He slammed the door and walked briskly around the car. Through the window, Ledger watched as Hark staggered back into the car behind him, one hand pressed to his stomach. There wasn’t a lot of blood, less than Ledger would have expected. Still, he left an impressive smear on the Toyota he’d tripped into as he slid to the ground.
Hark opened and closed his mouth like a guppy. His legs were bent under him, and his glasses were crooked on his face.
The driver’s side door opened, and Syder got in. He put his seat belt on, black fabric stretched over his chest, and Ledger wanted to laugh at the propriety of it.
Instead, he watched through the windshield as Hark died on the ground while Syder started the car and threw it into reverse.
“You didn’t have to…” Ledger stopped to swallow stickily and wet his lips. He’d gotten so used to the taste of salt he thought nothing of it until he saw the blood drip onto his hands. “You didn’t have to do that.”
Syder blew through the gates with a dismissive wave to the men manning the parking booth. He turned out onto the street.
“I couldn’t trust him,” Syder said. “If he’d betray you, he’d betray me. And I can’t have people around me that I can’t trust.”
“You have a lot to lose,” Ledger got out.
“Exactly,” Syder said.
The car hit a pothole, and Ledger gagged as the pain jarred up his spine to clench around his brain. His vision swam in and out of gray limbo as he tried to stay awake. Syder spun the wheel as he turned out onto the road. Ledger braced his elbow against the door and pushed himself up, teeth gritted against the sickening slosh of pain in his head. He slapped his hand weakly against the window, blood smeared over the glass, as he tried to get someone’s attention.
The car swerved toward the sidewalk and then back as Syder corrected. He reached over and grabbed a handful of Ledger’s hair again to drag him back.
“Give it up,” he said. “They didn’t listen to you last time. Do you think they will now? Besides, what are they going to do? Call the police?”
Ledger made a pained, shrill noise in the back of his throat. Having his hair pulled hurt alotworse when the scalp was already split and bloody. He threw himself forward and tried to grab the wheel.
The car swerved again as he fought Syder for control—enough that it mounted the curb, the concrete scraping along the bottom—and someone blasted their horn at them.
“You little bastard,” Syder gritted out. He clenched one hand on the wheel, fingers bone white as he gripped it, and grabbed hold of Ledger’s shirt with the other. With a grunt of effort, he shoved Ledger back onto the other side of the car and pinned him against the door. “This could have been easier.”
He let go of Ledger, pulled his arm back, and grabbed something from the center console. A syringe. He flicked the lid off the needle. It bounced off the dashboard and dropped down into the footwell. Ledger tried to grab Syder’s arm, but Syder just ignored him as he jabbed the needle into Ledger’s thigh.
Ledger wokeup choking on his own blood and the smell of sweat.
He tried to roll over, but he couldn’t. The best he could manage was to twist his head to the side as he coughed so that he could push the clots of blood and phlegm out of his mouth with his tongue.
Ledger tried to sit up again.
This time he worked out why he couldn’t as the restraints dug into his wrists. He twisted around as much as he could to try and see. Metal handcuffs braceleted both his wrists—the bruising and raw welts explained the tingling numbness in his fingers too—and disappeared under the table. He couldn’t see his feet, but when he kicked at them, the restraints felt like rope.
Ledger lay there and tried to breathe through it.
In.
Out.
In.
He panicked.
Sour adrenaline flooded his system as fear made his lungs seize up and blood pulse in his ears. He kicked and wrenched at his restraints in terror, metal clattering on metal and his heels clanking against the end of the table. It didn’t do him any good. That just made him panic more. In the end, it was the sickly, greasy pain in his head that made him stop. It was that, or he felt like his head would explode from the pressure building up inside it.
Ledger went limp. The back of his throat tasted like blood and sour water, and he could feel the blood in his head push against his eyeballs. That probably wasn’t a good sign, he thought groggily.
He closed his eyes and tried to think.
It wasn’t easy. The pain, the fear, and the slow, beer-salty stink of sweat that felt like it was soaking into his pores kept interrupting any time he strung two thoughts together. Finally, he opened his eyes and looked around to acknowledge what he already knew.
He was in Bell’s basement.
