Holly Lin | Novella | First Kill

by Swartwood, Robert

  Which I do now, frantically, wanting nothing more than to get the fuck out of here. But I need to stay calm, focused, and while Brooke keeps sobbing, I reach over and start working the duct tape keeping my left arm in place. There doesn’t seem to be any sharp spots on that end of the metal chair, which makes this a whole lot harder. Plus there’s no telling just how soon Dolph—and maybe his entourage—will return. It could be any second now.

  Brooke’s sobbing quiets momentarily for her to speak.

  “What … what are you doing?”

  “Like I said, I’m getting us out of here.”

  With my free hand, I work at the duct tape as best as I can, wearing down the adhesive until there’s enough give that I manage to slip my other hand free.

  I work at my feet next, which is a little easier now that I have two free hands. It takes a couple of minutes, but then I’m out of the chair and standing for the first time in hours.

  I don’t take the time to relish the small spurt of freedom. Instead, I hurry around to check on Brooke.

  She looks awful.

  No—she looks absolutely terrible.

  Her face has indeed swollen, so much so it looks deformed. Blood trickles down from her nose and mouth, staining her T-shirt. Dolph may have hit her elsewhere, but her face seems to have taken most of the impact.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whisper. I start to reach for her face, catch myself, let my hand drop down to my side. I kneel, start working on the duct tape keeping her legs bound to the metal chair. “Just sit tight—I’m going to get us out of here.”

  Am I, though? Am I really going to get us out of here when I don’t even know where here is? It’s all wishful thinking, but right now it looks like Brooke could use some wishful thinking.

  When I manage to free her legs, I start working on her arms. That takes a couple of minutes—I’m counting them down in my head, wondering when Dolph will walk through that door—and then her arms are free and I help her stand up.

  “Come on,” I say, taking her hand.

  I lead her to the door.

  Which, of course, is locked.

  “Great.” I shake my head, frustrated, and look around the tiny room. Nothing in here except the chairs. I look at Brooke, then at the chairs, then at Brooke again. “I have an idea.”

  One hour to go.

  Fifteen

  When Dolph returns again, thankfully he’s alone.

  He steps through the door—light streaming into the dim room—and pauses just long enough to glance at the girl in the chair facing him. The girl who has her head down so Dolph can’t see her face. Her hair’s the wrong color—Brooke’s is blonde, mine is black—but that doesn’t seem to register right away. It takes at least an extra second or two before it begins to make sense, but by that point the door has closed and I step away from the wall and swing the metal folding chair at his head.

  As expected, it catches him off guard. He falls to the ground with a grunt, tries to get back up.

  I swing the chair again, this time connecting with his face.

  Blood squirts from his nose. He rises to one knee, tries to stand, but I swing the chair again at the back of his head.

  He hits the ground, and I swing the chair one final time down on his head.

  Dolph lies flat on the floor, unconscious.

  I toss the chair away. A second later I’m kneeling over him, searching his pockets, pulling out the cell phone, then a switchblade. I shove both items into separate pockets as I stand back up and turn to Brooke.

  “Let’s go.”

  She raises her head, but it takes a while, as if her head weighs two hundred pounds. She squints up at me, her face now even more swollen. The girl needs a serious trip to the ER, but first we need to get out of here.

  I hurry over to Brooke, take her arm, help her up from the chair.

  The door was locked a minute ago, but with Dolph now in here, I’m hoping it’ll open without any trouble.

  It does.

  I push Brooke out into the light.

  There’s a pin on the outside of the door handle. I slip the pin in the slot, which will make it impossible for the door to open from the inside. Good. That’s one asshole down. Now we have to worry about the three others, assuming there aren’t more.

  Brooke slumps against the wall. She almost falls, and I have to grab her, hold her steady, looking now up and down a narrow hallway. Only … this isn’t a hallway in the traditional sense. This doesn’t even look like a building.

  Where the hell are we?

  That noise I heard before—the low electric humming—is coming from up the hallway. I decide what the hell and start in that direction, looking back over my shoulder, expecting one of the other masked men to make an appearance at any second.

  I’m not sure what I expect, but when we reach the end of the hallway and step into the room—the massive room—I whisper, “Holy shit.”

  At first it doesn’t make sense what I’m seeing.

  Then, all at once, it clicks.

  “This is the engine room,” I say. “We’re on a ship. A big ship.”

  Brooke doesn’t say anything, leaning into me.

  I keep her propped up, staring around at all the massive machinery. Halfway down the room are metal stairs.

  “Come on,” I say, leading her along.

  She murmurs, “We should … call for help.”

  Yes, we should. But not quite yet. First we need to figure out where we are.

  It takes Brooke a while to climb the stairs. I stay right behind her, my hand on her back, helping her along.

  We reach the top level and continue on until Brooke stops all at once, sobbing again, telling me to call for help.

  I pull the phone from my pocket. “Let’s call your father.”

  She blinks at me. “What?”

