Pike: The Pawn Duet, Book One

by Frazier, T. M.

  “Oh, you know, just sitting around talking about skinheads,” Nine answers dryly.

  Thorne takes my beer from my hand and drains it. “Nice,” she says, without prying further, because she isn’t the type. I like to think it’s because she knows better than to ask too many questions ,but in reality it’s probably because she doesn’t fucking give a shit. “Pike, I did today’s numbers and posted the new inventory to the online store. I found a buyer for the Rolex on pawn that wasn’t picked up and Jordan left you another message. He’s picking up the painting in the morning.” She shrugs on her little button-covered backpack over her shoulders and heads for the door.

  “See you in the morning,” I call after her.

  Thorne answers without looking back and with a one-fingered salute. Her version of good-night.

  I move from behind the counter and lock the door behind her, flipping the sign to closed.

  “So, you and Thorne…you ever…” Nine starts, but he doesn’t need to finish for me to know what he’s getting at.

  “Fuck no,” I spit. Not because Thorne isn’t attractive because she is. She just isn’t attractive to me. Probably because I want to keep her around, and women I fuck aren’t the kind I want to stick around and have a beer with. Orgasms and endings are my thing, but never with Thorne.

  “What? She’s hot,” Nine probes.

  “Yeah, but knowing she’s hot and thinking she’s hot are two different fucking things.”

  “They are?” Nine asks, skeptically.

  I sigh. “They are, brother. Besides, I trust her, and I like her, and I don’t fuck women I like.”

  “That’s right. You prefer to fuck women you hate.”

  “There’s a large selection that way. Besides, it keeps shit simple,” I reply, because it’s the truth. “Besides, Thorne already has someone in her life. Her girlfriend.”

  “Ah, yeah, so there’s that.”

  I chuckle, “Yeah, so there’s that.”

  “So the real reason you haven’t gotten with her is because she’s repulsed by your penis,” Nine laughs, spraying beer on my glass fucking counter.

  I toss him a roll of paper towels. “Shut the fuck up. And clean that up.”

  Nine wipes his mouth and drains the rest of his beer. “You wanna head to the bar?” he asks, wiping the counter then reaching for another beer. “You know, for a beer?”

  “Sure, why the fuck not,” I reply, looking around the showroom. The walls hang with instruments barely played, the shelves are lined with lamps and trinkets either sold or forgotten, and the glass cases are filled with jewelry pawned for a quick buck that I’ll resell for several quick bucks. It’s a treasure trove of other people’s shit, and I love every inch of it because it doesn’t matter who it all belonged to before because, at least for the time being, it’s all mine. “I just gotta move all the shit from the case into the safe first.”

  Nine flips the channel on the TV. “No rush. I ain’t got shit to do.”

  I unlock the cases one by one and empty the contents into a bag. I’m opening the last case when the bell rings. Nine looks to me and raises his eyebrows because it’s not the bells over the front door that indicate a customer, especially since I’ve already locked that door, but the other bell. The one hidden behind a brick at the back door used only by the people I conduct my other business with. “You expecting someone?” he asks.

  “No.” I toss the bag on the counter. I check the security cameras on the screen behind the register and can only make out a shadowy figure waiting by the door. A baseball cap covering his face. It’s not unusual. Anyone coming to the back door of my shop isn’t someone that wants to go about their business being easily recognized. “I’ll be right back,” I tell Nine.

  “I’ll be right here,” Nine says, propping his feet back up on my counter.

  Making my way through my office and the storage room, I reach the door and begin to unlock the intricate series of deadbolts and chains. “Who is it?” I ask, waiting for the answer before I remove the last lock.

  “Jimmy sent me.”

  There is no Jimmy, of course, but it’s a code only reserved for my backdoor customers. It changes every week, and this week it’s Jimmy. Last week, it was Jamal.

  I finish with the last lock and turn the handle. The door is only open about an inch when it’s kicked in, smashing me in the face. I see stars as the room fills with familiar hooded men with skeleton bandanas tied around the lower half of their faces.

  Same fucking shotguns aimed and ready.

