Hailey
I’d dehydrated myself from crying. I didn’t think I could.
Sobbing to the point where my tongue stuck to my teeth wasn’t something I was used to.
Then again, neither were dead bodies.
I could still see his feet.
Red-speckled black oxfords over black socks.
Blood trails all over the concrete.
The air smelled like pennies—like sweaty palms chock-full of copper.
The scent could make you sick if you breathed it in long enough, but a mouth full of my old blood was worse than the smell. Tasted a lot like pocket change. The cuts on my lips were deep enough to stick my tongue into and stung enough to make me dizzy. I let my chin hit my chest and shut my eyes until the spinning stopped.
God, I was really starting to look the part. Black-eyed and busted lipped—portrait of a modern black dahlia. If I ended up freezing to death, they’d find me grinning too, flipping my kidnappers the bird with frostbitten middle fingers.
I laughed for the first time in twenty-four hours. It felt good enough to cry about. Picturing my front page New York Times debut was worth wasting the oxygen over. My sense of humor, morbid as it was, kept my mind off the cold.
The wires around my legs and arms were the first to freeze. Cillian had me strapped so tightly to that chair that every time I moved, the cables rubbed my skin raw. Bad day to wear shorts.
The sheriff wasn’t much better off than I was. All the blood on his pant legs had frozen the pleats in place. His skin must’ve been blue by now, judging by the frost forming all the way up to his utility belt.
His gun was missing.
I checked a second time. They’d definitely taken it. God willing it wasn’t Liam, but given how the day was going he would’ve also probably gotten a hold of the sheriff’s—
Keys.
The full set was peeping right out from under his empty holster.
Enter Hailey Houdini. If there was one thing I was good at, it was falling over. So I started rocking until I did just that.
The chair hitting the concrete was too loud, but I wanted those keys too much to realize it. My arms were loose. I’d loosened the cables a little. You never know when a little water weight will come in handy.
Moving was the hard part. I couldn’t feel my hands, so I figured I’d caterpillar my way over to where the sheriff was. With a good deal of effort I guessed it would probably take me about fifteen minutes to work around how terrified I was, ten minutes to try and defrost my fingers, and five minutes to get myself close enough to grab the keys.
I didn’t even have thirty seconds.
When a girl falls in a room, and four men are there to hear it, is she safe and sound?
“Who let the kitten out of her cage?”
Liam’s voice cut straight through the cold and I got this, dull, gnawing sensation all of a sudden—the kind that eats away at the lining of your stomach. My body tensed up, a subtle warning to brace myself. I was on my own.
Liam wasn’t.
“Where were you planning on going, love? There isn’t a door in this house that’s open for you.”
Before he’d even finished speaking, Cillian picked me up by my hair and brought me over to Liam. He looked different. Like the crow’s feet around his eyes had quadrupled since the last time I’d seen him up close. One of his arms was hanging in a makeshift sling. Glad to see Rusty had leveled the playing field.
“What’s the password on that fancy phone of yours?” Liam asked.
That wasn’t the question I’d expected, but either way I didn’t have any plans to speak to him. Liam couldn’t do much with that arm of his, Cillian’s strong point was intimidation, Marcus seemed harmless enough, and Caleb couldn’t even look at me. I was an asset, and as long as I had something they needed, they couldn’t touch me. Maybe they’d slap me around a little, but I’d already made up my mind that I could take it. Cold makes you numb to a lot of things, threats included.
Liam snatched my face in his hands, digging his fingers so hard into my cheeks that I felt his nails pressing into my gums.
“I believe I asked you a question.”
His eyes were close to popping out of their sockets. He was trying to compensate for that dead arm. I stared at him straight-faced, in spite of how terrified I was, and kept my mouth shut.
“It’s your life, girlie. Hold your tongue as long as you like, but eventually I’ll make you open that mouth.”
He ran his fingers right along the edge of my lips, smearing blood all over the tips, before putting them back into his mouth.
“I’m curious. Does the rest of you taste salty or are there sweeter spots?”
I didn’t realize I’d hit him until his blood came running down my face. He was cradling his nose, throwing insults at me that I couldn’t believe. Marcus and Cillian grabbed me the second they realized what had happened and dragged me to the center of the room. Caleb was standing by the door with my phone in his hands, leaning against the frame, waiting for Liam to tell him what to do.
“Caleb, follow me for a minute.”
Liam disappeared with Caleb outside. I looked to Marcus for some kind of reassurance, but there wasn’t a sliver of the kindness I’d seen in his eyes earlier in the afternoon. His pupils were dead and fixed directly on me, like I was the reason behind the dullness.
It felt like contempt, and I hated him right back for blaming me for whatever it was that he’d decided to. I didn’t owe any of these people anything. Almost everyone in this family deserved exactly what was coming to them. Problem was, I’d have to put up with their bullshit in the mean time.
