Chapter Eight
In which terror tastes like cough drops.
Ava…
Sweet baby Jesus, my head hasn't hurt this much since that crackhead in the ER slammed an IV stand into me trying to escape.
Opening my eyes doesn’t help anything. The lighting may be low, but it's stabbing through my eyeballs. It takes me a minute to realize I'm not in my old bedroom, with the sounds of Carla’s uncomfortably noisy sex leaking through the wall.
There was a new apartment…
A surge of nausea rises at my throat, nothing comes out but I dry heave for a moment until the door opens, and a woman hurries through.
“Take a breath,” she urges gently, rubbing my back and pulling out a basin and putting it next to me, just in case. “Slow, deep breaths. Do you remember where you are?"
“Is this…?” I'm trying to think. The fact that this is a hospital room is instantly soothing. The hospital is where I belong, right? Where I do my best work. But I'm here as a patient. The woman is so pretty. In her mid-fifties, maybe, with pale green eyes and long dark hair back into a sensible ponytail. She's wearing a white doctor's coat.
“I'm Dr. Ella Morozova,” she says. “My son, Dimitri Morozov, brought you here after he found you in the hallway at The McManus high-rise covered in blood and screaming for help. Do you remember that?”
The soothing cadence of her words is making my heart rate slow down, like it’s trying to match the calm melody of her voice. “I remember…”
There had been a giant standing in the hallway, phone to his ear. I saw icy blue eyes, wide with surprise as I barreled down the hallway, he dropped the phone and his arms reached out instantly to catch me. I remember the agony of the electricity rhythmically surging through me, frying my ganglia, and setting my nerve endings on fire. The involuntary twitch of my muscles, the spasms, yeah, I sure as hell remember that.
The laughter of that evil fuck who…
"I was kidnapped,” I say, forcing the words out. “I was lured into the apartment by a real estate agent who told me it was low-income housing.” I laugh a scratchy little laugh because my throat feels like I've been screaming for a week. “She even took me in through the back entrance. You know, how they make the lower income tenants do so the rich people don't see them?”
She nods with a right smile. “Yes, a charming building plan."
“We got to the apartment. I knew it couldn't possibly be low-income housing, it-” My shaking hand comes up to my forehead. It's icy cold and sweaty at the same time. “It was obviously a million-dollar property. At least a million. She gave me champagne to celebrate. We were drinking it while she was trying to distract me with the amenities in the kitchen."
How could I have been so fucking stupid?
“Mother, is she-” I recognize the man who strides into the room immediately. He’s the giant who rescued me in the hallway. “You're awake,” he says, a pleased smile spreading over even white teeth. “I'm Dmitri.” He’s as huge as I remember, 6”5 at least, broad shoulders, thickly muscled with dark hair. His eyes, though. I could never forget the color. Like the icy blue hue of a glacier, clear and cold.
"I remember you. From the hallway. You saved my life” I put my hand over my mouth, blinking the tears back from my stinging eyes. “I don’t know how I’m ever going to thank you for rescuing me.”
“You were doing a pretty good job by yourself," he says wryly. “I don't know how you managed to short circuit the death voltage with a scrap of rubber, but that was some beautiful work. That's what saved your life.”
Death voltage?It really would have killed me.
Nausea tries to claw its way back up my throat.
“Hey,” he says, seating himself on the chair next to the bed, “don't think about that right now. According to the search we ran on you, you are indeed Ava Blue, P.A. at Bellevue Hospital, well-respected by the medical staff. Is that how you knew exactly where to cut that slab of beef to make him bleed out in seconds?”
“All those things are correct,” I agree. What I want to say is that I’ve never killed anyone before. I’ve never even lost anyone on the operating table. But I watched the blood drain from that man and I can’t be sorry. Even now.
Dmitri is watching me with a faint smile, like he understands what I’m thinking. “Tell me what you remember after you were drugged.”
I don't want to think about it. I definitely don't want to say the words out loud and make them real. I want to pretend this is an especially shitty dream brought on by too much stress and the horrible coffee from the hospital's cafeteria.
“I don't…" I focus on my breathing for a moment. “Could I please have a drink of water?"
“Of course,” Dmitri says, there's already a pitcher of water on the table next to the bed. I can hear the clink of the ice as he pours some into a glass and he holds it up to my lips. The doctor has moved into the corner of the room, watching us thoughtfully. He holds the straw for me as I take a sip. Nothing has ever felt this good, the cold water soothing my sore throat and making it easier to draw a breath.
"You’re with the police? Which division?"
The two of them exchange a brief glance and he looks back at me with a smile. “Special investigations. We have reason to believe that you are the victim of a human trafficking ring. But it's not like anything we've seen before.”
