The Color of Jade (Jade Series Book 1) (36 page)

“Kids?”

“Yeah, orphaned kids and babies, whose parents were killed. I know of at least fifty, maybe more. The kids I saw were twelve and younger, but I know kids between the ages of thirteen and seventeen were there somewhere. The boys were training to be fighters, the girls… Used for something else,” I paused, as my own words registered. Olivia looked on, waiting for me to give her more. “Damian said something about
they didn’t have to go far, that they would get out.
Damian had a planned escape route and a truck waiting for us under a bridge. Maybe they had a place they planned on taking the kids if they needed to escape quickly with them.
”

“Really?  I’ll see what I can find out.”

“Thank you.”

Over the next few days, my reservations lifted some as my trust grew for Charles and Olivia, but kept quiet about what Denny said. Their moods lightened with mine and I wondered if they too, sensed a change in the air.

***

I tried to wake but I wasn’t sure why. The potent smell of liquor and cigarettes grew heavy in the air. The touch of invasive, rough hands aroused me from my sleep as I heard his heavy breaths next to my face. Suddenly, my senses heightened and I jerked into wakefulness when I realized, I wasn’t dreaming.

He grabbed me suddenly and covered my mouth. Through widened, distraught eyes, I saw the harsh planes of Damian’s face, inches from mine. His lack of restraint grew. Induced by alcohol to carnal cravings expressed through wolfish eyes. My insides coiled with bile. I tried to scream. Fear engulfed me. He pressed his hand against my mouth and nose. I couldn’t breathe. Tight. Constricting. I thought would pass out, and then he removed his hand.

“I’ll do it again if you make a sound!”

With a nod of my head, I quickly agreed as my heart pounded up in my throat. I didn’t make a sound. I cringed as his rough hand brazenly touched my cheek. Down my jawline. His fingers latched around my neck. He squeezed tight enough to make it harder to breath then put his mouth on mine as he forced himself onto me.

“Stop Damian… Please!” I pleaded, barely above a whisper. “No more, don't do this.”

He squeezed my neck tighter and I gasped for air. “Shut up!”  Damian said. Hostile and aggressive, his lips attacked mine. I turned my face away from him and pinched my eyes closed.

“Every time you close your eyes at night, you will think of me! You will see me in your dreams! Whether I am here or not, I will be there in your mind every night for the rest of your life!”

Tears brimmed over my lashes. I let them fall quietly down my cheek. He released one hand from my neck. The violent nature of his groping left me paralyzed. My heart sank into the pit of my stomach. I drew in a sharp breath.
I couldn't go through this again.
Then as I lost all hope, I saw a light come on down the corridor.

“Denny!” I screamed!

The heaviness of Denny’s footsteps echoed against the jail walls as he ran down the hall. I cried out as Damian struck me then he tightened his grip on my neck. I heard keys jingle. I struggled for air. The pressure in my head grew exponentially. I clawed at his hands and hungered for breath. Sounds of Olivia and Charles voices faded distantly at their desperate attempts to encourage me to hold on. Blackness grew thick in the dark night. I started to fade.

Denny pulled Damian off me. I gasped and coughed as I struggled to breathe. The sudden surge of air no less painful than the absent flow seconds before. I heard sounds of a struggle then Denny dragged Damian out of my cell and took him away.

I lay there, awake, afraid to move, afraid to fall asleep. Afraid he would find me in my dreams, just as he promised. The feel of his fingers still present on the place around my neck. Everywhere he touched me my skin bristled with panic. I stared at the ceiling, fearing his return before I finally let my eyes close.

***

I waited for the day to resume as normal but Denny never returned and breakfast never came. After hours of dreading what would come next, I heard a door open. Footsteps headed down the hall and stopped in front of my cell.

My heart froze in my chest when I saw Damian. A black eye and a cut lip marred his face. He stared at me. His icy, cold eyes darkened with hatred as they locked on mine. Rubin stood next to him along with Jasper. I pressed myself into the corner as he rushed into my cell. He grabbed me and I screamed. A blood-curdling scream. Desperation set in. I thrashed and begged, and desperately pleaded for them to leave me alone. I grabbed the bars to Charles cell. I clung to it as he helplessly gripped the bars on the other side. His eyes wide, darting.

“Hang on! Be strong, Jade!” Charles yelled, as Damian pried my fingers off the bars.

