With the gun pointed at the woman, John pulled out his cell phone and dialed. “Good evening, Dick. Are you ready to say goodbye to your daughter?”
Olivia peered lifelessly at the talking pin-striped suit moving above her. From a faraway place, it occurred to her to feel frightened or shocked, or at the very least curious, but her body would not respond.
I’m going to die now, were the only words that wound around and around in her brain as she stared into the black barrel of the gun. I’m going to die now.
And strangely enough, she couldn’t muster the energy to care. For she had been kidnapped, deprived of sight or speech, tackled, molested, and propelled onto a thousand pieces of glass, and now, it would all end with a bullet to the head. Earlier on, the fighter in her had built a rampart to protect hope, but after repeated blows, the acceptance had found a way to seep in through the cracks.
I’m going to die now.
“Would you like to say any last words to her?” said the silky-voiced man they called John. The suit jacket bent at the waist and a sleeve devoid of a hand stretched out, the cell phone floating to her ear.
“Olivia?” Her father’s voice came through the phone, his voice as calm as the feeling that settled over Olivia’s body like a blanket. “Are you there, sweetheart?”
She kept her eyes locked at the space above the jacket’s collar, seeing nothing but the van’s stripped interior wall.
“Olivia?” her father said with a tad more urgency. “Hold on, okay? Just hold on. I’ve sent someone to get you.”
It doesn’t matter. I’m still going to die.
The phone floated back up. “Well, you may want to tell them to hurry,” her captor said and cocked the gun.
Olivia’s eyelids slowly slid shut as accepted her fate.
This is it.
“You should have given me my money, King.”
And in the small space of the van, the overwhelming blast of the gun.
23 | THE CURIOUS MR. SMITH
Smith heard the report of the gun from the van before he saw the spark on the asphalt underneath. He had been keeping his distance, trying to determine their destination, but now he stepped on the gas. He was quickly running out of time.
A quick glance at his rearview mirror confirmed that the grey car tailing him since he’d left King’s garage also sped up. He’d wondered for a moment if King had sent backup, if he had lost confidence in Smith’s capabilities, but knew that couldn’t be true. For one, the driver of the car would have definitely exercised a little more stealth. This was no professional and King dealt exclusively with only pros.
Smith supposed the guy could be one of the kidnappers, but his instincts told him otherwise. Apart from following him into Union City, and now heading back to the Lincoln Tunnel toward Manhattan, the driver had not shown one ounce of evidence of knowing what the hell he was doing.
But Smith had run out of time to mull over such things. He stepped on the accelerator and rammed into the back of the van.
“What the hell?” John asked as the van lurched and he tumbled forward, dropping the phone on the floor.
Felton looked out the side view mirror. “Someone’s ramming us.”
John cursed under his breath. “Who is it? Is it King?”
“Some guy. I don’t know!”
“Did you just shoot her?” Dane said, turning around to peer at the motionless body. “I thought we were going to torture her first?”
John averted his eyes, managing to also avoid looking at the body at his feet. “Can we first concentrate on the guy who’s bumping our vehicle?”
“Shit, he’s got a gun!”
All three men ducked as the driver side mirror shattered.
“Well shoot him back!” Dane shouted.
John crouched as he made his way toward the back of the van, careful not to touch the body on the floor. He didn’t know why he’d done it, but the proof lay on the ground and, surprisingly, his conscience was clear. As he grabbed to turn the door handle, a shot was fired to the other side view mirror, making him flinch.
He couldn’t decide if the shooter was a lousy shot or deadly accurate.
John took a deep breath then flung open the door. He pointed his gun at the dark windshield of the car, catching a glimpse of the rumored curly blond locks of the fabled Assassin. He hoped wildly he’d hit his mark. If this was indeed King’s hired executioner, he would not even get a second chance.
Before John could squeeze the trigger, the black car sped up and hit the van once more, making him stumble forward and very nearly falling out onto the car’s hood. As he steadied himself, he saw a gun extending out from the driver’s side window. John had not even managed to blink in reaction before he felt the bullet tear into his side. He fell backwards onto Olivia, his own gun falling out onto the rapidly moving asphalt.
Smith pulled his arm back inside the car, changed lanes, and accelerated. The BMW zoomed forward until both vehicles were side-by-side in the two-lane tunnel.
He opened the passenger window and pointed the Glock at the driver. “Pull over,” he shouted at the frightened-looking bloke. He would bet his favorite gun that these men were amateurs. Probably their first kidnapping and extortion job. Probably their last, if Smith had his way. “Do it!”
The driver made a show of shaking his slick dark head but judging from the way he was hunched over, gripping onto the steering wheel, he knew the poor guy would soon relent.
Smith made a point of cocking the gun and repeated the directive. “Or I shoot you in the face,” he called out with a hint of a smile.
The van immediately slowed down.
“Good boy,” Smith said under his breath as he pulled up in front. The moment they stopped, he jumped out of the car, his gun poised, and narrowly missed being hit by a passing SUV. He looked down the long length of the one-way tunnel and found no other cars approaching for the moment, save for the grey car which was parked about half a mile away.
