A Harmless Little Plan (Harmless #3)

by Meli Raine

  But how are they connected to Nolan Corning?

  Tap tap tap.

  Someone’s knocking on the front door.

  John’s body lunges, flying over me, arms and legs extended like he’s a flying squirrel. I rotate slightly just before he lands on me.

  Big mistake.

  His hip bone digs into mine like two foreheads cracking, my left leg going up as he rolls, the pain of his jeans button scraping along my inner thigh. My hands are in front of me and some muscle in my shoulder pulls so hard the pain blinds me, leaving me screaming without sound.

  I’m close to fainting again.

  “Jesus, Lindsay. Be more careful.” John’s mocking words heat up my ear, his breath smelling like garlic and darkness. I close my eyes, the brush of my bare calf against his jeans like singeing my skin with a hot branding iron. My breasts feel heavy against my chest. The cool air makes my nipples tighten reflexively.

  Shame ripples through me as they pucker. The last time that happened, the muscles moved from arousal.

  Not terror.

  “Get in here,” I hear Stellan say to someone. The door slams shut. I can look through the open bedroom door and see sections of the hallway. Pale shadows cover the wall. A woman comes into the room, her head turned around as she still talks to Stellan, who is handling her roughly.

  She turns around.

  It’s Jane.

  Jane.

  I open my mouth to say her name but nothing comes out, because John casually presses his forearm against my throat. Something pops in my neck, right where a man’s Adam’s apple would be. It feels like a chicken bone caught in my trachea.

  I can’t breathe. He’s pressing so hard I can’t breathe.

  Jane’s eyes catch mine. She’s an animal, feral and caught in a trap, her breathing erratic, her face pale with shock.

  Jane is no accomplice.

  She’s a victim.

  I can’t think. My vision swims. Instinct makes me grab John’s arm, fighting. I need to breathe, my chest spasming. I kick hard, finding leverage, losing it as he effortlessly presses the palm of his other hand on my pubic bone, hard.

  I’m trapped.

  I’m dying.

  I’m fading out.

  “Lindsay! God, no,” I hear Jane say as if she’s underwater, except I’m the one who’s drowning.

  So this is how I die.

  Naked in Drew’s bed with Jane watching.

  Where are you, Drew?

  I love you.

  And then the world folds up neatly into a pinpoint of light that closes in on itself to become nothing.

  Just like me.

  Drew

  Another female voice, screaming Lindsay’s name.

  Fuck.

  “I slid the note under the door,” Tiffany says, walking on those tiny stilettos, holding a compact mirror and some kind of pale beige makeup stick thing. “But your camera crew’s still not here.”

  “They’re on their way,” I say tersely. The drill has to be turned on. No time for delays. Whoever is screaming Lindsay’s name is crying out for a reason.

  Time is of the essence.

  The drill sounds like a thousand rocks being ground up by giants using a mortar and pestle, but I use it anyway, scoring a three foot by three foot chunk of wallboard, popping it out, finding insulation. With my bare hands, I pull it out, locating the electrical outlet. My fingers feel like sausages. I’m sweating like a pig, but my throat is dry. The second knuckle of my right index finger won’t move properly.

  I force it to move.

  “Did you just kill her?” I hear distinctly, a woman’s panicked voice loud and clear. Now that the thin wallboard, exposed along with pipes, electrical wires and ducts, is all that separates me from Lindsay, I have a better sense of what’s going on.

  And this does not sound good.

  “Let go of her. Jesus,” says a man. Gagging sounds, then the distinct choking of someone vomiting.

  “Lindsay, I’m so sorry, oh my God are you breathing? Are you okay?” The woman’s voice is familiar, but I don’t have time to figure this out. I slip the fiberoptic camera through the holes in the electrical outlet. It’s like putting a cooked noodle through a key hole.

  I attach it to the phone Silas gave me, press a button, and --

  Holy fucking shit.

  Lindsay’s naked, on her belly, the soles of her feet facing me. She’s the source of that choking sound, dry heaving, her shoulders rising up, hair spilling away from me.

