Racing Through Darkness

by G. K. Parks

  “No. He supervised.”

  I stretched, trying to determine the best play under the circumstances. We were thinking outside the box on this one. All the interrogations I had seen or been a part of utilized the threat of imprisonment, implied violence, or the perception of having ratted out some scary SOB. While the tried and true good-cop, bad-cop routine might work, I wasn’t sure how convincing it could be when the only two options were death or freedom. Pain and violence were a guarantee.

  “What are you planning to do with him when this is over with?” I asked.

  “Not your concern.” He judged my expression. “Do you really want to know?”

  “Depends on the answer.” He let out a slight snort but remained immovable. “Is he restrained?”

  “Yes.” Some elaboration would have been nice, but I didn’t expect it. I also didn’t pretend to fathom that Mercer’s sadistic streak and imaginative torture techniques would be lacking. I had an idea, but it was by far one of the worst ideas I ever came up with, and in my lifetime, there had been quite a few doozies.

  “Hit me.”

  “What?” The pristine exterior was shattered by complete confusion.

  “Are you deaf? You’ve wanted to take a pop at me since we met, just fucking do it.” I screwed my eyes shut and tried not to flinch. “And try not to break my jaw because it’ll be hard to talk to the kidnapper if I can’t move my mouth.”

  “You’re daft.” I opened my eyes, and he studied my face as if seeing me for the first time. “Don’t tense, it’ll hurt worse.” And then he threw a hard punch. It knocked me back, and I resisted the urge to spit blood. Instead, I wiped my mouth on my shirt for effect.

  “You hit like a girl. Again.” He didn’t comment but shook out his shoulders and hit me again. Recovering, I proceeded to muss my hair and rip my shirt. It was important to look as if I had been put through the wringer too. My split lip was a nice effect as was my swollen cheek. I wasn’t willing to go so far as a broken nose, and I was glad Mercer had been kind enough not to inflict that type of pain. Tearing and bleeding on my shirt would add to the illusion, and I made sure my bruised hip was partially visible over the waistband of my pants.

  “You okay?”

  I laughed. “Like you care.” I dug through my purse for a compact to check my appearance. I looked worse before, but hopefully, this would be convincing enough. “Toss me inside, accuse me of not answering your questions or whatever. I don’t give a shit. I’ll see if I can get the asshole to give us something. He might be more apt to talk to a fellow captive.”

  “How long?”

  “Thirty minutes. If he starts to open up, you can always throw me back inside later.”

  “We need a location.”

  I narrowed my eyes as if to say ‘no shit’, and he grabbed my arm and a fistful of my hair and dragged me to the door. “Let me go. I told you I don’t know anything,” I shrieked as he opened the door and shoved me into the room. I landed splayed on the ground in front of the man bound to a chair.

  “Tick tock.” He slammed the door closed. The latching of the lock was the last sound I heard from the outside world.

  Thirty-two

  I pretended not to notice the man, beaten and bloodied, with his head drooping and tied to the chair. Judging by the bloodstain on his shirt, he had been shot in the arm in the vicinity of his shoulder, but it didn’t appear to be life-threatening. Instead, I scrambled off the ground, playing up my injuries as I ran to the door and pounded on it. “Let me go. Please. Please,” I screeched, doing my best to make my voice sound hysterical, and the stinging in my cheek made my eyes water, adding to the illusion. After a solid minute of begging to be released, I crumpled to the ground and pulled my legs to my chest and rocked with fake sobs.

  The man tied to the chair cleared his throat, but I continued on, pretending not to have noticed. He tried again a little louder, and I stopped and looked up, appearing fearful.

  “Oh my god,” I exhaled, “are you okay?” I slowly approached him.

  “Who are you? What do they want?” His voice was harsh, probably from his earlier screams.

