by Tara Brown
Come with me if you want to live.
She paused, tilting her head, maybe wondering if this was a prank. It gave me the second to whisper, “There are men coming here now to kill you and steal your research. I am here to save you from them.”
Her back window opened and Luce climbed in. She offered her hand to the girl. “Grab whatever you don't want burned and come with us.”
The girl, Janice, opened her mouth to scream, I could tell by the way she inhaled quickly. Luce saw it too and shot her in the neck with a tranquilizer before she even finished the breath.
“Well, that didn't work.” Luce sighed.
“I totally thought she’d respect the Terminator quote,” Jack muttered. I didn't need to say I told him so; the scientist passing out before our eyes was the proof of the mistake we’d made. Notes and scribbling I didn't understand lined the wall of the small room. It was like entering a cell where a schizophrenic was kept. I didn't understand the notes or the system she had. I would never be that smart. She was a special breed of genius.
The kitchen was messy and the dim light inside didn't feel adequate enough. She enjoyed creative chaos, that much was evident. Or she was just a slob.
Luce walked to her and dragged Janice’s pants off as I pulled off her shirt. I yanked off my clothing and hurried into hers.
“You take the laundry downstairs that she was just about to do, and I will take her out the front. With you moving, they won’t be watching the road in front as keenly.”
I glanced around nervously. “Did you kill the tech in the room before I entered?”
“Yeah, I did it while you were on the street below. Didn't want you to lose your equipment’s sending and receiving. The whole apartment and probably the ones next door are dead for recording or incoming or outgoing transmissions of any kind. That's going to bring them down on us when they realize their cameras aren’t working.”
I pulled my hair out of the tight bun and let it slip around my shoulders, confirming our hair was actually a pretty good match.
“Told you she looks like you a little. I mean, even with her being a lot younger.”
“It’s only a few years, Jack.”
“It’s probably ‘cause she’s Australian. They get a lot more sunshine than we do. She’s got more wrinkles than she should have.”
“You’re a dead man,” I snarled as I lifted her glasses off her face and put them on.
“Boy. I’m a boy, compared to you.” He chuckled. “Just live through this and then you can come and get me.” He was taunting me on purpose.
Luce lifted the girl into her arms with a grunt. “She’s more like one forty, not one fifteen,” she grumbled.
“Hey, all I had was her Plenty of Fish profile. And at least she’s closer to your weight now, Evie.”
“I’ll kill him for you.” Luce grunted again and walked to the window, tying herself and Janice into the harness. She glimpsed back at me as she stepped up to the ledge. “Don't forget to be Aussie and not Bostonian.” She winked and stepped out, leaving me there alone. It was a full inhale and exhale before I kicked into gear, hiding my clothes and gun, washing all the makeup from my face, and checking a photo on her fridge to make sure I did my makeup the way she did. Using her makeup made me gag a little, but I suffered through.
With my hair in a messy ponytail and my shoulders slumping like I lived my life in a computer chair, I pushed the glasses up and wrinkled my nose a bit. I grabbed the packets from my pockets and slapped them on the wall in her apartment, right below the smoke detector. I pressed the button in the middle of them, hearing it click.
“Charged.”
I took two deep breaths before I dared to lift the laundry basket and saunter out the door. I didn't worry about her research or the key to her apartment; I wouldn't last the stairs to the basement before they had me.
When I got to the stairs, I sneezed loudly, wiping my nose on my sleeve and sniffling. I wanted them to see me.
I coughed a few times and shuffled my feet on the steps.
“You all right, Janice?” a girl on the stairs asked with a thick Cockney accent.
“Yeah, mate. Just got me a bit of a sniffle from the smell in the hall. You just getting in?” My Aussie accent was dreadful, but the sniffle might have explained that away.
“Yeah. Closed down the pub. See ya then. Have a good night.” The dark-haired girl I hadn’t seen on the stairs waved and walked off. I waved awkwardly, carrying the basket.
Just as I had predicted, in the second floor stairwell a familiar scent caught my nose again. It was much stronger this time. The smell of cologne and deodorant and man sweat. But only a certain man could make sweat that delectable.
My heart raced as it had before I entered Janice’s apartment.
I took the stairs slowly, not darting my eyes about. I pretended to be deep in thought, but I was deep in listening. Someone moved behind me, but I didn't look back. Janice wouldn't have looked back. She would’ve continued on and not even heard them. She was obviously a deep thinker. I had walked right into her apartment without her noticing.
When I got to the first floor I turned to go toward the basement laundry, but a dark figure stopped me in the hall. I tried to walk around him, not lifting my head, but he didn't move.
“Excuse me,” I gave my best attempt at Australian. It was decent.
“Can you help me?” he asked, and immediately I knew it wasn't Servario. His scent in the hallway had weakened and this voice wasn't his.
I lifted my gaze, wrinkling my nose. “Whatcha need?”
He was about my age and underworld looking, especially when he grinned and lifted his finger at me. “You.”
I gulped. “What?”
“I need you to come with me.” His accent was real. There was just no way a person from the town of Blackpool could be imitated with that level of skill.
