Page 213 of A Matter of Time

“What’s IOD?” I asked deliberately.

“IAD,” he corrected me. “Okay, guess not. IAD is the Internal Affairs Division, J.”

Again it was funny that he was calling me J like we were buddies, like we were just sitting around talking, nothing at all like the life-and-death situation it was.

“Did you hear me?”

“Yeah.”

He chuckled. “You know, my buddy Marco says if you blow him, he’ll get you some more blankets. I think ya should. It’s like a meat locker in here, J. I mean, we’re sittin’ in the office where it’s warm. Down here in the warehouse, you’re gonna fuckin’ freeze your ass tonight.”

I shook my head.

“Come on, J, think about it. You’re not gonna see Sammy again anyway. He’d want ya to at least be warm.” He said it like it was obvious. “And what’s suckin’ a little dick to a guy like you? I’m sure you’ve blown hundreds of guys.”

“No.”

“C’mon, J, I bet you give a great blow job.”

“Sounds like you wanna know,” I said to antagonize him. I was afraid that the way we were going, I would be forced.

“Fuckin’ cocksucker!” His voice went flat and cold before he stood and kicked me in the ribs.

I rolled up into a ball and saw his boot coming for my face. My head felt like it exploded, and then it was dark all over again.

It was so cold. I couldn’t remember ever being so cold. My teeth chattering woke me. Sitting up almost made me vomit, but I bit back the nausea, and when I moved my hand to touch my hair, I realized it was caught in something. I pulled and used my other hand to free it. Like a heavy, tight-fitting bracelet that slipped off painfully, chafing, but feeling better in seconds. I jerked suddenly and held up my hand in front of my face.

“Oh shit,” I gasped, realizing the rope was off my right wrist. In the cold, my hands had shrunk, and the rope that had been tight wasn’t any longer. It took only seconds to get it off my other hand. This, then, was one of the many benefits of being a small guy—ropes and handcuffs had to be constantly tightened.

I found that I couldn’t stand. Even sitting up almost made me swoon. So I crawled to the edge of the wall and moved through the darkness. The floor was covered in gravel and sand and smelled like manure. There were furry bodies moving just feet from me, but I heaved silently, determined not to vomit. When I felt a blast of cold air on my face, I looked out and saw the moon-washed snow and a car. And I thought that running would be good, but at the same time I knew that I was already cold and outside would just be that much worse. Staying with Dominic would get me killed, but so would wading through snow in just my jeans and a sweater.

When I brushed up against a rope, heavier than the one I had been tied with, I felt up the length and found a knot. A foot above that, another…and then another. I couldn’t follow it in the darkness, but it had to lead somewhere. It was dicey, though. I could barely stand, let alone climb, and depending on how far up it went, I might fall.

These were decisions I had never imagined making, even in my wildest dreams. Did I climb the rope ladder or stay where I was? The choice was made for me, however, when I heard a heavy door slide open and a shaft of light cut through the darkness. When I looked, I saw no one in the doorway, so I rose to a hunched position and scrambled back to where the blankets were still piled next to the wall. I collapsed onto the floor hard and saw lights in front of my eyes. My body felt heavy, and waves of nausea pounded through me.

“Hey.”

I rolled my head and dimly saw the man looming over me. I was thinking that this had to be Dominic’s friend Marco.

“I’m bored.” He slurred the words before he grabbed me.

I tried to move, but I was useless. He outweighed me by at least a hundred pounds, and his weight on my chest, his knees on my arms, pinned me easily. He thumbed open the button of my corduroys and flipped me over hard, winding me. I was worried that he’d notice I was free, but he was far more focused on what he wanted at the moment. It also didn’t hurt that he reeked of alcohol.

I was shoved face down on the floor, and my sweater was pushed up as my pants were yanked down. I squirmed, but the knee that was driven into my back stopped me. He grabbed a handful of my hair and yanked my head up sharply before showing me a long, jagged hunting knife.

“My dick goes in your ass or this does. You decide.”

I went completely still.

“Yeah, I fuckin’ thought so,” he said, his hand sliding across my bare skin. I felt him shift, and he yanked me to my hands and knees before I heard him spit. “Gonna tear up that sweet little ass of yours.”

I felt him there against me, my legs between his, felt him ready and hard, felt the knife in his hand against my ribs, felt him nudge me before, I knew, he would lean back and then forward again to bury himself in me. In that instant I had an advantage. He was bigger, but even hurt, I was sure I was faster than an inebriated man.

I dropped my left shoulder, which put him slightly off-balance, then brought my foot up toward my back, putting my heel as hard as I could into his balls. He cried out, the blade slipping from his hand, and I rolled onto my back before grabbing for the weapon. He couldn’t stop his forward momentum, and I was going to stab him, catch him in the throat, but at the last second, I slid sideways out of the way, scrambling to my knees. There was a crunch as his face banged the floor, and I saw the spreading pool of blood around his head. He was stunned for a moment, nose clearly broken, and I took that second to hit him between the base of his skull and the top of his spine. As I was holding the hilt of knife between both hands, that being what made contact, it made me far more powerful. The strike rendered him unconscious. The whole ordeal had lasted only seconds but felt like a lifetime. It was so quiet, and in that stillness, I decided not to sit there and wait.

I pulled up my pants, grabbed one of the blankets, and bolted back across the room. Adrenaline is an amazing thing. You go from tired and weak to Superman in seconds. With one end of the now rolled blanket tied around my neck—I was not leaving the knife and it was tucked there—I even had a cape. It was funny. I had never climbed a rope ladder in my life, but it seemed self-explanatory. You put your feet on the bottom knot, put your hands above the next knot and pulled yourself up. It was an upward crawl, like a worm. Up, down, little by little. When I heard the guy who had tried to rape me stirring, I moved faster. I watched him get to his knees, feel his face, swear, and realize I was gone. His roar was loud; it bounced off the walls, echoing in the huge space. But he couldn’t see me. I was high enough up that I was cloaked in darkness.

I froze as another man came running in, not wanting the rope to move, then climbed faster when the new guy started questioning the first. I started to panic when I kept going up and there didn’t seem to be an end, but there was suddenly a beam in front of me, and I saw the shelf. I reached for it, realized I needed to be higher, and climbed above and dropped down inside. I pulled the rope ladder up slowly, hearing the two men yelling, and watched as the man who’d tried to rape me was helped from the room. Once I had the length of the rope in a pile beside me, I calmed. I had just enough energy left to wrap the blanket around me, and put the knife by my head, before I passed out from exhaustion. I had never been so tired.