Against the Dark

by Carolyn Crane

  He would’ve let her go down easy as anything; she’d seen the truth of it in his eyes. He hadn’t even bothered to deny it. He was a jerk. An asshole.

  But deep down she didn’t really think it. The hate felt less poisonous than the hurt, that’s all.

  She slipped down the hall like a quicksilver ghost through the morning quiet, heading out onto the dark grounds and around the perimeter. All the shame and anger and worry fell away as she went; it was only her and the danger and the darkness. Macy was right: Angel did love the high wire.

  She picked Borgola’s exterior office door lock in half the time Cole had. She’d let him do the locks on the last round because they were together on a job, and you wanted to cut the competitive crap when you were on a job.

  She felt her respiration slow as she pocketed her pick and wire set and went in. Even her eyes felt calmer, like they could take in more, and she thought if she looked into a mirror, they would be a clearer, lighter brown.

  Cole had suggested safecrackers like her were consummate observers. The mistake didn’t surprise her; a lot of people thought picking a lock or cracking a safe was about acute senses, but that suggested you were apart from the lock you wanted to open, and really it was about sinking into the lock, being one with the lock. Or more—you had to give something up to it in order to let it into you. There was a certain amount of vulnerability in the process, but it was quite safe, too, because a safe wouldn’t do things like enchant you and fuck you and use you and not care if you were strung up and gutted. A safe was, in a word, safe.

  The alarms were still offline, thanks to Cole. Eight minutes—that’s what this would take her. She’d be back before Cole was out of the bathroom. And if not, fine. Let him freak out.

  In and out.

  She would be home in time to make her meeting with the seamstress for Lisa’s curtains, she realized. It would be like nothing had ever happened.

  She entered Borgola’s closet and hit the first combination lock. She put in the numbers and opened it. She always memorized the combinations, just in case. You always built in redundancy where it didn’t cost you.

  She slipped through the torture filming room. Letting her get caught was his Plan B? It was unthinkable. Well, what did she expect? He was a criminal, a parasite, a jerk, some kind of operator with a boss who was probably Coke to Borgola’s Pepsi.

  Her self-destructive man radar hadn’t been off after all. It just hadn’t picked up on how very destructive he was to her.

  She moved the hutch aside as Cole had done and opened the walk-in. Three minutes she’d been gone.

  She spied the bead nestled in the black rubber matting on the floor below the boxes, wedged into a horizontal slit. She grabbed it and pocketed it. Then she spotted the diamond bags on the shelf near the door.

  Her heart beat a little faster.

  Back in the car with Macy and White Jenny, she’d so badly wanted to hold them, to watch them sparkle in her palm, to complete the ritual. Instead she’d deprived herself, like she had to prove she wasn’t really into it anymore.

  What the hell.

  She grabbed the fattest bag, pulled it open, and tipped the diamonds into the shallow cup of her palm. She drew back the bag so that the jewels made a fat line of glitter.

  She moved her hand, specking the small room with tiny disco ball sparkles, then she put her cheek to them. She felt curiously let down, holding all of that wealth in her palm. She remembered that let-down feeling from the old days. She’d always felt sure the stones would make everything different, but they never did. Yet she’d always had to hold them. She couldn’t pass up holding them.

  She got them back into the bag and put the bag on the shelf, then she checked her phone. Five minutes she’d been gone; she’d burned an extra minute with the diamonds. She slipped back out, shut the door, and set the hutch back in place.

  “Fancy meeting you here, Angel.”

  Borgola. She spun around. He stood in the dark on the other side of the room; she couldn’t see him but she could see the red record light of his camera.

  She pulled the gun out of her belt. Hands grabbed her from behind and disarmed her easily. So easily.

  The warmth went out of her.

  “I knew the Association would show up,” he said. “I certainly didn’t expect them to send such a lovely Associate, though.”

  What was he talking about? Wildly she tried to shake free of the man holding her. She kicked for his knees, his balls, his toes. He avoided her attacks with a liquid level of ease that suggested years of training. More guys came out of the darkness.

