Blood Diamond (12 page)

My instinctual desire to suck in a breath between clenched teeth was aborted by the lack of air. Panic set in, tightening my throat and chest until I remembered to breathe out of my nose.

Maybe it was the fright-born adrenaline rush or my increased levels of awareness, but I managed to force open an eye.

The red glow of emergency lighting bathed me. It took several minutes to force my vision into focus. Dark shapes coalesced into net-shrouded crates and shipping containers destined for some train yard.

Something warm wiggled against my back. Distracted from my surroundings, I tried to make sense of what was going on behind me.

“God damned stupid bitch,” someone muttered behind me, and with a mixture of relief and dismay, I recognized Brandon’s voice. “Did she really have to use so much fucking tape?”

I meant to grunt, but the act of drawing a deep breath burned my aching throat. I stiffened and shook in reaction.

“Shit. Are you awake?” Brandon stilled behind me.

Bracing myself for the inevitable pain, I forced the grunt out. It felt like I had swallowed barbed wire.

“Just hold tight for a few minutes, Boss. She didn’t do this right, thankfully. It shouldn’t take me much longer to get free,” my friend whispered.

It wasn’t until I looked down at my hands that I realized what Brandon was talking about. Duct tape was strong, but it had its weaknesses. Instead of securing my hands in a crisscrossing pattern, she had forced my wrists together and wrapped them in tape. If I could lift my hands over my head, I’d be able to tear my way free.

Judging from the way Brandon was jerking against my back, he was hard at work defeating the silvery material. With a soft, triumphant huff, Brandon relaxed against me. The ripping of tape accompanied hisses of pain.

“I am going to kick that bitch’s ass,” Brandon snarled, leaning against me. I suspected he was doing it to keep me upright. He confirmed my thoughts by saying, “You okay to sit on your own?”

I was, although moving triggered rolling waves of vertigo and nausea. Moments later, Brandon was kneeling beside me.

“Damn, Boss. You look like hell. Your eyes are all pupil. What the hell did she do to you?” He touched my cheek, and I winced at the tug of tape on my beard. “Give me a sec to figure out how to get this off. She wrapped it all the way around your head. All I got was a strip.”

I winced as Brandon started picking at the tape. He muttered curses as he worked while I took a good look around. Wherever we were in the cargo bay, it was secluded. Stacked crates secured with steel cabling obscured my view of the ceiling.

“I can’t tell if she’s stupid or overconfident. She didn’t take my pocketknife
or
my keys. She did smash my phone, though. Once I have this loose enough to slip the blade under it without cutting you up, I’ll get this off your mouth. Damn, I wish I had some oil. This is going to hurt like hell.”

In my drug-fogged state, it took me an embarrassingly long time to remember that certain oils broke down the adhesive properties of duct tape.

It took Brandon several minutes to work away enough of the tape so he could rip the rest off. I suspected when he was finished, I wouldn’t need to shave; he’d rip out all of the hair and most of my skin in the process.

“Don’t scream,” he warned.

I tensed and held my breath, and when I finally did exhale, Brandon ripped the tape off. For a stomach-churning moment, the cargo bay spun around me. The drugs, as though sensing my lapse, sucked me into their embrace once more. I slumped against Brandon.

It took him three or four slaps against my cheeks to get me to sit up without his help. “Sorry,” I mumbled.

“You’re not the one who should be sorry,” Brandon snapped. He held his hand in front of my face. “How many fingers am I holding up.”

I made it up to sixteen before his fingers blurred too much to count. “More than you have,” I dutifully reported in a slur.

“You sound like hell.”

“Thanks.” I agreed with him. Each word burned my throat, emerging as a rasp. I could barely understand myself, and I marveled Brandon was able to make sense of what I was trying to say.

“Do you know the drill, Boss?”

“There’s a drill for this?” I blinked at him, and for a sickening moment, there were three Brandons. All of them were frowning. A displeased Brandon brought trouble to someone, though I was relatively confident it wasn’t me this time. “Is there a drill for a crazy cat lady? She kicked me in the knee, choked me, and stabbed me with a needle,” I complained.

Brandon’s frown twitched up into a rueful grin. “Damn, all I got was her hair. She’s nuts. Lean against the crates, Boss. I can’t keep holding you up if I want to get you out of that mess.”

