“I’m no one.”
“You’re about to be no one in a few minutes.”
“What?”
“What’s your name?”
“Why?”
“Because you just fell through my fucking ceiling, that’s why.”
“Sorry,” Annica said. She even really meant it.
He looked over to Sharky and said it again. “Get her out of here.”
Before Annica could say anything, his hands returned, this time much more rough, pushing her away from the angry boss. At first she was glad to be moving in the opposite direction from him. But the way she was being handled was a bad sign of things to come.
“Take it easy,” Annica said to him, “I’m going, I’m going.”
He didn’t respond. He’d gone from that mysterious man on the cargo ship, to a kind face in the wilderness, and now to a hardened cop. Especially the way he’d handled her, rough and brutish until he’d pushed her clear out into the hall.
“Stop,” she said, struggling against his grasp. “Just stop grabbing me like that. I’ll go.”
He pushed her forward.
“Let go of me!”
He only relaxed his grip.
“Where are we going?”
“Relax,” Sharky said.
“No!”
“We’re just going to ask you some questions,” he said, “and then you can go.”
He had a large ring of keys attached to his belt. It jingled loudly as they walked the hall. “Are you security?” she asked.
“Something like that.”
He was strong, that she knew. Whenever their bodies would come into contact, a light bump around the corner, she could feel the solidity of his body, his thick chest, his core. When she’d put up an effort, he hardly had to work at all. She would hate to see him actually try.
“Don’t worry,” he said.
“Don’t worry?”
“I’m not a cop.”
She almost laughed at that, even in the seriousness of the moment. How could he have said that and not been joking?
“We won’t call the cops, either,” Sharky said, trying to make it sound like that was a good thing.
“I almost wish you would,” Annica said.
“Really?”
“No.”
He opened a door for her, and then he watched very carefully as she walked in. A small office. A small desk and two chairs. He told her to sit. Then he closed the door, leaning his back against it. The only way out.
“What do you want?” she asked.
He shrugged and said, “Nothing.”
It was like a dagger through her heart. Why couldn’t he want something? She was here, locked in this room. Could he at least want her to talk, to stay alive for an explanation of who she was and where she was from?
“We just need you to sit tight a moment,” he said.
“Can I ask who you are?”
“I’m a security guard. That’s all. Nothing personal.”
“You were on the ship. The cargo ship. The Batchewana.”
His expression shifted immediately, from a businesslike smugness to something that almost seemed wounded, like she’d just ripped out a chunk of his flesh. It melted through the ice of his cool demeanor.
Annica said, “I was a passenger on the—”
“I know.”
He moved off the door right as it opened, Sharky making room for the man who had just been raging back on the production floor.
“Hi,” he said with a fake and pained smile. “How are you?”
“Not too good,” Annica said as coolly as she could.
“I know,” he said, reaching out his hand. “I’m Roger.”
Annica just stared at it. And then let her eyes drift away, watching how Sharky had stood back. She could almost see the wheels in his head turning.
“May I ask your name?”
She shrugged, averting her eyes.
“Okay. Empty your pockets,” Roger said, his voice getting lower. Even lower a minute later with, “Empty them or we’ll do it for you. Trust me, we will and it won’t be very fun.”
She was really screwed. She knew it now more than ever. More than when she was stuck in a hallway, or in the darkness of the drop chute, or lying on the conveyor belt. Here she knew that it might all be over with.
She looked sadly at the contents of her pockets spread out on the desk. Her cell phone, luggage locker key, handful of change, and a pen.
Roger pocketed the pen, and the change. Then looked judiciously at the locker key as he dangled it in the air. “What’s this?”
“A key,” she said.
He rolled his eyes, dropping it to the desk with a clink. He grabbed her phone next. “What’s your password?”
“I’m not saying another thing,” she said. “You’ll have to call the police. I don’t care what kind of trouble I get in.”
She would rather deal with that kind trouble. It was probably easier than whatever these guys had in store.
Roger held the phone up to Sharky. “Don’t we have someone?”
“For that?”
“Yeah. Is he in today?”
Sharky pursed his lips, his non-answer perhaps informing Annica that she had just lucked out. There was no one around to crack her phone’s password—or so she hoped.
“Well, don’t worry,” Roger said, turning back to her with a sigh. “We’ll get into it one way or another.”
“I don’t care anymore,” she said.
“You will care.” He placed the phone on his desk, chuckling. “You’ll care if have to resort to sending you downstairs for some enhanced interrogation techniques.”
She couldn’t let herself think about downstairs. She could only think of upstairs, the outside world, life, hope.
“And it won’t be as nice down there,” Roger said. “The less you cooperate, the smaller the instruments.”
Annica tried to suppress a shudder and failed.
Roger seemed delighted, smiling. “Okay?”
“Okay what?”
“No one here wants to do that. Most of all you, I’m sure. But it will happen if you don’t start telling us some answers.”
“Fine,” she said.
