Decoding Darkness

by Marissa Farrar

  All around me was carnage. The other men had pulled their weapons, but I didn’t even care. I set my sights on the briefcase containing the other vials and threw myself at it. Bryson took after me, but slipped in Otto’s blood, his feet flying up almost comically before he landed on his backside. My fingers caught the edge of the briefcase and it flipped up, turning through the air, before hitting the floor. The strike against the floor caused the vials to pop from their sponge casings, scattering everywhere. My gaze darted after them. I needed to destroy them. If there were no drugs, they’d have nothing to inject me with. How many had there been? My memory tried to process what I’d seen. Four in total? Three left in the case, that were now on the floor.

  Otto was too preoccupied by the slash down his face to give a damn about me or the drugs. Hollan had pulled his weapon, but I didn’t care about that. I was at the point of almost wanting him to shoot me just so this whole horror show would be over. I’d also noticed that Hollan, despite having killed my father, no longer appeared to want to get his hands dirty. I slammed my foot down on the second vial, and it went the same way as the first, and then scrambled for another that had rolled to a stop beneath the wheels of the table.

  Stewart grabbed me, trying to haul me up. I fought against him, but he was a secondary concern. I needed to find that vial and destroy it. It was the last one, wasn’t it? Had I missed one?

  I spotted the final vial beneath the chair and I lunged.

  My skin was slippery with Otto’s blood. Stewart lost his grip on me, and I fell forward, landing on the vial that had almost gotten away. I managed to get my hand on it, when a weight from above crushed me. I’d been in the process of trying to pick the vial up from beneath me, but the sudden weight bent all my fingers into an unnatural position. I heard a sudden pop that went right down to the roots of my teeth, and agony lanced up through my hand and arm.

  That wasn’t good.

  Chapter Nine

  The pain shooting up through my hand and arm was excruciating. My mind flashed with bright white light, and I forgot everything else going on around me, existing only in that singular moment of agony. Then my body began to process all of the endorphins shooting through my veins to allow me to cope, and I slowly came back to reality.

  Beneath my injured hand, the small glass vial pressed into my flesh. From the shape, I could tell it was still intact. Even though I was in agony, I couldn’t let them save the vial. If they did, they would use it to inject me and this would have all been for nothing.

  Stewart’s weight on top of me shifted. The moment he got up and hauled me back to my feet, my chance would be gone. Yes, I could try to stamp on it, as I’d done with the other one, but if someone saw the intact vial first, they could easily snatch it out from under me.

  “Get her up!” Hollan roared.

  I couldn’t think about it any longer. Despite knowing it was going to be agony, I pushed my injured hand down as hard as I could. A fresh burst of white hot pain shot through my hand, and I let out a scream, but I didn’t stop, continuing to push down. The small glass tube fractured beneath my palm, glass sticking into my skin, though I barely noticed. My skin was wet with the contents of the vial, and I hoped none of the drug would get into my system through the cuts.

  Stewart’s hands around my upper arms dragged me back to my feet. I made the mistake of looking down at my hand and the world spun around me again. My little finger and ring finger were both bent at an unnatural angle—down and away from the other fingers.

  Heat rushed through me and my mind pulled away from my surroundings. Though faint, I didn’t want to pass out. The thought of being unconscious with these sons of bitches standing around me filled me with fear. I couldn’t allow myself to be so vulnerable. I took a deep breath and looked away, not wanting to think too hard about what the unnatural bend to my fingers meant. Were they broken, or dislocated? I had no idea. I’d never broken anything in my life and didn’t have any basis for comparison. Either way, it hurt like hell, and looked horrific.

  The thought of something looking horrific made me think of Otto. I glanced over to where he stood, a sheet of red down the front of his shirt. He’d found a medical pad of some kind and had it folded and pressed to the wound I’d given him. Already the blood had soaked through the pad, and a streak of it had turned his white-blond hair pink. He was looking at me as though I’d morphed into something strange—something he suddenly didn’t recognize. A surge of guilt rose up inside me, though I shouldn’t feel guilty. He’d been working for Hollan and would have injected me with that stuff. He’d forced my hand.

