by Nicole Fox
“Dinner time,” said a man's grating voice. “Brought some water, too.”
“Thanks,” Lydia said, her voice much louder than it needed to be. She was giving me cover to slip away.
I carefully shut the door behind me till the latch clicked, holding my breath as I pulled my cell phone out and turned on the flashlight feature, shining it around the room. Cages, at least twenty like the one Lydia was imprisoned in, lined the left wall, all thankfully empty. There, in the wall on the right, was another sturdy metal door, identical to the ones I'd already come through. It would lead me, I figured, out to the tunnel I'd entered when I'd first descended the stairs. I could just backtrack my way as fast as possible and avoid the guards.
I made my way carefully across the room, but clearly not carefully enough, kicking a stray can, sending it clattering across the floor.
“The fuck?” the guard in Lydia's prison room asked. “You fucking hear that?”
“An opossum, I think,” Lydia said on the other side of the door. “Been hearing creepy noises like that all day. Or this place is haunted or some shit.”
I picked up the pace and moved to the exit, this time more carefully than before, as footsteps sounded behind me in the cage room.
The guard laughed as he came closer. “Haunted my ass. Keep that hoodoo bullshit to yourself around here. Most of these fuckers are so backwoods they'd probably believe you.”
I put my hand on the knob and turned the latch just as I heard the guard begin to twist the door knob on his side. My breath caught in my throat. I was fucked if he caught me down here. I was either going to have to kill him, or make him disappear some other way. And, if I had to do that, how was I going to get into Joey Banks' management box? I needed Lydia safe and sound and unsuspected, or else I didn't have a chance. I was screwed every which way from Sunday, and I knew it.
“Wait,” Lydia said suddenly, her voice quivering a little in fear. “Maybe it really is ghosts? I heard Marie Laveau was buried on this stretch of land. And, I mean, look at this place. How many people has my father killed?”
The knob stopped turning. “You serious? Or you just fucking with me?”
I pulled my door open while he was distracted and slipped out into the tunnel, closing it gently behind me.
“See?” I heard the guard ask Lydia. “No fucking ghosts. Probably a rat or something, like you said.”
I carefully made my way down the dimly lit corridor, nearly tiptoeing as I crept past the door and headed back to the stairwell.
“Here,” the guard said, his words more muffled the farther I made it, “eat up.”
Just like before, I carefully made my way through the door to the stairs and headed up the stairs, less careful now about being heard. I got back into the Warehouse proper and then headed out to the bunkhouse. As I went, I tried to get that vision of Lydia out of my head, but I couldn't. I mean, I'd seen some shit in my time. Corpses, even one or two I'd made myself, disfigurements, examples we'd had to make of people. But torturing your own flesh and blood? And what had happened between them for her to hate him so much in return? Other than the obvious, of course.
I got back into the bunkhouse, was greeted briefly by the same guys as earlier, the ones I'd shared some beers and whiskey with.
“Hey Kort,” Riley said, pushing out the chair beside him with the toe of his boot, “have a seat man, grab another beer.”
I almost turned them down, at first, but quickly reminded myself that I had to act natural. And turning down beer in this line of work sure as Hell wasn't natural. “Yeah,” I said, taking the offered seat and accepting the beer that was pressed into my hand, “sure thing.”
I drank another few beers with the guys, until things started to get late and everyone had to turn in. My eyelids were starting to get heavy, too, from the long day on the road, and the work in the warehouse. Still, I couldn't get Lydia from my mind, even with the help from the beer. The vision of her crowded into that dog cage, the hurt look on her face at the betrayal by her father. What little bit of heart I still had ached for her like nothing I'd ever felt.
“You was asking me about the boss earlier, right?” Riley asked after a while, like he was trying to fill in the empty spaces of the conversation as he leaned down to the ice chest between us and grabbed another beer. He was pretty drunk already, I could tell, and he was looking for an excuse to keep me around so he at least had a drinking buddy.
“Yeah, sure, I guess.”
“You hear about what happened to his wife, yet? His daughter's momma?”
I shook my head and finished off the last of my beer.
“The boss,” he said, his words slurred and heavy, “he figured she was a plant, had informed on him somehow. He'd just started expanding this place, and he thought somehow the feds or some other organization had gotten her to roll over on him. He beat her to death, in front of his little girl, that Lydia. His daughter, she run off after, till you brought her back.”
“Beat her to death?” I asked, leaning forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “Jesus. Guess I can see why Lydia hates him so much.”
He belched, blew out his stinking beer breath as he nodded forward and caught himself. “Now, that's what I hear, at least. Whispers and shit around the campfires, you catch my drift. Happened before my time, course, so I can't say for sure.”
