Seize me From Darkness (Pierced Hearts Book 4)

by Cari Silverwood

  “How did it go?” Jaz grimaced as she caught sight of the bandage then her brow furrowed as if she was wondering what lay underneath.

  “He did a good job.” I shrugged. “It’s fine. I have antibiotics. I thought you might like to ask me questions?”

  I had ones for her. Though we were still waiting on the IT expert to decrypt the hard drive from Gregor’s computer, I needed to hear it from her. I needed to know, firsthand, she was being honest with me, or why she wasn’t.

  “I do have some, but I need the right answers.”

  “The right answers? If you’re lucky, I might have those. Lie on the bed with me. After all the hacking at my flesh and the drugs he injected, I’m feeling a bit woozy.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.” I half-climbed on the bed then flipped myself down on the mattress, full length. “Here.” I shifted over and patted beside myself.

  When she looked dubious, I grinned and patted the bed again. “I won’t bite. Promise I won’t touch you unless you say so.”

  One eyebrow arched in skepticism but she sat on the edge of the bed.

  “That’s it?” I was tempted to drag her down.

  “Best you’ll get.”

  I propped myself up on an elbow, hissing as the finger tangled in the quilt for a second. The anesthetic didn’t stop the pain that throbbed into my hand. “My head is on a level with your ass if you sit like that. Which...I’m okay with.”

  Her sigh was exasperated.

  “I bet you are. Fine! You win.” She slid down and ended up lying next to me, grumpy yet amused, while I was still up on my elbow. Her hair fell over my hand.

  The view was even better with the top of the dress askew but I pretended I didn’t see that.

  “The doctor. What did he say?” He’d checked her out first, when I insisted.

  For a second, Jaz turned down her mouth. “Nothing. I have scratches, abrasions. He told me to get some blood tests done, as soon as I can, just to be certain of things like hepatitis and so on.”

  “That’s it?” Her summary struck me as too fast.

  “Yes.”

  When I studied her for a while, she only looked annoyed. I smiled. “Good. Next. Remember what I said about a lot of people potentially getting hurt if anyone finds out you’re in Papua New Guinea?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Some of these questions may be hard for you but you need to answer them.” At her nod, I continued. “Glass wants to know why that man wanted you tortured.”

  She answered slowly but without a single tremor in her words. “I told you, I’m only a librarian in Sydney.”

  “But the man? How does he connect to you?”

  “I know his son. He was a doctor, that’s all. I went to him about some plastic surgery but chickened out. I know he was arrested for fraud and was going to go to jail over it, as well as paying back millions to the government.”

  Her shrug was dismissive.

  “That’s all?”

  “Yes.”

  Such wide eyes, and too steady, like she was afraid if she looked away I’d see it as a lie.

  “His name?”

  “The son was David Gavoche. That man said he was Andrew, the father. I had nothing to do with the son’s death.” She was shaking and her eyes shone. “Nothing.”

  I went to reach across to her but she glared, her eyes sharpening.

  “You said you wouldn’t touch me.”

  Silence.

  Yes, I had, but the vehemence in that was shocking. I searched her face. “I’m not your enemy, Jazmine. You know that.”

  Her sniff was followed by a deep breath, and she squirmed her nose about.

  “If you want to cry, there’s no shame.”

  Her answer came out through teeth. “I don’t want to fucking cry. I want to go home. I want out of here!”

  How had we gotten to this? Her yelling at me with hate? Her determined to go home without even passing go and talking about us?

  Us. I’d thought, hoped, there was a chance for something to happen. I’d really hoped. After all these years, I was tired of being alone, but all she wanted to do was leave. All I wanted to do was turn her over my knee and spank some sense into her.

  Except I couldn’t. Or was that shouldn’t?

  Definitely shouldn’t. She’d been through enough to break anyone, but at the back of my head all I could hear was, if she leaves, you will never see her again.

  And wasn’t that a happy piece of news.

