That’s when I hear Chazz again, this time shouting, “What the fuck?”
The men holding me in place pause to glance back. I glance back too. And there’s Chazz, looking stunned, pulling his arms out of the grasp of the two men holding him in place. They let him go without any fuss.
He sprints to the car, leans down, inspects the side mirror. He turns back, his jaw clenched, glares first at me, then at the masked men.
“This car’s a fucking classic. Who’s going to pay for the damage?”
The two who had been holding Chazz now reach us. One of them says, “Take it out of your cut.”
Chazz says, “I’m not taking shit out of my cut. You owe me more.”
The other snorts. “Keep dreaming.”
Chazz stomps his foot in place like a petulant child. “This is fucking bullshit!”
“Calm down.”
Chazz clenches his fists. “I held up my part of the deal. I got her here. You assholes were at least supposed to wait until I fucked her first.”
“Sorry, Romeo. You should have gotten here sooner.”
“I even showed up late to make sure she’d want it bad. You always know a bitch wants it bad when you keep her waiting.” Pushing his shoulders back, trying to look intimidating, Chazz points at the broken mirror. “I want extra for that.”
“Keep dreaming,” the masked man says again, growing impatient. Then to the men holding me: “What are you two idiots doing just standing there? Get her in the van.”
The two holding me move at once. They drag me toward the back of the van. The doors are open, but they don’t shove me inside. One of them holds me while the other grabs a roll of duct tape. He tears off a piece, places it over my mouth, then tears off two longer pieces and wraps those around my wrists and ankles. They put me in the van while somewhere outside Chazz keeps whining about his car and the other guy says okay fine they’ll pay him extra. After a couple minutes of silence, the front doors open and the two other men get in and then the engine rumbles to life and the van starts to move.
Five hours to go.
Eight
We head south.
I know we head south because the van turns left onto the highway. I can’t see out any windows, of course, but I can feel the movement of the van, just as I can feel the engine’s heavy rumbling as the driver accelerates. He doesn’t go too fast—doesn’t want to get pulled over, no doubt—but fast enough so we’re cruising at maybe ten miles above the speed limit.
The one in the passenger seat has a cell phone in his hand. He dials a number, places the phone to his ear, and simply says, “We have her.”
After that, there’s silence. Nobody speaks. Nobody tells me what the hell is going on. I just lay on the floor of the panel van, duct tape over my mouth, my wrists and ankles bound, completely helpless.
The two who had dragged me into the van are sitting on the floor, their knees pulled up to their chests. They keep their masks on. It’s dark in the van, but I can see their eyes through the holes in the masks. They watch me for a while, but eventually they seem to get bored. One of them closes his eyes. The other’s gaze drifts toward the front of the van.
Has it hit me yet just how scared I should be? Not really. I’m scared, sure, but I’m not terrified. It’s a strange feeling. Part of me knows I’m in some kind of danger while another part knows there’s a limit to that danger. Because if these men wanted to kill me, they wouldn’t be wearing masks. The reason they’re wearing masks is to hide their identities, and I have to assume—hope—that the reason is they plan to eventually let me go.
I think about my mother, who’s back at the condo and maybe still watching old movies in the living room or maybe she’s gone to bed by now. I think about my father, still at work doing God knows what. I think about Tina, over four thousand miles away, who’s probably tucked into bed asleep.
If these men do decide to kill me, when will my family find out? Will they ever find out?
The floor of the van continues to vibrate, which is becoming really annoying, so I start to sit up.
The masked man who hasn’t closed his eyes glares at me. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Because of the duct tape over my mouth, I can’t give a verbal response, but I plead with my eyes to try to get across the fact that it’s uncomfortable lying on the floor.
The masked man doesn’t seem to care, so he doesn’t object as I continue to sit up. It takes a couple moments—the passenger up front turning in his seat to watch—and then I’m sitting with my butt on the floor and my back against the side of the van.
Now all three of the masked men are watching me—the one who’d closed his eyes is now staring at me intently—and I do the smart thing which is to not make eye contact. I focus on my feet instead, on the nails I’d painted earlier tonight because I thought I was going to have a nice date with a hot guy.
The van begins to slow. For some reason, I think it’s because we’re going to turn off onto another road, but I notice a traffic light ahead of us. The yellow light changes to red.
We stop.
I don’t move. My eyes shift up to find that both masked men in the back are watching me.
Outside, the traffic light changes to green, and we start moving again.
The masked man who closed his eyes earlier closes his eyes again. The other one watches me for another minute, then glances up toward the front. That’s when I tilt my head just enough to focus my gaze on the back doors.
The masked man who hasn’t closed his eyes adjusts his sitting stance, and I glance back down at my feet.
For another minute, the van moves at a steady speed, doing maybe forty-five, fifty miles per hour.
Then it starts to slow again.
From my vantage point, I spot the traffic light coming up, this one already red. No telling how long it’ll stay red. So the moment the driver eases the van to a full stop, I make my move.
