The Origin (19 page)

“Lift your shirt up,” she said but Daniel just leaned against the wall, his unresponsive eyes staring straight ahead. Coral huffed and pulled on the black shirt, gasping when she saw a scab instead of an open wound. “What the hell?” She tugged the shirt down and poked her finger through the hole, horrified to find fresh blood on her finger. “Where is it? Where’s the bullet?”

Daniel closed his eyes. “It’s been pushed out.”

“You pulled it out?”

“It fell out. I heal fast.”

“What?” She took a deep breath and listened to his thoughts. He was still brooding about the men – three of them – in the building. She was disturbed to find that his mind was a deep whirlpool of regret and triumph, longing and confusion, and somewhere in the middle, he struggled to surface.

“Daniel,” she said, forcefully shaking him by the arms. “Snap out of it! Tell me why you killed those men!”

His mind whispered the name before it came out of his mouth.

“Those men kidnapped Olivia King?” she said in shock. As much as she disliked the woman, she would never wish her harm. But with Richard King’s reputation, she was not at all surprised to learn that his enemies had finally hit him where it hurt.

Daniel’s uncertainty broke through her thoughts:
I was so sure that they had her. But she wasn’t there… where the hell is she?

She let her hands drop to her sides. “Then why the hell did you kill them?” Suddenly, she caught a thread of a memory, of Daniel being shot repeatedly, of his waking up in the Hudson River. She fought for breath as the bile began to rise in her throat.

Daniel’s shivers started off as tiny tremors under the skin, but the more Coral spoke, the more they became large quakes that racked his entire body. She wanted to know why he’d killed those men.

If they don’t value the life of others, why should I value theirs?

The words flitted through his mind but he couldn’t find the courage to say them aloud. He had murdered those men and had set a building on fire. Deep in his gut he knew that he was no better than the lowlife criminals he went after.

But he had to set aside his personal demons and focus on the most immediate problem: Olivia was still missing. He found that the more he concentrated on her face, the more the shivers receded, as if the mere thought of her was a sobering splash of cold water.

Suddenly, a thought occurred to him, something Coral had said the first time they met. “You can see the future, right?” he said, his eyes finally focusing on the short, curly-haired female before him.

She nodded in trepidation. “But I don’t think – ”

“And you said it had something to do with me touching you?”

“Don’t do it, Daniel…”

Before she could even complete her sentence, he pulled off a glove and touched his palm to her cheek. Immediately her face slackened, her eyes staring blankly ahead. Then he noticed that both of her pupils had gone entirely white behind her glasses. He jerked his hand away in alarm.

Coral slid down to the dirty tile floor, barely breathing. “Your skin,” she said in a whisper.

“What? What about my skin?” Daniel squatted down in front of her, noting with some relief that her eyes had turned brown again. Still, he worried about lasting repercussions. He snapped his fingers in her face. “Coral? Say something.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath and looked him in the eye before she said, “Daniel, you’re contagious.”

“Contagious? What the hell?”

Coral nodded vigorously. “Contact with your skin infects people.”

“I know what contagious means. But with what?” Yet even as he spoke, his entire body was vibrating, his skin crawling with static electricity. Most of his life he’d felt that something was not quite right; was Coral the one to finally shed light into the mystery?

But with one shake of her head, he realized that she was not. “I don’t know. I didn’t see.” She looked down at the chipped linoleum floor between her splayed legs.

Daniel stood up, exhaling with impatience as he turned away. “What
did
you see? Tell me something of value, please!”

After a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, with her head still hanging low, she said, “I saw where they’re keeping Olivia King.”

Daniel’s head snapped around, his anxiety suddenly overshadowed by renewed hope. “Is she alive?”

“Yes.”

“Is she hurt?”

“Yes.”

“Where?” He grasped her shoulders desperately. “Tell me where she is.”

Coral flinched. “She’s at 35 Christopher Columbus Drive in Union City. I didn’t see what floor, but it looked like a vacant office space.”

He shot towards the door.

“Daniel,” she called out. He turned back to look at her one last time and saw that her brown eyes were wide, her face colored with concern. “Be prepared for a fight that you will lose.”

His eyebrows furrowed and wondered if they were even speaking the same language. “Me? Lose a fight?”

She shrugged and shot him a rueful smile. “I’m not crazy. That’s what I saw. Just... be careful, alright?”

He nodded and left without another word.

* * * * *

“Felton, Dane,” John called down the hall.

“What’s going on?” Olivia said, her breathing starting to come in rapid gusts.

The once silky voice was now pitted with anger. “Your father has failed to comply. He has forced us to resort to Plan B.”

Pure terror snaked up her spine and gave her an instant migraine. She didn’t need the particulars of Plan B spelled out; it didn’t take a genius to guess what happened to the captive once the deal went awry.

She heard the two sets of footfalls enter the room and she bit her tongue in surprise when someone grabbed her arms roughly and jerked her to her feet. “So we don’t have to be gentle with this one anymore, right?” said the one with the Texan drawl, the one they called Felton. She couldn’t decide if she hated the name or the accent more.

“No. I mean, yes, be gentle!”

Desperate words came tumbling out of her mouth: “Please give him a little more time.” As much as she hated begging, she was beyond pride at that moment.
 
“I have nothing to do with this! I’m just an innocent bystander here.”

