Reunion (6 page)

She shrugs and tugs, hard, on the rope as Amy ducks down and groans. The sound of her moan is muffled by the pipe. “Frenchie and El Brujo are capable of anything. Whatever the worst you can imagine is, double it.”

And with that, she tucks Amy’s legs up an
d
I watch Amy disappear. Allie crawls in right behind her, then hands me her phone.

“Use this to text with Chase. I’ll be back,” she says, her voice fading fast. “
I promise.”
She bends the arch of her fe
e
t so her toes dig into the muck-covered pipe and then she’s gone.

They’re gone.

I am alone.

Being stuck down here alone, but with a flashlight, water and a working phone is a completely different feeling.
As long as Amy and Allie make it to the surface, being trapped in here will be worth it.
 

Mikey saved Amy’s life by luring me in here and closing that door. He doesn’t know that.

But he may have also ended mine.

I wonder if he knows
that
.

All the times I babysat him flip through my memory. It becomes a blur, like I’m on a merry-go-round and he’s standing still, off to the side. Mikey as a baby. A toddler. Covered in ice cream at the park. Asleep after I read him a Dr. Seuss book nine times in a row. Coming to me to ask how you kiss a girl. How you ask a girl to the seventh grade dance.

And then there’s that face he made the last time I saw him.

Mikey isn’t who I thought he was.

Bzzzzz.

I jump and look at the screen.

Mission almost accomplished
, Chase types.
Allie coming back for you. Stay calm
.

Stay calm
. That’s exactly the kind of thing Mark would say.

Mark.

The last time I saw him, I was snuggled in his arms. The ocean sang its steady lullaby. We were naked and sweaty, complete and content. The craziness of the dean’s set-ups had faded out with our touch.

What a difference a day makes.

Allie says I’ve been in here for nearly a day. I look at the phone. The clock says 6:33 a.m. Is that right? It feels like I’ve been down here for half my life.

Out of the corner of my eye I see the water bottle Allie brought. My mouth feels like parchment paper. I drink greedily. I can now. I don’t have to save it for Amy.

Amy is safe. Amy will live. Amy will be okay.

Those words chant through my
m
ind over and over as I hug the empty water bottle and begi
n
to rock in place.

And then the door opens.

I turn the sound off the phone and shove it in my back pocket. Who’s coming? Is it Chase? Mark? This guy Drew that Allie mentioned? My heart leaps at the thought that it’s one of them, here to rescue me.

Except that makes no sense. Mark’s in jail. Drew and Chase a
re
pulling Allie and Amy out.

So who could it be?

Fine Italian leather shoes, the kind men get made for them in Milan, appear. Step. Step. Step. The toes flex down, then the heel.
Fine wool, maybe cashmere, comes into my line of sight. I can see the weave, the little bits of fine fuzz from the tight quality of the cloth. My eyes focus suddenly, like a telescope. I become nothing but animal instinct.
 

I
have no choice.

I open my mouth to scream, but the sound dies in my throat.

It’s Dean Landau.

And Frenchie’s right behind him.

There is a moment when your heart stops. Just stops. It doesn’t beat. It doesn’t pulse. You can’t feel it. Most of the time, we live with the steady drumbeat inside our chests and we take it for granted. It’s just there.

I
t just
is
.

Like time itself.

But time can stop. Hearts can stop. Entire worlds can stop.

All with one word.

“Carrie,” he says.

Carrie.

My own name becomes a death blow.

So many stupid responses fly through my mind at a rate of a million miles a second. “Fancy meeting you here,” doesn’t quite work. “Let me go,” is pointless. “What are you doing here?” is a waste of my breath.

I say nothing.

Because, really—what do you say when the biggest drug lord and sex slave smuggler in the world is standing in front of you carrying what looks like a bag filled with medical instruments?

And your best friend just lost an arm to him?

