Sloane

by V. J. Chambers

  I stalked over. “Axel.”

  It seemed that he didn’t hear me. He was wearing another suit. This one wasn’t pink. Instead, it was navy blue pinstripe. He had a gray fedora on his head, slightly askew. He looked like he was king of the world and enjoying it.

  I moved in front of him, blocking his view of the stage. “Axel, I need to talk to you.”

  He gave me a perturbed look. “You again.”

  “Look, I know you’re a jackass who doesn’t care about anything except yourself, but I need your help.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You’re in my way.”

  “I know that. That’s because I need your attention.”

  His gaze traveled from my toes up over my body. He went very slowly, and I suddenly felt self-conscious. I was wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, with a windbreaker thrown over the whole ensemble as a barrier against the night chill. I sure as heck didn’t look very glamorous. His gaze was unnerving. And it was… strange. I didn’t think anyone had ever looked at me so closely. I was used to sticking to the periphery, barely being noticed. Under Axel’s stare, I felt exposed.

  “I’m paying attention to you,” he said. “Talk.”

  I licked my lips. Suddenly, I couldn’t remember what I wanted to tell him. “Can you—can you stop staring at me like that?”

  He chuckled. “I thought you wanted my attention.”

  I was going to murder him. I could do it, too. I had a gun on me. I could just slam the thing into his pretty little face and—

  Pretty?

  I shook myself. “The music’s really loud.”

  He eased his arms off the other two girls and got up. “Fine. We can go somewhere more… private.”

  A little shiver went up my spine. Jesus, why did he have to have a voice like that? Like satin and sex and—

  Axel was already walking through the club, not even looking over his shoulder to see if I was catching up.

  I hurried after him.

  He started up a set of stairs in the back, and I followed him. We went up to the top floor, which was empty and quiet. The sound of the music was dampened by the distance. He opened the first door we came to and made an elaborately polite after-you gesture.

  I went inside.

  “This is my office,” he said, closing the door behind us. It was carpeted with thick, crimson shag. There were two leather couches against either wall, a glass table between them. His oak, dark-stained desk was on the far end. There were framed black-and-white nudes on the wall. I felt the hint of his breath at the back of my neck, heard the purr of his voice. “Like it?”

  I jumped, lurching away from him. “Yeah, it’s great.”

  He grinned. “You seem a little nervous.”

  “I’m fine,” I said, smoothing the front of my windbreaker.

  Axel took off his fedora and tossed it on one of the couches. “Now, what did you want to talk to me about?”

  “Uh…” Why couldn’t I think? Something about Axel made me feel so flustered. I jutted my chin out. “What kind of name is Axel anyway? Your parents big Guns N’ Roses fans?”

  “No.” He drew down the corners of his mouth in displeasure. “My mother happens to be Swedish. It’s a Scandinavian form of the Hebrew name Absalom, if you must know.”

  Oh, so I’d offended him? Good. He’d gotten me all off-kilter. He deserved it.

  He narrowed his eyes. “Your name is Sloane, right?”

  I nodded. He remembered my name. I was surprised, and to my horror, a little bit pleased.

  “Well, Sloane, certainly you didn’t make us come all the way up here so that you could ridicule my name?”

  Now I was flustered again. I searched my brain trying to put together what I wanted to say. What came out was, “The Shepherd Foundation benefit.”

  “Yes?” He looked confused.

  “You’re going.”

  “Yes.”

  “I need you to get me in.”

  He drew back. “That’s why you’re here?” He laughed, sitting down on one of the couches. “Well, I’m afraid that’s out of the question. I’m only a guest at the benefit. I don’t have the ability to invite people. The guest list is very competitive. Not just anyone can go. Besides, I wouldn’t have pegged you for someone who’d be interested in things like that.”

  This was going all wrong. “I don’t want to go to the benefit.”

  “You just said you did.”

  I twisted my fingers together. “I need to get in. There’s someone there I need to talk to. Dr. James Armstrong. I can’t get to him any other way, so I need to get into the benefit.”