The van’s driver crawled out with his hands in the air, his cowboy boots thunking when he landed on the asphalt.
“What the hell are you doing, man?” another male voice shouted from within the black vehicle.
The short driver looked over his shoulder. “What does it look like?” He turned his light brown eyes towards Smith, his hands trembling as they came to rest on his head. “Just don’t shoot me. I’m through with this shit.”
Smith walked sideways, angling himself for a clearer view of the man in the passenger seat. “Who else is back there with you?”
“Find out yourself,” he said with steady, dark eyes.
Smith took a cleansing breath and decided that he was done with the pleasantries. He shot the beady-eyed man in the right shoulder then turned and administered an identical wound to the man in the boots.
“I gave up! You’re not supposed to shoot someone who surrenders!” he shrieked.
Smith smothered a smile and maintained his bad guy face. “I ask again, who else is back there?”
The driver writhed on the ground, clutching at his shoulder. “There’s a man and a girl. That’s all,” he said, his voice strained.
“If you’re lying to me,” Smith said, unable to resist the theatrics, “I’m going to come back and give you a coordinating hole on the other shoulder, you understand?”
With both men handcuffed soundly to the interior door handle, Smith crept around to the back of the van, listening closely for any signs of movement from within. Before he could reach the back, the doors flew open with force and he pivoted away in time to avoid being struck.
With his gun drawn, he spun around to face the interior of the van, but only found a pin-striped suit in a pile on the floor beside the bloody body of one Olivia King.
Smith ran around to the other side of the van but saw nothing between the vehicle and the tunnel’s exhaust-stained walls. Standing on the rear bumper, he hoisted himself up and checked the roof, a search that also yielded nothing.
H
e swung himself into the van and shone a pen light on the motionless body on the floor. Though she was bloody and unmoving, the rise and fall of her chest meant that she was alive, and judging from her erratic breathing, just feigning unconsciousness. He took a closer look at the blood on her clothes, careful not to make contact, and realized that, apart from the glass on her face, she was not otherwise wounded.
He thanked his lucky stars that she was alive. King would not have been very pleasant if his only daughter was murdered, in the back of a van full of cleaning supplies no less.
“Miss King?” he said softly. “Olivia? You can open your eyes now. My name is Smith. I’ve been sent to save you.”
The jig was up, this much Olivia knew, as she came to realize that her panicked breathing had most likely given her away. She’d blacked out when John had shot a hole in the van mere inches from her head, but she’d roused around the time the second gunshot shattered some glass but had kept faking unconsciousness to bide her time. She was able to keep up the façade even after John fell on her, his three-hundred pound body crushing the breath out of her lungs. Only after he stripped off his clothes and disappeared completely did she begin to find the air in the van too thick to breathe.
She peered through her eyelashes at the man claiming to be her savior as he crouched beside her, beginning to tug at the tape on her mouth. As soon as her mouth was free, she wasted no time. “Let me go,” she commanded.
The man withdrew his hands from her face, a curious furrow to his blond eyebrows. “I’m here to save you,” he said almost as a question.
“I don’t need saving. Untie me right now.”
The man reached into his pants pocket and withdrew a utility knife – he was a regular MacGyver – and she turned to the side as he sliced the tape from her aching wrists. She sat up and pulled the rest of the tape off her cheek then nimbly crawled out of the van.
“She’s a witch,” said a frightened voice from behind and she turned to find with great pleasure Felton and Dane both bleeding and handcuffed to the door.
“Give me your gun,” she said to Smith and felt the warm handle of the pistol make contact with her open palm. She pointed it directly at Felton’s revolting face and recalled the atrocities he’d performed on her in one night. But as much as she wanted to feel the satisfaction of seeing his head explode into a million bits of brain matter, she could not make her finger pull the trigger.
Just do it. He deserves it.
Her finger twitched but refused to budge. She cried out as she lowered the gun, angry and disgusted.
“Dammit Felton, you’re pissing your pants!” Dane cried, edging away from his trembling cohort.
Olivia handed the gun back to its owner and looked away in disgrace.
“Where did he go?” Smith said, holding up a pair of pin-striped pants. “The guy who wore this?”
“He disappeared,” Olivia said without any energy to elaborate. She held a hand out again. “Give me your keys.”
The man handed her a black key fob with a BMW logo on it and said with a sort of half smile that was completely inappropriate for the moment, “A please would be appreciated.”
She shot the handcuffed men an acidic look. “Take those men to the nearest police station and make sure they rot in jail. Please. And thank you.”
24 | A KNIGHT IN WHITE
Olivia scanned the area as she walked to the black sedan, trying to determine many things at once: which tunnel she was in, how she was going to find her way home, where John could possibly be, if she was finally safe.
“Olivia!”
She whipped around, her entire body one coiled muscle of anxiety, and saw the very last person she expected to find in this ring of hell.
