Black As Night (Quentin Black Mystery #2) (23 page)

I could see light out there. Artificial, but I felt air on my face. I smelled smoke. Diesel fumes. Food.

Legs walked by me and I froze, looking up.

A woman in a red dress. She staggered past the window, her feet at my eye-level, and I realized, looking in both directions, that we were in an alley. It was night.

I could hear traffic somewhere, now that the wood was gone.

I hadn’t been imagining that before. But why had Solonik left me in a room with street access?

But I already knew why.

I didn’t know
how
I knew exactly, but I must have picked that up from Solonik, too. He knew the people around here. They’d heard sounds coming from this place before...they thought he was a crazy Russian who liked to get rough with his girlfriends. No one fucked with him because of his mob ties. Because of his ties to “Mr. Lucky.”

I almost had a picture of the latter in my mind by now, too.

Shoving all of that out of my head, I yanked harder on the wood, desperate now to get it off. I had no doubt Solonik had been serious about taking me with him when he left Thailand. I’d even felt glimpses of where he meant. Moscow. Possibly Riga, since he wouldn’t want to be too close to Mr. Lucky’s people while he “tamed me,” as he thought of it.

The word brought another wave of revulsion in me, right before I threw my whole weight into trying to yank the plywood off the window.

That time, the bigger piece came off.

Jagged pieces of glass stuck out of the bottom of the window frame, but I couldn’t suppress a sigh of relief that there were no bars. I began pulling the bigger chunks of glass out of the metal frame with my hands, almost oblivious to cutting myself now. Then I picked up the wood and broke what I couldn’t pull out. Once I decided I’d done enough, I jumped off the bed, heading for the corner where I’d occasionally seen Solonik’s bag of clothes.

I felt all around the table and the bench, but it wasn’t there.

Hesitating only a half second, I briefly turned on the light.

I took in the room in two turns of my head, looking for something––anything––I could wear out of there, but even the sheet on the bed was gone.
 

I remembered then. Solonik had muttered something about laundry the day before.

Once I remembered that much, I turned off the light.

I stood there, wondering how far I’d get naked, covered in blood, then realized I didn’t give a fuck about that either.

Black?
I sent tentatively.
Black? Can you hear me?

Silence.

I couldn’t wait any longer.

Urgency practically burst out of my skin. I could no longer tell if it was paranoia or real; to some part of me the distinction almost didn’t matter. If I didn’t get out now, I’d never get out. I knew that. I’d never get another chance; Solonik would make sure of it.

As soon as the thought came, I crossed the room in a handful of steps and leapt up on the thin mattress. I grabbed the window frame as well as I could and pulled myself up, grimacing in pain as more glass sliced my palms from my weight. Ignoring it as best I could, I got my head and shoulders through the opening and sucked in a lungful of damp air. It smelled like chicken and chili and sweat and exhaust but right then it was the freshest air I’d maybe ever tasted.

Feeling a sudden rush of energy from even being half-way through the opening, I started crawling the rest of the way out, crying out as my leg caught on another shard of glass, my back and shoulder scraping a few more.

Then I was clear.

I knelt there, gasping. Then I was on my feet.

I’d barely gotten up when I was running, flat-out, for where I could hear the most cars.

CATCALLS FOLLOWED ME as soon as I hit the streetlights, nervous laughter.

An older woman yelled at me in Thai, gesturing up and down and frowning before she spat on the sidewalk. I didn’t bother to read her, but I got whispers of
drug addict...farang whore.
I stared up and down the street, scanning faces without really seeing any of them, barely hearing the voices or noticing the stares as I fought panic, trying to decide which direction to run, which direction he’d be least likely to come from.

I had no way of knowing.

I’d already been running for blocks. I’d tried to run in straight lines. I’d followed the loudest sounds I could, but I might have gotten turned around.

He could be anywhere.

I had no idea where I was. I didn’t know Bangkok at all.

Black?
I thought, even softer than before.
Black? Are you there?

MIRI! MIRIAM MY GOD! MIRI! MIRI!

I flinched, nearly fell to a knee as his mind exploded in mine. I held out a hand, saw people walk around me, staring at me, looking like ghosts.

MIRIAM! WHERE ARE YOU? WHERE ARE YOU?

I don’t know...I’m on the street. I’m...I have to get out of here, Black. I don’t know where I am. How do I get out of here?
I looked down at myself, swallowing.
I’m conspicuous. I can’t stay here...

Where are you? What street?
I could feel his panic coiling through me still, but the military guy was back. I felt it in his mind and it steadied me somehow.
What street, Miri?

