Instinctively, she looked up at the ceiling and then at the corners down the walls of the hallway. And finally she saw something, a slim chance, a small paneled door. It looked like the front of an electronic control box. She ran to it, flinging open the metal door and finding a narrow crawlspace that disappeared into the dark. Immediately, her mind flooded with nightmarish images of her body getting stuck in some pitch-black tunnel. Claustrophobia and whatever else awaited her. But it all went away when she heard two voices. Two men talking to each other, and approaching.
She hunched down into the dark crawlspace, closing the door behind her and then moving forward. She had no idea where it would lead, but she didn’t care as long as it took her away from the hallway. The floor took a turn downward and she half slid down a steepening metal slope. It felt slick like someone had greased it for this very purpose, for stuffing bodies down chutes for quick disposal. The disposal of nosy trespassers, maybe. Her end was possibly coming a few stories down, deep in the basement into the bowels of the incinerator. What a great story that would be . . .
Somewhere in the darkness, along the way, her movement came to a stop. She felt nothing, not the air rushing by her, not the metal underneath. It was like she was floating, in stasis. In the dark. For that brief moment, Annica believed she was dead. It was over: the ride down, the trip to Hawaii, the story. Everything had come to a peaceful, mysterious lull, like the doldrums out in the sea, with her stuck in the blackness forever.
Death.
The afterlife, or so she assumed, came next in a bright flash. She landed hard against a metal grate. Face-first, mouth-first, teeth all biting into lips. Knees throbbing with the impact.
Her body felt like it had slammed into a brick wall. Her barrier, a metal grate. Where? What was it? When Annica opened her eyes, she could see through the barrier, seeing light that slowly focused into images between each small square. It was like she was on a type of scaffolding. A walkway, suspended above . . .
She saw the activity below, the movement of people all dressed in white overalls, several of them huddled around a conveyor belt, their arms moving in unison. It was some sort of production line.
One by one, Annica’s senses slowly came back. She could hear the faint sound of music, a radio commercial, and the sound of the workers chattering below. The low vibration of some churning machinery, the grinding of gears, tumbling metal, the beeping of a forklift. She must have been only about fifteen feet above the workers, hung up in the air. She could stay still and quiet and no one would likely notice. But for how long? And how would she ever get down? Annica looked up, craning her sore neck to check for a way off the scaffolding. There was a set of stairs at the end. So she could maybe crawl to them, sneak down, and act like nothing had happened.
When she’d climbed into the tunnel, she’d resigned herself to facing some sort of backlash. That was inevitable. But looking around in this room, with all of these people, working people, she felt better about things. She felt a little safer, not like a hog set for slaughter. They were processing something. This was a proper industrial facility.
Her biggest fear now was having some legal issue. It wouldn’t be a very nice way of starting her job in Hawaii, behind bars for the first few days, waiting God knows how long for Jackson to come and bail her out—and then give her shit for the next two weeks.
Back up on all fours, painfully, slowly, she made her way across the scaffolding, the metal grate digging into her palms as she crawled. She moved several more feet before deciding to stand. What difference would it make? She’d have to walk down the stairs, anyway.
She rose to her feet and kept moving, as calmly as she could, her face relaxing somehow back into that bored expression despite the pain of her joints. Complete normalcy, like crossing the catwalk above a production line had been just part of her daily routine. She almost felt normal about it, too, until one of the metal panels beneath her gave way with a loud crack, the walkway dipping down half a foot and hanging there.
She quickly got back down on all fours, instinctively. If she was going to fall, she’d rather take a few feet off of it. She hung there, suspended, trying desperately to ignore all the pairs of eyes that must have been on her. She shuddered, feeling the urge to move again, to crawl away from their attention. The voices wafting up, the urgent tones, spurred her on. Move. She tried crawling again, sliding quickly off the hanging tile and onto another. And then it happened so fast she heard and felt nothing but air.
5
Annica
She woke up on her back, sore as hell, and under the wide-eyed gaze of several white-clad workers. They wore masks, but their surprise shone through. Locals, middle-aged men and women. For the moment, they were silent.
The conveyor belt she’d apparently landed on had stopped moving. Jagged little edges of things stuck underneath her, jabbing against her skin and along her spine. She tried to move immediately, but then hands came down, holding and stopping her. Voices, too, everything trying to hold her in place, telling her to wait, to relax, to stay. But despite the pain in her back, she just wanted to get off the belt and get the hell out of there. It wouldn’t matter if her legs were broken, if she’d have to crawl out with pure upper body determination. It wouldn’t matter how much she was bleeding. She just needed to be gone, as far away as possible from this room and these people, and the man she’d once had the stupidest idea to try following.
She raised her head off the belt, scanning around for her nearest exit. And then the wave of voices came back.
“Don’t move.”
“You’re hurt.”
“Just hold still.”
They all came in jumbled, the voices, the hands.
“Hold still!”
She was so not going to hold still.
“Stop!” a man yelled, his hands coming down and holding her body more firmly, almost crushing her against whatever she was lying on. What was it? Florescent light bulbs? There was a crinkling sound underneath, and from the room, footsteps. A whole army of them rushing in as rapidly and urgently as the voices.