  I reach for my gun when one such shotgun is shoved in my face.

  “Hands up, motherfucker,” a male voice warns.

  I slowly raise my hands as two of the hooded figures come back in from the showroom, but they aren’t alone, they’re pushing Nine in front of them with the barrel of their guns.

  “Looks like we’ve got company,” Nine says dryly. I smile because Nine and I have been through so much shit in our lives that very few things can make us feel angrier or more fearful than almost every day of our childhoods. I mean, these fuckers are going to die, but the way they’re so dramatic about the entire ordeal is laughable.

  Also, I may be a little drunk.

  “Seems you’re right, brother,” I reply.

  Nine looks around. “Those skeleton bandanas are tacky as fuck. Do you wash them? Or are you guys just getting high on the smell of you own funk? Because I can’t imagine another reason why ya’ll would be this fucking stupid.”

  “Shut the fuck up. Both of you. Shut the fuck up!” one of the men yells.

  “Pike,” Nine says with a schoolgirl giggle. “I think he wants us to shut the fuck up.” He’s met with the handle of a shotgun to his head. Nine drops to the ground on his ass but remains conscious, rubbing his now bleeding temple and wincing. “So fucking serious,” he mutters.

  “I found it,” a voice says, coming from the smallest man of the group. He’s holding up the painting I’m supposed to deliver to Jordan in the morning. But it’s not just any painting; the lining in the back is concealing… The man who hit Nine rips the lining down, exposing rows of plastic bags containing a huge amount of blow taped to the back.

  Fuck!

  Now they’ve hit a nerve and earned themselves hours of torture. To hit me once and jack my shit makes them naive, to do it twice makes them stupid as fuck, and now, it’s personal. I’m making a mental list of the tools I will use on each and every one of the motherfuckers. To make them hurt. To make them scream.

  The little guy opens a drawstring backpack while another man rips the bags taped from the painting and dumps them inside. “Nice doing business with you, motherfuckers.” They file out, one by one, until it’s just the leader and the smaller guy left. “See you next time.”

  The shit-talker is halfway through the door, I seize the opportunity and kick it shut with my foot, trapping the big guy out and the smaller one inside. I use my elbow to hit the button by the floor, clicking the automatic locks in place.

  With the intruder’s attention on me, Nine grabs the shotgun from the intruder who spins around, grabbing for his gun. Realizing his gun is now in Nine’s possession, he turns back around. I leap off the floor, grab his shoulders and rear my head back, delivering a headbutt so hard that vibrates through my skull long after his eyes fall back and he slumps to the floor.

  Luckily the combination of adrenaline and alcohol dulls my own pain, but I know this fucker felt in. He’s sideways, in a heap, and unconscious, but still breathing. I crouch over him. “Looks like I might have to start believing in God because my fucking prayers might have just been answered,” I say.

  Nine jogs over to the monitors next to Thorne’s computer. “Fuckers are gone. Left one of their own like the pussies they are.”

  The thief's hood fell slightly off his head in the scuffle, revealing strands of shiny dark hair falling over a high cheekbone.

  Wait, a high cheekbone?

  “What the actual fuck?” I whisper
to myself. It can’t be. He can’t be.

  A prickling suspicion takes hold.

  I crouch down and pull the hood off completely, exposing a long thick wavy mane.

  Holy fucking shit.

  My suspicion was right.

  “At least, the little guy went down easy,” Nine remarks. He pulls his eyes from the monitors and glances at me over his shoulder.

  I lift up a fistful of hair to show him what I’ve found. “That’s probably because he…is a she.”

  Chapter Seven

  Mickey

  “Vacation is over. We have to leave and leave now,” Papa says, rushing around the living room, grabbing his wallet from the table and shrugging on a shirt.

  “But vacation isn’t over yet!” Mallory whines. “We still have one more week.”

  “It’s over now. Get in the van. All of you. Let’s go.” Papa grabs his keys and holds open the front door.

  “We still have to pack,” Mama argues. “What’s going on?”

  He answers her with a look I’ll never forget. It’s both a plea and an order.

