Hacking Darkness

by Marissa Farrar

  He put out his hand to me, as though I was a nervous dog he was trying to coax over. “To the reason you’re here. That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Darcy.”

  I looked at his outstretched hand, the nails perfectly square, his fingers free from any sign of a wedding ring, and something in me snapped. With my right hand, I reached under the sleeve of my left, and snatched up the blade between my thumb and forefinger, pulling it from the hair band I’d used to hold it to my skin. I should have waited until he was closer, so I could have jabbed the blade into one of those beautiful emerald eyes, or slashed at his perfect throat, but I just reacted. Instead, I lashed out and caught the inside of his wrist. It was enough to make him yell in shock and pain, but the weapon slipped from my fingers and fell to the floor. I didn’t pause long enough to pick it up, or see if there was a gush of blood, and instead darted for the stairs. I hoped Isaac would be more preoccupied with stopping any blood loss than he would be with chasing me. I didn’t know where the other guys were, but I hadn’t seen any sign of them yet.

  My feet hit the wooden stairs, and I ran as fast as I could, taking them two at a time.

  “Darcy!” His roar came from behind me, but I didn’t let myself pause long enough to see if he was actually coming after me. I was glad I’d hurt him. Nothing like making a good first impression.

  I reached the top of the stairs and burst through the door, blinking in the sudden glare of light. I had to get my bearings, but I had no idea which way was out. A hallway stretched in both directions. Left or right?

  I chose right.

  Where were the other men? What were they doing?

  Several doors were on either side of the hallway, but I didn’t want to take one for fear of running into the others. I couldn’t hide—if I did, they’d find me eventually. No, I needed to get out of the house and try to get someone’s attention to help me. I remembered how deserted it had sounded when they’d brought me to this place, how I hadn’t heard any sound of nearby traffic. Would there even be anyone around to help? The hall reached a final door at the end, which was already standing open. It opened onto a large kitchen, windows looking out onto an expanse of gardens beyond, followed by fields, then a copse of trees in the distance. A set of double doors was on the far side. I leaned in, quickly checking the kitchen was empty, then ran over to the doors, grabbing the handles and yanking on them hard.

  They didn’t budge. It was locked.

  “Darcy!”

  Isaac’s voice followed me. He’d catch me here.

  Where were the damned keys? I scoured the wall, looking to see if they were hung up somewhere, then the kitchen surface nearby. Surely the keys would be here, unless the men each kept a set of keys on them. Had they been prepared for the possibility of me trying to escape?

  Other shouts echoed through the house. “What’s going on?”

  And Clay’s voice. “What the hell’s happened?”

  Isaac shouted again. “She’s headed out the back.”

  “The door’s locked,” came the deep voice of Kingsley. “She’s not getting out of the house.”

  In desperation, I looked around. A heavy marble pot used for grinding herbs sat on the granite worktop. I snatched up the pot, and without a second thought, threw it at the closest window. The crash and jangle of breaking glass made me flinch back, but I couldn’t pause. The men would be here any second.

  I threw myself at the broken window, holding both arms in front of my face to protect myself from the shards. Fresh air hit my face for the first time since yesterday, and I could smell freedom, so tantalizingly close. My forearms met with sharp glass, slicing through my clothes and skin, but I didn’t even care. I just wanted to be outside, to feel the sun on my face and be able to go wherever I wanted, do whatever I wanted, again.

  Chapter Eleven

  Hands grabbed my waist and yanked me back through the broken window. Glass tinkled down around me, and I let out a sob of hopelessness. I’d tasted freedom, but I’d never really thought it would happen. I knew they’d catch up with me in the end.

  I twisted away from the broken window to discover it was Kingsley’s massive arms around me. He held onto me, perhaps afraid I’d try to make another bolt for it. Pieces of glass were everywhere, and I eyed them, a part of me still seeking freedom and wondering if I could snatch up a shard and use it as a weapon. At least I’d never taken off my sneakers, so though the top half of me might be a mess, I wouldn’t cut my feet on the glass on the floor.

