by Paula Cox
I stare at her firmly, leaving no room for argument. I won’t hear anything else. We need to keep her safe; we need to keep our child safe. She must sense that I’m not messing around, ’cause she bites her lip and nods. “At least let me see you out.”
“Just outside the door,” I say, “and then straight back inside.”
“I’m right here.” She smiles at me as we walk through the automatic doors and stand for a moment in the winter cold. “You see—I’m safe. Nothing’s going to—”
Her eyes go wide, glancing over my shoulder. The snow, I think numbly, my enforcer brain ticking overtime. The goddamn snow: muffled footsteps. Muffled footsteps—snow. How many times have I used that to my advantage? Goddamn it. I spin, raising my fists, but when I’m about halfway around the bat comes down on my head with a sound like splitting wood. The pain strikes lightning through my skull, into my brain, and my legs are kicked out from beneath me. I land face down in the snow, my mouth full of blood and moisture, my nose smashing down brutally and blood pissing out, turning the white blanket crimson.
I try and roll onto my back, but another strike hits me between the shoulders. I let out a roar, which is immediately stifled with mouthfuls of cold bloody mush.
Faraway, I hear Allison, as though in a dream: “Rust! Rust! Rust! Rust!”
Get up, I tell myself. Get the fuck up right now. Can’t you hear her screaming? Get up, man. Get the fuck up. She’s screaming for you. She’s terrified. Get up, man, get the fuck up! But my arms feel limp from the strike between my shoulder blades and my face is crusted with blood. I manage to roll onto my side, panting, so that I can see Allison’s kicking legs. For a moment it seems like they are all that exists: just two legs, kicking wildly. But then I follow the legs up to her belly…her belly! When I see Bump—and the leathery arm wrapped just beneath Bump—I open my mouth to shout. But all that comes out is a pathetic sigh as snow tumbles down my cheek. I lay my fist into the snow and push with all my strength, but right now it feels like all my strength is being sapped: my back is pulsing making it difficult to move my arms; and my head feels as though it has swollen to twice its usual size.
“The baby!” Allison yells, her voice much quieter now. “Rust, the baby! The baby!”
Her kicking legs become wilder as the leather-wearing man—it’s Trent, that fuck, he circled around and got the jump on me—opens the door to the black SUV and shoves her inside. The baby…the goddamn baby. In my dazed state, I see Mom; I see Mom’s eyes and I see the absolute disregard in them. I hear her voice, ringing out in my head: “I have met a man, and, well…we’re going to start a life together, and you can’t be here, you just can’t …” I remember pushing through the door, head down, hands in my pockets, fourteen years old and walking away, never before or since feeling more rejected. My baby…my fuckin’ baby…I won’t let him feel that same rejection. I won’t let him feel abandoned, deserted, like Mom made me feel.
Somehow, despite the countless aches and pains throughout my body, I manage to climb unsteadily to my feet. I wobble from side to side, but then I’m running, one foot in front of the other, toward the SUV. I see Trent run around the side of the car and jump into the driver’s seat, see Allison trying the door handle—the bastard must have child-locked it—and then kicking the door with both her feet. The door shifts, but only slightly, and I’m still a few meters away when Trent puts the SUV in drive and screeches out of the parking lot, the tires kicking snow all over my face. I sprint after it, panting, fists clenched, thinking of Allison in the back of the car, thinking of Bump, thinking of all the fucked up things Trent is going to do to them. I sprint all the way to the main road, but the car is long gone, weaving through traffic, growing smaller and smaller as I stand here, stunned.
I feel like I stand rooted to this spot for a long time, but it can’t be that long ’cause the car is still in view. But I watch it for an age, it feels like: watch it recede into the distance, taking my lover and my child with it. Allison…and things were just starting to get close. In the office—she was going to say something in the office, wasn’t she? She was going to say something about love…I swallow, feeling like I’m swallowing shards of glass, and then shake my head, trying to shake away the pulsing pain. All that does is make it worse.
