by Nicole Fox
Tyson squatted down in front of the cage and leaned forward, his fingers grasping through the metal bars. “This'll blow over,” he whispered. “Don't worry, baby girl. It'll be like nothing happened. You'll see.”
I just shook my head. “I know, uncle. I just hope it does soon. I don't want to spend the rest of my life pissing in a bucket.”
He made a pained face and looked away, then stood and patted the cage's front gate. Then he and Pork Chop turned and left. At least they left the light on.
Well, that hadn't worked. I just hoped Kort would find me. But then, why would he? I’d just abandoned him. I just shook my head and settled back against the cage's wall, my knees pulled up to my chest, my arms wrapped around them and tried to rock myself into some sense of security.
Miracles weren't real. And miracles never happened.
Chapter Sixteen
Kort
I'd watched as the security guy and Lydia's uncle marched her through the Warehouse. I'd even slipped away and followed them as they disappeared down the stairs and into the basement levels. I had to slip off back to work, though. Theodore seemed like a real hard ass, especially after I told him I'd been sent as a special worker. He demanded absolute respect for his authority, with no slacking, and no talking out of line. I guess, with what I was handling, that was expected. You didn't want men you couldn't trust to unload bales of cocaine and weed or huge bags of methamphetamine.
My eyes stayed open for Lydia, to see if she'd reappear around the Warehouse, but I didn't have any luck all afternoon. It wasn't until that night, when I heard she'd been sent down to some cages down in the basement. Cages they used for some less frequent kind of cargo.
“No shit?” I asked as the guy next to me as I sat around in the meeting area outside the big bunkhouse that was next to the compound. A lot of the guys, not having any real families to go home to at the end of the workday, just stayed there as part of their payment. It was just easier for them to live in the dorms, especially with the commute being so far from any other place to live.
His name was Riley, and he looked like a mean son of a bitch. Scraggly beard, bad jail house tattoos of the number 1488 on his knuckles. I figured he had a lightning bolt or two somewhere on his body. He seemed the type.
“No shit,” Riley replied, taking a hit off his beer.
Rage welled up inside me, but I kept it tamped down. What kind of man would do that to his daughter? What kind of daddy would lock his own flesh and blood up in a cage? This man was even more sick and twisted than I thought he had been. Still, undirected anger wouldn't make getting closer to him any easier.
“You were the one who brought her in, right?” he asked, pulling a pack of smokes out and offering me one.
I waved it off at first, but changed my mind. I took the smoke from him, leaned in and let him light it. I took a long, soothing drag, the first one I'd had since I was a punk teenager. The nicotine immediately began to smooth out my nerves, helped me to get a sense of myself.
That raw anger stayed with me, though, like a ball of fire in my belly. Not only was he doing it to his daughter, he was doing it to a woman I cared about. I needed to find a way to get her out, and a way to get to Joey. Maybe, though, I could pump the guys here for information. They'd been around long enough, knew the way this place worked.
“Yeah,” I said, ashing my smoke. “That was me.”
Riley waggled his eyebrows and got a dirty grin on his face. “Guys say she's a looker. Like, big city ten.”
I shook my head, my eyes narrowed as I looked out over the bayou. “Yeah. She sure is something, alright.”
We lapsed into a little silence that last a long moment. After a while I spoke up again. “What's with this Banks guy, anyways?”
“Joey Banks?” the guy asked, shaking his head. “Dunno, he just stays up in that office all the time. Word is, he don't even come down, even at night. Reckon I seen the guy once, and that's it.”
I ashed my smoke again. “Even at night? He some kinda recluse or something?”
The man shook his head again. “He's something, alright. Big kingpin, but don't make any difference to me. Been in and out of state so many times, I can't get a job to save my life.”
After that I steered the conversation over to sports and the like, not wanting to sound like I was just pumping him for information. I didn't want to come off as an informant or something. A couple beers later, and a friendly shot of bourbon from the bottle a couple of the guys showed up with, and I was heading into my little dorm room. I laid down in the Spartan accommodations and stared at the moldy ceiling.
I waited till the sun tracked down the western sky, and the crickets and frogs came out to make their night music. I slipped out of the bunkhouse and back into the Warehouse, which was pretty easy. There wasn't much security inside the fence, just on the outer perimeter. I backtracked to where I'd seen Tyson and the other man take Lydia, then slipped down the concrete stairs, into the basement.