  “Okay, so you don’t know why. Next question. We need to know if you are going to be okay with lying to the authorities in Australia about where you’ve been. It’s best if you just say you’ve been travelling with someone and you don’t want to get them in trouble, so you won’t identify them. Can you do that? Even if you’re pressured? If there’s been a lot of news coverage of your disappearance, and police investigation, the cops will be really interested in you.”

  “Yes. I can do it.”

  I watched her, raised my eyebrows but she didn’t twitch at all. The girl was stonewalling me.

  Last question and the one I’d thought she’d say no to. If she didn’t trust me. This one, I almost didn’t want to say because if she refused, I wasn’t sure where to go from here.

  “We also need to know your full name and address so we can check it’s all valid. So we know without doubt, that you exist as who you say you are.”

  The nothing blank look on her face was quickly replaced by a puzzled one, with her shaking her head. “What? You’re joking. Your friends are the murdering criminals, not that I’m not abso-fucking-lutely grateful, but I seriously do not want them to know who I really am.”

  “And me, what about me?” My heart sped up. This was like putting my soul out for her to knife. Do you trust me? “If you tell me only, I swear I won’t pass it on. I’ll do all the checking.”

  Then she ran on, blurting out something that I couldn’t understand, but from the rush and the little movements of her face, it upset her greatly.

  “What? Say it slower, meisie.”

  “The doctor...he said I had a drug implant in my arm. Under here.” She touched just below her armpit on the side near me. “It means I can’t get pregnant. Works for ages. Did you know?” Her look was imploring, hurt, uncertain. “Did you know they’d done this to me?”

  “No, I didn’t.” I frowned. It was invasive, but what did it have to do with what I’d just said? “This bothers you?”

  “Yes.” Her toes seemed to fascinate her. “Even here, I’m not rid of there, of what they did to me. What you did. I need you to go, Pieter.”

  I shifted higher. “Hey. I’m your friend. You know that.”

  “I need you to leave.” She sat up then slipped off the bed, wiping at her eyes. “Please.”

  Fok this. “I need your name. Your address. You have to say.”

  “No. I don’t. Go.”

  “If you don’t tell us. We can’t let you go.”

  But she only folded her arms and glared.

  Shit. Stubborn bitch, alright. She was having some sort of emotional upheaval and it seemed I hadn’t a clue how to fix it. Forced hugs wouldn’t work this time.

  “Dinner is in an hour. I’ll come get you.”

  “Send it up. I can’t face eating with anyone.”

  What the hell? She was going to hide up here, totally? Like we were lepers?

  “Please?” Her tone was so wobbly that I switched from wanting to chastise her to wanting to help her in a second flat.

  “Okay.”

  I closed the door and stood there for several minutes staring at nothing. How was I going to make everything right again?

  Dinner was strained without her, though that was more my effort than Glass’s. Within seconds of my return downstairs, after I delivered her meal, he sat down at the table and tucked into his plate of takeaway.

  “Tomorrow I’ll know anyway,” he told me, around a mouthful of fried rice.

  “How
?” I poked my plate with the fork. Eating should be a high priority after the crap I’d had for a month. “How will you know?”

  “My IT guy is running the hard drive through his algorithms, or something. He says it should pop sometime tomorrow. Then we’ll know who the bloody hell she is anyway.”

  “Uh-huh.” I took a swig from the bottle of Aussie beer he’d served, then read the label. Eumundi lager? It had a weird Australian tree on it, which actually...looked South African. But it was ice cold and delicious, and I was pretty sure my finger felt better already. Maybe I’d stick to beer for dinner.

  “She’s stupid. Thinking we can let her go without knowing who she is.”

  “Stupid?” I leaned back at a steep angle onto the chair, crossed my legs. She wasn’t that. “No. She’s just hurting, doesn’t trust us...me.” It was the me that pained me. “I sort of understand.”

  Tomorrow I would know who she was and... Surprise, surprise. That knowledge had sent not dread, but a thrill of anticipation into my balls. With my thumb, I smeared the cold droplets on the glass of the bottle. If I knew who she was, maybe I could find a strategy to keep her here?

