“… so upset. I was thinking we could have some fun later, but if you’re going to be all…”
“You have got to be kidding me!”
“You have got to be kidding me,” Don Wyatt said and slumped back in the chair. He didn’t like the sound of this job that they were offering but he couldn’t get up the courage to leave either.
If this had been twenty years ago, it would have been a different story, he told himself. If they’d tried to push a job like this on him then, he would have gotten up from this chair and walked out the door. He wouldn't even have been in this chair in the first place. He'd have been in LA or Las Vegas, chilling at the pool side with a bunch of busty blondes. Where had the nineties gone?
He stared at the skinny lady on the other side of the table. She was blonde alright, but there was no more than a hint of curves on her and they were all tucked in neatly under the light grey suit she was wearing.
“No, Mr. Wyatt, I’m being perfectly serious.”
A baby sitter job. That was all the world had to offer a man who could pull more stunts than Jackie Chan. Do them better than Jackie Chan. He was definitely better looking than Jackie Chan. He should be after all the money he’d spent on plastic surgery.
“This is an amazing opportunity for you,” she continued.
“But they’re kids! What do you want me to do with a couple of kids?”
“We’ll tell you what to do, like we always do.”
Wyatt swirled the chair, frowning under his receding hairline as he considered.
“What’ll happen to me if I don’t do it?”
“You’ll never work for this company again. I hope you don't mind me saying this, but you do not have many prospective employers left.”
She was smiling, but it wasn’t a pleasant expression. Don stiffened. He was aware of his current situation, but he didn’t like talking about it and he certainly didn’t like when other people talked about it.
He swirled the water in his glass. Water! Back in the day it would have been scotch or brandy. Now everyone insisted on sobriety on the job. Like anyone could do this job while sober.
“That’s harsh considering everything I’ve done for you,” he told the stuck-up blonde.
“It’s not personal Mr. Wyatt. We are grateful for all your previous work, but Mr. Jones made it clear that it’s this or nothing. Naturally, the pay will reflect the value we put on your service in this matter.”
Wyatt swallowed. He didn’t have a choice. Not with the way his marriage and the stock market had been going recently. He sighed. Train a couple of kids for a few weeks. It couldn’t be that bad, could it? He took a sip of his drink, pretending that it was something stronger.
“Alright I’ll do it,” he said once he’d swallowed. “When do I start?”
“Tomorrow afternoon. I’ll notify the others immediately. Good day to you, Mr. Wyatt.”
“Good day, Ms. Hearning,” Wyatt mumbled and left the office.
22
Under Ground
Sofia slowly came back to consciousness, feeling groggy. Where was she? How had… she’d been shot! She sat up quickly, too quickly, she realized when her head spun. Fighting back nausea she ran her hands over her body. She didn’t seem to be bleeding from anywhere. No bullet holes.
“Are you okay?” a gravelly voice asked from beneath her, startling her.
Sofia looked into Thomas’s worried face. She suddenly remembered that she had been using him as a mattress before someone shot at her.
There was a pink mark on his chest where her head had been and… was that… ? Had she been drooling on him while she slept? That was embarrassing.
She reached out to dry it off his skin before he noticed and belatedly remembered that her hands were cuffed behind her back. Ouch. She leaned forward and tried to get it off him by using her shoulder.
“Er… what are you doing?”
“I just…” Sofia didn’t know how to finish that sentence so she cleared her throat and sat back up. She glanced at his chest and was relieved to find that most of the saliva was gone. “How long was I out for?”
Thomas looked at her strangely.
“What?” she asked.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yes. A little drowsy, but… Was I shot?”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah, with a stun gun.”
She suddenly remembered pulling a dart from her neck right before she passed out. She looked out the window. It had to be early evening because outside the windows the sun was setting behind the trees lining the road on both sides. It had been early afternoon when they left that gas station. She remembered watching the people at the gas station from the back of the car.
It had been chaotic and she hadn’t been surprised when a stray bullet finally hit one of the pumps and the pumps erupted into blazing balls of fire, the whole place turning into an inferno of flames. The explosion had knocked her off her seat and back onto Thomas while the rear window had shattered over her head.
She recalled arguing with their armed kidnapper, which had to be the dumbest thing she’d ever done, before everything went black. At least it had only been a stun gun.
“I can’t believe he shot me.”
“You wouldn't shut up,” a voice said from the front of the car. “I see nothing’s changed.”
“Zack,” the woman driving the car warned.
Sofia glared at them, wishing her hands weren’t tied behind her back. When she got out of here she’d… Well, she wasn’t sure exactly, but she’d get back at them somehow. She’d get them arrested for one. Picturing them in orange jumpsuits behind bars cheered her up.
She looked back at Thomas and saw that her saliva wasn’t the only thing covering his chest.
“What happened to you?”
Thomas looked down at his torso and winced. Bruises were forming everywhere.
“That’s not from me, is it?” Sofia said quickly, moving closer. “I mean, I know I fell on you a couple of times, but I can’t have caused all of this.”
