His lips curved up at that. "I think you are one step in the wrong neighborhood in this town away from being some sort of criminal. Plus, because of you and Iggs, I was even more exposed to that kind of lifestyle. It was more normalized in a way, I guess."
"Did you like it? Or was it just a compromise?"
"I didn't expect to like it at first. It just seemed like a sure path, a way out of this shit apartment, some way to belong again. But it didn't take long to start to really like it, to think it was a good decision. The brotherhood is nice. The family of it all—with the brothers as well as the wives and kids —was something I no longer knew. I mean, I've always had Iggs. But that shit, well, it hit the fan with my family and Iggs and therefore me. I haven't spoken to our parents since."
My stomach plummeted at his words. At the idea of my best friend in the whole world being without me when the seemingly inevitable blowup happened with her family.
Iggy had always been a good child. She rebelled in small ways usually thanks to my or Vance's nudging, but she bent to her parent's ridiculously strict rules with little or no protest in the vast majority of the cases. I always thought that she would one day hit her wall, would have enough, would give them a lifetime worth of her pain and anger and resentment.
I always wanted to be there for that.
"Hey," Vance said, voice soft, hand reaching out, closing around my knee, giving it a reassuring squeeze. "It's okay. She's okay. I don't... I want her to be able to tell you her own story. It's not my place. But she's good now. I think we both knew it was going to happen eventually."
"I should have been there for her."
"You know what, Ace, fuck shoulds. I think you are only going to make yourself miserable with them if you let them in. And what good will that do?"
"I don't really see a way around them," I admitted, curling up, pulling my knees to my chest, a makeshift shield against all the feelings suddenly swirling around me.
"Ace, it's going to be alright," he told me, voice sweet.
His hand moved out, snagging my chin between strong yet gentle fingers, carefully tipping my head up, making my gaze find his.
One beat.
Two.
Three.
I'd swear the world could stop right then and I wouldn't have even noticed.
And, what's more, I wasn't sure he would have either.
"Christ, were you always this bea—"
The knock at the door might as well have been cannon fire the way it sent us shooting apart.
I didn't know about Vance, but my heart flew into overdrive.
"P-pizza," Vance declared, clearing his voice as he folded up, moved away from the couch and toward the door.
As I watched his back, there was only one thought in my head.
A desperate, needy sound.
Always what?
Had I always been so... what?
It had been so long since someone mattered, since someone's thoughts and feelings about me mattered.
There was no denying, though, that while conversation curved toward lighter topics as we devoured the pizza, that it mattered.
He mattered.
And I wasn't entirely sure he ever stopped mattering.
Maybe I had simply forced it down, pretended to ignore it.
Suddenly, all those nights alone in my bed, emotionally dead seemed a lot less triumphant and a whole lot sadder.
Eight
- Journal Entry - 20th Birthday -
Maybe I could blame a night without sleep the night before the job.
There was no accounting for them. No matter how much I tried to analyze it, it made no sense why some nights I slept like a baby while others my mind flashed through a catalog of memories. Mostly ones I didn't want to relive. The ones soaked in blood and screaming, full of abused women.
The night before the job I was finally supposed to do on my own, I couldn't sleep.
Maybe that had been a factor.
Especially because it was the first time in a long time that the bloody shit was somehow cut with other images. Ones from my past. Ones of my family, my friends, and Vance.
You want to really fuck up your psyche, have images of a man choking on his own blood followed by kissing the guy of your dreams followed by a head bashed in with a ten-pound hammer.
There was no sleeping when you had maybe started to get a little turned on by the kissing memory then immediately made queasy by the memory of looking down and finding brain matter on the top of your shoe.
In retrospect, I should have put the mission off one more day. The intel I'd gotten had suggested it was a relatively new location, so they were likely to be there a while still. I had the time to wait until I had gotten a decent night of rest.
I was headstrong, though, sure of myself, hungry to prove I could do it on my own, that the past four years of training were more than enough.
I didn't want to wait.
Impatience was one of my flaws.
So I shook off the tired with a large black coffee, had a small meal, then hit the road.
The Alpha brothers had been a name in the trafficking world for years, had managed to stay just below the radar, never getting caught because they never stuck around for very long. Their greatest asset was the fact that the younger brother, Patrick, was a ridiculously good looking guy. Mix that with a little charm, and that made him the guy who could lure countless unhappy runaways and foster kids into his car, could earn their trust. Then drug them and send them off to be trafficked overseas.
The older brother, Thomas, was the mastermind of it all, the muscle, the shot caller.
Both of them took advantage of the women they were to traffick. Sometimes at the same time. That disgusting little tidbit was information I had gotten from a girl who had managed to jump off the ship she was bound to be transported in, swim to shore, and scream for help, creating a big enough scene that the brothers had simply taken off without her, knowing that trying to retrieve her would only end them both up for a decent stint in prison.
