He left me alone in the office, and for a while I just stood there, listening to the hum of the building and the muffled voices outside. I let myself feel the pain, catalog it, make it mine. Then I went back to the med room, found my cut, and slipped it over the bandages. It still smelled like her.
I sat on the edge of the bed, hands shaking, and started cleaning my Glock with methodical, slow movements. My fingers stuck to the oil and powder residue, but I kept at it, every click and slide a promise.
Tomorrow, we’d ride. Tomorrow, I’d get her back.
I slid the magazine home, the sound sharp and final.
“I’m coming for you,” I whispered, and meant it.
8
Melissa
They put me in a room that smelled like bleach.
That wasn’t the fun part. The fun part was the handcuffs, ratcheted so tight around my wrists that I could feel the pulse in my bones. I’d been cuffed before, but always by the law, and always loose enough that I could angle out of them if I was patient or desperate. These were pro work—Saint’s work, most likely—and whoever had done it had an eye for humiliation. They’d threaded the cuffs through the battered metal headboard, so my hands were stuck above my head. The only way to get comfortable was to scoot up until my shoulders jammed against the post, then bend my knees so my whole body made a fucked-up W. Every time I tried to shift, the cuffs bit into my skin andset my fingers on fire. The bed creaked loud enough that anyone in the parking lot could hear.
I counted the minutes by the hum of the ice machine outside. It must have been on its last legs, because it clanked and hissed every few seconds, a soundtrack of slow mechanical death. After the first hour, the sound settled into my head like a parasite. After two, I started naming the individual noises. The loud one was Chunky. The higher, raspy grind was Banshee. There was a third, a sort of whimper, that I called Augustine, because it made me think of the way his voice dropped when he thought he was about to lose.
That’s what I did. I lay on my back, staring at the shadow dance of the popcorn ceiling, and thought about the man who was almost certainly coming to get himself killed for me. Even now, with my wrists going numb and my mouth sticky with the taste of my own blood, I couldn’t stop replaying what happened in that bar bathroom.
Augustine. Jesus. I’d known guys who could fight, and I’d known guys who could fuck, but I’d never met one who could do both with the kind of focused desperation that made you feel like maybe, just for a second, you weren’t completely disposable. I was still half-hard from the memory, even with the Leatherbacks’ latest beating bruising my entire side. That was a first for me: associating a sexualmemory with comfort. I’d always been the “fuck them before they fuck you” type, and if it was rough enough, all the better. I wasn’t supposed to get attached to it. Not in the way that mattered.
The memory was hot and mean and weirdly hopeful. I remembered the cold of the sink against my back, the smell of Augustine’s skin—cigarettes and leather and something that could only be described as old church. I remembered how he’d lost his balance when I yanked him by the cut, how he’d gone wide-eyed for a split second before slamming me against the stall, like he wasn’t sure who was in charge. I remembered how he’d kissed me, like it wasn’t the first or last time we’d ever do it, and how his hands had closed around my ass, steadying me with the precision of a man who’d never dropped a single thing in his life.
My mouth was still split from the Leatherback’s ring, and every time I licked my lips I tasted iron and adrenaline. I tongued the cut and thought about the way Augustine had cupped my jaw after, how gentle his thumb had felt even as he left a fingerprint-sized bruise. I’d worn that mark with a stupid pride, knowing it was visible even under the yellow light of the Nipple Tip’s bar.
I wondered how he was healing. I wondered if he was already dead.
The thought hit me harder than I expected. For a second, I felt actual tears prick my eyes, which was fucking embarrassing because a) I hadn’t cried since my mother’s funeral and b) I was probably going to die in this room, chained up and alone, and I really didn’t want to meet my maker looking like a soap opera extra.
I shook the feeling off and forced myself to focus. My wrists were raw, and I could see the red lines where the cuffs had already started to cut into the skin. I flexed my fingers, trying to keep the blood flowing, and the cuffs shifted just enough to let me know they weren’t going anywhere. My left thumb was still bandaged from the cemetery, where I’d broken the nail clawing at Baldy’s eyes, but I could feel the sticky residue of dried blood under the tape. The Leatherbacks hadn’t bothered to patch me up. They liked their women a little busted up. It made them feel important.
The rest of my body was a checklist of bruises and half-healed cuts. My right cheek was swollen, my knees were skinned raw, and the inside of my thigh still ached from where one of the guys had kneed me during the abduction. The worst part, though, was the boredom. I hadn’t seen anyone since they dumped me here, and the only sign of life was the cigarette smoke that drifted in from the vent every few hours. I tried to focus on thedetails, just to keep my brain from turning into pudding. There were nine cigarette burns on the headboard. One of the floor tiles by the bathroom was loose. The room number was 207, but the seven had peeled off, so it just looked like a broken infinity symbol.
I shifted on the bed and tried to angle my arms so I could reach my jacket pocket. It took a full five minutes of wriggling, but eventually I got two fingers inside and felt around for anything sharp or useful. Nothing. Just a crumpled napkin, a stick of gum, and a piece of string that might as well have been a lifeline made of hair. I started to laugh, but the motion set my bruised ribs on fire, so I settled for a bitter little wheeze.
It was almost dark when I heard the first footsteps outside the door. They were heavy and slow, dragging like a man who wanted everyone to know he was coming. I closed my eyes and tried to remember how to pray, but the only words I could think of were Augustine’s from that night in the cemetery: “You ever kill someone in daylight?” The answer was still no, but if I made it out of this alive, I was going to try it at least once. Just for the experience.
The footsteps stopped right outside. I opened my eyes, heart in my throat, and waited for the next round.
The lamp flickered once, then went out entirely. The TV made a static pop and filled the room with the glowof a knife infomercial. I watched the host slice a tomato so thin you could see through it, and thought of Saint’s promise to “open me up” if I ever tried to run again. I’d always hated tomatoes. Too soft, too red, too easy to ruin.
The ice machine whined, then kicked out a new batch, and I wondered if Augustine had ever eaten a snow cone as a kid, or if he was just born a grown-ass man, all knuckles and scars. It was easier to think about that than to dwell on what was coming.
I ran my tongue over my teeth, tasting blood and the ghost of his mouth, and decided I wasn’t going to break, not for Saint, not for my father, not even for the hope that Augustine would come through the door and save me.
But when I pictured him, I didn’t see a savior. I saw a man with a broken nose and a bleeding hand, grinning like the world was a punchline only he understood. I saw the way he looked at me, like I was a puzzle he wanted to solve, not a mess he needed to clean up. For the first time in my life, I wanted to see the end of a story that wasn’t just about survival.
I flexed my hands again, felt the cuffs bite down, and started counting the minutes until the next sound.
I’d die in this room before I let them have me, but I’d give anything to see Augustine’s face one more time.
***
I knew it was Saint before he even opened the door. His footsteps had a rhythm—slow, deliberate, like he was setting the metronome for your heartbeat and daring you to keep up. When the handle turned, the whole frame rattled. He didn’t rush. He wanted to make sure I’d have time to get scared.
He filled the doorway the way a landslide fills a canyon. His hair was scraped back into a greasy bun, beard thick enough to hide a pocketknife in, and his cut looked like it had been stitched together from the hides of smaller, weaker animals. The turtle patch on his chest was so faded I could barely make out the blue. There were other patches, too: Filthy Few, One Percenter, and underneath, a new tab that read PROPERTY OF NONE. That made me want to puke.
