Third Strike

by Zoe Sharp

  The pain had a jagged quality all its own, ripping out chunks of my nervous system and spinning them away like debris from an explosion, so that some parts of my mind seemed magnified a hundred times and others were just big blank holes of frenzied nothingness.

  Next thing I knew I was on the floor, my body rigid. I was peripherally aware that my head was banging on the concrete and that was probably not a good thing, but I couldn’t stop the twitching dance of my limbs. My hands had distorted into the twisted claws of an arthritis-ravaged geriatric. I couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. It was the worst cramp I’d ever had in my life, the most violent fever, the meanest hangover, all rolled into one.

  After that, I don’t remember much. They handled me roughly, yanked at my clothes, stuck something sharp in my arm. I think I heard someone groaning out the word, “Bitch!” over and over.

  Then the corners of the room folded in neatly over my head, and I went under.

  The first things that struck me, when I came round, was the nagging ache in my shoulders and wrists, and the nasty tingling in my fingers. I’d been sleeping, but something was very wrong with the angle. My head was lolling forwards into space, overextending my neck muscles.

  They had strung me up, I realized belatedly, with all my weight hanging from restraints round my wrists. Padded restraints, by the feel of it, so they didn’t mark me. How kind.

  I lifted my head, miscalculated how heavy it had suddenly become and had to right myself with a jerk that did nothing for the pain everywhere else. I wondered how long I’d been left like that. Not long, I reckoned, or I would have suffocated like a crucifixion victim.

  “Back with us, huh?” said a woman’s voice I couldn’t immediately place. There was something familiar about the words, though. I waded sluggishly through my memory, sifting. My father. That was it. He’d said the same thing when I came round in hospital after I was shot. Shot. My father. My mother. New York. Boston. Parker. Texas. Storax. Terry. Vondie.

  Reality arrived like a subway train, bringing with it a wheezing rush of information. On reflection, I think I preferred things when they were more fuzzy.

  I opened my eyes. Somebody had brought in an easy chair and Vondie was reclining elegantly on it in front of me. The chair had been carefully placed out of my reach, even if I’d had the energy to try. She was leafing through a file contained in a thick manila folder and swinging her crossed foot negligently.

  She’d taken the time to primp while I’d been gone, I saw. Her platinum blond hair was immaculately pleated behind her head and her makeup was flawless. It helped to disguise the thick nose I’d given her, even if it failed to conceal the damage completely.

  It didn’t take long to work out why she’d gone to the trouble, and the realization sent a greasy slither of fear coiling through my belly. They’d stripped me naked before they’d dangled me from the ceiling. Never a state of affairs that’s going to make you compare well to another woman and feel good about yourself. Not when she’s tall and slim and wearing a fistful of designer labels, at any rate. Quite a change from the chainstore brands she’d sported on the UK job.

  I forced my stiffened legs to uncurl, biting back a groan as I straightened my feet out with slow, deliberate effort onto the cold floor beneath them, so I could take some weight off my arms.

  They’d hung me just high enough so that, when I stood upright, the best I could do with my arms was bend my elbows a little, but they were still largely numb from the restricted blood flow. Eventually being cut down, I recognized ruefully, was going to hurt like a bastard.

  “Did I miss anything exciting while I was asleep?” I said around a furred tongue.

  Vondie smiled without looking up from her study, as though I wasn’t worth any greater response. I waited in silence, muscles shivering, while she played her games, knowing I’d been through this before, or something very like it, and emerged more or less intact.

  When I’d been undergoing my Special Forces training, they’d allowed the full-fledged boys to have first crack at interrogating us. It was a matter of pride that they broke us, as they’d been broken in their time, and though I’d held out longer than most, they got to me in the end. They got to everybody in the end.

  Vondie finished reading her page and looked up with a smile.

  “Your record’s impressive, Charlie—in places,” she said. “Shame you didn’t make the grade for Special Forces, though. That must have stung—being one of the dropouts. The failures. Tell me, were you really raped, or were you just hoping you could screw your way to a pass? Should have started with the instructors. Oh, wait a minute—” She glanced back at the page briefly, raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. “You did.”

