Edge of the Heat 5 (16 page)

Jerry opened his mouth but before he could say a word, the car stopped. The dusty glare from the headlights revealed a ramshackle house that looked to be long abandoned. The guy with the evil grin hopped out of the car and ran to the front door, twisting it open. He fished a flashlight from his pocket and shone it around inside. He was back to the car in seconds.

“This is it alright. Kill the engine.”

Chris did, but left the headlights on, then got out of the car. Both men stretched their spines.

“This place is très spooky, Brian.”

Brian and Chris, huh. Those were his ... His what? Captors?
Just a couple of all-American goofballs
, Jerry thought. He gritted his teeth and prayed it was true. If they were goofballs, maybe he and Sara had a chance.

“Yeah, let’s get inside.”

Brian walked to Sara’s door and opened it. He reached over her and jabbed her seatbelt release. Sara spilled forward and Brian pulled her towards the door so she fell head-first onto the ground.

“Hey!” Jerry yelled. “What the hell are you doing? She’s hurt and unconscious!”

Brian gave Jerry his usual evil grin and then kicked Sara in the ribs. She didn’t move.

Jerry’s eyes went wide. He shook his head in shock. “You can’t do that to a woman.”

Brian threw his head back and laughed. “Did you hear that Chris? This guy’s soft on her.” He bent down and looked Jerry in the eye. “Love ‘em and Cleave ‘em Lola isn’t a woman, she’s a machine.” He looked down at Sara. “Isn’t that right,
Lola,”
he said, putting as much innuendo and hate as he could muster into the last word. Then he kicked her again. Jerry winced and wished Sara hadn’t taken his gun.
This was bad. This was very, very bad.
Jerry twisted in his seat and found his seatbelt release. He clicked it then pulled his body across the car with his legs. He jumped out of the car, knelt next to Sara, and threw his body over hers. If she was getting any more kicks, he was going to take them.

Brian laughed again and aimed another kick. Jerry shimmied his body around, his hands pulling cruelly tight behind his back, and tried to cover Sara fully.

“
Knock it off,” Chris said in a harsh tone. “You kill her and the boss is gonna have your head. Let’s get them inside.”

Jerry knelt, panting, waiting to see if the kick would still come or not. It didn’t. He felt something on his cheek, which was pressed against Sara’s face. A soft, but definite fluttering of her lips. She had kissed him. Jerry pulled his head back so he could see her. She still looked unconscious. Was she shamming? Jerry felt a quickening of hope in his belly, as soft as her lips had been. Did Sara have a plan? Something up her sleeve? Or was she just trying to gain what small advantage she might have by feigning unconsciousness. Again Jerry wondered just who exactly she was and what exactly was she into. What was going on here?

Chris came around the car towards them, a large gun drawn and pointing at Jerry. “Get up, stand over there.” He lifted his chin towards the front of the car. Jerry maneuvered himself to his knees with effort, then stood.

He watched each man grab an arm and prepare to drag Sara into the house. “Unlock me,” he said quickly. I won’t run, I’ll carry her for you."

“No.” Chris spat the word out, leaving no room for argument. “Walk into the house and go into the first door on your right.”

Jerry walked, sneaking glances back at Sara. Her head hung down and her feet dragged on the desert hardpan, leaving dusty grooves.

The house was as dark as a well. The slight night breeze of the desert pushed its way through the door, stirring up dirt and dust that made Jerry want to sneeze. He could make out the first doorway to the right with the light from the headlights, plus a second doorway a little ways down. He stopped in the first doorway and turned around.

“Look, I don’t know what’s going on here, or why you grabbed me and Sara, but if its about money, I can get you money if you let us go. A lot of money.”

Chris and Brian exchanged a look. Jerry couldn’t see their faces, but he sensed an almost-laughing, evil grin surface on Brian’s face. It wasn’t about money then.
Fuck
.
What else could he offer?

“I have friends in the —” Chris dropped Sara’s arm and took a step towards Jerry. He planted the hand that wasn’t holding the gun in Jerry’s chest and shoved hard, putting his body into it. Jerry wasn’t expecting it. He tried to save himself with a step backwards but fell instead, landing on his backside and smashing his hands painfully. Chris slammed the door shut and Jerry heard metal jingle and scrape.