They yanked me down the hallway. I writhed and squirmed under their firm grasp. My wrists ached from his vice-like grip. I continued to scream. Tears burned my eyes. My throat raw like I swallowed sandpaper as he carried me past the other prisoners. They all stood at their cell doors and watched them take me away. “NO!”  I cried, whipped with defeat. Breathless and tired. My determination and will crushed. My desperate sounds echoed through the block then down the grey hallway. I knew where we headed.

Damian sneered at me as I looked around the familiar shower room. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Denny. He knelt on his knees with his hands cuffed behind his back with two men on either side. They held onto him and forced him to look at me. Swollen, and black and blue to the point I hardly recognized him.

“This is what happens when you turn others against me!” Damian said. The razor sharp spray of the fire hose cut fiercely as Damian directed it at Denny. Many times before, I felt it and I knew the pain. To have red welt-like cuts all over your body, so many and so excruciatingly painful that the slightest touch became unbearable.

“No! Please don’t!”  I cried. Damian handed off the hose to Jasper and returned me down the hall to the cement room, my previous dungeon.

“You turned my own brother against me!”

“No, I didn’t!”

“I told you I would find out!  Do you have any idea what you’ve done? What you've started?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

“Oh, Jade. You think you had it bad before…”

I woke crouched in the corner pressed against the cold cement wall, barely aware in a dull, numbing fog. I tried to open my eyes, but couldn’t.  My mind churned slowly, minutes passed by like hours as I tried to place where I was. Fear and confusion paralyzed my reaction as I struggled to bring my cuffed, trembling hands to my face and touch my eyes. A thick cloth constricted tightly, a blindfold. I sighed as I rested my head against the roughly textured cement as the last remaining shreds of fight left me and escaped into obscurity.

Awareness encompassed me suddenly and I gasped. The tangible abrasion of rage thickened the air stomping out the usual damp, musky stench of my cell. I wasn’t alone. My heart beat fiercely against my chest. I couldn’t breath as fear consumed me, constricted by the ever present eyes that peered from somewhere in the darkness. A devastatingly familiar voice too close, way to close, whispered in my ear and I knew pain, persistent merciless pain, would soon follow. “Let’s go, you know the drill.”

***

How many more weeks… months… could I live through this! I had no idea how much time had gone by. Why did Damian have this unrelenting desire to hurt me, to torture me as he did? He won! I told him he won! Wasn’t he happy with that? He took me. I'm sure Gage paid for it every day when he woke up, reminded where I was. I didn't fight him, I didn't resist anymore as I prayed for an end. One way or another, I needed this vicious cycle of drug induced lethargy and disjointed delusions followed by pain and anguish by his hand to end.

“I’m sorry. I’ll be good, Damian. I promise.”

“It’s too late for that, Jade.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“Do you think I can trust you now? You played me the whole time!”

Denny hung by his wrists from the ceiling and Jasper and Rubin dropped him to the floor. He struggled to his knees as Damian set me in front of him. My body drenched, water dripped from a heavy curl that hung in my face. I didn’t bother to fight back. With the sting and the red welts still present, I ignored my own pain as I watched Denny suffer through his.

My hair follicles stood on end as I heard the click of a gun and watched as Damian loaded one bullet into it. My insides turned brittle as he spun the barrel and pointed it to my head. Jasper did the same and held it to Denny’s. With my hands over my ears, I pinched my eyes closed and screamed inside my mind, shattering the last of my will.

“Please, don’t…!” I begged, panic leaked into my voice, but he laughed.

Deep despair overpowered me and I cried as I realized this was my fate. I would never see Gage. I would never see the light of day. I would never see Emery, Trey, or Kane again. I’m sure they tried but I had to accept the fact that they weren’t coming.

The small sliver of hope I harbored dissolved into no hope at all, as I resorted to death one last time. I don’t know why I let Casey convince me to hold on. No one would come and I knew that now.

Click! I heard the simultaneous empty click of the misfired guns and I jumped out of my skin. I looked at Denny as he watched me through grief stricken eyes.

“I am so sorry, Denny! You’re here because you helped me,” I cried. “You should’ve looked the other way.”

“No,” he said, “I’m sorry we didn’t get you out.”

Click! I jumped again. My heart pounded in my chest and I squeezed my eyes shut as I sobbed. I couldn’t stand it! I looked at Denny with anguish crushed into the crevices of his face. Then a gun went off, and his body jerked before me. I gasped, horrified and sickened as my stomach wrenched painfully. His eyes clouded, muted instantly by death. Life left him as his body fell and he lay motionless. Dark red blood spilled onto the grey tile floor, his face diluted to the color of bleached bone.

