I hit Niko so hard that his gum flew out of his mouth. It wasn’t anywhere near hard enough. He grabbed the front of my throat, pinching my larynx between his thumb and forefinger, and I was paralyzed by a black suffocating agony. Damian’s little game was nothing compared to this. By the time he’d let go and I could breathe again, my right hand was duct taped to my right ankle and he was working on the left. Behind him, Vukasin was laying out a row of awful things on the floor. Dirty power tools. Hemostats. Tinsnips. I realized that what Niko had done to my throat was probably the least painful thing that was going to happen to me in the rest of my short life.
Niko pointed to my mouth and held up the duct tape, asking a question in Croatian. Vukasin shook his head and replied, holding up pliers and clicking them in the air, then put them back down and handed a long metal pole to Niko. Niko used the pole to force my legs open, attaching a bound ankle to each end.
Once I was rigged up to their satisfaction, Vukasin said something else in Croatian and Niko nodded and left the room.
“It’s just like our own private movie,” Vukasin said. “I should have brought a video camera. Wait a minute...”
He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a cell phone.
“I think I can make video on my phone,” he said, squinting at the screen and pushing buttons. “But I never tried it before. Ah, here we go.”
He held the phone up to me where I lay on my back with my arms and legs splayed and taped to the pole.
“My very own Angel Dare movie,” Vukasin said, moving the phone closer to my face.
“Fuck you.” I could barely squeeze the words out through my swollen throat.
“No no,” he said. “I don’t like that line. Say something better. More original.”
I turned my face to the side and closed my eyes. I could hear faint splashing coming through the heavy double-glazed windows. It sounded like Niko was swimming in a backyard pool. I could picture him out there, relaxing in the sun, working on his tan. The image was infuriating.
“Well,” Vukasin said, pocketing the phone. “Let’s move on. We have so much ground to cover. But first, let me make one thing absolutely clear.” He gestured to the tools. “This is not about the fact that you testified against my former boss. That man has already been replaced by his own superiors and the business of importing women continues uninterrupted. That has nothing to do with you and I.”
I didn’t respond, just started rocking furiously back and forth, twisting and yanking my wrists as hard as I could. They were stuck fast and trying to move under the duct tape was excruciating, but I was able to move away from him using my shoulder muscles like Hank had taught us in his grappling class. Vukasin watched with an amused smirk. We both knew I was wasting energy. I couldn’t open the door, couldn’t get away, all I could do was entertain that fucker with my pathetic squirming. I needed to concentrate on getting a hand free. Not that I had any idea what I was going to do with the hand once it was free, but it was better than thinking about those power tools.
“What do you know about penis reconstruction surgery?” Vukasin asked. I paused in my struggle and looked up at him, confused, but he didn’t wait for me to answer. “I won’t bore you with all the complicated details. What I will say is that it is humiliating, excruciatingly painful, and the result quite ugly. As I’m sure you recall, I was deported back to Croatia after my traumatic injury, and while I do not wish to speak badly of my beloved country, we are not known for the skill of our plastic surgeons.” He put his hand on his crotch. “But rest assured that what they gave me is fully functional, with the help of a surgically implanted pump. I promise you won’t even know the difference.”
Jesus. When I left him at the mercy of the enslaved women he had abused for so long, I assumed they would kill him. During the trial, I heard that he had been severely injured, but I guess the exact details weren’t relevant to my case. I had no idea what the girls had actually done. I had to admit there was an awful kind of poetry to it.
“I could have killed you,” I said hoarsely, painfully. “I could have, but I didn’t. I let you live. You can’t blame me for what those girls did to you.”
“Women like that are animals, like dogs,” he said. “You bound me and left me to be mauled by starving dogs. For this, I do not blame the dogs. I blame you. There can be no forgiveness for what you allowed to be done to me. This is personal, Angel. You of all people should understand.”
He picked up a soldering iron. It was plugged into the wall, and its tip was glowing.
I started to scream then. It felt like broken glass in my throat and was barely louder than the hiss of a beer bottle being opened. I started squirming away from him again, as quickly as my body could go. I was also twisting my knees fiercely inward, trying desperately to close my open legs. It felt like the tendons were close to tearing.
I noticed the door behind Vukasin easing open but was too busy screaming to pay much attention.
It was Hank.
33.
When I saw Hank’s face, my scream got swallowed up in a sort of shocked hiccup. A hot flare of childish hope swelled inside my chest, making it hard to breathe.
Then I looked down and saw that his hands were ducttaped together.
The little brother stepped out from behind Hank and spoke to Vukasin in Croatian. Vukasin replied, gesturing with the soldering iron. The little brother kicked Hank in the lower back, causing him to tumble face first to the plastic-covered floor. The little brother grabbed the roll of duct tape, binding Hank’s ankles, then swiftly made himself scarce without another word. Maybe going to join Niko in the pool.
“Here is your hero, Angel.” Vukasin said, pointing with the soldering iron. “Your white knight come to save you from the evil vampire.”
