Explicit Detail

by Scarlett Finn

  ‘Get Flick out of here!’ Rushe roared.

  ‘Let her go!’ Galante pleaded. ‘Let Rosie go, please!’

  Flick knew nothing about drugs, but if what Rosa had just administered was enough to kill him then Rushe was acting on borrowed time, using his last minutes of strength to fight for her life instead of his own.

  ‘Get my woman out of here now, Galante!’

  Rosa had dropped the needle and was clawing at Rushe’s corded arm, the colour in her face changing rapidly.

  ‘Yes,’ Galante said, sweeping his hands toward Joey, who, along with Whyte, still had Flick up off the floor. ‘Get her out of here! Let her go! We’ll release her! You release Rosie!’

  Rushe had enough time left to end the life of Rosa Vallario, the murderess, and Galante loved the felon too much to take that risk. But Flick didn’t want to abandon Rushe here. Whyte and Joey lugged her toward the door Rosa had emerged from. She screamed out for Rushe but he maintained his stare on Galante.

  ‘Rushe!’ she cried out. ‘I love you! Rushe!’

  Rushe’s form faded from her line of sight when they took her into the dark and the door shut behind them.

  ‘Give her something,’ Whyte said. ‘What have we got?’

  ‘These, I got these,’ Joey said. ‘There’s not enough to kill her, but it’s all I got!’

  ‘Just give it to her and get her the fuck out of here!’ Whyte replied. ‘We’ve got to go and get rid of that asshole’s body.’

  After a brief tussle, they got her down to her back on a high, flat surface. Something was pressed into her mouth and it was her instinct to spit out the plastic capsules, but Whyte was on her, his hand over her mouth and nose. Pinned down, Flick had no way to fight. Then another body landed on her, and someone stroked her throat.

  ‘You swallow those down or you’ll be dead quicker than your boyfriend in there.’

  Without oxygen, Flick had to swallow but the pressure didn’t leave her face when she did.

  ‘I should just finish her,’ Whyte snarled.

  ‘Yeah,’ Joey said, but he got up and moved away, apparently unwilling to get his hands dirty for Whyte. ‘I got to check Rosie.’

  Joey disappeared, and Flick kicked out against the hatred Whyte choked her with. The wimp of a man tried to persist, but she wrestled with Rushe, who was twice Whyte’s size, for fun. So thrusting upward, she bowled him to the floor and leapt to her feet.

  The darkness made educated purpose impossible, and she tried to run, but Whyte snatched for her ankle and sent her to her face. Smacking her head on something blunt but solid, nausea burst in her gut, and the agonising explosion of pain behind her eye made Flick call out.

  She couldn’t give into the threatening unconsciousness now, so flipping to her back she brought up her foot and slammed her heel down into his wrist, granting her immediate release and causing Whyte to howl in a pain that satisfied her.

  Scrabbling up, she ran with her hands out, and while wobbling on her feet she searched the wall until she found a door. On opening it, she met light and rushed forward, getting half a dozen steps in before she recognised her location as the staff dressing area. Snapping around, she returned to her entry point only to find that it had locked behind her. She couldn’t go back; she couldn’t get to Rushe.

  Her eyes unfocused and she lost her footing. Stumbling against the wall, Flick knew she had to get out of this private space. If she didn’t and she passed out then they could have her, they could do what they wanted. They’d have her, and they’d have Rushe too.

  Getting out of the staff room, she bypassed security, and headed for the exit. Perhaps stumbling women came out of this place all the time because they didn’t seem fazed.

  Flick couldn’t run, and every stair was steeper, higher, more difficult to climb than the last. She thought about Rushe, about how to help him, about how to get back there. But by the time she got into the alley the world was spinning, and she couldn’t walk straight. But she had to, she had to keep going, she had to get away from this place, away from these people.

  Rushe had been injected with a drug designed to kill. The man she loved was dead or dying while Flick struggled to keep herself upright. Stars floated in front of her when she got onto the sidewalk and the bright lights dazzled her, but someone grabbed hold of her. She braced to scream but no sound came out, and her legs went from under her when she recognised the blurred faces of security.