  “Why?” I asked, still breathless from the constriction in my chest. “Is that how you managed to make it?”

  Her smile didn’t waver, but something tightened around her eyes. “I passed out in the top five percent of my class,” she said, and there was no mistaking the pride.

  “Yeah,” I drawled, aiming for languid as I rolled my head round a few times, trying to work out the giant kinks. “I’ve heard that can happen in a slack year.”

  Vondie let her breath out fast. She closed the file, held it over the arm of her chair and let it go, very deliberately, so it hit the floor with a sharp smack. Of no further interest.

  I blinked a few times. I don’t know what they’d given me, but it was dispersing fast. I’d lost the muzzy feeling in my head and my vision was almost clear.

  “Where’s my mother?” I said. My mind revolted at the thought of them doing this to her, treating her like this. She didn’t have the resources, the resolve, to cope. It would finish her.

  Vondie got to her feet and came closer, the limp I’d given her in Cheshire almost imperceptible now. She was smiling broadly. “Well, well, I have to admit that normally it takes my interviewees a little longer to cry for their mommies,” she said, making a big show of looking at her platinum wristwatch. “Congratulations, Charlie—I think that’s a new record.”

  I stopped forcing my eyes to lock onto different distances around the bare room and focused totally on her instead.

  “If you’ve hurt her, you know I will find you and I will kill you,” I said with utter calm. I’d never meant a promise more, but I felt nothing. No emotion, no anger. Just certainty. Utter, cold, glittering, diamond-tipped certainty.

  Vondie flinched before she could control it, saw that I’d registered her involuntary reaction, and damped down a scowl. Instead, she began to circle, lips pursed, eyes flicking up and down my body in slow, deliberate insult.

  “I kind of thought you’d be in better shape—someone in your profession,” she said in a beautifully disparaging tone.

  I didn’t respond. She disappeared out of my field of view and I forced myself not to move my head to try and follow her path. But I couldn’t stop myself tensing up, like seeing the fin slice under the surface of the water and waiting for the first crushing bite from the depths.

  When it came, her touch was almost a caress, and far more creepy because of that. I felt a cool finger very softly trace the ugly scar of the bullet wound in my right shoulder blade and forced myself not to twist out from under it.

  “Got it in the back, huh?” Her voice was soft, too, and very close to my ear. “Running away, were you, Charlie?”

  I let my head come up a fraction, just enough to reinforce the memory of the head butt that had smashed her nose. I heard her quick sidestep, the little gasp the sudden movement provoked, and knew I was walking a very dangerous line here.

  She stalked back round to stare me in the eye—but not too close. “What a pity you took Don out like that,” she said, her voice regretful. “They’re still not sure if he’ll lose the arm.” She paused for another dismissive visual sweep. “He would have had such fun with you … .”

  “Like to watch that kind of thing, do you?” I said, ice in my chest now, flooding my limbs with such cold I struggled not to t
remble. “Is that how you get your kicks?”

  She smiled, and it wasn’t a pleasant smile. “You can indulge yourself in this little round of bravado all you like,” she said. “But it’s all going to be for nothing. News flash, honey, this is a pharmaceutical company. They got stuff here that will have you screaming for mercy and spilling your guts—in every sense of the word—in minutes.”

  She gestured to my left. I twisted my head and noticed, for the first time, that someone had wheeled in a little trolley, on which was a steel tray containing several sets of latex gloves and a number of hypodermic syringes. I had no idea what was in them, and even less desire to find out.

  I felt my chin come up. “So, what’s keeping you?”

  She sat down again, smoothing her skirt as she did so. “We want you to suffer, not to die,” she said casually. “We took a little blood while you were out and the lab boys have been running a full tox screen, just to make sure there’s no danger of anything unexpected happening to you.” She checked her watch again and shrugged. “You’ve been out for a while. They should be back with the results any time now. Soon as they are, we can get this party started.”

