by The Behrg
He shook his head. “I took his wife right here, on the table, Jerry standing about where you are now, my head banging into the light fixture with every thrust, her ass slapping and sticking to the tabletop, and then when I had finished, I bent forward looking into her eyes—she had remarkable eyes. She was a dark woman, European I guess, but her eyes were this emerald green with specks of gray, just breathtaking. She was looking at me by then, and while we stared into each other’s souls, I put a knife just like this through her side. Punctured her liver. Then I went farther, deeper, driving the blade up, my hand thrust inside her, our eyes never leaving each other. The light in those beautiful eyes dripping away till they were nothing more than cheap marbles.”
Joje stepped back, taking a long breath. Blake leaned against the cage, crying, and yet, just like Jerry’s wife, unable to take his eyes off Joje. “I guess I’m telling you this so that you understand. I keep my promises, Bwake, but I also keep my threats. Now get in the cage.”
Blake bowed his head. He was ruined. Broken. Stripped of all he had been, all he had believed, his sense of the world, that if you did right and worked hard, good things would come and that when challenges appeared, there were always solutions. Always.
But not anymore.
As bad as things are, they can always get worse.
“Why this house?” he asked, swallowing hard. “What, what is it you want?”
Joje looked like a patient parent determining how to answer a child’s silly question. “I don’t care about your house. I have everything I could ever want. Except what you took.”
The statement felt like hitting the ground after a fifty-foot fall. Blake’s mind began spinning.
“Try going in backward. Feet first.”
“What is it you think I took?” Blake asked, feeling an urgent need to understand why this was happening, that it wasn’t meaningless.
Joje spun the knife in his hand and started forward.
“No, no! I’m going!” Blake said. He turned around, still on his knees, but now facing away from the cage. The tears that dripped from his eyes were hot. He backed his legs into the cage, bringing his knees in, toes striking the back before he could think of ducking his waist in.
“Lower your legs like you’re kneeling but with your upper body slack against the floor.”
Blake did as he was told, crouching while flattening his chest to the floor.
“Scoot to the side, closer to me. Now rotate your knees down, lying sideways.”
The edges of the bars on the opening gouged into his side as he now lay vertically through the opening.
“Good,” Joje said. He was really getting into it now. “Can you—bring an arm in?”
“Not yet,” Blake said, keeping his tone blank of emotion.
“You’re gonna have to stretch your legs out above you lengthwise, fold in half like a sandwich. Here, I’ll help,” Joje said.
Eventually, that’s what worked, Joje pressing Blake’s legs back through the bars once he had them extended as far as he could. Blake’s glutes and hamstrings screamed at him as they moved an inch at a time until finally popping out above him, extending against the top of the cage. Blake’s back was spasming, the angle of his body compressing bones and nerves in a way never intended. With more assistance from Joje, he was able to squeeze his arms and shoulders through, hunching his head into the small cavity created between the top and bottom halves of his body in an upside down sandwich.
He heard the rattle of the cage close, latch locking into place. Then Joje’s breath on the back of his head as a lock was snapped shut. Then another one.
Not a lock, Blake realized. The handcuffs.
With the cage closed, Blake tried to let his body relax, filling out the additional space before realizing there wasn’t any. His attempt at shuffling his shoulders, wiggling side to side, or stretching his feet that were pressed flat against the front of the cage were met with the same results. He didn’t have an extra breath of room.
“Comfortable?”
Blake’s breath disappeared, his diaphragm pushed so tight he couldn’t form words if he tried. Blood rushed to his head so fast it seemed he would drown.
“You’re turning a little white. Hold tight. I’m gonna flip you.”
The world twirled, Blake’s limbs and back squeezed against the gridded bars. Like a Tilt-A-Whirl, the cage flipped forward another ninety degrees. His body settled in, his legs pressed now against the bottom of the crossed bars. The hard plastic plate that had been on the floor was now above him and had dropped down, leaning against the top of his head and closing off what little space had existed there.
The air was suddenly gone, the space between the bars no longer allowing its passage. Blake screamed, the last of his air escaping, even though the scream had only been in his mind.
Joje’s face appeared next to him, though Blake could only glimpse him out of the corner of his eye—turning his head was an impossibility. “This will work beautifully,” he said.
Could he tell Blake was dying?
“Breathe, Bwakey, it’s okay, you’re okay, just normal claustrophobia setting in.”
But Blake had forgotten how to breathe. What did you have to do to make your chest rise and fall? One arm was compressed against the side, the other he was practically sitting on; how could he bring them up to force his lungs to expand and compress?
“Breathe, focus on it—come on, Bwake!”
Blake closed his eyes, shutting everything out, the cage, the world, their predicament, Joje.
Forget everything. Just breathe.
In. Out. In.
“There you go!” Joje said. “See, you’ll be fine. I’m a man of my word. I’ll be back before tonight. With your family.”
Out. In. Out.
Joje whistled as he moved back into the kitchen, keys tinkling together.
In. Out. In.
When the garage door closed, Blake missed a breath. The whoosh of that door sealing shut reminded him of the dirt falling from his shovel onto the bodies in the open graves he had dug in his own backyard.
