by Hazel Parker
“Yeah—”
I screamed. A mutilated corpse fell to the ground, having been pressed up against my door. I looked out at the hallway to see two men entering and pressing a cloth to my mouth. Just before I passed out from the chloroform, I saw Damon appear, the wicked smile on his face.
“I told you to take my offer when you had the chance,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you get a refund for your flight.”
He bellowed in laughter as the world started to fade from vision. Lane…I’m…
Sorry…
Chapter 19: Niner
I was disgusted with myself, but mostly, I was disappointed.
“What could have been” were four words that repeated themselves in my head over and over again. What could have been if Carrie had given me the chance to have Uncle or Fitz invest in her store? What could have been if I hadn’t been so callously cold at her apartment? What could have been if I had never seen her at the club party a few weeks ago?
Of course, such questions were stupid and didn’t do anything to make me feel better. Actually, they went a long way to making me feel worse. They only reminded me how great of a thing I’d had with Carrie, only to toss it all to the side because I didn’t have the emotional maturity to handle when things had gone to hell. Maybe, in that sense, it was a damn good thing we hadn’t worked out. I probably would have killed the relationship early in its formation.
When Tuesday morning came, I texted our prospect, Danny, to make sure that she got to the airport safe. His response seemed weirdly short, as it said, “You got” rather than “You got it,” but as long as it was a confirmation he was going to do it, I didn’t care.
I thought so much about calling Carrie, though. In my head, I envisioned calling her, apologizing to her, her wanting me to take me back, me getting to the gate just before she got to her flight, and it being a magical reunion. It would have been something out of the movies.
In reality, I just drearily made my way to Brooklyn Repairs for another day of work and club activities. It wasn’t a secret that I usually kept to myself and didn’t say much, but this time, I didn’t say anything at all. I deliberately ignored people who said “good morning” to me, didn’t go to the front to speak to any customers, and relied on Biggie and the other club members to figure it out. I overheard more than one customer call me a weirdo for being so recluse, but if they knew what I was going through, they wouldn’t be saying a goddamn word.
Shortly around noon, I took my one-hour lunch break. Perhaps in a different time, I would have gone to Southern Comfort, said hi to Carrie, and gone back to work with a pep in my step. Even with the store closed, had things gone differently, maybe I could have at least had a sandwich and a short conversation with Biggie or someone else.
Instead, I took the downtime as an opportunity to go for a walk. I hoped that it would clear my head, or at least not make me so mopey. I didn’t give a shit how I looked to the world, but I cared that I was making myself miserable as hell.
I was doing a rather piss-poor job of that the first few minutes when I kept looking at my phone, reading my text message history with Carrie. How something that had been so good and so wonderful, something that felt so destined to be…how something like that had fallen to the bottom of the Hudson River, as dead as the victims of the mafia and other gang violence, was beyond me. I—
A phone call?
From Carrie? As in, Carrie Griffith?
And not just a phone call, but a FaceTime call?
The hell?
Something about this did not feel right at all. She should have been in the air by now, and even if she weren’t, she wouldn’t have called me. Everything about this felt like a trap or a lure for something that was bound to hurt me. The sixth sense I had developed as a cop was screaming at me to be careful.
But the other senses in my brain were also screaming at me to answer the goddamn phone. Did I want to pass up the chance to speak to Carrie—especially since, given it was on FaceTime, I’d know immediately if it was a trick of some kind?
I hesitated momentarily to answer, but once the hesitation faded, swiping to answer was immediate. It took a second for the visual to come on, but when it did, I could see it was Carrie immediately.
But I could also see that something was very wrong.
Her eyes were downcast, as if she were afraid to look at the camera. Her lips looked swollen. Both of her arms were down by her side, indicating that someone else was holding the camera. In the background, it looked like…it looked awfully familiar, but I couldn’t place it. There was sunlight pouring in at an angle, as if from a sloped rooftop.
“Carrie?” I said in a light tone that quickly got darker. “Carrie? Carrie. What’s going on?”
“Lane,” she said, her voice sounding like she’d been sobbing for the last few minutes. “Lane, baby, I’m sorry. I should have listened to you. You were right. Damon, he—”
“Damon what?” I said, my gut already telling me I was about to hear something that I really wouldn’t want. I made it a point as I spoke also to start recording the call, so I could analyze it later. “What the hell is going on?”
“He…he killed the guy watching out for me, Lane! He chloroformed me, and I woke up here, he’s, he’s—”
And then the camera turned, and I went from seeing the angel of my life to the demon, the bane of my existence. Damon Wicker.
“Hello, Lane,” he said, a disgusting smile crawling across his face. “Or should I call you Niner? Or maybe Officer Bentley? It’s so hard to tell you with you. They say I’m the criminal, but you’re the one with so many names, it’s hard—”
“Where the hell are you?” I shouted, oblivious to anyone staring at me in the street. “What the fuck have you done with her? What did you do to her?”
Damon just cackled, all too entertained and amused by my fear. I wanted to reach through that goddamn camera and choke the life out of that asshole. I wanted to dig my nails into him, rip those tattoos off, and then kill him. I wanted to destroy him, but to do so very slowly, as if that might somehow avenge the deaths of all of the women that he had killed.
