Hollywood's Baddest

by Susan Westwood

  “What is the next step?” she breathed thickly, her eyes still scanning everything around her as adrenaline burned through every part of her, making her muscles ache and making her want more than anything to run.

  “The next step is that you are taken.” There was a strange ripping sound then, and she whimpered softly in fear as the man let go of her throat and kept his gun held to her head. “Don’t… move….” he instructed firmly.

  The next moment he pulled something tight across her mouth and she knew he’d duct-taped her mouth closed. She breathed in and out slowly through her nose, trying to get enough oxygen. She was still looking around the room when something covered her head and everything went dark around her. She tried to twist and turn, but the man grabbed her arm and held it hard behind her body.

  “You stubborn bitch! You just don’t listen, do you! I bet you make me wind up having to shoot you before I even get you back to the boss. Knock it off!” he ordered, and she stilled. As she stopped moving around he slowly let her arm go, and the painful ache in it that he had caused began to subside.

  She could not see anything, and she could not say anything, but she could hear, and it was incredible to her just how acute her other senses became when her eyesight was no longer available to her. Alexis felt strong hands close on her upper arms and she was pulled and pushed out of her garage. The sounds around her changed, and she knew she was outside. Someone dragged her into a vehicle, and from the feel of it and the space around her, she could only guess that it was a van of some kind.

  Her heart raced and her blood pounded through her veins, rushing through her body and deafening her ears. She tried to hold in the tears that threatened to spill down her face; knowing it wouldn’t matter if she did cry, because no one could see it with a cover over her head, but she didn’t want her captors to hear her crying, or see it when they unveiled her head again, whenever that might be.

  She tried to determine from the sound and movement of the vehicle where they were going and how fast they were moving, to at least give herself an estimate at a radius from her house. They drove for a long while, and she knew that they were taking her somewhere far from where they had kidnapped her. She cursed Lucas in her mind, wishing that anything had been different with him; that he hadn’t won the Oscar, that he hadn’t had his own party, that Warren had chosen any other attorney and that Anderson hadn’t demanded that she be the one to defend him. If he had pled guilty instead of maintaining his innocence, or if any of so many other things hadn’t happened, or had happened, she would not be in the back of a van, terrified out of her mind and being taken by criminals to god knows where over the drug money they were so determined to get.

  The van finally slowed and came to a stop, and she heard two sets of footsteps on either side of it. The door slid open and the rough hands which had grabbed her before, grabbed her again. She was pulled from the van and she did her best to try to figure out as much as she could about her surroundings. The ground was hard when she stood on it; concrete or asphalt. She was forcefully walked into a building and the sound around her changed. Everything sounded as if it was far away, like there was an echo that reverberated off distant walls; almost cavernous. She smelled what little air she could get through the cover on her head and noticed that it was dank and dirty smelling.

  They walked along a hard surface that sounded gritty with each step, until they came to an elevator. She didn’t know it was an elevator until she stepped into it and it began to move. She tried to count the floors and she wasn’t sure, but she thought she’d heard three of them pass before they stopped on the fourth. The doors opened and the two people with her pushed her out of the elevator and walked with her a short way through a room that echoed a great deal, and then she was stopped where she stood, and was pushed roughly down onto a seat. She listened closely still, and suddenly out of nowhere, the cover over her head was lifted and light almost blinded her, it was so bright. She closed her eyes until her vision adjusted and then she was finally able to open them and look around.

  Alexis was in a warehouse of some kind. The walls were made of thick old red bricks, and the room she was in was wide open. From what she could see, it was the most of the entire fourth floor, with no walls separating any of the space, only support beams set at intermittent intervals throughout all of it. There were windows set in the wall all around the room, but most of them were boarded up; only a few were left to bring in the light from the world outside, like random eyes watching the room silently, seeing everything in it and saying nothing.

  There was a table about five feet in front of her, and leaning on the table was a tall thin man with a tuft of dark messy hair at the top of his head, the patch at the forefront of it seeming to be resisting his receding hairline. He stared at Alexis with dark beady eyes that glinted dangerously. His face was lined with time and the trials of life, and his mouth was set in a thin strip.

  Another man, a shorter, rounder, hairier man, was standing just off to the side of Alexis, between her and the table. He seemed to be smiling at her, just a little; his chubby cheeks spread back by his wide mouth. His eyes were dark and deep-set, and there was something about his nature that made Alexis uncertain if the man was in a pleasant mood or if he was just crazy enough to be completely unpredictable and dangerous. Alexis looked from one to the other of them and tried with everything in her to calm herself and do her best to think clearly. She had to find a way out of where she was, and somehow her sense of self preservation and survival had kicked in and was trying to overcome the fear and panic in her.

  She took in her breaths as slowly and steadily as she could, hoping that she looked less terrified than she felt. She wondered if the two men before her were drug dealers or if they were going to do anything to her or perhaps just hold her for ransom for the drug money. She knew as she sat there that her best chance of being freed was to try to get herself out of the situation she was in, rather than waiting on anyone else to get her out of it.

  “How you doin’….” the short round man said with his half smile and his slightly wild eyes, “You comfortable?”