But whose bodies?
Jenna’s? Adam’s?
Evaline’s?
Or was he watching the reel upon the completion of his life, reliving the events that had led to his death?
In.
Out.
In.
Chapter Nine
Day Six Continued
1
Adam drew in a sharp breath; he hadn’t expected it to be this bad. Milton sat in a wooden chair so rickety it would’ve been better used as firewood. It was the only piece of furniture in the room beyond a filthy rug rolling up at the edges, discolored with age.
Stu and Gary may have known their weapons, but Milton was a soldier, and it only took one glance to recognize it. He was lean, cut, muscles moving beneath his clothing with every breath. And his face looked like a pumpkin that had been smashed in on Halloween.
An open gash at least an inch wide, wider in parts, ran from his hairline down the curve of his forehead and over his right brow. His eye was black—not the bruised purple and black from a blow near the socket, but the actual eye itself, black, only half of it floating where it should be, the rest covered in tissue and film that reminded Adam of a swamp. He could almost picture flies buzzing around it.
Adam had hit him with the end of a canister, knocking Milton out before he had a chance to realize Adam was a danger. And then Adam had brought the canister down again, and again. He had to be sure, and in the complete darkness of the trailer, he had no idea if the guy had just been thrown off balance or was down for the count.
Apparently it had been the latter.
His goggles, the night-vision headset he wore, must have shattered inward with the blows. If the canister hadn’t been torn from Adam’s hands as he toppled over when the truck made a sharp turn, he didn’t think Milton would have been here. At least not sitting in a chair.
Whatever ground Adam had hoped to gain,
he knew was lost. Why had he hesitated outside? That may have been his only chance. But he was just a kid, just a young, stupid kid who had been taken from his parents, frightened out of his mind, reacting without thinking, not knowing how much damage he could have caused.
He couldn’t convince them if he didn’t believe it himself.
“Sit.”
Adam looked around for another chair, though he knew there wasn’t one. From behind, someone kicked in his left knee, forcing him to the ground. He stayed down, hoping it showed some sign of vulnerability. Pretending to be scared for the moment wasn’t a challenge.
“Who are you?” Milton’s voice was like glass.
“I’m Adam—”
A hand raked across his cheek, Adam’s vision blurring.
“Not you, your family. Who are we holding? A senator’s son? Police chief’s? A warden?” Milton leaned down, that cesspool of an eye unblinking. “Why do you matter?”
“I don’t. We don’t. My dad’s in technology, does consulting. He just started working for a new company? I don’t think his old business was going that well.” Adam stopped talking. Milton had only tilted his head, but the gesture had been enough. As scared as he was, he also felt a sense of awe—this guy could get people to do what he wanted without even opening his mouth.
“What company?”
“Uh, Symbio?”
Milton brought up his hands, rubbing them together. A mucous-like liquid was forming in the gash on his face like a bronzing glaze. He glanced over Adam, and suddenly arms were pulling him back, holding him so tightly he felt his ribs might break.
“Always easier to make nobody disappear,” Milton said.
They dragged Adam across the floor, his knees scraping, the cloth of his jeans catching.
“No, wait!” he called. “I lied!”
The two men stopped just in front of the door. They didn’t release him, and Adam understood that if he was dragged from this room, it would be to die. His breath tumbled from him in whopping gasps. He looked at the one-eyed man in front of him, injured so badly he should have been in a hospital, and shuddered.
Such power. Such command.
“I know why he chose us, our family,” Adam said. He waited like watching a lion deciding whether it was going to rip you apart or drag you back to its lair to dine on at its leisure. Milton’s eyes once again flicked upward, and Adam felt the hands release him. He hit the floor, breathed in a sigh of relief.
Now he just had to come up with a believable lie.
2
Jenna was belted into the passenger seat, doors and windows set to child lock on the SUV. Not that she could have jumped out and started running had they been unlocked. Worse than the pain in her legs was the lack of pain she felt in her right foot and calf. They might as well have not been attached—she felt nothing there.
Drew stuffed a handful of french fries into his mouth, washing them down with a slurp of his extra-large Coke. He eased behind a BMW, getting back onto the Santa Monica 10 Freeway heading east. The smell of greasy fries and chicken made her stomach both turn sour and groan with the pangs of hunger.
As they merged onto the freeway, Drew told her to eat. She didn’t argue. “Where are we meeting them?” she asked.
“Him,” Drew corrected. “Just George.”
“He’s left them? Blake and Adam?”
Fries were traded for breaded chicken balls. Drew chomped loudly, mouth open.
“Are they alive? Why would he leave them?”
“Why do you ask so many questions,” Drew said. “You made your choice, live with it.”
She knew it was a choice she wouldn’t live with long.
Traffic moved, and Jenna realized she had no idea what day it was. A weekday? Weekend? Drew took the 110 interchange, the overpass floating above the Staples Center off to the right. They converged with the mass of vehicles migrating north.
“Please, Drew, tell me. Are they okay?”
“None of you are, not with George.”
“Are you going to kill him?”