  One she doesn’t argue with as her eyes go wide in understanding. “Girls, listen to your father. Let’s go. Now.” She slings her purse over her shoulder. “You don’t need shoes!” she yells to Mindy who drops her shoes on the ground. She ushers my sisters through the door.

  “What about Penny?” I ask, looking under the sofa for our family cat. She’s always hiding somewhere.

  “Michaela, now!” my father orders. “Forget the cat.”

  I stand up and give him my best pout. It usually works to get what I want, but not today. My father rushes toward me, lifts me off the floor and carries me over his shoulder to the van where my mother and three sisters are already piling in. He sets me inside and slams the door.

  My sisters and I exchange worried looks, but none of us dare speak.

  Papa gets in and starts the engine, tossing us sideways as he peels out of the shell driveway. “Seat belts!” my mother yells. We struggle to find the buckles tucked into the seats while swaying from one side to the other.

  “What’s going on, Papa? You’re scaring us!” Mallory, my youngest sister cries. I help her with her seatbelt before finding my own, clicking it in place.

  Papa doesn’t speak until we are on the main road on the way out of town. “We will be fine, girls. We just had to leave. I’ll explain it all later,” he says. He looks at his four teenage girls in the rearview mirror and flashes us a reassuring smile, but I see through to the worry and fear lying beneath. “It’ll be okay,” he adds, reassuring himself as much as he’s reassuring us.

  Mama reaches out and grabs his hand, intertwining their fingers on the center console.

  A loud sound like a car backfiring booms around us, jerking my spine to jump like it’s on a string.

  “What was that?” Maya shouts.

  I spin around in my seat and spot the black van tailing us. Inside are two men wearing hoods with black skeleton bandanas covering the lower half of their faces. The man in the passenger seat is leaning out of the window….holding a gun.

  The sound. It wasn’t a car.

  We’re being shot at.

  “Girls, get down!” Mama cries.

  Disguises or not, I recognize the men. Men I’ve known my entire life. Men my father insisted we all interact with for the sake of his research.

  Research I realize has obviously taken the turn my mama always feared it would. These are not reasonable men. These are men with hearts full of hate, and right now, that hate is a weapon. And just like the gun, it’s aimed directly at us.

  I turn back around in my seat so that my sisters don’t see what’s behind us. I try to hide the panic consuming both my body and my brain for their sake.

  I meet my father’s eyes in the rearview mirror once again, and with one glance, I know he sees what I see. I want to ask them why they’re shooting at us, but I already know.

  Papa’s been found out.

  I wrap my arm around Mallory and push on her shoulders so her head is down, mirroring the position of Maya and Mindy. “Shhhh. It will be fine. Just a little unscheduled trip,” I say to try and soothe her fears, but her shoulders are shaking uncontrollably.

  “Ben,” my mother says, her voice cracking.

  Papa slams his foot on the gas. “Get down!” he cries as the back window is blown out. Glass rains down all around us.

  It all happens so fast.

  The squeal of tires on the pavement.

  My sisters scream.

  My mother prays.

  The sound of the metal guardrail as we smash through it. The impact pulling the seat belt painfully against my waist.

  The feeling of falling.

  Falling.

  Falling.

  The overwhelming realization that this will be my very last memory.

  Ever.

  The screams. Oh, God, the screams.

  The icy cold water as it rushes into the van.

  Only one scream remains.

  Mine.

  Followed by the most terrible sound I’ve ever heard, and I’ll never forget.

  Silence.

  The nerding hours.

  That’s what my sisters call the couple of hours I spend each morning doing research or conducting experiments while the rest of the house is sound asleep.

  It’s not my fault I’m the first person awake. My bedroom window faces the sunrise. Every morning, the first rays of the sunlight flicker into my window until it forms a steady beam, heating my face and backlighting my eyelids until I’m forced to recognize the new day and finally open my eyes. I could put thicker curtains over my window, but I think I’d miss the sun’s nudge back into consciousness. Besides, I get a lot done in those couple of hours when the house is silent except for me and the endless chatter of my curious thoughts.