  She only stared at him in response. She wasn’t going to interact with her captors until she knew more about who they were and why she was there. He watched her quietly for a moment and when he knew that she wasn’t going to respond, he glanced at the tall thin man and gave a little chuckle.

  “I guess maybe I ought a give the lady a hand so she can talk to us,” he quipped sarcastically. He walked over to Alexis then and leaned over so that his face was inches from hers. A rotten smell assaulted her nose as he drew near. He reeked of sweat and what might have been old deli food, covered over with cheap dime store cologne.

  He reached his hand up to her face and tugged the corner of the duct tape that was still covering her mouth. She felt tears spring to her eyes and tried not to wince as he pulled it slowly from her cheek. He paused at about half an inch into it and looked at her with mock sympathy; his eyes wide and his mouth forming a slight pout.

  “Aw, does that hurt?” he tugged slowly and pulled a little bit more of it off. She closed her eyes and willed herself to just get through it. He laughed then, loud, and his breath clouded in her face and nearly made her vomit from the rotting stench of it. “Maybe I’ll be nice to you and just… rip it all off at once. How about that, pretty lady?” he asked, and she kept her eyes closed.

  He waited, and she did not respond. Growing frustrated with her in almost no time at all, he made a grumbling noise deep in his chest and ripped the tape off in one swift motion, making her feel as if part of her face had gone with it. She gasped and opened her eyes, unable to stop the tears that flowed freely from them.

  Drawing in big breaths, she coughed a few times and then closed her mouth and looked up at him as he stood over her, staring down at her. “See? I can be a nice guy, when I want to be.” He gave her a nod. “Now then, how about you be a nice broad and tell us why we don’t have our money yet. I know you got th
at note we left on your kitchen table. Did you get that? You can tell me. I already know. You got it… didn’t you?” He wasn’t asking her; he was confirming something she realized that he already knew.

  She nodded subtly and watched him like a hawk.

  He rubbed his chin and stared at her some more. “So… you got it… but, I don’t have any money.” He frowned in frustration and then looked over at the tall thin man still leaning on the table staring at her icily.

  “Larry, did you get any money?” he asked with pseudo curiosity.

  Larry shook his head slowly and deliberately. “No, Wade, did you get any money?” he asked in a stony voice, never once taking his eyes from Alexis.

  Wade looked back at Alexis. “No. I got no money, but the money is still due, and I got a little woman here who was supposed to help us get that taken care of.” Wade’s eyes gleamed and his smile faded some, and Alexis no longer wondered if he was in a pleasant mood or if he was psychotic. She knew the answer, and the truth of it, staring back at her from the two dark black holes that were his eyes, terrified her. She felt as if her heart had stopped right in mid-beat, and every part of her body tensed solidly with fear.

  He hovered over her closely and his voice grew low and cold. “Where’s Lucas?” he asked pointedly. She froze and didn’t respond. She wasn’t going to tell him anything; not only because she didn’t want anything to happen to Lucas, but also because she truly did not know. For all she knew he had just woken up in the bed of another woman.

  “Where’s Warren?” he asked, and she blinked in surprise. She wondered why he would want to know where Warren was, but then she realized that he’d want to know that because Warren was the closest connection to Lucas, just like she was a close connection to Lucas, and they had probably taken her because they couldn’t find either Warren or Lucas, and the attorney in the case, she was the next closest person to them. It all made sense.

  She gazed back at him silently and kept her mouth closed. He narrowed his eyes at her and grew angry.

  “Answer me you little bitch! Where are they!” he demanded as rage began to color his cheeks and fire grew in his eyes.

  She didn’t say anything. She kept her face still, and she made sure that there was no kind of visible response in her.

  He leaned back up and threw his hands in the air, turning to look at Larry. “What am I going to do with this unhelpful pain in the ass, huh Larry? Should I start torturing her a little bit? Maybe loosen up her tongue?”

  Larry pressed his thin lips together until they disappeared. He shook his head slowly and, his eyes still locked on her, he spoke in a quiet voice that sent a shiver up her spine and made the hair on the back of Alexis’ neck stand on end.

  “I think we should go see what the boss wants to do. She isn’t ours; she’s his. So, let’s go tell him how… uncooperative she’s being and see what he wants to do about it.” Larry lifted his chin slightly, and that was it. He remained otherwise motionless.

  Wade stepped back from her and nodded. “That’s a wise call, Larry. That’s smart. We’ll do that.” He glared hotly at Alexis. “You stay here, and don’t do anything stupid. We’re going to go see what we should do about you.”

  Larry pushed himself off of the table and walked toward her, stopping by the wall long enough to pick up a length of rope that was sitting in a pile there. He went behind her chair and reached for her arms, grabbing them roughly and pulling them backward until he had them connected. He wrapped the rope around her wrists tightly and tied it off, giving it a solid yank before he stood up and walked toward the door at the end of the room in the corner.

  Wade watched her a few moments longer and then he turned and followed Larry out of the room, slamming the door behind him. She could hear their footsteps in the hallway outside of the door. She heard the elevator hum as they stepped into it, and then she heard it leave the floor. After that, all she heard was the sound of her own breathing, and nothing else.