Hank struggled to lift his head. His face was slick with sweat, eyes unfocused. His head dropped back down like its weight was more than he could bear.
“Hank?” I cried. “Jesus, Hank!”
He didn’t move.
“Some hero,” Vukasin said.
Not Hank, too. I’d already gotten Cody killed; did every single person who’d ever gotten close to me have to come along for the ride?
Vukasin regarded us both, then put the soldering iron back in its holder and started perusing the other tools at his disposal. Eventually he decided on a simple straight razor and stood over Hank’s prone body.
Hank rolled on his side, shook his head and twisted his wrists against his belly, saying something too slushy to understand. Who knew how many pills he had taken, or what was really going on inside his damaged brain? Vukasin gave Hank’s arm a curious slice with the razor and Hank bellowed, bucking away from the pain.
“Speak to me, hero.” Vukasin asked. “Tell me I am evil and that you will do anything to save your true love.”
“She don’t love me,” Hank slurred. “But I don’t give a damn. I love her.”
“Ah,” Vukasin said. “So romantic. Everyone loves you, Angel. Even me, in my own special way.”
He turned back to Hank and the second he did, I fixed my eye on a shiny scalpel about three feet from my right fingertips and started inching my way towards it.
“And so what now, hero?” Vukasin asked.
He slashed at Hank’s face with the razor. Hank wrenched himself away, grimly silent, blood like tears on his cheek.
“Now you get to watch me fuck your woman and then take her apart,” Vukasin continued.
“I ain’t gonna let you touch her,” Hank said, his voice hard, more focused now.
“Oh that’s a good one,” Vukasin said. “You won’t let me.”
“That’s a promise,” Hank said.
I worked my way closer to the scalpel. A foot away. Six inches.
“Or maybe I’ll let her watch me take you apart first,” Vukasin said. “You heard how she screamed for you just now. Clearly she cares if you live or die. Knowing that is going to make killing you that much more enjoyable.”
I
had the scalpel. I held onto it so tightly that my sweaty fingers ached. I started to work my way towards Vukasin.
I heard Hank hiss and grunt and could see him thrashing, but Vukasin had his back to me, his body blocking my view of whatever he was doing. I knew whatever it was, it had to hurt. Another louder but desperately stifled noise from Hank, this one longer and more drawn out. I moved closer to Vukasin. Closer.
“What do you think of your hero now, Angel?” Vukasin asked.
I drove the scalpel into the soft indentation on the side of his left ankle, just behind the Achilles tendon.
He screamed and spun towards me, blood-flecked razor held high.
Hank raised his bound feet and kicked out at the backs of Vukasin’s knees, causing Vukasin to fall backwards on top of him. The razor tumbled from Vukasin’s hand. Hank swept his bound arms up and over Vukasin’s head, and around his neck.
They struggled and flailed together. Vukasin’s flying feet knocked the soldering iron from its stand. The iron fell a few feet to my right, melting a large, smoking hole in the plastic tarp. Hank and Vukasin continued to thrash, but all I could see was that soldering iron. I inched towards it, tipping my right side down and reaching hard with my aching fingers. Almost, almost— And then I had it.
The stink of melting duct tape was awful but it was no-where near as awful as the feel of it against my skin. I didn’t care. All I cared about was getting free.
It only took a few seconds to burn through the duct tape around my right hand and foot, along with several layers of skin. I quickly freed my other hand and foot and then cast a quick glance over at where Vukasin and Hank were still grappling. Vukasin had managed to grab the straight razor again and was slashing deeply and repeatedly into the artery on the inside of Hank’s thigh while screaming in Croatian at the top of his lungs. Hank held him from behind, grimly fighting to get his forearm up under Vukasin’s chin and cut off his air. Blood poured like a faucet from the right cuff of Hank’s pants but he didn’t make a sound. He kept on working that forearm until it finally locked into place, then rolled over so that Vukasin was face-down beneath him. Hank bent his bound legs and pressed his knees down against Vukasin’s spine while pulling the Croatian’s head up and back. Vukasin went silent and the razor dropped from his hand as he reached up to claw at Hank’s arm.
“Reckon one of us is gonna go to sleep pretty soon,” Hank said. He looked up at me. His face was no longer flushed, but horribly pale. He was dying, bleeding out, but his voice was clear and calm. “Don’t know if it’ll be him or me, but I’d just as soon have you out of here either way.”
I could hear Niko calling out, thundering up the stairs.
“I can’t just leave you here,” I said.
“You got no choice,” he said. “If you stay we both die.”
He was right, and I did it, but that didn’t make it any easier, leaving him.
I made it into the bathroom just as Niko and the little brother burst in through the door.
I locked the bathroom door behind me and ran to the window. I could hear scuffles and thumps from the bedroom behind me. I tried not to think about anything but getting that window open.
