She pushed a hand through her hair in a revealing motion, then stopped when Ara stepped into view.
"No," Ara said. Her single word halted the stripper's approach.
Jebediah couldn't tell if it was Ara's tone, glare, or gloved hands with silver studs at the knuckles that made the girl freeze. He supposed it could've also been the two bouncers behind him out cold.
And even though it wasn't at all necessary, Ara took a moment and wiped the bouncer's blood from the back of her hands while keeping her eyes locked on the stripper.
Once the working girl found the ability to walk again, she peeled away and back into the crowd of partiers like the devil himself was behind her. And maybe she was, given Ara's obvious disgust at the room of writhing humanity.
"I am dirty just standing here," Ara said.
"Kill no one. Not yet," Jebediah responded.
"If any of these … men …," she spat the word. "Come near me, I will make them wish to die. No one will touch me, Jebediah."
"I don't think that'll be a problem," he replied.
Ara may as well have been invisible against the backdrop of scantily clad women holding the room's attention. Her black turtleneck sweater led down to plain dark pants. She could have been a nun, except for the holstered .40 Smith and Wesson at her hip.
The two stalked forward into the crowd. Space appeared where they went. No one reached for a phone to call a warning and no one barred their path. Jebediah and Ara were figures of dread, and the partygoers guessed disturbing them in any way was akin to suicide.
And they were right.
So the crowd kept their eyes on each other and breathed easier after the duo passed.
Jebediah and Ara passed under the DJ's balcony and approached a metal door. The entrance to the VIP area was painted red and framed by the black walls. Beyond the metal door was a hallway lined with doors—doors where the high paying customers could get anything they wanted. Flint's intel put their man at the far end of the hallway in the largest room. He'd have two men guarding him. Chances were, they'd be outside the room standing somewhere in the hallway.
Once through the door they'd need to sprint and hit hard. With any luck, and the advantage of surprise, they'd drop any hostiles with minimal noise. After all, no one in their right mind attacked a guarded ardati soldier in the Caliber.
Jebediah and Ara took up positions on opposite sides of the entryway. They attached silencers to their guns, brought them to the ready, and bent into a crouch. Jebediah silently mouthed counting to three, then they stormed through the door side by side.
An armed man was leaning against the wall lighting a cigarette. Jebediah's gun coughed once, and the surprised man's head rocked back in a spray of blood.
At the same moment, Ara's gun fired again and again. The rounds caught the second guard standing at the end of the hallway, dead center. He had his gun just barely out of his holster. Rounds from Jebediah's gun joined Ara's, and the man slumped forward, dead on his feet with a look of surprise and panic. He toppled forward and fell on his face. He struck the floor at the same instant the match from the first guard hit the ground.
Ara and Jebediah stopped in the middle of the hallway. Ara whirled to guard their rear while Jebediah trained his gun forward. Both were breathing hard, but calm. No one came into the hallway. The sounds of rough sex and laughter from the VIP rooms told them no one heard their gunfire.
They stalked to the door at the end of the hallway. A half-naked redhead came out. She was looking down and wiping tears from her eyes. She didn't notice them until the door was halfway shut. Jebediah grabbed her, threw her to the side and put his hand over her mouth to stifle her scream. Ara kept her weapon trained on the door.
"Quiet," he ordered. His harsh whisper was hot against her ear. "You don't have to get hurt. But stay quiet."
The redhead nodded her head up and down. Her eyes were pleading, and Jebediah noticed one was almost swollen shut. There was blood dripping from her scalp where it looked like hair was torn from the roots. He slowly lowered his hand from her mouth.
"You want Richie?" she asked in a shaky voice.
He nodded.
"He sent me to get another girl," she whispered. "He doesn't like red hair."
She gave a shaky laugh and wiped at her bruised eye again. "Whatever you do to him will be too good."
"He won't think so," Ara said.