Drew glanced at her sharply. “Don’t breathe a word of that to anyone! You don’t know him like I do. You think something, he’ll find out.”
“If you protect my family from him, if they’re alive? I’ll give you everything you want.”
She was surprised to realize she meant it.
Past the conglomeration of intersecting off-ramps, the 110 opened up into a smaller interstate, one that reminded Jenna of being back home. West Virginia never felt so far away.
Drew followed the GPS on his phone, the freeway eventually dissolving into a street in Pasadena, Arroyo Parkway. Jenna followed every turn and street name, hoping somehow, someway, she might be able to retrace these steps.
They turned left on Colorado, right on Fair Oaks, sidewalks as busy as the streets of New York. Drew pulled into a Shell station at the corner of Walnut, weaving between the cars lined up for gas and passing the large yellow sign with red-lettered words: “Snack Shop.” On the other side of the gas station, he parked in front of the air and water hoses.
Drew stepped out without a word, the beep of the alarm enough warning to not open a door or call for help. Jenna watched in the side mirror, turning it to follow him until he disappeared into the convenience store next to the open garage. Her entire body seemed to release a breath she had been holding for days.
A small pickup truck that had once been white but was now plastered in mud or maybe cement pulled in beside her. The driver, a dark Latino with bushy sideburns and eyebrows, opened the door too hard, its edge banging into Jenna’s door. The alarm chirped.
Jenna met his eyes as he realized someone was in the car he had just marked, maybe dented. He looked like he might crawl back into his truck and drive off. Jenna held up her hands, cuffed at the wrists, for him to see.
“Help me,” she said, hoping her bruised face would be clear through the tinted windows.
The man outside her door wet his lips with his tongue, then glanced down, averting his eyes. Jenna put her palm to the window, still peering out at him.
“Please! Help me!”
A fist pounded against the glass on the other side of her palm—Jenna jumped back in her seat, a cry leaping from her mouth. Her heart rate had gone from still to sprint in half a second. The Latino man outside pressed flat against his truck as he let another body slip by.
Joje.
He looked in at her, smile splitting across his face. His nose was swollen, flesh a nasty purplish red. He pointed at the lock, motioning for her to open. The man at the truck was already gone, Joje’s frame in the side mirror blocking Jenna from seeing him slink away.
She turned from the window, staring into a windshield that might as well have been blank. She was still lost in her thoughts when Drew climbed into the backseat and Joje pulled out onto the street, a street she no longer cared about. Another freeway, another off ramp, busy roads turned into lonely side streets turned into dirt paths no vehicle was meant to drive on.
Wherever they were leading her, it wouldn’t matter if she knew her way back—it had always been a one-way ticket.
3
The clock ticked forward another notch, the rift between passing seconds wide enough to swallow Blake whole. He swam in a black pool of ethos, kicking, clawing, wrestling his way to the surface and yet still being pulled beneath. His movements were restrained—the flaring of a nostril, the tremor of a muscle, an itch tickling the hairs on his leg like a silky worm—as restrained as the tired hand moving mercilessly around the corners of the clock.
Round and round we go.
“Hello?” he called.
“Hello!” he answered. Round and round and round.
His body had long passed the point of discomfort, giving up its demands to move, stretch, breathe. He had entered a cocoon of paralysis, only his mind wandering from the small wire crate in the kitchen to roam the dark corners of his imagination; thoughts, memories, and regrets colliding into nightmar
es almost as frightening as the truth.
His wife was in one such corner, her body sinking into the hospital bed. Monitors blinked and beeped, drooping bags of poison running their tubes into her wrists like the stinging tail of a chimera.
This was a corner Blake had learned to avoid, one he hadn’t visited in years.
He brushed at the cobwebs clinging to his face, his hair, and stepped a little closer, close enough to see her face.
Her cheeks were sunken, skin pulling inward as if she were wearing a mask that had been fitted to her face. Her normally vibrant eyes now clouded behind the drugs. She had lost so much weight she no longer resembled the woman he had married—in truth, she no longer looked human.
“I’m here,” he said.
A tear ran from the corner of one closed eye, trailing down the side of her face and disappearing on the white sheets of the bed.
She’s crying because you’re not here, you’re never here, and even when you are you don’t want to be, you want to be anywhere but here, looking at anyone but her.
Her bony chest rose beneath the hospital bedding then fell, her body appearing to sink farther into the sheets.
“You should have told me you were coming.”
Her voice was hoarse, the whisper of a breeze through dried leaves barely clinging to a tree in early November. It wasn’t from the cancer; it was from disuse. The closer they got to the end, they had so little to talk about.
“Where’s Mommy?”
Adam stood at the open curtain—Blake had told her to keep him out, he wasn’t going to be long. Cobwebs hung from above, a transparent curtain the boy seemed not to notice.
Blake’s wife covered her face, a movement that probably caused her immense pain. “I don’t want him to see me like this! Take him out—take him away!”
Where’s Mommy?
Adam had been looking right at her when he asked the question. An innocent inquiry for a child not quite three, a damning one for the mother on her deathbed.
