I look at her as a dozen responses bing-bong through my mind, as if someone had sent too many balls into a pinball machine. "I must consider this, Brys. I will not give you a dishonest or disingenuous answer."
Her smile is shockingly tender and understanding. "I appreciate that answer more than I can say, Jakob. Take your time. I'd rather a truthful and genuine answer tomorrow than a lie or a half-truth now." A long silence ensues. "So…is this what a stakeout is like?"
I shrug. "I don't know. I have never been on a stakeout before. I have been many things in my life, but never law enforcement."
"Like what?"
I glance at her. "Hmm?"
"You said you have been many things. Like what?"
I should not trust her. I should not divulge any of my many sordid truths. It should stay physical—for her sake, if nothing else.
"I was a victim of sex trafficking and forced into prostitution as a teenager."
Into her stunned silence comes the unmistakable sound of gunfire.
12
NOT LIKE THAT
BRYS
Jakob reaches back and snags the strap of the rifle, kicks open his door, and is jogging across the intersection an instant after hearing the gunshots. Which comes from the house we are obviously watching—I assume because ‘the quarry' is inside, the quarry being this Pooly guy, whoever he is. Although who is shooting at whom, I do not know.
A nasty, vindictive bastard, by the sound of it—he did something so awful to Jakob’s employee Lash that he won’t speak of it.The devil would be horrifiedis a pretty incredible and damning statement.
I don't know what I'm supposed to do—sit here and wait? What if there are more of those maniacal murder-thugs out there patrolling the neighborhood? What if—
Glass shatters in conjunction with a deafening series of cracking gunshots from very close. Before I can so much as scream, a gloved hand reaches in through the shattered window, wielding a tool of some kind; its purpose is revealed when the person uses it to slice my seatbelt apart. The door is wrenched open before I can react, hands grip my arm, and yank me bodily out of the vehicle like a rag doll. I land in a heap in the grass,my head bouncing off the hard earth, my shoulder screaming in protest at the way I was yanked.
I've never been one to go down without a fight—NOT LIKE THAT, get your mind out of the gutter—so I log roll away from the hands, onto my back, and start screaming, kicking, thrashing, and flailing like a madwoman. My limbs connect with someone, and I'm rewarded with a pissed-off masculine yelp of pain. Thus encouraged, I kick and thrash and fight all the harder, and again my efforts are rewarded with a thump of my foot against flesh and another wordless expression of pain, followed by what sounds like cursing in some European language I can't place.
A loudcrackaccompanies a flaring burst of agony and a splintering, coruscating flash of lights; my cheek throbs with flaring pain, and the world spins.
Something cold and hard touches my forehead. "Kick me again, and I paint the street with your blood, bitch-woman." The voice is rough, accented, and vicious.
I go still. "You are making a mistake."
"Oh, you think your precious Caleb Indigo will save you?"
"Who?" I blink away the dancing dots; the face above mine is wide and round and dotted with the scars of a severe chicken pox infection.
The gun, a comically colossal silver hand-cannon, waves at the house. "Him. Indigo. Now—you stand up very slowly and do as I say, or I hurt you more.” He uses the gun to gesture for me to stand up. "I do not like to hurt women, so do not give me a reason."
"I don't know who you're talking about," I say, even as my memory niggles at the sound of the name.
"It does not matter what you know or do not know about the man." He stares at me with small, dark, porcine eyes set deep in a fleshy face, and that cold, wicked gaze is all the convincing Ineed to play along, for now. "You are to come with me." Once I'm on my feet, the man presses the gun to my forehead again.
Never let a kidnapper take you anywhere. Fight like hell. Once they get you into a car, your chances of survival plummet.My father's voice echoes in my ear—this was advice given to me the day he dropped me off for my first day of university at Yale…along with other fun nuggets of wisdom, mostly to do with how not to get raped, kidnapped, murdered, or scammed. Fun guy, my father.
The gun, making an O-shaped indentation in my forehead, however, is a pretty convincing argument for picking the right moment for my resistance. Fight now, and this moon-faced fuck will go all Jackson Pollack with my brains on the concrete. Which doesn't sound like a good time to me.
I keep my hands up and visible. "Okay. Okay. I'll cooperate."
More gunfire echoes from the house—a singlecrackfollowed by a short burst from an automatic. Another automatic burst rattles, and another single crack, a second crack, a third, all in short order.
That's not good. At all.