Turning around to maybe flee or contemplate my options, I jumped, seeing there behind me was another man in black. He smiled, but it was much more of a grin and obviously ominous.
“I don't have any money on me. I left it upstairs. I can get it.”
The men laughed, exactly the same and at the exact same time.
The one behind lunged at me, forcing me to turn around and stagger as the other guy grabbed me. His hand came up over my lips as the basket dropped from my grip, spilling clothes onto the floor. I made a feeble attempt to fight them as they gripped my arms and dragged me to the laundry.
I would’ve feared a terrible fate if I hadn’t known who they were. They weren’t going to rape me, not here anyway.
One of the inept morons hit me in the back of the head, hoping to knock me out. It didn't work, but I fell, feigning being unconscious instead of screaming or fighting back the way I wanted to.
They caught me as I fell and scooped me up.
The smoke alarm began as the packets on the wall ignited. They would smoke for two minutes before a full-scale explosion destroyed Janice’s apartment, just in case.
“The smoke detectors? We better hurry.”
They hurried me outside and placed me into the back seat of a dark car.
“She’s older than I thought she’d be,” Jackass Number One commented as he closed the door.
“She’s Australian. There’s lots of sun there,” Jackass Number Two pointed out as he climbed into the driver’s seat.
It was a real kick in the crotch.
14
Only you, Isla
The car ride had been silent for a while when Jackass Number One checked back on me and commented, “She’s a bit sexy hot for a scientist.”
“Not our kind of hot,” Jackass Number Two commented. He was driving and clearly in charge.
“You wanna get a kebab on the way after we drop her off?”
Jackass Number Two groaned. “No. I just watched some real crime show about that girl who disappeared back home in Blackpool.”
I knew it!
He shook his head as
he drove under a streetlight that lit the car up. “That young girl, they say was part of that grooming shit they got going on up there where them foreigners are convincing the street kids to trade sex for food and shelter. Some pervy old sixty-year-old pricks are getting off on fifteen-year-old girls. All white girls with Middle Easterners.”
“What’s that got to do with getting takeaway?”
Jackass Number Two turned his face, seeming quite serious. “They killed one of them girls and stuck her in the kebabs. Ground her up. Right in the fuckin’ takeaway. Mum’s out there looking for her kid and getting a takeaway and it’s filled with ground—”
“Right, I get it. I don't fuckin’ need the whole story. Jesus. That's fucking sick. This is what’s wrong with this goddamned country. I’m fuckin’ moving, I tell ya. I’m going to the Middle East where they cut your balls off for fucking kids.”
Bad guys with morals always made me shake my head, but this time my insides boiled as I contemplated the validity of the story. I would be checking it out, if I lived.
The car slowed and the jackasses went silent.
I cracked an eyelid and tried to show Jack where I was. He was tracking me, but I was worried. He had been so quiet in my ear, not even breathing.
We drove under something, perhaps an overpass or a bridge. It was dark and the jackasses seemed oddly tense. The car parked, making everything inside me tighten. I had to force my muscles to relax as a shadow cast over the vehicle. A man I couldn't make out stood over my window, staring down on me.
The doors opened and I exhaled as I let them drag me from the car. I was flung over a shoulder and thumped into a building.
The man walked with an arrogance I expected, but he didn't smell like Servario. I became worried he wouldn’t be part of the show, but his voice filled the hallway, “Take her to the office. I’ll be there in a moment.”
The beast carrying me didn't make a sound. He just turned in the hall and stalked toward the office, whatever that was.
The huge man placed me down gently on a bed and walked out, closing the door behind me. It was completely dark, and I couldn't see a thing except the outline of the door where the light came in from the hallway.
I listened for footsteps or someone else in the room but nothing stirred. I wasn't certain what to do. “Jack?” I whispered so softly I hardly heard it.
“You okay?”
I nodded so the camera in my eye would bob.
“Good. L and J are safe and sound, and her building has burned to the ground, no casualties. The lab she worked at in Oxford has also been burned. Luce took care of that first. Any time you want to make that exit, let me know what you need. I’ll do what I can. You’re near a farm on the outskirts of London. It’s close to a train crossing and a small river. If you go that way you could catch a train. They run every few minutes into London, starting at five in the morning, and you are only about an hour away from that time.”
As I took a breath, I bobbed the camera again, not excited that it was one hour until the next train. Slowly I got up, listening for anything, even trying to catch a smell or something that could tell me more about where I was.
As I got to the door, it opened, making me jump back. A large man filled the doorway with his silhouette. “Going somewhere, Doctor?” Servario asked softly.
He strolled into the room, taking advantage of the fact that I couldn't see a thing. He closed the door and sighed. “Tell me where your research is, and I will walk out of this room and nothing will happen to you.”
I swallowed hard, not sure which way to go with this. Did I tell him it was me and risk us both if there was surveillance in the room? Or did I let him torture me?
I backed up, not sure how to be me or Janice.