With the cool, damp air enfolding me, I slipped through the metal door and into the hallways below the Warehouse, my head cocked to the side. I thought I heard something. Soft crying, like desperately contained sobs, drifted down the hallway from my left. I followed the sounds to a solid metal door, opened it up. Cages in front of me a door to the right. And, of course, Lydia.
The crying stopped abruptly, replaced by sniffles. “Tyson?” Lydia asked.
“Jesus Christ,” I whispered.
“Kort?” she asked.
Shit. What had I dragged her into when I brought her back here? This was my fault, all my fault. I carefully shut the door and crossed over to her in the cage, squatting down next to her. “Lydia, are you okay?” I whispered.
“No I'm not fucking okay,” she replied, sniffling again as she crawled over to me, put her hands on the gate. “My pops locked me up in a fucking cage. Why would you think I'm okay?”
I reached down to the gate, grasped it with my fingers over hers. “What the hell did you do?”
She snorted as she grabbed at my fingers. “I didn't give him the respect he thought he was due.”
“Well, can't you just do that? We need you close to him to make this plan work.”
“Fuck him,” she said, wiping the back of her hand across an eye, trying to dry the tears from it. “I thought about trying to make this work when we came in, but I can't do it, Kort. Not after what he's done. Not after this,” she growled.
“I know-”
“He locked me in a fucking cage,” she nearly hissed, cutting me off. “A cage, Kort. I've pissed twice in a fucking can since I've been in here.”
I just didn't understand. I shook my head. “What did you do? And what did he do to make you-?”
“Shut up,” she hissed quietly, cutting me off, not answering my questions. “Listen. You hear that?”
Footsteps. I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Go,” she said. “They find you here, we're both fucked. Take the side door.”
“Where's it go?”
“Away?” she hissed. “I don't fucking know.”
The footsteps came closer, clearly coming towards us down the outside tunnel. I got up and walked quickly, quietly for the door that was off the side. I thanked God it was unlocked as I pulled it open and slipped within the darkness, closing it behind me just as the door I'd previously entered through swung open.
“Dinner time,” said a man's grating voice. “Brought some water, too.”
“Thanks,” Lydia said, her voice much louder than it needed to be. She was giving me cover to slip away.
I carefully shut the door behind me till the latch clicked, holding my breath as I pulled my cell phone out and turned on the flashlight feature, shining it around the room. Cages, at least twenty like the one Lydia was imprisoned in, lined the left wall, all thankfully empty. There, in the wall on the right, was another sturdy metal door, identical to the ones I'd already come through. It would lead me, I figured, out to the tunnel I'd entered wh
en I'd first descended the stairs. I could just backtrack my way as fast as possible and avoid the guards.
I made my way carefully across the room, but clearly not carefully enough, kicking a stray can, sending it clattering across the floor.
“The fuck?” the guard in Lydia's prison room asked. “You fucking hear that?”
“An opossum, I think,” Lydia said on the other side of the door. “Been hearing creepy noises like that all day. Or this place is haunted or some shit.”
I picked up the pace and moved to the exit, this time more carefully than before, as footsteps sounded behind me in the cage room.
The guard laughed as he came closer. “Haunted my ass. Keep that hoodoo bullshit to yourself around here. Most of these fuckers are so backwoods they'd probably believe you.”
I put my hand on the knob and turned the latch just as I heard the guard begin to twist the door knob on his side. My breath caught in my throat. I was fucked if he caught me down here. I was either going to have to kill him, or make him disappear some other way. And, if I had to do that, how was I going to get into Joey Banks' management box? I needed Lydia safe and sound and unsuspected, or else I didn't have a chance. I was screwed every which way from Sunday, and I knew it.
“Wait,” Lydia said suddenly, her voice quivering a little in fear. “Maybe it really is ghosts? I heard Marie Laveau was buried on this stretch of land. And, I mean, look at this place. How many people has my father killed?”
The knob stopped turning. “You serious? Or you just fucking with me?”
I pulled my door open while he was distracted and slipped out into the tunnel, closing it gently behind me.
“See?” I heard the guard ask Lydia. “No fucking ghosts. Probably a rat or something, like you said.”
I carefully made my way down the dimly lit corridor, nearly tiptoeing as I crept past the door and headed back to the stairwell.
