I can’t shake a strange feeling about their silence. In my years of running this program, some students had indeed blown off the classes to go enjoy Paris, but to do so on the first day?
Liv was the most puzzling of the two. She’d been so submissive and meek when we’d met, obediently falling into step. When I first caught her staring at me, I thought she’d melt into the floor of embarrassment.
That’s not the type of girl who wanted to ruffle feathers, especially not with her dedication.
I can’t explain it, but I feel a certain connection to her, as I have since I first met her to invite her to the program. My professionalism required that I be harsh with her, perhaps more so than the other students. I’m not the type of trainer who’d succumb to my baser desires, but I wanted to establish early than I was off-limits, and much too hard and cold for her.
But my impression was such that I had truly high hopes for her at the time we met, and my instincts are rarely so far off.
I peer at the students for a moment more before making another call — this time, to one of my colleagues.
“Max? How’s the new batch of students?”
“Excellent, but I’ve got to go track a couple of them down. Can you cover for me? I’ll owe you a drink later.”
“Ehhh, fine, no problem, I’m around the corner.”
“Thanks, I’ll leave my chart by the door — I’ve got to run.”
“Good luck, Max.”
I hang up the phone and head out of the building, leaving the athletes to handle themselves for the time being. By now, most all of them are self-sufficient enough to handle themselves for five minutes.
For some reason, with every passing heartbeat, I feel a growing sense of urgency regarding the two students. My mind keeps recalling my first meeting with Liv, occasionally wondering if I was too harsh with her despite all the potential I saw, and perhaps that’s what rouses my sense of responsibility even more strongly than usual. Maggie strikes me as more inclined to cut loose, but both are still extremely talented, and the fact that they share an apartment and both haven’t shown concerns me all the more.
I care deeply for my students. In all my time as a teacher, I’ve given more than a few rides home in pouring rain, helped them pay for their equipment and travel costs, and even given little lessons on how to cook cost-effectively. I have a personal stake in such things. So when a young woman fails to appear for the first day of training, I become concerned.
Especially in the case of a talented young woman like Olivia.
7
Liv
Something smells like death.
I struggle to open first one eye, then the other, feeling like my eyelids weigh a thousand pounds apiece. My body is numb and heavy, and I can’t seem to orient myself. I have no idea where I am, only that I feel a damp, dank coldness sinking into my clammy skin. Even opening my eyes doesn’t help very much, as it’s almost pitch-black wherever I am right now. I might as well be blindfolded, for all the good my eyesight does me here. I blink impotently in the darkness, willing my arms to move, to feel, to do anything at all. But everything is so stiff and immobile, like I’ve been paralyzed. My muscles simply won’t answer to my brain’s instructions.
Am I dying? Am I dead?
My throat feels coarse and thick but I need to make some kind of sound. What if I’m not alone in here? Where are my parents? Am I in the hospital?
Then it dawns on me that I’m not in North Carolina anymore; I’m in France. My sluggish brain trudges through the train of memories. I came to Paris to study and train under world-renowned gymnastics coaches. I came here alone. This is my first night in Paris, and…
Maggie! Where is she?
I was with her earlier tonight — I know that much, even though the rest of the night is still so foggy. I try to open my mouth to speak, but it appears that some kind of restraint is wrapped around my head, cloth fabric pressing in on my lips to keep me from forming words. Summoning all my strength and focusing every sleepy nerve of consciousness, I manage to push a moaning sound out of my vocal chords. Somewhere to my right I can hear a similar groan, more akin to a whimper, high-pitched and fearful. Maggie.
My heart starts to race as the full gravity of our predicament settles in around me. We’re being held somewhere dark and dank, we cannot move or speak, and we have no idea where we are. At least, I have no idea. I wonder if maybe Maggie knows something — not that I can ask her, since neither of us can talk at the moment. I decide that’s got to be the most important thing, the first order of business. I’ve got to get this thing off of my mouth.
But how can I do that when my arms don’t work?
