“I was about to be killed when they took me. If they hadn’t been there, I’d be dead right now.”
Hacker stops pacing the room then and looks at Muscles carefully.
“Where are you from?”
“What?” Muscles sounds taken aback by that question.
“Maybe we’ve got something in common, like where we’re from, that explains why we’re all here. I’m from Los Angeles.”
“Phoenix.” Muscles shrugs.
“Boston.” I frown, realizing they’ve taken us from opposites sides of the country. That makes this seem a lot less random and more likely that we’ve been kidnapped on purpose for whatever reason.
“Houston,” Blackout speaks up from by my side and I jump, not expecting to hear his voice. He rubs his eyes and I help him to sit up more since he has slowly moved down so that he’s leaning heavily on me.
“So that’s weird. Okay, what about jobs? I work in a bank. Maybe this is about some big heist that they need us for?”
“I don’t have a job.” Muscles shrugs at us all again.
“I’m just a personal assistant.”
“I work for my Dad’s construction company.”
“Okay, any other bright ideas?” Hacker snaps at us all. She is clearly getting fired up.
“You said your dad would bring a ton of lawyers down on that guy, right? Does that mean your family is well off?” Blackout asks, his eyes closing again before he forces them back open.
“What has that got to do with anything?”
“Maybe this is about money, but not from a bank. Maybe it’s a ransom? My Dad owns his own business. He has money.”
Hacker seems to consider that seriously. “My family does have a lot of money.”
They both look at Muscles and me expectantly.
“My Mom does okay, but not great enough to expect her to be able to come up with much money for a ransom.”
“I don’t have parents.”
“What about other family or friends? Anyone willing to pay money for a ransom?” Hacker pushes.
“No.” Muscles is short with his answer. It leaves no room for argument. It gives the impression that he is suddenly older. At first, I thought he might be fourteen or fifteen, but now he seems closer to eighteen. It’s his eyes, they look haunted. How can a kid who is most likely quite young, look so burdened?
“What else is there?” Hacker changes the subject from Muscles, perhaps sensing that he seems rather uncomfortable.
“You said that you nearly died right before you got taken, right?” Blackout talks while his eyes remain shut, he has given up the fight to keep them open.
“Yes,” Muscles answers him while leaning against the wall of the hallway we had just come through. It’s like he isn’t quite ready to commit himself to this new room.
“Well, some crazy lady tried to stab me with a knife before I got taken.”
“A guy was chasing me with a gun.” Muscles shows his first signs of being scared, remembering what must have been a frightening scene from his recent past.
“I suppose someone did try to blow me up at the bank,” Hacker speaks calmly and I gawk at her.
I can’t believe they’ve all had near death experiences and are saying it all so easily. Now they’re looking at me and I start to shake my head, but then stop. Joel had been aiming for me when he fired that gun. He had hit Dana by mistake. I was his intended target.
“I was shot at, too.” I feel my voice break and I quickly stop talking. I’ve been crying on and off while being stuck in that horrible room. I don’t want to start again and especially not in a room full of people I don’t know.
I move my arm out from under Blackout while I still have feeling left in it and a rush of blood flows back to my hand. He has already started to lean on me again. I lift my feet up onto the couch and tuck myself into a ball, wishing I had the forethought to put on socks. The ground is freezing. Our rooms have floorboards on them and they’re cold enough, but out here it’s just concrete which means the floors are downright freezing. There are spluttered spots of paint on the ground where it was evidently spilled while the walls were painted. It’s almost as if they simply didn’t have time to get everything done, like putting your furniture into your new house when you haven’t even completed building it.
“Okay, so what does that mean? They hired people to pretend to try and kill us so they could save the day and get us on their side?” Hacker frowns.
“I knew the guy who tried to kill me.” I swallow past the lump in my throat. I knew what Joel’s reasoning had been for trying to kill me. Do I tell them that reason? They’ll definitely think I’m crazy; I’m not even completely sure if Joel isn’t crazy.
