Flawed (The Mercenary Series Book 3) Page 7

  A nail.

  Chapter Eleven

  V

  I sat in the back of the car with my lips pressed together, trying not to focus on the constant throbbing agony emanating from my hand.

  Could someone bleed out from losing the end of their finger? I didn’t know, but I didn’t want to risk it, so I squeezed the cloth as tightly as I could around my injured digit, trying to create the effect of a tourniquet. My eyes streamed from the pain, and I clenched my teeth against the cry trying to burst from my throat.

  Giovanni had said we weren’t going far, but I figured we’d been in the car at least an hour by now. I wondered if X had made it back to the cabin yet and if he’d found the note and the little present Giovanni had left him. I couldn’t help but picture his reaction. He would be furious and heartbroken. I hoped he wouldn’t do anything rash and put himself in danger. What Giovanni had done had been carefully orchestrated to get a reaction out of X.

  I tried not to think about the baby. Would it still be all right after the stress and blood loss? I told myself he or she had survived the car accident, so it must be a tough little thing—a fighter like its mom and dad.

  The car pulled off the main road and took a number of smaller tracks, heading deeper into the forest. We were still in the Catskill Mountains, as far as I was aware. I’d thought Giovanni would have headed back into the city, but that didn’t appear to be his plan.

  Fuck it. I was going to ask him.

  I leaned forward in my seat, only to have the guy next to me jab his gun in my side in warning. “Relax,” I told him. “I’m only asking a question.”

  Giovanni heard me. “What’s your question?”

  “What did you say to X in that note?”

  He spoke as he drove. “Only that I want what he owes me, and then I’ll consider giving him what he wants, too.”

  “What’s that?”

  He laughed. “You, of course.”

  I didn’t want to allow myself to feel any hope. This wasn’t the kind of man who stood by his word. He was the sort of man who went into people’s houses and cut off their fingers to make a point. “What does he need to get in order to get me back?” I said, anyway.

  “Two hundred thousand dollars should do it.”

  My heart dropped. “Where’s he supposed to get that kind of money?”

  “He’ll have to figure that out.”

  X would try to get the money, I was sure of it. He wouldn’t just give up like that. Perhaps Giovanni had left some kind of trail, and X was already on his way. Maybe he thought there was a way of freeing me without needing to get what was owed. But I knew the story of what had happened. X had taken the money to do a job, and then not gone through with it. In a way, Giovanni had a point. I’d be pretty pissed, too, if someone had taken a huge sum of money for me to do a job, and then not only not completed it, but given half to the victim, who had then turned both him and the cash over to the authorities. Plus X had kept the other half, as far as I was aware. The thing that worried me was how far X would go in order to get his hands on that kind of cash. I didn’t want him to get himself shot or put behind bars in order to meet Giovanni’s demands. Perhaps he would take the risk and turn up here without the money, but I thought the little present Giovanni had left X might stop him doing that. Maybe that had been the point.

  We pulled into an overgrown driveway. In fact, driveway was too good a description. It was more like a small clearing in the forest which led up to a cabin not unlike the one we’d left. The difference was those cabins had been maintained and appeared to be new, whereas this one was rundown, the greenery from the forest creeping over it as though trying to claim back the wood. A porch led off the front of the house, but the boards were broken and splintered. The bright sunlight of the day struggled to pierce the thick foliage, so although the drive up to the property was doused in sunlight, the house itself fell into thick, black shadows.

  I knew I wasn’t here for any good reason, but the place made me shiver. It looked like the sort of place you’d take someone to kill them.

  Giovanni parked the car, and the guy sitting beside me jabbed his gun in my side then nodded to my door.

  Awkwardly, not wanting to let go of my injured hand for too long, I opened the door and used my elbow to shove it open farther. I climbed out and stood straighter. Could I run now? I was tempted, but I thought I’d end up with a bullet in my back for my efforts.