Jebediah stared at the girl for a moment. He didn't lower his gun. If he let her go, she might warn someone else. The only way to be sure was to put a bullet in her head and hide the body.
Ara sensed his hesitation and put a hand on his shoulder. "She won't tell anyone, will you?" she asked the redhead.
"Oh, god no," the redhead quickly insisted. "He's in there by himself, half-drunk and laying down. I'll just tell the club he passed out. They usually let him sleep it off."
Jebediah stared at the girl, thinking, then lowered his gun. She stumbled away toward the front of the club.
Ara gave Jebediah an odd look but kept quiet. Both turned to the door and pushed through.
Richie had been a belly sleeper for most of his life. He supposed it started about the same time his father, a brutish soldier for the one of the minor houses, started paying visits to his room at night. It didn't protect him, but the illusion of safety from the cuddled-up position had stayed with him through adulthood.
Even now, in the depths of his disturbing dreams, he tried to roll back to his belly. But, as when he was a child, rough hands forced him over. He groaned in protest at what would follow. But something new happened. Restraints were slapped on his wrists and ankles, and a hand slapped his face hard enough to flip his head to the side.
The sudden pain shook him from his dreamy state and he lunged up. He yelled when his shoulders were pulled back by handcuffs attaching his arms to the top of the bed. He tried to roll over, but his ankles were tied down, too.
He started to cry for help, but a gun got shoved between his teeth. He gagged at its acrid, metallic taste, then gave a muted scream when the still-warm barrel burned his mouth and tongue. A strangely familiar face appeared over his.
"Shut the fuck up," the man ordered. "There's no one for you to call."
Richie's face was shoved over. Both men he'd brought to guard him were stacked face down on the side of the room. Blood still leaked from their bullet wounds onto the floor.
"You understand now?" the man with the gun asked. "Good. Cause I want you to believe me. I want you to know how much I want to blow the top of your head off. I want it so bad the trigger's half-pulled. But give me what I want, and I'll go away."
The gun left Richie's mouth. He didn't try to yell. No one was going to help him.
He looked around. There was a woman dressed all in black with her hair pulled back. She looked down at his naked body with open disgust. He looked back to the man with the gun, and he finally recognized him.
"You! Jebediah Creek. From the Warren the other day. Is that what this is about?" he sputtered. "I didn't hurt the boy. I only scared them. You already killed the others …" His panicked babbling stopped short from the explosion of pain to his nose and a loud crack.
"There was a girl taken from a school. Tell me where she is," said Jebediah.
Richie spit blood. "I don't know. That wasn't us. Bunch of Warren rats probably—"
Another fist closed one of Richie's eyes.
"I don't have the goddamn time for this," said Jebediah. "Every second I'm here is a second she's scared. A second she's being hurt."
"I don't know. I swear, it wasn't me!" Richie screamed.
Jebediah looked at Richie and breathed for a moment, then holstered his gun.
He reached behind and brought up a thin wire about the width of the metal on a coat hanger. Then he reached into his pocket, brought out a butane lighter, and triggered the jet flame. He ran the blue fire up and down the wire until it started to smoke. His eyes stayed locked on Richie, and the wire began to glow with h
eat.
"The first time I did this was hard," Jebediah said in a matter-of-fact tone. "Shoving something into a man's peehole makes anyone squeamish. But I got over it fast. This time, it'll be easier."
He brought the wire down to Richie's exposed crotch.
"No. Christ no. Don't!" Richie protested. "House Rakash. Them! They took her."
"We figured that already," Ara said, walking closer holding a towel. She shoved it over Richie's mouth at the same moment Jebediah pushed the wire against the inside of the bound man's thigh. It sizzled and burned and the ardati soldier screamed into the towel. After a moment, the wire was pulled from his leg, and Ara lifted the towel. Richie was sobbing.
"You need to do better," said Jebediah. "Or next time, this goes in there." He pointed at Richie's penis.
"I swear to God, I don't know where she is," Richie wailed.