  “Shit, she’s bleeding!” Lorcan stared at me from the kitchen door, his dark eyes wide.

  “What the hell are you playing at, Darcy?” Kingsley demanded, spinning me around to face him.

  I looked between them all, and then to Isaac, who was clutching his own sliced wrist. He’d rid himself of his gray suit jacket, and the sleeve of his white shirt was now red with blood.

  He fixed those green eyes on me, his head tilted to one side. “That didn’t exactly go well, did it?”

  “If you think I’m just going to let you sell me off as a sex slave without even putting up a fight, you picked on the wrong girl.”

  His eyes widened in surprise, and then he laughed, and to my confusion, the others joined in, though their laughter was less raucous. “You think we’re going to sell you into the sex trade?”

  My cheeks flamed. “Or something like that. What else am I supposed to think?”

  “That there’s something far more important about you than your body.” One corner of his mouth curled, and he glanced down the length of me to my toes and then back up again. “Not that there’s anything wrong with your body.”

  Alex stepped forward. “She’s bleeding, too, Isaac. She might have glass stuck in her wounds. We can have this conversation later.”

  I shook my head. “No, I want to know.”

  “Alex is right,” said Kingsley. “We’ll get both of you fixed up, and then Isaac can explain like he’d planned.”

  What was Kingsley saying? That Isaac would have told me everything if I hadn’t slashed him with a razorblade and made a run for it? He probably had a point, but I didn’t think for a moment that whatever they were going to tell me would be something good. You didn’t kidnap women and lock them up, only to reveal at a later date that they’d won the lottery and a trip to Maui for four.

  But the lacerations on my arms were stinging now. I’d barely felt them when I’d pushed my way through the broken glass, adrenaline coursing through my veins. But now they were starting to smart. Blood ran down my hands and dripped off the tips of my fingers and onto the floor. Isaac didn’t look much better, and I took a sick thrill from seeing his injury.

  Alex beckoned me over. “Let me take a look.”

  I put my hands behind my back. “I’m fine.”

  “Don’t be dumb. No, you’re not. You don’t want to leave glass in there and get infected. You could get sepsis.”

  “What do you think you are? Some kind of doctor?”

  He didn’t answer me, just set about looking under the kitchen sink. He emerged with a first aid kit.

  “Sit over there,” he said, nodding toward the kitchen table.

  All the fight had gone out of me. And he was right, I didn’t want to get some kind of infection. Though I would have preferred to have my injuries looked at by a professional instead of some wannabe gangster.

  “Put your arms out on the table,” Alex told me.

  I heaved out a sigh and did as I was told, slipping into the kitchen chair opposite and placing my injured arms on the table. He picked up a pair of scissors and proceeded to cut up the sleeves of my top, first the left and then the right. I winced as the material peeled away, already sticking to my cuts as the blood dried. I had a number of lacerations, all of varying sizes, from little nicks to larger gashes, but nothing that looked life threatening. I watched Alex’s face as he concentrated on my skin, his eyebrows drawn down in concentration, his lips slightly parted. It was a shame he was such an asshole. He
really was quite gorgeous.

  He glanced up at me and caught my eye, forcing me to pretend I wasn’t looking at him. I looked around the room instead, seeing what the others were up to.

  Clay was propped against the kitchen counter, one ankle crossed over the other, his arms folded across his chest as he watched us. Lorcan and Kingsley stood together near the doorway, while Isaac went to the sink to tend to the wound I had given him. I couldn’t help but be distracted as he unbuttoned his ruined shirt and slipped it from his body.

  My eyes widened as he exposed his skin. A massive intricate dragon was tattooed across his back, the tail dipped down into the waistband on his pants, the head resting up on his shoulder. Scales of green, gold, and red blended seamlessly together. Beneath the tattoo, Isaac’s body was strong, and I could make out the muscles beneath his skin, though he wasn’t bulked like Kingsley.

  Lorcan wasn’t the only tattooed member of the gang.

