Embers and Echoes

by Karsten Knight

  Maybe she’d needed to lose one sister before she realized how important it was for her to save the other one.

  She was so deep in reverie that it took her a full minute to realize there was a conversation happening inside the crate. She pressed her ear to the corrugated metal.

  There were several voices, actually, and shuffling, too. Groans of exertion and deep breathing. It sounded as though the men inside were moving something heavy.

  And they were coming for the door.

  Ash scurried down the row of crates as quickly as she could, toward the port-side railing. The door to the crate slammed open behind her, and the voices exploded outward into the marina. She lost her footing on a slick section of deck and ended up scampering the remaining few lengths to get around the corner in time. She leaned against the outside of one crate and tried to listen as best she could.

  “You resist again,” a loud voice with a thick Hispanic accent shouted, “and I’m going to start cutting off fingers.” There was the muffled sound of a fist striking flesh followed by coughing and sputtering.

  Ash allowed herself a quick glance around the corner, hoping the shadows would hide her face.

  Four men had emerged from the crate—one of them with a thick mustache and a suit, and three others with white button-down shirts rolled up to their elbows.

  In their midst, restrained by the three underlings and shackled in heavy chains around his arms and legs, a figure in jeans and a dark black T-shirt was hunched over, recovering from whatever blow he’d just suffered. When he straightened up, Ash could see that he was tall, even taller than Colt—pushing up on six and a half feet. The giant had a solid, muscular build, and his tattered black T-shirt strained around his chest and arms. A dark mesh bag had been fitted over his head and cinched around his neck. Even without seeing his face, one thing was crystal clear:

  This was not Rose Wilde.

  “It’s almost seven thirty,” the man in the three-piece suit said as he checked his watch. “Should be plenty of time to get him to the factory before sundown.”

  “Sundown,” Ash mouthed. Clearly some sort of hostage situation was afoot. Wouldn’t it have been to their benefit to transport him at night?

  “Do what you need to do to get him to the van.” He made a shooing motion to the other men, two of whom secured the prisoner by his arms while the other steered him by his shoulders. “But remember, boss wants him conscious, so avoid the Chicano’s face, eh?”

  Ash was just starting to lean closer to the scene when she felt fingers slide through her hair and twist. She tried and failed to stifle a squeak as a hand yanked her to her feet by the top of her head. The follicles of her scalp screamed in pain.

  She turned around just far enough to see her attacker. He wore a sleeveless T-shirt and couldn’t have been older than twenty-one or twenty-two. His goatee was scraggly where his facial hair had yet to come in fully. But Ash was forced to take him seriously when she noted that his free hand had unholstered the gun from his hip.

  “Whatchou doing here?” he grilled her in an accent that matched that of the man in the suit—Cuban?

  She tried to untangle his fingers from her hair, but his grip tightened and he twisted her head roughly to the side.

  She had to bite her lip to keep from squealing out again. “What the hell, bro?” she growled. “Can’t a girl watch a sunset from a boat without getting scalped?”

  “Wait a minute.” The guard’s eyes grew wide, and he released her hair, though to Ash’s horror, a few of her dark hairs came away with his fingers. “You’re her, aren’t you?”

  “What?” Ash asked, massaging her scalp, then realized she was asking the wrong question. “Who?”

  He gestured quickly around the corner with the gun. “His little girlfriend. I’ve heard about you.”

  “Wait, I’m not—”

  “I want to see them,” he said.

  Ash glanced down at her shirt. “Are you talking about my—”

  “I don’t got all day and I’m not playin’.” He raised the gun and trained it directly between her eyes. “I want to see them. Take off your shirt.”

  She opened her mouth to argue, but he flicked the safety on and off to tell her that he meant business.

  The bile crept up Ash’s throat. She hadn’t even removed any clothing, and she already felt violated by this little bastard. She didn’t know who he thought she was, but she could only assume what he was after. Her choices, however, were limited. She didn’t trust her abilities enough to melt a bullet in the chamber, and heating up his hand could cause him to misfire.