“Cat got your tongue, Girlie Girl?” Frenchie says with a laugh.
The cackle sounds
like bubble wrap being stepped on by someone wearing combat boots.
He tips his head back so far that in the thin shred of light I can see his back molars.
 

They’re filled with silver. He even has a gold tooth up top.

My skin turns to putty. It’s like I’m terrified and frozen but pumped full of heat at the same time.
T
he dean’s cologne fills the air, a spicy European scent that is supposed to be intriguing.

I retch instead.

He’s so calm, Dean Landau. I shouldn’t call him that any more, should I?

He’s El Brujo.

The Wizard.

And he’s here to kill me.

Or worse.

“You need not be afraid of me, Carrie,” he says, his eyes latched to mine as if they’re connected. With a grace he really shouldn’t possess, he sets the medical bag on the ground, never breaking eye contact. His eyes are dark, the pupils round and full of calculation.

He looks like a hunter who is enjoying the chase.

Right up until the second he’s about to kill.

Please kill me fast
. The thought rips through my mind like a
hot
knife
through a stick of butter
.

“
I said get the fuck outta here,” Frenchie says to someone above. He looks up through the hatch.
 

The dean’s mouth tightens. He’s irritated. I feel like I see everything at once. It’s like the world turned out to be six layers deeper than I ever knew. Now I can see every layer, all the parts working at the same time like the most complex factory ever.

It’s too late, though. All this knowledge won’t help me.

It’s too late.

Amy’s safe. Amy’s safe.
Amy’s safe
. The words roll through me like a
n
electromagnetic pulse. They’re all I have now.

“Carrie.”

God, I hate the sound of my name when it comes out of him.

“Carrie, do you have any idea how difficult this journey has been? Joe was so much easier to manipulate than you. Perhaps your mother was the one with the intelligence,” the dean says, his voice filled with a sick amusement. He’s playing with me.

Enjoying
me.

Batting me back and forth with verbal paws, like a cat plays with a mouse before killing it.

Fury
rushes through my body like a linebacker tackling a quarterback. The force of my rage is like a twin. His eyes light up.
 

H
e likes this.

He
feeds
off this.

I know I’m dead. Know it. There is no way out of this situation alive. Between the dean and Frenchie, they have the manpower to do whatever they want to me. I can’t fight them off. I can’t escape.

All I can do is stall.

Meanwhile, my mind starts to slip. It’s hard to describe, but it’s like holding on to something that looks solid but us actually made of millions of little pieces barely holding together to mimic something.

That’s what is happening inside my brain.

I’m just millions of shards of nothing that are floating off, as if gravity itself were disappearing.

My heart smacks against my chest like a dying fish on a dock, but all I can feel is the thin thread of oxygen that goes in and out of my lungs. It hurts. Breathing hurts.

Thinking hurts. Everything hurts in anticipation of what this man with the happy, sadistic eyes is about to do to me.

And I don’t mean Frenchie.

Suddenly, Mikey’s voice breaks in from above. “She’s not supposed to
—
”

“Get the fuck out of here!” Frenchie snarls,
storming up the steps
.

No more Mikey’s voice.

And then the slam of
a body against something heavy. Metal? A wall?
 

A choking sound.

Or maybe that’s me, trying to breathe. I can’t make sense of anything now.

Not when the dean is looking like
that
at me.

And his hands are flexing, opening the bag, and pulling out a saw. A bloody saw.

I look away but I know he’s coming closer. I smell him.
I
t’s not just the scent of his cologne any more. The odor of anticipation smells like a man aroused.

His musk is a very masculine scent.
I
t’s power and excitement, teasing and accomplishment, all mixed with cloves and lemongrass.

This
is
the last thing I
will ever
smell.

This, and the wet copper tang of
my own
fresh blood.

I want to close my eyes. I want to lay on the floor and stare at the ceiling and wake up from this nightmare.
I
t’s a nightmare, right? I’m actually asleep and this is just like the screaming dreams I’ve had for three years. None of this is real. Any minute now, Mark will shake me awake and hold me in his arms and stroke my hair and calm me down.