That mess proved to be the duct tape around my wrists, leaving me to deal with picking off the remaining strips while he went to work on my feet. The bandages covering Evelyn’s bites spared the wounds from the adhesive. They did, however, end up victim to Brandon’s knife.

“What caused that? You look like you were mauled.”

I couldn’t help it. I giggled. “She bit me.”

“She? The crazy cat lady bit you? Oh, wait. You mean that new girl of yours? Saw her up top earlier. She’s quite the gorgeous number. Bites hard, does she?” Brandon grinned at me.

“Fenerec have sharp, pointy teeth,” I warned him.

“So they do, Boss. So they do. How many fingers this time?”

The question annoyed me since I couldn’t even make a guess at the right number. “Too many,” I reported.

“Think you can walk?”

The thought of trying left me feeling queasy, but the alternative was to wait for the psychotic woman to return. “I’ll manage,” I replied, hoping I wasn’t lying. “We’ll find out,” I added after consideration.

I had at least fifty pounds on Brandon, and I doubted he’d be able to support me for long if I wasn’t able to walk on my own.

With a wince, Brandon got to his feet, pocketing his knife. “We’ll take it slow,” he promised, grabbing hold of my arm to haul me to my feet. He was stronger than I thought, able to get me upright with minimal effort on my part. “You’re big, but you’re not too heavy, thank God.”

The
Wave Dream
lurched under my feet more than I thought it should, but I managed to stay on my feet. “I don’t know what she drugged me with, but I feel terrible.”

“You look it. The first thing I’m doing is getting you out of here. I don’t know what’s going on, but I heard gunfire while you were still out; that’s what sent the bitch off. It’s been quiet for a while.” Brandon pressed his hand to my forehead. “You’re clammy, too.”

The worry in his voice alarmed me almost as much as the idea of someone shooting holes into the
Wave Dream
’s hull. “Gunfire?”

Brandon clapped my shoulder, cursing as he almost knocked me over. After steadying me, he said, “Don’t worry, it’d take some serious firepower to sink this ship. Even if they tear a few holes, it’s nothing a pump and a patch can’t fix until we hit port—if they hit something below the waterline. Cargo bay is just above it.”

That didn’t reassure me, and I told him so. With a chuckle, he grabbed my elbow and led me through the maze. “Here’s hoping she’s kept occupied for a while. If we can make it to the office, we can summon security.”

I halted, blinking at Brandon as I forced my fogged thoughts to remember my first meeting with the woman. “Oh. I knocked the phone off the hook.”

“Did you? Damn, I hope it was our guys doing the shooting, then,” was his worried reply.

“Why hadn’t you?” I leaned against the nearest crate to catch my breath. The cargo bay spun around me, and when I closed my eyes, the sensation worsened. I grunted, forcing myself upright once more.

“She caught me when I was leaving to use the head. Wasn’t even out the door before she jumped down on me,” Brandon admitted in a grumble.

I was relieved I hadn’t been the only one caught like that, although I didn’t tell him so. “How long does it usually take them to respond to an off the hook, anyway?”

“Depends.”

“On?”

“If it’s breakfast, lunch, or dinnertime,” was Brandon’s rueful reply.

“Dinner.”

“Two hours, three if we’re not lucky—if we’re really not lucky and the dinner shift just started, four or five hours.”

I groaned. “It had just started.”

“You’re cursed, Boss. Sorry, but you are. Anyway, if it’s more than an hour, Zach’ll have someone’s balls for certain, especially if security knew you were down here.”

“Ouch.” I cringed at the thought and wondered if Zachary would literally or figuratively live up to Brandon’s predication.

“No shit. He’s bad enough about the cargo bay’s sec—”

The concussive burst of gunfire startled me into whirling around. My knee gave out, and I crumpled. Brandon caught my arm, easing my descent to the floor. He crouched beside me, pressing a finger to his mouth. I nodded.

Several more shots were fired before the cargo bay fell silent. Brandon drew a deep breath and whispered, “We better lay low. If I let you get hit with a stray bullet, he’ll have
my
balls.” After a moment, he pointed at a narrow gap between two shipping containers. “Think you can fit in there?”

“I’m tall, not wide,” I muttered, eying the space doubtfully. With Brandon’s help, I got back to my feet, hobbling over to the passage. I’d fit, but it’d be tight. I kept quiet about my reservations. While I wasn’t claustrophobic, I didn’t like the idea of being trapped in such a cramped space, unable to escape it easily. Brandon slipped in first, leaving me to squeeze in behind him.