  Weaknesses might yet be found in this woman. In the past, her weaknesses had been engrossing.

  “How are you taking it?” He pointed with his fork at my finger. “This and all the rest, it wasn’t standard operating procedure for combat. I know you can handle that, but what I saw up there...crazy shit.” He shook his head and waited.

  I chugged down some more beer.

  “I don’t know. It has fucked with my head. Given my priorities a shakeup. I’m not seeing everything the same way.”

  “Yeah?” He drank from his own bottle. “If there’s anything I can do? More work? I know you need money? That job for Vetrov led to this? Right?”

  “It did. It was exactly what you saw back there. Women being caught and sold...tortured. Only Gregor got out of hand over here. I can’t imagine his boss expected torture like he was doing it.”

  “The other women were fine according to what I saw. Just traumatized. I’m sure they were raped but not tortured.”

  Maybe it was just her and the cop that Gregor got carried away with? Screaming wasn’t exclusive to people being tortured. The women would perhaps have been worth tens or even hundreds of thousands to the right buyer. They had this huge set-up. Implanted them with contraceptives. So for them to make an exception for Jazmine, the Client must have been paying a lot of money. Why?

  I jerked forward and sat up. “If you have a job or two, I’d consider it.”

  “More than that. You know if you want to commit, I can let you in for regular work that pays very well. I need reliable men for shotgun duty. You can share a house in the compound with Jurgen and his lady? Or even bed down here?”

  “Okay.” I nodded. It was either this or I could try construction work. I had some possibilities there too. It paid less, but it was legal. “Tomorrow, as soon as you find out, tell me who she is.”

  “I will. Though the way you said that, you don’t think you know who she is.” Flat statement, but he’d hit the nail on the head.

  “No. I don’t.”

  “That’s...not comforting.”

  “Yeah. So true.”

  I drank the last of the beer, rested it back in the circle of condensation on the polished timber table. That gap in my facts was scary and frustrating but finding out the truth, now that was exciting.

  Confronting her might make my day.

  Chapter 26

  The strip of plastic I’d found was from a clothing label, from the looks of it. When wriggled into the door latch, it’d let me, eventually, after hours of fucking around with it, open the damn thing.

  My one advantage – this house wasn’t made to be a prison, just secure against criminal gangs like the raskols. From memory, most of the foreigners in Papua New Guinea lived in these secured compounds.

  The house was dark. Early still. Too early and the darkness would terrify me. I just knew it would. The crime rate here was high and a foreigner on the streets in the early hours after midnight, especially a woman, would be robbed, assaulted, and raped. As a journalist I’d heard all the stories coming out of Port Moresby.

  I needed money, maybe a phone.

  In the early dawn, I sneaked downstairs with a small purse, empty, but it made a good prop, and to my desperate relief, found a wallet in a bowl in the side room near the front door. Being in a secure compound had obviously left Glass certain no one could rob him.

  But no phone. Shit. I was going to have to take a chance.

  What was I going to do? If this place was alarmed, I was up the creek with no paddle. I opened the front door and tensed, waiting for the blare...nothing. I shut it behind me quietly, and set off down the short road toward the obvious entry, my little tan sandals clip-clopping.

  A guard stood there in a khaki uniform. Sparrows pecked at and swooped across a stretch of mowed lawn to the side. The sky...was so blue. I smiled and felt buoyed up by this unexpected dose of beauty.

  “Excuse me ma’am. Where would you be going?”

  Be bold. “I’m a...lady friend of Glass and I need to get to the nearest corner shop. Is there anywhere open yet?” I smiled and flipped my hair off my shoulder, trying to act like a pretty girlfriend and not an escaped prisoner.

  “I think so, yes. Can I call you a taxi? I have a friend. He’s honest and a good driver.”

  Oh god, oh god. Yes!

  I broadened my smile. ‘Yes. Please do that.”

  “Did you know you didn’t turn off the alarm before you opened the door?”

  Fuck. Think!