  The others were all out of the car now anyway, Giovanni slamming his door shut and turning to face me. I scowled back at him. He didn’t know me, had no idea I would fight back the moment I got the chance. Perhaps I should play on that, and pretend to weep and beg for my life, but I wasn’t able to bring myself to do anything except glare at him and try to not pass out because of my hand. Who would have thought losing a piece of finger would hurt so fucking much?

  He jerked his head at the two men. “You know what to do with her.”

  They grabbed me by my arms again and started to haul me toward the cabin.

  “Hey, wait!” I cried. “What are you going to do with me?”

  “Nothing yet, sweetheart. We’re just going to have to wait for lover-boy to turn up with what I asked him for.”

  Instinctively, I struggled against the two men. “Then what? You’re just going to let us go?” I thought the chances of that happening were slim to none. He wasn’t going to let a hit man walk away from this—especially not when he’d deliberately hurt the girlfriend of said hit man and taken a huge amount of cash from him. Giovanni would know X wouldn’t just let this lie.

  “Just be a good girl,” he said. “And I’ll think about it.”

  I gave a growl of frustration as I was dragged to the cabin. Trying to fight them wasn’t going to do any good. They were armed and I was not only unarmed, I was also injured and pregnant. I needed to try to be smart about this.

  They shoved open the door to the cabin and pushed me inside. The place was almost as dilapidated on the inside as it was on the outside. The men weren’t going to give me a tour, however.

  A second door was positioned in the wall opposite. One of the men reached out and pulled it open. Beyond lay a flight of wooden stairs which led down into the pitch black.

  “Welcome to your new home,” he sniggered.

  I forced a smile. “Thanks. I’ve been looking for someplace new.”

  He gave a snort and shoved me through the door. I managed to get down the first few steps, heading more cautiously as the dark seemed to swallow me up. I thought I was going to make it down the flight without any mishaps, but then there was movement behind me and a hand placed between my shoulders and gave me a shove. I threw my bodyweight backward, so I didn’t pitch headfirst down the remaining steps, but instead only lost my footing. I skidded and bumped my way down the final few to the bottom.

  I blinked into the dark, knowing the small amount of light I had wouldn’t last for long. The walls were mostly gray cinder blocks, but a little deeper into the cellar, the breeze blocks gave way to natural rock. I frowned, trying to piece together what I was seeing.

  A voice called down to me, “Don’t get too comfortable.” He chuckled, and moments later slammed the door shut on me, plunging me into pitch black.

  Taking a shaky breath, I steadied my nerves. It was only the dark.

  I thought back to what I’d seen, trying to put a mental picture of my surroundings into my head so I didn’t feel quite so disoriented.

  The cabin must have been built on a natural cave, and whoever built it had taken advantage of that and created a cellar. Perhaps they’d thought it would be a good place to store meat they’d hunted, or, if they were city folks, even use as a wine cellar. The place smelled damp and earthy. I thought if I listened hard enough, I could hear the trickle of running water, but perhaps that was just the acoustics of the place, or I was imagining things. I was utterly blind down here. I didn’t think I’d ever been somewhere there was quite literally no light. I’d been in t
he dark at night time, of course, but even on a cloudy night, there was still some illumination from the moon. Now I sat in the dark, and I wasn’t able to tell the difference between my eyes being open or shut. Experimentally, I brought my uninjured hand up to my face and wiggled my fingers in front of my eyes. I felt a slight movement in the air, but that was all. I didn’t see a thing.

  I hugged my knees closer to my chest. I wouldn’t allow myself to become spooked by being in the dark. I, of all people, should know the truly frightening things in life were normally the human ones. The dark was just an absence of light. There was nothing in it that could hurt me.

  A scratching sounded behind me, making me jump and launch myself away, hurting my hand, and giving an involuntary cry of fear. I hated myself for that sound, but I hadn’t been able to stop it. What was over there? Had I imagined things? But then I heard another scurry, and squeak.

  Fuck. Rats.

  But if there were rats down here, they must be getting both in and out somewhere. I didn’t want to put my hand on a sleek, furry body, but I needed to check my surroundings in more detail. I couldn’t sit, huddled here in the dark, when there might be some way out nearby. A big part of me figured Giovanni wouldn’t have put me down here if getting out was going to be that easy—he must have checked the place over before bringing me here. But there was always that chance he didn’t, and I wasn’t going to wait around doing nothing.