I grunt and strain, willing my arm muscles to respond to me, all in vain. I feel so detached from my own limbs, like they don’t belong to me. I can’t even figure out if they’re restrained or if I’m simply paralyzed. Closing my eyes, I decide to start small, with just my fingers. I try to recall the sensation of wiggling my fingers, and slowly but surely my fingers start to twitch. I let out a gasp of relief, realizing that I must not be totally paralyzed. I wonder if I may have been drugged, and now the effects are beginning to wear off. That must be it.
Who would have drugged me, though? Where did this happen? How did we get here?
A handsome, smirking face framed with sunshiny golden hair swims lazily to the forefront of my mind and I remember with a jolt: Will met us at a pub. He bought us drinks. We danced and I felt him rubbing up against me from behind, his hands grabbing at my hips as I feebly resisted. I remember being led into the backseat of a big, black car…
And from there, the sensation of something sickeningly sweet and icy cold being pressed into my face, that frigid sweetness swarming into my nose and making me feel weak. I suddenly recall watching some crime drama on television years ago in which a girl was knocked out with a rag to her face — chloroform, it was called? Did that really happen to me? How could this be happening? I have training in the morning. I haven’t spoken to my parents in hours and hours. Surely somebody will notice that I’m missing, that something is terribly wrong.
I work on bending my wrists next, and from there the rest of my arms. To my shallow elation, I find that my arms are not bound with anything, only my face. So as soon as I manage to regain control of my arms I reach up, fumbling blindly in the dark to find the binding around my head and tear it off. It’s only a piece of ripped fabric knotted at the back of my head. It’s secured too tightly to pull away without severely hurting my face, so I have to figure out how to untie it. My fingers are still clumsy, and it takes me a long time to undo the knot. Finally it comes loose and I throw it aside, opening and closing my jaw to try and work it back into normal condition.
“Agghhhh,” I groan, my lips struggling to form coherent words. There’s another moan of response from the area to my right, which I can tell now for certain is Maggie.
I feel around beneath me. I’m lying down on my back, with a hard, freezing cold concrete floor under my spine. I brace my hands on either side of me to push myself up into a sitting position, every nerve in my body protesting the effort. It feels like trying to walk on a leg that’s fallen asleep — everything is tingling with pinpricks of pain, urging me to be still and compliant, not to try and save myself. Every part of my frame longs to just lie back down and wait for whatever grim fate is coming for me. But I can’t give in so easily. I’m an athlete; I’m used to pushing myself through obstacles and disregarding the pain and discomfort warnings my body gives me.
“M-Maggie?” I manage to croak, my throat still scratchy and my vocal chords weak.
“Mmm!” she whimpers, and I can hear the rustling sounds of her own body trying desperately to move. She must have been dosed with the same stuff they gave me. I have to figure out how to reach her, reassure her that everything’s okay… even though I don’t know if things are going to be okay. Things definitely don’t seem great right now.
I grit my teeth as I struggle to scoot close
r to her. I can feel that I’m still wearing my white dress, same as before. So at least I know they didn’t undress me or anything. I shudder at the thought. Some timid voice in the back of my head suggests that maybe this is just a misunderstanding. Maybe it’s just a really, really bad hangover. I’ve never had one before — maybe it’s always like this. Maybe you always feel this scared and lost.
But I know that’s not the case. As much as I want to believe that any second now the lights will flick on and we’ll find out that we were panicking for no reason… it’s not going to happen. This is a grave situation. And Will and his friends put us here. I kick myself for ever trusting him in the first place. I should have known from the very second he offered me a drink of his champagne on the flight here that he was bad news. Cute boys like that don’t talk to me just because they like me. Of course he saw me as easy prey — small town girl with no real world experience, no solid footing, desperate for a friendly face. And Maggie was easy, too. All it took was one charming smile and she was hooked. I wanted to cry in frustration at how stupid we were, going to that bar. How could I have been so irresponsible? So trusting?