  A moment later—so soon I swear Vondie must have orchestrated it—there was a tap at the door. They’d hung me with my back to it so, when anyone came in or out, I’d have the fear of anticipating their identity and purpose to add to the humiliation they were already putting me through. A nastily sophisticated little touch.

  Vondie threw me a triumphant glance as she rose to meet the new arrival. I didn’t see who it was. Male, by the tonal frequency of the voice. Harried—shocked, even. I let my body droop slightly, like I was really hurting until I heard the door close again. Not much acting involved.

  I expected Vondie to regain her seat for a leisurely read, but she stayed behind me at first, so all I heard was the rapid flick of turning pages.

  “You’ve been a bad girl, Charlie,” she said at last, apparent pleasure in her tone. “According to the lab boys, you have Vicodin in your system. Something hurts, huh?”

  This time when it came, her touch—in the deep scar at the back of my left thigh—was a sharp jab. My leg buckled and I swung precariously, gulping down the pain with enough air to swallow the noises I was desperate not to make.

  By the time I’d staggered upright enough to have my feet and my breath back under me, she was seated again, watching.

  “Not enough of it for you to be addicted,” she went on, as though there’d been no interruption. “But we could soon change that.”

  She smiled at my frozen expression for a moment, milking it, then dipped her eyes back to the lab report. She’d almost scanned right to the bottom of the page when she stopped abruptly.

  I saw her shoulders stiffen, the paper quiver as her fingers did the same. My gut tightened the same way, like we had some kind of visceral connection.

  She looked up again, eyes glinting. “So, tell me, Charlie,” she said softly. “Who’s the father?”

  CHAPTER 32

  “What?”

  I jolted like she’d hit me with that damned TASER again. The single word was torn out of my throat as the implications rushed in through the shattered hole. “You’re bluffing,” I said, and couldn’t keep the shake out of my voice.

  She has to be bluffing. I can’t be! No way! Can I … ?

  She watched me flounder for a moment, head on one side. “You had no idea, did you?” She smiled thinly. “Well, in that case, let me be the first to congratulate you, Charlie. You think you’ll get to keep it?”

  “You’re bluffing,” I said again. Better. No wobble this time.

  “It’s too early for you to be showing any signs, but give it another few weeks and those hormone changes will be kicking right in. You won’t be able to ignore them. The mood swings, the nausea, the cramps and the cravings. Before you know it, you’ll blow up like a goddamn whale.”

  She rose, taking care to smooth down her skirt, emphasizing her slender figure, and gave me another malicious smile.

  “I assume that bastard Meyer is the lucky guy,” she said. “Seeing as you’re listed as cohabiting. Unless you’ve been fucking your new boss on the side, just to hedge your bets. Parker’s a cutie, isn’t he?”

  I clamped my mouth shut and said nothing, but she didn’t need to be a mind reader to see the slur of wild emotion tumbling behind my eyes.

  “Shame you’re gonna lose that flat stomach you’ve worked so hard on but, hey, you won’t have much else to do in the slammer other than work out.” She smirked. “That and try to prevent some big butch gang of lady truckers from raping you in the showers. Still, that’ll be nothing new to you, huh?”

  That punched me out of shock, brought me scrabbling back to the surface, relit the fire. “You sound like you’ve been there, Vondie,” I threw back at her. “Miss it?”

  “It’s Vonda,” she growled. She took a breath, got a grip. “So he really doesn’t know?” she murmured. “Pity. We could have used that.”

  I tried a laugh that came out more as a gasp. “You have no idea what you’ll be letting yourself in for, if you try hitting Sean with this … .”

  “Screw what he’ll do to me,” Vondie dismissed. “What’s he going to do to you? Consider a hypothetical for a moment. Even supposing by some miracle you get out of this, what happens to your precious so-called career now?”

  She waved a careless hand towards the manila file that was still lying on the floor next to her chair. “Can’t go risking your life every day, being a bullet catcher, when you’ve got a kid, Charlie.”