“Denny!” I screamed. I grabbed his arms and shook him. They shot him! A strangled sound escaped as my body racked with sobs at the devastating realization, they killed him! My heart plundered in my chest as hands pounced on me and drug me across the floor away from Denny. I screamed and kicked. I swung my fists to anyone who I could reach. It was only by chance that Denny was dead instead of me. Rubin and Jasper held me as I stared down the revolver Damian pointed at me. He pulled the trigger. Click again. I sobbed as my heart galloped out of my chest. My head whirled as the room spun. Two more left.

“Stop this!” I screamed, as a satisfied smirk crept across Damian's face. “Just get it over with!”

The door suddenly burst open and men filled the room. Overwhelming chaotic yells, echoing shouts from every direction. Damian swung the gun around wildly and fired at the men in the doorway.  The deafening sound of the gun rang through my ears as he shot the bullet meant for me. Shards of shattered tile splintered into the air as it hit the wall.

“Back off or I’ll shoot her!” Jasper held onto me and jammed the gun to my head. The hard steel of the barrel dug into my scalp.

“Drop your guns!” Damian yelled, his gun pointed at anyone who moved.

The yelling continued. I thought I heard Gage. My head spun. Then I saw him. Gage stood with a rifle pointed, his eyes heated, fixed on Jasper who held me. Casey was there too, along with Kane, guns pointed.

I grabbed Jaspers empty gun and pulled it away from my head. I struggled to get free. “The guns are empty!” I screamed. At that moment, Damian and Rubin pulled metal shelves stocked with towels crashing to the floor and ran through the side door. Metal screeched against the tile floor as Kane and Casey shoved it aside and ran after them. I heard a shot go off. Then another down the hall.

I struggled to get away from Jasper as Gage lunged at him. He let go as he fought to defend himself and I fell to the floor. The air punched from my lungs, I gasped. I curled up and covered my head as the two of them fought around me. I pulled myself to my knees, crawled to the wall and leaned against it. Dazed, I watched them fight. With a fleeting glance, I saw they were the only ones left in the room besides me.

Denny’s lifeless body lay in a pool of blood, the shower room floor, pink with blood diluted by water.  I followed the red trail to the other side of the floor and saw a rifle. They fought hard with fierce frenzy, determined to kill each other. Clenched fists flew, punches landed as they brutally attacked each other in a tangled brawl. The battle wouldn’t end until one killed the other.

I staggered as I tried to stand. The heaviness of my legs felt like walking through waves from the ocean and I fell to the floor. I crawled over to the gun and picked it up. Braced against the wall I aimed at Jasper. My arms trembled and swayed from the weight of the gun. I blinked my eyes, then rubbed them with the back of my hand as I tried to focus. He staggered backwards from Gage's brutal blow and stepped into my view. Without a pause to think, I pulled the trigger and prayed I hit him. The deafening gunshot boomed loud in the room. My ears rang, replaying the blast over and again in my head and then faded to eerie, ringing silence.

Jasper looked at me and then down to his chest that bled from a gaping hole. He staggered two steps and fell to the ground. He reached out, his hand inches from me. I tried to press myself into the wall as I held my breath. Jasper gasped, struggled to breathe as blood oozed from the side of his mouth and flowed freely from the center of his chest. The color leached from his face, life, taken from him. For the second time in minutes, I watched existence seep from a man’s eyes.

I gripped the rifle, my trembling hands white around the knuckles. A strangled whimper escaped me as my hazy eyes met Gage. Briefly stunned he stared at me, and then in two steps moved to my side. He took the gun from my hands and set it down. He collapsed to his knees, desperation and relief leaked into his eyes while they searched mine. Dazed, I tried to register his face as he drew me to him. His body shook and he held me as if he would never let go.

“Gage…”

“You’re alive,” Gage said, over again. His voice wrought with emotion as he brushed my hair off my face. “I thought I lost you…”

“You came…”

“I wouldn't stop until I found you.”

Exhaustion devoured me as the tears fell. Months of terror and fear drained from me as sobs racked my body. I couldn’t believe he held me in his arms and though I didn't feel worthy of him, I didn't want him to let go. A sense of calm moved over me. The two of us, submerged in the same silence. The faint sounds of blood water trickling down a drain and my cries that escaped me, magnified off the dense shower walls. I raised my head and reached my hand to his cheek, wet from his tears. My fingers brushed over his face. His moist blue eyes closed to absorb my touch and he exhaled a ragged breath as if a heavy weight lifted and he could breathe again.