My ankles and wrists are bound but that doesn’t stop me from pulling my knees up to brace my back against the side of the van. Within two seconds, I’m up and hopping toward the rear doors. My wrists may be bound, but my fingers are still free, and I quickly lift the latch that opens one of the rear doors just as the two men behind me scramble to their feet.
I shove the door open and jump down onto the highway, my bare feet against the cold asphalt, and the first thing I’m aware of is the car stopped directly in front of me, its headlights glaring into my eyes.
I raise my hands to block the headlights, squint and see the driver staring back at me, his mouth open in shock.
At that moment, both of the masked men exit the van and grab my arms and begin to pull me back inside.
The car’s driver, having quickly come to terms with his shock, shouts out his open window, “What the hell is going on?”
The masked men aren’t gentle at all in the way they throw me into the van. One of them crawls up into the van after me while the other stays outside. I’m briefly aware of the car’s driver asking again what the hell is going on, and then I hear a single crack and the driver falls silent. A second later, the other masked man jumps up into the van, slams the door shut, and the van is moving an instant later, its engine screaming as it tears away from the intersection.
The masked man glares down at me, his gun in hand. He says to me, “That’s on you,” then says to the man in the passenger seat, “Give her the shot.”
The man in the passenger seat is already prepared. He pushes out of his seat, a hypodermic needle in hand, and that’s when I start struggling again, thrashing on the vibrating steel floor. Both masked men in the back need to hold me down while the passenger crouches over me and searches for a vein. He finds one and inserts the needle and plunges in whatever liquid is in there, and then he steps back, returns to his seat, but the two other men keep holding me as my thrashing lessens and everything starts to go gray and then completely dark.
Four hours thirty minutes to go.
Ni
ne
I open my eyes to darkness.
At first, I think I’m still sleeping—I feel groggy—but I know I’m awake.
And the darkness … it’s not a complete darkness. There’s something textured about it. Something … suffocating.
I blink and immediately understand the source of the darkness.
There’s a cloth bag over my head.
It’s not tight, which was why I barely felt it at first, but now that I’m starting to come to, I realize that it is a cloth bag, just as I realize there is still duct tape over my mouth and that my wrists and ankles are still bound.
Except … no, that’s not quite right. My wrists and ankles are still bound, yes, but they’re not bound as they were before. Because now I’m sitting in a chair. One of those metal folding chairs, it feels like, the kind without any padding. My ankles are bound to the chair legs, just as my wrists are bound to the back of the chair.
Despite all this, I still try to struggle out of my restraints. It does no good. I’m just wearing myself out, so I stop and take a moment to try to take in my surroundings.
There’s a noise somewhere far away which may be a motor humming, but for the most part it’s silent.
Several seconds pass in that strange silence, and then I hear another noise, the creak of another metal chair, directly in front of me.
The cloth bag shifts as someone pulls it off my head.
One of the masked men is standing in front of me. At least, I assume it’s one of the masked men from the panel van. He holds the cloth bag at his side for a moment, his gaze steady with mine, and then he tosses the bag aside and sits back down on the metal chair facing me.
He leans forward, his elbows on his knees. “Did you have a nice nap? You were out for about an hour and a half.”
I don’t say anything because duct tape is still over my mouth. The masked man knows this, of course, but he doesn’t seem to care about my answer, even if I were able to give one.
His eyes are green. And his voice—shit, how did I not notice this before?—is Russian. At least, I think it’s Russian. He sounds like the big blonde guy from the Rocky movie.
“I know you’re scared, but there’s no reason to be. Our intention is not to hurt you. At least, we do not want to hurt you. That is entirely up to you, on how you follow directions.”
He leans forward, pinches the edge of the duct tape, slowly peels it off my mouth.
“There,” he says, leaning back as he balls the duct tape and tosses it next to the cloth bag, “now we can better have a conversation. Would you like some water?”
Despite the duct tape no longer keeping me silent, I say nothing.
The man’s eyes narrow slightly. “Do not make this more difficult than it needs to be, Holly.”
“How do you know my name?” My voice doesn’t sound nearly as scared as I thought it would.
“We know a lot about you. We know where you and your family are staying. We know what groceries you bought this past weekend. We know about all the places you have been since you arrived to Oahu.”
“What do you want?”
“It does not concern you what it is we want. That is between your father and us.”
“My father? But he—”
I don’t continue, clamping my mouth shut. The last thing I need to do is give this guy more information … though, by the sound of it, he already knows a lot.
Even though the mask hides his face, I can hear the smile in his voice as he says, “But your father is only a sergeant in the Army? That is what you believe, is it not?” He chuckles. “How naïve you are, little Holly.”
“Don’t call me little Holly.”
The man chuckles again. “We knew you would be—what is the word—feisty?”
I ask, “Did you ever see the fourth Rocky movie?”
The man says nothing.