One of the faces was finally revealed to her, a hand pulling away the mask to reveal a young woman’s frightened expression. “Please stay still,” she said. “We’re getting help for you.”
What was there left to say to these people? For as badly as her body felt, Annica didn’t want to stay lying there. She didn’t want their help. She struggled against their hands again, her muscles feeling weaker this time. And then, over all the noise, the loudest voice of all. “Hold her down!”
She stopped moving. Struggling against their combined weight was pointless. She lay still, waiting. The loud voice, the seeming leader of whatever this operation she’d had just landed on was. When his face appeared above her, unmasked, she couldn’t stop herself from letting out a gasp. It was the sound of terror and it seemed to startle her rescuers, who drew back, staring at the new arrival. And he was staring at her—the man she’d been following. Sharky. Those same eyes, now bulging out, that same mouth, still mournful, beautiful, but now twisted with concern. His chest was heaving, like he’d run some distance. Only a few minutes ago, she’d been the one struggling to catch up with him. And now here he was, his hand dropping to her arm, patting her.
“Are you okay?” he said.
She had no idea how bad it was. She had no idea about anything. Lying on her back still, in this strange room and under these strange faces, the world seemed chaotic and distorted. She had fallen some distance through the air, from a life that had finally become ordinary and safe, to this. What the hell was this?
“Can you hear me?” Sharky had said it twice, with Annica just picking up on it.
“Yes.” She could almost feel his gaze, his attention gently sweeping across her face like the tips of feathers. He winced, almost as if he could feel her pain.
He winced again at the sound of another voice, out of her field of view. The most authoritarian yet. “Get her up.”
; “She’s hurt,” Sharky said.
“Get her up,” was the answer, hard and loud like a prison guard. “Get her up and get her out of here.”
“Can you sit up?” Sharky asked her.
She sat without a word, but with a long groan instead. Her tailbone felt like it had been replaced with a burning hot piece of coal.
“What hurts the most?” he asked her. “Is your arm okay?”
She could only mumble something unintelligible.
“You’re lucky this beltway has some give to it.” He stuck his arm out. “Ready?”
“Huh?”
“Let’s go,” came the voice. “Get her moving.”
She grabbed hold of him, her hand squeezing around his forearm as it flexed and pulled her down off the table onto two shaky legs. They were shaky, but holding. She was amazed they hadn’t shattered in a million pieces.
“There you go,” Sharky said, brushing random bits of crud off her shoulders. “You landed perfectly. Or else you wouldn’t be standing.”
Someone in the background started shouting to the workers, convincing them that the “show’s over” and how they needed to clean up her mess. Immediately, the worker ants were activated, Annica surrounded by a flurry of activity. It was dizzying. Her head spun, either from the disorientating effect of this strange environment, or how she landed into it. And she started feeling that hot pressure again, like the sea sickness, but this time on land. It grew worse when she saw the man who’d been barking all the orders. The heat rose continually as he approached, her face feeling the hot blast of air from his angry mouth. “What the fuck is this?” he shouted. “Who are you?”
“I’m no one.”
“You’re about to be no one in a few minutes.”
“What?”
“What’s your name?”
“Why?”
“Because you just fell through my fucking ceiling, that’s why.”
“Sorry,” Annica said. She even really meant it.
He looked over to Sharky and said it again. “Get her out of here.”
Before Annica could say anything, his hands returned, this time much more rough, pushing her away from the angry boss. At first she was glad to be moving in the opposite direction from him. But the way she was being handled was a bad sign of things to come.
“Take it easy,” Annica said to him, “I’m going, I’m going.”
He didn’t respond. He’d gone from that mysterious man on the cargo ship, to a kind face in the wilderness, and now to a hardened cop. Especially the way he’d handled her, rough and brutish until he’d pushed her clear out into the hall.
“Stop,” she said, struggling against his grasp. “Just stop grabbing me like that. I’ll go.”
He pushed her forward.
“Let go of me!”
He only relaxed his grip.
“Where are we going?”
“Relax,” Sharky said.
“No!”
“We’re just going to ask you some questions,” he said, “and then you can go.”
He had a large ring of keys attached to his belt. It jingled loudly as they walked the hall. “Are you security?” she asked.
“Something like that.”
He was strong, that she knew. Whenever their bodies would come into contact, a light bump around the corner, she could feel the solidity of his body, his thick chest, his core. When she’d put up an effort, he hardly had to work at all. She would hate to see him actually try.
“Don’t worry,” he said.
“Don’t worry?”
“I’m not a cop.”
She almost laughed at that, even in the seriousness of the moment. How could he have said that and not been joking?
“We won’t call the cops, either,” Sharky said, trying to make it sound like that was a good thing.
“I almost wish you would,” Annica said.
“Really?”
“No.”
He opened a door for her, and then he watched very carefully as she walked in. A small office. A small desk and two chairs. He told her to sit. Then he closed the door, leaning his back against it. The only way out.
“What do you want?” she asked.