  Alex spotted me looking at Isaac. His eyebrows lifted, a smile tweaked the corner of his mouth. “Distracted much?”

  The burn in my face increased. “I just don’t like watching glass being picked out of my own flesh.”

  “It’s got to be done,” he said, picking up the tweezers. “Now, hold still.”

  I gritted my teeth, my nose scrunched up as he set to work, picking pieces of glass, some so tiny they were mere specks, out of my wounds. None were so deep that they looked like they needed stitches, so that was something. I wondered how Isaac was getting on and if I’d managed to cut him deeply enough to warrant a trip to the emergency room. I figured he’d avoid it if he could. He’d have to lie about how the injury happened if he did decide to get professional help. The truth of being cut up by the woman he was holding down in the cellar probably wouldn’t go over too well with the doctors.

  The other men stood guard, watching Alex work on me, as though they were worried I’d make a bolt for freedom again.

  At the sink, Isaac finished cleaning up his wound, and taped a gauze down onto it, before turning around to face us.

  “How’s she doing?” he asked Alex.

  “Almost done.”

  And he was. He washed out the last of my cuts, adding Band Aids or gauze strips where they were needed.

  Isaac watched me. “Time to go back to your room.”

  My stomach twisted. I didn’t want to go back to where there was no natural light. “Please, I’ll be good, I promise. Just let me stay up here.”

  “After what you just did? I don’t think so.”

  “It was a natural reaction.” I tried to plead my case. “How was I to know if you were going to hurt me or not? I had to protect myself.”

  “We still need to talk, Darcy, but you have to learn that you can’t cut me and get away with it unpunished.”

  Unpunished. I didn’t like the sound of that.

  I turned to the others, hoping one of them would fight my corner—Alex, perhaps—but no one even looked at me.

  Isaac stepped forward, looking down at me where I sat. “Here’s how this is going to work, Darcy. You behave yourself, and then we’ll talk. Keep doing stupid stuff like this,” he lifted his bound arm to demonstrate, “and you’ll find yourself down there for far longer than necessary.”

  So he planned on letting me out at some point? Was that to release me, or to kill me?

  I shook my head. “I won’t do any more stupid stuff, I swear on my life. Just don’t lock me back down there. Please.”

  “Come on, Isaac,” said Clay. “Maybe we should give her a chance.”

  Kingsley stepped in. “There’s nothing to say she won’t try to run again. She’s already proven she has it in her, twice now.”

  Clay turned to him and dragged his hand through his blond hair. “Maybe she won’t if we explain to her the reason why she shouldn’t.”

  Kingsley rubbed his hand over his mouth. “She’ll never believe it. Not with her daddy being FBI. She’ll never be able to see us as the good guys and them as the bad.”

  I held up my hand to get their attention. “Umm, excuse me, but I am here, you know. You can always direct some of what you’re saying my way.”

  “I don’t trust that she won’t try to escape again,” said Lorcan, and I shot him a glare for taking Kingsley’s side. Alex, so far, had remained quiet through this whole thing, and I wondered whose side he was taking.

  Clay shrugged. “She’s seemed all right by me. Wouldn’t we all have done what she did if we were in her situation?”

  Isaac stepped in. “No, it’s not time yet. She’s got to learn that we’re the ones who are in control in this situation. Fluttering her pretty blue eyes and looking sad isn’t going to be enough to make us change our minds.”

  He took a couple of steps toward me, and I staggered up from the chair. The expression on his face was one I didn’t want to mess with, but I couldn’t go meekly. I looked to Alex for help, as he still hadn’t spoken, but he pressed his lips together and gave his head a slight shake before getting to his feet. The others closed in as well, and I knew I didn’t stand a chance of getting away from them. If Isaac said I was to go back down into the cellar, it looked like that was exactly where I was going.

  I backed away, stumbling over my chair. I kept going, but my lower back hit the kitchen worktop, thumping against one of the big bruises I still had. I winced, but managed to clamp my pain down between clenched teeth.