“I'm taking you home,” he said, as he pulled back to look over my condition. His eyes anguished.

“Home?”

My jaw trembled, as I looked through heavy lids, unable to convince myself he sat before me.

“Yeah, it's over, Jade. You are coming home,” he said, as he cupped my cheeks in the palms of his hands as he looked at me tenderly with moistened eyes, and then crushed me to his chest again tangling his fingers in my hair and I sank into him. With little effort, he picked me up and slung the rifle over his shoulder, then walked past the bodies of Jasper and Denny.

I wrapped my arms tightly around his shoulders and buried my face into his neck. He carried me through the door and weaved down the maze of hallways. I drifted in and out. The sway from him carrying me, calming.

Light shone bright through my translucent eyelids and I looked up. My mind, slow to register the daylight that filtered through a wall of windows. Daylight, something I hadn’t seen in a long time. A knot grew in my throat.

The hallway opened up to the front entryway of the city building. The entire front of the building, glass that stretched three stories high. One of the frames of glass shattered and open to the outside, glass all over the floor. My guess, their way in.

I heard men’s voices and we met Joel at the front lobby. “We have this area secured but Chale says they are closing in out there, we’re going to have a hell of a time getting out if we don't move now,” Joel said. “Kane radioed in, him and Casey went to get Trey.”

“What are we up against?” Gage asked, as he set me gingerly on a couch, never taking his eyes from me as goose bumps traveled up my arms. I shivered uncontrollably.

“The building across the street here in the front is secure, but the whole right side of the city building and that street is covered with them still. We’ve got a serious gun fight ahead, we’ll need to take cover most of the way,” Joel said, and glanced at me then scanned the room as he added, “its pretty cold out there.”

With nothing to cover my drenched body, Gage took off his jacket revealing a white tee shirt under a black bulletproof vest. The sleeves stretched tight against his biceps as he wrapped his jacket around me. I couldn’t help but look at my frail arm next to his. He noticed too, by the look he gave me but didn’t say anything as he gingerly brushed his thumb over my hollowed cheek.

With widened eyes, I gasped suddenly, startled by his touch, and with a fleeting glance met his soft blue eyes that settled on me. I averted my gaze down between my arm and his as I followed the curvature of his muscled chest and shoulder, past his strong, shadowed jaw line and settled once again on his endearing glance. He looked so big, healthy and strong compared to me.

He put the jacket over my shoulders and I slid my arms through the sleeves warmed by his body and pulled it close me.

“The trucks can't make it in so we'll have to go farther than I originally planned,” Joel said, as he walked up to us hurriedly with something in his hands. “I don't know how effective this blanket will be since we need to walk out on foot.”

He shook it open then quickly set it over me. I gasped as I reacted suddenly to Joel's movement and jerked away from him.  My heart raced as I covered my face and buried it into Gage's chest. Shocked by my reaction I slowly turned back towards him to see he looked just as shocked.

Tears welled up in my eyes. “I’m… sorry, I …” I said, as I choked through my instant tears. I suddenly felt conflicted, confused, an automatic reaction to protect myself from the beatings, forced actions and torture, practiced well over the last six months, but unnecessary now.

“No… I’m sorry… I shouldn’t have done that,” Joel replied, stunned. He stood there and looked at me for a moment then glanced at Gage as he sheltered me with his arms. “We need to move.”

Gage just nodded as they communicated something else between them, unspoken but I saw the bewilderment in their eyes, then Joel walked back over by the door and looked out.

“Are you okay?” He asked, visibly concerned.

“I’m sorry…” I hesitated, unsure how I felt, unsure how to explain my reaction. “I don't know why…”

“Don't be. There is nothing you need to apologize for, okay?”

“Okay.”

“We need to go. Are you ready?” Gage asked. I nodded. “We are going to get shot at. Once we start going we can’t stop until we get out of their range of fire. We are meeting Kane about a mile up the road.”

Weakness seeped through me like a thick dark fog consuming a vast field.  “I don’t know if I can,” I cried, but it sounded more like a pathetic whine.

He gave me a look of disbelief. “I’ve never known you say you can’t… Jade. This is almost over.” He checked his rifle and made sure it was loaded. He grabbed a handgun from his belt and checked it too.