  I stayed on my hands and knees, knowing that if I wandered around, blind, I might easily trip over something. If I hit my head or broke a limb, on top of my current injury, I wouldn’t stand a chance of getting out of this. I wanted to be free, but I also needed to be sensible and weigh any pros against the cons.

  Mentally, I tried to coordinate myself. I’d fallen the final couple of stairs and stumbled before landing on my ass. Then the scurrying of the rat had made me jerk away. Had I turned back on myself when I’d done that? I imagine the stairs were in front of me, just to the right. I could be completely wrong, but I needed to get my bearings. If I knew where the staircase was, I could map anything else I found—if there was anything else to find. Keeping my wounded hand held up against my chest, I hopped forward, like a three-legged dog. I used my good hand to reach ahead, tapping around for the feel of anything that might give me some idea of what might be in the room. I was tense for the feel of fur beneath my palm, or feeling the nip of sharp teeth in my skin. I wasn’t someone who was scared of rodents, but I didn’t want to land my one good hand on top of one of the not-so-little critters.

  My fingers met with wood, the digits bending back as they landed awkwardly half on and half off a step. I sucked in a hiss—I could do without a broken finger right now—but the pain quickly faded. Finding the steps reassured me. I knew the door led to the cabin, and the rest of the world was right above me. I wasn’t trapped in some black, supernatural world. This was just a cellar, in the middle of the forest, under some decrepit cabin.

  A shiver trembled through me.

  That wasn’t such a great image either.

  I debated climbing the stairs and banging on the door, but I knew there was no point. It wasn’t as though Giovanni and his men would open the door to me, if they were even still there, and there was no one else around for miles who would hear me.

  Instead, I turned away from the stairs and did my strange crawl hop to the wall beside them. I’d use the staircase as my focus point, keeping it in mind so I could always get back if needed.

  My ears strained for sound. I wanted to make sure I was aware of any scratching, scrabbling rodents nearby, but mainly I was listening because I’d thought I’d heard running water earlier. It had been faint, and perhaps I’d been imagining things, but I did think I’d heard it. Plus, I was underground, and the rats had a way of getting in here.

  I patted my way around the walls. The stone was cold and damp beneath my fingertips, areas slimy from a moss or lichen.

  Another scurry and squeak sounded, making me jump.

  The damn rat was close by. Or perhaps he’d brought a friend.

  The place was bigger than I’d thought. I’d only caught the faintest glimpse of the cellar right before I’d been brought down, the light from the cabin shining down the steps and illuminating the interior. But the light had only penetrated so far, and clearly hadn’t reached all the way to the back. I thought perhaps the cellar was even bigger than the floor plan of the cabin, reaching beyond its walls and beneath the forest floor.

  I kept going.

  I realized the sound of water had grown louder.

  Feeling around with my good hand, I discovered a gap where the floor of the cellar met the wall. I hadn’t imagined things, but I had no idea how far away the stream running below was. It was obviously underground. Rats could swim through things like that.

  I navigated the space with my hand. It was maybe a foot wide, and as I reached down into it, trying not to think about what my hand might be delving into, I felt the temperature drop. Perhaps the gap hadn’t been here when the cellar had been built, but time and a weakness in the rock had caused it to collapse, revealing the waterway running beneath. I tried not to get my hopes up. The rest of the gap could be tiny. I could try to edge down there, only to get myself stuck and drown.

  No, it needed to be a last resort. I couldn’t have X turning up with the money to free me, with Giovanni willing to keep his part of the bargain, only for them to come down here and find me dead, wedged in a gap in the rock, with my head in a stream and my legs sticking up in the air. The thought made one of the inappropriate laughs I was prone to bubble up inside me. Me and my morbid sense of humor. But the idea of sitting alone in the pitch black laughing felt way too uncomfortable, so I clamped my mouth around the sound.

  I couldn’t take any risks—not yet, anyway.

  I just needed to sit and wait.

