While she couldn’t see the door from her angle, she noted that this end of the black painted passage wasn’t lit at all. The only sign that anyone had been near this part of the basement were the fingernail marks Flick saw gouged into the floor. John was tall, and Flick was over his shoulder, and the light was almost non-existent. But she could clearly make out the scratched paint, and curled wood that had been exposed from the floor underneath.
‘That’s right,’ Shiv said, leaning in to whisper in her ear. ‘You ain’t never getting out of here.’
Flick screamed again, but John moved forward, and they went into a dark room. A room with no light. Disorientated again, Flick tried to fathom something in the darkness, but in her panic she missed John tossing her down from his shoulder. The awakening was abrupt when she hit ice-cold water, freezing water that Flick immediately tried to clamber away from. But she was thrust back down into it, and then a light came on. The blinding white light made her call out again.
Soaked to the skin she shivered, but she managed to get to her feet, and look around through her webbed lashes. Again, this room was painted black, and there was nothing here but a light on the ceiling and a round basin, six feet diameter and maybe two or three feet deep, the water lapped at her thighs. But when Flick turned to observe the room behind her, her attention stopped on something. A person, there in the corner, who sat on the floor, blank, motionless. Flick would have assumed the woman dead, if she didn’t blink through her blind stare.
‘Wanna know how long she’s been here?’ Shiv laughed. ‘Shame you’re not gonna get the boss’ mercy like she did. You wanna know why he kept her alive? Almost offed her a couple of weeks ago but he wants to make it slow, real painful, and he’s gonna make it count; make sure he got an audience. You’re not gonna get that, you’re out the back door.’
‘Shut up,’ John said, and Flick looked back at the men to see John pull a canvas roll from his back pocket. ‘Got any phobias?’
‘Yes,’ she said, and he glanced up in surprise. ‘The great outdoors and three course meals.’
John smiled. ‘You’re funny,’ he said. ‘We don’t get a lot of that.’
‘Worth asking,’ Flick said. ‘That’s why you asked about the phobias, right? You don’t try then you don’t succeed. I’m just adopting your philosophy.’
Her teeth chattered, but Flick glanced back at the woman again. Her body was covered with nothing more than an old shirt, torn and stained, but the woman didn’t notice. Still, the blonde hair and the long legs made Flick think she’d been a beauty. But they’d broken her, just like they planned to try on her.
‘What’s her name?’ Flick asked.
‘Serendipity,’ Shiv said. John shoved him, then crouched to unroll the canvas. ‘What? Bitch isn’t gonna make it out of here alive, is she?’
‘Ironic, isn’t it,’ John said, standing up again. ‘She could use a bit of serendipity... so could you.’
‘Why am I here?’ Flick asked, then regretted it when Shiv lunged forward and grabbed her. he yanked her back to her knees in the water. ‘You’re gonna give us information.’
John shoved Shiv aside and crouched in front of her. But when Flick thought John was going to be kinder, he took a handful of her hair and pushed her face into the water. The blood from her mouth, and probably from her wrists too, stained the water with crimson clouds ballooning in front of her burning eyes and soundless scream.
With a tug John brought her back up out of the water, and Flick sputtered and gasped. John kept hold of her hair with one hand, while with the other he took her wet hair from her mouth.
‘That’s a sneak preview,’ John said.
‘What is it?’ she gasped. ‘What is it that you want?’
‘Rushe,’ Shiv said.
Blinking past John, Flick saw Shiv leaning against the wall, presumably struggling with his limp to stand without aid. That man wanted blood, her blood, and him standing there, looking on, with such a malevolent determination made the terror Flick had tried so desperately to suppress push up into her guts.
‘You have Rushe,’ she said to Shiv. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘We work in shifts,’ John said. ‘You don’t give me what I want... he gets his turn.’
