A different silence followed her into the bar. It was one of sanctuary and calm. It was filled with the creak of floorboards and the crack of her own heels pounding off the walls as she made her way upstairs.
Her purse and coat were hooked on the pegs surrounding the massive, oval mirror hanging on the wall just inside the entrance. Her pumps were kicked underneath its bench. Bare foot, she padded straight into the bathroom for a hot shower and freedom from the pencil skirt restraining her movement. She washed off her makeup and twisted her dark hair into a braid over one shoulder. The heavy mass wasn’t as dark as her father’s inky locks, or as thick as her mother’s, but Cora had always loved her hair.
The strands hung in full, natural curls to her waist and framed the oval contour of her face. The darkness brought out the pallor in her complexion, the speckles of green in her eyes, and emphasized the fullness of her mouth. It was as if her hair alone had the power to pull the rest of her together and create the person the outside world saw when they looked at her. It drew attention away from the much too closeness of her eyes, the wide set of her nostrils, and all the other imperfections only she seemed to be able to see thanks to the twelve years of going to a school filled with gorgeous assholes.
In their elite circles, Cora had been the shy, standoffish girl that refused to play with the other kids. But they hadn’t understood she’d done it for their own safety, and hers. Being the daughter of Giovanni De Marco either meant making all the wrong friends, no friends, or friends who only wanted something. It was easier not to have any friends at all, a decision that had left a dent in her social skills and self-esteem. It just wasn’t enough to make her lose sleep over it.
Teeth brushed, lotion properly lathered all over, she pulled on her habitual t-shirt and boy shorts, and climbed into bed.
But morning never came. It felt like she’d just closed her eyes when they cracked open to the same murky darkness and the same hollow silence. But the air was different. The weight of it hung in a thick, hot tension that formed a paste at the back of her throat.
Someone was in her apartment.
She could feel them.
Sense them.
Their cologne, a spicy tangle of man, rain, and night, filled the space.
Her space.
The intrusion spurred her into a paralyzing wave of consciousness that pinned her to the pillow, kept her prisoner beneath the covers. She could scarcely breathe in fear of giving away that she was awake, even as her hand inched forward across the short expanse of cold mattress to the nightstand drawer and the steely promise of her .45.
Behind her, a board creaked beneath the weight of her invader’s boot. Their smell amplified with that single forward step, seemingly solidifying around the bed. Around her.
She couldn’t breathe.
Cold sweat beaded along her upper lip. It slickened her spine, fusing her t-shirt to damp skin. But the worst was the volume of her heart rate, the sheer ferocity of it clapping in tempo with her rising terror. She could taste it on her tongue, a bitter bile of vomit that made it impossible not to gag.
But she gritted her teeth and reached.
It happened before she could suck in a breath. One second she was staring at the sharp corner of her mahogany nightstand, the next the bed was violently jostled. The mattress caved beneath a massive weight, sending her tumbling backwards across it, straight into the arms waiting to catch her.
Cora screamed. It lasted barely a second before the cold, plastic edges of the gas mask clapped over her mouth, over her nose, stifling the sound.
“Easy, sweetheart. Breathe.”
That was all she could do. That and fight against the bands of steel crushing her into submission. But it was met with the efforts of battling a bear. All her attempts succeeded to do was increase her inhalation of the gas pouring through the tube, straight into her face.
“There’s a good girl,” the voice murmured, a gruff, gravely drawl straight into the shell of her ear. “Just breathe.”
The last thing Cora saw before the world went dark was the alarm on her nightstand flicking from four fifty-nine to fives.
Chapter Three
“Are you awake?”
The phantom whisper followed her through the darkness. It beckoned her to the sliver of light glinting in the distance, to the hum and crackle of sound absence in the black void.
A murky world pierced with sharp spikes of light floated into existence. Light and shadow played tag across the expanse of her baffled conscious. They jumped and swayed in rapid and almost violent succession up the entire wall facing her.
She lay on a bed, a lavish and elaborate chunk of carved wood in deep, dark mahogany. Guarding pillars reached to the vaulted ceiling and knotted in an intricate cross above her. Sheer drapes were drawn back and fastened to each post and dipped in a rich paint of orange from the flame leaping in the hearth at her feet. Beyond that, her world was darkness, hunched and lurking monsters masquerading as furniture. Smells she couldn’t account for and a living demon residing within the cavity of her skull, its razor-sharp talons curled into every nerve ending. The excruciating pain was nearly enough to make her stomach pitch and her vision blur.
But sickness was a luxury she couldn’t afford when a great, gaping hole loomed over her from where her stream of thought used to greet her. Pattern of speech persisted, her thoughts continued to flow, questions and answers she recognized in a language she was fluent. It was all there, yet the important things she should know were redacted. Great chunks of memory were missing—like how she came to be in that place, or why.
Don’t panic, she willed her thumping heart as it threatened to consume her. But panic was all she could muster. Panic and a crippling urgency to vomit.
Fingers slick with sweat closed in satin sheets and a goose down duvet. Both were drawn back from her body. They rustled when she eased upright. Her head spun, pitching the room into a cycle of colors and heat, a pulsing, burning heat that made her skin unbearable.