  The mystery woman is Jane.

  Stellan’s to the left and John is on the bed with Lindsay, not touching her. With a firm grip on Jane’s arm, Stellan looks like he’s calling the shots.

  “She could give us good info, you idiot. Don’t choke her yet.”

  Yet.

  He grabs a piece of paper out of Jane’s hand. “What the hell is this? A message from Corning? What the fuck is he up to, John?”

  Corning.

  I go cold. Sucks to be right. Nolan Corning, Harry’s chief rival in his own political party, is behind everything. Processing the implications of this is impossible in real time. Absorbing the shock is critical, though. This explains it all, right down to my being set up and the technology advantage – among others – that Stellan, Blaine and John have had all along.

  I also realize that if Stellan is openly talking about the guy in front of Jane and Lindsay, he’s planning to kill them both.

  Thinking about Nolan Corning is a luxury I can’t afford now. John shouts, “How the hell should I know? What’s it say?”

  “Says the neighbor’s having remodeling work done on her apartment and she apologizes for any noise.”

  Bzzzzz.

  I take that as my cue to turn on the drill and finish scoring the square I’ll punch out shortly. The element of surprise is my only weapon.

  Emphasis on only.

  My attention has to stay on the drill, but I’m not stupid, I look at the phone screen as well. John’s grabbing Lindsay and rolling her on her back. She’s groaning. Jane is in Stellan’s grasp, shaking. Her knees look like they’re about to give out.

  “Fucking neighbor getting home improvements,” Stellan mutters, crumpling the note and throwing it right at the outlet where I’m observing. It pings, then bounces, rolling under my bed.

  My bed.

  Fury takes over, my emotions unrestrained as I watch my woman on my bed, naked and in peril. This is the first time she’s ever been to my apartment, and those fuckers do it like this?

  She’s groaning, which means she’s alive. A nasty red line crosses her neck. I see bruises and small spots of blood on her legs.

  They’ve hurt her.

  Just how badly have they hurt her?

  I should have a strategy here, some sort of plan for what to do after I rescue her. Right now, the plan is:

  1. Break into the bedroom and use the element of surprise as a tactic.

  2. Kill John and Stellan.

  3. Get Jane and Lindsay to safety.

  4. Hand off Jane.

  5. Run far, far away with Lindsay and tell the world to fuck off.

  But numbers one and two are paramount. The rest can’t happen if I don’t do them.

  “Look,” I hear Lindsay say in a weird, strained voice. “Let Jane go. Why is she here? Just -- ” Her shaky sigh makes rage run through my bloodstream. “Just leave her alone. She didn’t do anything.”

  “Nothing other than feed you information for years when you were on the Island,” Stellan says.

  The room goes stone cold quiet.

  I pause. Drilling sounds should be intermittent to keep up the ruse, I remind myself. But I pause to watch my phone screen.

  Jane is staring at Lindsay.

  Whose eyes are closed, body trembling violently.

  If I’m lucky, I’ve got two to three minutes left to get in there and save her. The clock races faster than my pulse. I have to catch up.

  The toolkit contains the simple tools I ne
ed to penetrate the wall, but it also has two .380 caliber handguns in there. I need a clear line and a few seconds to pick off one of them.

  The problem is -- what will the second guy do?

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jane and Lindsay say in unison. I ignore them, turning the drill on again, scoring the wall. I penetrate slowly, feeling my way so I go through the wallboard just enough to be able to kick out the chunk I score, but not enough to pop through the other side. That would make what I’m doing obvious.

  And that could kill Lindsay.

  “Shut the dumb bitch up,” Stellan says, followed by a weird ripping sound. Muffled, higher-pitched sounds come through the wallboard, but I keep a steady hand as I cut the wall. Then I look at my phone.

  They’ve taped Jane’s mouth shut.

  And John is ripping more duct tape for a go at Lindsay’s face.

  Once you mute a person, you remove a distinct part of their humanity. If they won’t let Lindsay talk, then they’re done with her. If they were smart, they’d pump her for information, but they’re not smart. They’re tools of evil and evil, apparently, doesn’t give a shit what Lindsay knows.