This time John let her go, and without her hands, Flick fell face first back under the water. Her attempt to push back up was thwarted when his hand hit the back of her head on its way back up. She shook, and writhed for oxygen, for a glimpse of air. This could be it. If she let the reality of what was happening, the inevitably of her fate, overtake her then she would die here, in this cold water, without ever getting the chance to reassure Rushe that none of this was his fault.
In the last prison chamber, she’d been desperate for water, and now she was deprived of air. And she’d thought she was smart in telling Brianna to be careful what she wished for. Flick should have taken her own advice.
With his fist in her hair, John retrieved her out of the ice-pool. Flick tried to shake the water from her body, but the shivering impeded her breathing too.
‘It’s cold,’ John said. ‘What do you think it will be, the hypothermia or the drowning...? Drowning’s supposed to be a good way to go, that’s what I heard.’
‘I thought you were nice to everyone?’ Flick spat out.
‘Don’t wish me away,’ John said. ‘The water’s the kindest of the options around here. I’d tell you to ask Serendipity, but it’s been what...? Four months since she said a word.’
‘Four months?’ Flick exhaled; suddenly her predicament wasn’t so bad. ‘You’ve had her here for four months?’
‘Closer to six now actually,’ John said. ‘Are you going to tell me what I want to know?’
‘You haven’t asked me anything,’ Flick said.
‘What do you know about Rushe? What do you know about why he’s here?’
‘I know nothing,’ she said.
‘Who are you really? What is he, your boyfriend?’
‘Yes, he’s my boyfriend,’ she chattered. ‘Can I go now?’
‘What do you know? When he took you back to your daddy, where did you go?’
Flick didn’t know what she was supposed to say. Though even if she had, she wouldn’t have said anything.
‘He took me to my father.’
John dunked her down into the water. ‘Wrong answer,’ he said when he pulled her back up, but Flick barely heard him through her own choking. ‘He was gone for days, where did you go?’
‘To my father.’
Again he held Flick under the water. Try as she might to wriggle free, she stayed put. His weight holding her down far outmatched her feeble strength in comparison. When John pulled her up, she spat out the water from her mouth. But it was the burning in her lungs that had her coughing. It didn’t matter what they did to her, Flick would let them hurt her, she would endure this. If she gave in, and told them everything she knew about Rushe, it wouldn’t matter. One way or the other they’d made it clear that she wasn’t getting out of this. Shiv was sure she wouldn’t get out of this room alive, and after the stories Rushe had told her on that first night in Dell’s Flick was sure that was true.
What she had done to Shiv in the shack was in defence of Rushe. What Rushe had done to him upstairs in this very building was in defence of her. After everything she’d been through Flick was becoming familiar with the evil of this world. Talking wouldn’t keep her alive, all Flick could do now was hope for a miracle.
Rushe was somewhere here; he was on one of the floors above in the embrace of another woman. His torture was nothing on what she endured here with these men. But it didn’t seem that he was much more than a prisoner himself. Without the trust of Victor Rushe’s own card must be marked too.
‘Who did he talk to?’ John asked. ‘Does he have a contact? Who is he working with?’
Flick thought about the man in the diner, the one she recognised from Dell’s. Rushe could be working both sides; maybe he was a double agent for on
e of Victor’s competitors. That could pay well because it was a hell of a risk, so she assumed he’d want danger money.
‘No one,’ she said. John lugged her back to slap both of her cheeks. ‘You’re gonna die here, Felicity. Is he worth that? Worth dying for? You’re gonna die for a man who’s fucking another woman as we speak? Is he worth it?’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s up there with Simone; she knows how to do things to a man that will make his eyes roll from their sockets.’
‘Says the voice of experience,’ Flick said. ‘Did Victor put a gun to your head and make you have sex with her too? What’s wrong with the woman that you men don’t want to get naked with her? You should get her and Skeeve together.’
‘Tell me,’ John shouted. ‘Tell me who he spoke to, who was with him? Was he alone? Did he have a partner?’
