by M. C. Adams
“Same hostel, room 318. He’s expecting you in half an hour. I’ll be watching you through surveillance cameras. I’m no more than five minutes away.”
Five minutes! Dueling voices clamored in her head. A timid voice shouted, A lot can happen in five minutes! I’ll be a gutted carcass in five minutes. A more confident voice yelled, That’s plenty of time to kill that SOB!
As if aware of her mental debate, Mike added a reassuring, “Relax; you don’t need me.”
“You’re sure it’s Ivan?”‘
“Yeah. Looking at the surveillance footage now. Got a visual this time. It’s Ivan.”
Still hesitant to hang up the phone, she deliberated over discussing the syringe, but her argument seemed senseless. Again, she decided against telling him, and they said their goodbyes. “Poppy, you got this.”
Alexa nodded. “I know, Mike. I know.”
It’s show time, better get dressed. She took a big gulp of her drink and gargled the alcohol till her throat burned before swallowing. Piece by piece, she donned the dominatrix garb. She lined her lips with a crimson stain, her mouth forming a perfect “O” in the dresser mirror. Alexa pressed her red lips together tight and forced them open, making a delectable smacking sound. She grabbed the syringe leftover from the Castro operation and screwed an eighteen-gauge needle on the tip. Oh, and the handgun! She disassembled and reassembled the gun while humming to herself before placing it in its holster. Safety off, Lex.
She took a few moments to visualize the event, same as before, only the images were clearer this time after having been inside the building. She reminded herself to wait until she was inside the room and the door was closed. After a couple quick run-throughs, she opened her eyes and grabbed the syringe. She wrapped the trench coat around her scantily clad physique and stepped out the door.
CHAPTER 33
As she marched toward Ivan’s building, Alexa repeated a mantra to herself. I will kill you, Ivan Verden. She repeated the words until she reached the hall to Ivan’s room. Perhaps less aware of her surroundings tonight, she didn’t hear the background noises of the patrons in the other rooms as she walked down the hall.
Room 318. Ivan’s room. Alexa’s knuckles rapped on the door. Then with her right hand, she smoothed the fabric of the coat where it covered the gun. Her left hand held the syringe buried in her palm.
The door swung open wide. His face was unmistakable; the brown eyes, the scar over the brow; it was Ivan Verden. Alexa felt her breath escape her. He wore a tight-fitting white tank, nothing like the outfits in his photos. His tattooed arms were exposed, as well as the scar over his carotid. I will kill you, Ivan Verden. She managed a wild-eyed smirk and entered the room without invitation. Ivan leaned his frame against the open door while his gaze followed Alexa’s steps. He held a stone face, but his eyes twinkled with anticipation. Alexa slowly untied her belt and revealed her dominatrix ensemble. A furrow developed on his brow for a moment. He dislikes my outfit. But his countenance changed, and a devilish look entered his eyes. Alexa watched the open door with hesitation. Shut the goddamn door! Instead he placed one hand on the doorframe and motioned with the other for her to spin around. She winced at the thought of waiting another moment to shoot him, but he wouldn’t close the goddamn door. She opened the front of the trench further and pulled the top of the coat down to her shoulders. She couldn’t lower the coat anymore, or it would show the handgun concealed over her left flank. She turned halfway, making a seductive pose with her head still facing Ivan. She turned her head to the other side to look over the opposite shoulder.
When her head turned, the door slammed shut, and Ivan made a swift move toward her. Fuck! In that disoriented second, he grabbed her from behind. His left arm wrapped around her neck, and his right hand cinched her upper arm. His tongue moved along the side of her cheek. Alexa squirmed to get away. She didn’t scream. He didn’t say a word. They struggled in silence. He swiftly lifted her off the ground and carried her toward the bed. He held her right arm too tight for her to grab the concealed gun. Somehow, Ivan hadn’t noticed it pressed between their bodies. His mouth moved down to her left shoulder, and he sank his teeth into her flesh. She saw his actions in a mirror that faced the bed.
