fifty-six

Hangover. This was the first thought that wafted through my brain. My head was pounding, my mouth tasted of copper, it was dark. It had to be a hangover. I raised my hand to rub my face, but it was caught on the sheets. I flopped it around to free it, but it was still stuck. The other was stuck as well.

I felt my wrists and realized that the “sheets” were ropes.

I turned my head and felt rough cloth on my cheek. I tried to call out, but my mouth was taped shut. I stopped moving and took inventory.

My hands were tied. My ankles were tied. I had a bag on my head, and my mouth was taped. I was lying on a hard surface that smelled of gasoline and rubber. I felt a slight vibration, and my world bumped.

I was moving. I was in a car trunk, lying on my side, stuck between the front of the trunk … and a body that had been crammed behind me.

What had Dmitri said just before he hit me? “Your protector is dead?” Jael. Just add her to the list. Carol, Alice, Kevin, and now Jael. I started to breathe quickly and thrash at my ropes in panic. A lump formed in my throat as my rage and sorrow overtook me. I pushed it down. If I cried now, with my mouth taped, I’d suffocate.

I considered suffocation as an option. If I suffocated, it would certainly piss off Dmitri. He had told me his plans. He was going to skin me. It would be a long, slow death. Suffocation would be quick and easy.

I couldn’t make myself follow that path. As long as I was alive, I might be able to talk my way out of the worst. Perhaps I’d get him angry enough to fight me. That would give me a chance to run.

I searched the trunk for the sound of Carol’s voice. I’d even have welcomed her telling me that she told me so, but she was gone. I was alone and scared. I lay still and listened to the vibration of the tires on the road. My shoulder was wet. I knew what caused the wetness. I had smelled it before.

When I’d found Carol in our house, she was sprawled across the kitchen floor. Dmitri had cut her throat, severing both carotid arteries and her larynx. The room smelled of blood, and that same smell flooded my small world in the trunk of a moving car.

My time in the trunk allowed me to collect my thoughts and focus. The terror I’d felt faded as I accepted my situation and made a plan for the future. In the trunk jostling against Jael’s corpse and remembering Carol’s, I decided that one of us, Dmitri or I, would die today. I’ll get him for you, honey. I’ll try.

I tried to flip onto my back, but my hands were tied to ropes that led out of the trunk. They must be swinging outside, looking like an innocent packing mistake. The car bounced again, and its bouncing became constant. It was leaving the main road and driving over ruts and potholes.

The car stopped. The engine died, and I was left listening to the rain pelting on the roof. The trunk popped open. I turned toward the sound.

“Ah, Mr. Tucker,” said Dmitri’s voice. “You are awake.” He grabbed me by my right arm and leg, pulled me out of the trunk, and dropped me. The bag over my head scraped my cheek as I fell to the ground. My shoulder crunched, and I grunted from the impact. I scrabbled around and felt wet pine needles between my fingers.

Dmitri hooked a hand in my armpit and dragged me across the forest floor. The rain in the trees sounded like meat frying. Thunder rumbled. Wherever these woods were, Dmitri and I would be alone on a day like today.

Dmitri dropped me at the base of a tree. My tailbone hit the root, sending tingles down my legs. He worked at my hands and I realized that, while my wrists were still tied, they were not tied to my waist anymore. I blindly flung my fists up, hoping to catch Dmitri on the chin.

He laughed. “You still have some fight left, yes? I will enjoy this.” Dmitri grabbed my wrists, tied them to a rope, and started hauling. He must have rigged a pulley overhead, because my arms were yanked straight up.

Dmitri said, “Stand now or I will break your shoulders.”

I got my tied ankles under me, and Dmitri pulled the rope until I was stretched along the tree. I heard the ripping of duct tape, and he ran tape around the tree, trapping my knees against the trunk. Another rip, and my elbows were pinned as well.

Dmitri pulled the bag off my head. “Asshole,” I grunted into the tape on my mouth.

“What’s that? You would like to speak? Yes, I think you would. You like to talk, talk, talk. But you shall wear the tape. We are away from people, but not so far away that your screams would not be heard.” Dmitri tested the ropes and the tape that held me against the tree.

“Very good,” he said in his Russian accent. “It is good to get back to my roots. I once did only this. Killing idiots. That was a long time ago. Now, I am mostly counting money. Drug money, engineering money, video money, Internet money. I have counted a lot of money, but selling your software, that will make all my other money nothing.”

Dmitri reached into his back pocket and pulled out a long, black folding knife. He opened it, revealing a blade with a sharp tapering point, like the tip of a bat’s wing. He touched the tip of the blade to my forearm, which was held between the tape on the tree and the ropes on my wrists. The blade parted the cloth of my shirt easily, and I felt a pinch. I tensed as if I were in the dentist’s chair.

Lightning flashed and rain ran into my eyes and nose where I snorted it out in a mist. I was breathing hard, and skirting around the edge of panic. Adrenaline ran through my hands in twitchy waves.

“I am surprised you are here, Mr. Tucker. I know many engineers. They are smart, practical men. They would have left after the garrote.” He traced the sharp knife along the faint line that still marred my throat. I pulled back.

“I will not cut your throat, Mr. Tucker. This will not be that fast,” said Dmitri as he pulled a pair of latex gloves out of his pocket and put them on. “The skinning will take some time. Your body would normally be left as a warning to others, but of course there is no one left to warn. I have already killed the FBI man, your friend, and your wife.” He paused. “Your wife was much smarter than you. I squeezed her real tits and told her what she must do. She did all that I asked.”

I screamed into the tape and pulled at the ropes. If had been possible for me to break them, I would have done it in that moment. I would have given anything to break free and shove Dmitri’s sharp knife into his eye. At that moment I realized that I was helpless and weak, a foolish man who would not be able to fulfill his promise to his dead wife. I slumped against the ropes, and Dmitri laughed at me.

He used the knife to cut away my shirt below my elbow, ripping it away, leaving my chest exposed to the cold rain. The storms that had been rumbling past the woods moved overhead. Lightning and thunder smashed together in crackling waves. Dmitri leaned close, his hand on my chest, the index finger over my nipple. He breathed, “You are ready, yes?” into my face with his cigarette breath.

The Russian leaned the sharp knife at an angle against the inner skin of my elbow. He pushed harder into my chest with his free hand to maintain his balance. I panicked, pulling spasmodically at my arms and legs flailing my head.

Something caught my eye in the woods. I couldn’t be sure I had seen it, but I didn’t risk a second look. That would ruin it. I did as I had been trained to do. I avoided looking at it. I looked away, peering into the trees as if I saw something among them.

Dmitri caught my stare and followed my eyes, looking deep into the empty woods. “What do you see there, Mr. Tucker? Maybe it is an angel, eh?” He looked through the rain. Then he said, “Such a pity. It is nothing.”

Dmitri laughed again and his temple exploded. Shards of blood and bone splashed across my face. The knife nicked my arm and fell away as his body spasmed and pushed itself into my chest. I heard a rattle escape his throat as he fell on me. He slid to the ground as blood spurted onto my chest and down my pants.

I looked back to my right. Walking out of the rain, her hair plastered across her face, was Jael Navas, her gun glinting and smoking.