‘I don’t know anything,’ she said. ‘We went to my father’s, and that’s it.’
John threw her backwards into the tub. When she fell under, Flick scrambled to turn and get back out again. Just at the same instant, that she broke the surface, the door opened.
Spluttering, Flick tried to regain her bearings, John was at the door talking to someone. Shiv hobbled over to join them, and with two men standing behind the one talking to John, Flick knew that rushing them would do no good.
John glanced over his shoulder at her, and Shiv started to swear. ‘No way! I get my turn!’ Shiv exclaimed.
John continued to talk for a few seconds, then shrugged and came back to her. ‘You’ve got a reprieve,’ John said. ‘For the time being.’
Without thought of kindness, he dragged her out of the tub and across the floor to the other men. Unfortunately, Flick caught sight of the canvas from John’s pocket laid out on the floor. In it were a series of vicious metal tools that she dare not imagine uses for.
One of the men stopped to lock up the door behind them again, and Flick wondered at the thoroughness. The woman was out of it. They’d broken her. They’d won. But Flick couldn’t imagine a reason why they would hold onto this one woman, or rather why she would be separated from the others and so well guarded.
Flick was taken back down the corridor, but instead of going into the room with the other women Flick was taken past that door, and to another one on the opposite side of the corridor.
John fumbled with locks, and all the men closed in around her. Flick hadn’t had this much attention when they went to the water room, so she didn’t know why they’d give her it now. Escape sounded like a great idea, but after her time in the basin, and with Skeeve, Flick wasn’t sure she had enough fight left in her to be effective.
When John got the door open, someone cut her binds from her wrists, he swung the door back, and then she was shoved inside. No one followed this time, and the door was shut and locked behind her.
No one came into the room because there was someone here, the room was occupied already; and its tenant looked like thunder itself.
The added protection wouldn’t have been adequate if he’d chosen to fight his way through the others. But it was unlikely they would get far out of the property when there were so many variables, and most likely other men on the premises – men who would shoot to kill.
‘Hello, Lover,’ Flick said to the man sitting on the single bed in a room not much larger than their accommodation in the shack a lifetime ago.
Seeing him now, here like this, was unexpected but he bolstered her strength, reminded her that the fight was worth it. His anger was written all over his face, Flick was familiar with the feeling.
‘You’re like a fucking boomerang, you know that?’
Rushe was angry, he sat forward with his elbows on his knees, and his hands clasped. ‘Why are you here?’ Flick asked.
‘Me?’ he said, flying off the bed. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
‘They snatched me off the street,’ Flick said, and her teeth began to clack again.
‘Don’t tell me you went back to your old place. You should’ve stayed with your family.’
‘You told me there was no more danger. You said no one would come looking for me.’ The latter statement had been made when he liberated her the first time, and a lot had transpired since then, but still he had said it.
‘You have no idea what you’ve walked—‘
‘Look at me!’ she screamed, matching his anger with her own. ‘Do you see the bruises? Do you see the blood? Don’t tell me what I know! I know damn well what they’re going to do with me! And I know they’ll take pleasure in it. Don’t you fucking stand there and tell me that I don’t know, Rushe, don’t you do it! Don’t you dare!’
‘Take off your clothes,’ Rushe said, grabbing the back neck of his tee-shirt to pull it off over his head.
‘What?’ she asked, somewhat deflated by his indifference to her outburst.
‘Your... is that a uniform?’
‘Yes,’ Flick said. ‘You want to have sex with me? With everything that’s going on you think...? You want to have sex with me?’ Flick didn’t know whether to laugh, or beat him about the head.
But he shunted his tee-shirt toward her. ‘You’re cold.’
With those clipped words, he turned his back. At the reminder, she began to heave off her wet clothes.
‘Tell me what they did to you,’ Rushe said, still with his back to her. The tension in his shoulders kept him rigid, and his huffed words revealed his own frustration.