The sight of the tall Swedish man sprinting towards her in rumpled tailored clothes, his short blond hair flapping around, brought a swelling in her chest and tears to her eyes, which she quickly wiped away.
A moment later, he wrapped her in his arms and pressed her head against his rapidly thudding chest. “Thank God,” he said, squeezing tight. “You’re alive.”
Olivia breathed through her nose, relieved but still afraid to close her eyes. “Alex, what are you doing here?”
He fought to catch his breath. “I didn’t know what else to do, so I followed that car from your father’s garage all the way to Jersey, then I realized he was following that van. I thought I could help, until they started shooting. So I stayed back.” He pulled away and held her face in his hands. She winced as the pressure of his palms drove the glass deeper into her skin and pulled away.
“What’s wrong? What happened to you?” He bent down to examine her face but she quickly turned away.
“It’s nothing,” she said, heading towards the car parked in front of the van. “Let’s get out of here, please. It’s not safe.”
Alex squeezed her hand. “Here, I’ll drive,” he said with a gentleness she had not seen from him before. He took the fob from her grasp and left it on the roof of the BMW, then led the way to his own vehicle down the road, late night traffic swerving and zooming past them in the dim tunnel.
He opened the door for Olivia, and furrowed his eyebrows. He didn’t remember folding the seat forward. He glanced inside the dark backseat and, finding nothing, pushed the passenger seat upright. “The spring mechanism must be broken,” he muttered under his breath.
“Where to?” he said once he’d pulled back into traffic. “Police station?”
“No!” she said, surprised at the alarm in her voice. Contacting the police would be the only logical destination after the night she’d experienced, but Olivia could not bear the thought of facing all those strangers, of answering endless questions about her captors. They would inevitably grill her all night about the details, force her to relive the events that were now embedded into her memory like the glass in her skin, when what she wanted most was to just get back to the sanctuary of her home. “I just want to take a shower and get in bed,” she said with a slight tremor in her voice.
Alex shot her a long look as he drove, concern rumpling his forehead. “What happened, Mei?”
She closed her eyes and wished she could just go to sleep and wake up from a harmless nightmare. “I… I can’t talk about it right now, okay?”
He shot her a sympathetic smile and said, “Okay,” though they both understood that it was anything but.
* * * * *
Alex carried Olivia’s bags as they took the elevator up to her apartment. He was not clear on that night’s details, but he felt afraid to touch her, afraid to unwittingly cause her more distress. So he settled with standing close, ready to provide whatever she needed, hoping that for the moment, his presence was comfort enough.
“Thank you, Alex,” she began to say once they reached her front door, but he cut her off.
“Are you kidding? I’m not leaving you. I’m coming inside and standing guard in case they come back.”
She shrugged with some effort and let him in. “They’re not coming back,” she said before locking and bolting everything on her door.
“In any case, I’m staying right here.” He dropped the bags by his feet and crossed his arms across his chest.
Several thoughts ran through his mind, each one threatening to come blurting out of his mouth. He wanted to tell her that he cared for her more than she realized. He wanted to apologize for not being a better protector, for not being a faster sprinter, that he should have gotten back in the car and driven after the van instead of giving chasing on foot like a moron. Mostly he just wanted to promise that he would never let anyone else hurt her again, a lofty promise that he wasn’t sure he could keep but wanted to make regardless.
But he said none of these, for she said nothing, and they just looked at each other quietly in the semi-darkness.
Olivia turned and walked down the hall. As she reached the bathroom door, he gently called out her name.
She put a hand on the jamb and faced him with a weary look.
/> “You don’t need to be afraid. Not around me.”
The sag in her shoulders would have been imperceptible, at least to anyone else who was not watching closely for the moment she thawed. “Here, let me get the glass out of your face,” he said and led the way inside. “Where do you keep your tweezers?”
She pointed. “Top drawer.”
With the tweezers held between his fingers, he reached out but could not bring himself to touch her cheek. She tilted her face into the light and he took a long look at what he’d been avoiding all night. He felt the anger building inside as he saw that one whole side of her face was covered in bloody lesions and shards of glass. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?” he said, wincing at the sight of the long cut along the edge of her upper lip.
She shook her head. “I’m good. Really.”
He gritted his teeth. “No you’re not.” He wanted to kill the bastards that did this to her. A single thought suddenly flashed through his mind, and he gulped. “Did they… violate you?” he asked, afraid to hear the answer to the foul words leaving his mouth.
Olivia’s eyes dimmed a little but she, thankfully, shook her head. “They tried,” she said and filled him with relief and anger and an overwhelming need to keep her safe. It wasn’t rational, he knew, because she was a grown woman. Still, he couldn’t shake the fierce sensation of wanting to avenge her honor, as clichéd as it seemed.
He lifted his hand to begin the task, when her hand caught his wrist. “Don’t worry about it. I can do it,” she said.
Her eyes were empty and lifeless now, leaving him to wonder if the glimmer would ever return.
“I don’t mind.” He shook his head, but she wrestled the tweezers from his grasp regardless.
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