Pearson gives my bandage a quick check and nods before taking all my weight as we slowly hobble out of the room. I can already hear raised voices down the hall. Everyone must be in the living area or kitchen. I don’t think I would’ve been able to make it if we had to walk to the elevator and go to another floor.
Tessa is the first to see us when we appear. “Rafe, what do you think you’re doing?”
Conversation stops and all heads turn my way.
I blame the drugs for what comes out of my mouth. “Consider me Inigo Montoya.”
Declan, Liam, Keane, and Jax all look at me like I’ve lost my mind.
Tessa laughs loud and long, apparently getting myPrincess Bridereference, and the men look at her with confusion.
“More like Westley when he confronts Prince Humperdinck,” she replies and rolls her eyes at the guys when they remain clueless. “Seriously? Forget it,” she huffs. “I suppose you don’t happen to have a direct way of communicating with Voldemort, or some floo powder that will take us right to him?” she says to me.
“What if I said I might?”
Turning back to her laptop, she waves me over. “Then you, Rafael, just became my best-estfriend.”
“Did any of you understand that?” Declan asks the guys, and they shrug but move out of the way when Pearson helps me over to the couch where Tessa is sitting.
I pick up whoever’s cell phone is sitting on the coffee table. “Can this be traced?”
It must be Tessa’s phone because she answers, “If it can, they’ll think the phone is calling out from Jakarta.”
Good enough. I hand the phone to her so she can unlock it. It takes four rings before someone answers, and I’m honestly surprised the number still works.
“I had a feeling I’d be hearing from you,” a raspy voice says in Spanish.
Chapter 31
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. After being knocked out again, I come to, chained to the ceiling with my arms over my head and my toes barely able to touch the floor beneath me. Now I’m severely pissed. At least my clothes are still on, so I take that as a win. I’m in the same room being kept company by Rita’s corpse, her eyes clouded over with death and her body lying at an odd angle on the floor in front of me. I wish I could conjure up even a morsel of sympathy for her, but it doesn’t come. She was stupid to think that she could make deals with the likes of Julio or Alejandro and come out of it unscathed. Men like them aren’t honorable.
I tilt my head back as far as I can and look up at where the chains are connected to the ceiling. The finger Alejandro broke throbs and has swollen up like a fat purple and blue sausage. I won’t be able to bend it, so making a fist or even using that hand properly is a big nope. The chains rattle and clang together like wind chimes when I give them a testing tug. If they aren’t bolted into a cross beam or other support structure, there may be a chance that I can dislodge them from their tether.
Using a move I learned on the salmon ladder, this really cool contraption where you hang from a bar and try to jump it up rung by rung, I arch my spine and swing my legs back, then coil my core tight and lift my body in the air. I let all my weight pull me back down with a jolt, and the resulting force shakes the chains and causes a rain of plaster dust to fall down like snow upon my head. My mood brightens when I see cracks in the ceiling around the chain mount. Unfortunately, what I did was loud, so I’m not surprised when the door to the room opens and some guy wearing a wife-beater, his jet-black hair slicked back into a low ponytail, comes in to investigate.
I let my body relax and hang, giving him a brilliant smile in greeting.
“Hi. I’m Andie. Is there any chance you’d unlock the cuffs on these chains so I can go to the bathroom?”
He places his hand on the gun strapped at his side and comes closer. I’m hit with the overpowering smell of booze and weed wafting off his clothes and skin. If he’s drunk and high, I can work with that to my advantage.
“Um…cuarto de baño?” I ask, trying to remember how to say bathroom in Spanish. That’s another thing I’m going to put on my if-I-make-it-out-of-here-alive list. I’m finally going to get Rafe to teach me the language. It shouldn’t be too hard to convince him to talk dirty to me in Spanish while he fucks me. Best idea ever.
Taking another step forward, the dark-haired man stops when he sees Rita. He bends down over her body and starts tearing off her jewelry and pocketing it. Well, that’s disrespectful as hell.
“Hey! Try to focus. Bathroom!” I say to him, and his attention snaps back to me. I don’t like the look in his eyes when they scan over my body.
He says something, but of course, I don’t comprehend the meaning. Licking his cracked lips, he comes another step closer. I try not to react when his hand grabs my tit and squeezes. I know exactly where this is headed, but I won’t give the slimy fucker an opportunity to finish. I quickly draw my legs up and crash my knees together, hoping they crush the sides of his head at his temples. The head has a weak point in that area that the hard skull doesn’t protect. Hitting the temple just right can cause the underlying middle meningeal artery to rupture. If untreated, it will lead to death because the blood has nowhere to flow but into the brain.
When he stumbles back, stunned, I wrap my legs around his neck and push my right knee as hard as I can against the side of his head at the ear. The celery-crack of sound lets me know I just broke the vertebrae in his neck and severed his spine. His eyes are still open and wide when his body collapses to the floor in a heap at my feet.
I look over at the door. No one has come in to investigate the noises I’m sure that little stunt made. Not letting that particular gift horse go to waste, I start hopping my body to pull on the chain. Surely, Alejandro or another of his men must hear the racket I’m creating. But still, no one comes. It takes twenty attempts, but finally, the bolt comes loose from the ceiling and the chains fall, as do I. I’m able to duck out of the way before I’m hit over the head, but I’m not fast enough to get completely clear, and the heavy metal links bounce off my left shoulder and arm, creating a bloom of pain in their wake when my shoulder dislocates. Fucking great. I’ll need to pop it back into place first. Once I do that, I can get the guy’s gun and use it to, hopefully, shoot off the cuffs that bind me to the chains without also shooting my hand or having a ricochet bullet hit me.
My legs are numb from dangling for a long period of time, and I have no choice but to crawl across the floor until I can pull myself up on the doorframe. I’ve seen movies where this works, so I cinch my eyes closed, lock my jaw, and whack my shoulder as hard as I can against the frame of the door.
Teeth dig into my bottom lip to stop myself from screaming because,holy shit, that hurt. But somehow, it worked. Thank you,Lethal Weapon. I poke my head out to see if anyone is coming. Not a soul in sight. No noises. Nothing. Where is everyone? Surely, Alejandro didn’t leave me with just one man standing guard.
I stumble over to the dead guy and take his gun. Feeling along the calf of my right leg, I’m still surprised to find Jax’s knife there. If only I could find Keane’s rings just as easily. I can’t take the chance of searching the place for them. My priority needs to be to escape as quickly as possible. At least now I have two weapons.