  “Get her back in the chair,” Hollan commanded. “I need that code.”

  “She broke the vials,” Otto said, though his voice was strange as he tried to speak without moving his face too much. He nodded toward the floor. “All of them. I do not have anything to give her.”

  Hollan turned his attention to me. “I guess you think that was smart, huh, Darcy? But you just removed the kind way of doing this. An injection would have been easy. You might have even enjoyed it. But instead, you have to make things difficult.”

  “Good,” I spat. “I’ll never make this easy for you.”

  His face turned puce with fury. With his stocky build, and hair cut so short it was almost shorn—like an Army buzz cut—he suddenly reminded me of an English Bulldog, and I had to hold back a snort of laughter. I was in no position to find anything funny, yet I couldn’t help myself. The endorphins racing through my body were doing crazy things to my mind.

  Hollan glanced down to my hand. “I think we need to give you a matching set of fingers on the other hand, just to remind you who’s in control around here.” He jerked his head at the two men. “Get her back in the chair.”

  To my surprise, neither of the men moved, and I stayed in the exact same position.

  “Boss, I think Otto needs to be taken care of first.” It was the first thing I’d heard Bryson say recently.

  Hollan glanced over at the Swede. Otto’s skin had faded beneath his tan, and the blood didn’t look as though it was stopping any time soon. I recognized the indecisiveness of Hollan’s face, as he tried to decide if torturing me was more important than having someone die of blood loss on his property.

  “Dammit. Get her back to her room.”

  I had to stop myself from mouthing ‘sorry’ at Otto as Stewart and the other guy tightened their grip on me. I was starting to get used to the feel of their fingers around my arms, fingers digging into bruises over bruises. I didn’t fight them this time. I was only glad they hadn’t tried to grab my injured hand, which I cupped to my body, between my breasts. As well as Otto’s face, I thought my fingers were also in need of medical attention, but I didn’t think there was a chance of that happening any time soon. I’d have to try to figure it out by myself, though I had no idea what I was going to do. My mind pulled away from the edges every time my gaze strayed toward the way my fingers jutted out at a hideous angle from the rest of my hand.

  Otto’s blood covered my skin, but I doubted I was going to be allowed to clean myself off. I hadn’t even been allowed to use a bathroom, and I figured that bucket was going to have to come into use sometime very soon.

  Where the hell were the guys? I didn’t want to think the tracker wasn’t working, and they weren’t coming. If I allowed my thoughts to take that route, I’d sink into despair. Now Hollan had the option of drugging me taken away, he was bound to go down the torture route. I figured we were in the middle of nowhere, and whatever concoction Otto had in the vials in the briefcase wouldn’t be purchased in the local drugstore—not that I thought this place even had a local drug store. If I allowed myself to think they weren’t coming, I knew I’d struggle to find the strength I needed to hold up against whatever Hollan did to me.

  I wanted to be brave, wanted to be strong.

  But everyone had their limits.

  Stewart and Bryson dragged me back to the cell. The toes of my sneakers dragged on th
e ground as they moved with strides too long and fast to allow me to get my footing. We reached the cell, the door still standing open from where I’d been taken out of there. The two men hauled me back in, then threw me to the ground. Instinctively, I curled my body around my bad hand, trying to protect it as much as I could. I hit the floor on my side, jarring my shoulder and hip. Even though I hadn’t hit my hand directly, a wave of sickening fresh pain permeated me at the movement, and my eyes flooded with tears. I blinked them away, not wanting Stewart to see them. There would be a time for crying and feeling sorry for myself, but it wouldn’t be while these bastards were anywhere near me, taking pleasure from my tears.

  I used my elbow and the side of the metal framed bed to drag myself up to a sitting position. I didn’t quite trust my legs enough yet to stand, though I wished I could so I at least had the illusion that I was on an equal footing to these two thugs.