“There you are,” said a low, raspy murmur from one of the corners. “I was beginning to worry.”
The man that unfolded himself from the armchair next to the fire was nothing more than a dark silhouette with the light radiating behind him. In the absence of his features, all Cora could make out was how tall he was, how thin. An unnatural lankiness that momentarily paralyzed her with thoughts of aliens and probing.
“Don’t be afraid.” The figure drifted closer, gravitating around the edges of the enormous bed to her right. “You’re safe.”
He came to a stop at the nightstand. She watched in silence as he poured her a glass of water from a pitcher.
At that angle, she could just make out his side profile in all the places the light touched him. It highlighted the folds beneath his swollen eyes, the deep lines cut into hollow cheeks, and the white whiskers matching the neatly trimmed cap on his round head. He wore a man’s version of a kimono in a light blue with dark trousers underneath and a black sash around his narrow waist.
He passed her the drink with long, spidery fingers tipped with neatly trimmed nails.
Cora hesitated, but the need to slicken her dry throat won out and she accepted it. It didn’t even matter that it was room temperature as she guzzled most of it down.
“How are you feeling?”
She returned the glass to him, feeling mildly better. “Where am I?”
He set the glass on the end table with a muffled thunk. His long hands moved to clasp in front of him. The fingers wove together like the tentacles of an octopus.
“We’re currently in the Northwest Atlantic.”
That wasn’t right. She may have been fuzzy on the details, but the Atlantic was miles ... whole countries away from where she should have been.
“Please.” He must have seen the welling of panic climbing up her chest, because he put up his hands, palms out the way one would a terrified dog. “I assure you—”
She never did find out what he was assuri
ng her of. At that moment, the door behind him burst open and two men charged in, fully armed with AK47s and military tactical gear.
Jesus. Had she been kidnapped by the CIA?
“Excuse us, Mr. Takahashi. We’re here for the girl,” the one on the right commanded.
Cora, having already been jumped once, wasn’t about to let anyone do it to her a second time without a proper fight. She lunged from the bed, ignoring her sloshing stomach. She grabbed the first thing within throwing distance and hurled it.
The lamp shattered against the doorframe just over the second man’s right shoulder. It exploded in a glorious burst of glass and ruined shade. But it didn’t slow down the two who charged at her.
Cora screamed and bolted back onto the bed. Her feet tangled in the sheets, but she scrambled across the mattress and leaped off the other side. The thin man jumped out of her way as she landed on both feet mere inches from him.
“Grab her!” one of the gun wielders shouted.
Cora didn’t wait to see if the thin man would. She tore for the open door, grabbed the doorknob and shut it behind her as she raced into the corridor. Not waiting to see if they would break through, she twisted on her heels and ran headlong right. It seemed the safest bet given that the left side was brightly illuminated, thus making it easier for them to spot her.
She seemed to be in some kind of castle with a million hallways and corridors all twisting and winding together like two warring snakes. There were stairs that led to even more passages, passages with doors that all seemed to be locked no matter how many she tried. The most frightening aspect was the fact that she seemed to be running up, which meant, eventually, she’d run out of places and get trapped, but there were also no stairs leading down, unless she went back the way she’d come and that wasn’t an option.
“Fuck!”
Sides aching, lungs burning, Cora staggered to a breathless halt. She wheezed as she collapsed against a wall and groaned when it’s cool surface soothed the sweat along her spine.
All around her, silence echoed. Not the sort of silence a person raised in the city could possibly ever understand. It was the absence of everything, except the collision of her heart against her ribs and the ragged pants she couldn’t seem to control. It was wilderness, middle of nowhere, completely isolated sort of silence. The kind serial killers were fond of.
Northwest Atlantic.
Jesus, where the fuck was she?
Pushing upright, she surveyed her surroundings and the gray, stone walls looming over her. There was a dull, red carpet beneath her feet that seemed to run throughout the entire place, and gasoline lamps.
Who the hell still used gasoline lamps?
Maybe it was all a dream. It made much more comforting sense than being kidnapped from her bed and taken halfway across the damn world.
What she needed was a window to show her outside her prison. It was odd that a place so vast had a million doors, but zero windows. It was stranger still that none of the doors, not one, would open. Who was that paranoid? What was behind them that warranted such secrecy? It also brought to mind the question, how often did they steal women that they needed to lock the doors? That was the only conclusion she could come to.
Going against her better judgment, she turned back, her strides slower, guarded and careful. Her ears strained over the crashing of her pulse for even a hint of someone approaching. She kept to the walls, using them to wind her way downward. Her knees knocked together, making each stumble down the stairs awkward and clumsy. Her nerves jangled, causing every joint to creak, pop, or stiffen at random. Plus, with the weak knees, the trembling didn’t help her coordination.