  ‘Get her in a cab and get her out of here,’ one of the security guys said.

  ‘Should we send her to the hospital?’

  ‘No, this bitch is out of it. We pay the cab driver to take her out of our precinct. We get the mess off our own doorstep, that’s procedure.’

  Flick opened her mouth to tell them what had happened, to ask for help, but the words were too heavy, and faded to nothing, just like the rest of her world had.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Flick could hear something, but she couldn’t quite make out what it was. A voice maybe, or perhaps it was an animal. There was movement, and the muffled sounds of vehicle engines. Paper shuffled, a phone rang, then something blasted a siren and she opened her eyes.

  Daylight. Beyond the end of the tunnel, Flick could see blazing sunshine. Daylight. Rushe. Flick tried to leap up but the weight all over her body pinned her down, and though her head hadn’t moved at all, a searing pain fired through it.

  She didn’t think she’d made a sound, but someone came over and touched her hand. Flick opened her eyes again and tried to see the point of contact, but she couldn’t move her head.

  ‘Take it easy,’ someone said. ‘You’re in the hospital. Can you tell me your name?’

  ‘Rushe,’ Flick said, trying to sit up again, but the person next to her guided her back down.

  ‘Your name is Rushe?’

  ‘No,’ Flick said, licking her cracked lips. ‘You have to find him. You have to help him.’

  ‘Let’s worry about helping you.’

  ‘No,’ Flick said. ‘You don’t understand. They’ll kill him. You said that this is a hospital, he could be here. Is he here?’

  ‘No one by that name has—‘

  ‘He’s six four, broad. He’s striking, you would have noticed him, dark hair and eyes. He has a scar on the back of his neck and on his shoulder. There’s one on his right temple from—‘

  ‘No one by that description has been brought in,’ the doctor said.

  Flick hadn’t even processed whether the caregiver was male or female, so she took the time to blink her eyes and tried to orient herself.

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘You’re in a hospital, I told you that.’

  ‘She awake?’

  This was a second voice and a dark figure came into Flick’s peripheral vision. Concentrating enough to focus, she found she was in a curtained-off area. The doctor was a female, her hair drawn up in a blonde chignon. The second voice and the dark form appeared to be a man in a police uniform.

  ‘I need help,’ Flick appealed to them, while managing to push her weight onto her fists.

  ‘I would say so,’ the cop said, coming over to her; the doctor remained in the background. ‘Your tox screen was concerning. Those weren’t regular street drugs in your system. Do you want to tell me where you got them?’

  ‘You go straight to that?’ the doctor said, approaching the cop’s side. ‘She was abandoned in the middle of the street. We have to do a pelvic and—‘

  Flick remembered having consensual sex the day before, but that only reminded her of her pain. ‘I need to go...’ Snatching for the cop, Flick had a thought. ‘You have to go to the Waterside. You have to arrest them.’

  ‘Arrest who?’

  ‘They’re killing them! The women, and now Rushe, and—‘

  ‘She’s hysterical,’ the cop said, with more than a modicum of impatience. ‘Can you give her something?’

  ‘We’re trying to get the drugs out of her system,’ the doctor said.


  ‘Tell us what happened,’ the cop said.

  ‘You have to find Rushe! You have to get to him, they’re going to kill him.’

  ‘This your boyfriend? Your brother? What?’

  ‘My boyfriend,’ Flick said. ‘They were going to kill me, but he told them not to. He said if they killed me there would be payback.’

  ‘Right,’ the cop said, then leaned back to talk to the doctor. ‘Talk about a bad trip.’

  ‘I am not tripping,’ Flick said, though she wouldn’t know it if she were.

  She opened her mouth to tell the cop everything and then remembered that there was a chance some cops somewhere wanted to talk to her and they wanted to talk to Rushe too. Flick also remembered what Jansen had said about corrupt cops, and about the human traffickers out there somewhere, who may still be looking for her and their money.

