by Lake, Keri
Searing pain left my entire arm trembling. I clamped my mouth shut, a silent scream splitting my skull, while jagged flashes of light burst behind my eyelids. My stomach cramped with the tension, my muscles so stiff they ached. In those moments, I thought of Lena, Jay, Lauren, Aubree—all the people I’d let down. The victims of Culling, and I’d be just another statistic for the sadistic motherfucker. My teeth chattered, as the grinder hit my bone and the vibrations zipped up my hands.
A thunderous crash shook the building, and my nerves exploded, jerking my hand.
An aftershock rippled down my spine, dispersing tiny trembles throughout my muscles. The flare of pain fizzled to a dull burn, and the grinding stopped. Plumes of dust and smoke drifted over me as my eyeballs shifted back and forth, searching the ceiling for signs of caving.
A rainstorm of shattering glass and the explosive thunks of crumbling brick sounded from behind. The two men beside me dropped to the floor like dead flies. On the fringes of my view, two other bodies smashed into one another in a flurry of movement.
What the fuck?
I couldn’t move my head, but my hand had been released, and I raised it to my forehead in an attempt undo to the bindings there. A deep gash along my index finger exposed the bone, but I ignored it, and using my other working fingers, I pushed off the leather strap and went to work on untying my left hand.
Gunfire reverberated through the building. My body flinched with each thunderclap that bounced off the walls, as bullets pinged off the metal all around me. A clink hit the mill, and my muscles seized as the bullet deflected.
A gunfight had broken out, and I lay helplessly fucking strapped to the machine.
With a useless index finger, and the sprawling numbness, working the knot free with one hand proved difficult. I couldn’t lift my head for fear of stabbing myself with the drill above me. Digging my fingers into the thick weave of the knot, I slipped, unable to slacken the loop.
“C’mon!” Frustration wound in my gut the longer I toyed with it, my hands still trembling from both the torture and the explosion a minute ago. Gasoline burned my nose and the smell of gun smoke filled the room, like firecrackers on the fourth of July.
Seconds ticked by, and the gunfire lessened, until two guns dueled back and forth with lengthy pauses in between.
One final shot, and the room fell to an eerie silence.
Abandoning my work at the knot, I rolled my head back, looking for signs of activity with the world turned upside down. A patrol car sat in the middle of the opened floor. It must’ve crashed through the rolling door of the loading dock. In the driver’s seat, I could barely make out the figure of a man slumped over, a black mask covering his face. The same mask I wore.
Tinkering at my ankle had my head snapping downward.
Aubree stood, untying my binds, an AK-47 strapped to her arm—perhaps the sexiest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.
Relief and anger pounded through my body, as it occurred to me she was the only other person in the room with a pulse.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I rolled my head around again, taking in the body count lying in pools of blood all around me. “And did you just take out four gangstas in a matter of minutes?”
A smile lifted the corner of her mouth as she freed my right leg and tossed the rope onto my body. “Did I forget to tell you? I know how to use a gun. My dad taught me. Shot a thirty aught six at five years old. At targets, mostly.”
“You’re a damn good shot.” My attention turned back on my bound wrist. “Any chance you could work on my arm? It’s that … gravity thing.”
The smirk turned into a full-blown smile, but it quickly disappeared when she lifted her gun, aiming like a goddamn ninja sniper, and shot at something behind me.
I craned my neck to see yet another body crumpled to the floor. “You, uh … want tell me what the fuck is going on here?”
“Later.” Still toiling away at my binds, her brows pinched together, a whole lot of pain clouding her eyes. “I’ve never killed anyone before. I’m trying not to think too much about it right now.”
Within minutes, all four of my limbs were freed, and I slid out from beneath the drill, cradling my mangled hand for a moment as she rounded the machine and strode up to me. A blow to my cheek knocked my head to the side. I turned back to her in complete and utter fucking confusion.
“That’s for drugging me again.” Gripping my nape, she pulled me to her face and crushed her lips to mine, her tongue darting into my mouth. “That’s for leaving the gun on the nightstand.”