“I watched it last summer. I watched all the movies, actually, because they had a Rocky marathon on TV. And my favorite one was number four because Rocky kicks the shit out of that Russian dude. Makes him look like a real pussy.”
I’m lying—my favorite movie of the series is actually Rocky II—but this asshole doesn’t need to know that. I’m banking on the fact that these guys don’t intend on killing me because they still haven’t shown me their faces. Which means that they plan to eventually let me go. Which, all things considered, is a plan I can get behind.
Still, part of me feels like pissing this guy off because clearly I’m an idiot. I mean, just what the hell am I thinking? There are times when I say stuff without giving much thought to what I’m saying, but damn, I need to cool my jets.
“On second thought,” I say, “I didn’t like how the Russians were portrayed in the movie. I felt it was irresponsible of the director to portray the Russian people as a bunch of pussies. Not that I think all Russians are pussies, especially you, though at the same time if you consider yourself a pussy, I don’t want to offend you and say you’re not a pussy, so maybe it would be best if we just got it out in the open and you told me whether or not you’re a pussy, otherwise I won’t be able to think about anything else.”
What the hell was that? Shut up, Holly, I tell myself, just shut the fuck up.
The masked man doesn’t answer me, of course. At least not verbally. He just sits there, staring at me, and then in an instant he leans forward and backhands me across the face.
Okay, so maybe I’m reading the situation wrong. He still has on the mask, which might mean these guys don’t intend to kill me, but that certainly doesn’t mean they won’t hurt me. After all, he did say that, so that’s what I get for calling his bluff.
The man doesn’t apologize for backhanding me, which frankly is pretty rude. Instead, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a cell phone. Flips it open and holds it up for me to see.
“From what we understand, your father has a special cell phone he keeps just for you and your sister. So that if you are ever in trouble, you call him and he will help you. Am I wrong?”
It’s true—my father told Tina and me the phone number years ago, told us to memorize it in case something terrible happened and we needed to reach him ASAP—but how the hell does this man know that?
“No more fucking around,” he says. “Give me the number.”
I say nothing.
He leans forward, his eyes even more intense. “Give—me—the—number.”
Now what is a girl to do? What is a girl who’s bound to a metal folding chair with a psycho who just backhanded her supposed to do when said psycho wants her to call her father? Whatever’s going on here, it has nothing to do with me other than the fact I’m now being used as leverage. But, well, the thing about this girl is that she hates being used for anything, let alone leverage, so of course she says the stupidest thing imaginable.
“Fuck you.”
Three hours to go.
Ten
I expect him to backhand me again, but instead he bolts up from the chair and wraps his hand around my throat.
Squeezing, he says, “Do not fuck with me.”
I stare up at him, not able to speak, let alone fuck with him, but that doesn’t seem to bother the man. He’s going to kill me, I realize now, and it all could have been avoided had I just called my father.
There’s an insane intensity in the man’s eyes like he doesn’t know what he’s doing, but then he blinks and the expression changes and his grip on my throat lets up.
He steps back, glaring down at me, and again holds up the phone. “Shall we try this again?”
I stare up at him, trying to catch my breath, hoping my voice box hasn’t been completely crushed. I have no plans of ever becoming an international pop star, but I’d at least like the possibility to always be there.
When I don’t answer immediately, the man says, “Do not be a stubborn bitch. Give me the number.”
I open my mouth, try to speak, but it doesn’t seem to work. I have to clear my throat, try again, and finally mana
ge to utter a few words.
“Can I … ask you … a question?”
He stares at me.
I lick my lips, clear my throat again. “Is your name … Dolph?”
Unsurprisingly, the man doesn’t think this is funny. He gives me another backhand, then leans in again, wraps his hand around my throat, but before he can do too much damage, there’s a knock at the door behind him.
The man lets go of my throat, stepping back as he glares down at me. A couple seconds pass, and then he turns and exits the room, leaving me alone.
The door now closed again, there’s complete silence except for that strange humming coming from somewhere far away. Or is it close by? Doesn’t matter. Whatever’s happening now, the only thing I can do is wait, and so I just sit here in this tiny room and wait.
My face stings from where Dolph backhanded me again. My throat feels tender. My mouth now free of duct tape, I’m able to shout for help if I want, scream as loud as I can, but part of me knows it would be a waste of time. Wherever I am, I’m far away from the general public. I can shout and scream all day and nobody would hear me. All I’d do is wear myself out, and right now I need to store up as much energy as possible.
Five minutes pass, then ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes.
Oh hell, I don’t know exactly how much time passes, but it seems like forever. Maybe this is how they plan to break me. Isolation. How long does it take for somebody to start going crazy when she’s locked up by herself? Do I start talking to myself first? Do I start seeing things?
I use the time to inspect my surroundings, but there isn’t much to see. The room is small. Nothing on the walls. Just a dim bulb hanging from the ceiling. And the door.
Holly Lin | Novella | First Kill Page 3