  Her hands were shaking as they made their way down to the first button, and then the second. Strangely, however, she noticed he wasn’t looking at her breasts. He was staring intently at her shoulders. In fact, he was so focused on the nape of her neck that his gun was just ever so slowly drifting off target.

  When she hit the third button, she couldn’t take it anymore—she struck.

  She lashed out with her mind at the handle of the revolver. The guard screamed and dropped the gun. He held up his now crimson palm, which was bleeding in patches. Some of his skin was still stuck to the red-hot handle of the gun.

  Ash seized the opportunity and landed a kick to his knee, dropping him. Then she followed up by slamming his head into the railing.

  However, the blow to his head didn’t put him out like she thought it would. He snaked his arm around the back of her leg and ripped her feet right out from underneath her. She landed hard on the unforgiving wood, and the air exploded out of her lungs.

  The guard started to crawl toward her, and Ash lashed out on pure instinct. Her boot caught him square in the nose. His eyes had a moment to look at her, startled, before they lost focus and his eyelids drooped. His head landed on the wooden deck with a sickening thud.

  Ash slowly lifted herself off the wood and massaged her side. The rib she’d broken during her confrontation with Eve in May was still tender.

  She peeled the guard’s face off the deck. He was breathing, but his nose was visibly bent and there were splinters now protruding from his forehead. After what he’d done, she had to resist the dark urge to roll his body into the water to see if he floated.

  The four men and their prisoner were nowhere on the deck of the ship when she looked back down the row of metal crates, nor were they even in the boathouse anymore, she discovered after a little exploration. She took off running past the line of boats and exited out into the dockyard.

  The van was just pulling away down the gravel drive. At first she just watched it barrel down the alley toward the main drag. Reflecting back on all the trouble that had ensued a month earlier, after she’d rescued Serena outside the Bent Horseshoe Saloon, she couldn’t help but ask herself, Was she really about to interfere with yet another kidnapping in a windowless van?

  Yes, she realized, and dashed around the building to where she’d stowed her scooter. Yes, I am.

  She snapped her helmet on and twisted the key in the ignition, and the little scooter rocketed off, sending a fountain of gravel and dirt pluming out from under the tire and onto the boathouse wall.

  Almost as soon as Ash pulled out onto the river drive, she had to veer to avoid an oncoming SUV. The driver blared his horn, and Ash offered him an apologetic wave as she cut across both lanes to keep up with the van, which was disappearing down a back alley.

  Ash tried as best she could to take a cue from all of the espionage movies that she’d seen, and kept the Vespa a few spans behind the van, but never took her eyes off the license plate. When the van barreled down a narrow side street, Ash slowed to let it extend its lead. The Vespa rattled over the uneven stones, and she earned her fair share of looks from the local residents, who were enjoying the summer heat outside of their apartments and houses. A few women crossed their arms in their fold-out chairs and appraised her like a king might regard a beggar in his court. A circle of five men in wife-beaters was throwing dice against a wall and into
a chalk-lined circle, where the results caused one cheer and four groans.

  Ahead the van rolled to a stop in front of a corner building with a low archway. Ash let the scooter drift to the right and parked in the shadows. Two boys clucked their tongues at her as they walked past. Ash avoided eye contact and gave them the finger.

  At first she wasn’t sure how the men in the van were going to do the unloading. The street was far from desolate, and if the locals considered a Polynesian girl on a Vespa worthy of their attention, then a giant bound and shackled like a medieval prisoner would definitely pique their curiosity as well.

  The van did a three-point turn so that its tail end rolled right into the overhang. The fit was so snug and the van maneuvering so graceful that Ash figured this wasn’t the first time they’d used this covert method of unloading.

  When no one emerged from the van after a minute, she edged down the plaster wall. The glare from the streetlamps moved off the windshield enough for her to see that there was no longer anyone sitting in the driver’s seat. They must have all slipped out the back.