“So they paid him off. Point is, that still doesn’t explain why us.”
“Maybe this is one of those black market, organ donor things. We just have the right blood type?” Blackout chillingly suggests.
My body shakes in fear and the look on Hacker and Muscles faces are sure to echo my own expression of horror.
“Ew, that’s disgusting.”
“Makes sense, though.” Blackout yawns and I suddenly become very aware of just how close I am sitting next to him. Our shoulders are touching and even our legs. My nerves start up then as I breathe in his scent and find myself moving closer to him. I feel such a sudden attraction towards him that I grip my nails into my hand, causing sharp pain to shoot up to distract me from my thoughts. I have no idea where that had come from and now is a completely inappropriate time to let my mind think about such things.
“Right, then we have to get out of here.” Hacker is over by the door Suit Man had exited through in a blink of an eye.
“What about the armed guards?” I gasp out, moving away from Blackout and standing up, feeling myself shaking at the thought of more guns being around here. What if we get shot at? What if we’re killed trying to escape?
“Look, if they want us, then they aren’t going to kill us, are they?” Hacker jiggles at the door, slowly building up more force. It doesn’t budge.
“There must be another exit somewhere, let’s look around.” I suggest, watching Hacker pull out a clip from her hair and twisting it in her hands. I wonder if she is actually going to pick the lock. Doesn’t that only work in the movies?
Hacker leans closer to the lock just as the door bursts open and, for a brief second, I think guards are going to come in with machine guns and shoot us all dead. Instead, two men rush in holding a kid in their arms. One man looks panicked and the other guy is dead serious.
“Medical lab is this way,” the serious man yells at the panicked one and they run through the corridor together, leaving a trail of blood behind them.
The door they have come through is left open, but none of us take a step towards it. I think I’m going to faint as I look at the blood left on the ground. I hear a rushing noise in my ears, like a strong wind or water perhaps. The ground moves from under me and then strong arms wrap around me, bringing me to sit on something soft.
“Hey, are you okay?”
I shake my head, wanting myself to drown in that water I had heard, wanting to disappear from this situation I’m now trapped in, but unfortunately, the water starts to recede. Already my head clears up and I slowly become aware that I still have Blackout’s arms around me, keeping me sitting up.
“Who the hell was that?” Hacker demands, her voice sounding strained as she, too, takes in the sight of so much blood.
“I don’t know, but maybe we should get the fuck out of here.” Blackout’s voice sounds stronger. I again sense my instincts screaming at me that we should get out. Staying here is a mistake.
“Maybe that is what that guy tried to do and they shot him?” Muscles warns.
We all stay where we are, taking in his words. Should we try to escape and potentially get killed for it? Or do we stay and possibly get operated on or whatever it is that they want to do to us?
Either way, they both aren’t very app
ealing options.
Chapter Twenty-One – The Suit Man
In the end, the Suit Man decides for us. He rushes in a few minutes after those two men came through and locks the door behind him before rushing past us. We’re each trapped in our own thoughts and I start shaking again.
Who is that person? Is that the Reader person we’re waiting for? Is he okay? Why is he bleeding so much? Is that something those men have done? Will he live through so much blood loss?
There is still a mass of it on the floor and I can’t keep my eyes off it. No one has come back to clean it up and I’m suddenly glad I haven’t eaten in a while.
“Are you okay?” Blackout asks me again. In the past few hours, fatigue has taken over him and while he has removed his arm from being around me, he has slowly sunk back into my side.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re shaking,” he points out. I quickly push off him and lean on the opposite side’s arm rest.
“It’s cold.”
I try to calm my breathing and focus on something else other than blood. I jump on the first thing that comes to mind. “What kind of name is Blackout?” In fact, what was with all their names?
“I have no idea. My name is Charlie.” Charlie shrugs at me.
“I’m Rose.” Hacker frowns at us all and then we all turn to look at Muscles.