  Chapter Twelve

  X

  Like Vee, I’d never been a crier, but the sight of the tip of that small finger caused a sob to bark from my mouth. I pressed the back of my hand hard against my mouth to stifle the sound.

  What the hell had her father done to her?

  Vee was right all along. He really was a sick son-of-a-bitch. Had he done this to prove a point?

  I didn’t want to read the note that had been left for me, but I had to. The white paper was streaked with Vee’s blood, but tidy, legible handwriting was easy to make out between the red.

  Hello X.

  You took something from me, so now I’ve taken something from you.

  Get me what you owe me, plus one hundred percent for interest, and I’ll consider returning her to you.

  Take the cell phone. I’ll be in touch.

  You have twenty-four hours.

  Giovanni Bianchi.

  “Fuck!” I roared, slamming my hands down on the counter. My fury bubbled over and I took it out on the kitchen, swiping the coffee machine, cups, and caddies off onto the floor with a crash. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I punched and ripped and smacked and tore, until enough anger and terror for Vee’s life had been purged from me to allow me to think.

  Exhausted, with trembling legs, I sank to the floor. The cell phone that had been left for me was also on the floor, not far away. I was lucky I hadn’t smashed it in my rage. Pushing myself away from the counter which was against my back, I reached out and picked it up. There was still nothing on it—no messages or numbers—but it had been left for me for a reason. Giovanni would use it to tell me where I was to go to exchange the money I currently didn’t have in return for Vee. I made sure the volume was turned right up on the phone, so I wouldn’t miss any calls or messages, and then slipped it in my pocket.

  Somewhere in the distance I heard the wail of sirens approaching. The police and paramedics must have made it to the store. I hoped the old lady was all right, and I felt bad for her husband. But I couldn’t hang around here much longer. The cops were bound to put out a search, and I didn’t want to be here when they did. My prints woul
d be all over that place, and I would almost certainly be arrested as a murder suspect. Getting arrested would most likely get Vee killed. I couldn’t be out doing what Giovanni wanted if I was stuck behind bars.

  I got to my feet and picked up the note from where I’d dropped it. I held it for a moment, breathing hard, the paper dangling from my fingertips.

  He’d already hurt her, cut off a part of her finger to make his point to me. I couldn’t bear to think about what else he might do to her. I’d prefer for her father to have taken her than Giovanni. At least she might have had some way of working around her father, but I didn’t like to think what her chances were if she tried something similar with Giovanni.

  My thoughts went to what he’d asked of me. I calculated what he’d paid me to do the job to kill the cop who’d once mentored me a long time ago, and then added the same again on top. I shook my head, looking downward, my teeth biting into my lower lip. I didn’t have two hundred thousand dollars to give him. He’d paid me one hundred thousand, and I’d given half of that to the cop to leave. Being a cop, instead of leaving, he’d handed it over to the authorities and spilled the whole story. That had only gotten him killed, and I had no idea what had happened to that money. I already had some cash, plus the money I’d been paid by Vee’s father to do the job on her. A chunk of it had already been spent moving around the country, on some fake ID—which didn’t come cheap when you wanted stuff that looked like the real deal—plus some weapons. I thought perhaps I could put half of that money together, but I knew Giovanni wouldn’t be happy with half. There was a good chance he wouldn’t even be happy if I found all of it. He might easily take the money and kill us both anyway.

  Where the hell could I get another one hundred thousand dollars in the next twenty-four hours?

  I could take on a new job, but that wasn’t something an assassin normally went looking for. People tended to contact me rather than the other way around, though admittedly I’d been out of touch for a while. Plus, a hit wasn’t something that could be rushed. I could try to rob a bank, but it was hardly my area of expertise. I’d most likely end up behind bars, and then I’d be no help to anyone. I wished Harvey Baglione was still alive. I knew he’d have loaned me the money. Perhaps there was cash left at his place? I still had the keys. I could go back and take a look around, though I doubted even someone like Harvey would have left one hundred grand lying around. Plus there was a chance his body had turned up by now and someone might be watching his apartment.