  “We’ll start in the chains,” Borgola said from behind the camera. “But I think it might be fun to do a round robin.”

  She kicked fiercely, connecting with a knee, but there were four guys on her now, all easily as strong and deft as Cole, and they pressed her to the carpeted wall and locked metal cuffs around her wrists and ankles so that she was nothing more than a decorative X, a foot up on the wall. They checked her pockets and took her phone, her bead, and her tool.

  She nearly threw up when Borgola came toward her. He handed the portable camera to yet another guard.

  “Naughty girl, hoodwinking my poor guards,” Borgola said.

  She closed her eyes as she felt his cold hands on her neck. With an awful certainty, she knew she would end up in that glass nails coffin thing with the nails poking into her. Would she die from bleeding to death, or from the nails piercing through the soft tissues of her brain? Or maybe the nails were staggered; maybe they stuck in a person at different rates, designed to prolong life and misery. Maybe. Hell, of course they would be.

  Stop thinking about it.

  He was saying something to her about operations, his inside man in the Association, whatever that was. She felt the prick of a knife at the side of her throat, the top of her shirt. She could feel the drip of blood tickle downward. She gazed calmly into his eyes, which were cold as pickled herring. Everything felt surreal, like none of it was really happening. But nothing was really happening yet. A man was talking at her. Men talked at her all the time. A prick of a knife, but that’s all it was. You’re okay, she thought to herself.

  He was asking her about Cole now. It would be so very convenient for him that she’d gotten caught. A diversion.

  “Don’t answer,” he hissed. “I’ve worked with Cole Hawkins long enough to know what he is. He’s a good soldier but not the brightest bulb in the box.”

  Not the brightest bulb in the box. It seemed weird that Borgola would use a cliché that millions had used before, that millions would use in the future, but here he was, using it when he was about to film her torture and death.

  She couldn’t deal with his eyes anymore, so she stared past his ear. If she was going to get out of this, it would be through calm; not panic. She was cool under pressure, but she’d never been cool in the limelight. Cole had been right about that.

  “Maybe you even fed him the information about the Malibu heist. Worked to let the clues fall into his lap. He told me he’d solved the mystery himself, but I think you led him to it by his dick, am I right?” He frowned at her. He didn’t like her not talking. “Don’t bother playing dumb. You’re not here for the diamonds.”

  She worked her throat, trying to swallow without him being able to see. She’d never wanted to hide so badly, and she’d never been in a situation where the option was so completely absent.

  “I knew the Association was sniffing around.” He brought his mouth close to her ear. “I know all, honey. And soon I’ll know things about you even you never knew. Inside and out. And so will my camera.”

  She shuddered as he removed the knife and went to the other side of her, pressed it to her cheek. “Sure didn’t think the Association would send me a tasty chunga. Their mistake; you weren’t quite fast enough or good enough. But you certainly are fuckable.”

  The Association? Associates? What was he talking about?

  The guard handed him the ph
one. “No transmittal, no photos.”

  Borgola wore a little puff of a frown. “So what’s the game plan?”

  She kept her mouth shut. It would go bad for her no matter what. He slapped her cheek. She closed her eyes against the sting.

  “You didn’t transmit. You didn’t photograph anything. You didn’t take anything. Is it all up here?” He drew a finger over her forehead. “Do you Associates have photographic memories? Is that one of the prerequisites for bringing down big bad wolves like me?”

  Bringing him down? An Associate? Is that what Cole was?

  “But the Association can’t help you against me now,” Borgola whispered. “You’re in no-extraction territory. And those students on my ship are going to die. Sorry you couldn’t save them. But their deaths won’t be in vain. Their deaths will be motherfucking spectacular—in the original sense of the word. Spectacles to behold.” He smiled a creepy smile. “Just as yours will be.”

  Borgola was planning to film a bunch of kids being raped and killed, just the way he would film her.