She tried to move forward, to the sound of her captor’s voice, but Felton’s fingers dug deeper into her skin. “Hey, honey, where do you think you’re going?”

“Please!”

It was the other accomplice, Dane, who spoke next. “Hey Jo– I mean, man, we
gotta
stick with the plan. Don’t even think about deviating from the plan.”

Olivia struggled against the arms that held her, wishing she could see people’s faces and read the subtle changes in expressions that could very well reveal her fate.
 

The man beside her snickered. “He can’t do it. He’s all talk and no game.”

Silence, and then a heavy sigh. “Take her down to the van. I’ll collect our stuff here and meet you there. We’ll proceed as planned.”

Before the men led Olivia out of the room, John said, “Wait.” He pulled out the voice distorter and held it up to his mouth as he dialed Richard King’s number once more. This time, the man waited three rings before answering.

“Congratulations,” John said through rigid lips. “You’ve just sentenced your daughter to torture and death.”

“You won’t get that far,” King said much too casually. Gone was his terse voice, which perplexed John. That was until he realized that King had already made his move. His rook was on the move.

“You’re not going to find anything once you get here,” John said.

“I’ll find you one way or another, you bastard.”

John’s nostrils flared. Did he not know what was at stake here? He motioned for Olivia to be brought closer. “Your daughter wants to say hello,” he said right before he jerked her bound arms behind her back so high that they were almost straight above her head.

She shrieked in pain. “Dad! Daddy, just please give him the money!” She cried out once more when Dane kicked the back of her knees and she crumbled to the floor. And that was when she lost control of her tightly reined emotions and finally began to sob into her knees.

John sucked in his breath at the sight of a broken Olivia but stood his ground. There was no turning back now. “You should really listen to your daughter,” he said into the phone. “By the way, you never mentioned how beautiful she is, how lovely her lips look when begging for mercy.”

“You son of a bitch!” King said, finally losing his cool. “You are going to die at my hands!”

John tsk-
tsked
. “A threat? To someone who’s holding a gun to your daughter’s head? And by the way, the ransom has gone up to ten million. Those damn late fees.”

“Listen to me, you sick piece of shit,” King said, carefully enunciating each word. “Not only are you not getting a single penny, but you are also going to die. Slowly. That, I can guarantee.”

“Promises, promises,” he said more brightly than he felt. “Well, Dick, I’m afraid we have to run. If you love your daughter at all, or you know, even like her a little bit, then I’d advise you to deposit the money into my account. I am giving you thirty minutes. After that, she
will
die.”

* * * * *

King slammed his cell phone down on the oak desk so hard the battery casing fell off. After replacing the wayward piece, he reached for his landline phone and dialed Smith’s number.

“You had better be damn close, Smith,” he said with a growl.

“I’m close. The signal was coming all the way from New Jersey.”

“They’re moving her,” he said, fingering the worn engraving on the platinum ring he still wore on his left hand.

“They haven’t yet. Take it easy, mate. I will find your daughter.”

“I want you to find that asshole and bring him to me. Then I will show him what happens to anyone who dares cross me.” He slammed the phone down, relishing the idea of vengeance with his own bare hands. It had been way too long since he’d gotten them dirty.

Felton and Dane flanked both sides of Olivia as they led her out of the room and down the hall.

“Our man there’s losing it,” Dane said as his fingers tightened around Olivia’s arm, though he wasn’t clutching her nearly as hard as his fellow henchman. The ball of dread in her stomach grew ever larger with each step she took. Plan B meant torture and death, hers to be more specific.

“Maybe it’s for a good cause,” Felton said and clamped a hand on her bottom. “Maybe then he’ll let us get some use out of her first before the execution.” He gave a rough squeeze and laughed abrasively.

Dane snickered. “What’s the matter? Not getting it the legal way?”

“Oh, I get it plenty. Don’t you ever question that,” was the arrogant reply, and Olivia’s skin crawled at the sound of the man hocking and spitting. “Just that my regular women are pork chops. And this here is filet mignon.”

Olivia fought to contain her revulsion as Felton continued to manhandle her. She twisted her body around, but his hands remained kneading her ass. “Get your hands off me!” she said in a shrill voice.

To her shock, Felton immediately withdrew his hands from her body. So, too, did Dane.

“Dane, did you just – “

“What the hell?“

Olivia took advantage of the momentary confusion and ran, adrenaline rapidly coursing through her veins. She couldn’t see, had no actual hope of getting away, at least not with her eyes taped shut, but she had to try. She knew what they wanted from her and she was not going to give it without a fight.

“Hey! Come back here!” She heard Felton’s heavy footsteps thundering behind her but she knew she couldn’t run faster and run the risk of knocking herself out on a wall.

A moment later, his stocky body crashed into her like an enormous bag of rice, pushing the breath out of her lungs as she tumbled down and slammed against the floor.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he said against her ear, making her cringe. The weight of his body pressed on top of her, making her almost gag when she felt the hard length that was pressing into her backside. His hands were already reaching into her shirt, when the other guy cleared his throat.

“I’m standing right here, you asshole,” he said from a distance, but Felton continued as if he didn’t hear, for apparently not only was he a rapist, he was an exhibitionist too.

But all of Olivia’s hopes of Dane turning out to be a decent human being were dashed when he added, “You mind doing that in the privacy of the bathroom or something?”