“Fuck,” I mutter, and then turn and jog through the parking lot to the pickup. I need to get to the club; I need to rally the men. I need to get everybody out there. Luckily the club isn’t too far from the library, so as I get behind the wheel and rev the engine, I know I only have a short way to go.
But just because the way is short, it does not mean my mind settles down. Immediately, as soon as I start speeding through the traffic, vision hazy from the blood and the snow, feeling like any second I could crash but not caring as long as I can start after Allison and Trent sooner, my mind fills with evil, horrible images. I want to close my eyes to them, to banish them from my mind, but I need to stay alert, focused. I speed down the street, cutting between cars, cutting off cars, damn near killing myself dozens of times. And all the while, playing on a constant loop in my mind, I see Trent leaning over Allison. I see Trent with Allison in his arms, squeezing her too tightly; I see Allison’s face turning red and her begging him to stop. “My baby,” I hear her moan, as Trent bear-hugs her. “My baby. Please…my baby. Please, stop it. My baby. Please …”
“Fuck!” I growl, smacking the steering wheel with my palm when a light turns red. Speeding is one thing; pulling out into the middle of an intersection is another. I need to keep breathing if I’m going to get to Allison. I take out my cell as I wait for the light to change and dial Zeke. No answer. Shackle, no answer. The lights turn green, and I drop my cell and continue to speed down the road. “Fuck! Fuck!”
I see Allison chained to some dirty pipe, my mind cruelly showing me image after image. I see Trent take a big step back, aim with his boot, and then—Allison keels over, weeping, begging for me to save her. She stares at me in my mind, those two green eyes full of reproach, begging me to come and rescue her, demanding to know why I didn’t stop her from being taken. The pain in my shoulders, my head, my face—none of it compares to the pain of knowing that Trent has her, out there, somewhere; and that he’s doing anything he likes to her and Bump.
As I drive, I try and picture the SUV. But it was just a black SUV. I try and picture the plates. Over my years of enforcing, I’ve gotten pretty damn good at picturing plates. One of the skills you need when hunting people down is remembering plates without having to look closely or for a long time at them. So I think back, as I have done dozens of times, and I realize that the SUV had no plates. It was just a black SUV, nondescript, and the plates were removed. I hear myself growl, my chest rumbling like the quaking of the earth before a tsunami hits. He must’ve planned to take her, then; he must’ve planned to kidnap my fuckin’ woman. I grip the steering wheel so hard that my knuckles turn bone-white.
Soon, I am turning into The Damned’ parking lot. I jump from the pickup and I’m walking through the snow when a bout of crippling pain hits me, my head tightening as though screws are being methodically inserted and rotated into my brain. I bring my hands to my head, trying to massage away the pain. That goddamn bat feels like it dislodged something. I try and keep walking toward the clubhouse, but now it seems far away, much farther away than it should. I grind my teeth, but that only makes the pain deeper. I wonder if I’m bleeding inside my skull; I’ve known that to happen to men before when they’ve been hit hard. Maybe I’m bleeding inside my head…maybe this is it, collapsing in the snow without telling anybody what happened to Allison or my child.
“Goddamn it,” I growl. No—I try to growl. Nothing comes out but a soft, hoarse breath: a breath so weak it doesn’t even throw any dragon fog into the air. I stop for a few moments, snow settling and then melting in my beard, and force myself to steady my breathing. Getting irate isn’t going to help save Allison; panicking will not save her. I have to turn off my emotions, I have to forget how muc
h I care; I have to go back to being Rust, the enforcer …
But that’s impossible when there’s a baby in the mix. I can’t do it. ’Cause every time I try and turn my emotions off, I end up thinking of Bump and all the danger my child is in.
Even so, after a few minutes of deep, long breaths, my vision begins to clear and the pain recedes. It is still a massive aching in my skull, but I am able to push it far back where it doesn’t interfere with me. I head toward the clubhouse, ready to rally the men. All the men, now: fuck this scouting shit; fuck this staking-out shit. It’s time we busted down the doors of the unpatched. It’s time we ended this Trent fuck once and for all.
