Tor smiles and raises his fist.
“You have always been a whore, and now you will be my whore.”
My consciousness is shattered by his fist. As I slip away my one thought is of Paco—and what could have been.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Paco
Tallinn claps me on the back, and I tense. I have been anxious since leaving Greta. I would give much to have stayed by her side. But without trying to pay this doctor off for his silence, how can I face Greta?
It would be akin to killing her sister—again.
Tallinn's hand falls. “Jumpy, Paco.”
I simply nod.
Lisbeth sidles beside us silently. Our backs skate along another waterfront house's clapboard exterior. The gentle sounds of the sea lull me, but do not lessen my awareness of the danger of our mutual goal. This house looks like every other one in the row of brightly painted sea cottages.
We come to the front door. Chill and damp creep into my bones; my southern heritage protests the Nordic bite.
Tallinn peers along tall and narrow sidelights, murky with filth.
“Stand-up establishment.” He snorts softly, giving the dirty glass pane a gentle tap.
Lisbeth cocks a brow in Tallinn's direction.
This expression, I know. “It's of ill-repute.”
“Clearly,” she says with a snide thread in her voice.
Tallinn rolls his eyes when she turns away.
Americans are so distrusting. I do not need Tallinn to tell me that he is—What would he say? The idiom comes to me: not a fan of Lisbeth.
We know little about Lisbeth. However, knowing she is Greta's sister is enough for now.
“Let's go around back.” Tallinn jerks his chin, indicating a narrow deck that runs the perimeter of the seaside shack.
I glance down. Barnacles like rotting teeth cling to slick wood pilings driven into an unforgiving sea.
The sea of my home has always calmed me. The frozen ocean below riots around the pilings, lifting angry fingers of water toward the dilapidated shack, churning beneath our feet.
Lisbeth is already moving in her sure-footed way, seemingly oblivious to the slickness of the boards that serve as a walk leading around to the presumed back entrance.
I am last to traverse the antique moorings.
Tallinn is between us as Lisbeth rounds the back.
Only her profile is lit. Seeing half of her pale face has a strangely prophetic feel, unease are like talons digging into my psyche. The urge to contact Greta surges through me like a compulsion.
Tallinn gives Lisbeth a direct look. “Knock like we discussed.”
Lisbeth gives a curt nod as her reply. She knocks four times in quick succession then silently counts out five seconds before knocking once more. We wait.
My apprehension swells like the tide below.
“What is it?” Tallinn asks, studying my expression.
“I do not know.” My foreboding is both tangible and inexplicable. I cannot articulate my feelings, though they are real.
He shakes his head, his brows coming together. The whites of his eyes appear to float in the haziness that borders sea and night. “You know. Spill the details, Paco.”
Shuffling sounds of dragging feet come from behind the door, and Tallinn straightens, forgetting his request. Our attention is now riveted to the back entrance. The distraction temporarily dispels my unease as we move closer to the door. It opens a crack.
The palest blue eye that I've ever seen peers out. A sliver of the man attached to the eyeball resembles a mad scientist. And that assessment might not be too far from the truth.
He is not of high moral character; that much is certain.
The Americans are fond of saying “don't judge a book by its cover.”
But in this case, I am free to do so.
*
After staring with his one, unnerving sky-blue orb for nearly a minute, he swings the door wide, allowing us entry.
Lisbeth enters first, then Tallinn and I follow.
“You come here to do the deed, do you?” the doctor's sly voice is remarkably like one I would expect to hear on a radio. Broadcaster smooth.
His dulcet tones are in direct conflict to his stooped posture, his riot of white hair, and his advanced age.
Elders are treasured in Mexico. The lack of nursing homes speaks to their value in my home country. A Mexican can guess the age of an older person within a year or two. We care; therefore, we know.
This man has to be in his late eighties, possibly early nineties. I don't know if he is Norwegian, but his accent lends bite to the English—it is not his first language.
Knowing four languages has advantages other than the obvious. I am able to identify other languages, even though I may not speak them. His native tongue eludes me.
The doctor picks up a lock of Lisbeth's hair, studying the soft platinum silk before letting it drop. His eyes roam her face like the touch of a ghost over a desecrated grave. “A shame,” he concedes absently.
His manner chills me.
“I do not intend to kill her,” I say.
“Not awkward—not at all,” Tallinn murmurs behind me.
The doctor's bushy eyebrows shoot to his hairline. “Oh?” His eyes flick to Lisbeth again, gauging the knowledge of her own impending death. Noting her smooth expression, he harrumphs. His gnarled hand palms his chin. “That will not please our mutual friends.”
Lisbeth is nonplussed but holds her normally sharp tongue in a show of restraint that seems odd, given our short acquaintance and the ferocity of her character.
Tallinn crosses his arms, and the old man appears to take him in for the first time.
The doctor's face screws into a look of disgust.
Tallinn notices. His eyes on the doctor, he says to me. “Lots of bad vibes around here, man. Just sayinʼ.”
The doctor's lips twist, then he turns his attention back to me, dismissing Tallinn's presence.