With my knee throbbing and barely able to support my weight, a turtle could’ve run laps around me. If Brandon was impatient with my slow progress, he didn’t show any signs of it, keeping a firm grip on my arm in case my leg gave out again.

“She really did a number to your leg, didn’t she?” Brandon asked.

“I’m counting myself lucky she didn’t take off my kneecap.”

“It looks like she did to me, the way you’re limping.” The passage opened to a three-way intersection. Brandon pointed to the right. “That way leads to the office.”

“I’m pretty sure smart men run away from sources of gunfire, not towards it. The first place people are going to hole up is in your office,” I hissed. “If that woman’s an Inquisitor, I’m a petite, eight-year-old girl. If the Inquisition gets involved, we’ll be caught in the middle of a three-way gunfight.”

“Four way,” Brandon corrected.

“Four?”

“Well, five. Us, the Inquisition, the Canadian Fenerec, Zach and the crew, and the woman and her posse.”

I groaned, leaning against one of the containers. There wasn’t enough room for me to sink down to the floor. I ran my hands through my hair, wincing as my fingers caught on the duct tape still adhered to my head. “Wonderful. Is there any good news?”

“You don’t sound like you had just finished downing a bottle of whiskey anymore. You sound almost coherent.”

“Small blessings,” I muttered.

“Were you aware that your brother’s on board? He’s pissed, too.”

With a low groan, I banged the back of my head against the metal container. At the first dull thud, Brandon elbowed me in the ribs.

Avoiding the situation wasn’t going to help anything, so I asked, “I know my brother’s on board. Do we know for certain the woman has a posse?”

“We’re pretty certain. We got some video from the park and got a few hits when we compared to the stills of everyone boarding. That’s part of why your brother came. It’s personal, and he wasn’t about to let the Inquisition handle matters for him. Good job, by the way. You had us planning your funeral. It was going to be a nice one, too. Zach didn’t let us in on things until after he had you in his quarters.” Brandon chuckled, elbowing me in the ribs. “That girl of yours really is gorgeous, though.”

“She has teeth,” I muttered, flushing a bit. After my run in with the crazy cat lady and her noose, I would think twice about rejecting Evelyn’s advances; at least with her, I had a basic expectation of survival, among other things.

If I kept company with her for much longer, I’d find out what those other things were, which interested me almost as much as escaping the cargo bay alive. Muttering curses over how Evelyn was getting under my skin, I staggered after Brandon. I was fairly certain he was silently laughing at me, but was too polite to make a fuss over it.

“You need to be more careful, Boss. At the rate you’re—”

A thump against the shipping container silenced Brandon. I caught myself before I spun, preventing a dizzying one-way trip to the floor. I checked above me and behind me for the source of the sound, but saw nothing.

Thump.

A low growl heralded an ear-piercing shriek. The cry cut off in a gurgle. Shivers spread down from the base of my skull, zapping down to my toes.

“What the hell was
that
?” Brandon hissed.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” I whispered back. The growling continued from somewhere unnervingly close.

Brandon pointed in a direction I hoped was as far away from the sounds as possible.

“I think I’d rather meet a Fenerec in a dark alley than repeat this experience,” I confessed.

Twisting around, Brandon poked my collarbone. “No cracking jokes until after we’ve gotten out of this alive.”

“I blame the drugs.” Without them, I suspected I’d be in a lot more pain, but also a lot more useful. I’d probably be a lot more frightened than I already was, too.

After being hunted by a group of Inquisitor-murdering humans, blowing up my twin’s truck, staying with Evelyn, and enduring asphyxiation and drugging by the crazed woman on the loose in the cargo bay, I doubted things could get much worse.

“Whatever you’re thinking about, stop it,” Brandon demanded, glaring at me.

“What?”

“You have that ‘how can this possibly get any worse’ expression, Boss. Stop it.”

“I do not,” I protested. When we came to another intersection, Brandon crouched down. I sat down with a groan. “I hope you’re not expecting much out of me. My head’s spinning. You’re lucky I haven’t thrown up on you,” I warned.

“You’re not going to win any races on that leg of yours either. Relax, Boss. We’ll take it as slow as you need.”