“Will.” He more grunts out his name, but it all leads us to silence as we wonder why Suit Man called them all different names.
“Zoe.” I haven’t been called anything yet by Suit Man, but it feels weird to not have these people know my name.
“That’s strange. Do you think he doesn’t know our real names?” Rose asks us all.
“But why pick those names?” I can’t work it out, especially since Will doesn’t look strong at all.
“Well, I’m really good at computers. I suppose he could know that.”
“And I have issues with electrical things, so blackouts aren’t all that uncommon around me.”
“Will?” I ask, but he only shrugs in reply. He’s definitely not much of a talker.
I think about what my name will be. There is no way Suit Man knows about my dreams so I doubt it will be related to that. Perhaps I will be like Will and I’ll have an opposite name. Maybe Happy, since I’m anything but.
“Who cares about what our stupid names are here, we should be talking about a way out of this place.” Rose finally sits down on the other two-seater couch that faces the television. She has her arms crossed over her chest and most of her hair has fallen out of her ponytail, framing her face. Her hair is naturally blonde and she has a tan that makes me feel like Casper the ghost will think I’m too pale. If I hadn’t known it before, I would have guessed she is from Los Angles.
“I think there might be listening devices in here.” Charlie tries to sit up more and looks around, concentrating hard. I, too, look around us, although I have no idea what a listening device looks like, let alone knowing where one might be.
“Where?” Rose also surveys our surroundings and even Will seems curious to see one.
“I don’t know. I can just feel it.”
“Feel it?” I ask, thinking that Charlie might need some more sleep after all.
“Just trust me, okay?”
I don’t know why, but I do trust him. My instincts are usually spot on and I’m willing to trust them when they believe in Charlie. However, I’m definitely going to ignore them when I feel myself wanting to have Charlie’s arms wrapped around me, his lips on mine. What on earth is wrong with me? Obviously these inappropriate emotions I’m feeling come out of some grief thing. Losing Dana and being kidnapped is messing with me and making me act strangely. That’s probably the only normal thing about this situation.
“Either way, I suppose it’s smart to assume they’re listening to us. We should probably watch what we say. We don’t want them to know too much about us,” Rose agrees.
“Since we don’t know what they already know about us and what they want with us, it’s a bit hard to watch what we say,” Charlie retorts, perhaps letting the situation we’re in get to him.
“You’re the one who brought up listening devices, Mr.-I-can-feel-them,” Rose snaps back at him.
“I can feel them.”
“That’s absurd.” Rose crosses her arms over her chest.
“I’m not saying I understand it, I just can tell there’s something around.”
“Good for you.” Sarcasm is now oozing over Rose’s voice.
“That stupid suit guy didn’t call me Blackout for no reason, you know.”
“Is it because your brain blackouts and you say stupid stuff?”
“Rose!” I can’t believe they’re going to start a fight now when we don’t even know where we are or why we’re here.
“No.” Charlie glares at Rose and within seconds, the room goes dark. I hear the small bar fridge click off and the silence in the room feels louder than any of the noises from before.
“What just happened?” I ask no one. I can’t see anyone. I feel Charlie next to me, but other than that, nothing.
“Like I said earlier, I have issues with electrical things sometimes.”
“You caused this?” Rose shrieks at him.
“Yes.”
“Put it back on. I don’t want to just sit here in darkness when we’re in a place we don’t know after being kidnapped and drugged!” Rose is angry.
Charlie clears his throat and sounds hesitant. “I haven’t quite mastered that part yet.”
“What?” Rose sounds ready to kill Charlie. I feel him tense next to me, however no one says anything else. After what seems like an eternity, the lights finally come back on.
“Did you just do that?” I ask Charlie, wondering if he managed to ‘master’ putting the power back on now or if he had merely been messing with Rose.
“No—”
“Please, Blackout, we ask you to put a stop to that if possible. Our generator is hospital grade, but the five minutes it takes for it to get past you and kick back on is an annoyance.” The Suit Man finally enters the room from a different hallway. He looks shaken, though, less composed than he had been previously.