Jebediah moved the wire toward him.
"No! Stop. I know who does. Boyd. Guardsman for House Rakash. He'll tell you. He knows. He knows."
"Where is Boyd?" Jebediah asked. Richie told them.
"You promised! I helped you! You promised!" Richie begged.
"Yes," replied Jebediah. "I promised you we'd leave. And we are."
Jebediah walked to the door and opened it.
Roberto, the beggar from the Warren and Javier's father, walked into the room.
The scar on Roberto's face, where Richie had cut him, still hadn't healed, and the father looked at the ardati with undisguised hatred.
Jebediah and Ara walked to exit the room. Behind them, they heard Roberto speak.
"My son cries at night. And this scar, it still hurts."
The door to the room closed. It couldn't completely muffle Richie's screams.
The duo's ride was quiet except for the rhythmic pounding of the wipers, and the buzzing of the cars air conditioning blowing tepid air against them.
Ara leaned back into the cracked vinyl passenger seat with a sigh. Her holster bit into her side. She adjusted the sidearm, then stretched her neck while eyeing Jebediah from the corner of her vision. He'd changed since the kidnapping.
He'd always been intimidating, both from reputation and sheer presence. But it was an unconscious thing, tempered with the occasional smile or joke. That was all gone now.
The dark pieces of him just hadn't been revealed. They'd been forced to the surface like oil pulled from the ground, then lit into a raging fire. And people were burning. She wondered if he knew how much she liked him like this. She wondered if he could tell. But they still had to be careful. There was too much at risk.
"Killing that redheaded girl wouldn't have helped us. Civilians will stay out of our way if we don't hurt them," she said.
He didn't respond, focusing instead on the road ahead.
"A huge body count will just draw the authorities. We need intel, not a bunch of corpses," she continued.
"Where does it come from?" he asked.
Jebediah's sudden question confused her.
"What do you mean?" she replied.
"I saw your face in that club. You were uncomfortable with the women, but it was nothing compared with how you were with the men. You tell me I need to watch the aggression, but you were ready to draw down on the entire room. You weren't just disgusted, you wanted to kill them."
"What of it?" she threw back, her voice rising and her mouth drawn to a scowl like she was ready to spit. "They are pigs, all of them."
"If you'd have fired on that room, we would've lost Richie."
"You can trust me to help the girl. She's a child, Jebediah. Magda is a child and those men, they put their hands on her …" she trailed off then fell silent.
"If you want to help her, then we need to find out where she is," said Jebediah.
Ara stayed silent. She looked out the windows, watching the passing streetlights cast shadows through drops of water running down the car windows. Her mind drifted back to another car she'd sat in, at a much younger age.
Looking back, she realized just how severely she'd been in shock in the back seat of that car, trembling as if chilled to the bone, even though the open windows let in the desert's dry sweltering air.
She only vaguely registered heavyset Davood's presence next to her. Another boy, Hootan was driving the car. He was slimmer and already balding, though only seventeen.
A part of her wasn't in the car. That part of her floated above, looking down at her dirt-caked hair and second-hand dress, now ripped at the hem. It saw the broken fingernails on her bloody hand, laying limp on her lap. That part of her knew with detachment that under the hand and within the ripped dress she was bleeding and hurt and dirty. And very, very ashamed.
Biology was her toughest class and she'd worked hard the night before, nodding to stay up while reading to lamp light while the rest of her family slept piled together in their home's single bedroom.
So, when Davood and Hootan offered her the chance to skip the two-mile walk back home in their shiny new car, a gift from their rich father, she'd only hesitated a little. They were the boys the other girls giggled and whispered about, and she'd been flattered by the attention. She'd also been excited when they stopped at a market Davood's family owned because they offered her the first soda of her life.
But afterward had come the market's back room, the pain and humiliation, then finally the numb feeling of floating over herself, watching what happened like it was happening to someone else.