They left me standing in the middle of the room for what had to be at least twenty minutes. No one said anything to me. The least they could’ve done was speak to me, threaten me, anything. I didn’t know what they were waiting for, but the fact that nothing was happening ate away at my nerves.
I should’ve done what Liam had asked. I should’ve told him what he wanted. Clearly, I wasn’t thinking when I’d smashed my forehead into his nose. Maybe I was. I’d acted out like some kind of heroine, but obviously, I wasn’t one.
The sheriff was the real deal, and look how he ended up. Dead.
I couldn’t even defend myself, and I’d picked a fight with a maniac. A+, Hailey.
The situation looked pretty bad. But there still were the maybe’s and even’s. Those always made me feel better. Took the edge off of reality.
Even if Liam was angry with me, there’s only so much he could do to a hostage. There’s only so much he could do to someone he needed alive, right? The four of them needed me in good enough shape to get my Dad here, so even though I’d hit him, he couldn’t really retaliate, could he?
Maybe he wouldn’t. Caleb wouldn’t let him go too far. I had to believe that. If there were any human beings still left in this slaughterhouse, it was me and—
Caleb came around the corner with Liam right at his heels and didn’t waste anytime approaching me. Liam dragged something into the room that I couldn’t see. Caleb blocked my line of vision with his shoulders, trying to redirect my attention back to him. He was so close I could feel the heat radiating off of his body. As quickly as it had come, it had gone. The chill in the air stole it away.
“Hailey.”
I started trembling when he said my name. His voice. Something wasn’t—
Maybe I was reading too far into things. But I couldn’t stop—
Shaking, I mean. Maybe it was the cold. It had to be. I was freezing, not afraid. There was nothing to be afraid of. Caleb was nothing to be afraid of.
“Lift your head up.”
I did as he asked. I shouldn’t have been so curious but I looked up into his eyes anyway. There was nobody there. His were like Marcus’s—worse than Marcus’s and out of the blue, I started crying again. I couldn’t tell you why, but once I started, I went at it so hard I couldn’t breathe. The air was too thin to breathe. His irises were too thin to see. The blue-grey was disappearing.
He reached out and blindfolded me. The world went black.
“I’m gonna need that password, Hailey. Just be easy about this and you’ll be fine. You’ll be—”
Cillian cut him off the second he had the opportunity.
“Watch those promises, Caleb. You’ll only upset her when you don’t follow through.”
I thought about a lot of things in that moment. Whether or not I was going to cooperate or put up the kind of fight that made me who I was. Mom would’ve told me to put up and keep up my dukes. I wanted to, but I couldn’t even make a fist. I couldn’t even stop my hands from shaking.
Those four little numbers, the numbers I never should’ve said, came tumbling off my tongue.
“Get our man on the phone, Caleb, and make sure you switch the video on so he can see everything.”
Liam sounded like he was standing much closer than he had been earlier. I didn’t want to think about what that meant, I just—
I really needed to talk to—
“Hailey?! Hails? Is that you? Where the hell are you!?”
Good old Dad. I’d been gone for twelve hours and that’s the best he could come up with? I didn’t have anything to say to him, I just hoped he couldn’t tell I’d been crying behind the blindfold.
“Mr. Anderson, It’s lovely to finally speak to you face to face. I’m not one to hide behind a ski-mask, sir.”
Liam slapped his arm around me and pulled my body close to his like he was posing for a candid. He didn’t need to touch me to put me in my place. I felt small enough as it was. My Dad was watching.
“I don’t know who you are, or what you and my daughter think you’re doing, but whatever it is it’ll be over in less than 24 hours. My guys at the Bureau have been waiting for this phone call all day.”
“Dad, what the hell do you think this is?”
“What am I supposed to think, Hails? CNN’s been screening tapes of you all day running around Union with some guy! I sold it to the press as a kidnapping story, but don’t think for a second that I’m stupid enough not to know exactly what this situation is.”
That’s when I lost it. Collapsed right down on my knees and lost it. I don’t know what kind of person he thought I was to think that I’d done this on purpose. Did he not see how I looked? I was sitting, purple-faced and bleeding on camera, and he still wouldn’t accept what was happening.
Heaven forgive me, but I hated him. I had since the divorce, but this was much worse. He wasn’t even looking at me. He probably thought I was screwing around with my friends. I guess I wasn’t worth taking seriously.
So, I got this idea right then. I wanted something terrible to happen to me just so he’d regret everything he’d said. I’d never wish him dead, but I wished him misery all the way up till his 11th hour.
“Sorry to break up the family drama so soon, but, unfortunately senator, this situation is very real and your daughter is very much in danger. We can show you if you like. You’re a smart man, I’m sure you understand the value of visual aids.”