Roger’s smile grew, horrifyingly. The most yellowed teeth she’d ever saw. “That wasn’t so bad, right?”
“Go ahead,” Annica said. “What do you want to know?”
“Let’s start with your name.”
“Laura.”
“And what brings Laura to Hawaii?”
“A fucking vacation.”
“Alone?”
“Until I meet my husband. Who’s extremely protective of me, and a little crazy.” A plan started forming in her mind. She only hoped Jackson would play ball if it got to that.
“Sure,” Roger said.
“Who’s probably getting worried about me as we speak.”
“As he should be.”“He’s supposed to meet me at Cafe Juniper at two o’clock.”
“That’s in ten minutes,” Sharky said quietly.
Roger gave him a sour look. And then back to Annica, “We’ll make the timeline up from here on out. Okay?”
Annica thought about Jackson again. He wasn’t exactly her spouse, but in a weird way, he was the closest thing to it. There was some truth, and some mixed emotions, to her answer. And there was truth to Jackson waiting for her, with his own spouse. Mira.
Ever since Annica and Jackson’s not-so-serious relationship withered away, she had not-so-secretly kept tabs on him. Her ex-Navy Seal, ex-lover. They stayed friendly. They stayed business partners. Annica had even met his new girl, likely his first since . . . whatever it was she and Jackson had shared out of rainy clothes, in the foggy-windowed darkness of his backseat. Whoever Annica was back then . . .
“So when we hack into your phone,” Roger said, “it’ll corroborate the story of Laura, a vacationer? Innocent little Laura, coming to Hawaii just to meet her husband?”
“Sure.”
<
br /> “What’s your husband’s name?”
“Jack,” she said, almost completing the entire name.
“Jack . . .”
“Jack.” She said it more firmly, and with a firmer and more final ending.
“Well, what do you think?” Roger said to Sharky. “Sound pretty credible?”
He shrugged in response.
“To me,” Roger said, “it sounds like the words of someone who doesn’t want to go downstairs.”
“Well . . .”
“Doesn’t it?” he said, tapping the phone.
“Well, who the hell would want to go downstairs? If it’s anything like you’ve described . . .”
“And it also sounds like someone who’s trying hard to give just enough information to stay out of it, but not enough information to really say anything of value.”
By now, Annica had thoroughly examined the room, or at least as much she could examine from her cramped corner seat. An increasingly desperate search for any semblance of a weapon. Or better yet, an escape. Or just any basic tool she could grab and wield for either purpose. There was the old-school computer monitor on Roger’s desk. An inoperable-looking stapler that seemed to be used as paperweight. Was it weighty enough to do damage to the pockmarked face of Roger?
How about the cracked-open window to her left? Would it be low enough to survive the fall? And onto what matter of industrial bric-a-brac would she be landing?
What about the simplest equation: the door? Would Roger be a pal and let her pass by?
“What else can I tell you?” she said, trying not to eye the door so intently. “What do you want?”
“First,” Roger said, “you’ll have to agree that it’s been a bit of an odd morning. No?”
“I agree,” she said, knowing before even saying the words how easy it would be to come across as utterly genuine. But should she have dialed it back? Annica may have just given away a benchmark for the rest of her answers, just like the seemingly innocuous opening questions of a lie-detector test.
“I’m glad we can agree on something,” he said finally, after his eyes had thoroughly consumed her. Despite the man’s small size, she felt even smaller in his gaze.
“I had no intentions,” she said, “of coming here.”
“So what was it? How did all this begin?”
“There is no ‘all this.’”
His eyes narrowed on her. “Laura, or whatever your name is . . . You broke into our facility, crawled through the ductwork, then somehow crashed through the ceiling and almost landed on one of our employees at the sorting belt. That’s what I mean by all this.”
What could she say to that?
What could she do?
Computer monitor. Paperweight. Open window . . . What else?
A crooked smile came from Roger when her eyes met his. “So why don’t we try again?” he said.
“Fine.”
“And we can start off generally, if you’d like.”
Annica nodded. “Fine.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I’ve got the hots for him.”
No reaction from Roger. Had he heard this one, too?
“That’s all it is,” she added.
“You have the hots for who?”
She looked at Sharky, his cold, hard face suddenly blushing. Dark eyes not so dark anymore. It was amazing how quickly his demeanor kept changing with her. He’d gone from mysterious and sexy, to scary and threatening, and now: puppy dog.
Who the hell was he?
“Who?” Roger said again.
“Him,” she said, looking at Sharky enough that he’d averted his eyes, looking down at his feet, chuckling to himself as if he’d known all along. “Him right there.”
Roger checked his armed guard, who shrugged innocently in response.
“That’s why I’ve been a little . . . evasive.”
“Because of your husband,” Roger said.
“I’m married,” Annica said, keeping her eyes on him. “Happily. I’ve got no business following around some stranger like this, following him here especially.”
“I’d say. You have absolutely no business here.”
“Of course.”