She claimed the only ones who got away without being raped by one or both of the brothers were the ones they determined to be virgins, knowing they could get a much higher price for them if they served them up intact.
I was itching to finally get to take them down.
I was sure it would be one of the easier gigs.
It was only ever the two brothers and this one hired hand.
Three guys wasn't too big of a deal.
Oh, how very, very cocky I had been when I got ready for the day, when I took off, when I walked up to the door of a small three-bedroom that, from the record I found online, was in the middle of a foreclosure and supposedly abandoned. From those records, I also knew there was an unfinished basements.
Traffickers liked basements for obvious reasons. One way in and out. Really fucking thick walls to keep sounds from being overheard by neighbors.
This place didn't have neighbors, though. On a deep cul-de-sac, the closest house was half a mile down, and from the looks of it as I passed—crumbling front steps, holes in the roof, and shutters hanging on for dear life—abandoned.
See, I got in the door.
In the past, getting in the door was all that I had needed.
It was a pattern that had given me a false sense of security. Like nothing could go wrong during the introduction process.
I miscalculated.
Got sloppy.
Missed the way his eyes had roamed over me.
I'd noticed him glancing at me, of course, but had written it off as a typical man-inspecting-man look. Not a predatory look. Not a look that found hints of breasts, a subtle flare of hips, a certain softness of ass, the thickness of thigh.
Men who made money off of women's bodies became a sick sort of expert on appraising them.
In the past, Holden's presence had secured me my place in the door, had validated my claim. Or maybe they were simply too busy eyeing his herculean size to pay me much mind.
The door was closed behind me.
I was led through the abandoned living room, dining room, and into the kitchen. A formica nightmare straight out of the seventies with hideous dark wood cabinets and holes where all the appliances were supposed to be, the only redeeming quality I found was an ornate scalloped wooden detail around the window over the sink.
"Right through here, Frank," he said. And I missed the sneer. I missed it. But when I replayed it in my head later, I wasn't sure how it hadn't sounded like a blaring siren in my ears.
He moved in behind my left shoulder, reaching in front of me to open a door.
Which should have been another warning sign.
No one had a bedroom off of the kitchen.
What was often off the kitchen, though, was a basement.
This was something I figured out when the door swung open.
Just slightly too late.
Because hands planted at my hips.
And I was flying forward down steep wooden stairs.
I felt the impact.
And the crack.
A rib.
I'd bruised and busted a rib or three in my time, but this one felt different. The pain was sharper. It was hard to think beyond.
But I had to think beyond it.
I had to get up. I had to scramble back up those stairs.
Behind me, I could hear the shrieks and whimpers of women, lost somewhere in the dark and cold.
Before me, though, I still saw an open door.
And I knew.
Oh, I knew that if that door closed, I would be in for some deep shit.
I ignored the deep pain.
I ignored the heavy feeling in my chest.
I got on all fours, forced my body to straighten, charged forward, ramming my body weight in the lower body of Patrick, knocking him backward, seeing his back crack against the counter as my hand sought and found my karambit, charging forward on pure instinct.
I was vaguely aware of clamoring behind me. Bare feet on wooden stairs. A slapping noise everyone would recognize.
But I was too distracted by the whirring of my heartbeat and the tightness in my chest and the curses being hurled at me to dig too far into it.
Patrick's body slumped.
I'd missed the artery, but he was losing fast, he wasn't going to make it without intervention.
One down.
Two to go.
The guard barreled in from the back door, sweaty, eyes wild as he caught sight of the girls running off.
I could worry about them later.
If they were runaways or foster kids, they were probably pretty street smart. They would get safe, get help.
I had to finish this.
The guard was smaller, but wider than Patrick, all shoulders and thighs, barreling toward me, hand reaching behind him.
He was a better fighter than his boss, more street, more natural.
He was taking every bit of my focus.
And when I saw Thomas charging into the room, I had a feeling I was officially in over my head, that there was no way I could fight them both off. Not with my chest feeling so tight. Not with the screaming in my rib.
Apparently, though, I wasn't the only woman in the room bent on vengeance.
I thought they all had fled, but one had stuck behind. Maybe to try to help me. Maybe too in shock to think of running.
I didn't know.
What I did know was she was present enough and angry enough and smart enough to reach the only weapon lying in plain sight in the room.
See, I had seen a lot of shit by this time. I had doled out so much violence. I had been witness to pure evil.
As such, I wasn't really sure what I thought of a higher power anymore. I wasn't sure I could believe in something that allowed so much wickedness, so much cruelty, to flourish in the world.
But right then, in that moment, I saw it.
God was the righting of wrongs by any means necessary.
God was vengeance.
God was a woman with a butcher's knife.
I saw the blade sink into Thomas's back just as my karambit flew from my grasp, dragging my attention back to the fight at hand.
My other blade was in my boot.
