by Naomi West
“Lauren? You awake?”
It was Anderson. The man who let me be sentenced to this hell hole.
“Lauren?” he asked more urgently than before.
“Yeah,” I finally said, “I'm awake uncle. What do you want?”
“I . . . I brought you some water.” He gestured feebly with the big, cold-looking bottle of spring water in his hand. Across his shoulder was draped an ugly orange and purple beach towel. “And, I wanted to see if you'd like to get out, maybe take a walk?”
Get out? Of course I wanted to get out! I turned, suddenly desperate to stand upright for the first time in hours. If I was ever able to settle down somewhere and get a dog or a cat, I decided, they were never going to get kennel trained. No fucking way, not in a million fucking years. “Out? You're going to let me out?”
“Now, hold on,” he said as he grabbed the keys down from where they hung next to the door. “I can get you something to drink, and a shower, but you gotta get back in afterward.”
A shower sounded like the next best thing to a king-sized bed at this point. And If I couldn't have the second, I might as well take the first. “Fine! Whatever! Just let me out of here.”
He came over and knelt down, unlocked the door, then helped me climb out from the cage. As I stood and stretched, my back crackled and popped all the way up and down my spine. He caught my shoulder and kept me from stumbling as a rush of blood went to my head, disorienting me for a moment.
“Oh my God, that felt good,” I groaned.
A concerned look came over his face as he offered me his hand. “You okay to walk?”
“Yeah,” I said, taking his hand anyways as we headed out of the small room. “What time is it?”
“A little past midnight,” he said as he took me left down the hallway, away from the stairs we'd first entered the tunnels through. “There's some showers down this way, and a bathroom you can use.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure, baby girl. Anything.”
“How bad are things? Really?” He sighed and bit his lip, and I could tell he was trying to think of how he was going to answer without betraying my crazy pops' trust. “I'll take that as 'not good,' then.”
We rounded the corner and stepped into the bathroom and toilet area he'd mentioned earlier. In here, four or five shower heads sprouted from the mildewing white, clinical tiles. It looked like I imagined prison showers would be. I didn't even ask why this stuff had been installed in the bowels of the Fortress. I didn't want to know the answer. I glanced from the showers to him, then back again. I hope he didn't think he was going to stand here and watch me shower.
“I'll stand over here,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said in a clipped tone, “how about stand outside in the hallway, instead.”
He laughed uneasily. “Sure, baby girl, anything you want.”
I realized for the first time how creepily he used my nickname. I'd always felt something about him was a little off, back before I'd run, but I'd never thought much of it. I was pretty sure I'd just been naïve to the looks he was giving me. Now, after years of experience, I knew what his eyes on my body meant.
I stripped down after a minute or two, tossing my clothes off in a dry looking corner, and turned on the shower. I slid into the stream, making sure my back was never to the door. If my adopted uncle was going to try and sneak a peek I wanted to know.
The water turned hot right away, the boiler kicking in quickly. I basked under the water, not even caring that I didn't have any soap or shampoo. I just let it soak into my sore muscles, my cramped legs, my strained arms, and my knotted back. I must have been under the stream of water for ten, fifteen minutes, silently mulling things over in my head. What was Anderson doing down here, if it wasn't to set me free? Did he know something I didn't? And had Asa made it back upstairs alright?
I missed him. Even after our short time apart, and the brief moment we'd had in the cage room, I still missed him. What the fuck was happening to me? Did I really have deep feelings for this guy? More than just the good fucking he'd given me? I shook my head, trying to dislodge my thoughts of him, sending a spray of droplets from my flailing hair. It didn't work. Those strong arms, that chest, those tattoos I wanted to trace my fingers over, the way he smiled, the way he listened to me as I read to him. I shook my head again.
Nope. Apparently, Asa was harder to get rid of than I'd given him credit for.
Shit, I did care about him. Finally, I turned around and shut the water off, my skin pink as a salmon in some places, red as a steamed lobster in others.
“You done, baby girl?” Uncle Anderson asked from out in the hallway.
“Yeah.” I paused. “Just hold the towel out around the corner, I'll come get it.” The towel popped out from around the corner, and I padded over in my bare feet, took it, then dried off and wrapped it around my body.
“Decent yet?” he asked.
“Not yet.” I went over, found my dirty clothes, and began to pull them on. This would have to do. I doubted Anderson was going to find me clean underwear on such notice. I wrapped my hair up in the towel, figuring a blow dryer would be asking a little much, too. “Alright, you can come in.”
His footfalls echoed as he walked in to the open shower. “Feel better?” he asked.
I looked him right in the eye, my toes splayed out on the damp tile beneath my feet. “Yeah. Thanks.”
“Anything for you, baby girl,” he replied, staying a little distance away from me, but still wanting to come closer.
“Anything? How about you tell me about this shit show with my father, then? What the hell has really been going on?”