  “I—”

  “And what’s Meyer’s reaction really going to be, huh?’ She tapped her fingers against her lips. “Is he still going to be so keen on you when you’re just the little wifey at home with the squalling brat? Right now, you think you’re somebody, huh? Working for Armstrong’s outfit in New York—and what about Parker? God, the ink’s not dry on your green card yet.”

  She shook her head, as if bemused by the turn of events. “What happens when you don’t have that anymore? When you spend your days up to your neck in unwashed diapers and puke? Is Meyer still going to even want you—holding him down? Holding him back?”

  She smiled again, warming to her theme. “Being able to blow some guy away at sixty feet isn’t exactly the kind of skill that will impress the local neighborhood PTA. And there isn’t much else you’re good for, is there, Charlie? Of course,” she added, her expression turning sly, “there’s nothing says you have to keep it.” She nodded towards the surgical tray, towards the loaded syringes. “We could do you a favor there.”

  “You bitch,” I said, ragged, losing it as the rage fizzed the edges of my vision. “You utter fucking bitch …”

  Vondie laughed out loud. “Oh, Charlie, your mother would be so shocked—what a potty mouth!” she said, her voice rich with delight. “Speaking of mothers, I seem to remember from our file on Meyer that his ma comes from a long line of good Irish Catholics. He may not go to Mass every Sunday, but I’ll bet it’s gonna go way against the grain, finding out you’ve aborted his kid.”

  “He won’t.” Because I won’t. Because I can’t … .

  “Find out?” Vondie shook her head in synthetic disappointment, making tutting noises. “Oh Charlie, keeping those kind of secrets will kill any relationship stone dead,” she said with mocking sadness. “You know that.”

  She stepped to the trolley and picked up one of the syringes out of the surgical tray. She held it against the light and tapped it with her fingernail, as if checking for air bubbles. The liquid inside was a dull yellow. I’d no idea what it was, only that I didn’t want it inside me. Or inside anything I might have inside me, either.

  “Speaking of secrets, time to get you to spill yours, I think. Of course, there are a few side effects to this stuff I probably ought to warn you about,” she said, gloating openly now. This wasn’t work to her. “Birth defects, that kind of thing, but let’s not allow little things lik
e that to worry us.”

  She’d moved closer, unable to resist it as she taunted. She was within a couple of meters now, leaning forwards, shoving that smug smiling face into mine.

  “I warned you what would happen if you hurt my mother, Vondie,” I said almost under my breath. I thrashed impotently against the restraints, an apparently useless gesture that allowed me to get the feel of them and made noise, so she had to come nearer still to catch my words.

  Come on, a little closer. Just a little closer …

  “Well, that’s nothing to what I’d do if I thought you were going to hurt my child,” I muttered. “Past having your own are you? You dried-up old hag—”

  She took that last step, offense coloring her face as she caught the gist.

  I bounced up, bunched the muscles in my arms to jerk my feet clean off the floor, scissored my legs and lashed out.

  I tried to tell myself later that it was never intended to be a killing blow. That I wanted to cause enough pain to incapacitate her, no more. So I aimed for her face, for the nose I’d already broken once, intending to add insult as well as further injury. But at the last moment she jerked upright and so I gathered a little more momentum before I struck, a little lower than I’d anticipated. Or so I tried to tell myself.

  My foot landed hard, side on across her throat. Above my own bellow of effort and pain and rage, I swear I heard the quiet pop as her larynx collapsed.

  Vondie dropped the syringe and fell backwards, windmilling her arms. She crashed into her own chair, which tangled her legs and tripped her. Her shoe skated on the manila folder she’d so carelessly dropped, then her back hit the far wall and she slithered down it, clutching at her throat and gasping, eyes wide with shock.

  “Top five percent, huh, bitch?” I said, breathing hard. “Like I said—real slack year.”

  Instinct had her battling to rise, clawing for purchase on the smooth face of the blocks. I strained against the cuffs that held me, but I knew they weren’t going to give way. There was nothing I could do but dangle there, helpless, and wait for her either to die or to kill me.