“Then stay out of it!” The guard grabbed the woman’s leg and pulled the crawling woman back to slap her again.
Blood trickled from the side of her mouth, and she wiped it away, sobbing. The guard reached for the woman’s purse, but with a screech, she clutched it to her chest. Muttering, the guard easily shoved her to the side with one arm and emptied it. An array of makeup, business cards, and a tape recorder shaped like an external battery dropped to the ground. The listening device would fool anyone with an untrained eye, but even Aiden’s own paranoia toward the law saw through the disguise. The guard smashed the recorder against the floor and picked up a business card. “Mindy Albertsen. Oh, I see. A reporter at one of those gossip news outlets.”
“I thought there was a story here. I’m a new reporter! I didn’t know any better!” she wailed. “Please, let me go, good sir! I didn’t mean anything of it!”
She leveled her gray eyes to Aiden and threw herself at his feet. “Please—tell him I mean no harm!”
“He is a prisoner, just like you. You are foolish to think that he can provide you any help.”
Aiden flinched, watching her crawl to the guard and hug his legs only to get kicked backward. She sobbed into her hands. Her white daisy print dress was soiled with splotches of dirt, and green streaks like the color of grass stained her white gloves.
The guard pulled her to her feet, and her legs stumbled on her black-heeled boots. He grabbed a ring that hung by a gold chain from around her neck. “And is this secretly recording us, too?” he demanded. He tried to pull the ring away, but Mindy screeched and bit at the man’s hands. “Give it to me!” he roared.
“It’s a ring. It’s just an ordinary ring. It’s important to me—you can take anything else in my purse if you want, but this is personal.” Mascara streamed down her cheeks. Every time she wiped her face or felt her busted lip, she spread her bright red lipstick across her face.
“Give it!”
“You’re not helping your case if it is a recorder of some sort. What if it’s getting listened in on?” Aiden could not believe he needed to point that out to the guard, and his own self-preservation screamed at his stupidity. However, he continued. “Besides, you already have her.”
The guard cursed in Chinese and walked toward the metal table in the back of the room. Mindy dropped to the ground, cradling the ring in her hands.
Aiden’s heart sunk as the guard opened the drawer and retrieved one of the many needles and chemicals Mr. Yang left behind. “Can’t you just let her go?” he pleaded.
“I won’t tell anyone! I don’t even understand what’s happening here, so Ican’ttell anyone!” Eyes wide, she crawled closer to the guard.
“You’re not going to kill her, are you? Don’t do that!” His limbs roared in sudden energy. Aiden slammed his wrists against the metal bindings, and his legs tried to move, but he only managed to turn his chair over sideways. “Don’t!”
“I can’t believe you have the time to worry about others,” the guard scoffed, preparing a needle.
“What…what is that?” Mindy stammered.
“It’s a drug.” The guard slipped on his gloves. “You won’t remember much of anything with this, so don’t worry. This is the best option for everyone here.”
Aiden’s face paled. He opened his mouth to continue protesting, but the room's chaos abruptly dissipated. In seconds, he watched Mindy’s terrified eyes calm. Tears stopped dropping, and her whimpers disappeared. The skin on her face smoothed. She stood up. As the guard turned around to administer the needle, she calmly ducked underneath him and positioned herself to throw the much larger man over her with little effort. She placed her right knee against the guard’s neck, and the heel on her left foot retracted to reveal a knife, which she promptly stabbed into the man’s hand.
The guard’s eyes and veins bulged, and she swiftly picked the needle from the ground and jammed it into the man’s neck. The heel closed around the knife, and she walked over to the table where he had prepared it.
Aiden could only stare from his place on the floor as the guard babbled and gasped.
“Yes, this would be what you all use to do your dirty work.” She held the liquid to the light. “It shuts the lungs down slowly, so you feel like you’re drowning.”
She swept her blonde hair to the side. Her heels clacked against the clean ground, and she grabbed the guard’s gun. She checked the bullets and swept her purse from the ground, only to turn it inside out and open another pouch. “Magic gadgets are such great inventions, don’t you think?” She winked at Aiden and attached a silencer to the gun.
Hovering over the guard, she held the syringe. “You have a choice here while you’re still able to think. Do you want to live and suffer in your final moments? Or do you want to die quickly?”
“Kill…me…” the guard croaked.
She fired the gun without blinking. Blood pooled around his head. She dropped the syringe to the ground and turned her attention to Aiden.
Oh my god, who is she?Grunting, Aiden shoved himself and the chair back. The metal legs screeched against the ground.Why is she here?The handcuffs bit into his wrists.Did one of the family heads decide to hire her and have me killed?
She smiled at him. A foxlike smile.
The roar of blood in Aiden’s ears faded. The smile tickled his memories.
All those different women pictured hanging by his brother’s side with different hair, different eyes, and even different noses. Different except for the smile that resembled a laughing fox.
He continued panting, but his heart soared. He wondered. He had been wondering. He never stopped wondering who the woman was. He wondered if she would appear in that sparkling lime green dress he found in his brother’s bedroom. “…is it Celia?” He recalled his brother’s cold order to shoot the kidnapper. “Or is it actually Diane?”