“Oh, her?” Damon said, taunting me by turning the camera to Carrie, who, with the camera pulled out, was shown to be chained down to the ground, held in place like a slave. God, I wanted to kill that man so bad. “So far, just what she has told you. You do have to hand it to me, Officer Lane ‘Niner’ Bentley.”
He cackled at his own terrible, awful “joke.”
“I may do things that boring society would consider illegal, but I am a truth-teller. I have never shied away from the things that I have done.”
“You think that makes you some goddamn hero? You think that makes you a good guy because you haven’t lied? When I see you, Damon, I will fucking kill you. You may have gotten away with it once, but no system is going to prevent me from coming after you again. I will find you, and I will kill you.”
“Bahahaha,” Damon laughed. “Well, you are in luck. I am putting an invitation out to you and the Stones—all three of them—to show up to a meeting spot that you will be informed of within the next thirty minutes. You are requested to be at that spot at eight o’clock tonight. We will give you a proposition that, let’s see…could save the girl’s life?”
No, there was some catch, some bullshit, some wicked nonsense to this that Damon wasn’t saying. Even if he did spare Carrie’s life in exchange for something, it was like doing a deal with the devil. He’d cripple Carrie, rape her, mutilate her face—something that, yes, might have meant she lived, but it would have been so vicious that it would have altered her life forever.
“Of course, such a trade comes at a price, you know. I trust that you and your capitalist-loving cronies understand?”
“You fucking touch her, I will make sure the only thing else that touches you is a goddamn bullet through your skull!”
“Temper, temper, temper, Lane,” Damon said, mockingly tsk-tsking me. “I can certai
nly understand now why the NYPD couldn’t keep you around. Maybe this also explains why Carrie couldn’t keep you around, either!”
Damon threw his head back and laughed some more as I shook so much that I felt like I’d crush my phone from the tightness of my grip. And then, just to make a point, Damon gave the camera to someone else, lifted Carrie from the ground, and then shoved her down to his crotch. He had pants on, and I knew he hadn’t done anything, but the message was clear.
Wait too long or refuse to play along, and that was about the gentlest thing that Damon would do to her.
“Eight o’clock tonight, Officer Lane Niner Bentley,” he said. “I look forward to seeing you!”
He laughed some more before the call cut off. I almost turned and chucked my phone in sheer anger before common sense won out, reminding me that I’d recorded that call for a reason.
But if I didn’t figure something out within the next eight hours—really, probably within the next hour, knowing how Damon operated—then it wouldn’t matter how much evidence I would have collected. He’d kill Carrie, but not before ensuring her soul would be tormented by her final moments for the rest of eternity.
I couldn’t do it alone, though. I’d done it alone before and look what that had gotten me. A lot of enemies of a different kind, and even if I didn’t exactly have “bosses” or many “co-workers” who wanted to see me fall, I still needed the full support of the Savage Saints.
I sprinted home, ignoring the honking cars as I raced across different streets trying to get to Brooklyn Repair. A few guys on bikes yelled at me to watch where I was going, but their words barely registered with me. Nothing short of the complete recovery of Carrie as I had last seen her would make me feel at ease.
As soon as I reached Brooklyn Repairs, I yelled as loudly as I could.
“Everybody who is not in the club, out right now!”
A few customers looked at me. I stared at them and made a threatening motion. Yeah, we’d have to deal with some bad Yelp reviews. Big fucking deal. They all scrammed.
The prospects, Uncle, and Biggie came over to me, looking at me with some mixture of annoyance, confusion, and fear.
“Niner,” Biggie said. “What’s—”
“Get Marcel over here as soon as possible,” I said. “You two. We all need to talk.”
* * *
“That’s it?” Marcel said after I played him, his brother, and his uncle the video in the office.
“That’s it,” I said. “You want to know what I think? I think Kyle is using Damon to kill you all. He wants the four of us gathered in one place so that he can end us with ease. Once that’s done, no one’s going to stay in the club. Fitz is going to go back to Manhattan, and all the prospects are going to go back to their old lives.”
“Shit,” Uncle said. “Always knew Kyle was a real sleaze ball, but this right here is a new fucking low, even for him.”
“I told you, he’s bound to do anything. If you’re surprised by this, then you didn’t take him seriously enough.”
“Alright,” Marcel said, putting his hands out, controlling the room. “Look, this is not the place to cast blame. I am only interested in getting Carrie back and this fucking Damon guy finally killed. I don’t give a shit what led up to this if it can’t tell us where the hell she is.”
There you go, Marcel. That’s what I’m talking about.
“Let’s watch the video again,” I said. “And this time, let’s try and see if we recognize where they are. If we can pinpoint their location, we can launch a strike in the next hour or so—”
“And maybe have a chance to save her and take out Damon,” Marcel said. “Alright. Go ahead, Niner.”
I did so, playing the video from the start. Thankfully, having already lived through it twice now, it didn’t blind me quite as much as it had before, but it was still excruciatingly painful to see Carrie hurt and Damon laughing. I paused it before it got to the end—I didn’t need any further reinforcement of the imagery Damon had tried to provide.