  “Your father,” I say. “Let’s call him. He’ll know what to do.”

  She blinks again. “But why … why can’t you call your father?”

  “I told you, my father’s nobody. Your father has rank. He’ll get things moving in a snap.”

  I place the phone in her hand, encouraging her to open it up and dial.

  She does so, slowly, much too slowly, and I’m nervous where we are, too exposed, so I lead her down to the next doorway, which leads into another hallway, and I push her through that. By that point she’s dialed and has the phone to her ear, listening, and then after several long seconds she shakes her head, fresh tears in her eyes.

  “He’s not answering!”

  I shush her, tell her to keep her voice down, certain that the rest of the masked men will show up at any moment. One of them will probably get suspicious when Dolph doesn’t return to wherever they were congregating and he’ll go looking for Dolph and find that we’ve escaped.

  I take the phone from her, start to dial 911.

  Brooke says, “What are you doing?”

  “Calling the police.”

  She moves quicker than I anticipated, grabbing the phone from my hand and snapping it shut.

  “No,” she says, sobbing even harder now, “call your father. Please just call your father.”

  I don’t know what it is right then—the adrenaline shooting through my veins, Brooke’s constant sobbing—but I relent. At the moment all I want her to do is shut up, so I dial the number my father had Tina and me memorize years ago.

  After one ring, my father answers, his voice quiet but intense.

  “Yes?”

  “Dad, it’s me.”

  He senses the desperation in my voice. “What’s wrong?”

  “Men took me. They tied me up and—”

  “Where are you?”

  “I don’t know. Some ship, I think. They had us tied up, but we managed to escape, and—”

  “Who’s with you?”

  “What?”

  “Who is with you?”

  “Her name’s Brooke. Her father’s stationed on the island, too.”

  “What’s h
is name?”

  “Dad, aren’t you listening? We’re in danger! You need to call the police. You need to—”

  “Holly”—my father’s tone is way too calm for the current situation—“what’s Brooke’s father’s name?”

  “Daniel Heller. He’s a colonel. Dad, you need to call the—”

  “Holly, stop talking.”

  This catches me off guard. “What?”

  “Let me talk to the girl.”

  “You mean Brooke?”

  “Her name isn’t Brooke.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know everyone on the base, Holly. There is no Colonel Heller.”

  Forty-five minutes to go.

  Sixteen

  I don’t know when it happened, but Brooke’s sobbing has quieted. She’s gone completely silent.

  I turn, wondering if she’s still beside me, and yes there she is, but the terrified girl who I’d known these past couple hours is now gone.

  “Brooke?”

  She punches me in the throat.

  It’s not a hard punch—it doesn’t crush my larynx—but it still has enough force to cause me to lose air.

  I drop to my knees, let go of the phone as I reach for my throat.

  Brooke snatches the phone midair—she has the reflexes of a ninja—and stands back up straight, places the phone to her ear.

  “I’m not going to draw this out,” she says, and her voice no longer sounds the same. Now it’s accented with Russian. “We want what you stole in the next two hours or we will kill your daughter.”

  I look up at Brooke again—is that even her real name?—but she doesn’t even bother glancing at me. It’s as if I’ve become an afterthought despite the claim that they’ll kill me if they don’t get what they want.

  “Don’t give me that bullshit,” she says into the phone. “We haven’t hurt her yet, and if you want it to stay that way, you will get what we want in two hours or the only thing that you’ll find left of your precious daughter will be her head. We will call you back in an hour for your progress.”

  She snaps the phone shut, looks at me for the first time.

  “I guess we’ll see how much your father loves you.”

  I glare up at her but say nothing. Not that I don’t want to say something—I very much want to tell this girl where to stick it—but my voice box is momentarily out of service.

  “My real name is Veronika, by the way. I would say it is nice to meet you, Holly, but you have been a real pain in the ass.”

  I smile up at her, try to speak for the first time.

  “Everybody has to be good at something.”

  Veronika says, “You surprised us. We assumed you would buckle under the pressure and call your father the moment we told you to do so. But you did not, even when we threatened to hurt you.”

  “Like I said, I’m a stubborn bitch.”

  “When you first refused, we assumed you knew the truth about your father. And yet we still did not hurt you because those were our orders. Under normal circumstances, we would tear out your fingernails one at a time. Then we would break your fingers one at a time. Then your hands. If we would need to continue, we would, but typically girls your age do exactly what they’re told after the first or second fingernail is torn off. But you … you are different.”

  I smile again. “I am a precious snowflake. Now what’s this about my father?”

  “Your father is a killer.”

  The absurdity of this statement makes me want to burst out laughing, but Veronika’s face remains impassive.

  She says, “Your father stole something from my employer. One of the men with him was shot and left behind. We knew the man’s life was worthless—your government would take no accountability for him—so we tortured him. He gave us your father’s real name and where he was currently stationed before we ended his life.”

  “This is crazy. My father is only a sergeant in the Army.”