Because if we don’t, I reflect as I head into the bar area, shoving the door with my shoulder, the mother of my child dies. If we don’t find him, the emotion—maybe it’s even love—I have started to feel over these past months turns to ash. And I can’t go back to being cold, and numb, and full of distant hate. And I don’t want that. No, not again, not when I’ve tasted what it’s like to actually have a heart.
Chapter Twenty
Allison
I kick the doors violently, using all my strength, thinking about my baby and nothing else. Absurd thoughts enter my crazed mind, like pushing the baby out and somehow placing them on the side of the road; at least then, my child would be safe. If only that were a possibility. But I have to carry Bump, and I can’t let anything happen. I kick and kick and kick all the way down the road as the evil man who threatened me once before speeds through the traffic. I see him, out of the corner of my eye, glancing at the rear-view mirror, but otherwise he just ignores me for the most part.
Then he turns into a narrow alleyway and leans into the back of the car. He reeks of whiskey and cigarettes: the same smell as Rust, but on him it makes me feel sick.
“If you don’t stop kicking,” he says, his voice calm, “I am going to take a metal pipe and shove it so far up your cunt that fucking kid of yours is going to be able to suck on it. Do you fucking understand me?”
At once, my legs go weak. I look into his eyes, his bright, startling blue eyes: eyes which are almost the color of smooth clean bone. He has a skeletal look about him, the look of death, and I fully believe that he will carry out his threat. He keeps staring at me. I gather he is looking for an answer. I nod numbly. “Yes,” I mutter. “Yes, I understand.”
“Good,” he says, but he does not return to the front of the car. Instead, he just continues to stare at me. We stay like this for a long time. I think back to when he first tried to intimidate me, the day I met Rust, the day my life changed forever. I think back to how strong I was able to be, how self-assured I was able to present myself. All of that is gone now, as he stares at my face, as the tip of his tongue moves over his lips and then his teeth. He grins at me, a mad grin, and then says, “Do you take it from behind, Allison?” My name, my name—did he know my name before? I can’t remember. When I don’t answer, he grunts out a guttural laugh and shakes his head. “I guess we’ll have plenty of time to answer those sorts of questions, eh? Anyway, I hope you won’t mind, but I’ve got to gag and tie you up before we go on. That means I’ve got to step from this here seat and come around the back. So I should give you a warning, you pregnant fucking whore.” He says this almost gleefully, as though feeding from my fear. “If you try anything—if those legs of yours start kicking again—I am going to cut off your finger and make you eat it, okay?”
Without waiting for a response, he climbs from the front seat and walks around to the door closest to my feet. I tell myself to kick him in the face the second he opens the door: kick him in the face as hard as I can and then make a run for it. We’re in an alleyway, so the street cannot be that far away, and with the street there will be people. But the alleyway hasn’t been cleared of snow for some time. It’s thick on the floor, perhaps ankle-height. I wonder how far a four-months pregnant woman can run through ankle-height snow. A four-months pregnant woman whose hands are trembling, whose head is pounding, whose heart is smashing into her ribcage. And then I know I’ve spent too long wondering. Trent is opening the door.
I despise myself as he reaches into his jacket pocket and takes out the black bag. I despise myself as he tugs on my arm, gripping my wrists tightly, and yanks me to an upright position. I despise myself as he secures the bag over my head and ties a rope loosely around my neck, holding it in place. I despite myself as he sits me up, crosses my hands, and ties them together. I keep telling myself to do something, but what am I to do? Fear cripples me, making it so I just sit here and let my captor handle me like butcher’s meat.
When he’s done, I hear him close the door, walk around the car, and climb into the front seat. I am in a world of darkness now. The material of the black bag is thick, closing out what little sunlight manages to beam through the shielded winter clouds. My hands are bound with what feel like zip-ties, biting into my skin. I sit upright, jostling in the car, and then wince as a loud zzzzzzz sounds close to my ear.
