up and looked to his lackeys, acknowledging Olivia no more than if she were a dog he had greeted then forgotten once the fur was brushed from his trousers. "You've set up contact?"
"Sent the picture and the link. Should be opening it any second now," said the Crier, holding up his cell phone and slapping it against the opposite palm several times. He hadn't even partaken of the sextasy and he was still antsier than the Kid and the Driver. He kept adjusting his crotch, swiping under his nose like a boxer spoiling for the next round, licking his lips as he eyed Olivia top to bottom.
"What's the rest of the p-payment?" Olivia asked, gaining a little volume, if not steadiness, in her mounting trepidation. She dodged the Driver's bear claw of a hand as he attempted to clap it over her mouth. "The other installm—"
The Driver's second attempt was successful, his palm crushing her lips against her teeth, his chiseled abdomen pressed against the back of her head so she couldn't turn it and bite. Something hard nudged between her knees—his shoe, she thought—knocking them too widely apart, and for a moment, she was suspended there, with just him holding her upright by the head, his big hand cupped beneath her nose and partly under her chin. She envisioned him snapping her neck right then; he had the strength to do it, no question. One little twist and this could all be over . . .
(Please, please, oh please.)
Gus motioned the Driver's hand away with a two-fingered salute that was vaguely religious, like those sacred heart paintings of Jesus. But there was nothing Christlike about the smirk on his thin, colorless lips. "You always were a sharp one," he said, with something resembling fondness. He took a cell phone from his back pocket and thumbed at the screen a few times, then extended it towards Olivia.
Even without her glasses, she recognized the picture of her son. It wasn't just any old snapshot, either—this was his third-grade school photo, his hair a wilderness of brown curls that should have been smoothed before the shutter clicked, the bow tie he had picked out himself slightly askew. But that big, beautiful smile was perfect. And so was the next, revealed by a swipe from Gus, this one belonging to Jesse. Her first-grade portrait, for which she'd insisted on matching her best friend Jillian, right down to the bangs she hacked into herself with a pair of snub-nosed scissors from art class. Olivia and Amanda had both cried over that one, although pregnancy hormones might have played a role. The six-year-old's bangs had since grown out, though the picture would live on in infamy.
Another swipe, and Olivia was staring at a candid shot of Matilda on the playground of her daycare, red curls ablaze in the afternoon sun. She only wore her little spring jacket with the bunnies and birdies on it, the one she chose at GapKids just two months ago, so the picture had to be recent. As did the last.
Shot with a telephoto lens at a good distance, the picture was no more than two weeks old—Olivia could narrow it down to almost the exact hour, because it depicted her exiting her apartment building, baby Sammie asleep in the stroller she navigated, Gigi standing guard alongside. She'd been meeting up at the park with her wife, Frannie, and the older children, after a mid-morning nap and feeding with her sweet baby girl. Not a bad dream in sight.
How had she missed it again? She'd been so vigilant in the years since Calvin Arliss tried to make her his magnum opus, when she discovered he had been stalking and photographing her for God knew how long. Henry Mesner had slipped through her well-constructed defenses early last year, but that was a one-off; he hadn't tailed her for months—years, in Calvin's case—with a camera, stealing pieces of her private moments as surely as a pickpocket nicking her wallet. He was a hit and run. Calvin and Gus were a head-on collision with no survivors. Those school pictures hadn't been passed out to anyone but family.
A sourness spread over Olivia's tongue, flooding her cheeks and palate, pressure building in her throat, and she fully expected to empty her stomach on the floor in front of Gus's chestnut-brown boots, sleek and burnished as a horse's coat. But when she opened her mouth, what spewed out was far more vile than dark coffee-scented sludge.
"If you go anywhere near my children, I will fucking kill you," she snarled, quaking now with rage instead of just terror—though there was plenty of that, too. She wasn't even sure what words her lips would form next, only that they came from some dangerous, blackened part of her soul. The part that had goaded her into beating a man nearly to death; to playing judge, jury, and executioner. "I swear to God. I will tear your heart out and feed it to the fucking sewer rats, do you hear me? No one touches my kids, you piece of shit. You're fucking dead, all of you. Dead."
Gus's eyes glinted a steely, malicious blue-gray that reminded Olivia of sun reflecting off the barrel of a gun. (Click.) He directed his response to the room at large, though his voice didn't raise above its rockabye cadence and he crouched slightly, like a wildlife enthusiast spotting a tiger in the bush: "There she is."
To Olivia, as he returned the phone to his pocket, he said, "I'm sure you passed some of that fire on to your children, even if they're not biologically yours. Hopefully not too much, though. It's always hardest on the feistier ones. You, for instance. And the little blonde—Jesse, right? I'm afraid she'll have a rough go of it, too. But your boy, the dancer . . . he'll learn fast. And the youngest two will never know any different.
"They'll grow up calling every man they meet 'daddy' and selling themselves for the price of a takeout dinner and some blow. The redhead might fare a little better, especially if she keeps that color upstairs and down . . . "
For a moment Olivia thought a rabid dog had wandered into the storage container, but the doors were closed and she was the only one practically on all fours. She realized then that the deep, beastly growl was coming from her own throat, and she released it with an infuriated cry, lunging at Gus with the intention of biting whatever she got hold of—aiming for the groin, but the femoral artery would do just as nicely—or ramming her head into something vital. Even if she only managed to bruise some ribs or a kidney, at least it would shut him up.
He didn't get to talk about her children that way. No one talked about her children like that—ever.
The Driver's hands snatched her back before she got anywhere near Gus or his dick. He barely flinched, the smirk never leaving his lips, somehow reptilian in their formlessness. If a forked tongue had flickered from behind them, testing the air, Olivia wouldn't have been a bit surprised. What did slither out of his mouth, though not a serpent's tongue, was just as sinister.
"Okay, gentlemen. I believe the pump is primed, so to speak. How's our viewership?"
"All eyes," said the Crier.
"Excellent. Then let's show Captain Benson what her new duties will be, now that she belongs to me."
. . .