Explicit Instruction (27 page)

With a swift backhand
, her head snapped to the side, but Flick only brought her eyes back to Victor. ‘You’re one smart mouthed puta, aren’t you? You talk to Rushe like that?’

‘Only when I want
him to wash my mouth out.’

‘I can do that too,’ he sneered.

‘Oh I hope you try it,’ she said. ‘Please.’

A heavy clunk echoed in the space
, and the door Rushe had exited by opened. Flick held her breath, hoping it could be him coming back for her, but it wasn’t, it was John... and Shiv.

‘Do what you want,’
Victor said to them. ‘But she’s out the door tomorrow either way.’

Victor
glared at her, then marched through his men to exit.

‘What do you two want?’
Flick asked, uneasy by how Shiv limped. The vengeance he’d wanted could be his now. The only thing between him and the victory of punishing her was the width of this empty room.

‘We want it all
bitch... and we’re gonna get it from you,’ Shiv said.

Flick didn’t have much time for panic, and there was nowhere for her to run. So when John rushed at her, then dug his shoulder into her belly to fling her over his shoulder, there wasn’t a thing she could do to stop him.

Shiv
opened the door that Skeeve and Glen had used. But there was no way for Flick to stop the three of them from going in the same direction. Her attempts to kick loose were fruitless, because John’s arm just moved further around to clamp her legs against him. The corridor was narrow, but with her hands still bound behind her back she had no way to reach out.

Shiv
followed behind sneering at her, and she knew that whatever was about to happen he was looking forward to it. Screaming out, Flick knew no one could hear her. Likely no one but the women still trapped in that room, who most probably envied her liberation. But she wasn’t free. Flick was helpless, and Victor was doing all he could to remind Rushe that he was powerless too.

Victor
worried enough about Rushe’s identity to kidnap her, but to do it in the way that they had, with the van on the street, John and the others had to have watched her. They knew where she was. Flick had no reason to be on that street; no reason to work in that coffeehouse, or to go to the Italian place with Hayden. Which meant they knew where to pick her up. If they knew that then, they had to know that she wasn’t a cop. But that didn’t mean they were as confident about Rushe.

If he was a cop there would be some kind of protocol, some way he had to check in with whoever his s
uperior was. Holding onto the hope that he would get a message out, or his colleagues would worry enough to come in looking for Rushe, Flick’s captors brought her to a halt and unlocked a door. A door that from what she could hear had threes locks and further bolts.

While she couldn’t see the door
from her angle, she noted that this end of the black painted passage wasn’t lit at all. The only sign that anyone had been near this part of the basement were the fingernail marks Flick saw gouged into the floor. John was tall, and Flick was over his shoulder, and the light was almost non-existent. But she could clearly make out the scratched paint, and curled wood that had been exposed from the floor underneath.

‘That’s right,’
Shiv said, leaning in to whisper in her ear. ‘You ain’t never getting out of here.’

Flick screamed again
, but John moved forward, and they went into a dark room. A room with no light. Disorientated again, Flick tried to fathom something in the darkness, but in her panic she missed John tossing her down from his shoulder. The awakening was abrupt when she hit ice-cold water, freezing water that Flick immediately tried to clamber away from. But she was thrust back down into it, and then a light came on. The blinding white light made her call out again.

Soaked to the skin she shivered
, but she managed to get to her feet, and look around through her webbed lashes. Again, this room was painted black, and there was nothing here but a light on the ceiling and a round basin, six feet diameter and maybe two or three feet deep, the water lapped at her thighs. But when Flick turned to observe the room behind her, her attention stopped on something. A person, there in the corner, who sat on the floor, blank, motionless. Flick would have assumed the woman dead, if she didn’t blink through her blind stare.

‘Wanna know how long she’s been here?’
Shiv laughed. ‘Shame you’re not gonna get the boss’ mercy like she did. You wanna know why he kept her alive? Almost offed her a couple of weeks ago but he wants to make it slow, real painful, and he’s gonna make it count; make sure he got an audience. You’re not gonna get that, you’re out the back door.’