  I thought the two men were going to leave me to it—prayed that’s what they’d do—but Stewart paused and leaned in over me, his finger stabbed in my face. “Don’t think you got one over on us, bitch. You’re still our captive. We can do whatever the hell we want to you.” His gaze flicked up and down the length of my body, and the tip of his tongue flicked out to lick at his skinny lips. I felt my whole body shrink inward, but I tried not to let my fear show.

  “Fuck you.”

  “Listen to me, girly. We’ll do whatever we want, and then we’ll kill your pretty little ass.”

  I made myself sit up straighter, though it was hard to do with my poor hand tucked in against my body. “If that’s going to happen anyway, you’d better go back and tell your boss that there is no way he’s ever getting the code out of me. You’ve always got to give the person you want something from at least an inkling of hope that they’ll get something in return—even if it’s only a quick death. You just took everything off the table, and that means I don’t have to tell Hollan shit.”

  I was probably doing completely the wrong thing by making the guy who already appeared to hate me even angrier, but I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I wanted to give him something to think about, to make him realize he hadn’t won. I thought Stewart was one of those men who intrinsically hated women. He only ever wanted to fuck us, and then probably hated himself for doing it. If I was a betting girl, I’d have put a couple of grand down on him having an unhealthy relationship with his mother. Luckily, I managed to keep that little thought to myself. It probably would have earned me a busted nose if I hadn’t.

  “Oh, you’ll talk,” he snarled. “We’ve broken grown men in the past. Don’t think for one minute you won’t tell us everything we want to know.”

  I clamped my lips shut. There was no point arguing with the son of a bitch. I’d make sure he paid for every threat he threw at me as soon as the guys arrived.

  Together with Hollan, Stewart was definitely on my ‘men I planned to kill’ list.

  To my relief, he gave up threatening me and backed out of the room. He slammed the door, the lock cracking into place, and I was able to breathe again. Just.

  My attention went to my hand, and the sight sent fresh fear through me. I took little gasps of air, my eyes pricking with the tears I’d held back for so long. I wished I was one of those women who watched endless medical dramas, so maybe I would have had some idea about what had happened to my hand.

  Though I didn’t want to, I forced myself to look more closely. I couldn’t leave it like that. If it was broken, the fingers needed to be strapped so they didn’t heal in that position—assuming I lived long enough for them to heal, that was.

  I swiped at my tears with my other hand, and then grimaced as the tears mixed with Otto’s blood, which had been slowly drying on my skin. Knowing I was procrastinating from what really needed to be dealt with, I used my good hand to reach beneath the thin mattress and locate the half-drunk bottle of water. Though I hated to waste the only water I had—and knowing it was highly unlikely Otto would ever bring me another bottle—I still had to get Otto’s blood off my skin. The sight of it reminded me too much of the night my father had died, how his blood had covered every inch of my arms and hands.

  As though the sight sent me tumbling down a rabbit hole of memories, my thoughts went to the days and weeks after my father had been killed. It had been as though my brain had been unable to process what had happened, and that I’d had a bad dream and expected to wake up at any moment. Or that I’d be able to rewind time and make it as though it had never happened. I’d kept expecting to see him in places where he’d normally be—in the kitchen first thing in the morning, making coffee, or walking through the door at the end of the day. Aunt Sarah had moved in straight after he’d been killed, and I’d found that I’d hear her moving around the house, and each time I expected it to be him, but of course it never was. My brain had always taken a moment to catch up with reality, the lift of thinking I’d see him, followed by the instant dip of disappointment, and then a punch of grief, causing my chest to physically ache. Had I hated her a little back then for never being him? For always getting my hopes up, only to be the one to, however unintentionally, dash them again?