“I think you finally understand that now,” Roger said.
“I always understood that.”
Roger frowned and said, “So do you know him?”
“No, I just saw him. On the street.” Annica’s mind sputtered to find the right lie. Though it wasn’t really a lie at all. She had just seen him. And, yes, there definitely was . . . “Just something,” Annica said. “Just something about . . .”
“Something about what?” Roger said, head tilted to the side. “You know this sounds a lot like pure bullshit.”
“I just wanted to talk to him. It wasn’t supposed to be a big deal.” She almost laughed at how ridiculous it all was. But then she remembered what promises lay in store for her in the basement.
“Does this happen to you often?” Roger asked.
“Never.”
“I wish I could believe you.”
“It really doesn’t.”
“I’m talking about the whole story.”
“Call the cops then.”
He chuckled. “You seem like a bright girl. You know that’s not an option.”
“What other options do we have?”
“Laying you out on the table,” Roger said. “Maybe starting with the live wire, run that from a car battery. We’ve got all kinds of options down there.”
“Are there any—” Her words were cut off by a hard, dry swallow. Her mouth almost felt too dry to form proper words. “Are there any up here?”
“Any options, you mean?”
“Anything.”
“It depends on what you tell us, and how close it is to the truth. That will decide the options for you.”
Annica stared at Sharky for a moment, his posture having relaxed against the door frame once again. “And if I tell the truth, you’ll just let me go on my way?”
“It depends what kind of truth you’ve got. I’m just keeping it real with you, Laura, or whoever you are. No bullshit. That’s the kind of courtesy I’m showing you right now. You’ll be wise to do the same.”
“I am,” she said. “I am doing the same.” She looked up at Sharky one last time, pleading with him, using her eyes to pierce through that rough exterior, pierce and stab and tug at his heartstrings—if he had any. Please have some. Please.
“Alright,” Roger said. “Maybe we’ve gone as far as we can with this.” He looked at Sharky and said, “What do you think?”
“I think she needs a tour.”
“Yeah.” Roger was nodding. “Yeah, maybe a tour might be the best thing. What do you say, Laura?”
“What?”
“You want the tour, right? That’s what you came here for?”
“I came just to . . . I came to get his phone number. That’s all I wanted.”
“Well, I’m sure he can give it to you during the tour. Isn’t that right?”
“That’s right,” Sharky said.
“And he’s single,” Roger said to him, that smile going crooked again. “Isn’t that right? Single and looking?”
“Always looking,” Sharky said, not smiling at all.
Annica, with the vague sensation that their meeting was about to wrap, urged Roger with a wide-eyed glance. Her chair was slightly lower than his and she’d been staring up at him the whole time, pleading. “Wait,” she said. “Please. I don’t need a tour.”
Roger shrugged.
“I don’t want a tour,” Annica whimpered. She didn’t know the specifics of what the tour entailed. She just knew that she wanted no part of it. No tour. No basement.
“Well,” Roger said, standing from his chair, “Let’s hop to it then.”
“No.”
“You got this?” Roger asked his guard.
Sharky said, “The . . . tour?”
Roger showed him Annica’s
phone. And then tossed it underhand at him, the phone bouncing off Sharky’s chest and into his clasped hands. “Let me know if he gets anywhere with that,” Roger said.
“Will do.”
“And let me know her name when he gets it.”
“It’s Laura,” Annica said, watching how he looked at her, how his face frowned almost sympathetically. “Laura Graziano.”
“It’s Jane Doe.” Roger gave one last chuckle to Sharky before walking out of the room. No last words for Annica. Not even a sideways glance. It was the type of dismissal a judge gives to a convict headed for death row.
“Alright, Jane,” Sharky said, pointing to the open doorway. “You ready?”
“No.”
“You need help again?”
She waited for a moment, making sure he wouldn’t approach her for any “help.” Her eyes were trained on his feet. One step forward and she’d go screaming into him, punching and kicking, and biting, and doing it all with the ferocity of a cornered animal.
But he stayed relaxed against the door. “You ready?”
She felt her hands unconsciously grip the armrest, fingers curling around, Annica clutching on for dear life. She looked at Sharky. “Are you going to kill me?”
“No.”
“What’s happening?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I’m walking you out of here.”
“That’s what ‘the tour’ means?”
He didn’t respond. No words or body language. Just that classic cool demeanor of a man, a guard, named Sharky. The man who would be giving Annica her tour. She hated the idea of it, of him and what he might do to her.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said, finally.
“You don’t have to make it so difficult. Let’s just get up, walk through this door, and I’ll show you out of here.”
There was no other choice, really.
Annica got up and made her way, slowly, to the door.
“Ladies first.”
He walked behind her in the hall, giving directions for each turn and each door. Nothing had looked familiar to her first tour, when she was unguided and alone. When she was still somewhat free, and most definitely alive. Now, it was dead man walking.
Dark Salvation (DARC Ops Book 7) Page 4