But something inside me told me there was no way I could bend down with the screaming in my chest.
My arm flew out instead, a scissor to the throat, cutting off his air much like my own felt restricted.
Catching him momentarily distracted, my arm grabbed his neck, slamming it down onto the corner of the counter, the whack loud even to my ears.
It might have been enough.
But I didn't take chances.
Especially not if it might be my last job. I was starting to feel a little lightheaded from the lack of oxygen.
I wasn't feeling great about my chances.
If I had to go I was taking all of them with me.
Jerking his head back, I whacked him against the counter.
Two. Three. Four more times.
I was too winded to keep going.
And the entire front of his skull was bashed in.
It was done.
"Hey," I called, voice coming out a lot weaker than I intended, even more evidence that I didn't likely have a lot of time left. "Hey, he's dead," I called again to the woman in the black tee with her tumbling red hair, her arms covered in red too. Blood. A lot of fucking blood.
Thomas's body was spread over a half-wall that led into the dining space, his entire front carved open, the flesh there resembling mincemeat.
"You need to go," I added, finally dragging her attention over to me, seeming to process everything at once. "Listen to me," I added, knowing I didn't have long to tell it all to her. "You need to get that shirt off. You need to clean that blood off. If you're going to the police. You need to get that evidence off of you."
"He... he hurt me," she cried, waving her hand with the knife toward Thomas's body.
"I know. I know he did. And you had every right to do that. But our judicial system hasn't been great about this kind of thing. Victims who kill their captors end up in jail. You don't deserve that. Take the money out of his wallet. Get a hotel room. Take a shower, get all the blood off. Dry your hair. Then walk to the police like the rest of the girls likely are, okay? Then tell them your story. But leave out this part. This part was me. Tell them that."
"But you don't deserve to be behind bars either."
"I don't think I have long," I told her, desperately trying to suck in the right amount of air. Failing miserably. "It's okay. Don't worry about me. Wipe off that knife then hand it to me. Then find a shirt, and help put that one on me."
Thankfully, she didn't fight. Her survival instinct was as strong as mine had needed to be for a long time.
She ran off, finding a shirt, pulling off the blood-stained one, swiping off the blood from her neck and arms and legs with it, then coming over to help me put it on since I was barely able to raise my arm on my own anymore.
"I need your pants," she mumbled, pulling me out of my lightheaded stupor.
"What?"
"Your pants. I need your pants. I can't go to a hotel without pants."
That was true.
So she took my pants.
And my boots.
She gave me one long last look. "Thank you," she told me, then tore out of the house.
Alone, I lowered myself down to the floor, finding a small bit of relief in laying flat even as I felt blood moving up my throat, making me turn my head to the side to cough it up.
This was how I was going to die.
Of all the ways, it could have been worse.
It could have been more drawn out.
It could have been something as sad as a car wreck or terminal disease.
At least I was going to go out in a blaze of glory.
At least I took these bastards with me.
It wasn't a terrible death.
I found a small bit of comfort in that as the blood kept comi
ng, as my chest got tighter, as my eyes started to close.
I found an image behind them in those last moments of consciousness.
Piercing eyes.
Cocky smile.
Calloused fingers.
A raspy, sexy voice.
Vance.
Consciousness came to me slowly, a place I had to claw myself to from somewhere deep, somewhere floating and cool and numb.
I'd never done drugs, but I was pretty sure I knew high when I felt it.
I was really, really high.
I tried lifting my head from the pillow, finding it lolling to the side instead.
My eyes stayed stubbornly closed through all of this, a strange weight holding them closed.
Sound came first.
The quiet chattering of the television. The footsteps from the other side of a closed door. The beep of a monitor.
A monitor.
Holden had a decent amount of medical supplies. Stitching kits, prescription drugs, casting material, braces, even a defibrillator.
But he didn't have monitors.
If there were monitors, I was in a hospital.
That thought seemed to be enough to push the drug stupor away, allowing me to surface, jerking awake, relieved beyond belief to find my wrists weren't attached to the rails of the bed with handcuffs.
The cops hadn't gotten me.
But if it wasn't the cops, who was it then?
"Thank fuck you got friends with deep pockets," Holden's voice called to me, deep and familiar and more soothing than I could have anticipated. "Because you got no idea how fucking expensive your surgery was."
"Surgery," I repeated, blinking my eyes open, finding him sitting there at my bedside. Things were hazy, but starting to clear.
The mission.
The house.
The missed signs.
The fall.
The fight.
The girl.
The surety of my death.
"I punctured a lung," I guessed, thinking of the tight chest, the screaming pain, the blood.
"You never do shit by half. Small puncture could just mean a re-inflated lung. Just a tube. Not a huge deal. But you did a good job. Nice big fucking hole that meant they had to open you up to repair the damage. Recovery is going to suck."
The Rise of Ferryn Page 12