He hadn’t done that since her early days in the shack, when he knew she felt violated.
‘No,’ she said, putting on his tee-shirt. At the clean, masculine smell of him brushing her nose the tears sprang up again.
‘No?’
‘No,’ she said again, then kicked her sodden uniform to the corner. Another torn dress, another cell, another single bed, and all because her cab broke down.
The bed was less than two feet away, but when her throat closed, Flick let her legs give out, and fell to the floor. Lying in the foetal position, she covered her face with both hands and let herself sob. Her body ached, her soul screamed for mercy, and no one could deliver.
These horrible, despicable, evil men would taunt and torture her, and then her body would be sold on as property. The possibilities of where she could end up were too petrifying for speculation.
But they didn’t see her now. Soon every tear she shed would be to the depraved pleasure of whoever purchased her. The people she imagined buying a person would have to be sick.
Whatever use they found for her it would be humiliating and excruciating. She had to void her thoughts; she had to void any feelings she had for anything. That child in the other room seemed to have managed it, Brianna and the others did, and Serendipity certainly had. Then Flick understood. It wasn’t about them breaking her, yes that gave them pleasure, but she had to break. Fighting would get her nowhere and if Flick let herself feel, if she let herself hope, then her torture would endure.
Serendipity had managed to block it out, after all these months in that room, and with these men. Numbing yourself to reality, teaching yourself to detach, it was a defence mechanism. Flick had to make it a way of life, because whatever life she had left would be too unbearable to acknowledge.
When a heavy hand landed on top of her head, she hissed out, throwing her anger and hatred to whoever dared to touch her. But then Flick saw him. With concern, and pain, and a torture all of his own, Rushe sat there in front of her. Sat there screaming an apology with his eyes that she knew he’d never vanquish. None of this was his fault, and none of it was hers, but that really only made it worse.
‘Kitten.’
One murmured word and everything was said that needed to be. Crawling toward him, Rushe opened his arms, and she let herself fall into him, fall into that embrace that could shield her from everything. Maybe he couldn’t make the physical fall away, neither of them could help themselves here, or each other. But they had this – perhaps the last pleasant experience she would ever have.
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He let her sob, and stroked her waterlogged hair while he held her so tight, so close, that she wanted to believe their bodies could forever merge to one. When the tears stopped, Flick was terrified to look at him. He’d never be cruel, not now, but he’d want to comfort her, to tell her that he would take care of things and save her. Except there was nothing he could do, and so that would only serve to frustrate him.
‘Why aren’t you with Simone?’ she whispered, closing her eyes, and pressing her damp cheek against his hot, bare chest.
‘I didn’t want Simone,’ he said.
Flick tried to decipher what that meant, and how he’d ended up here, so she lifted her attention. Keeping herself curled in his arms, Flick let her head relax on his upper arm to switch her view higher.
‘You didn’t want Simone?’ she repeated.
‘No.’
‘I don’t know what that means.’
‘It means she’s a whore with no appeal.’
‘But I’m a whore.’
With his large hand, Rushe clumsily shoved her hair from her face. ‘No, you’re not.’
‘I’m not?’
‘No,’ he said, and she noticed he wouldn’t look her in the eye.
In all that had happened reality seemed to have blurred with fiction, and in her dizzy mind Flick tried to recall what was truth, and what was lies.
‘So much has happened.’
‘How long have you been here?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Where have they been keeping you?’
‘Down here,’ she said. ‘I was in a room with a group of women. They have a teenager in there Rushe, did you know that?’
His hand stopped. ‘No.’
Urging her back to his chest, Rushe deliberately tucked her head under his chin and she knew he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, look at her face anymore.
‘I was in there and then they brought us all in to that room where you were.’
‘Who hit you?’
‘Skeeve,’ she said. ‘Mostly. But I deserved it... at least I gave it back to him. I might not be strong, but I have a smart mouth... or so I’m frequently told.’
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