What place is like that…empty…sunlight in…
“Looks like an abandoned building of some sorts,” Uncle said. “Not a surprise, really. You figure that a guy like Damon’s going to go from place to place—”
“Wait,” Biggie said. “Is she…is she chained? Niner, play the video from the start, will ya?”
I did as commanded. I already had an idea of where this was going.
“How many places in the area do you think have chains set up like that?” Biggie asked.
“From knowing what I know as a police officer? Very, very few. The places that would wouldn’t do so in such an open area—it would either be a private sex place or it would be a dark room, but definitely not an open area.”
It’s where we first ambushed that one Bloodhound.
“Maybe it’s where we ran into the Bloodhound,” Biggie said, making me feel more confident about my notion. “Damon probably assumes we won’t think to check it since we found the one guy there. Maybe he thinks that we’ll have checked it off, as it were.”
“Well, what the hell are we waiting for?” I said, already standing up. “Get everyone you can together right now. I already got rid of the customers. Marcel, sorry, business needs to go to the side for today.”
“I don’t think anyone’s going to question or disagree with that, Niner.”
Perfect.
“We need to all move out en masse, but we can’t bring bikes. It’ll be too loud, and they’ll kill her as soon as they know that we’re on to them. We need…”
It’ll be just like the old days.
“To treat this like a sting. Get in there, overwhelm the shit out of them, kill Damon, get Carrie, and leave the rest behind. At this point, Marcel, we’re not bikers anymore. We’re a bunch of goddamn Savage Saints.”
“Absolutely,” Marcel said. “You’ve helped us up to this point, Lane; the least we can do is help you. So yeah, let’s start putting—”
“What the fuck?”
The voice from outside carried all the way to the office. I cocked a gun and hurried outside, but there was no threat present.
Instead, the corpse of the prospect tasked with watching Carrie this morning, Danny, had been dumped just inside our garage, with a piece of paper that said “Lift Me” over his chest. I did so before the rest of the club could see what I saw.
They had carved the address of the meeting spot into his chest and stomach. The sight was horrid and left little doubt about what they would do to Carrie or to us.
“Oh my God…”
I may have tried to hide it from Marcel, but the president needed to know everything. I guess in some ways, I was glad. If he didn’t realize the extreme measures that the Bloodhounds were capable of, he could have no appreciation of the enemy.
“Now you know,” I said. “Now you know what they can do. So let’s hurry up before they do this to Carrie.”
And God help everyone in Brooklyn if they do.
Chapter 20: Carrie
I know it sounds weird, but a part of me silently wished that Damon had his pants off right before he hung up with Lane.
It would have given me such great pleasure to gnash my teeth on his dick and turn him into a eunuch for all those present to witness. True, I would have suffered more abuse and more violence, but it would have been worth it.
But, instead, he kept the gesture symbolic as he hung up the phone, handed it to one of his minions, and then pulled me up by the hair. I had my hands bound to the ground by chains, making it impossible for me to escape. They had also tied my feet together with rope so tight, it cut off the circulation.
“Hello, Carrie,” Damon said as he smiled at me, his rancid breath impossible to turn away from. “You and I have had many encounters before, but never have we been quite so personal as this. I hope you know that I am very much looking forward to getting to know you.”
“Fuck off and die, you shit,” I said. “I wished I’d called the police on you
when you walked into my restaurant.”
Damon just laughed. Cackled, really. It was certainly a little bit theatrical.
“And what were you going to tell them, hmm? That a scary-looking man had come to your store and wanted some food?”
He laughed some more, but this time, instead of allowing him to mock me, I spat at him. That cut off the laughter immediately. He wiped the spit off, smeared it on my face, punched me in the gut, and then shoved me to the ground.
“God, you stupid fucking cunt,” he said, but he seemed to return to his majestic, grandstanding self shortly after that. “Tell me, Miss Carrie, what do you know about me? I like to make sure that my guests of honor get to know me before the fun begins. After all, what could be more important to an erotic encounter than the connection of shared interests?”
“Like I’d ever say a goddamn thing to you!” I said with a sneer. “You’re a disgusting pig and a rapist. And that’s all I’m going to ever admit to knowing about you.”
But as I spoke, even though I thought I was telling Damon how he really was, he seemed instead to relish it. It was like he wanted me to call him a rapist. He seemed to…I couldn’t believe it, but he seemed to be aroused by it.
“Oh, my, tell me more,” he said, his eyes narrowing like a predator spotting unsuspecting prey.
Well, I was plenty suspecting. But there wasn’t much I could do about it.
But then, before I had a chance to say anything else, anything stupid that would have gotten me in trouble, Lane’s words from before flashed in my mind—the words that warned me that a man like Damon got off the most from being seen as fearful and significant. The more I told him what he wanted to hear, the harder he was going to be, and the easier it was for him to hurt me. In a way, he was like many a nightmarish creation of horror movies, feeding and thriving off of my fear.
So, it was time to do the opposite.
“You say you want to know more?” I said. “You want to know what else I know about you?”