It took ages to find a fork in the path. She recalled it vaguely during her first dash through the halls, but rather than going left, she’d gone right. This time, she swerved left and took the stairs downward. Its steep incline straightened down a narrow corridor and a single, wine cellar door at the very end. It sat embedded in a bed of rough stone, encased by a soft curtain of shadows. Everything about it reminded her of a horror movie, right down to the light wafting chill coming from the crack at the bottom, numbing her bare ankles. Although, the shiver that passed through her had nothing to do with the breeze and everything to do with the little voice warning her to turn back.
But she couldn’t. She’d already made so many reversal detours that she couldn’t risk aimlessly wandering around, hoping to get away with it a second time.
Mind set, she braved the distance, pausing only once to glance back. The fact that no one had come for her or found her was an unsettling niggle at the back of her mind. At some point, she should have come across someone, right?
Swallowing, she continued. Her feet made hardly any sound as she advanced to the door. She grabbed the latch, gritted her teeth against the numbing cold of iron against skin, and yanked.
The icy breeze from the swinging door greeted her first, followed promptly by the slap of darkness radiating from the other side. It took her eyes a moment to adjust, but once they did, she wished she could unsee it all.
Iron chains hung from a vaulted ceiling crossed with beams. Steel bars and leather straps were mounted to stone walls housing shelves and hooks displaying an array of devices, tools, and other contraptions she couldn’t in a million years put names to. Tucked in corners, bulky shapes of things concealed beneath sheets.
But it was the table at the very core of it all, the gem planted on a dais of granite that nearly stopped her heart.
It was the crimson stains marring the wood and the leather straps strategically positioned in all the places necessary to restrain a person.
It was the steel bucket at the bottom.
“Oh God!”
She got as far as the first step back when something grabbed her around shoulders, restraining her arms against her sides and forcing her into an unyielding, scalding hot chest.
“Good girls don’t go wandering off in places they don’t belong,” drawled an all too familiar voice.
Cora opened her mouth to scream, but all she managed was to suck in a lung full of air before a large palm clapped over her mouth.
“Don’t,” the voice warned in that low, guttural growl. “No one can hear you, and I don’t like the sound. Now,” he went on casually, as if they were having a normal conversation at the country club and not on the threshold of his torture chamber. “I am going to ask you nicely not to scream. Otherwise, I will have to take drastic measures to make you stop. Do you understand?”
At his mercy, she could only nod.
“There’s my good girl.”
The hand lowered slowly, almost carefully, like he didn’t quite trust her to keep her word.
“I’m not your girl, you sack of shit!”
The vibrations of his chuckle spread across his chest. She felt it roll the length of her back and in all the places they touched with the same accuracy as if it were his hands. The very idea of it repulsed her, even as the rest of her shivered.
“Oh sweetheart.” His words tickled the skin of her jawline and prickled the hairs along the back of her neck. “I’m not so sure about that.”
There was no missing the none too subtle nudge of his hips, nor was there any mistaking the hard bump he kept firmly against the curve of her lower spine.
“Let go of me,” she bit out through stiff lips.
“And risk you running off again? No. If anything...” The turn of his head grazed the side of her face with the sharp tickle of bristle that showered a litter of goose bumps down the length of her arms. “I’m strongly tempted to put a leash on you.”
The very idea was appalling. Degrading. It was all she could do not to tear free and kick him in the place he still rubbing against her.
“Do it and I will strangle you with it,” she snarled, wrenching her face away from his.
He caught her jaw and forced it back to forward. The long fingers glided down the column of her throat and encircled the vulnerable arch.
Beneat
h his touch, her pulse jumped.
“Careful,” he whispered. “I might take that as a challenge.”
He released her then. It was so quick, so unexpected that she was given no time to react before the world plummeted into darkness with the closure of a bag over her head.
Chapter Four
The tang of iron had never been so strong. It overlapped the rust, the sour stink of sweat, the sharp sting of ocean. It was everywhere, a suffocating force wrapping itself around her until she was sure she’d smell like metal works forever.
The room itself was an iron cubby. No doubt a small storage area. One side was stocked with sacks of rice and wooden crates. The other had been hollowed out to make just enough room for her.
Nothing else had been offered.
No bed.
No blanket.
Not even a bucket to piss in.
Either that meant they didn’t intend to keep her there for very long, or they didn’t care what became of her. She wasn’t sure which bothered her more. Captors who cared little about their prisoners usually meant bad things for the prisoners. That was a known fact.
But it raised the question why they were doing this. What did they want and how was she part of that plan? She hadn’t seen anyone since they’d tossed her into the room and locked the door behind her, a door that only opened from the outside.
It was a cargo ship of some kind. Judging from the goods she was left with, she guessed dry goods, or maybe containers. Maybe there were other prisoners somewhere inside that monster. She didn’t believe for a minute that she was their first, or only kidnapping. No one just carried around a tank filled with sleeping gas, not unless they did that kind of thing regularly. She wouldn’t even know where to buy something like that, especially one so easily transportable. It would have had to have been small, something lightweight and compact, because she hadn’t felt it when he’d been knocking her out. Not to mention that torture dungeon. Clearly professionals. Question remained, what business were they in? Slavery? Black market origin exchange? Ransom? The latter she could handle. Her father would pay whatever they wanted for her return. There was no question about that.
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