‘Shut up,’ John said
, and Flick looked back at the men to see John pull a canvas roll from his back pocket. ‘Got any phobias?’

‘Yes,’ she said
, and he glanced up in surprise. ‘The great outdoors and three course meals.’

John smiled. ‘You’re funny,’ he said. ‘We don’t get a lot of that.’

‘Worth asking,’ Flick said. ‘That’s why you asked about the phobias, right? You don’t try then you don’t succeed. I’m just adopting your philosophy.’

Her teeth chattered
, but Flick glanced back at the woman again. Her body was covered with nothing more than an old shirt, torn and stained, but the woman didn’t notice. Still, the blonde hair and the long legs made Flick think she’d been a beauty. But they’d broken her, just like they planned to try on her.

‘What’s her name?’ Flick asked.

‘Serendipity,’ Shiv said. John shoved him, then crouched to unroll the canvas. ‘What? Bitch isn’t gonna make it out of here alive, is she?’

‘Ironic
, isn’t it,’ John said, standing up again. ‘She could use a bit of serendipity... so could you.’

‘Why am I here?’ Flick asked
, then regretted it when Shiv lunged forward and grabbed her. he yanked her back to her knees in the water. ‘You’re gonna give us information.’

John shoved
Shiv aside and crouched in front of her. But when Flick thought John was going to be kinder, he took a handful of her hair and pushed her face into the water. The blood from her mouth, and probably from her wrists too, stained the water with crimson clouds ballooning in front of her burning eyes and soundless scream.

With a tug John brought h
er back up out of the water, and Flick sputtered and gasped. John kept hold of her hair with one hand, while with the other he took her wet hair from her mouth.

‘That’s a sneak preview,’ John said.

‘What is it?’ she gasped. ‘What is it that you want?’

‘Rushe,’
Shiv said.

Blinking past John
, Flick saw Shiv leaning against the wall, presumably struggling with his limp to stand without aid. That man wanted blood, her blood, and him standing there, looking on, with such a malevolent determination made the terror Flick had tried so desperately to suppress push up into her guts.

‘You have Rushe,’ she said to
Shiv. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘We work in shifts,’ John said. ‘You don’t give me what I want... he gets his turn.’

This time John let her go, and without her hands, Flick fell face first back under the water. Her attempt to push back up was thwarted when his hand hit the back of her head on its way back up. She shook, and writhed for oxygen, for a glimpse of air. This could be it. If she let the reality of what was happening, the inevitably of her fate, overtake her then she would die here, in this cold water, without ever getting the chance to reassure Rushe that none of this was his fault.

In the last
prison chamber, she’d been desperate for water, and now she was deprived of air. And she’d thought she was smart in telling Brianna to be careful what she wished for. Flick should have taken her own advice.

With his fist in her hair
, John retrieved her out of the ice-pool. Flick tried to shake the water from her body, but the shivering impeded her breathing too.

‘It’s cold,’ John said. ‘What do you think it will be
, the hypothermia or the drowning...? Drowning’s supposed to be a good way to go, that’s what I heard.’

‘I thought you were nice to everyone?’ Flick spat out.

‘Don’t wish me away,’ John said. ‘The water’s the kindest of the options around here. I’d tell you to ask Serendipity, but it’s been what...? Four months since she said a word.’

‘Four months?’ Flick
exhaled; suddenly her predicament wasn’t so bad. ‘You’ve had her here for four months?’

‘Closer to six now actually,’ John said. ‘
Are you going to tell me what I want to know?’

‘You haven’t asked me anything,’ Flick said.

‘What do you know about Rushe? What do you know about why he’s here?’

‘I know nothing,’ she said.

‘Who are you really? What is he, your boyfriend?’

‘Yes, he’s my boyfriend,’ she chattered. ‘Can I go now?’

‘What do you know? When he took you back to your daddy, where did you go?’

Flick didn’t know what she was supposed to say
. Though even if she had, she wouldn’t have said anything.

‘He took me to my father.’

John dunked her down into the water. ‘Wrong answer,’ he said when he pulled her back up, but Flick barely heard him through her own choking. ‘He was gone for days, where did you go?’