  The sign over the archway read ROJA’S CIGAR FACTORY, and a half-size statue of a butler smoking a cigar guarded the entrance. The same ROJA’S CIGAR emblem decorated the van’s windowless side paneling.

  Ash took one moment outside the van door to ensure that no one was watching her. She also acknowledged that what she was about to do outshined anything else she’d done in her life in terms of stupidity. And then she opened the driver-side door, slipped in, and crawled out the back.

  The metal-striped wooden door to the cigar shop was still ajar, and Ash squeezed through the opening, for fear that the door might squeak if she pried it open any farther. Inside, the front of the shop was completely dark. A soft glow emanated from the computer screen above the cash register, illuminating a glass container that housed a collection of stainless steel lighters and cigar clips. The shop had an earthy sweet smell that would probably cling to Ash’s clothes and skin long after she left.

  The voices were coming from around the corner (not to mention the faint clinking of chains tapping together). She passed the wall of cigars for sale on her way toward the passageway in the back, which was cloaked with a single drape. The curtain was backlit with a neon blue glow, and Ash prayed that the kidnappers weren’t working for the fiery blue-eyed Cloak.

  Ash lowered herself onto her belly and crawled forward until her head poked under the curtain’s other side.

  In the spacious room beyond, a series of circular velvet booths lined the wall to the left. But the real attraction was on the right side of the room. It was a humidor, a special room with controlled humidity and temperature designed to store and preserve cigars, which Ash knew about only because her father was an aficionado (a habit her mother loathed). This one in particular had two glass walls and a glass door that was open a pinch.

  Presumably the humidor’s other two walls were lined with cedar and housed a high-end cigar collection, but Ash couldn’t tell, because she was too distracted by the scene happening inside.

  The prisoner dangled from the middle of the room, upside down. The chains around his feet had been strapped to a hook on the vaulted ceiling, and he swung helplessly back and forth.

  The three thugs stood at attention in the corners of the room, and the man in the suit was pacing circles around the prisoner. But most interesting of all, Ash finally discovered the source of the buzzing and the blue light. They had set up a network of ultraviolet lamps around the humidor, all facing up and onto the prisoner to spotlight various levels of his body.

  The man in the suit knelt down, loosened the bag over the prisoner’s head, and tugged it off.

  The prisoner—the giant—was a teenage boy. It was hard to tell in the eerie UV light, but Ash approximated him to be close to her own age and possibly of Mexican descent. He had long shaggy hair that formed a floating mane around his upside-down head. Even though his life was clearly in jeopardy, there was something about the two-tiered dimples to either side of his mouth that made him perpetually look as though he were about to laugh.

  The suited man slapped the prisoner’s face lightly. “Oye, amigo,” the man said gently. “We know that you and your little friend have been very curiously looking into our employer’s affairs for the last month.” He gestured around at the tanning lamps. “We even clearly know your weaknesses. All I want to know is why you were snooping around Mrs. Vanderbilt’s boat like a little bloodhound before we caught you.”

  “Mrs. Vanderbilt’s boat?” the boy said with mock surprise. “Shit, I thought I’d climbed aboard a Disney cruise.”

  His interrogator actually laughed. “You’re a funny man, stranger.” He slipped on a pair of brass knuckles that he’d taken from his pocket. “It almost pains me to have to knock some seriousness into you.”

  He turned fast and slammed his armored fist into the prisoner’s stomach. With a spasm of pain the boy’s body convulsed upward into a macaroni shape before gravity ironed him back out into a straight line.

  “Okay, okay . . . but first . . .” The boy wheezed between breaths. “Just . . . answer me . . . one question.”

  The man leaned closer so he could hear the boy.

  The boy cocked his head upward. “How long . . . did it take you . . . to grow . . . that mustache?”

  This time the man struck him across the face. The prisoner’s head twisted ninety degrees, and when it came back to the front, blood dribbled out onto the floor.