Right?

Right?

Wrong.

It’ll take at least half an hour to get Amy and Allie through that pipe, then longer for Chase to realize I’m not coming. Worse, Allie will crawl back with the rope and—
oh, God
.

I have to warn her.

If she comes down here, he’ll—

The air between me and the dean is filled with a thousand tiny pins of torture. When I move an inch to the right, it’s like a knife slices my ribs. To the left, my head howls with blinding pressure. If my hand shifts, it’s as if I’ve beckoned him.

Time is an enemy.

I
t ticks on, each second a century as I await my doom.

Amy’s blood is still on my hands, my shirt, in my hair and filling my nostrils.

The butcher
.

She never said
the dean
.

“
You’re the butcher?” I ask, my voice like dry sand. I cough, the skin at the back of my throat sticking together, making me gag.
 

His mouth tips up with a smile, his eyes on the gleaming, dirty metal blade of the instrument he holds.

“Me? No.” He frowns. “How do you know that name?”

Oh, shit.

No one can blame me for losing half my mind and forgetting that I’ve just shoved Amy and Allie into a pipe to help them escape. My goal right now is survival. Being halfway intelligent and remembering to keep them hidden feels like trying to hold water in your hands. You can cup your palm for only so long, but eventually all of the water will fall, pulled by gravity.

You can’t fight physics.

And El Brujo is a force of nature.

A malevolent force.

“What name?” I say, my tongue stuck to the sides of my mouth. My words come out slurred.

“The butcher,” Frenchie growls,
returning down the hatch and flipping some wall switch I’ve never seen before. Bright fluorescent lights turn the storage space into a bizarre, glowing laboratory of the damned.
 

I shrug. “Whoever is cutting off the arms and legs of these women is a butcher,” I respond.

“How do you know about that? The police have carefully kept that detail out of the news,” Frenchie snaps.

The dean makes a dismissive sound. “The DEA agent told her, of course.” His voice drips with contempt. The change from suave sophisticate to irritated criminal mastermind makes my organs rearrange themselves in terror. “
But he’s no concern any longer.”
 

I say nothing.
But the dean’s words can be taken so many ways.
 

O
h, Mark.

“I am no butcher, Carrie,” the dean says. His voice feels like an evil caress.” I am an artist. A lover. A connoisseur of oddities. Nora was my one dear truth.”

Nora? Oh. That’s right. Nora was Claudia’s mother’s name.

“She was everything and nothing. Perfect and grotesque. Untouched and damaged. She was the ying and the yang, black and white, and when she died a piece of me went with her,”
he says. His voice is filled with sorrow.
 

But not an arm or a leg
, I want to say. I can’t move. I’m watching him and Frenchie, letting time slip as fast as possible, wishing I could nudge it. Shove it.

Make it go faster.

In the bright, blinking light the dean seems less dangerous. Frenchie is pale, wrinkles in his face showing bleakly. He seems older than he is, and more pathetic. Less severe.

I wonder what I look like.

Not that it matters.

“
You are smart, Carrie. By now you’ve figured it all out,” the dean prods. He wants me to play this verbal game. Frenchie walks past us, toward the hole in the wall. I panic, because if he gets past the boxes he’ll see the pipe, know where Amy went, and then Allie and Amy will be at risk again.
 

Just
then one of the giant coffee bags begins to groan.

Frenchie turns on his heel, walks t
w
o paces to it, and gives it an enormous kick.

The groan intensifies.

Frenchie kicks again with the tip of his boot.

The sounds stop.

“Fucking whiners,” he mutters, shaking his head. His phone buzzes and he pulls it out. He moves like someone who is pissed off at having to make any effort whatsoever to even live.

As Frenchie reads his text, he makes a strangled noise of frustration. “Fuck,” he says, looking at the dean. “We got a problem.”

“
We
have no problems,” the dean corrects him. “
You
do.
This is what I pay you to do. Fix it.
”