The two miles rushed by outside the window until the car stopped outside her house. Davood reached across her and shoved her door open.
"Time to go. Next time we visit longer, yes?" he asked.
Hootan looked back from the front seat and threw a small chuckle over his shoulder.
She pushed her legs out the door and stumbled forward in slow steps to her house without looking back. She heard the car wheel away and she quietly entered her home.
She went to the only bathroom and stripped off her clothes. She paused to stare at the blood on her underwear, then went in the shower and began to wash. She didn't hear her mother enter, didn't see her look at the bloody underwear, and didn't know she went to speak to her father. Not until afterwards.
Two weeks later, her father, a stout, oftentimes distant man who worked construction, told her she was going to a different school. The school taught women how to guard other women, and their graduates worked for men who didn't want other men around their wives, daughters, or mistresses. She'd have almost no contact with her family, and after graduation part of her earnings would go to her father. Her mother had sat at the table they ate meals, staring down at her hands.
Ara had understood, though. Who could love her after what had happened, after what she'd become? She wasn't her father's little girl anymore, and so had to earn his affection back. Her mother's, too. She'd go to the school and work without rest. And when she was done and able to provide for her family, she knew they'd reconnect. Because things would be different. She'd do what they asked so she could sit in her father's lap and be held.
They would all love her again when they could.
Jebediah's car came to a jarring stop and her thoughts returned to the present. He looked over at her, probably wondering why she'd been so quiet during the ride.
"Are you ready?" he asked her.
She paused, looking at the picture of Jebediah's family hanging from the humvee's rearview mirror.
"You love your son. However he is, sleeping or awake, you love him," she said.
He gave her a confused look. "Of course, I do," he replied, then slammed the car door shut behind him.
Ara looked at her reflection in the window for a moment, then opened her door and followed after him.
Boyd, guardsman extraordinaire for House Rakash and former boy toy to Shira, lay stripped down and glued to his favorite leather chair. He wouldn't have been able to tell anyone how he'd gotten there.
What he remembered was walking into his apartment, feeling something like a tr
ain hit his head, then waking up mostly naked and unable to move.
And he wasn't chained up or anything so mundane. It felt like the entire back of his body had somehow adhered to the surface of the leather recliner. He tried to lift his arms but they only went up as far as his skin would stretch. Anything higher was painful and threatened to rip his flesh.
He tried to move his legs a little but only managed to make them shuffle. Thankfully they'd left his shorts on, but since his legs and back were glued down too, it didn't help his mobility at all.
He was able to bring his head up only because his hair wasn't glued down. A pretty but severe-looking woman came into view and sat down next to him.
"Boyd, is it?" she asked. He nodded back. "Listen, Boyd, I'm having a rough night. You're not going to believe this, but you're the second guy that's been tied down in front of me over the last few hours. And before you get the wrong idea, this isn't something I do regularly. The problem is, I need something from you, something really important. And I think you're the only one that can give it to me."
Boyd stared at the woman and carefully studied his situation. He replied to her with all the gravity of a man delivering a monumental decision. "Fine. You can have me. I'll have sex with you," he said.
The woman's eyes went wide and her mouth opened and closed.
"Wha—, what the hell are you talking about?" she yelled.
"Look, I get it. You heard about me from some of the other girls. Not sure why you thought this was the right approach, but hey, we're here. You have a kink. I understand. I mean, I'm flattered, really. So let's do this. Um, you probably need to help me with my shorts …"
A man cleared his throat out of Boyd's line of sight. "Ara, maybe you should let me speak to him?"
"Oh my god, yes." She bounded up and quickly walked away. "This guy's all yours, Jebediah."
Boyd started at the name. "Hey man, wait, I know you. I mean, I heard of you. What the hell is this?"
The horror of comprehension dawned on his face.
"What happened to your hand?" Jebediah asked.
Jebediah's Crime: A Heroic Supernatural Thriller (The Hinge Series Book 1) Page 14