  He stretched, cradling his head with his hands. “I really fail to see how this is my problem.”

  Oh. Oh, right. I’d buried the lead. “It’s for Leigh.”

  He furrowed his brow. “You know, Sloane, you may make the least sense of any woman I’ve ever met.”

  “Sorry, it’s only that it’s complicated.”

  He smiled. “It’s not exactly a bad thing. You’re…” He looked me up and down. “I mean, you’re obviously sort of pathetic, but there’s also a kind of fierceness to you. You intrigue me.”

  I blushed. I looked away. “That’s not… Stop doing that.”

  “Stop doing what?”

  “Looking at me.”

  He burst out laughing.

  I took a deep breath. “You remember how we were looking for Leigh earlier?”

  He made a face, as if he was thinking very hard. “Oh. Oh, yes, I suppose that’s why you came by. I’d forgotten all about that. Did you find her? If you found her, could you tell her to call me? I really do worry about her.”

  “No, we didn’t find her,” I said. “I mean, not exactly.”

  He reached over and opened a wooden box on the table. He retrieved a bag of white powder and wiggled it at me. “You want a bump?”

  I gulped. “Is that cocaine?”

  “Yes. Do you want some?”

  “No.” I glared at him. “Not at all. I don’t. I’m trying to explain something to you.”

  “Yes, you seem to be having some difficulty.” He gave the bag a shake. “Nothing like a little blow to loosen your tongue, you know?”

  “I don’t need drugs to talk.”

  He set the bag down. “All right. All right. But can you speed this up, Sloane? I admit I find you intriguing, but I also get bored very easily, and I really can’t be sure how much longer you’ll amuse me.”

  My nostrils flared. “James Armstrong has kidnapped Leigh and taken her to a secret lab so that he can do experiments on her, and I need to talk to him, so that I can find out where the lab is and get her back.”

  Axel blinked.

  I sighed. You know, when I said it out loud, it sounded stupid.

  “Kidnapped?”

  “Yes.”

  “By that asshole with the shaved head that you were with earlier?”

  “Griffin? No, he’s her husband.”

  Axel looked horrified. “She married him?”

  I dragged a hand over my face. If I didn’t need Axel, I swear to Christ, I would turn around and leave right now. Being in his presence was pretty much the most frustrating experience of my entire life.

  He opened the bag, took a tiny coke spoon out of his breast pocket, and snorted it into his left nostril.

  “Don’t do that,” I said.

  “What?” he said.

  “If you’re all fucked up on drugs when I’m trying to talk to you—”

  “Sloane, love, I do a line to wake up in the morning. I’m always fucked up on drugs.”

  Oh my God, this was horrible.

  He rubbed his nose. “Let’s go back a minute. Did you say that Leigh was married?”

  “Yes, but that’s not the important thing. The important things is that she’s been—”

  “Kidnapped.” He got up from the couch and went over to the window. He pulled the curtains aside and peered out into the darkness. “Have you called the police?”<
br />
  “We can’t… There are reasons the police can’t be involved, but I can’t go into it.”

  He turned back to me, arching an eyebrow. “But you’re sure that this Armstrong person has her.”

  I nodded. “Pretty sure.”

  “And so you need my help to get to him.”

  “That’s right.”

  He turned to the window again. “What if I said it sounds dreadfully dull to me, and I’m not interested?”

  “Well, then I would tell you that Leigh’s life could be in danger. When we were here before, you said you cared about her. If you really care, you can’t let anything happen to her.”

  He laughed softly, still facing away from me. “Maybe I don’t care about Leigh. Maybe I gave up on her since she obviously gave up on me.”

  I interlaced my fingers and looked down at the carpet.

  He let the curtain fall down. “What if I told you that I’d reached the end of my patience, and that I want you to leave?”

  I didn’t know what to say. “I…” I drew in a breath. “I would beg you.”

  Axel turned around and fixed me with a stare. His eyes seemed to be burrowing into my own, like he was looking into my soul. His voice was an intense whisper. “Do it. Beg.”