From the front, Trent laughs. “This is a modified car,” he says, a note of pride in his voice. “I’m just raising the tinted windows. Wouldn’t want anybody seeing you as we make our merry way, would we?”
I bite down on my lip, the same place I bite when Rust and I are in a particularly passionate situation, only now fear prompts me to bite it. The fear is absolute. The way my wrists are tied, I am able to place my hand on Bump, if at an awkward angle which makes the zip-ties bite into my skin with more sharpness. I stroke Bump, ignoring the pain, and tell myself that I will stay safe for my child. Rust will find me; Rust has to find me. I have to stay safe for Bump. I have to make sure my child survives. If not—but I can’t think about the alternative. I can’t let my mind stray there.
I sit silently, jostling from side to side, completely disoriented. My fear remains, but I manage to push it down, so that it grows quiet and dim. I try and picture the woman who remained calm and in control the first time Trent tried to intimidate me. I try and retain her coldness, her calm. But she was different than me, much different. She did not have a child to worry about. She was not in love—I gasp at the word. Love, yes, because I am sure I am in love with Rust. I am in love with him, and perhaps I will never get a chance to tell him—
“Stop it,” I mutter.
“Huh?” Trent snaps, bringing the SUV to a stop and climbing from the seat.
My body seizes. Has he stopped because I spoke? Is he going to hit me? Is he going to make good on his threats? When he opens the door, I lean away instinctively.
“Oh, come on,” he says, and then his hand wraps around my bound wrists, a hand with no give in it at all, solid and imperative. “Don’t make me hurt you. You wouldn’t want me to enjoy myself too much, would you?”
He tugs at me again, this time with more force, and I fly from the car into what feels like a large warehouse: the noises of cars and horns are muffled, and when I land on the floor echoes sound all around us, multiplying above my head. He pulls on my wrists, not caring when the zip-ties cut into my skin so harshly I’m sure I feel blood blooming around them. Then he drags me across the warehouse floor, our shoes clicking and echoing. I’m wearing small heels, professional heels, and their click-click follows us all the way to the staircase, and then up and up, down a narrow hallway, and into what feels like a smaller room. The echoes die when Trent closes the door.
He returns to me, handling me as though he has handled many bound women before; he does it expertly, quickly and efficiently, moving me here and there and giving me a pinch if I do not move quickly enough. Eventually he pushes me into a chair, ties me around the waist just under Bump with a length of rope, and takes the black bag from my head. I wince, squinting as light darts into my eyes, into my head, making it ache and pound. For a long time, the light blinds me, and then, slowly, my eyes begin to adjust.
I am sitting in what looks like the office of some factory: a large window off to one side which once might have overlooked the factory floo
r but is now covered with boards of wood and nails; a corner desk with a swivel chair; boxes spilling out notepads and staplers and hole-punches and packets of pens and rulers and pencils and erasers. I sit in the direct center of the room on a wooden chair, and Trent sits opposite me, back to me, cellphone beside him on the table, gun resting near his cellphone, and a dozen computer monitors laid out before him. The monitors show CCTV footage of hallways and rooms, all of which are full of leather-wearing men holding heavy rifles and pistols.
Trent turns to me, a gleeful smile on his face. “Look,” he says, waving at the monitors. “Do you see what I have done? Oh, I am clever, aren’t I? I used to mess around with electronics when I was a kid, you know. All sorts of things, circuit boards, the insides of digital watches, light fuses, computers, anything I could get my hands on. And then my father said I should be a football player or a wrestler or something cool and manly and he decided the best way to make me understand this was to beat me every night with a knuckle-duster he kept hanging on the coat hook in the living room. But I never forgot, oh no.” With his forefinger, he taps the shaved side of his head. “It all stayed up here—and so this is my fortress, my labyrinth. We have toilets and beds: barracks, you could call them. We have men to make food runs. We have it all. No way your Rust knight saves you here, pregnant slut.”