Something about what he told me it rang true. Like the way you can hear a story about someone's past, and as unbelievable as the store is, it just makes sense in the grand scope of things. What would I have done in her shoes if I saw my father do that? Turn him in to the cops? Not in this part of the world, they'd just ignore it, or turn Lydia back over to her father. He was that powerful back then, maybe still was. Lydia had done the only thing she could: she ran. No telling if she'd be next, or if he'd want to silence her after what she'd seen.
I shook my head as the codger next to me glugged down the last of his beer and slammed it noisily on the rickety table. “Another?” he asked, still swaying.
I laughed and shook my head. “Nah, man, I'm fine. You want a hand back to your bunk, though?”
He waved it off. “Nah, man, I'm fine right here.” He leaned forward and lay his head on his forearms like a pillow. “Fine right here, man.”
I pushed back from the crappy table and stole back to my room. I lay there a little longer, staring up at the moldy ceiling, thinking of how I was going to get Lydia out, and how I was going to make Joey Banks pay for everything he'd done.
Now, more than ever, I wanted to see him dead. The killing time would come, if I was patient and didn’t lose my cool.
Chapter Seventeen
Lydia
The hours went by slower than I'd ever imagined possible. With no clock, no sun, no change in temperature, time seemed to stand still as I waited in the cage. What would pops do to me? Beat me to death like he'd beaten my mother? Sell me like the other people he'd probably put in these cages? I shivered, knowing that the man who had raised me had become this creep. Earlier, he'd looked like a child's monster in a faerie tale when he'd come from the shadows. The longer I sat in that cage, though, the more I realized the similarities were more than just skin deep. Finally, footsteps came down the hallway towards the door. A single set. The door pushed open, and the visitor came into my jail.
“Lydia? You awake?”
It was Tyson. The man who let me be sentenced to this hell hole.
“Lydia?” he asked more urgently than before.
“Yeah,” I finally said, “I'm awake uncle. What do you want?”
“I . . . I brought you some water.” He gestured feebly with the big, cold-looking bottle of spring water in his hand. Across his shoulder was draped an ugly orange and purple beach towel. “And, I wanted to see if you'd like to get out, maybe take a walk?”
Get out? Of course I wanted to get out! I turned, suddenly desperate to stand upright for the first time in hours. If I was ever able to settle down somewhere and get a dog or a cat, I
decided, they were never going to get kennel trained. No fucking way, not in a million fucking years. “Out? You're going to let me out?”
“Now, hold on,” he said as he grabbed the keys down from where they hung next to the door. “I can get you something to drink, and a shower, but you gotta get back in afterward.”
A shower sounded like the next best thing to a king-sized bed at this point. And If I couldn't have the second, I might as well take the first. “Fine! Whatever! Just let me out of here.”
He came over and knelt down, unlocked the door, then helped me climb out from the cage. As I stood and stretched, my back crackled and popped all the way up and down my spine. He caught my shoulder and kept me from stumbling as a rush of blood went to my head, disorienting me for a moment.
“Oh my God, that felt good,” I groaned.
A concerned look came over his face as he offered me his hand. “You okay to walk?”
“Yeah,” I said, taking his hand anyways as we headed out of the small room. “What time is it?”
“A little past midnight,” he said as he took me left down the hallway, away from the stairs we'd first entered the tunnels through. “There's some showers down this way, and a bathroom you can use.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure, baby girl. Anything.”
“How bad are things? Really?” He sighed and bit his lip, and I could tell he was trying to think of how he was going to answer without betraying my crazy pops' trust. “I'll take that as 'not good,' then.”
We rounded the corner and stepped into the bathroom and toilet area he'd mentioned earlier. In here, four or five shower heads sprouted from the mildewing white, clinical tiles. It looked like I imagined prison showers would be. I didn't even ask why this stuff had been installed in the bowels of the Warehouse. I didn't want to know the answer. I glanced from the showers to him, then back again. I hope he didn't think he was going to stand here and watch me shower.
“I'll stand over here,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said in a clipped tone, “how about stand outside in the hallway, instead.”
He laughed uneasily. “Sure, baby girl, anything you want.”
I realized for the first time how creepily he used my nickname. I'd always felt something about him was a little off, back before I'd run, but I'd never thought much of it. I was pretty sure I'd just been naïve to the looks he was giving me. Now, after years of experience, I knew what his eyes on my body meant.
I stripped down after a minute or two, tossing my clothes off in a dry looking corner, and turned on the shower. I slid into the stream, making sure my back was never to the door. If my adopted uncle was going to try and sneak a peek I wanted to know.
The water turned hot right away, the boiler kicking in quickly. I basked under the water, not even caring that I didn't have any soap or shampoo. I just let it soak into my sore muscles, my cramped legs, my strained arms, and my knotted back. I must have been under the stream of water for ten, fifteen minutes, silently mulling things over in my head. What was Tyson doing down here, if it wasn't to set me free? Did he know something I didn't? And had Kort made it back upstairs alright?