We all sit silently in what appears to be unanimous fear. What is this man going to do to us?
“Come with me, guys, and we’ll go into the other room where we can talk properly.”
The Suit Man walks through the same hallway he had just entered through and I feel hesitation at following him.
I don’t know what to do, although sitting in this room with the blood still staring me in the face doesn’t sound like a good plan to me. It’s either follow Suit Man or stay with the blood. Suit Man wins out, mostly because everyone looks ready to follow him anyway. So I awkwardly stand up, feeling stiff from sitting for so long, and follow Will who has already begun heading to the door. Rose is next to him. Looking over my shoulder, I watch Charlie struggling to get up off the couch. I walk back to him and reach out a hand, pulling him into a standing position. Rose never offers to help this time. I think that bridge might be burned now.
“Thanks. I just feel a bit dizzy.” I let Charlie put his arm over my shoulder and help him walk down the hallway that the others disappeared down.
This hallway has a door at the end of it and it’s obvious from the blood trail that this is where those men went through with the bleeding kid. To the right is an open entryway that opens up to a small dining area. Inside is a long, wooden table with six chairs. The walls, ground and ceiling are white and plain. Apart from the wooden table and chairs, there is not a drop of color in this room. Seeing so much white makes me feel like I’m in a hospital and it puts me further on edge.
“Sorry about this.” Charlie looks embarrassed to be leaning on me so heavily.
I’m the one feeling embarrassed, though, having my body reacting to being so close to Charlie. I have goose-bumps all over from his touch and I chalk it up to the fact that we’re in a near death situation and nor
mal reactions aren’t really normal.
“Don’t worry about it. We’ve had longer to recover from it.” My legs protest as he suddenly loses his legs and his weight falls further down onto me.
“Not to mention, I have no idea when the last time I ate was. I’m starved,” Charlie complains.
Before I can comment about that we finally make it to the table where I’m quick to let Charlie drop into a chair. I watch Rose stand by the open entrance we’ve just walked through with her arms crossed in front of her and a stubborn look plastered on her face. Will is standing by the end of the table, but hasn’t made a move toward a chair yet.
Tension fills the air and I stay close to Charlie, fearing this situation turning ugly quickly.
“Please, sit down. I’ve got some food about to come out and I know you all want to hear an explanation,” Suit Man says calmly.
“My ears work just fine over here,” Rose snaps.
“You can either voluntarily sit down or I can force you to,” Suit Man growls. His voice has me dropping down into the seat next to Charlie. Will follows suit a moment later.
Rose, to her credit, doesn’t budge. She’s brave.
“I’m not doing a thing until you tell me where the hell I am and why I’m here. Are you going to kill us? Torture us? Sell us to some foreign country as slaves? Hurry up and tell me what’s going on.”
Slaves? Torture? Selling us? New horrors fly through my mind and a lump in my throat grows. Charlie takes my hand in his and I look over at him to see he looks just as scared. His grip remains strong, though, and I try to breathe through my panic.
“Why must women always be so hysterical?” Suit Man rolls his eyes.
“Excuse me?” Rose sounds even angrier, if that’s possible.
“Look, I promise you we are not here to harm you, we’re here to protect you.”
“Then let us go home,” Rose demands.
“We can’t do that. We haven’t neutralized the threat against you.”
“Why do you keep saying we? Who are you?” Charlie speaks up now. Will and I have yet to say a word.
“If you will all sit down, I can explain that. Trust me, if I wanted you dead, tortured, sold or harvested for organs, then I have had plenty of time to do so. Why would I waste my time on small talk? Now, I’ll just go check on the food.” Suit Man stands and leaves through another door that looks like it is part of the wall. I hadn’t even noticed it there before. There isn’t a handle so I think he must have some button he can press to get it open. This place feels like a maze. Escaping it won’t be easy.
Taken By Surprise (Taken Trilogy Book 1) Page 19