  Did he suspect me? If he did I was screwed. I made myself not look past him. That might be a red flag that I was thinking about escaping into the street. If I ran, if the guard didn’t catch me, Glass and Pieter would. Or if not, I’d still be lost in the streets.

  “Damn. No I didn’t. Can you fix that? I wanted to surprise him with a proper cooked breakfast and all the man has is canned stuff.”

  Sweat prickled my forehead and I clutched my purse like it was a lifeline. Believe me, please.

  “Ahhh. Lucky man. I can do that yes.”

  “Thanks.” I attached another smile to my face.

  Five minutes had never taken so long.

  When the taxi pulled up, I slid into it as sedately as the queen on an outing, arranged my dress, and waved to the guard. We drove off. Thirty seconds later, I leaned forward. “Do you know where the Australian embassy is?”

  “You mean the high commission? Yes, I do.”

  He spoke English, and he was right about it not being an embassy. A smart taxi driver. My luck was turning.

  “Take me there, please.”

  “Sure. Though I don’t think they open this early. It’s way across the city.”

  Fuck. “It’ll do.”

  I could wait.

  And so, I left Pieter, my fellow captive, my rock, and maybe the only love of my life, behind me. But you couldn’t really love a killer, could you? It was just a phase. Had to be.

  It was Stockholm syndrome. The realization jarred me. The taxi, the surge of the engine, the bumps as he drove, the smell that said used-by-a-hundred people, it all faded. I was a fool. How had I missed that? Years of journalism under my feet and stories filed about kidnap victims, I knew Stockholm syndrome back to front. I’d missed it.

  Why? Because he’d gotten deep under my skin, into me, and so logic made as much difference as a grain of sand in the ocean. Pieter. I’d never forget him.

  I cleared my throat of the sudden thickness then sat up straighter, staring out the window and seeing little through my blurred vision.

  My life was moving on. My Pulitzer Prize was waiting.

  He was back there. I wondered if he would understand.

  Chapter 27

  The door banged open and I jerked my head off the pillow.

  “Get your ass in gear. Your lady friend has escaped.”

&n
bsp; I blinked away sleep crud. It was Glass, dressed, grumpy, and as determined as a bloodhound on a trail.

  Ma se poes. Escaped? “Where the hell is she going?” I flung back sheets and rolled to my feet. That she’d run from me, rather than trusted me, was the cruelest part of this. And damn if I didn’t want her back. The need had never hit me so hard.

  How dare she slip away without talking? I yanked on shorts and a T-shirt.

  “Where? The high commission. Hang onto my mobile phone.” He tossed it to me. “Tell me what the guard sends us. Luckily he thought to double-check her story. He’s down as Security two.”

  The high commission. Now that was serious shit. If she spoke to anyone there, we were in deep kak. I ran with him to the door that led into the garage. The big outer door was trundling up already. We slid into his jeep and rumbled out onto the road.

  Once through the guard’s checkpoint, Glass threw a querying look my way. “News?”

  “The guard says he’s talking to the taxi driver via text. The driver’s pulled over and he’s telling her he has a problem from base to sort out.”

  “I told him to get the driver to pretend he was going to the high commission. He’ll be going to a different address.” He spun the wheel and headed out along a straight stretch between suburban houses. “You need to be ready.” He glanced across. “I know you like her but this isn’t good and I have an email about who she is too. Read it. Top one in my Gmail account. Her name is...” He stopped at traffic lights. “Jazmine Foulkes, and she’s a journalist. Known for breaking some big stories. My guy did a shallow search for info on the net.”

  I’d found the email. She wasn’t a librarian. I sagged back into my seat. “Well, this is just fokken dandy, hey?”

  “Surprised?”

  “Ja.” I’d known, really, all along. In my gut. It still hurt. We surged forward. “I want to sit her down and lecture her and then...” Do something nastier that I should really be ashamed of thinking, outside of Gregor’s little dungeon. I wiped at my mouth.

  “What? You sound as pissed as me. Lecture her?” He chuckled. “Sure. We’re going to have to think hard about what to do with her.”