  So while she considered her options, Flick kept her mouth closed. Rushe was out there, dead or alive; she wouldn’t believe the former until she saw a body. Rushe was a fighter and could get out of anything, Flick believed it. She had to believe it.

  Grieving was premature, so she wouldn’t give it credence. Women would continue to die as long as this gang got their way. Rushe was somewhere in the world and he could be in pain, he could be in need. Time was of the essence, so Flick took a deep breath.

  ‘It was some guy in a club,’ she said. ‘Never seen him before.’

  ‘Description?’

  Flick would do her best to keep things vague, because there was no way these people would believe her real story. She also couldn’t admit Rushe’s role in last night’s events for fear of incriminating him too, since he had threatened Rosa’s life.

  Even if the cop believed enough of her tale to go to the Waterside and ask questions, Flick would just cause more problems for herself, for Laurie, and for any other oblivious could-be victims out there walking the streets now.

  The doctor had wanted to keep her overnight for observation but after an hour, Flick was too restless to stay put. It took her five minutes to find her clothes in a bag under the bed. Though her movements were still sluggish, she kept working on getting herself dressed.

  Peeking around the curtain, she was ready to make a break for it when she noticed the clock – it was four thirty in the afternoon. The late hour alarmed Flick so much that she started moving without thinking.

  Quickly out of the ER, Flick went for the sidewalk and just kept walking. She doubted that the cops would chase after her, or the doctors for that matter. But enough time had been wasted already.

  Unlike the last time Rushe was in trouble, Flick had no one to back her up. Her first idea was to go to Liam. He would be in the library, and she didn’t know who would be watching so she would have to be careful.

  Stealing wasn’t something she’d thought herself capable of. But at the present moment, she had no other choice. At least that was what Flick told herself when she swiped the coat of a woman enjoying a drink outside a coffee shop. The woman was yammering on the phone and couldn’t have cared less about her coat hanging over the guardrail cordoning off the external seating area.

  Donning then buttoning the stolen apparel, she hooked the hood up over her head and went toward the library, which was only a dozen blocks away.

  Liam usually went for his dinner at The Grill at around five, so Flick didn’t have to wait for long. Ideally, if she’d had the first inclination how to find them, she would have gone to Eric or Scott. Wasting half the evening trying to locate them herself was ridiculous when she knew how quickly Liam had gathered the information on Whyte.

  At almost quarter past five, Flick spotted Liam coming out of the library and running down the stairs to cross the street. She’d been watching from the alley opposite, and there were enough people coming out of work now that she felt comfortable enough to break onto the pavement and beat a path toward Liam. She gave him the space to enter The Grill and order as he normally would, all the while hanging back near the restroom so as not to attract suspicion.

  When Liam was finished, he went to his regular booth in the far corner and flipped around a discarded newspaper left on the table top. Flick gave it five seconds, then willed herself to go over. People could be out to get her, so his position in the window made her feel exposed, and there was no illusion that Rushe was watching over her anymore.

  Flick gathered her courage and kept her head down as she made a beeline across the room and into Liam’s booth. She didn’t remove her hood, his inhale was probably a prelude to a joke, but she lifted her head and met his eyes. Liam stopped, and his ease became panic.

  ‘Flick, for crissakes,’ he gasped out, and lunged across the table to seize her hand. ‘What happened to you?’

  Vanity was the furthest thing from her mind. She hadn’t showered since yesterday, and she was fighting the worst hangover of her life. No doubt her eyes were sunken and shadowed, and her skin would be pale and sticky. If the way her head thumped was anything to go by, she’d be parading a nasty bruise on her forehead, showing through her dank hair too. But those things were insignificant.

  ‘I don’t have time to talk about it. I need you to find someone.’

  ‘Flick, whatever this is—‘

  ‘They’ve hurt Rushe,’ she said. ‘I don’t know, maybe he’s already dead, but—’

  ‘Rushe is a guy who can take care of himself. You should worry about—‘

  ‘Myself?’ Flick snapped. ‘He used his own life to save mine; do you think I should just walk away from that?’