“What is your proposal? You have come within the preordained window of time. I have prepared a room for our fair girl to be laid out. So that I might—” He clicks his tongue in parody of an old-fashioned camera shutter clicking to a rapid tempo. “Take many beautiful post-mortem shots for our mutual acquaintancesʼ satisfaction.”
He says beautiful as “beau-tee-ful.”
Lisbeth's lips lift in a sneer.
I hold up a palm, attempting to diffuse anything before I can negotiate. I badly wish to return to Greta. “How much money will it take for you to fabricate a photo shoot?”
Now it is time for the doctor's mouth to jerk into a rough smile. The expression does not reach his eyes. His gaze narrows into two glacial slits of condescension and greed, a look I'm intimately familiar with. “Much.”
“How much?” I grow tired of the games.
He names a figure, and I can feel Tallinn's indignation like a pulsing heat at my back, even though he says nothing.
But is there any price too high for sparing a life?
“Agreed,” I say without hesitation.
He says nothing for a swollen moment. “She will stay here. I will apply make-up that will give her the look—” He chuckles in apparent delight, though nothing is remotely funny. “Of the recently departed.”
Tallinn grunts in annoyance, which I ignore. I will allow his grievance because I cannot allow my own. It's not a luxury I can afford.
Greta.
My mind's eye blinks, and she fills my mental vision. “How long?”
The doctor is not a stupid man. “Three hours. No more.”
“I don't like it,” Tallinn states immediately.
“Stay here then, my friend.” The doctor's eyes hold challenge.
Tallinn rises to the bait. “Love to. But I'm watching my homeboy here.”
He jerks a thumb at me.
I sigh, hanging my head.
“Lisbeth?” I direct in soft question to her.
She inclines her head.
“Are you willing to let this man make you into a corpse?” I can't keep the dryness out of my voice. All of this borders on ridiculous. But it is a necessary evil on so many fronts.
She eyes him with clear disdain. “I think I can manage one old man while he plays make-up artist.”
The doctor scowls, grunting with obvious offense, and turns to me. “The funds will need to be wired. Immediately.”
And that is how easy it is to manipulate agreements. A cool ten million moves obstacles as though they never existed.
The doctor shuffles to another room. Five minutes pass before he returns and stands before me, holding a slip of paper with his handwritten information.
Tallinn accesses my Swiss bank account via his smartphone. He turns it to me, and I tap in my pass codes three times.
I answer numerous questions to withdraw money in the amount we agreed upon. I interpret the doctor's chicken scratch from the bit of torn paper and transfer the funds.
The silence stretches like a limb pulled to far; amputation is inevitable.
Finally, I receive confirmation of funds transfer and exit the system. Tallinn takes his phone back and slides it into a hidden pocket in his all-black jacket.
“Excuse me while I confirm the monies have been transferred.” The doctor is gone for another five minutes. My body is so tense, my teeth ache from the tightness in my jaw.
When the minutes lengthen to ten, Tallinn begins to look anxious—more anxious than usual and not half as anxious as I feel.
“What's taking that old geezer the time?” Tallinn mutters.
What indeed?
Lisbeth gives Tallinn a look of strained patience.
The doctor returns, his pace a crawl. “Done.” He gives Tallinn a look of intolerance then includes me in the gaze. “She stays—you go. Three hours.”
I hesitate.
I've paid him off. It almost seems too easy. Like all the years of paying off the narco without incident, until one year it all changed.
Would this change, too? Would I come back to a dead Lisbeth? A kidnapped one?
“Paco, we've done what we can. This chick can handle herself.” Tallinn grunts. “Let him work his creepy death magic, and we'll get her later. Simple.”
I rotate slowly, giving him the weight of my eyes. “Nothing is simple.” Life is fashioned to be complicated. It is the rule of our time here on earth, not the exception.
Tallinn nods in acknowledgment. “True, but I liked my pessimism better than your glass is half-full shit.”
“Just go. I'll be fine. You will see—this will work out for Greta's benefit and my own.” Lisbeth lightly touches my arm. “Thank you, Paco.”
The doctor's face fills my vision. I fight to not step away from his corrupt presence. “I'll return in three hours.”
He spreads his twisted hands. “I will be finished.”
I walk out of the shack and gratefully suck in lungfuls of air. The smell of the sea is so overpowering that I feel as though I swim as I breathe. Salt and the putrid smell of dead ocean vegetation strangle my senses.
“This place gives me the fucking heebie-jeebies. Let's rock.”
Tallinn says it best.
We walk back to our vehicle parked nearly a mile away. Our silent stroll is deliberate.
Each step deepens my foreboding.
I’m not worried for Lisbeth. Tallinn is correct—she's lethal. Especially because of her feminine form, she would take any number of men by surprise. Lisbeth and Greta share a fragile appearance. And that is all they share.
Tallinn drives me back to the hotel in tense silence. We’re both lost in dark thoughts.
“Paco!” he calls as I leap out of the car before it rolls to a stop.
I hear the beep of the alarm when Tallinn locks the car as I stride inside.
Pounding footsteps follow me to the elevator. His hand inserts itself as the elevator doors shut, and he squeezes inside, glaring at me.