“You wanna ditch this party and find a dark corner somewhere?”
“I want to find Michael.”
A tearing sound drew my attention downward, to where she tore away part of my shirt and wrapped my hand tight. “If you’re so good at being badass, how did you remain a prisoner all those years?”
“Asshole never gave me a gun.” She made a final knot, pinching the flow of blood from the wound. “I’m not so hot with hand to hand fighting, so you’re gonna have to watch my ass.”
My brow kicked up at that.
“Let’s go find this bastard and end him.”
I gripped her arm. “Aubree, I can’t let you get hurt in this. I’ll find him. I’ll end him.”
She rolled her eyes, tugging her wrist. “Not happening.”
“I’m serious.” My grip tightened around her forearm. “No fucking around.”
She twisted her wrist, wrenching her arm free. “I’ll be fine.”
No way I’d convince the woman to follow my command. She’d proven time and again how stubborn she could be. All I could do was protect her. “You stay behind me. If shit gets crazy, you bolt. Don’t come back. Promise?”
“Promise.” She kissed me again, and I stepped in front of her, taking the lead.
“So, that bullshit you pulled with me, the shooting lesson. That was—” I picked up my fallen rifle, awkwardly toting it in my non-mutilated hand.
“I thought it was sweet, you showing me how to use a gun.”
A bullet sparked beside me, and both of us halted. Flanked by two burly men with beards, both wearing leather vests, Culling aimed his rifle from the center of the top balcony above us. Two seconds later, bullets sprayed over the open space, a beat after Aubree and I ducked behind equipment. Separated from me by a narrow walkway, she crouched low, keeping her gun tucked close.
A quick peek around the mill showed Culling, heading toward the stairwell, leaving his goons to fight for him.
With a wave, I caught Aubree’s attention and swept my gun left and right, demonstrating that I planned to cover her and for her to run.
She nodded, but a strange, nauseating sensation hit my gut when the corner of her lip kicked up, like she planned to do something fucking crazy.
Sure enough, she bolted from her hiding spot, before I had the opportunity to shoot.
50
Aubree
Bullets rained above me, and their shells clanged to the floor, as I kept low, shuffling across the open factory toward the staircase. I planned to go after Michael—he’d broken away from the other two men, heading for the door of a stairwell. Had I hinted at the plan, Nick probably would’ve shot me himself, because when he’d told me to run, I was pretty sure he meant the opposite direction.
Toward safety—not straight into the mouth of hell.
Then again, he’d have probably advised me not to have Cox drive a patrol car straight into the building, either, but that’d turned out just fine.
I dashed toward the staircase, and a hot jolt of pain struck my calf.
“Fuck!” Grabbing my leg, I fell forward and lifted my pant leg, where a bullet had hit my calf. A quick examination showed a long path of the bullet at the surface of my skin. A grazing. I ignored the pain and pushed to stand up.
“Aubree!” Nick’s voice thundered from behind me, just before a shot struck one of the bikers.
I glanced back, to see the second biker had already descended the
staircase at the opposite side of the room. About fifty yards behind, he made a dead run toward me, but Nick slammed his rifle into the guy’s face, knocking him back.
I kept on, after Michael, not willing to let the bastard get away. Up the staircase, I hobbled after a flash of his black suit, as he entered the stairwell.
Shooting twice had bullets bouncing off the closing door, not even close to hitting their target. Legs burning, I pushed through the door.
Michael appeared one level below me, and I forced speed from my muscles, leaping three stairs at a time. I fired another shot into the black abyss below, and missed, as he rounded another landing. Bullets pinged as I blindly shot into the dark spiraling staircase.
The desperation to catch him kept me from caring that we headed straight for the basement of the building, until he disappeared and a cold chill swept across my skin.
Gun aimed, I twisted left to right, all the way around, looking for him.
The sudden stillness raised the hair on the back of my neck, and before I could spin to what had given me that eerie feeling, a blade lifted my chin at the same time arms enveloped me.