  Veronika laughs. “You know nothing about who and what your father is. Poor, poor dear.”

  I’m still on my knees, my shoulder against the wall. “Can I stand up?”

  “Certainly. It will make it easier to take you back to where we kept you before. Grigory will not be happy with the beating you gave him.”

  Grigory? Shit, and I was really starting to like the sound of Dolph as the asshole’s name.

  Leaning against the wall, I rise to my feet. I study Veronika’s swollen face.

  “You let him beat the shit out of you just to try to get me to call my father. Why?”

  “Our employer doesn’t want you harmed. He has children of his own. He knows that if you are harmed, your father will retaliate against him.”

  “So you let Dolph turn your face to hamburger.”

  “Dolph?”

  “Grigory, I mean.”

  “I’ve been through worse, and it would be much worse for me if we failed. Now let’s go. Do not make this any harder than it has to be.”

  “You literally told me thirty seconds ago that you aren’t supposed to hurt me.”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t mean we won’t hurt you if we have no other choice.”

  “Do you honestly think I’m just going to go back willingly? You don’t even have a weapon.”

  Veronika smiles. “Do you want me to punch you in the throat again?”

  “As fun as that sounds, I think I’ll pass.”

  “Then let us return to the room.”

  I issue an overdramatic sigh. “Fine,” I say.

  I step toward her—and stab her in the stomach.

  The switchblade has been in my right-hand pocket this entire time. I pulled it out after Veronika throat-punched me and I’ve held it ever since, just waiting for the right moment. When Veronika snapped the phone shut, I hit the button for the blade to release so the sound wouldn’t be too noticeable. And apparently it wasn’t, because the expression on Veronika’s swollen face is one of complete shock.

  I twist the knife and pry the phone from her limp hand. I’m not sure what I plan to do next—stab her again maybe for good measure—but that’s when one of the masked men appears down at the end of the hallway. Only he’s not wearing his mask anymore. So I see the surprise on his face, then the sudden fury.

  Time to leave.

  Keeping the switchblade where it is in Veronika’s stomach, I take the phone and run.

  Thirty minutes to go.

  Seventeen

  I don’t bother looking over my shoulder. I know the man’s chasing me because I can hear him, the pounding of his shoes and then his voice.

  “Stop or I will shoot!”

  I don’t hesitate—I keep going toward the closed door at the end of the hallway ahead of me—but flinch when a bullet smacks into the top of the door.

  I turn around.

  The man stands maybe thirty yards away, aiming his gun at me.

  “Do not move!”

  The door is right behind me. So close. All I need to do is turn and open it and step through. But then what? I don’t know where that door will take me. Hell, I don’t even know where I am.

  A crazy idea comes to me.

  I say, “If you hurt me, I’ll make sure my father saves you for last.”

  Even from this distance, the flash of fear is evident in his eyes. I don’t know how long it will last but I use it to my advantage, spinning away and grabbing the door handle and throwing it open and stepping through just as another bullet smacks into the other side.

  Another massive room with more machinery.

  I keep running.

  The man who shot at me will be here any second. He’ll probably call the others if he hasn’t done so already.

  I flip open the phone as I run, dial the last dialed number.

  My father picks up after one ring.

  “I told you, this will take time.”

  “Dad!”

  “Holly?”

  “I managed to get away, but I don’t know for how long.”

/>   A gunshot echoes out somewhere in the room. A metal beam ten feet above my head dings as a bullet smacks into it. I don’t bother looking back to see where the shooter is, I just keep running.

  My father says, “What was that?”

  “They’re shooting at me.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  I have the insane realization that I’ve never heard my father swear before.

  He says, “Do you know where you are?”

  “No, but it’s a ship.”

  “You’re calling on a cell phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “That means you’re still on the island, probably in the harbor. I can’t trace this number from my cell.”

  Another gunshot sounds.

  I flinch but don’t look back, keeping the phone to my ear as I keep running.

  “Dial 911,” my father says. “I’ll have my people monitor the calls. They’ll trace you from there.”

  My people.

  “Holly”—my father’s voice is unnervingly calm—“can you do that?”

  I’ve reached the end of the room. There are no other places to go but up metal stairs.

  I hurry up the steps, for the first time glancing back over my shoulder.

  The man is halfway across the room. He’s running, the gun at his side, but when he sees me look back he pauses long enough to aim and fire again.

  Another bullet smacks into one of the steps just above me.

  The son of a bitch is trying to keep me from moving forward. He’s not going to kill me—at least not yet—but just scare me into slowing down enough to catch me.

  In my ear, my father shouts, “Holly?”

  “I’m here,” I say, climbing the stairs again.

  “Can you call 911?”

  “Yes.”

  I reach the top of the stairs and keep running, through another doorway, then down another hallway.

  My father says, “I’ll be there as soon as I can. And Holly? I love you.”

  Before I can return the sentiment, he clicks off.

  I snap the phone shut and keep running, both arms pumping now, my bare feet slapping the floor.