  Isaac stopped directly in front of me. He still hadn’t put a shirt on—the bloodied one he’d been wearing bunched up at the side of the sink. Though his chest was free from tattoos, I couldn’t get the image of the dragon on his back out of my mind. Did it mean something, or had he just had it done because he liked it?

  “What are you going to do, Darcy? Are you going to keep fighting, or are you going to make this easy on all of us?”

  Slowly, I shook my head. “Why should I make this easy on you?”

  Then I darted forward, putting my full body weight behind the movement, hoping to barge past him. He grabbed my arms and pulled me up against him. My chest heaved as I felt his naked torso pressed up against my back. He wrenched me harder, pulling me in, so his mouth was against my ear.

  “I see you like to do things the hard way, love. That’s fine. I can work with that.”

  “I’m not your love,” I spat back between gritted teeth.

  I heard the humor in his voice. “We’ll see about that.”

  His hands tightened around my arms, seemingly not caring about any of the cuts I’d sustained in that area—not that I could blame him. I had sliced him with a razorblade. He held me squeezed up against him, his breaths hot—excited, almost—in my ear. My pulse raced at the contact, my mind conjuring the sight of the dragon tattoo scrawled across his naked skin. A dangerous frission of excitement rose up inside me, and I caught the air in my lungs, anticipating his next move.

  But, instead of anything more intimate, he pushed me forward, back out of the kitchen and into the hallway, which led to the cellar door. Isaac was surprisingly strong, and even when I tried to push back, he still managed to propel me forward.

  I looked to the others for help, but none would meet my eye. Why would they? They were the ones who’d been holding me captive all this time. They weren’t suddenly my allies against Isaac. They’d been waiting for him to arrive, and now here he was.

  I guessed this was where the fun really got started.

  We reached the cellar door. It remained open from where I’d run, and the staircase vanished into darkness.

  “Misbehave,” Isaac said into my ear, “and you’ll find things only get worse for you. Do what we ask and they’ll get better.”

  He gave me a little shove forward, enough to send me stumbling to the top step.

  I spun around, but the door slammed shut, plunging me into darkness. It seemed my escape attempt had lost me the chance at having the light on again.

  My balled fists met with the wood of the door. “But I don’t know what yo
u want!” I yelled back at him. “You still haven’t told me why I’m here!”

  Silence was my only reply.

  Chapter Twelve

  They were punishing me, that was for sure.

  I was back in the dark again, the only light coming through the gap beneath the cellar door. I hunched at the top of the stairs for awhile, my arms wrapped around my knees, listening for any clues as to what the men wanted or what they were going to do with me.

  The arrival of Isaac had made everything worse. He seemed cold and ruthless, and I understood why the others had been waiting for him. He was clearly the man in charge, and I didn’t want to be frightened of him, but I was.

  Time ticked by, and the men left me alone. I didn’t know if I should be grateful or pissed. I’d been given breakfast that morning, but we were well past any meal times now. I guessed going without food was going to be another part of my punishment, together with being left down here alone. At least when the other guys had visited me, it had broken up some of the monotony. The boredom made me want to scream—I was normally never without a book, or TV show, or the internet far from hand. Hell, sometimes I’d have all three going at the same time. Now I had nothing to do, and that was as torturous as being left alone in the dark. I figured Isaac already knew that.

  With my mortality suddenly staring me starkly in the face, I found I bitterly regretted so much of my life. I should have been a better person, and maybe this wouldn’t be happening to me now. If I’d been nicer to my aunt, if I’d gotten a steady job and made some friends, maybe I’d be in a whole different place right now.

  Memories swept over me, and I watched my past curving in front of me, from right to left. One particular regretful incident stood out to me, and with it came the sickening twist of guilt in my stomach.

  I’d ruined my own father’s funeral. I’d interrupted the priest giving his eulogy at the graveside, when he’d been talking about the richness of life and how it should be judged for the content, not the length. I’d lost it and screamed at the priest that it was bullshit, and how long you lived did matter.