  She’s a tool, too.

  One that gets the job done by being dead.

  I finish scoring the square and grab my weapon. Then I pause, closing my eyes, imagining in my mind’s eye the next set of steps. Muscle memory can’t be accessed for this set of maneuvers. I have to go deeper, to the part of me that runs entirely on instinct, with a singular goal:

  Save Lindsay.

  Everyone else is collateral.

  Including me.

  Chapter 8

  Lindsay

  I can’t breathe.

  Duct tape covers my mouth, my tongue retreating as the cold, sticky tape smacks over my lips. If I were thinking, I’d have made sure my tongue protruded so I could fight the tape later.

  But I don’t believe in “later” anymore.

  Later is a luxury for people who have a future.

  I sink into the bed, my body a tense noodle. I’ve collapsed and given up, but my muscles haven’t received the message yet, tight and reactive, ready to flee or fight.

  I can’t do either of those, and I already froze.

  Time to just wait to be killed.

  “Let’s do her first,” Stellan says to John, looking overtly at Jane.

  Stellan walks quickly, a flash of movement coming toward me out of the corner of my eye, and suddenly my face is on fire. The shock of having the duct tape ripped off my face makes my jaw pop, my mouth screaming in agony, tears filling my eyes and making it impossible to see.

  “Before we do that, I want some answers from Lindsay after all,” he says, giving John a series of weird looks, his eyes flitting to the wall to my right.

  What the hell is so interesting about that wall? Someone’s doing maintenance work next door. Who cares?

  “Leave Jane alone,” I choke out, looking at her. She’s gagging, and I hope she doesn’t throw up, because she’ll suffocate to death. Tears stream down her eyes and she’s just standing there, completely shut down, Stellan holding her arm, giving John hell.

  “Fuck off,” he says to Stellan. “You keep changing orders, and we’re running out of time.”

  “Why are you doing this at all?” I croak out. “You won’t tell me why me, but tell me why. Why do you want to do this?”

  Stellan lets go of Jane, who crumples to the floor, as if she’s been held up entirely by his grip. He moves with catlike grace, a sickening athleticism to his motion. It’s captivating.

  I’m captivated.

  Or just captive.

  His hand reaches out, my body jerking in strange movements as I struggle to breathe properly, my throat still swollen and hot from John’s choke hold. The sizzle of his skin against mine makes my abdominal muscles curl in, as if they’re trying to roll me away from him. Protect me. Secure me.

  “Oh, Lindsay,” Stellan says in a sad voice, as if I’ve disappointed him. He sounds like every teacher who realized I didn’t understand a math concept, like my mother after a campaign appearance where I didn’t smile enough, like Daddy when I tried to do better.

  “You really are naive, aren’t you?” With an attitude so close to tenderness it re-ignites my fear sensors, he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a blade.

  Jane’s on the floor, scrambling to stand up, breathing hard, making little mewling noises as she spots the knife.

  Instead of cutting me, Stellan does something else, my braced body flinching as I hear the snap of the plastic zip tie around my wrists being cut. Then he holds the blade up to my face, poking lightly at the soft, thin skin under my right eye. One tiny move and he’ll pierce my eyeball. I can’t blink. Can’t flinch. Can’t react, because I could be the instrument of my own blinding.

  Carefully, almost theatrically, Stellan lowers the knife, folds it in half, and shoves it in his back pocket. His hands cup my face, cradling my jaw as he studies me, tilting his head to and fro, eyes crawling over my features like he’s determining my value.

  Like an appraiser at an antiques show.

  Like a courier delivering a sex slave.

  And then he kisses me. The gesture throws me into a strange place inside, like I’m at a freak show carnival and I’m one of the acts. Everything goes crooked and off key. My lips are cold, still stinging from Stellan ripping off the duct tape, and feel like soft plastic. Stellan’s lips are warm and wet, slippery with power as he pulls me roughly to him, my nipples brushing against the fabric of his button-down shirt. With Drew, this would be erotic, arousing, pleasurable – maddeningly ecstatic.

