Intoxication: Blue Line Book Three

by Brandy Ayers

  “Did it surprise you that your own family would let them do this to you?” The detective sounded appropriately aghast at Camille’s story, but still Jon bristled at the question.

  “Didn’t surprise me at all.” Camille’s voice held no emotion, just resignation. “Rich never liked me very much. He’s almost twenty years older than I am, and my parents doted on me. He blamed me for some of his problems, and wasn’t afraid to let me know while I was growing up. Our other brother, Leo, would try and protect me, but he went into the armed services when I was a kid and became career military. He’s stationed in Texas now. He has no idea what has been happening here.”

  Formosa nodded solemnly and gave Camille a small smile. “You are doing great Camille, thank you for being so open. Now, this is going to be hard I know. Can you tell me exactly what the men did to you?”

  The room went still and thick with dread and anticipation. Jon’s heart slammed into his chest at a speed which a couple rounds in the ring normally caused. He didn’t want to hear this. He hated having to picture his girl being tortured by someone that should have been treating her like the queen she is.

  Camille avoided everyone’s eyes, but didn’t hesitate in explaining her story. “After I was released from custody, my brother picked me up at the station and drove us to the warehouse he used as an operations base. During the ride he didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to, I knew nothing that happened from that point on would be pleasant. When we arrived the two men…”

  “Complese and York?” Formosa pulled their names from her memory.

  “Yes. They were waiting outside for us. One grabbed me by the hair and pulled me out of the car. He slammed me against the ground and tied my hands with zip ties. I was dragged into the basement of the building and thrown into a room. They left then, and I was alone for probably a day. There was a bucket in the room for me to relieve myself, and a pile of dirty blankets, but that was it. Sometime during the next day, the three of them came back. Rich sat in a chair and asked me the same questions over and over. Why did you run? What did they ask you? What did you tell them? Why are you lying?”

  Her voice cracked slightly, the only sign that she was being affected by her own story. “Every time I answered in a way they didn’t like I was slapped or punched. One of the men held me while the other doled out the abuse. I lost track of how long that went on for. Eventually they figured out I wasn’t lying and left me alone.”

  Through the course of his life Jon had survived more than his share of pain. Shot twice on the job. Lost both parents and his brother before their time. Not to mention all the small ways a person can struggle from day-to-day. But nothing could have prepared him for the absolute agony of having to listen to Camille recount her ordeal. Hearing about how she had been forced to tear open a plastic bag of bread using her knees and teeth, then eat that bread off the floor because her hands had been tied behind her for almost three weeks. About her brother beating her while men stood and watched, some laughing. About the men that broke her fingers while telling her what they would do to her body if her brother allowed it. About how they would kill her and throw her body where no one would find it.

  Jon struggled to stay in his seat, silent, holding Camille through the two hours they questioned her. The knowledge that his suffering at hearing her story was a mere fraction of what she had had to endure, helped him to stay the course.

  “The day I came to the station Rich started getting paranoid that the police were closing in on him. I kept hearing him shout from the floor above about a fire investigation and there was too much heat on the whole operation. He decided to move the operations base again. He had made it a policy to move the base every few months. Same with the greenhouses, meth labs, and buy locations. They never stayed long in one place, it kept neighbors from getting suspicious. This warehouse where I was held had been fairly new, but he decided to toss it early, just in case. In the chaos, no one really thought about me, I’m pretty sure they thought I would just starve to death, and started getting lax about things like locking doors or not talking specifics around me. Because of that, I was able to sneak out, I was able to cut the zip ties on a sharp piece of metal which stuck out from an old piece of equipment, and then I ran like hell until I got to the station. That’s it. That’s the whole story.”

  The room filled with silence, and despite hating the topic, Jon found he missed Camille’s soft voice. It was still raw from the damage her throat had sustained from screaming during her torture, but no less sweet to his ears.

  Formosa narrowed her eyes at Camille, obviously gearing up for more questions. Jon held himself back from intervening, knowing this had to happen to catch the men responsible.

  “Camille, I don’t think that is the whole story. I still don’t know how you got involved in this whole thing. According to your file, two years ago you were top of your class in pre-med at University of Pittsburgh. Then for no reason, you dropped out.” The detective leaned back in her chair, letting enough cool detachment into her voice to break the friendly appearance she’d been working before, though not enough to come across as the enemy. Begrudgingly, Jon had to admit this woman was good at her job. He just wished it wasn’t currently pointed at the woman Jon would lay down his own life for. “Tell me Camille, how does a girl go from a promising career as a doctor to making fourteen dollars an hour restocking pharmacy shelves and hanging out with a bunch of druggies?”