  I’d questioned every step I’d taken that day, and even things I’d done in the days and weeks and months before he’d been killed, wondering if something I had done or could have done might have had a domino effect. If I hadn’t been late home a few nights earlier, we wouldn’t have been fighting about him not allowing me to go to a party that night, and he might have not been in that room at that time, or his attention might not have been on me, so he’d have heard the killer coming. Even down to ridiculous things, like wishing we hadn’t switched the furniture around the previous year, as he’d been standing where the couch used to be. If he’d been standing somewhere slightly different maybe the bullet wouldn’t have killed him.

  I was trying to make sense of it, hoping there was a way of changing the past, all the while filled with the futility of knowing nothing could ever change. He was gone. There was no bringing him back.

  I sniffed back fresh tears. I thought after this many years, I could still think of what had happened without wanting to cry, but I guessed considering the situation, I was allowed a few tears.

  Taking a couple more shuddery breaths, I pulled myself together. As much as I wanted to wallow in self-pity, I knew it wouldn’t get me anywhere. The sharp agony of my hand had dulled to a steady throb, but it still hurt like hell, and every time I glanced at my fingers, a wash of nausea flashed hot and cold through my body.

  I moved my attention back to the bottle of water. Clamping the bottle between my knees, I used my left hand to unscrew the top. I picked up the bottle with my uninjured hand and splashed a little on the cuts caused by the broken vial. Washing the blood off my left hand proved to be trickier, but I managed to pinch the neck between the thumb and forefinger of my right hand to lift the bottle, careful not to bump my injured fingers, and then tipped a little water on my bloodied hand and arm.

  The only material I had in the cell, other than my own clothes, was the mattress behind me, so I twisted around and used the side of it to wipe the worst of the blood off.

  The job was far from perfect, and I’d have given anything for a bar of soap and running water, but it would have to do. With my skin relatively clean, I turned my attention to my fingers. If they were broken, they’d be bent at the break in the bone, I assumed. I forced myself to look. As far as I could tell, the bend was at the first knuckle of both fingers. Did that mean they were dislocated rather than broken? If so, would I be able to pop them back into place?

  The thought made me sick and dizzy, but I wouldn’t be able to use the hand unless I did something about it. If Isaac and the others ever showed up, I was going to need to run, and quite possibly fight, and I wasn’t going to be able to do anything while I worried about protecting my hand.

  If I was wrong, however, and the fingers were broken rather than dislocated, this was going to hurt like hell.

&
nbsp; Chapter Ten

  I’d never experienced real pain before—not physical pain, anyway. Emotional pain, I’d had by the bucket load, but this was different. This was going to hurt like hell, and I wasn’t ashamed to admit the thought of the pain terrified me. I wished there was another option, but there wasn’t. At some point, I was going to need to run or fight, and I wouldn’t be able to do either with my fingers sticking out like that. They almost looked as though they didn’t belong to me, as though I was looking at puppet fingers, or even a Halloween prop. They’d started to swell and had taken on a strange pale hue, which did nothing to help the way my brain wanted to disconnect from them.

  But they were mine, and I needed to do something about it, even if the idea made me want to pass out, and I wanted to wail and beat the floor with my good hand, and cry about how unfair all of this was. I just needed to grit my teeth and get on with it. The longer I waited, the worse it would be.

  I remembered what I’d done while I’d been locked in the trunk of Hollan’s car, how I’d used my thoughts of the guys to ease the trauma, and I willed my mind to take me there again. My happy place. With all of them.

  I closed my eyes and pictured them around me ...

  Alex came to me first, tall and blond, his expression serious as he looked down at my injured hand. “It’s definitely dislocated, Darc,” he told me. “But that’s good. It means you can fix it, and the pain will get one hundred times better. You just have to do exactly what I say.”

  I nodded. I would do that. I would do exactly as he said.

  Kingsley was the next to appear. “And remember to breathe,” he told me in his deep, chocolate smooth voice. “You don’t want to pass out, and you’ll regain more control if you take a deep breath in right before you have to put the fingers back into place, and exhale as you’re doing it. Okay?”