He shook his head, looked away.
“If you want to help my pops,” I lied, “you need to tell me everything's that been going on since my mother died. I need to figure out how to help him, no matter what he did to her, and I need your help to do it. He's my blood, Anderson, no matter what he did. I don't want to see him put away, but I don't want to see him like this, either.”
His jaw was working like crazy, as he ran a hand back through his long hair and started to pace the length of the prison-style showers. “Fine,” he said, clearly not liking that he needed my help, or that he had to burden me with this. “Things have been going downhill for a while, since before he killed Ora. I shoulda put a stop to it back then, but I just couldn't.”
“Tell me,” I pressed.
“He's going bankrupt, baby girl. All these soldiers? He thinks he needs them! Actually needs them! His suppliers, they don't give a shit, they're just shorting him anyways. All his power is wound up in this place, tied up here, stagnant. No one'll work for him from outside the Fortress, saying he's too erratic.”
“Fair point on their part.”
He stopped and looked at me for a moment, but immediately returned to his pacing. “I don't know what to do.”
“Can you fix it?” I asked.
“Fix it?” he replied, stopping in his tracks and looking at me. He nodded, a gleam in his eye. “Yeah. I could fix it. I think. Why?”
“This place is my inheritance, ain't it? Why wouldn't I want it fixed?”
“You mean . . . you'd wanna . . .?”
“Well, it's the family business, after all,” I lied. “Why wouldn't I?”
Of course, I wanted nothing to do with this. I'd just taken a shower after being locked in a fucking cage reserved for human trafficking victims. And drugs, money, guns? I might hustle a pool game here and there, steal a car, maybe. But doing all these things? Knowing my luck, the feds would be up my ass farther than Asa. I smirked a little at the thought.
“What?” Uncle Anderson asked.
“Nothing,” I replied quickly, waving away his question. I took a step closer to him, my posture relaxed and more trusting than before. “Look, how can we . . . how can we get you installed at the top . . .”
He looked away as I came closer, shame from even considering this on his face plain as day.
<
br /> I soldiered on, though, despite his reaction. “. . . where you belong?”
He looked back to me, his chin held a little higher. Flattery works wonders sometimes, I'd found.
Chapter Eighteen
Asa
I woke up early in the morning, my head clear, my senses on high alert. What was I hearing? Talking? Rambling? Sounded like the drunk from before just outside my door.
“Shut the fuck up, Snake!” bellowed a voice from across the room. “Some of us got a shift in the morning!”
Snake? That was definitely the drunk from before, the guy who'd been handing me beers all night. I strained my ears to hear what he was saying.
“Fuck that slut,” he yelled. “Gonna go down there, get my fucking pickle wet.”
I knew exactly what he was talking about. Who he was talking about. My eyes opened wide, the anger rising in my chest as the adrenaline kicked in. I leaped out of my bed, pulled my clothes on in a flash, didn't even bother to lace up my boots.
“Shut the fuck up!” called the same voice as before.
“Fuck that slut!” Snake yelled back.
I hit my bunkhouse door at a run. Snake was there, at the rickety table, a couple more beer bottles than before out in front of him.
“Tomorrow,” he yelled as he went out the front door. “No, tonight! Gonna make that little whore scream my name!”
I stomped down the hallway and out into the little courtyard. By the time I got outside, he was already half-way to the Fortress. I wasn't going to hurt him. I was going to get him to apologize for calling her what he had. He was rip-roaring, shit-canned drunk, and I knew it. Everyone knew it.
“Hey,” I barked as I got closer. “Hey, Snake!”
He lurched back around till he could see me. He wobbled a little on his feet, stumbling in that way some drunks do to keep their footing. “What?” he slurred.
I kept on my warpath, didn't stop till I got right up in his face, my teeth bared like a rabid dog. “The fuck you say about Lauren?”
He didn't even try to push me away or reply, he just swung a fist. His muscle memory was good, too, from years and years of fighting. He knew how to throw a punch, and it came at me like a city bus. I was better, and more sober. My instincts kicked in, same as his, and I blocked his punch with my forearm, slamming it out of the way. Before I could take it back, I was slamming my elbow into his temple.
His eyes rolled back and he crumpled like a tin can, folding in on himself as he dropped to the ground. Just above his ear, his head cracked hard on a rock, and it sounded like a melon landing after having been tossed off a second story. Blood trickled from his ear immediately, and I knew he wasn't going to wake up anytime soon. Maybe never. Head injuries like that were traumatic. My stomach turned immediately as I looked down at him. Not because I abhorred violence, but because I knew I'd just fucked up. They'd be looking for whoever did this, and who would be a more likely suspect than the new guy? No one. I glanced back over my shoulder, at the bunkhouse door.
No one was coming. They were probably just happy Snake had shut the fuck up.