  “I…” I felt flustered again. My throat was dry, and it was hard to talk. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

  All the while, he watched me, an eager look on his face.

  “Please,” I choked out. “Please, help me.”

  A smile stole over his features. “Oh, I do love it when beautiful women beg.”

  I looked back at the carpet. Fuck him.

  Wait. Had he just called me beautiful? I raised my gaze back to his.

  He was still smiling. “I’ll get you into the benefit. You can come as my date. I haven’t decided on a plus one yet, and my mother’s been after me about it. You’ll do. Of course, you’re going to need something to wear.”

  I let out a shaky breath. “Thank you. Thank you for doing this.”

  He shrugged. “Whatever. It’s this weekend. I’ll need a way to get in touch with you to iron out the details. You can leave your phone number with Charlotte—the girl at the door? The one in the red corset. She’s handling all of that sort of stuff for me tonight. If I keep my own phone, I always lose it. Anyway, you give her your number, and I’ll call you.”

  “Um, okay.” Why was he taking charge like this? This was my plan.

  “Great,” he said. “Well, now I really am getting bored. There are bare tits downstairs, and I want to look at them. So… go away.”

  LEIGH

  “Face the wall and put your hands against it,” rang out a voice from behind the door.

  Griffin, Silas, and I all exchanged a glance. This was the first time they’d spoken to us. Whenever they brought food, they didn’t talk. They just slid it in through a slot under the door. The food wasn’t good. It was bland and strange. Some sort of tasteless mush—a kind of grainy slop. It reminded me of gruel from Oliver Twist. But unlike Oliver, I hadn’t gotten so hungry that I was asking for more of the stuff.

  “Let’s go,” said the voice.

  Silas, who’d been lounging against the wall next to one of the cots, got to his feet. “Yeah, what if we don’t?”

  The door opened a crack. There was a gunshot. The door pulled shut.

  Silas’ head jerked backwards. He crumpled to the floor, lifeless.

  Griffin groaned. “We might as well do what they say. If we keep going dark over and over, it will weaken us.”

  I got up and faced the wall. I put my hands over my head, palms flat against the wall. Griffin did the same thing, standing next to me.

  I could hear the door opening.

  I peered over my shoulder. Knox hadn’t gotten up. He wasn’t facing the wall. He was slumped in a heap, his eyes glassy. I saw the guards march over to him.

  One of them saw me watching.

  “Face the wall,” he snapped.

  I turned around.

  Behind me, I heard the sounds of them hoisting Knox up. They were dragging him across the floor. Then the door opened and closed.

  I peeked around again. The guards were gone, and so was Knox. I relaxed, moving away from the wall. “Oh my God, what are they doing to him?”

  Griffin put his arms around me. “Hey, we’re going to figure out a way out of this.”

  I looked up at him. “How?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  I eased out of his grasp and walked over to the place where Knox had been sitting. “There’s something wrong with him.”

  Griffin hadn’t spent much time trying to talk to Knox. Silas had gone over to him at one point, attempted a conversation. But when nothing had really come of it, he’d given up. Griffin and I had watched their exchange, but hadn’t said anything. So, we hadn’t discussed Knox’s mental state at all. The guys had been too busy worrying about Sloane and Christa, who they thought were likely to appear in this room with us at any minute.

  I tried to assure them that Sloane could take care of herself. After they told me how they’d found me, I said that I was sure Sloane was working on a way to get us out of there. I found it reassuring, but the guys were both too nervous.

  Griffin dragged his toe against the floor. “Yeah, I guess it was too much to hope that he was staying quiet because he had a grudge against me.”

  “No, he’s not himself. They’re doing something to him.”

  “But what?” He looked around the room as if he was going to find an answer in the ceiling.

  “What did Sloane say about this lab place?” I said. “What kind of stuff do they make?”

  “She said the memory-loss stuff,” said Griffin. “You remember? At Op Wraith, we injected French with it? And…”

  And my father.