  The man took off his jacket and draped it casually over one of the back tables. “You know,” he said as he rolled up his sleeves, “I really have no pressing engagements to go to. Mi esposa is giving me headaches about choosing a high school for the kids, so between you and me, I’d much rather be here than at home . . . and I don’t mind working on my tan under these lights.”

  Ash knew she had to intervene somehow, and soon. She wasn’t entirely sure what the UV lamps were for, but they seemed important. Besides, they were the only things lighting the windowless room. A cover of darkness would give her an edge if she was going to make a move. Scorching the circuitry to one of the lamps wouldn’t be a problem, but were her powers fine-tuned enough to sabotage all five of the lamps simultaneously?

  Then Ash noticed the electrical cable snaking out of the humidor’s entrance. It plugged into the wall three feet to her right.

  It looked like a more conventional approach was in order.

  Ash slithered across the floor and wrapped her hand around the plug. Before she pulled, she hesitated long enough to ask herself—was this really her fight? She could crawl safely away, place a call to the police, and then take the Vespa back to her hotel.

  It occurred to her, however, that these men were on Lesley Vanderbilt’s payroll, and therefore at least somehow related to her sister’s kidnapping. And if that wasn’t enough incentive for her to get involved, the man in the suit was now lumbering toward the prisoner, ready to strike again. He pulled back his fist.

  Ash ripped out the plug. Instantly the electric buzz of the UV lamps hissed off and the humidor flickered into darkness.

  The panicked shouts started almost immediately. The man in the suit yelled, “Get those lamps back on, you fools,” and Ash heard slapping along the glass as his three underlings struggled to find the door.

  Then she heard the rattling of chains. Something snapped.

  A silhouette appeared in the door frame. One of the men had found his way out and was following the extension cord like a lifeline, heading right to where Ash was crouched. She saw him stop and squint into the darkness, finally noticing Ash’s outline in the shadows.

  A massive hand clamped down on his shoulder and dragged him back into the darkness. The door slammed closed behind him.

  Ash took a few cautious steps toward the lightless humidor. Inside she could hear muffled shouts, growing more frantic, and then the thwack of fist on flesh. A gun discharged once, twice, in successive loud pops, and when it fired a
third time, the glass in front of Ash shattered. The bullet buried itself in the cigars not far from her head.

  Shortly after, a man flew through the air and landed at Ash’s feet, out cold before he could feel the glass shards stabbing into his back.

  Ash’s eyes gradually adjusted, and she stepped closer to the humidor, where she could just barely make out the brawl inside. A second underling was already draped, unconscious, over a bench in the back. The boy prisoner grabbed the third by the hair on his head and smashed his face into the glass, which spiderwebbed on impact. Meanwhile, the boss came at the prisoner, swinging with his brass knuckles, landing two hard blows on the boy’s spine.

  He might as well have attacked a brick wall with a Popsicle stick. The boy just laughed, grabbed his attacker by the throat, and carried him across the room. The boss’s heels dragged limply beneath him until the boy forcefully sat him down against one of the cigar shelves. While the man struggled to get free, the prisoner quickly tethered a length of broken chain around the boss’s neck and one of the shelf’s support beams, tightly enough to secure him in place, loosely enough that he could still breathe.

  “Hey, guardian angel.”

  It took Ash several seconds to register that the boy was talking to her. She pointed stupidly at herself. The boy must have been able to see her well enough through the darkness, because he laughed and continued, “Yes, you. Think you can find a light?”

  “Sure,” she managed. She groped around the wall near the door for a bit until she found the switch, and winced as the halogens over the humidor sizzled on.

  In the short time it had taken Ash to locate the lights, the prisoner had blindfolded the man in the suit and bound his hands behind his head with another chain. The large boy gave her a comical wave, far too casual for someone who’d just been tortured, and Ash laughed when the remaining links of his broken handcuffs jingled. She caught him giving her a quick up-and-down while he leaned against one of the cigar shelves.