Great
, he thought.
Now I can’t do a fucking thing for anyone, including myself
. He scooted quickly to the door and pressed his ear to the small gap at the floor. He heard muffled talking, and footsteps, then another door slammed and more metal scraped. His guess was Sara had been put in the next room.

He circled his wrists carefully inside the cuffs and looked around the room. Soft moonlight fell through the window. Maybe when his eyes adjusted he’d be able to see more. His first job was to get out of these handcuffs. Jerry thought hard. How was he supposed to get out of these cuffs? A bobby pin, right? Too bad he was fresh out.

He got up and circled the room in the meager light. A small cot. A toilet like in a jail cell. And that was it. The room itself was roughly the size of a jail cell, maybe a little bit wider. Nothing that he could jimmy his cuffs with. Maybe on the floor, or under the bed? This was obviously intended to be used to house prisoners. Maybe he could find something hidden.

He pressed his ear to the door one time. Hearing nothing, he started a thorough search of the room. As thorough as it could be with his hands secured behind his back anyway. A frantic voice hollered at the back of his mind, pulling at his attention, but he forcefully ignored it. That voice was panic, and he knew if he listened to it he would lose most or all of his wits and effectiveness. This was the worst, most dangerous situation he’d ever been in in his entire life, and panic could easily be deadly for him. Deadly for him and for Sara. That panicked part of his mind screamed that Sara got him into this, and he’d be better off if he just forgot she existed. He needed a plan to get
him
out of this mess and Sara be damned. She probably was just reaping something she had sowed anyway.

This time he took a moment to tell the panicked voice to fuck off before turning back to ignoring it. If he could find a way out of here, there was no way he was leaving Sara, shackled at the hands of men who would kick her while she was unconscious. He didn’t care if she was a criminal or not. Even criminals didn’t deserve to be treated like that.

His mind set, he got to work. Sara owed him some answers, that was certain, but she didn’t owe anyone her life. And he would never abandon her.

I don’t want to die out here
, he thought.
Then do something about it.

S
ara listened hard, making sure the men had actually left and one of them wasn’t just inside the door, waiting to see if she was really unconscious. She didn’t think so but it always paid to be cautious. She’d never met or heard of this Brian or Chris before, but she was reasonably sure neither was a big boss. And the real party wouldn’t start until a big boss got here. She’d been out of the game so long she barely knew who the players were anymore, but still, she knew a big boss when she met one. Neither of these guys was one.

These guys were either lower-level agency, or they were just standard criminals who had been recruited. One of them at least had to be agency, she thought. The DCIA wouldn’t trust her to just anyone. And she had seen Thorpe at the hotel. He’d been behind the swat guys. She had tried to shoot him, but she was pretty sure the shot had missed him. The second officer in had bulldozed into her from the side and smashed her in the head with a metal baton. Dazed, she had still tried to claw her way through them to Thorpe but one of them had shot her in the arm. She didn’t know if they had been real Las Vegas PD or agency playing a part, but since she didn’t know, she refused to shoot or stab any of them. Thorpe, though, if she had been able to get to him, she would have put a bullet in his brain in a heartbeat.

Thorpe was a big boss. So high up in the agency he was practically untouchable. He only answered to the Senator in charge of The Agency. He was one of the biggest reasons she was on the run.

She had lost consciousness at some point. The last thing she remembered was being shot, and then some sort of painful explosion in her head that had instantly stolen her awareness. She didn’t wake up until they were just leaving the city in the car. They had driven mostly North, but sometimes North/Northeast out of Vegas for 3.5 hours. Much of it on crappy side roads. She had stayed in the position she was in when she woke up, cramped and uncomfortable, but not wanting them to know she was awake, watching the sun go down out of the corner of her eye to determine their direction. She had counted the minutes in her head and estimated how fast they were going. The best she could figure was that they were 175 miles north of Las Vegas, in the Nevada desert.