“Here,” the guard said, his words more muffled the farther I made it, “eat up.”
Just like before, I carefully made my way through the door to the stairs and headed up the stairs, less careful now about being heard. I got back into the Warehouse proper and then headed out to the bunkhouse. As I went, I tried to get that vision of Lydia out of my head, but I couldn't. I mean, I'd seen some shit in my time. Corpses, even one or two I'd made myself, disfigurements, examples we'd had to make of people. But torturing your own flesh and blood? And what had happened between them for her to hate him so much in return? Other than the obvious, of course.
I got back into the bunkhouse, was greeted briefly by the same guys as earlier, the ones I'd shared some beers and whiskey with.
“Hey Kort,” Riley said, pushing out the chair beside him with the toe of his boot, “have a seat man, grab another beer.”
I almost turned them down, at first, but quickly reminded myself that I had to act natural. And turning down beer in this line of work sure as Hell wasn't natural. “Yeah,” I said, taking the offered seat and accepting the beer that was pressed into my hand, “sure thing.”
I drank another few beers with the guys, until things started to get late and everyone had to turn in. My eyelids were starting to get heavy, too, from the long day on the road, and the work in the warehouse. Still, I couldn't get Lydia from my mind, even with the help from the beer. The vision of her crowded into that dog cage, the hurt look on her face at the betrayal by her father. What little bit of heart I still had ached for her like nothing I'd ever felt.
“You was asking me about the boss earlier, right?” Riley asked after a while, like he was trying to fill in the empty spaces of the conversation as he leaned down to the ice chest between us and grabbed another beer. He was pretty drunk already, I could tell, and he was looking for an excuse to keep me around so he at least had a drinking buddy.
“Yeah, sure, I guess.”
“You hear about what happened to his wife, yet? His daughter's momma?”
I shook my head and finished off the last of my beer.
“The boss,” he said, his words slurred and heavy, “he figured she was a plant, had informed on him somehow. He'd just started expanding this place, and he thought somehow the feds or some other organization had gotten her to roll over on him. He beat her to death, in front of his little girl, that Lydia. His daughter, she run off after, till you brought her back.”
“Beat her to death?” I asked, leaning forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “Jesus. Guess I can see why Lydia hates him so much.”
He belched, blew out his stinking beer breath as he nodded forward and caught himself. “Now, that's what I hear, at least. Whispers and shit around the campfires, you catch my drift. Happened before my time, course, so I can't say for sure.”
Something about what he told me it rang true. Like the way you can hear a story about someone's past, and as unbelievable as the store is, it just makes sense in the grand scope of things. What would I have done in her shoes if I saw my father do that? Turn him in to the cops? Not in this part of the world, they'd just ignore it, or turn Lydia back over to her father. He was that powerful back then, maybe still was. Lydia had done the only thing she could: she ran. No telling if she'd be next, or if he'd want to silence her after what she'd seen.
I shook my head as the codger next to me glugged down the last of his beer and slammed it noisily on the rickety table. “Another?” he asked, still swaying.
I laughed and shook my head. “Nah, man, I'm fine. You want a hand back to your bunk, though?”
He waved it off. “Nah, man, I'm fine right here.” He leaned forward and lay his head on his forearms like a pillow. “Fine right here, man.”
I pushed back from the crappy table and stole back to my room. I lay there a little longer, staring up at the moldy ceiling, thinking of how I was going to get Lydia out, and how I was going to make Joey Banks pay for everything he'd done.
Now, more than ever, I wanted to see him dead. The killing time would come, if I was patient and didn’t lose my cool.
Chapter Seventeen
Lydia
The hours went by slower than I'd ever imagined possible. With no clock, no sun, no change in temperature, time seemed to stand still as I waited in the cage. What would pops do to me? Beat me to death like he'd beaten my mother? Sell me like the other people he'd probably put in these cages? I shivered, knowing that the man who had raised me had become this creep. Earlier, he'd looked like a child's monster in a faerie tale when he'd come from the shadows. The longer I sat in that cage, though, the more I realized the similarities were more than just skin deep. Finally, footsteps came down the hallway towards the door. A single set. The door pushed open, and the visitor came into my jail.
“Lydia? You awake?”
It was Tyson. The man who let me be sentenced to this hell hole.
“Lydia?” 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 bac
k 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?”