Finally I scoot across the floor and feel my knee brush against something vaguely warm and trembling. Maggie yelps and starts wriggling around in fear.
“Shh, it’s me. It’s Liv,” I mumble, my lips finally remembering how to shape real words.
“Mm! Mmm!” she whines. I fumble around until I find her hand. I give it a squeeze and feel her instantly relax a little bit while I start untying the fabric strip binding her mouth. Once it’s pulled off, she starts to sniffle and cry.
“Wh —what happened? Where are we?” she murmurs, her words slightly garbled.
“I don’t know,” I tell her honestly. I can feel her heaving with quiet sobs as I help her to sit up. She falls into me, shaking and weeping. I let her fold into my arms, her frame crumpling into the fetal position as I hold her.
“Those guys… they must have taken us,” she chokes out between sobs.
“Yeah. I think you’re right,” I concede sadly, forcing myself not to cry, too. At least one of us has to hold it together, and it might as well be me. I have the feeling that if we were to both fall apart there would be no hope at all. I have to be strong, for both our sakes.
“Do you hear that?” Maggie gasps suddenly, clutching at my arms. We sit stock-still and silent, listening intently. There’s a faint rustling, scraping, squeaking sound. Rats.
“Oh, gross,” I breathe, shaking my head. Maggie, however, is inconsolable.
“I hate rats. Oh god, oh god. What if they crawl on us? Or bite us? They carry rabies and other diseases, you know. And oh my god, if there are rats there are probably cockroaches, too,” she rambles, trembling as her voice gets higher and higher.
“It’s okay, it’s okay. They won’t mess with us, I’m sure,” I tell her quickly. But I pull my legs in close just in case, trying to minimize the space I take up. I just wish we could see something, anything at all. But it’s so dark.
Even with my eyes trying to adjust to the lack of light, I still can’t even make out shapes in the darkness. As cold and smelly as it is here, my mind starts going crazy trying to figure out where we could be. Maybe we’re underground? The atmosphere and total lack of light seems impossible for a house or building above ground. We’ve got to be subterranean.
“What is this place?” Maggie whimpers. I can feel her tears dampening my arms.
“I —I think we might be underground or something,” I answer. She shivers, her shoulders shaking with sobs. “Listen, we’re gonna figure this out, okay? I promise everything is gonna be alright. Do you have your phone or anything, or did they take it? I think they took mine.”
She shakes her head. “No, no, they have everything. I’ve just been lying here in the dark. I didn’t even know you were down here until you made a sound. I thought I was alone.”
“Well, let’s be grateful they didn’t separate us.”
“Yet,” she adds ominously.
“Hey, don’t talk like that. Let’s see, what do you remember about how we got here? About last night?” I press, trying to take a more proactive stance.
I can feel Maggie shrug. “Not much. I remember… being in the cab and getting to that bar in the eleventh arrondissement. With the graffiti.”
“Zero Zero, yeah,” I agree, the memories trickling back to us both.
“Oh god, Liv. This is all my fault. I’m the one who made us go there. You just wanted to go back to the flat like a good girl and I — I got us into this mess. I’m so stupid,” she cries, sitting up by herself. I can feel her withdrawing into a tight ball, rocking back and forth slightly.
“No, I could have stopped us. I wanted to go, too,” I lie, trying to assuage her guilt. It’s true that I didn’t really want to go to the bar. I’d had my suspicions before we even arrived on Rue Amelot last night, but I ignored the warning bells in my head and went along anyway. And besides, I’m the one who was gullible enough to get involved with a guy like Will. So the guilt is equally shared between Maggie and me. We’re both to blame.
“I’m so sorry, Liv,” she weeps. “What if they kill us?”
“Stop! Don’t say things like that. You don’t know what they’re doing or what they’re planning, but you can’t just keep assuming the worst. You’ll fall apart if you give in to that kind of thinking, Maggie,” I protest, reaching out to pat her shoulder. She flinches at my touch.
“My parents were right. I can’t handle the real world on my own. My first time striking out by myself and this happens,” she whimpers, clearly too distraught to heed my advice.