She had a pretty good idea what was in store for her once they got where they were going. Thorpe wanted the identities of the leaders of the
agitadors -
the name given to the band of rebel women fighting against the government-sanctioned human trafficking in Mexico
.
The band of rebel leaders she had founded and funded. He also wanted to know how they contacted Sara. And he wanted all of Sara’s reports and pictures on him. Sara knew he wasn’t above plans of torture to get what he wanted.

And Jerry was with them. Poor, sweet Jerry who had never been agency. Why had she ever thought it? He wasn’t agency, his friends weren’t in on anything, and now she had signed his death warrant by being attracted to him and letting him believe there might be a chance between them.

In the dark, pregnant quiet, she said a silent apology to Jerry for getting him into this.

When she was certain she was alone, she turned her focus to getting out of her cuffs. She’d been in a situation like this once before, and had managed to escape. She was seriously surprised that she did not have an armed guard right now. Thank God she didn’t though. Disarming a guard before he realized she was free would have made things even harder. Hard, but not impossible.
Not for Love ‘em and Cleave ‘em Lola
, she thought. God, she hated that nickname. She hated all her nicknames.

She categorized her injuries. Head, throbbing on both sides. Bad, like a giant rotten tooth. Left arm, numb from the elbow down. Could she move her left hand? She could, but vaguely, like it was part of a poorly-built mechanical arm. Right shoulder, sore.  Other than that, she felt OK. She rolled her shoulders and turned onto her stomach. Using her strong back muscles she brought her shackled feet up to her handcuffed hands. They’d left her with her shoes, too, which was another big mistake on their part. They’d taken the knives, but left the shoes. She felt through the lining of one shoe until she found what she was looking for. A short, small piece of metal. She fished it out and relaxed, giving her arms a break. As her feet fell to the floor the piece of metal caught on her shoelace and quietly clattered out of her fingers to the ground. No matter, she had another. Several more actually, including a short one in her mouth between her cheek and gum. That one had been there so long she had developed callouses around it. She brought her feet back up and felt around for the second, grasping it more carefully. She relaxed again for a moment, then maneuvered the piece of metal around to her handcuffs, tapping carefully for the little hole. She found it, and with a quick push and twist, her hands were free.

Quickly, she tried to sit up and simultaneously flip her arms forward to unshackle her feet, but her left arm froze up and almost forced a scream from her lips. She clamped her tongue between her teeth and waited, sweating against the pain. That was her gunshot wound. Her arms had been forced behind her back for hours now and it had gone to sleep. But it was awake again, and furious.

When enough of the pain abated, she moved her right hand towards her ankles, but more slowly this time. She picked the lock and rubbed her ankles as the shackles fell to the ground.

Quickly, Sara stood up and paced the room, looking for any sort of weapon or advantage. She picked up the cuffs and shoved them in her pocket as she went.

Cot, toilet, small room with absolutely nothing in it. Sara tried the door. Locked, of course. She ran her fingers over the hinges, plucking at them. They were heavy, with no movable parts. Dead end. She bent over and examined the lock plate and latch assembly, poking her little piece of metal in there. No luck.

Sara went to the window and tried to open it. It was stuck tight;  shut and locked and covered with bars on the outside. Improbable means of escape, even if she could loosen the bars somehow. But she would come back to it. She ran her hands over every inch of the outside wall, looking for cracks or weaknesses. It was made of clay on the inside. One of those shacks made with red desert dirt and water that would last forever and keep the inside cool at the same time. Was there paneling on the outside? She tried to see but couldn’t.

She ran her hands over the toilet and then pulled on it. It didn’t budge. How do you anchor a toilet into clay? Was there a steel plate in here somewhere? She put her foot on it and pushed, but still there was no movement at all. She left it for the time being and flipped the cot over. There were small screws she could take out but they were useless without a plan. She could take it apart and use the connecting pieces as a weapon. Pretty shoddy weapon though. They were too light to be very useful.

She got down on her hands and knees and went over every inch of floor. The floor itself was oiled, hard-packed dirt. She found no items, no loose dirt, and no holes. Sara didn’t allow herself to get discouraged. There was something here that would allow her to escape. She just had to find it.