  “Like I said, there is a significant age difference between my brothers and I. When I was a kid I guess my parents made Rich my guardian in the event of their death. They also put him in charge of the bank accounts they had set up to help me go to college and set me up if they couldn’t be there to do it. My dad was in his sixties when I was born, mom in her forties, so they worried a lot about making sure I would be taken care of after they passed.” The bravery Camille showed during the interview astounded Jon. She didn’t shrink away from Formosa’s questions, simply answered them with her side of the story. He’d seen grown men crumble under less pressure. “I don’t think they expected to die from a carbon monoxide leak in our house. After they died, Rich was technically my guardian, but I lived in my childhood home and he lived in his apartment, and he would come check on me only when he had to. Then I left for college and he paid out for my schooling, as the will had instructed. But then the economy crashed. Rich got laid off from the marketing firm he worked for at the time. For a while, he lived off savings, but it dwindled fast. A friend approached him about going in on his weed operation. Rich agreed and that is how this all started. Eventually Rich wanted to make the grow operation bigger, make more money. But he needed more money to make that happen. He said if I didn’t drop out of school and sign over the remaining funds to him he would sell my parents’ house and I would never be allowed back again.”

  Finally after and hours of being questioned, the cracks began to form in the hard shell of Camille’s strength. Not a single tear had fall during the entire interview, not until the moment she recounted how her slime ball of a brother threatened to rip away her memories of her parents. Once they started, she seemed unable to hold them back anymore, the rivulets of water streaming down her sunken cheeks.

  “I agreed, dropped out, and got a job as a pharmacy tech figuring it would give me a leg up when I eventually got back to college. At first the weed operation was the only thing he had his hands in, but he ventured into some other avenues. At one point he was almost like a general contractor, only for drugs. He didn’t have stakes in all the operations in the area, but he consulted with some higher level guys, got them in contact with other people that might be able to help. But then Rich just kept getting greedier and greedier. He dipped into some of the harder stuff he sold. His original business partner disappeared one day, and we never saw him again. I’ve always suspected Rich killed him, but I can’t prove it. But it left Rich in charge of the grow house, and able to expand it into whatever way he saw fit. He got contacts with some guys bringin
g heroin in from Canada, recruited some meth cookers which had been displaced from the city, and started holding my home over my head to get me to steal some of the ingredients from the pharmacy. He figured out a way to make tablets that looked exactly like the pills I stole, and we replaced the missing pills with the placebos he made at home.” Camille shook her head, and looked toward Jon, sadness and fear still clouding those gorgeous blues. “I swear I didn’t want to be any part of what he was doing, but I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t lose the house I grew up in. The memories of my parents. Before I knew what had happened I was a prisoner in my own life, long before he locked me up. He said if I tried to leave he would make sure I went down for the whole operation. Rich had always been brutally smart. But I think the power and drugs he took magnified his personality and distilled it to its purest and most evil form. I’m sorry, Jon, I should have had the courage to talk the first time I was picked up.”

  “Hey, sweet girl, there is nothing to be sorry about. You survived. And for that I am eternally grateful.” Jon desperately wanted to kiss Camille, soothe her worries with his lips and his words. But he was all too aware of the scrutinizing looks of McCracken and Formosa. He couldn’t keep himself from touching her in some small way, though. He reached his hand out and wrapped it around her too thin forearm, simply holding her in one of the few places not bruised and beaten. The warmth of her skin under his reassured him that she was real, something he had doubted countless times after she disappeared from the station.

  Camille sighed, the sweetest little hiss of breath through lips, and leaned slightly toward him. Jon ignored the curious stares of his employees across the bed, ignored everything except the rightness of having his sweet Camilla close and safe.

  Chapter Four

  Camille

  Telling the story of how she had become involved in Rich’s rising empire of drugs had been somewhat cathartic. It was a secret she held for almost two years, every day of which she lived in fear of her brother. But now it was all out in the open, and she felt better.

  Mostly.

  The fear still sat like an anvil in her stomach. Rich wouldn’t stop until she was dead. She knew that, he was nothing if not determined, and if her suspicions were right, it wouldn’t be the first time he had someone killed. But with Jon by her bedside, the fear wasn’t quite as acute. Instead it simply existed in the background, like white noise.

  The detective continued to ask questions, seeming to try and get details out of Camille that she simply didn’t have. She may know more than Rich wanted her to about the operation, but she didn’t know everything. She didn’t know where they holed up after leaving her to die in the basement. She didn’t know what his plans from this point were. She didn’t know how he got some of the drugs in, or how they distributed them to the small-time dealers. She also didn’t know what his end goal was.

  Finally, Jon called an end to the interrogation, despite protests from the others.

  “No disrespect, Chief, but I still have quite a few questions for Camille.” The woman, Formosa, said in a tone that indicated she held no fear for her superior officer. “Shouldn’t you be pushing for us to work the case harder, not take it easy on our only material witness?”

  Camille stayed quiet, knowing Jon would get his way in the end, and, truth be told, she grew increasingly exhausted with each question. She laid her head back on the pillows, closed her eyes and let the officials argue over her.

  “You may be from the city, and think that makes you somehow above me, but I will remind you that this is still my territory, and you are here at my request.” Jon kept his voice even, but the threat of violence was still clearly recognizable underneath. “Now, I say Camille has had enough, and she told us all she can. We need to let her rest.”