“Drop the gun.” That bone-chilling voice I’d heard in nightmares chimed inside my ear.
“Fuck you.”
Flames licked the thin skin of my neck, where he sliced the blade, and I flinched. “In case I haven’t made it clear to you before, I am perfectly capable of ending your life.” He licked the side of my throat. “Almost as easy as I ended your father’s.”
Anger snaked through my gut, and I balled my hand into a fist. “I knew you killed him, you psychotic piece of shit.”
“Why … that’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said, darling. Walk.” He wrenched the gun from my hand and held it level, jerking it to the side for me to take the lead. “Into the tunnel.”
A long, dark tunnel stood before me, lit only by the opening at the end, about two hundred yards away, that appeared to lead outside the building. The shine of metal piping lined both sides of the brick walls. Sludge squished beneath my boot, and the scent of mold and stale air overwhelmed my nose, as I trudged along, in front of Michael.
“Steam tunnels. All over Detroit. It’s a shame to see someone’s brilliant ideas overrun by filth, destruction, graffiti.” His words arrived on a sour tone. “Bunch of fucking animals in a zoo.”
Something knocked into my arm, and I stumbled. My head jerked back with the tug of Michael’s hand, yanking me back to a stand.
At the mouth of the tunnel, we reached a small staircase that opened to dirt and machinery at ground level, like a construction site, closed off by a tall fence that’d been lined at the top with barbed wire. Hardhat signs had been plastered on all corners of the site, along with Do Not Enter.
The only way out appeared to be back through the building, from where we’d just come.
“Up those stairs.” Michael nudged me forward.
A short distance from us, another staircase stood alongside a square concrete structure, only about eight or ten feet in the air—a vault, of some sort. Reluctantly, I climbed each step, eyeing a white square hatch at the top—large enough to squeeze a body through.
“Why?” I asked, as my shoulders violently twisted around to face him. “Why did you kill him?” Mouth set in a hard line, I clenched my jaw to hold back the furious words itching to escape, and took two deep breaths. “You swore that if I married you, he’d be safe. Left alone. So long as I stayed away from him. And I did,” I gritted out.
His cheeks puffed before he blew out a sharp breath and reached for the handle on the oversized hatch. “About a year ago, your father came to me, begged me to see you. He’d grown lonely. On the streets. A drunk. Said he couldn’t live without you in his life.” A smile skated across Michael’s face, and my heart sank at his words.
The last time I’d talked to my father, we’d met for coffee one week before Michael swiped me away to elope. He was well, working a lot, but healthy. I had no idea he’d sunk into such a low place.
“He threatened to … expose my business interests. So, I sent him to a watery grave. Thought the irony was appropriate—drowning in debt.”
Michael’s chuckle grated on my spine. I clenched my teeth as the anger rushed through my body, coaxing me to nail the bastard square in the face.
“And, of course, with your mother … it was kind of poetic.”
I knocked the gun and drilled my fist into his nose, then kicked my knee up and struck his balls. Air pinched inside my throat, as his fingers dug into my neck. The solid force behind me smashed into my spine, and the air blasted from my lungs.
Squeezing his bloody nose, Michael pushed me upward until my body covered the hole of the large hatch on top of the vault. Clawing the edges offered no purchase, and I grabbed to his arm with one hand, his belt loop with the other, my fingertips grazing the hilt of his blade in the holster.
Through clenched teeth, he growled, his grip at my throat tightening. “I should’ve killed you five years ago when I found you. I was going to. I’d planned to. If you hadn’t spread your legs like a fucking whore that night, taunting me with your pathetic apology, you’d be dead, and we’d all be in a better place.”
Michael had enrolled in my class, surprising me. For years, I’d thought he was dead, and there he was, standing before me, a successful lawyer, mourning the loss of his foster father. He was charming, at first. And I was foolish. “I knew you … came back … to kill me. You never … forgave me.”
He leaned in, pupils dilated and crazed, like a shark before the attack. “It was because of you that he tied me up and tortured me. Because of you, no one came for days.”