“Fuck!” I hissed under my breath. I nudged Snake's motionless body with the toe of my boot, tried to roll him over.
He didn't respond and didn't flip. There was too much dead weight there for me to move with just my foot. I ran a hand down my face, growled low. I couldn't run and leave Lauren behind. Even if I had to give up on my goals, I wanted her with me. I needed her with me. And what kind of man would abandon her with motherfuckers like these around? Less than twenty-four hours here, and there were already drunks threatening to rape her.
And I couldn't go, especially not when I was so close to Dalton Saylor. I'd been working towards this for months, trying to hunt Lauren down, trying to get myself into the Fortress. And besides, there were too many guards surrounding the place. I'd never get out at this time of night, definitely not unquestioned, and likely not full of bullet holes.
“Fuck!” I hissed again as I looked to the Fortress, and my eyes settled on the door. I nodded at them, the wheels turning in my head.
The tunnels below the Fortress. They'd seemed practically abandoned when I was down there just a little while before. I could hide out down there, till Lauren and I could figure out a way into the manager's office. Then, with her daddy dead, we could sneak out together and figure out our next move. I left Snake's unconscious body in the middle of the courtyard and headed for the Fortress. As I went through the door, I heard a startled shout from direction of the bunkhouse.
“Holy shit!” called the voice.
I found the access stairs I'd used earlier to get down to Lauren's cage and slipped into the tunnels. I could hear murmuring voices, and I tip-toed down to the room where they were keeping her. It sounded like she and one of the men were discussing something in a hushed tone.
As they were speaking, though, I heard the crackle of a radio. “Anderson?” called a static-filled voice from inside the room. “You there, boss? You awake?”
A pause.
“I'm here,” Anderson replied. “What's wrong?”
“We got a problem. Snake's been beat up real bad. Think we got someone in the compound that ain't supposed to be here.”
Shit. I took off down the hallway as quietly as I could, not knowing where I was headed. A half-dozen men? I could handle that. A small private army? I might as well have just killed myself right then and saved them the trouble. I darted around the corner from Lauren's cage room and pressed my back against the wall as I tried to control my breathing, just listening.
“I'm on it,” I heard Anderson say as he came out of the cage room. Soon, his footfalls receded as he headed back to the access stairs, then headed upstairs. “Get security on high alert and lock down the fence. No one in, no one out till we figure this out. And make sure Mr. Saylor has plenty of guards!”
I leaned my head back against the wall, still out of breath. Well, this was going well.
Chapter Nineteen
Lauren
I knew as soon as Uncle Anderson got the call that Asa had decided to make his move. He always had seemed kind of impulsive. It was one of the things I really loved about him. I frowned as I sat in my cage, staring at the six wired walls that had become my prison. Is that what these feelings were? Love?
I shook my head and leaned against the gate of the kennel, nearly yelping in surprise as began to swing open. “Holy shit!” I breathed, pushing the gate open all the way.
Anderson must have had so much on his mind with what he and I had discussed that he'd forgotten to lock the gate back up when he left. It seemed too good to be true, though. I hesitated. I didn't leave the cage. I stayed there, crouched down, wondering. Maybe it was a trick on my uncle's part. I couldn't rule that out, either. Maybe he'd just been humoring me when we speaking earlier, and this really was part of some sick and twisted plot by him and my father, to see how loyal I was? He might have been just waiting right outside the room, ready to spring on me when I went to leave.
I chewed at my lip, mulling my options. Even if it was a trick, I figured, maybe I could use it to my advantage. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I nodded to myself, and pushed the gate open the rest of the way, crept out into the dimly lit cage room. I rose to my feet, stretched again with my hands on my lower back. Even a short amount of time in the cage was hell on the body.
Holding my breath, I crossed over to the hallway door and pressed my ear to it, listening. Nothing on the other side. I closed my eyes, sighed, and grasped the door knob, pulled it open. I poked my head out, looked both ways, but I couldn’t see anything. I snuck out into the hall and took a left, heading down towards the showers. The lights here were distantly spaced, but at least they were on. Little pools of yellow dotted the floor every forty or so feet, lighting my way.
While Anderson and I had been talking about everything, I'd asked him about the layout of the Fortress, how deep these tunnels went. He'd told me they were huge, almost as big as the whole c
omplex. My father had his home down here, connected by an elevator in the manager's office I'd seen earlier. An elevator connected the two, but the old man’s room was accessible from these tunnels.
That was my chance, I realized. If he was down in these tunnels, I could find him and have my shot at him for what he did to my mother. If he was up in the manager's office, then I could find the elevator that led up to it. I turned the corner and headed down towards the showers, my footfalls echoing up and down the concrete walls, their only accompaniment my breath and the steady drips of falling water. I stopped at each intersection and listened, trying to get some sense of what was ahead of me. At each juncture I didn't hear anything other than my own low breath and the sound of shifting earth and rushing water.