His right hand reached across her torso toward her left arm. He hadn’t yet trapped the hand that clasped the syringe. She maneuvered the device in her palm and shoved the needle into Ivan’s thigh. She withdrew and tried to stab again. Her hand cut through the air, but he avoided her aim. He smashed her head into the footboard of the bed frame. The flimsy particleboard cracked under the force. He released her body, and she fell limp to the floor.
In the moment of freedom, still on her knees, she fumbled for the gun, pulling it from its holster. But she was too slow; Ivan smacked the gun from her hand and it flew across the room, rattled against the floor, and slid into the wall without firing. No weapon — it was what she had feared from the beginning. Ivan’s face broke into a monstrous scowl. He is enjoying this, and he’s ready to beat the crap out of me.
He lurched toward her and picked her up off the ground by her throat. Her feet kicked the air; her body dangled wildly like a puppet on a string. His stare burned into her skull as though he were trying to read her thoughts. Alexa dug the nails of her right hand into the arm that held her. He reached up and secured her hand.
As the veins in his neck popped out, she eyed the scar over his carotid. Alexa pulled the plunger of the syringe back with her left thumb, and air filled the empty chamber. In a single swift movement, she aimed the needle and plunged the syringe into Ivan’s neck. His face flinched slightly. Just as she presumed, the scar tissue had little sensation, and he probably thought it was her fingernails at his throat. Ivan tightened his vice grip on her. She grew weak, and her feet stopped kicking. She strained to breathe as black spots danced across her vision. She fumbled with the plunger in her hand, struggling to push the air from the syringe. The room started to fade from view. The pain at her throat was numbing, the lack of oxygen debilitating. Ivan’s face turned black.
A sound emanated through the darkness. The struggle with Ivan seemed like a distant memory. Alexa’s mother called to her. Alexa! Alexa!
Mom? Mom. There’s something I need to say. Something I forgot to say. . . . The thought escaped her.
And then there were waves of pain. She couldn’t pinpoint where they came from. Sound returned. She heard yelling and heavy breathing. The pain was followed by dizziness and nausea. A warm, wet sensation rolled down her cheek.
I’m crying. I’m not dead. No — Ivan is having his way with me. He’s torturing me!
Her mother’s voice continued to echo in her head. As it became louder, it took an eerie twist. It was her name she heard, but the voice was not her mother’s. It was the gruff voice of a male. Ivan! Alexa forced her eyes to open, although the rest of her body refused to respond to her commands. The light stung her retinas, amplifying the nausea, and she closed her eyes again tightly. I’m going to vomit. But I can’t move.
She heard her name again, and this time she recognized the voice. It wasn’t Ivan — Mike! She made another meager attempt to open her eyes. She tolerated the light better this time, and she started to make out some of what she was seeing. She was moving. Mike was carrying her. The combination of motion and light was too much to bear; she convulsed, and then vomited. Mike managed to turn her just in time for the vomit to land on the street.
“There you go, Poppy girl. You’re gonna be all right. Everything’s gonna be just fine. You did good. I’m proud of you.”
He continued murmuring such things, but the words slurred together in her mind. She couldn’t process anything clearly. The sensation was like being severely hungover and drunk at the same time, and it left her feeling as though she’d had a stroke. Yes. She felt like she’d suffered brain damage. Oh, fuck! What did that son-of-a-bitch do to me? She feared the worst and contemplated scenarios in which Ivan had managed to beat her senseless. All the whil
e, her senses slowly regained function. She could move her extremities. She became more alert. Mike’s words became clearer, and she could see well enough to know where she was.
He had put her into the van from the previous night. Mike, the dark-haired driver, and a new man who sat in Captain Kirk’s seat were with her. At the back of the van next to Mike lay a large black bag. A body bag — an empty body bag.
“Mi — ” Alexa’s voice broke off. Damn, it hurts to talk. She couldn’t ask the questions plaguing her mind.
Mike interrupted. “He’s dead, Poppy. You did it. Hell if I know how. You didn’t leave a mark on the man, but you did it.”
She frowned. She didn’t remember killing Ivan, and the body bag was empty. She tried again to ask, but she couldn’t form the words. Her throat burned something fierce. It wasn’t the only place that hurt.
Mike continued. “He strangled you. I thought you were a goner. But you came through after all. As far as I can tell, he took a bite from your shoulder, broke your collarbone, and bruised your forehead. That’s all.”