  Cole had been so motivated—willing to throw her overboard, but just as willing to jump overboard himself, it had seemed. Was it about saving some kids? Was that why he’d kept on, even when the odds looked bad? Had she been wrong about everything? Her chest felt thick with something like grief. Would those students at least be safe now?

  “So you can tell Dax that,” he added, as though that was significant. “You can tell Dax that I’ll make it my personal mission to dismantle the Association agent by agent. Or, excuse me, associate by associate. Oh, actually you can’t tell him, can you?”

  Borgola hated the Association; that was clear. Angel decided right there that if he hated the Association, then she was all for it.

  And she decided then that she would never tell on Cole. Borgola thought Cole was her dupe, and she’d let him think it. Cole didn’t deserve it, but keeping Borgola ignorant might well help those students. It wasn’t a big sacrifice—she was dead either way unless she turned the situation around.

  The decision gave her a curious sense of peace. Strength, even.

  She was doing something constructive, maybe even helping to save lives. She’d always loved helping people, she thought with a kind of baffled shock. Why hadn’t she done it more? It was the part she most enjoyed about doing people’s homes. The helping-Aunt-Aggie aspect was why she’d let Macy and White Jenny pull her out of retirement so easily.

  “So how exactly did you hoodwink Cole? And where is Dax?”

  She sucked in a breath, reminding herself that her silence might help some kids. It felt good, like something real to hold onto. And the strangest feeling came over her; it was as if, for the first time in her life, she located something real and good and important inside herself.

  It was as if, at that moment, she located herself.

  “You’ll tell me after we play awhile. You’ll tell me for the smallest of favors. A moment of relief.”

  Borgola took back his camera and instructed one of the guards—Jeb—to cut off her shirt. “From the collar. Slowly. Don’t get too much skin but…” he licked his lips at her. “A man gets messy. You know how it is. Or, you will.” His lips turned up in a sick little smile. She knew what he was doing—he wanted her scared. She wouldn’t give him that. She would give him nothing.

  She thought about her mother and father, her abuela and her brother. Macy and White Jenny. Her people gave her strength.

  Jeb sawed at the collar of her shirt, began slowly to slit it down. She had her teeth and her forehead as her weapons at present. Borgola was standing pretty far out of range, and even Jeb was being cautious as he worked at her shirt, but one of them would get close eventually, and she would head butt him or rip out his jugular with her teeth, and it would kill him. It would be a start.

  “Freeze.” Borgola lowered the camera. “The look’s not right. Jeb, stay right where you are. Manny, break a finger. Out of camera range.”

  She braced as the guard grabbed her wrist and her left-hand pointer finger and twisted slowly. Stars of pain shot through her hand and down her arm. And then a sickening crack. She winced and felt her eyes moisten with pain tears.

  “There it is. Priceless. Jeb, go, go, go.”

  Jeb cut a few more inches before she got her face under control.

  “Freeze, Jeb.” Borgola sighed. “You have ten fingers, honey, and ten toes, too, and we have all day. Manny, get the thumb. The little knuckle. That’s always good for a thrill.”

  Angel gritted her teeth as the man took her wrist gently in his hand, hating that it looked like she was crying when she really wasn’t.

  “There are two places to break the thumb,” Borgola said. Angel realized dimly that he was using that slimy comforting voice she’d once imagined he’d use at times like this.

  Manny was closing pliers over the end of her thumb. She braced herself as he squeezed, feeling the rough metal surface.

  A bang. Angel jumped. Manny slammed back and away from her, into a wall. Another loud bang. Movement all around. Manny lay motionless in a fast-growing pool of blood, pliers on the floor in front of him. Blood on the wall. He’d been shot. Jeb was hiding with Borgola; both had their backs to a pillar, guns up. Another guard lay motionless to the right.

  Two other guards hid behind a different pillar, and they fired at a metal table that had been overturned. Pop pop.

  Somebody shot back.

  Cole?

  Angel jerked at her restraints as gunfire continued. Her broken finger burned. There was more gunfire, and suddenly Borgola was at her side once more, and he had the gun at her head. “You have ten seconds to come out of there or I blow her head off.”