“Because of … my father … that anyone came for you … at all! I … told him of … monsters outside! He found you! And you … killed him! Bastard!”
In a battle of wills, our bodies trembled, his pushing into mine, and mine pushing into his.
His nose scrunched with the effort. “I have no use for you after another man’s dick’s been in your filthy cunt. You’re nothing but trash. And I can do better.”
“Burn … in … hell.” I popped the knife from its holster, sliced the blade across his neck, though not deep enough, and felt weightless as my body slipped from his grasp.
A cold hard slam smashed into my spine, and I cried out, my voice echoing inside the dark room where I’d been thrown.
My legs numbed.
My muscles burned.
A long pole slid down through the hatch and a squeal bounced off the enclosed walls. The sound of running water washed me in panic, as an ice-cold seeped into my clothes.
Michael peered down at me from the hatch above. “It seems the Levesque name will come full circle and die with you, Aubree. This is an oil retention vault. Your very own watery tomb.”
Fear climbed my spine with the icy wetness soaking my coat.
Against the paralyzing pain shooting through my back, I rolled over to my stomach, and pushed myself to my knees. Water flowed from the open pipe quickly. No valve. No shut-off nozzle that I could discern in the faint light. Whatever pole he’d shoved down into the vault must’ve been a key.
In the haze of panic, my mind searched for a solution. Like the dread seeping into my thoughts, light slid into complete blackness, and I looked up to see the hatch had been closed. The air turned frigid, penetrating me down to my bones, crushing my lungs, as I sucked in a breath.
“No!” My voice bounced around the vault.
Water had climbed to my shins, and I patted around for the pipe. Bitter cold steel met my fingertips, and I followed it to the angry pulse of water pouring from the mouth of the pipe. Nothing. No way to stop it. Placing my hands over the mouth of it only succeeded in kicking me backward onto my ass.
My heart raced. Pulse pounded. My head felt light, and I struggled to suck in air between rapid, panicked breaths.
“Help me!” I stood from the water suddenly at my knees, and pounded at the walls. “Somebody! Help me!�
��
In a matter of minutes, the vault would be filled. Concrete scratched my fingertips as I patted the walls, and I whimpered a sound of relief on finding a bolted ladder.
Taking each step easy, in spite of my trembling limbs, I climbed to the top and pushed on the hatch. It wouldn’t move. Wouldn’t budge.
I thumped my fist against it. “Somebody help me!”
Screwing my eyes shut brought flashes of my past, the light at the surface, the struggle for breath, the pressure at the top of my head.
I pounded with both fists against the hatch. “Help me! Open the door! Open the door!”
Frantic thrashing of my limbs knocked me backward, and I slid down the ladder, my foot catching between the wall and the ladder. Reaching for the rungs above me, I pushed up on my good foot, but my leg merely twisted in painful contortion, as water splashed around my chest.
“Oh, God! Help me!” Branches of terror shot through my veins, threatened to pull me into blackness
Using every ounce of energy I had, I pushed upward and yanked on the rungs. As the water reached my chin, I reached out to the darkness above me, the echo of my scream falling into silence.
51
Nick
Crouched in the darkness of the basement, I peered down the tunnel, where the figure moved through the shadows, getting closer. I already knew that the tunnel ended at the dead end construction site, where the adjacent building had been torn down. Only when he neared, did I notice Aubree was nowhere in sight.
Lurching from my hiding spot, I wrapped my arm around Culling’s throat and squeezed. Wetness slid against my fingertips. His kicks and punches struck me from all angles, as he fought for his life, but still I held tight, not letting go until I yanked him to the ground and pointed my gun in his face. “Where is she?”
“It seems my head is swimming. I can’t recall.” At the angling of his chin, I noticed a streak of blood across his throat.
Flipping the gun, I clocked him in the face with the stock and had his lips kissing the barrel once more. “Where. Is. She?” The words hardly pushed past my clenched teeth. I glanced up, toward the mouth of the tunnel, from where he’d come.