  “Lola,” I said on the verge of tears. “I don’t know who they are or what they want. Last night, I was on my way home, and this guy, he just,” I sniffled loudly and made a show of taking in a breath, “he grabbed me and brought me here. He keeps asking where some girl is, but I don’t know. I don’t even know who he’s talking about.” I brushed the hair out of my face and winced as I pretended to try to find a way to untie the kidnapper. “He and his friends had me in another room, and,” I swallowed as if the thought of whatever happened in there was too painful to recollect. I leaned over the guy to see around the side of the chair. “Do you know what they want? Why they took us?” Interrogation 101, find common ground.

  All my screaming made him more alert, and I noticed his eyes on my bruised side as I maneuvered around him. “Can you get me free? Maybe the two of us can find a way out of here.” He was attempting to be a knight in shining armor, but so far, he wouldn’t answer any of my questions. “Those monsters did that to you?”

  “You don’t know the kinds of things they wanted to do,” I cringed, hoping I wasn’t overplaying the brutality. I wanted this man scared. He needed to be if I was going to convince him to trust me. “Do you know who they are? What they want?”

  “They must have said the same thing to me that they said to you,” he suggested. “They wanted to know where Adalina was.”

  “Adalina?” I looked puzzled. “That doesn’t sound right.” I shook my head and tugged at the duct tape covering the rope. “What’s your name?” I asked. He fell silent as I continued to search the tape with my fingers for a place to begin peeling it away.

  “Adam, sorry.” His hesitation indicated he wasn’t completely sure about me. “Where’d you say they grabbed you?”

  “I was walking home from work at the diner. The damn bus was behind schedule, and I was hoping to catch a cab. But you know how that goes in the shady part of town.” I sighed. “I just kept walking. I don’t even remember where it was.” I stopped and sat on the ground in front of him. “This guy pulls up in a van, the door opens, and someone jumps out and grabs me. They put a hood on my head, and then I wake up in this room.” I scrunched up my face and wiped at my eyes. “We’re going to die,” I sobbed.

  “Lola, hey, look at me,” Adam said gently. This guy was way too calm for someone who was trapped and tortured. He knew the tricks of the trade when it came to abductions and interrogations. “We’ll get out of here. It’ll be okay. Just get me untied.” I scooted back from him.

  “No one knows where we are. These guys are trained killers. I saw military tats all over one of them. We’re never going home. I’m never going to see my baby again.” He paled, making the contrast between the caked blood on his face and his skin that much more dramatic.

  “Listen,” he hissed, growing annoyed with my constant theatrics, “if you can get me out of this rope and chains, I’ll get you out of here.”

  “Who are you? Harry Houdini?”

  “No, but I have friends who can help. Really.”

  “And what, you’re going to make them appear out of thin air, Mr. Houdini? It’s hopeless.”

  “If I can get a message to them, they’ll rescue us.”

  “Are you a cop? Are they cops?”

  “I’m not a cop, but it’s something like that. They’ll get us out just as soon as they realize I’m in trouble.”

  “How would they know where you are?” I crawled to the place behind the chair and tugged at the tape. Mercer bound Adam with handcuffs, a chain and padlock, some twine, and duct tape around his wrists. Talk about overkill. To make my attempt at progress more realistic, I pulled at the tape around his wrists and removed a few tiny thin strips as we spoke.

  “GPS,” he said simply, and I knew he must have a tracker on him. I was also certain Bastian worked his technological magic and jammed any and all frequencies.


  “Then why aren’t they here already? I’d love for some cops to bust down those doors and give those assholes what they deserve.”

  “They aren’t cops,” he repeated for emphasis, “but they’ll make sure these bastards can’t hurt anyone else.” I pressed my lips together, wanting nothing more than to bash this bastard’s head in. He was worried about letting Mercer hurt people when he was a goddamn kidnapper. Talk about hypocrisy.

  “Oh my god, are you with the mob?” I asked. “I don’t want any more trouble. What was that name you said, Adalind? Is that your boss’s wife or something. Oh my god. I didn’t think things could get worse.”

  “No.” His voice adopted an edge. “I work for well-connected people but not that type of connected.”

  “I don’t understand. Who the hell are you? Why did these idiots take you?”