That’s all? Alexa looked down to her collarbone. Her frown deepened. Clearly, her left clavicle was broken and deformed. She closed her eyes and imagined what her x-ray would look like and what her dictation of the exam would read. Fracture of the junction of the middle and distal thirds of the left clavicle with angulation and inferior displacement of the distal fracture fragment.
Alexa tried to move her left arm. Excruciating pain ran over her, but she was glad to pinpoint the source of the agony. Her head ached, too. Worse than a migraine, her head hurt inside and out, and she could feel the bruise developing on her forehead. I’m exhausted. There’s something about losing consciousness that really wears a body down. And it’s still hard to breathe. Her throat was swollen, and it felt as though her airway was half of its normal size. She used the majority of her energy to breathe.
With some difficulty, she managed to put her fingers on the source of the pain in her throat. She traced the mid portion of her neck with her right index and middle fingers. She came across a sharp jutting bone in the middle of her neck. Another shockwave of pain ran through her. Another broken bone — my hyoid bone. That son-of-a-bitch broke my hyoid bone trying to strangle me.
During her first year of radiology training, Alexa had encountered a case of a hyoid bone fracture on a CT of the cervical spine. The physician ordering the study had asked her about the clinical relevance of a hyoid bone fracture, and she informed him that hyoid bone fractures are infrequently seen motor vehicle accidents, blunt trauma to the neck, and strangulation attempts. The associated soft tissue swelling could lead to airway constriction and asphyxia.
Alexa concentrated hard on her breathing. She pushed each breath in and out of the small airway as if breathing through a straw. Asphyxia. The process was labor intensive. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep it up. Her airway was too swollen to provide adequate oxygenation.
Mike shook Alexa’s shoulder. The movement made her broken clavicle throb. “Poppy. Open your eyes. I need to see your eyes. You’re not out of the woods yet.”
Asphyxia. Alexa opened her eyes. I can’t breathe! She reached a panicked arm toward Mike. Her hand flailed about.
“Shit!” He yelled as her world turned dark once more.
Fuck you, Ivan Verden. I hope you rot in Hell. . . . Her thoughts blurred, and her world fell silent.
CHAPTER 34
During the prolonged silence, she didn’t open her eyes. She didn’t talk. She didn’t dream. She didn’t breathe. Mike was at her bedside when she awoke. Her neurons began firing all at once; the sensation was jarring. I’m supposed to be dead. She couldn’t remember the details of the preceding events. She looked around with hesitation. She saw Mike’s face, but it took a long, thorough gaze before she found his features familiar. She didn’t recognize anything else.
A current of air moved in and out of an orifice in the center of her throat, startling her. She reached up to investigate the phenomenon. One of her fingers passed into the orifice, shocking her to the core. Alexa’s bottom lip quivered spasmodically, and her eyes instantly filled with tears.
Mike grabbed her shaking hand and forced it down to the bed. “None of that, now. You hear me?” His voice was authoritative and patriarchal.
She frowned at his tone. She didn’t allow the pools of saltwater to roll down her cheeks. He watched her fight back the tears, and slowly her vision cleared.
He continued. “You stopped breathing on me. I had no choice but to take you here.”
Here meant the hospital.
“After a couple of failed intubation attempts, a surgeon cut that hole in your neck and put a tube down your throat to help you breathe. A ventilator kept you alive the last two days. I came by a few times. You just mumbled in you sleep, mostly. They pulled that tube about an hour ago, once you could breathe on your own again.” He released her hand.
“Ivan beat you up pretty bad — worse than I thought. But you got the best of him.” He winked and grinned down at her.
Ivan. She remembered now. She remembered struggling to breathe in the van. She remembered the empty body bag in the back of the vehicle. Empty body bag — Alexa perseverated on the words. Ivan was dead, but the bag was empty. A thought suddenly occurred to her: The bag wasn’t meant for Ivan. It was meant for me!
“You’ve been here two days, Alexa,” he murmured. “Can you talk?”