It wasn’t a bad jump down to the backyard. I was able to hit the flowerbed instead of the cement pool deck and the second I was down, I grabbed a wet blue towel to wrap around my naked body. The yard was surrounded by a cement-block wall. A quick look around made it clear the only way out would be back through the house.
The sliding glass door leading into the downstairs living room was open. Inside, I could hear the fighting and crashing continuing upstairs, then an abrupt silence. Niko’s track suit and white t-shirt were neatly folded on the nubbly beige couch. I grabbed them, along with his narrow leather fanny pack. Vukasin’s car keys were just where he’d left them but the .38 was gone.
I was pulling on the t-shirt when Niko came charging down the stairs in nothing but a tiny red Speedo bathing suit. Most guys who wear a Speedo really shouldn’t, but he looked pretty good in it. He had Vukasin’s .38 in his hand. I ran.
I shoved the front door open and bolted for the car. The jacket slipped out of my grasp as I ran, but I managed to keep Niko’s pants scrunched up under my arm.
The leather seat in Vukasin’s car was sticky and hot under my naked ass as I jammed the key in the ignition and hit the gas. In the rearview I saw Niko come through the door, then the little brother and Vukasin, answering the question of who had gone to sleep first.
I drove away without looking back again.
34.
I was sitting in a stolen car, my third that week, waiting. Several months had passed since I drove away from that little house outside Las Vegas, but it could have been one night. The same night lived over and over again. It wasn’t even really living, just endless running, like a hamster on a locked exercise wheel. Always running and getting nowhere. No sign of Vukasin, but I still had to keep on running—not just to keep him from finding me, because whenever I stopped, I started to remember.
The car was parked in the lot of a mid-sized strip mall, occupied by the same familiar, forgettable franchise businesses you’d find anywhere in the country. There was only one I was interested in. A Mail Boxes Etc. tucked in between a dry cleaners and a Starbucks.
Finally, the UPS truck I’d been waiting for pulled up out front, blocking traffic and cutting off several annoyed midmorning coffee junkies from their fix. The driver was a short black man who made up for his lack of stature with musclebound width. I’d been watching him for a week and recognized him, knew his routine. According to the tag on his brown UPS uniform shirt, his name was André, and he always stopped in the Starbucks for a Skinny Latte after his 10:45 delivery. I wondered if today was the day, if my package was part of the teetering stack that André was dollying into the mailbox place.
I was taking a pretty big risk to get that package. I’d ordered it online, paid for it with a stolen credit card and had it delivered here, to a box rented under a fake name. I’d scouted the place for days before that, making sure it was safe, familiarizing myself with the routines of the people who worked there and the people who came in to get their mail. Nothing remarkable, nothing out of the ordinary, but I kept watching anyway, just to be sure. Even with all my precautions, I was still exposing myself by coming back to the same place every day, and I’d still created a paper trail no matter how convoluted. Stupid, I know. But that’s how bad I wanted what was in that package.
André was taking his time, flirting with the pretty, barely legal Korean girl behind the counter. Eventually, he signed over the stack of packages and headed to the Starbucks. I waited until he had his coffee, got back in his truck and drove away before I went in. I didn’t take off my sunglasses.
I unlocked box number 213. Inside was a small paper slip informing me I had a package. I handed the slip to the pretty girl and she gave me a stiff cardboard envelope with an Arizona return address. I scrawled an unreadable signature on her clipboard and she went back to staring into her iPhone like I’d never existed. I left, silently thanking her for her attention deficit disorder. I never saw her again.
I carried that package around with me for weeks, unopened. I’d take it out of my go-bag every so often, turning it over and over in my hands, but I couldn’t bring myself to break the seal. Not until the tail end of another endless, sleepless night in another forgettable motel.
It was still dark, but not for long. The parking lot outside my single dirty window was full of cars but devoid of activity. The couple in the next room had been engaged in howling, wall-thumping theatrics for hours, but they’d finally fallen silent about twenty minutes earlier. No signs of life anywhere in the complex. I could have been the last living human on Earth.
I took the package out, turned it over and picked at the now peeling label. I was about to put it away again, but I didn’t. I tore it open.
Inside was a signed 8 × 10 print of a cowboy painting titled “After the Fight.” The sub
ject of the painting sat on a crude, splintery bench outside a rough saloon. His hat lay in the dust at his feet and there was blood on his torn shirt. He was looking down at his open hands, his face leaden with remorse and self-loathing. The subject’s hair was long and dark and his clothes were from another era, but I would have recognized that face anywhere. It was Hank.
Regret. Christ, I’d been living with that particular emotion for so long it felt as intimate and familiar as my heartbeat. But was there really any kind of happily ever after that might have been, if only I’d done things differently? Or just a different shade of heartbreak?
I looked at the painting for a few more minutes, a dull ache in the hollow of my chest. When I couldn’t stand to look at it anymore, I put it back in the envelope and tucked it into my bag.
I left the motel without checking out. The sun was just coming up as I pulled my latest stolen car into the early rush hour traffic. I didn’t have anywhere to go. I just drove.
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