  “Because,” he hesitated, indicating maybe some progress was being made, “my friends and I stole something from them.”

  “So give it back,” I screamed. “I don’t even know how I got caught up in any of this, but just give back whatever you took and maybe they’ll let us go. I want to go home.” It’s what Catherine said when I found her, and she must have said the same thing to him because he softened.

  “We tried to, but,” he paused again.

  “But what?”

  “The lady who hired us to steal it changed her mind.” This was making no sense. Was every word out of his mouth a load of bullshit or did the person pulling the strings change the plan?

  “Who cares? Just tell these guys where it is, and maybe they’ll let us go.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  I was getting frustrated, and the longer I spent with this piece of shit, the more I wanted to beat him into a bloodier pulp myself. “I don’t even know you, and they’re going to kill me because you stole some stupid trinket and won’t give it back,” I shrieked.

  “Get me free, and I’ll make sure you’re safe.” He realized I was his last chance of escaping.

  “I can’t. Underneath the tape are handcuffs and a chain and padlock. There’s nothing I can do.” I went around and sat on the ground, wiping my eyes with the hem of my shirt.

  “Miss,” he tried to calm me. “Lola?” I glanced up. “Maybe you can get word to my friends.”

  “How am I supposed to do that? Do you have a cell phone in your pocket?”

  “No.” I could still sense a degree of uncertainty, but time was running out.

  I ran my tongue along my bottom lip where it was still bleeding as subconscious reinforcement that Mercer and his team hurt me too. “I don’t either. We’re trapped here with those sadists.”

  “Maybe not.” He looked hopeful. “Do you think you can reach into my back pocket?” This sounded like the beginning of a bad joke.

  “Why?”

  “There’s a tracking chip sewn into the lining. If we can activate it, someone can hone in on my location.” I squinted at him.

  “Why do you have a tracking chip? And how do we activate it?”

  “You ever watch TV where they show people under house arrest?” He spoke quickly, getting more frantic as the minutes ticked by that Mercer would return to finish one or both of us off. “It’s like that. If the circuit is broken, it’ll alert my friends.”

  “The friends who stole the mystery item? They’re the reason I’m here. We’re here. And you think they can save us?”

  “They will,” he promised. “Hurry, please.”

  I moved behind the chair, not enjoying the idea of copping a feel of this guy’s ass as I accessed his back pocket. “What did they steal? I’m pretty sure we won’t make it, and I think I deserve to know why I was grabbed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “It’s not important,” he said quietly, leaning as far forward in the chair as the bindings allowed.

  “It damn well better have been a Ferrarri or Rolls Royce or something pretty fucking awesome.” I found a plastic card with a single wire molded to the plastic and a computer chip in the middle. If Bastian could trace where the location of the signal’s transmission ended, we’d have the rest of the Seasons and Adalina, I hoped.

  “No. It was nothing like that. Did you get it?”

  I came around the chair and stood in front of him. “How does this work?”

  “You see the red strip melted to the card? Just unplug it from the center square, the one that looks like a little computer chip, and bingo.”

  “Okay,” I moved as if I were about to do it but stopped, my hand hovering over the card. “But first you’re telling me what you took. I’m not risking getting shot full of holes if you’re smuggling guns or nuclear missiles or something.” Hopefully, he’d think I was as much of an airhead as the name I gave him indicated.

  “It was a kid,” he bellowed. “Just a kid.”

  “Why’d you take a kid?”

  “Someone told us to.”

  “Who?” He strained to see me more clearly through the dim light. “You stole a kid.” I knew the small amount of trust I earned just went to shit, but I tried anyway. “No wonder these guys want to kill you. Can’t you just give the kid back?” He went silent and glared daggers at me.

  “Who are you, really?”

  I straightened my shirt as best I could and ran my fingers through my hair. “Does the name Parker mean anything to you?” My tone was icy, and I saw the recognition dawn on his face.

  “Fuck. You’re working with Mercer? You were supposed to be concerned with nothing except recovering Catherine.”