  ‘I think if he lost his life to protect yours, then he loves you very much. I also think that you going and getting yourself killed would defeat his objective.’

  ‘I didn’t come to ask your advice. I know what I’m going to do.’ Flick knew that Rushe would be furious about her actions. But he would admire her single-minded determination. ‘I need you to help me find someone, then after that you can walk away and you never have to see me again. I won’t bring any more trouble to you. I apologise that you’ve been involved in this. I didn’t know... I’m sorry.’

  ‘Who is this person you want to find?’

  ‘An associate of Rushe’s,’ Flick said. ‘I only know him as Eric, I don’t know his last name, and I don’t know where he lives. He’s Caucasian. He makes money fencing stolen electronics, but I don’t know if he has a shop or a business. He has a little girl called Gracie, but that’s sensitive information. If you—’

  Liam held up a hand. ‘I’m not interested in hurting anyone.’

  ‘She was born at some point within the last two years. Somewhere in that same sort of time frame Eric was bitten on his thigh by a dog, so there might be medical records, or an identifying scar.’

  ‘Got it.’

  In recounting these details to Liam, Flick realised that Rushe had done it again. The car ride with Eric was a setup. Taking her out of that hotel suite, out of the bed they shared on the night she became his perk and on that job with Eric, had been for this purpose. Yes, Rushe got confirmation that she and Eric had already met, but he suspected as much because she couldn’t have gained the information she had about Susan and the other women from anyone else.

  But taking her on that ride-along, with Eric, showed Flick who she should turn to in the event that Rushe was not available to her. Chances were that Rushe didn’t need a second man for the task at all; he’d taken Eric on the Galante job to get the two of them in the same space with him.

  He’d done it with Jansen on their last mission too, setting it up so that Flick got a full view of Jansen, who ended up being her back up. The only reason she trusted him at all was because she’d witnessed the exchange of the two men. This time she’d had the chance to ask questions, to garner information from Eric, and Rushe had trusted her to ferret away the details for future use, she hoped now that he would be proud of her for understanding and following the lead he provided her.

  ‘They might be watching you,’ she said to Liam, trying not to focus too
heavily on thoughts of her love while there was work to do. ‘You’re going to have to be careful.’

  Liam frowned. ‘Why would they watch me?’

  ‘The people who hurt Rushe, they have associations with the King Club, who are serious people,’ she said. ‘This is important... do not discuss me, or Rushe, or any of what you’ve heard or seen here with any of your colleagues or friends, and you cannot go to the cops, do you hear me? Do not contact the police. When the time is right I’ll give you instructions, but you can’t go to them now.’

  ‘They may be able to help if—’

  ‘It’s important, Liam,’ she said. ‘I need your word.’

  ‘Are you on the run?’ Flick’s eyes darted away from his, and she knew the gesture was telling but it had been automatic. ‘Jeez, Flick, are you a fugitive?’

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘Is it Rushe?’

  ‘No,’ Flick said. ‘There are people who would like to know where I am, that’s all.’ Flick wouldn’t disrespect Rushe’s name. She didn’t want anyone to think less of him, especially while there was a question mark over his condition and he wasn’t here to defend himself.

  ‘Ok,’ Liam said. ‘I’ll see what I can do, give me an hour?’

  Flick nodded. ‘Bring it to the north alley, down the block. I can’t come into the library, they might be expecting me.’

  ‘Where are you going to go in the mean time?’

  ‘There’s one piece on the board I haven’t accounted for yet,’ Flick said. ‘I need to find out if he’ll be useful... If I’m not at the alley in an hour, get in touch with Eric and tell him what you know. Only tell Eric, tell no one else. Give him the information, then forget that you laid eyes on any of us.’

  ‘Flick,’ Liam said, keeping her hand when she tried to slide out. ‘This’ll make a helluva book.’