“Well, what about me? My parents trusted me enough to let me go off to another country on my own and I allow something awful to happen! But it’s not our fault, okay? These guys… they clearly know what they’re doing. I don’t think this is their first rodeo. In fact,” I continue, realizing the truth of my words with a painful jolt as they come out of my mouth, “I bet that Will started hunting me the second I walked onto that plane. How was I to know he was a bad guy? And how were you to know a get-together at a public bar would end up this way?”
“My parents always told me there were bad people in the world,” Maggie goes on, heedless of my words. “They always warned me to stay within the lines and follow the rules. Don’t do anything stupid. And here I am! God, if I ever get out of this, I’ll never disobey my parents again.”
I want to reassure her, remind her that even though we might have screwed up this time, her parents aren’t totally faultless, either. I know that if they hadn’t kept such a tight, restrictive leash on Maggie her whole life, she probably wouldn’t have felt the need to rebel in the first place. I saw it all the time with sheltered kids: the more closed-off and limited their upbringing was, the more outrageous their rebellion was. It was like pulling back a slingshot. The farther you try to reel it back, the farther the stone will fly once it’s released.
I know I’m a victim, too. It wasn’t until arriving in France that I realized just how bored and starved for new experiences I was after a lifetime in rural North Carolina. As soon as I set foot on that plane, I was itching for an adventure. And by god, I got it.
“Maggie, listen to me. We’re gonna get out of this, somehow —” I start, but my sentence is interrupted by the sudden deep, low creak of door hinges somewhere out in the darkness. Maggie squeals and falls into me again, grasping for my hands in terror.
We both blink uncomfortably in the dim pillar of light widening before us as a door swings slowly open to reveal the massive, hulking silhouette of a man.
8
Max
I pull up to the student living quarters and head up the stairs. There are a few residents hovering around, and I get a few peculiar looks as I make my way towards the room Liv and Maggie were assigned.
I have to admit, the student housing is pretty nice, as far as student housing can go. The area is somewhat secluded by Parisian standards
, mostly in hopes of giving the students and athletes the chance to lead a somewhat adult lifestyle rather than tossing them to the wolves, so to speak. The gardens of the park nearby are well-maintained, and the sidewalks leading around the buildings are spotless. More interestingly, there’s nothing around indicative of a wild party last night.
The girls have a place on the sixth floor, and I march up the staircase, my eyes flitting out to the city skyline, the sun lighting the whole sea of buildings up like a glittering sea of color. I try to put myself into the perspective of a foreigner experiencing this place for the first time, but I’ve been here far too long to relive such things.
Reaching the door, I raise a fist and pound on it several times. I say nothing as to not reveal myself on the off-chance they truly are dodging class, but as I turn my head to listen, I hear nothing — no shuffling, no hushed whispers, and no groggy moans of a hangover. Strange.
My fist pounds on the door again, but the whole floor is silent. All of this particular building’s residents are back at the class I left in the care of my associate. I realize it’s possible the two of them could be out enjoying the city in the morning, but to alienate themselves from everyone else in their class so early?
Something sits very ill with me, and I run a hand through my short, dark hair and down to my stubble-ridden face as I check the stairs to make sure nobody is coming. What’s running through my mind could get me fired easily. But I have a gut feeling, and it isn’t a pleasant one I can easily ignore.
I feel around in my pocket, and my fingers brush against a large paperclip I kept from some papers I’d been working on earlier this morning. Drawing it out and keeping it low, I use my fingers to subtly pry it open into a shape I can work with. I quickly draw my jingling keys out of my other pocket to make it look like I have a legitimate means of accessing the door before stepping forward and moving both to the lock, slipping the paperclip into the keyhole and carefully twisting it and turning it before I hear the lock click in short order, and I pop the door open, slipping inside before swiftly shutting it behind me.
Hitman - the Series: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance Collection (Alexis Abbott's Hitmen #0) Page 58