Thomas shook his head. “No. Most of it is from when my chair turned over back in that… interrogation room. It’s hard to break your fall when you’re cuffed to a chair.”
“I’m so sorry that happened to you,” Sofia said and found that she meant it. He might be an insensitive jerk and a generally awful person, but he didn’t deserve to look like that.
“It’s okay. At least you saved me from being cut up.”
Sofia grinned at him. So he was finally admitting that.
“That’s enough chit-chat back there,” the awful man, Zack, said from the front seat.
“If you wanted us to be quiet you should have gagged us,” Sofia told him angrily.
“Don’t tempt me,” he replied as they turned off onto a gravel road.
The car slowed down as they drove over potholes and Sofia concentrated on not being thrown back on top of Thomas. He didn’t need any more bruises.
When the car finally came to a stop it was dark outside. Zack got out the car and walked around to her side to drag her out.
“Hey! Stop that!” she protested as he aimed a flashlight at her face.
She tried to get away from him, but his hand was locked tight around her arm.
“Get that light away from my face!” she said and elbowed him in the side as hard as she could. He responded by pushing her. Her legs were wobbly and as she tried to move away from him they nearly collapsed under her. Getting knocked out twice in twelve hours was probably very bad for you.
“Are you always this… loud?” Zack asked.
Sofia tried to glare at him behind the flashlight, but found it hard to keep her eyes open. He snorted a laugh before he turned her around and pushed her into the darkness. She stumbled and would have fallen over if he hadn’t grabbed her shoulder and kept her upright.
“Careful there,” he said, holding on to her until she could stand on her own. She pushed away his hand and he started herding her towards wh
at looked to be, from what Sofia could now make out in the light from his flashlight, the ruins of a large house.
“I am perfectly capable of walking on my own, you know,” Sofia told him angrily when he gave her another shove. Her feet hurt as she stumbled over the grass. Running barefoot across gas station littered with shards of glass and metal had been a bad idea.
He shoved her harder and Sofia nearly fell over again. “Stop doing that!” she yelled at him.
She’d considered trying to engage their new kidnappers into conversation in an attempt to humanize herself to them, but right now she couldn’t see the point.
She doubted they were human enough to care anyway. More importantly, she would sooner die than be nice to someone who’d handcuffed her, stuffed her in a car and then forced her to walk on bloodied feet.
“Stop what? This?” he asked and pushed her again. When he caught her by the shoulder he leaned closer and whispered. “Didn’t you say you could walk by yourself?”
Sofia was about to tell him exactly what she thought of him when he gave her a final push, through the doorway of the house. She tensed and looked around, prepared to see more people who wanted to hurt or kill her, but there was no one there.
She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, but this was… not it. She could see the ruins of what once upon a time might have been a farmhouse. There wasn’t enough left of it to qualify as a house. The parts of the walls that remained standing looked like they did so simply because they lacked better things to do.
The man next to her pulled back a plank and Sofia’s gaped when a fancy-looking panel suddenly appeared. He pushed at some of the buttons on and suddenly she was falling through the floor. She screamed as she hit a huge, soft cushion filled with warm air.
“What is wrong with you people?” she hissed.
She tried to get up, but couldn't find her balance with her hands still cuffed behind her back. Her kidnapper laughed as he landed on the cushion next to her and pushed her up to a standing position, his hands firm on her shoulders. Sofia hissed in pain as her feet came down on the floor.
“There you go, princess,” he said from behind her, still laughing.
“Tell me, are all kidnappers this nasty or are you being an ass because it’s part of your personality?” she asked him, her voice tight with barely controlled anger.
He didn't reply.
“I said is...”
“I heard you. I figured the question was rhetorical.”
“You're a real piece of work and I’m going to hurt you,” Sofia promised as she shook off his hands to spin around and face him.
She’d seen him, briefly, when he’d forced her and Thomas into the car, and then again right before he shot her, but she’d been too distracted by the gun to be prepared for the effect his face had on her from up close. He was easily the best looking man she had ever seen with his intense, blue eyes, perfect cheekbones and dark brown hair.
Too old to be interesting, but still. If this was how all kidnappers looked, she had to admit Stockholm syndrome made a lot more sense. Then he opened his mouth and she remembered his awful personality.
“I do beg your pardon,” he said with a mocking bow. “I hope you’re not injured.”
Sofia frowned at him. Her ability to speak might be temporarily disconnected, but she wasn’t nearly as taken in by him as he seemed to believe. After all, he had just shot her. He might do it again, she suddenly realized and looked away from his face to his toned body. Where had he put the gun?
He misinterpreted the look and moved closer.
“Like what you see?” he purred in a low voice.
Yuck, Sofia thought and kicked up with her knee. He collapsed onto the ground without making a sound, curling up on himself.
“Zack are you guys already down there?” a woman called from the hole in the ceiling, startling Sofia who moved back, prepared to deal with the other kidnapper.
She heard a soft bounce as Thomas landed on the cushion, swiftly followed by the woman who had been driving the car. She was as beautiful as the man curled in a foetus position on the floor.