  “Chief, I would like to see you outside for a moment.” The woman again, the male officer, McCracken, had kept mostly quiet since they arrived.

  “No, I’m not leaving Camille.”

  “Jon, we’ll be right outside the door. Nothing will happen.” Finally, the other police officer, McCracken, spoke, his tone soft and calming.

  Camille hated that Jon’s men questioned him because of his apparent need to protect her. The job was obviously important to him, and he was losing the respect of the people he was supposed to lead. “It’s okay, Jon. I’m going to try and sleep a little bit. I’ll be okay if you need to leave.”

  Jon’s eyes softened as he leaned over the bed, keeping her forearm tight in his grip. “I’m not leaving you, sweetheart.” He dropped his head down, so that his forehead almost touched her own. The almost defeated posture telegraphed the stress and conflict the larger than life man must have been feeling. “But I am going to talk in the hall with these two for a moment. If you need anything at all, push the nurses button and I’ll come back. Got it?”

  Camille couldn’t help but smile. She had gotten a near perfect grade in organic chemistry, she could handle pushing a button. Not that he knew that. “Got it.”

  He continued to hover over her prone body, very clearing battling himself. For a moment, Camille thought he might kiss her, and the idea sent a thrill through her like she had never known. Before he could move any closer to her, the detective by the door cleared her throat, obviously growing impatient with the Chief.

  Jon closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and released his delicate hold on her before walking from the room.

  The second the door closed behind him Camille’s carefully hidden panic emerged. “You’re okay. No one will hurt you. Jon is right outside.” She repeated the mantras over and over, under her breath, willing her frayed nerves to hold on for just another minute. Just until her personal protector came back.

  Determined to focus on anything else, Camille peeled off the stiff hospital blankets that covered her body. She took stock of her injuries. Her toes were bandaged together where Mac had stomped on them during their torture free-for-all. Some of the bruises dotting her legs and arms from the first day of beatings were now yellowed and faded, with more overlapping from the following days. Her ribs ached from the body blows they had rained on her, but not nearly as bad as they had been during her first days in the basement, when just breathing felt like knives slicing the flesh and bones. Camille moved slowly, not wanting to disturb her limbs too much. She traced her bandaged fingers across her collar bone, right where Complese had put out his cheap cigarettes as he finished each one during his time with her. The perfectly circular scabs lined up as if he had been making a design, not scarring her for life.

  She didn’t even want to think about what her face looked like. A mess of swollen flesh and bruised skin most likely.

  It occurred to Camille that the upside of everything hurting was that nothing stood out as being especially overwhelmingly painful. Almost like her new normal was pain.

  The door to her room creaked open, and Camille’s heart jumped in her chest knowing Jon would appear in mere seconds. But instead a nurse walked in, carrying a tray with bandages and syringes. His blue scrubs were ill fitting, hanging loosely on his frame in places. Something about the man made her uneasy, and she searched his uniform for the standard issue ID all hospital personnel were required to wear. It rested right where it should, over the left side of his chest. The picture matched his face and everything.

  Camille silently admonished herself for being so suspicious of the poor nurse. She knew her room was guarded, that everyone entering her room was being thoroughly checked out. Closing her eyes, she reminded herself once again that she was safe. No one could hurt her.

  “Hello, there miss. How is your pain?” The nurse’s voice was quiet, yet rough.

  “It’s about an eight. Not as bad as when it was happening, but not exactly nice either.” She tried a weak smile. But it felt wrong on her face, brittle and fake.

  “Well, you’ll be glad to know I have something right here to help with that.” He held up a syringe filled with clear liquid.

  “No thank you, I told the
doctors I don’t want any narcotics. I’m fine with Tylenol.” She tried to shift her arm away from the nurse, who had reached out to take hold of the IV line.

  “Nonsense, why go through all that pain when we have something that will help take it away?” The man didn’t meet her eyes, instead focusing on the IV and the syringe.

  Camille jerked her arm away. “Because I don’t want to risk getting addicted like the low lives that did this to me.”

  The man ignored her words completely, grabbing her hand and pulling it towards him. She gasped as the pain from her freshly set fingers seared through her body at his rough grip. “Stop. I don’t want it, stop.” Her voice rose with every word until she was screaming at the top of her lungs for him to not give her the drugs. Just as the needle pierced through the port sticking out from the IV line, Camille screamed, sounding more animal than human, reached over and ripped the IV from the back of her hand.

  Chaos erupted in the room, a growl echoing from the door the only thing that warned of Jon’s returned presence. In a blur of motion, he lept across the small hospital room and tackled the nurse to the floor, pinning his arms behind him. Formosa and McCracken stormed in right behind him, talking over each other to find out what was going on.

  “He tried to give me something. I told him I didn’t want it and he tried to inject it in my line anyway.”

  Doctors and nurses rushed in, the small room soon filled with shouts and commotion. It soon became clear the supposed nurse was not in fact employed by the hospital. The ID was a convincing fake. The man was cuffed and escorted from the room to be questioned at the station.