I ignore him.
The floors light as the elevator ascends.
The numbers skip eerily past where a thirteenth floor would be and proceed directly to the fourteenth and beyond.
My frown deepens.
A hand lands on my shoulder. “Paco.”
I fight not to toss his hand from me. “I'm fine. I need to see Greta.”
His hand falls away. “Dude, she's sleeping.”
I hastily glance at my sports Rolex.
2 a.m.
I find I don't care. I won't have peace until I see her. Those blue eyes like the waters of the Caribbean, with lashes like sugar sand lace.
An elevator has never taken more time.
The doors part with a metallic sigh, and I step out. My eyes instantly sight her door—which hangs ajar.
I don't realize I'm running until Tallinn is beside me, a gun naked in his hand.
I move to the door, and he shoves me out of the way. I grunt as I hit the jamb with bone-shattering impact.
He goes in first and slams the door wide.
A silent pop like a stone punching into still waters comes from my left.
Tallinn drops like a mighty tree.
I freeze inside the doorway while a pool of blood spreads beneath Tallinn.
The sight of him bleeding out on the ground shocks me to stillness. I realize in this treacherously suspended moment that I love this crude, raw, and brutally honest man. He is so much more than my guard.
The passage of air when the bullet pierced the darkness makes my training taking over, but too late.
Men move forward—four in total.
I do not recognize them, but we speak the same language: that of the body and battle.
In the end, no amount of expertise can equalize four against one.
Not when I am met with a similar skill level.
I break bones—faces—and draw blood.
In the end, I fall.
My thoughts before consciousness leaves me are not of my mortality.
Greta is the singular heartbeat of my wakeful mind. When that leaves, her ghost follows me into darkness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Greta
My eyes snap open.
Alert.
Ready.
Bare concrete walls greet my fuzzy vision. A naked bulb tosses its glare across every surface. A shadow from a wooden corner chair stretches toward where I lay like a bony embrace.
My body's so numb with my fear, it surges through my veins alongside my frozen blood.
I'm too smart to move my head. I know I'll either barf or pass out. Some people might take a second to come to themselves after being hit in the head.
All I remember is before.
I won't panic. I remember where that got me last time. Gia's voice surfaces like a phantom sliding over my clammy skin.
There's nothing you could have done, Greta.
I swallow against the dryness in my throat, and a tiny bit of surviving saliva catches. I tug at my wrists and ankles.
Locked.
A tear I can't afford to shed slips from my eye. It sears a brutal trail of fire over the injuries on my face.
The zip ties are savage plastic against my tender, scarred skin.
Surely Zaire Sebastian couldn't have thought this was a Club Alpha feature.
Gia promised me that triggers wouldn't be allowed. This is so far beyond a trigger that I can't breathe.
This is a replay of my prior torture.
My breath hitches in an incomplete sob. Another tear joins the first. I bite the inside of my cheek until the taste of metal clings to my gums and teeth. Crying won't help me escape.
Survive, Greta.
The sound of water is all around me, disturbing the tomblike silence like being entombed in a boat without windows.
I blink back tears. Gia knows I've been hurt. She'll get help. I roll my lip between my teeth, thinking of the obvious.
Maybe help won't come soon enough.
*
When Tor strolls
in, I don't dignify his presence with even a flicker of acknowledgment.
I grit my teeth.
I've spent the last hour looking at the four cement walls and smelling my own dried urine.
I know a few things.
I'm near the water. I can smell and hear it all around me. Moisture seeps into the corners of my concrete prison like saltwater tears. The bare bulb that hangs above me, illuminates the damage of my body.
My face feels distended, and I can't see through one of my eyes. I know that my cheek has swollen into the eye socket where Tor tossed me into the wall.
Curiosity burns like a virus in my brain; however, I remain silent. My chin throbs, and I give thanks to an uncaring God that the floor in my hotel room was carpeted.
“Greta,” Tor calls softly.
Fucker.
A traitorous tear of frustrated rage slides down my face, though my lips are tightly clamped.
His fingers are suddenly on my tender chin, viciously turning it, and I cry out, despite my best efforts not to.
“You will give me your full attention.”
I stare into his cold green eyes, like a sea robbed of warmth.
I'm reminded of Paco's bright-emerald hue. Open, glittering with his joy of being alive and, so I believed, in my closeness to him.
Unlike Paco’s, Tor’s green eyes are glacial, closed with indifference, and shimmering with his intentions.
I've learned a lot from a gaze. “Fuck you,” I say between my teeth.
He slaps my abused cheek, and my head whips into the mattress. My instant agony is a muffled wheeze between my teeth.
“A love tap, Greta. Have you already forgotten the feel of my fist?”
I hate that my voice is small. “No.”
“Then you will do what I say.”
“Why?” My one eye follows him as he clasps his large hands behind his back, straightening above me.
I breathe easier when he's not hovering above me.
Blood runs down my face, pooling in the hollow of my collarbone.
I want so badly to protect my body, to cover it, that my skin crawls with the urge.
Tor appears to sense my thoughts in an unwanted pulse of telepathy.
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