‘To my father.’

Again he held Flick under the water. Try as she might to wriggle free, she stayed put. His weight holding her down far outmatched her feeble strength in comparison. When John pulled her up, she spat out the water from her mouth. But it was the burning in her lungs that had her coughing. It didn’t matter what they did to her, Flick would let them hurt her, she would endure this. If she gave in, and told them everything she knew about Rushe, it wouldn’t matter. One way or the other they’d made it clear that she wasn’t getting out of this. Shiv was sure she wouldn’t get out of this room alive, and after the stories Rushe had told her on that first night in Dell’s Flick was sure that was true.

What she had done to Shiv in the shack was in defence of Rushe. What Rushe had done to him upstairs in this very building was in defence of her. After everything she’d been through Flick
was becoming familiar with the evil of this world. Talking wouldn’t keep her alive, all Flick could do now was hope for a miracle.

Rushe was somewhere here; he was on one of the floors above in the embrace of another woman. His torture was nothing on what she endured here with these men. But it didn’t seem that he was much more than a prisoner himself. Without the trust of Victor Rushe’s own card must be marked too.

‘Who did he talk to?’ John asked. ‘Does he have a contact? Who is he working with?’

Flick thought about the man in the diner, the one she recognised from Dell’s. Rushe could be working both
sides; maybe he was a double agent for one of Victor’s competitors. That could pay well because it was a hell of a risk, so she assumed he’d want danger money.

‘No one,’ she said
. John lugged her back to slap both of her cheeks. ‘You’re gonna die here, Felicity. Is he worth that? Worth dying for? You’re gonna die for a man who’s fucking another woman as we speak? Is he worth it?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s up there with Simone; she knows how to do things to a man that will make his eyes roll from their sockets.’

‘Says the voice of experience,’ Flick said. ‘Did
Victor put a gun to your head and make you have sex with her too? What’s wrong with the woman that you men don’t want to get naked with her? You should get her and Skeeve together.’

‘Tell me,’ John shouted. ‘Tell me who he spoke to, who was with him? Was he alone? Did he have a partner?’

‘I don’t know anything,’ she said. ‘We went to my father’s, and that’s it.’

John threw her backwards into the tub
. When she fell under, Flick scrambled to turn and get back out again. Just at the same instant, that she broke the surface, the door opened.

Spluttering
, Flick tried to regain her bearings, John was at the door talking to someone. Shiv hobbled over to join them, and with two men standing behind the one talking to John, Flick knew that rushing them would do no good.

John glanced over his shoulder at her
, and Shiv started to swear. ‘No way! I get my turn!’ Shiv exclaimed.

John continued to talk for a few seconds
, then shrugged and came back to her. ‘You’ve got a reprieve,’ John said. ‘For the time being.’

Without thought of kindness
, he dragged her out of the tub and across the floor to the other men. Unfortunately, Flick caught sight of the canvas from John’s pocket laid out on the floor. In it were a series of vicious metal tools that she dare not imagine uses for.

One of the men stopped to lock up the door
behind them again, and Flick wondered at the thoroughness. The woman was out of it. They’d broken her. They’d won. But Flick couldn’t imagine a reason why they would hold onto this one woman, or rather why she would be separated from the others and so well guarded.

Flick was taken back down the corridor
, but instead of going into the room with the other women Flick was taken past that door, and to another one on the opposite side of the corridor.

John fumbled with locks
, and all the men closed in around her. Flick hadn’t had this much attention when they went to the water room, so she didn’t know why they’d give her it now. Escape sounded like a great idea, but after her time in the basin, and with Skeeve, Flick wasn’t sure she had enough fight left in her to be effective.

When John got the door open
, someone cut her binds from her wrists, he swung the door back, and then she was shoved inside. No one followed this time, and the door was shut and locked behind her.

No one came into the room because th
ere was someone here, the room was occupied already; and its tenant looked like thunder itself.

The added protection wouldn’t have been adequate if he’d chosen to fight his way through the others. But it was unlikely they would get far out of the property when there were so many variable
s, and most likely other men on the premises – men who would shoot to kill.