  She closed her eyes for a second to soak in the relief of being left alone, and then she took a deep breath and worked at the ropes around her wrists, pulling and tugging on them, turning her arms and hands every way she could. She knew she had to do whatever she could to try to free herself and find a way out before either of the men or their boss could do anything more to her. She had herself to think of, but more than that, she had a tiny baby in her that she had to think of and protect as well, and that sense of motherhood in her gave her more strength and determination than she ever knew she was capable of.

  Alexis managed to stand up and slide her arms up over the back of the chair so that she wasn’t bound to it any longer. She did her best to wrestle with the ropes, but realizing that she wasn’t getting very far with them and knowing that every single precious second was passing right by her, she tried another way to get out of them. She sat on the floor and curled into the smallest ball she could, thanking endless yoga classes for her flexibility, and she pulled herself through the circle of her arms until they were in front of her.

  Being able to see the way that the rope was tied made all the difference in the world for her. She was able to maneuver her hands from the loops of rope, and pull it off her. She dumped the rope on the chair she had been sitting on and looked around the room in desperation. She wasn’t sure if she could get to the door in time before they came back, so she looked for another way out of the room. There was no other doorway; only the few windows around the walls that weren’t covered, and one of them happened to be very near where she was.

  She reached into the inner pocket of her jacket and pulled her cell phone out. She had hoped that she could call the police, but there was no signal at all. Groaning in frustration, she went to the window and looked out of it. There was a fire escape just outside of it, and it looked to her as if she might be able to get out that way. Just as she began to push at the window, she heard the elevator and realized that Wade and Larry were on their way back into the room. Panic flooded through all of her and she realized that she only had seconds to decide what to do.

  She knew she couldn’t get the window open in time and get out of it, so she decided to try to play her captors just a little longer in hopes of having a second chance to escape. Looking at the phone in her hand, an idea came to her that she thought might be of some help to her on the off chance that she was able to get out of her situation.

  Turning the video recorder on, she set the phone in the window and turned it toward her chair so that it was recording everything going on. She thought that at least if anything did happen to her, there would be evidence of it that could put her captors in jail. She hurried back to her chair as she heard the two men coming out of the elevator and down the hall, and she was able to get herself seated again and the rope somewhat tied around her wrists before they walked in and headed for her.

  “Well, well, well.” Wade said as the two of them approached her. “Looks like it’s bad news for you.” He sneered and her stomach hardened into a solid knot.

  “What am I doing here?” she demanded then in as strong a voice as she could manage. She wanted to try to distract them or at least to delay whatever it was that they were going to do so she could try to find a way out.

  Wade’s eyebrows raised and his eyes widened. “Oh ho! Look at that! The little thing does speak.” He chuckled a little and cracked his knuckles.

  “Is this because of Lucas? I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing! I’m just his attorney; that’s it… you have the wrong person! I did call and leave him a message, and I told him that you guys wanted your money, but he says that he doesn’t know anything about it and he won’t come up with any money for anyone.

  He keeps saying that he’s innocent, that he doesn’t do drugs and that he doesn’t know any dealers, so keeping me here isn’t going to get you very far with him. I don’t mean anything to him. I’m seriously just a business associate, and that’s it! I’m nothing to him!” she insisted, trying to persuade them that she wasn’t
remotely involved or valuable at all.

  “She speaks a lot.” Larry said, looking unenthused about her and everything she said.

  “The question is, Larry, does she know what she’s talking about?” Wade laughed.

  Alexis grew angry and shook her head. “I do know what I’m talking about! That jackass Lucas and his stupid drug problem are what got me into this whole mess to begin with! If he hadn’t been doing drugs and wrecking his life, he’d never have gotten busted and I wouldn’t have been stuck with his case, and now look at me! Look where I am thanks to his drug problem!

  I’m tied to a chair in a warehouse with two kidnappers or killers or drug dealers, or whatever you two are, and god knows what’s going to happen, and it’s all because of him and his stupid drug problems!” the more she began to go off and complain about just how much Lucas had wrecked her life, the angrier she got, and the more she showed it, until there was no slowing it down, no tempering it, and no holding back.

  Both men stared at her in surprise, and Wade began to laugh softly at first, but by the time she finished and was visibly fuming over where Lucas had gotten her, Wade was belly laughing and he even reached down to slap his thigh.

  “I like her, don’t you Larry? I do. She’s got spunk.” He shook his head as his laughter began to fade. “Listen, we thought that bringing you here might encourage Warren to give us the money he owes us, but it looks like he’s the hardest one to find, and he’s not talking to us anymore, so that leaves you in a sticky situation.”

  She blinked at Wade in surprise. “Warren…? What do you mean he’s not talking to you anymore?”

  Wade chuckled again and shook his head. “She’s a funny girl. I like her.” He slid his hands into his pants pockets and looked at her appraisingly. “Listen, we’re going to kill you anyway, since you aren’t any use to us now, like we thought you might be. See, we weren’t sure if we’d let you go, but now you know who we are and what we look like, and letting you go would just wind up getting us into trouble.