His mind clicked into sharper focus.

Never mind,
he thought at me.
Are there cabs nearby?

I looked around, then saw a small group of them.
Yes...a few. But Black––

Walk to the curb. Get in the first cab you can. I’ll stay with you. I’ll push them if I have to. One of them will take you...

Push them?
I said.
How? I thought––

Just do it, Miri. Walk straight to the curb. Now.

I looked down at myself again. That time, I felt a flicker of his mind through mine.
 

I felt him understand, even as panic once more exploded out of him.

WALK TO THE FUCKING CURB. RIGHT NOW, MIRI.

I began to walk, feeling him trying to will me out of there with his mind. When I reached the edge of the road, in an opening between street kiosks, I again glimpsed the short row of cabs. An older male driver stared at me, open-mouthed, as I approached his car.

Where am I going?
I asked Black.

Hanu Hotel. Tell him you will pay triple if he gets you there in ten minutes.
Black hesitated.
Promise him whatever you have to, Miri. I’ll be at the hotel before you...but I’ll call ahead. People will be waiting for you, Miriam...

I felt another flush of emotion off him.

Grief hit me tangibly, guilt...

That time I shoved it back, hitting out at him violently.

Stop it,
I snarled.
I can’t deal with your bullshit right now!

He retreated at once.

That panic never stopped vibrating my skin.

“Hanu Hotel,” I told the driver, ignoring Black as well as I could. “Triple if you get me there in five minutes,” I added, feeling strange saying it, even beyond how I must look.

The cab driver looked at his friends, two other drivers, both of whom were shaking their heads at me and laughing. The driver himself looked about to tell me no, his eyes holding a thinly veiled contempt as he looked me over. I felt Black gearing up in my mind, ready to do something, but I walked closer to the driver, until I stood directly in front of him. Biting my lip, I fought not to react to the eyes I felt on me from all sides.

“Do you speak English?” I said.

He smiled, looking down my body with raised eyebrows “Yes, ma’am.”

“I’ve been kidnapped,” I told him, my voice hard. “And raped. Please take me to the Hanu Hotel. Now. My family is waiting for me. Now. They will pay you whatever you want.”

Emotion plumed off Black, so intensely I clenched my jaw.

“Now,” I repeated to the driver. “Please. My family will pay whatever you ask.”

That time, when the driver looked me over, something in his eyes changed.

I saw pain there briefly, then pity, right before he nodded. My use of the word “family” hit him the hardest. I was so open then, with Solonik having torn every shred of shielding out of my mind, I could feel the man had a family of his own––including a young daughter of maybe seven or eight, a daughter he already worried about. Walking up to the passenger side, he started to open the back door, then he stopped, looking me over another time. Rather than opening the door, he straightened, walking around to the trunk of his cab.

“Wait,” he said in stilted English. “Wait please.”

“No,” I said, fighting tears. “No. No wait...no wait...please...”

But he just kept walking.

Fear washed over me again, a sudden panic that maybe I hadn’t read the right things on him, that he might know Solonik too, that he might be on the payroll of Mr. Lucky. I looked up and down the street, wrapping my arms around my body. I remembered only then that my hands were bleeding, that my feet were bleeding too.
 

“Please...” I watched him rummage through the trunk. I started to back away, slowly shaking my head. “Please.
Please
take me out of here...please...”

He shut the trunk, holding up a hand towards me in a calming gesture.

In his other hand, he held a blanket.

Seeing it, my knees nearly buckled.

“It’s okay,” he said, walking back around the car. He motioned towards me, holding out the blanket, smiling at me reassuringly as he nodded. “Come back. It’s okay. We go now.”

I wrapped the blanket around me as soon as I’d shaken it out.
 

It smelled faintly like dog.

When he opened the back door to his cab, I practically dove inside, sinking down low in the seat so I wouldn’t be visible through the windows. I decided to sit entirely on the floor by the time he’d opened the driver’s side door, wrapping the blanket around me so that it covered my hair and most of my face along with my body.

I’d also locked both of the back doors.

Seconds later, we pulled away from the curb.

Ten

NO MORE MIRIAM

WHEN THE CAB’S door opened, I found myself looking up the steps of the Hanu Hotel. Two men stood outside those glass doors with dark gray uniforms and white gloves. I watched them open a door on each side as a beautiful Chinese woman in an emerald dress walked out, her head thrown back in a laugh as she walked next to a man who wore a charcoal-colored suit.