  Today, the light is waving at me from the other side of my eyelids, bouncing around as if someone is playing catch with the sun, tossing it back and forth. The warmth I’m feeling is not the usual gentle reminder of morning I’m used to, but a wild scorching heat, invading my subconscious, dragging me kicking and screaming from my sleep.

  Opening my eyes is an impossible task. I blink several times against the intrusive pulsing of light, but I can’t keep my eyes open. I try to shade my eyes, but I can’t use my hands.

  I tug at them again.

  Panic seeps into my pores and rushes into my veins, infecting my senses.

  I can’t move my hands…because their tied together behind my back.

  The mattress is so thin I can feel the hard floor beneath.

  That’s weird, my mattress is thick and plush.

  This isn’t my bed.

  Where the hell…

  The loudest music I’ve ever heard shouts angrily in my ears. The bass is a battering ram against my ribs, slamming harder and harder as if it’s trying to break through to my convulsing heart. I cough, and I sputter. Then, as quick as it came, the music is gone again, and so is the light.

  Ghosts of light dance in my vision. When they fade enough and my vision clears, I still can’t see anything, because it’s pitch black.

  “Hello?” I ask into the abyss. My voice echoes several times. Both wishing someone will answer and hoping to God no one does.

  A shift in the corner of my eye startles me. I gasp, searching the shadows for the cause of the movement. I manage to make out the silhouette of a large man sitting with his legs spread wide in a chair only a few feet away.

  The light in the room shifts and I realize there’s a window high above my head. The walls are rusty corrugated metal. This must be some sort of shed or warehouse. The new ray of moonlight exposes only his hands where he wears a single handcuff around each of his tattooed wrists. There’s something gleaming in his grip. A knife. And not just any knife. One with a long menacing blade with sharp jagged teeth at the end. He toys with it, turning the sharp point against the center of his palm.

  Blood rushes
through my ears so loud I can hear my pulse beating inside my pounding head.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he asks. His deep voice is an angry punch to my chest.

  “Where…where am I?” I ask, choking on the thick swell of fear rising in my throat. “How did I get here?” I search for my last memory and, for the second time in my life, I can’t find it.

  He lifts a small remote from the arm of the chair, his thumb hovering over a red button. “Wrong answer.” Again, I’m assaulted with the flash of lights burning my eyes and the screaming alternative music that sounds and feels more like a bomb exploding than lyrics set to a beat.

  It cuts off suddenly, and my shoulders fall forward, my chin meeting my chest. It’s over. I try to take a deep breath and calm myself down long enough to assess the situation, whatever it might be.

  I hear Papa’s voice in my head. Think, Mickey. Use that big brain of yours. You can’t get yourself out of here unless you know how you got here. An experiment can’t be conducted and concluded unless you have a working hypothesis.

  “Who. Are. You?” the man asks again, cracking his knuckles.

  “Please, don’t hurt me,” I beg, hating how weak I sound. I’m not this girl, or at least, I’m not this girl anymore. I’m someone stronger, but who? I want to scream and not because of where I am or because of the lights and music but because I can’t unscramble my thoughts long enough to focus on a single on that can help me right now.

  My silence is rewarded with another light and music show. It stabs into my ears as if he’s using his blade. The lights are blinding through the thin skin of my closed eyelids. This time, when it’s thankfully over, I feel like my skin is trying to jump free from my muscles. My bones rattle. Someone is screaming.

  It’s me. I’m the one screaming.

  “Answer the fucking question! Who the fuck are you?” he demands. I feel the warning in his words as he launches them at me like live grenades. “I can do this all night. Answer the fucking question.”

  The man behind the voice steps out of the shadows, into the moon light, and into my new living nightmare. His feet are bare and so is his chest with the exception of the array of tattoos decorating his muscular chest and washboard abs. He’s even larger than his shadow suggested. Well over six feet of pure intimidation. A monster lurking in a child’s room. His hair is the color of wet hay, untamed, and long enough to brush over his ears. His goatee is the same color as his hair except in the center where it comes to a point it’s a few shades lighter. His jeans are low and tight.