  It feels like death with Stellan, as if I’m a corpse and he’s kissing me, my blood stopped and my heart a cold piece of meat in my chest, unyielding.

  I cannot react. I hold my breath, hoping he’ll stop, knowing he won’t.

  Then he pulls away and gives me a loving smile that doesn’t match the violent look in his eyes.

  And he slaps me so hard across the face that I fall off the bed into a heap, at Jane’s feet.

  Then he rips the tape off Jane’s mouth as she lets out weird, wounded sounds like an animal caught in a trap, halfway through gnawing off its leg.

  “Because,” Stellan says calmly as Jane sobs, bending over to help me, my hair covering my chest, my nakedness on display, “because we can, Lindsay. If you could do anything you wanted and know you’d never be caught, what would you do? How far would you go?”

  “This – this isn’t some stupid horror movie, Stellan!” Jane blurts out as her hands slip under my armpits, gently helping to prop me against the wall. He must be wearing a ring, because there’s a nasty slash on my upper eyelid, a long, hot cut that feels like lightning.

  “Oh, God, shut her up, too,” Stellan says. “She’s just an extra.” An extra? From the way she’s acting, it’s very clear she’s not in on this.

  John grabs Jane, who tries to struggle, but she keeps looking at me. She knows I’m her fate. Whatever they do to me, she’s next.

  “WHY?” I scream. “Why? Just because you want to isn’t a good enough reason. It’s weak. You’re weak. You’re just doing this because someone’s pulling your strings. You’re too stupid to pull this off on your own.” I harden my voice, taunting them on purpose. Why not? What the hell do I have to lose?

  Stellan’s taste is still in my mouth. I breathe slowly, imagining his cells floating out of me on my outbreath, evicting him from my body.

  “You think we’re the stupid ones?” John barks, laughing. A drill next door starts up again, the sound louder, closer. John and Stellan move even closer to that wall, giving each other those disquieting looks again. Whatever they’re planning to do to me, it’s imminent. Any second now, I won’t be alive.

  DREW! my mind screams. I can’t stop thinking about him, how he’s failed me, how all my hopes and dreams are gone now.

  My last gasp of hope fades out as I stand, shoulders back, and walk
across the room, confronting them. If I’m going to die, I’ll do it on my terms.

  I won’t be a scared little rabbit anymore. Not for these last seconds of my life.

  John’s eyes narrow, and Stellan flattens his palm against the wall, annoyed by my presence, his other hand moving in an arc, ready to hit me.

  So I grab John by the back of the neck and make him kiss me.

  Drew

  Is she kissing John?

  Is Lindsay really kissing John by choice?

  Completely shocked by what I’m seeing on my screen, I hesitate, then regroup.

  My mission hasn’t changed.

  I’m still here to save her.

  But is she kissing him because this is all part of some sick plan of hers?

  Or worse – is she in on her own kidnapping?

  I reel back. The world ripples, like I’m under the surface, looking up through crystal clear blue water and a rainstorm begins.

  Then it clears.

  The reason she’s kissing him like that has nothing to do with saving her. Divorce the thought, Foster.

  Analysis later.

  Action now.

  “The pipes look good,” I call back toward the hallway in a disguised voice, Tiffany rushing over, looking worried.

  “Okay, Pete!” she says in an exaggerated voice as I flip my phone screen over. The last thing she needs to see is a naked woman in a bedroom with another woman and two guys next door.

  Then she whispers, “Where’s the camera crew? I’ve got everything ready.”

  Everything is ready? I don’t know what she means by that. I don’t care.

  “Good,” I say loudly, dropping my voice.

  “Is your nice friend coming back? He said he’d get the camera equipment and be back soon, to start filming.” Tiffany frowns. “I want to make sure I’m doing everything I can so this is successful. I need to move up the ladder in my career. I hate what I do for a living now.” She shrugs. “It pays the bills, but...”

  Her nattering becomes background static as I think about what’s happening on the other side of this thin wall. Lindsay’s kissing John, walking naked around that room – my bedroom – like she owns the place.