I missed him. Even after our short time apart, and the brief moment we'd had in the cage room, I still missed him. What the fuck was happening to me? Did I really have deep feelings for this guy? More than just the good fucking he'd given me? I shook my head, trying to dislodge my thoughts of him, sending a spray of droplets from my flailing hair. It didn't work. Those strong arms, that chest, those tattoos I wanted to trace my fingers over, the way he smiled, the way he listened to me as I read to him. I shook my head again.
Nope. Apparently, Kort was harder to get rid of than I'd given him credit for.
Shit, I did care about him. Finally, I turned around and shut the water off, my skin pink as a salmon in some places, red as a steamed lobster in others.
“You done, baby girl?” Uncle Tyson asked from out in the hallway.
“Yeah.” I paused. “Just hold the towel out around the corner, I'll come get it.” The towel popped out from around the corner, and I padded over in my bare feet, took it, then dried off and wrapped it around my body.
“Decent yet?” he asked.
“Not yet.” I went over, found my dirty clothes, and began to pull them on. This would have to do. I doubted Tyson was going to find me clean underwear on such notice. I wrapped my hair up in the towel, figuring a blow dryer would be asking a little much, too. “Alright, you can come in.”
His footfalls echoed as he walked in to the open shower. “Feel better?” he asked.
I looked him right in the eye, my toes splayed out on the damp tile beneath my feet. “Yeah. Thanks.”
“Anything for you, baby girl,” he replied, staying a little distance away from me, but still wanting to come closer.
“Anything? How about you tell me about this shit show with my father, then? What the hell has really been going on?”
He shook his head, looked away.
“If you want to help my pops,” I lied, “you need to tell me everything's that been going on since my mother died. I need to figure out how to help him, no matter what he did to her, and I need your help to do it. He's my blood, Tyson, no matter what he did. I don't want to see him put away, but I don't want to see him like this, either.”
His jaw was working like crazy, as he ran a hand back through his long hair and started to pace the length of the prison-style showers. “Fine,” he said, clearly not liking that he needed my help, or that he had to burden me with this. “Things have been going downhill for a while, since before he killed Tessa. I shoulda put a stop to it back then, but I just couldn't.”
“Tell me,” I pressed.
“He's going bankrupt, baby girl. All these soldiers? He thinks he needs them! Actually needs them! His suppliers, they don't give a shit, they're just shorting him anyways. All his power is wound up in this place, tied up here, stagnant. No one'll work for him from outside the Warehouse, saying he's too erratic.”
“Fair point on their part.”
He stopped and looked at me for a moment, but immediately returned to his pacing. “I don't know what to do.”
“Can you fix it?” I asked.
“Fix it?” he replied, stopping in his tracks and looking at me. He nodded, a gleam in his eye. “Yeah. I could fix it. I think. Why?”
“This place is my inheritance, ain't it? Why wouldn't I want it fixed?”
“You mean . . . you'd wanna . . .?”
“Well, it's the family business, after all,” I lied. “Why wouldn't I?”
Of course, I wanted nothing to do with this. I'd just taken a shower after being locked in a fucking cage reserved for human trafficking victims. And drugs, money, guns? I might hustle a pool game here and there, steal a car, maybe. But doing all these things? Knowing my luck, the Feds would be up my ass farther than Kort. I smirked a little at the thought.
“What?” Uncle Tyson asked.
“Nothing,” I replied quickly, waving away his question. I took a step closer to him, my posture relaxed and more trusting than before. “Look, how can we . . . how can we get you installed at the top . . .”
He looked away as I came closer, shame from even considering this on his face plain as day.
I soldiered on, though, despite his reaction. “. . . where you belong?”
He looked back to me, his chin held a little higher. Flattery works wonders sometimes, I'd found.
Chapter Eighteen
Kort
I woke up early in the morning, my head clear, my senses on high alert. What was I hearing? Talking? Rambling? Sounded like the drunk from before just outside my door.
“Shut the fuck up, Riley!” bellowed a voice from across the room. “Some of us got a shift in the morning!”
Riley? That was definitely the drunk from before, the guy who'd been handing me beers all night. I strained my ears to hear what he was saying.
“Fuck that sl
ut,” he yelled. “Gonna go down there, get my fucking pickle wet.”
I knew exactly what he was talking about. Who he was talking about. My eyes opened wide, the anger rising in my chest as the adrenaline kicked in. I leaped out of my bed, pulled my clothes on in a flash, didn't even bother to lace up my boots.
“Shut the fuck up!” called the same voice as before.
“Fuck that slut!” Riley yelled back.
I hit my bunkhouse door at a run. Riley was there, at the rickety table, a couple more beer bottles than before out in front of him.
“Tomorrow,” he yelled as he went out the front door. “No, tonight! Gonna make that little whore scream my name!”