Sofia stared. These people couldn't be real. They looked like people did in commercials after they’d been airbrushed.
The woman grinned at her. Her skin was the color of mocha and her hair a luminous dark brown that couldn’t be natural. That would have been too unfair.
Zack whimpered in pain and the woman looked at him with surprise.
“What happened to you?” she asked him.
“She kicked me,” he hissed.
The woman looked back at Sofia who braced for the woman’s retaliation, but she just flashed a perfect smile and looked approvingly at her.
“Well done,” she said, while Zack merely groaned.
She ignored him. “If you’d like to turn around, I’ll release you,” she added as she tapped something into a panel next to the cushion they’d landed on and made the hole above their heads close.
Sofia shivered as her last glimpse of freedom disappeared.
“Come on. Unless you want to keep wearing them?”
Sofia shook her head, unable to speak. She turned around. Giving her back to someone she knew was a threat made her uncomfortable, but so was having her arms cuffed behind her back.
Besides, she was stuck in a basement she didn’t know how to get out of. It wasn’t as if she could put up much of a fight anyway. She glanced at the man curled up on the floor and grinned. Well, if she caught them by surprise she could.
The woman moved closer, her flowery perfume at this distance overwhelming. She grimaced as the cold steel released its tight grip on her wrists. She turned back to the woman while rubbing at the red marks the cuffs had left.
“Thank you,” Sofia muttered.
“Don’t mention it. I’m sorry we had to use them in the first place,” she said apologetically and moved over to release Thomas’s hands. He grunted something unintelligible as she shifted his arms, but didn’t move away from the cushion.
“You’re sorry?” Sofia asked skeptically.
“We didn’t want to resort to kidnapping, but we had to get you out of there fast.
“You could have asked, you know. We were trying to get out of there ourselves,” Sofia said, flexing her hands.
The woman smiled. “And you’d have let us put you in a car? Two complete strangers you’d just seen shooting at people?”
“You think kidnapping us and locking us up in a basement made more sense?” Thomas asked from the cushion.
The woman laughed.
“Well, yes. At the time it did,” she said with grin. “I’m sorry. I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Gloria Noringer.”
She held her hand out to Sofia who, after a moment’s hesitation, shook it. She decided that since Gloria didn’t look like she was about to kill them, she might as well play nice.
“Sofia. That’s Thomas. So where are we?”
Thomas was not the least bit inclined to talk to a person who was, at least, partly responsible for the state he was currently in. He didn’t want to talk at all, didn’t want to sit up. His body felt as if he had been run over several times.
He hadn’t been able to get any sleep in the car. He’d been too worried about Sofia and busy imagining all the horrors waiting for them at their destination to relax. The way his body had been aching hadn’t helped.
At least Sofia looked alright. Maybe he’d ask that guy to sedate him. It wouldn't be sleeping, but he wouldn't have to be in pain any longer.
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you where you are. Not yet. But we want you to know that you’re safe here,” Gloria said.
“That makes me feel so much better,” Thomas muttered. He wouldn’t take her word for it. He was safe when he was at a police station reporting what they’d done to him and not a moment sooner.
“I know we didn’t meet under the best of circumstances, but I want you to know that we mean you no harm,” Gloria continued. She sounded as if she
was reading from a script.
“I do,” the man on the floor grunted as he finally managed to get back to his feet.
“Sofia, Thomas, this is Zack Calder. Zack, be nice.”
“I’m not your dog, Glo. You can’t order me around,” Zack muttered with a glare in her direction.
Zack didn’t extend his hand and the basement remained awkwardly silent until Gloria finally cleared her throat.
“Okay. I guess we’re done with the formalities.”
“No, we’re not.” Thomas said and made a heroic attempt to get upright. “You’ve yet to tell us where we are, why we’re here and what you mean to do with us.”
“Classified, classified and top secret blondie,” Zack grunted in reply.
Gloria gave him a reproachful look, before turning to Thomas. “We’re in a secret underground base.”
“Of course we are,” Sofia sighed as Thomas looked around the room properly for the first time. He had never been in a secret underground base before. He’d seen a few in movies and TV-shows, though and this one had everything he’d ever imagined a secret underground base would.
There were screens all around them showing news broadcasts as well as surveillance from footage from the grounds of the derelict house above them. There were also a number of weird looking things set into the walls and floor. He had no idea what they were for, but they were blinking and beeping. It looked a high-tech Christmas display. Minus the reindeers and fat men dressed in red.
“The other people you encountered today were…”
“Stop talking, Glo,” Zack ordered.
Gloria gave him another look, but he merely raised an eyebrow.
“I guess you’ll hear all about it tomorrow,” she finally relented.
Zack gave them all a final glare before turning to walk away into an adjacent room without another word.
“I apologize for that. Zack experienced a…personal loss a few weeks ago. He’s not being himself,” Gloria said as soon as Zack was no longer in the room. “He’s unfortunately right, though. We’re not allowed to tell you anything before your official briefing tomorrow. After that…
Fractured (Unreel series Book 1) Page 20