One of the four boys pulled both my hands behind my back and wound them in the same kind of wire cable they’d used earlier. I knew from the sting. It wasn’t as bad as the first time, though. My body was getting too cold to feel much of anything anymore.
“Buddy, I’ve got MCPD and the Feds sitting in my living room tracking this phone call. So think real hard about what you’re gonna do before you do it. If this is a prank of some kind, cut the crap unless you’re prepared to go to jail for it.”
“Mr. Anderson, I’m ready to die for this. I hope you can say the same. Marcus, pick up that hose. Caleb, get a wide shot of the freezer. I want our senator friend to see what kind of substandard conditions we’re working with here!”
There was that dull pain again, moving out from my stomach and into my bloodstream. Brace yourself, Hailey. Brace yourself.
“Before we begin, senator, please gather all your pig friends around your lovely phone so they have a proper view and once we’re finished here, I’d like you to post our little production on the Internet! My brothers and I wanna get good and famous. Make sure you get the credits right. Last name, Evans. E-V-A-N-S. Our mother’s name was Deirdre. You put her in an early grave, and today, sir, God’s punishing you for it.”
The water pressure from the hose knocked me face first onto the concrete. I tried to wrangle my hands out of the wire but they’d padlocked the cables together. Whoever was spraying me aimed the stream at my back each time I tried to turn my body away. It didn’t matter which direction I went, the water followed. Liam and Cillian were laughing, while I was soaking through my clothes.
Every now and again, they’d try to spray me in the face or shoot out water in spurts at my chest. Liquid bullets. I was bruising everywhere but I held out for a while, and only started screaming when they began aiming their shots in the same places, pounding my skin purple over and over again. I was waiting for it to stop, waiting for a break in the pain, but there wasn’t one. They kept on until I couldn’t scream anymore. Do you believe me now, Dad?
“Touch her again and—“
“Here’s what we’re gonna do. My brothers and I are going to make the most of the private time we have left with your daughter, so I’d suggest you hurry up and find your way out to our neck of the woods. I’m not a very patient man, senator. Speak soon.”
It was quiet for a long while after Liam hung up the phone. Then again, I couldn’t hear much over my teeth. It didn’t matter how much I was shivering, I’d gotten past the point where it was going to make a difference. Maybe I’d shut my eyes for a while, that way I didn’t have to watch them decide what they were going to do with me.
I prayed for the moment when I could finally pass out. The problem with waiting was, I still heard everything.
“Holding up alright, Cal?”
I knew Marcus’s voice from the telltale concern he tried to hide every time he spoke to his brother.
“Yeah.”
“Liar, you’re paler than a ghost!” Cillian broke out into that awful cackle of his. I couldn’t stand the sound of it.
“He’s right Cal, you need a little color in those cheeks. Some manly flush, I think.” Liam said. I felt his eyes on me.
“You know, the girl’s cold, Caleb. You gonna stand there watching her freeze till she stops breathing?” Cillian’s concern was completely transparent.
“What? No.” Caleb sounded out of it. Further than he should have been.
“Go on and warm her then.” Liam said.
Something felt wrong. Maybe I wasn’t hearing things right. I couldn’t figure out the conversation, or where he was going with any of it. I’d been waiting for this point for hours, the moment where I’d slip back outside of my body again for a little while, or permanently. I didn’t care too much, anymore.
“She has nothing to do with me, Liam.”
“Oh, but that’s where you’re mistaken, kiddo. The thing is, you’ve still got some manning up to do, Cal. You’re so goddamn soft, it makes me want to carve my intestines out. I’m only saying this, cause’ I see all that beautiful potential you’ve got. But you waste it on her. I’ve forgiven you all day only because you don’t understand yourself well enough to know that it’s only lust. So I’ve got an offer for you. If you refuse it, I’ll kill the pair of you. And I’m a man of my word little brother.”
I dipped in and out of consciousness for a little while after that.
There one minute, gone the next.
I kept having this memory, back from two summers ago when I took a run down the Virginia Beach shoreline right before sunrise. It was one of those dark blue mornings when the sand’s cold enough to bite. I stepped out of my house barefoot and that six am frostbite rattled right through my bones. I could’ve gone right back inside, but I ran, and kept running until the chill burned off. Took me a little while, but when I finally fell into the rhythm of things, both feet right in time with my heart beat, I broke into a sprint so fast I felt steps away from flying.
Like I could out do the angels.
I came back to the cold room for a few seconds, long enough to remember someone cutting my clothes away.
When he covered my mouth, I didn’t scream.
When he held me down, I didn’t fight. I couldn’t.
‘Cause I was gone again, sprinting through the sand on an empty beach, racing the sunrise.
Free.