“Doctor, don't make me do this.” His soft words made my entire body tingle with fear. He rushed me, wrapping his arm around my waist and spinning me. He walked us both forward with his hand wrapping around my throat as the other one tore my shirt open, exposing my breasts. He cupped one and whispered in my ear, “The problem with me, Janice—you don't mind me calling you that, do you? As I was saying, the problem with me is I don't particularly enjoy regular torture. I find women hard to beat on.” He hurried across the room until my hips and waist slammed into something, winding me as it forced my face down. I recognized the felt of the billiards table the moment my cheek touched it.
Did he know it was me?
He held me down with one hand as something sharp dragged down my back. “However, I find women very easy to fuck, and in my opinion, as humble as it might be, I like fucking far more than torturing.”
I tried to tell myself there was a chance he was fooled by my disguise, but then he bent forward and licked the back of my neck. “The problem with females in the field, Janice, is they are so easy to abuse for no reason at all.” The way he said “field” and “Janice” gave it away.
He knew it was me.
The blade in his hand cut my belt and pants, enabling him to slide them down my hips and buttocks. I gasped as he cut my underwear from me, tossing them aside.
He slammed the knife into the table near my face as he reached around me and cupped my breast, rolling my nipple between his fingers.
I didn't dare make a sound though I desperately wanted to. He rolled and tweaked my nipple, making my breath stop short. The moment I closed my eyes, he dragged the hand back, sliding it down my butt cheeks, dangerously close to the no-no spot.
Just as I held my breath he lowered his finger, sliding it into me and pressing down on my back, shoving me harder into the table as he assaulted me. He sawed a finger in and out, clucking his tongue when he discovered how wet I was. I almost clucked my tongue too. I couldn't believe my traitorous vagina was soaked and ready for Servario. I really was the biggest whore where he was concerned.
He didn't offer foreplay or take a knee the way he normally would. He pulled his hand from me and jerked his cock free of his trousers, shoving himself inside me—hard.
I gasped, hating that Jack was obviously aware of what was going on in the earpiece. I kept my eyes shut but there was no way to block out the gasping.
“I just need to know where it is and I will stop.” He thrust into me again, completely bareback. I almost got angry, realizing I would have to endure the fucking STI testing again.
He gripped my hips, fucking me with angry thrusts. “Tell me, Janice, tell me what I need to know.”
I took the beating as he pounded a few more times before squeezing my ass cheeks hard and coming with an aggression I hadn’t felt in a while. He jerked his last few strokes and then sighed into my back. “You are in a lot of trouble, Janice. A lot.”
He meant me and I knew I was. He pulled himself from me, letting semen run down my thighs. It was disturbing, and yet nothing less than I expected from him.
“Now it’s time to play.” He slapped me hard on the ass as he walked to the corner of the room, flicking on the lights as he did his pants up.
We were in a games room with leather couches. It was weird, considering I had assumed it was an actual office.
When I met his stare, I cringed. It was something I hadn’t seen before. He was angry but scared maybe.
He swallowed. “Come with me.” He held a hand out for me.
I peered down at the shreds of my clothing. “I can’t leave like this.” I maintained my Australian accent, even when he flinched.
“They know who you are, Isla. Give up the accent.”
I swallowed hard, not sure what game we were playing.
“They know everything.” He lifted a finger to the ceiling. The small glass circle was a camera. I knew there would be facial recognition, but how could I be a girl named Isla? My plan had been to escape, not get fucked by Servario and then made into one of his whores. “Just tell me who sent you and where the doctor is.” He swallowed the lump I had seen in his throat.
I understood then what this all meant. He would have to torture me until I could esc
ape.
I clenched my jaw and shook my head, showing my defiance. It was all I had. I didn't know who I was supposed to be or who I allegedly worked for.
“We know you are part of the mismanaged MI6 fiasco. Just stop. Tell us how it’s possible you and Mary have the doctor.”
He was trying to tell me that Mary was my out. Didn't they know she was dead?
If I gave him information on her, he would free me. I shook my head. I didn't want to give it up right away. That might seem too obvious.
He shrugged. “Your funeral.” He strode forward and grabbed my hand, dragging me to the doorway. I tripped on my pants, but he just dragged me, skidding my half-naked body along the floor. He dragged me to a bathroom where he flung me into the open showers.
Rage crept across his face as he snarled, “You fucking idiot!”
“Fuck you, Servario!” I spit my perfectly accented words at him. My English accent was far superior to my Aussie. I scrambled up, dragging my pants off all the way and kicking my shoes off. Barefoot and naked, I squared off against him. “Fuck you!” I pointed.
He cracked a grin, but it was the sort you didn't want to see, not on his face. He always meant whatever he threatened, and by the look he gave me, I assumed it was going to be a bad scene. “Fuck me?” His accent thickened. “You want to fuck me, Isla?”
I backed up, lifting my hands into the air defensively. “I do.”
He laughed, shaking his head. “Okay.” He pointed. “I warned you to never show your face to me again.” He rolled his sleeves up, flashing a wound on his forearm. He pulled off his tie and loosened his shirt. He gave me a grin and walked to me with the tie in his hands. I swung at him, to distract him with a clumsy punch, but he anticipated the other punch coming from my sneaky left hand. He took the right and grabbed my left, hitting me in the ribs once. I took it, wincing. He hit me a second time.