Extreme Danger (McClouds & Friends #5)(134)

Becca stared at him as he got back into the truck. “What is this place? Where are we?”

He accelerated into a big, dim complex of deserted buildings. “You’ll see,” he said.

“Hey, Nick. Now’s not the time for you to get cryptic on me. What the hell is—”

“Shut up and let me think. You think you’re the only person who’s stressed out? Do not f*cking scold me, Becca.”

She flinched at the brutal edge in his voice, and shut her mouth.

Nick braked in front of a blank-looking building with huge, sliding metal doors. The place had an air of decay and abandonment. Some of the windows were broken. There was a chain held by another heavy-duty combination padlock. Remnants of faded yellow crime scene tape tangled on the ground and stuck to the door. What on earth?

Nick picked that lock too and wrenched the thing loose. He reached into the back seat of the truck, grabbed a couple plastic bags that were stowed there, yanked the passenger side door open, and grabbed Becca’s arm. “Out you get.”

She slid out of the truck. “But where are we—”

“Later. Move.” His tone was like the flick of a whip. The jolt to her tortured nerves got her going.

He shoved her before him in a stumbling trot, into the big, empty building. Dim light filtered in from the high, filthy windows. There was a little more light from the open door. The ceiling was vast, many stories high. There was a huge metal scaffolding system, designed to hold industrial quantities of who knew what. The scaffolds were empty now.

Startled bats fluttered and swooped. An owl hooted, whooshed down over their heads and soared, flapping, out the open door. Becca smelled the reek of animal shit, mold, dust, rot. The place was cold, damp. Incredibly desolate.

“What is this?” she whispered.

“A few years ago, there was a big drug raid here,” Nick said. “This was a storage point for heroin coming out of the southern ex-Soviet republics. The owners are rotting in jail.”

“But why are we here?” she asked.

He crouched, did something with his hands inside the plastic bag that she could not see. She heard the clink and rattle of metal, like the links of a chain. He grabbed her hands, yanked them unexpectedly downward.

Snick. Snick. “Because this is the only place I know of where no one will find you, and no one will hear you scream,” he replied.

She stared at her hands, fastened with handcuffs. One was attached directly to the heavy metal scaffolding, the other was cuffed to a long, heavy chain which Nick then buckled to the next metal pillar.

She gaped at him in terrified astonishment.

Chapter

29

S omething cool and wet kept stroking his face, but Josh didn’t want to drag himself up to consciousness. Something bad waited for him there. But that wet thing petting his face was making him curious. Groggily, he let his eyelids flutter open. Regretted it as light sliced into his brain like a hot knife.

Oh, God. All pain. He was nothing but pain, his head a throbbing, sickening knot of it. Every heartbeat a hammer blow.

Josh tried to reach up to feel his head and discovered another source of pain. His shoulders were wrenched behind his back. Wrists on fire from tourniquet-tight bonds, his fingers numb and cold. His face felt crusty. His back hurt, his balls hurt, his stomach rolled. He tasted blood. Felt loose teeth. He knotted his gut to rock-hardness, and tried peering out one slitted eye.

Eyes. That was all he saw. Big, hazel eyes. Long-lashed, shadowy eyes, gazing at him thoughtfully. It seemed to hurt a fraction less, so he opened his one eye a little more to take in the whole face.

A girl’s face. Heart-shaped, hollow-cheeked. Delicate and beautiful. He would have taken her for an angel coming to carry him away if she hadn’t looked so damn sad.

There was an old bruise under one of her eyes. She was scary thin. Someone said something, in a questioning tone. A small child’s voice. He couldn’t make out the muffled, garbled words. The girl looked down, and replied gently in a language he could not place.

He opened both eyes. Curiosity was getting the better of him, but he had to close them and wait through several violent explosions of pain before he could gather the courage to do it again, and take in the entire scene.

Holy shit. It took a while for it all to sink in. So many kids. This raggedy girl, dressed in a shrunken T-shirt and baggy sweatpants, was in front. The shirt didn’t hide her shape. Pretty. No, beautiful, despite her thinness.

He averted his eyes and was punished by a searing bolt of pain from his optic nerve. Served him right, though. This chick was way too young for him to be noticing anything below the collarbone.

She was surrounded by other children. Lots of children. Skinny, dirty looking. Most of them were sucking on their thumbs.

They were in a white room, flooded with light. Big, nasty, buzzing fluorescent bar lamps hung over them, blazing cold, head-splitting light that washed out all the details like an overexposed photo. He was reminded of a pop psych quiz someone had given him once. So, like, you wake up in this completely white room. How do you feel?

His answer was supposed to have revealed his true feelings about death. That kind of drivel annoyed the shit out of him. He didn’t need a quiz to know how he felt about death. Death sucked. He wasn’t looking forward to it, not for himself or anyone he cared about. End of story.

But no one had ever asked him how he would feel if he woke up in a white room with a bunch of starved-looking kids in rags. He wondered what deep psychological truths that question would reveal about a person.