“I don’t have one,” she said.
“Everyone has a phone.”
“I don’t, and I can’t ‘hand you’ anything anyway, buddy. You zip-tied my hands. Cut the plastic off, and I’ll show you I don’t have one.”
“Give me your phone,” he repeated like a dolt.
“I don’t have one and I can’t! And where would I hide a phone in this dress?”
“Give me your phone, or I’ll come back there and take it.”
“Are you even listening to me?I said I don’t have a phone!”
Kir Sokolov made good on his promise and crawled to the back of the van to frisk her.
He found her phone in the pocket of the white, cape-like jacket that matched her dress.
He asked her in a really snotty tone of voice, “If you don’t have a phone, then what is this?”
Dree cussed him out while he retreated, laughing, to the passenger seat of the van, where he stripped the SIM card out of the phone, crushed it, and then threw the phone on the floor of the van and stomped on it.
The sharp crack of shattering glass filled the van, inspiring Dree to cuss him out again. She wasn’t made out of money. She didn’t have the cash to go around buying new phones all the time because some jerkface drug dealer broke hers.
It was a good thing the guy hadn’t continued pawing her after he found her ratty old cell phone, though, and it was another good thing that Dree had an ‘ample bosom for feeding babies,’ as her grandmother had noted oneverypossible occasion.
Sharp corners poked her boobs inside her bra.
That jerk Kir Sokolov said, “We know Francis Senft gave you the money he stole from us. Not only did he tell us you have it—”
Dree shouted over him, “He onlytoldyou that because you weretorturinghim. I have no idea what he did with it. He probably snorted it all.I don’t have it.”
“—we also have bank records from his phone showing he transferred money to banking accounts in your name.”
“Well, then he must’ve opened up those bank accounts under my name and without my knowledge becauseI never saw any money.”
“Webelieveyou can access it.”
“And Ibelievein the goddamn Easter Bunny, but I don’t see anyeggs!”
He stopped talking to her after that.
The van didn’t drive far through the nighttime French countryside. Within an hour, the driver turned into a gravel parking lot, and then he drove the van into a warehouse.
Kir and the other goon hauled her out of the rear doors of the van, squeezing her upper arms and crushing her flesh against her bones until she knew they’d left bruises.
She wasn’t going to whimper, though. Farm girls didn’t whine.
Large boxes stacked to the rafters towered over the small, white delivery vehicle that they’d shoved her into.
Florescent lights striped the ceiling far above.
“Where are we?” Dree demanded, thinking she should collect evidence for when she escaped so these guys would go to jail.
The driver guy laughed at her. “Nowhere you need to know about,” he said in Russian-accented English.
Kir said, “We have a computer here that you can use to transfer the money from your accounts to ours.”
“I told you, I didn’t open those accounts. How would I know what the account numbers are?”