  But later, I’d accidentally killed my father, and we didn’t talk about that. It wasn’t as if my father hadn’t deserved it. Near as I could tell, all the people I’d killed had deserved it. But it was funny how that didn’t make me feel better about it. I’d had to accept that about myself—that I was capable of murder, of torture, of taking pleasure in causing people misery. But it was a heavy weight that I carried around, and I was never going to be the same.

  I nodded. “I remember.” I took a deep breath. “But that’s not what’s going on with Knox, at least not entirely. His memory does seem to be screwed up, but he’s also got something else wrong. It’s like they’ve completely ruined his brain.”

  Griffin grimaced. “And that’s what they’re going to do to us.”

  Silas stirred on the other side of the room. “Fuck,” he muttered.

  I went over to him. “You okay?”

  He sat up. “Yeah, great.” He gave the door a dark look. “Those fuckers. If I get my hands on them—”

  “Don’t do anything stupid, Silas,” said Griffin. “We have no idea what these people are capable of.”

  “We have no idea about anything,” said Silas. “But one thing’s for sure. We know that they’ve got us locked up. We have to find some way out of here. Next time they come back in, we’ll all pretend to be good little kids facing the wall. Then we’ll rush ‘em.”

  “And then they’ll shoot us.” Griffin shook his head. “No, we need more information. We need to find out what they’re doing. When Knox gets back here, we have to get him to explain it to us.”

  “Knox isn’t capable of explanation anymore,” I said.

  “Well, we’ll have to make him that way,” said Griffin.

  I let out a caustic laugh. “I don’t think torturing him is going to work this time, Griffin.”

  He shot me a disbelieving look. “Why would you say that?” He was hurt.

  “You know why,” I said. Because Griffin had tortured Knox before. I hadn’t witnessed it, because Griffin had stopped when I got there. But I’d participated in torturing Marcel, the man who’d raped Griffin in prison. Griffin and I had tortured Marcel tog
ether. So I knew how that worked. And there was no way that I was ever allowing either of us to do that again.

  Griffin’s nostrils flared. “That’s what you think of me, isn’t it? You think I’m violent and horrible. You think I’d hurt Knox.”

  “I don’t think you’re violent and horrible, but you just said that you’d hurt Knox.”

  “That isn’t what I said,” said Griffin. “I wish you wouldn’t assume the worst about me.”

  “I only—”

  “Stop it,” said Silas, his expression cold. He glanced back and forth between us. “Look, we’re all violent people who did bad things. Can we please get over that shit?”

  I bit my lip. He was right. “Sorry,” I mumbled to Griffin.

  “No, doll, it’s okay. I guess I can see why you would—”

  “Please?” said Silas.

  Griffin sighed.

  I reached for his hand and squeezed it. I was over it.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Axel lived in a penthouse apartment in the heart of Boston. I had to take an elevator all the way up to the top, and I was wearing a really uncomfortable (not to mention cold) dress. I’d gone shopping to pick something up for this benefit, which was formal, and all the dresses were sort of flimsy. None of them had sleeves. Heck, I had trouble finding one with straps. So, here I was, shivering even inside the elevator.

  The dress hadn’t been cheap. I was appalled at how expensive they all actually were. It wasn’t as if I was strapped for cash. After Op Wraith had been disintegrated, the assassins left behind had divvied up the assets, which were pretty impressive. So, we all had enough money to be set for life. But we also knew that we couldn’t be flashy about our purchases. If we all suddenly popped up, living the high life, super rich, then that would draw attention to all of us, and no one wanted that. So I wasn’t used to spending money on fancy dresses.

  I didn’t even like dresses. I didn’t see much point in getting really dressed up. I liked pretty clothes as much as any girl, and it was kind of fun to put on makeup and do my hair. However, it was also a lot of work, and it wasn’t something I wanted to do all the time. I’d had a devil of a time trying to do it in the motel room with Jeff, who hadn’t given up on begging me to release him.