She was afraid to speak. She couldn’t get used to the feeling of her breath moving in and out of the hole in her neck. She ignored his question and looked down at her left clavicle. Still deformed. Wow. I’m unconscious for two days, and they can’t even fix my deformed collarbone? She rolled her eyes to herself.
“I need to hear you try to talk. Doc said your voice should be okay. You broke some little bone in your neck, but he put a pin in it. Can you try to talk?”
No. Ivan broke a bone in my neck — my hyoid bone. He broke my hyoid bone. Her eyes made another exaggerated roll. The situation irritated her. She sighed deeply, but the air coming out the tracheostomy in her neck made an even more irritating whistling sound as it passed. Wow. This is sexy. I have a deformed shoulder and a hole in my throat.
With those thoughts of vanity, Alexa realized she still cared greatly for her own well-being. She cared for her appearance and her safety. What the fuck was I thinking by getting myself into this mess?
“Poppy, please say something. . . .”
Alexa sighed again. Damn that whistling. She scolded herself for forgetting so quickly. She looked up at Mike and opened her mouth with hesitation. “Mi-ke.” Her voice cracked, and didn’t sound like her own. The words resonated low in her throat rather than her nasopharynx, and exited both her mouth and the tracheostomy. The sensation was even more peculiar than merely breathing through the tracheostomy. Beyond that, it was painful; not excruciatingly painful, but there was a dull soreness that accompanied her attempt.
“All right, that’s more like it.” He grinned.
She forced a meager smile. “Wh-er-e’s Iv-a-n?” She tried to make the words come out her mouth only, but it was useless trying to stop the air from flowing out of her neck. This time the “s” sound made little droplets of saliva spray out of the tracheostomy hole. She stared at Mike, willing him to answer her and ignore her spitting.
He looked puzzled by her question. “He’s dead,” he whispered.
She waited to hear more. But it was all he said. “His b-o-dy?” she asked. It hurt to get the words out, but she needed to know where they put him.
Mike dropped his voice even lower and neared her ear. “We needed to leave Ivan in the hostel. He has to be found dead in his room. I know that might not make a lot of sense to you, but it’s the message we needed to make. We needed to kill him quietly, remember, without a signature, and let him be found by his cohorts. We took pictures of his body, sent them to our allies. His body may not be found for a couple of days. It’s probably better that
way.” His focus turned to a window in the corner of the room.
Alexa nodded to herself. The body bag was indeed for me. They never planned on moving Ivan’s body from the hostel. She wanted to sigh, but she stopped herself this time.
His face turned back to her. “You remember it all?”
The events flashed through her head, and she nodded. Yes. She remembered the second night she almost let a man kill her, and she remembered struggling to push the plunger on the syringe. Yes. I did push the plunger, and that syringe saved my life. For a moment, she felt proud of herself. Her plan B succeeded when their plan failed.
As if reading her mind, Mike scratched his head and asked, “Can you tell me how you killed him? Looks like you stabbed him. I grabbed a syringe from the floor. I had the lab run it for tests. They didn’t find any poison.”
She took pleasure in his confusion. Bursting with pride at this point, she muttered, “Air em-bol-ism.”
His forehead became a maze of wrinkles, resulting in an even more dumbfounded expression. She swallowed hard, saliva gurgling out of her tracheostomy site. She tried again, this time covering the hole with her hand. “I in-ject-ed air in-to the blood to his br-ain.”
“That’s what killed him?”
She nodded. “Slow-ly,” she stammered. She imagined what Ivan was doing to her as he was dying. She pictured his arms wrapped around her neck, her bones breaking under the pressure. He could have broken my neck. I could be paralyzed. Or I could be in that body bag.
“Gotcha. Hell, whatever works. I could have sworn you poisoned the bastard.” Mike turned to her accusingly. “You know, that wasn’t part of the plan.” He raised an eyebrow.
“I kno-w,” she murmured. She didn’t feel up to a lecture from him right now. “I want to wa-lk.” Her body needed to move. She tried to sit up. Moving felt exhausting and liberating all at once. She felt the catheter tubing that led to her bladder shuffle against her legs, and she peered at the compression devices attached to her legs to prevent blood clots. Mike reached over to help her just as a nurse walked into the room. She helped Alexa sit up.