Keeper of Crows (Keeper of Crows #1)(10)
I half expected privacy glass to creep from the bottom up, like the cars my father frequently traveled in. The one difference between Dimitri and Father? My father guarded his secrets in varying ways, but Dimitri spoke openly. His men knew not to betray his trust.
“Where are we going?” I asked as the driver pulled the car away from my house. Each passing yard, fence, and gate taunted me that I might never make it home again.
“You tell them about me.” It wasn’t a question.
I shook my head rapidly. “No, I wouldn’t tell anyone anything.”
“No. I get visit from police yesterday. They say you tell them that I sell you the cocaine. I denied it, of course, but you have caused me a great problem.”
“Dimitri, I never said anything. I was in that place just biding my time. They got angry that I wouldn’t speak.”
Suddenly, the conversation with Doc replayed in my mind. He asked who Dimitri was, and I told him, My dealer. He could have waited a few days. Jesus. Still, lying was the best solution here.
Dimitri instructed the driver to take us to an address I didn’t recognize.
“Where are we going?” I asked again.
Dimitri didn’t answer me. He didn’t have to. My scalp itched where the stitches crawled over it, a centipede of thread. The silence in the car crept into my bones. “I swear I didn’t tell anyone about you, Dimitri.”
Still no answer. The car took lefts and rights, too many to remember in order. If they were trying to confuse me—and they probably were—it was working. Easing into an alley, the driver stopped the car. A man made of solid muscle stepped toward the car and opened the door for Dimitri, who barked two words. “Bring her.”
As Dimitri walked away without a backwards glance, Muscle walked around, opened my door, and motioned for me to exit. My feet hit the ground, one at a time, almost as if life were moving in slow motion. The concrete was broken, cracks splintering from one tagged building to another across the alley. Garbage in a nearby dumpster made me cover my nose as I stepped out of the car, avoiding a questionable puddle. Was that blood?
Breathe.
Step.
Breathe.
Step again.
I had to remind myself to do both.
Climbing a small flight of stairs to a loading dock, the lackey led me inside a large, dilapidated warehouse. It was empty of everything but a few makeshift beds huddled in a corner. Dimitri waited in the center of the large space. Maybe the beds belonged to homeless squatters. My eyes searched for them. Maybe one would get help.
Empty. The building. The beds. Dimitri’s eyes.
The guard shoved me toward the middle of the room, straight toward him. I stumbled and Dimitri caught me. “You caused me problems. Now I cause you pain,” he said, before punching me in the ribs. Fire bloomed and spread through my abdomen and chest. I gasped for air he had no intention of allowing me to have. I was going to die in this piss-scented warehouse. “You know what to do,” he ordered to the guard, walking away. “I’ll call the others.”
What others?
When the giant came at me, I blocked his arms, scratched out toward his face, and kicked toward his knees, his groin. It wasn’t enough. He was much better at fighting than I was. In all honesty, it was only seconds before the fight in me was gone. I just wanted it to end.
I wanted it all to end.
The giant’s fist crashed against my jaw with a sickening crack. I laid on the floor, staring at the air conditioning shafts and pipes that ran across it in predictable patterns. When he lifted me by the shirt to hit me again and saw I couldn’t stand upright on my own, he let go of me. I flopped to the floor, trying to push myself up. Blood poured from my nose and mouth, pooling beneath me.
“Get up!” he roared.
I tried, not because he told me to, but because I wanted away from him and the pain. Pushing away with my toes, I made it a few feet before the kicking began. He laughed at me as my fingernails dug into the cracked concrete. He was going to kill me. This was it.
When one of his polished shoes connected with my temple, everything went black.
4
The rhythmic sound of air being sucked in and expelled from a tube woke me. I blinked, unsure of what I was seeing. How did I get here? The scent of antiseptic weighed heavily in the air. A man with dark, slicked-back hair pushed a bucket out of the curtained area, using the handle of his submerged mop to steer. He whistled sweetly. The floor shone, still wet with bleach and water. A woman lay in a hospital bed, wires and tubes streaming out of her like rays of sunshine. Her eyelids were taped shut. A stream of staples flowed down her scalp. Every inch of her face was bruised, swollen, or cut. One of her calves was raised in the air by a sling hanging from a metal contraption. The machines beside her, whose music had been steady, suddenly became erratic. An alarm sounded, its frantic beeps summoning a nearby nurse who slipped on the wet tiles on her way to the machines, righting herself at the last minute. She quickly checked the patient’s pulse at her wrist. Two more nurses ran into the room, and then there were four. It was a flurry of activity.
“Her blood pressure’s crashing,” the first nurse who arrived announced. She was precise and sharp with each movement. “Ephedrine ready,” she ordered the others.
One flew into action. It must not have been the first time the woman had needed the medicine, because they had it readily available on an end table near the bed. A nurse used a syringe to ease medicine directly into the IV. Within a minute, the alarm’s shrill sound quieted and the beeping became rhythmic.