He shrugged and said, “Nothing.”
It was like a dagger through her heart. Why couldn’t he want something? She was here, locked in this room. Could he at least want her to talk, to stay alive for an explanation of who she was and where she was from?
“We just need you to sit tight a moment,” he said.
“Can I ask who you are?”
“I’m a security guard. That’s all. Nothing personal.”
“You were on the ship. The cargo ship. The Batchewana.”
His expression shifted immediately, from a businesslike smugness to something that almost seemed wounded, like she’d just ripped out a chunk of his flesh. It melted through the ice of his cool demeanor.
Annica said, “I was a passenger on the—”
“I know.”
He moved off the door right as it opened, Sharky making room for the man who had just been raging back on the production floor.
“Hi,” he said with a fake and pained smile. “How are you?”
“Not too good,” Annica said as coolly as she could.
“I know,” he said, reaching out his hand. “I’m Roger.”
Annica just stared at it. And then let her eyes drift away, watching how Sharky had stood back. She could almost see the wheels in his head turning.
“May I ask your name?”
She shrugged, averting her eyes.
“Okay. Empty your pockets,” Roger said, his voice getting lower. Even lower a minute later with, “Empty them or we’ll do it for you. Trust me, we will and it won’t be very fun.”
She was really screwed. She knew it now more than ever. More than when she was stuck in a hallway, or in the darkness of the drop chute, or lying on the conveyor belt. Here she knew that it might all be over with.
She looked sadly at the contents of her pockets spread out on the desk. Her cell phone, luggage locker key, handful of change, and a pen.
Roger pocketed the pen, and the change. Then looked judiciously at the locker key as he dangled it in the air. “What’s this?”
“A key,” she said.
He rolled his eyes, dropping it to the desk with a clink. He grabbed her phone next. “What’s your password?”
“I’m not saying another thing,” she said. “You’ll have to call the police. I don’t care what kind of trouble I get in.”
She would rather deal with that kind trouble. It was probably easier than whatever these guys had in store.
Roger held the phone up to Sharky. “Don’t we have someone?”
“For that?”
“Yeah. Is he in today?”
Sharky pursed his lips, his non-answer perhaps informing Annica that she had just lucked out. There was no one around to crack her phone’s password—or so she hoped.
“Well, don’t worry,” Roger said, turning back to her with a sigh. “We’ll get into it one way or another.”
“I don’t care anymore,” she said.
“You will care.” He placed the phone on his desk, chuckling. “You’ll care if have to resort to sending you downstairs for some enhanced interrogation techniques.”
She couldn’t let herself think about downstairs. She could only think of upstairs, the outside world, life, hope.
“And it won’t be as nice down there,” Roger said. “The less you cooperate, the smaller the instruments.”
Annica tried to suppress a shudder and failed.
Roger seemed delighted, smiling. “Okay?”
“Okay what?”
“No one here wants to do that. Most of all you, I’m sure. But it will happen if you don’t start telling us some answers.”
“Fine,” she said.
Roger’s smile grew, horrifyingly. The most yellowed teeth she’d ever saw. “That wasn’t so bad, right?”
�
��Go ahead,” Annica said. “What do you want to know?”
“Let’s start with your name.”
“Laura.”
“And what brings Laura to Hawaii?”
“A fucking vacation.”
“Alone?”
“Until I meet my husband. Who’s extremely protective of me, and a little crazy.” A plan started forming in her mind. She only hoped Jackson would play ball if it got to that.
“Sure,” Roger said.
“Who’s probably getting worried about me as we speak.”
“As he should be.”“He’s supposed to meet me at Cafe Juniper at two o’clock.”
“That’s in ten minutes,” Sharky said quietly.
Roger gave him a sour look. And then back to Annica, “We’ll make the timeline up from here on out. Okay?”
Annica thought about Jackson again. He wasn’t exactly her spouse, but in a weird way, he was the closest thing to it. There was some truth, and some mixed emotions, to her answer. And there was truth to Jackson waiting for her, with his own spouse. Mira.
Ever since Annica and Jackson’s not-so-serious relationship withered away, she had not-so-secretly kept tabs on him. Her ex-Navy Seal, ex-lover. They stayed friendly. They stayed business partners. Annica had even met his new girl, likely his first since . . . whatever it was she and Jackson had shared out of rainy clothes, in the foggy-windowed darkness of his backseat. Whoever Annica was back then . . .
“So when we hack into your phone,” Roger said, “it’ll corroborate the story of Laura, a vacationer? Innocent little Laura, coming to Hawaii just to meet her husband?”
“Sure.”
“What’s your husband’s name?”
“Jack,” she said, almost completing the entire name.
“Jack . . .”
“Jack.” She said it more firmly, and with a firmer and more final ending.
“Well, what do you think?” Roger said to Sharky. “Sound pretty credible?”
He shrugged in response.
“To me,” Roger said, “it sounds like the words of someone who doesn’t want to go downstairs.”
“Well . . .”
“Doesn’t it?” he said, tapping the phone.
DARC Ops: The Complete Series Page 129