  Angel held her breath. Was it Cole? Why would he come for her? She was plan B, the expendable one.

  And then he stood, jaw set hard as granite, eyes lit with fury.

  Cole.

  “Let her go.”

  “She’s an Associate, you idiot. She duped you,” Borgola said. “Hendel, disarm him. Manny, get a visual of Cole as he gives up his gun, and then point the camera over here. On her face. We’ll work in that earlier footage. This’ll be good. Let’s go, Cole. Lose it or we’ll blow your head off. You know those clips sell just as well.”

  Cole gave up his gun. Then he set aside his glasses and raised his hands. “It just needs to be us. You and me.”

  “So gallant.” Borgola put his face close to Angel’s. “An Association boy wouldn’t do this, would he? An Association boy would stay on track or Dax would have his head, am I right? Should I put him in the iron maiden? I saw you looking at it. Or should I blow his brains out? That might add dimension to your stage presence.”

  Borgola turned the gun on Cole. There were four guns on Cole now. But Borgola’s nose, which marked the most vulnerable part of his face, was turned to her, and just close enough that she could use one of her two weapons—the head butt. Careful not to telegraph, she drew in a slow breath, visualizing the move as she’d been taught to. She imagined the arc her head would follow, snapping over to the left, the bony part of her forehead ramming into his face like the flat surface of a sledgehammer square on his nose, breaking bone, hopefully forcing some clear into his brain.

  And then she went for it: she swung her head in a tight arc like the weapon it was, slamming it into his nose with all the force she could muster. She heard a crunch. His gun went off. He was down.

  Another shot and a flurry of action; Cole was fighting with two guards now, locked in a whirl of fists and elbows, moving in jerks and grunts. She couldn’t believe Cole was fighting two guys—and winning. Then it was just one guy. Then she saw bloody Jeb up from the floor, heading toward them, aiming.

  “Cole, this one’s got a gun!”

  She didn’t know if she’d helped or hurt with that, but the struggle seemed to change in character, the guard trying to give Jeb a clear shot, Cole trying to prevent it. And then he threw the guy right into Jeb, diving after him. The men hit the f
loor and Jeb’s gun skittered into a far corner, and they were all on the ground. It wasn’t like in the movies where guys fight one at a time—it was both of them teaming up on Cole. Angel spotted two guns on the floor, one quite near her. She wished she could get to it, to do something, anything.

  Blood racing, she eyed Borgola, sprawled below where her right ankle was cuffed to the wall. Was he dead? She didn’t think she’d gotten him hard enough.

  A scream. One of the men writhed on the floor, clutching his elbow, leg stomping sideways at the air. Nearby, a bloody Cole fought Jeb, and Cole wasn’t winning—he was trying to get away, crabwalking backward as Jeb hovered over him, seeming poised for a killing blow. Suddenly Cole scissored his legs around Jeb and actually tossed him, using his legs like arms. Jeb’s head struck the corner of a table and he came to rest in a lump on the floor. Cole sprung up, grabbed him by the hair, slammed his head into the table once more, punched the man with the elbow, then rushed over to Angel.

  “Cole—” she eyed the dark red stain on his T-shirt, horrified.

  “What the hell?” Cole said. “You come back in here?”

  “One of my hair beads dropped. In the safe.”

  He kicked Borgola. Unresponsive. He took his gun and checked it, then tossed it. He checked the other guards. “Keys.”

  “There.” She tipped her head at a hook on the wall where Borgola had hung the keys. Cole grabbed them off and unlocked to cuffs. “Your finger.” He unlocked the left hand cuff gently.

  “Not like I was shot,” Angel said as he moved to her ankles. The blood stain on his shirt seemed to be spreading. She rested her good hand on his arm as she stepped down, then she pulled the two halves of her T-shirt together and made a quick knot.

  He grabbed his glasses and set them back on his face, then he snatched a gun off the floor, checked it. “Is every gun in here empty?” Angrily he tossed it away. Angel grabbed her tool.