  “Until you covered the pier with blood and made me believe she was dead.” It wasn’t a conscious thought, but I backhanded him hard, causing the chair to teeter. “Did you get your rocks off watching her parents squirm? Making me squirm? Shooting her uncle?” I wasn’t aware that I was hitting him until someone grabbed me from behind and dragged me away. I kicked my legs out, hoping to get enough momentum to break free.

  Mercer shoved the door shut, and only then did I realize I was pleading with him to let me go. He dropped his hold on me, and I swallowed. Gasping down breath and refusing to think of what I just did and what I would have done.

  Recovering, I put on my game face and held out the tracker. “This will signal his friends if the circuit’s broken. Maybe Bastian can determine a way to reverse engineer the trace and then you can set it off and recover Adalina.”

  “Okay.” He tucked it carefully into his shirt pocket.

  “I need to get out of here. Can we go?”

  “Yes.”

  Thirty-three

  The drive back to Mercer’s safe house was in total silence. I leaned my cheek against the cold glass window and avoided looking at my hands. The encounter with Adam turned into something I wasn’t prepared for. I heard people speak of rage blackouts before, but if Mercer hadn’t gotten inside the room when he did, I was certain I would have beaten the man to death with my bare hands. I swallowed unsteadily, afraid I would be sick.

  After what felt like an eternity, Mercer stopped the car and removed the key from the ignition. Something changed in him, and he nodded to me as he climbed out of the car. I was numb and exhausted. I followed him inside and heard Bastian ask where the pizza was. It seemed an absurd question, and I continued into the kitchen to wash Adam’s blood off my hands.

  “Bloody hell,” Bastian swore as I came into view, “what happened to you?”

  “Mercer.” I didn’t feel like elaborating. Either Julian could fill him in or not. It didn’t matter, and I didn’t care.

  After watching the last remainder of the red water run down the drain, I dried my hands on a towel. My hand throbbed, and the pain radiated up my arm. I didn’t want to think about how forcefully I must have been pummeling that man for the impact to have jarred the rest of my body. If I ached, I’d hate to think what he felt like. Again, there was the possibility I might be sick. There was also the possibility he deserved much worse than what I did to him.

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nbsp; “It’ll take awhile to engineer a program to trace a sent signal,” Mercer said quietly. “It might be a couple of days even.” He pressed his lips together, perhaps considering offering a smile but thought better of it. “Get yourself cleaned up.”

  “Try not to need me for anything else,” I snarled. Bastian opened his mouth to say something but melted into the background as I went to the door.

  I wasn’t sure I had enough energy to make it home. By some miracle, I pulled up to my apartment building and went upstairs. Letting myself in, I locked the door and went straight to the bathroom. Stripping down, I stood in the shower, leaning against the tile wall. The emotional and psychological toll exhausted me, and I stared blankly at the faucet. There were no thoughts. My synapses were fried. I wasn’t even sure if I had enough sense to use the shampoo and body wash, but when the water ran cold, I stepped out of the shower, wrapped myself in an extra large bath towel, walked into my bedroom, and curled up in bed, pulling the blankets over my still wet body and damp towel.

  A couple hours later, I opened my eyes and stared at the digital blue glow from my clock. On autopilot, I got out of bed, dressed, and arrived at the hospital. It was dark out, and it was either early morning or late in the evening. Entering, I headed straight for O’Connell’s room. Opening the door, he met my eyes.

  “Parker,” he whispered, and I noticed Jen asleep in a chair.

  “Oh god, Nick,” I exclaimed, just as quietly. I went around and sat on the edge of the bed. “I almost killed him.” I felt a tremor travel through me, and O’Connell grasped my arm.

  “It’s all right.” His words held nothing but conviction. “You did it for me.” I looked away, and he squeezed my forearm to get my attention. “The asshole had it coming.” I didn’t like it. It didn’t matter what Adam did; we weren’t supposed to act like this. Whatever happened to the good guys wearing the white hats and acting within the confines of the law? “It’s okay. Tell me what happened.”