Second Grave on the Left

Chapter Fifteen

A jolt knocked my head — the same head that had just been traumatized by a blunt object — against the side panel of the interior of a trunk. It startled me awake. But I quickly started losing ground, slipping back into oblivion with each beat of my heart. A rich, warm darkness threatened to overcome me, forcing me to push, to bite and claw back to awareness.

I focused on the sharp pain throbbing in my head, the fact that my hands and feet were bound, the hum of an engine, and the whir of tires on pavement beneath me. If this was Cookie’s way of finally getting me into the trunk of a car, she was getting a year’s supply of bikini wax treatments for Christmas.

“So, like, what are you doing?”

I forced my eyes open to the grinning face of a thirteen-year-old gangbanger named Angel. Thank goodness. Surely, he could get me out of this. He was leaning in through the backseat. At that moment, I would have killed a woolly mammoth to be incorporeal as well.

“I’m dying,” I croaked, my parched throat making me hoarse. “Go get help.”

“You’re not dying. Besides, do I look like Lassie?” His smart-ass smirk faltered for a split second, just long enough for me to see the concern on his face. That was bad.

“Who is it?” I asked, closing my eyes against the layers of pain throbbing in harmony against my skull.

“It’s two white men,” he said. Worry strained his voice.

“What do they look like?”

“White men,” he said with a vocal shrug. “You guys all look alike.”

I tried to release a loud sigh but couldn’t get enough air in my constricted lungs. “You’re about as helpful as a spoon in a knife fight.” I felt my shoulder holster for my gun, but it was gone. Naturally. And my shaky grip on consciousness was ebbing as well. “Go get Reyes,” I said, losing ground much faster than I could keep up.

“I can’t find him.” His voice sounded like an echo in a cavern. “I don’t know how.”

“Then let’s hope he knows how to find me.”

What seemed like moments later, the trunk lid opened, waking me for the second time, and a rush of light filled the cramped space. I suddenly felt an odd kinship to vampires as I squinted against the harsh brightness.

“She’s awake,” one of them said. He seemed surprised.

“No shit, Sherlock,” I said, receiving a sharp stab of pain at the base of my skull for my effort.

Of all the times for me to be scared, now would be a good one, but I was getting nothing. No rush of adrenaline. No fear coursing through my veins. No panic-induced sweats or stomach-turning anxiety attacks. Either they gave me something in the form of illegal drug use or I had turned into a zombie. Since I had no desire to eat their brains, I was leaning toward the narcotics rap.

“You hit me,” I said as they dragged me out of the trunk and toward what looked like an abandoned motel. With infinite rudeness, neither of them answered, and I realized then that I wasn’t talking clearly. And walking with my feet bound was proving darned near impossible, too. Luckily, I had an armed escort. It made me feel oddly important. I totally needed bodyguards of my own. The implementation of a maximum-security program would not only deter future kidnappings, but it would also boost my self-esteem, and an esteemed self is a happy self.

“What do I do?” Angel asked, bouncing around like a grasshopper in a skillet. He was hard enough to see as it was. I couldn’t seem to focus on anything beyond the thickness of my tongue.

“Get Ubie,” I answered in a flurry of slurs.

“Don’t you think I’ve thought of that? I tried to get him when you were channeling a coma patient, Rip Van. He’s freaking out, trying to call you right now. He thinks he’s being haunted by your great-aunt Lillian.”

My escorts hefted me over the threshold of a crumbling single occupancy. A chair sat at the near end of the room along with a variety of blurry torture devices on the dresser next to it. Needles, knives, disturbing metal appliances designed with one thing in mind. At least my escorts had put some effort into this, had done their homework and prepped the area. I wasn’t just some random chick they were going to torture and bury in the desert. I was specially chosen to be tortured and buried in the desert. The self-esteem had already jumped a notch.

“So, why does Ubie think he’s being haunted by Aunt Lil?” I asked as they plopped me into the chair before tying me to it.

“Who is she talking to?” one of my escorts asked.

The other one grumbled. It wasn’t hard to distinguish which was Riggs and which was Murtaugh, though they were clearly the evil versions. And I figured out why I couldn’t place their faces. They were wearing ski masks, which really didn’t coordinate well with their suits.

I soon discovered that being bound to a chair was far less comfortable than one might think. The ropes cut into my wrists and upper arms and squished poor Danger and Will Robinson to no end. They would never be the same.

“Well, I tried the sugar trick,” Angel said, still jumping about, trying to see exactly what they were doing. “You know, like you told me before, but his cat kept licking at it until it looked less like ‘Charley needs help’ and more like ‘Lil likes ass.’”

“Ubie has a cat?”

I saw a flash of movement, so fast, it hardly had time to register before I was looking toward the rusted sink at my right. Only then did a sharp pain shoot through my jaw, and I was beginning to realize how much this was going to suck. Grrrr, I hated torture.

“You hit me again,” I said, growing oddly annoyed.

“Ya think?” Evil Riggs said. Smart-ass.

“Part of my brain hurts. I demand to know what that part of my brain is called and what its job is.”

Evil Riggs paused. “Lady, I don’t know what that part of your brain is called. Do you know?” He turned toward his BFF.

“Are you kidding me?” Evil Murtaugh asked, though I felt his inquiry insincere.

I did my best to identify the men I highly suspected of kidnapping, but I just couldn’t focus. Whatever they gave me was great. I’d have to get the recipe.

Their voices sounded like a recording played too slow, and I couldn’t quite zero in on their eyes to assess the color. I pretty much couldn’t zero in on anything that would have me tilt my head any direction but down. They had nice shoes.

“We’re running out of patience and time, Ms. Davidson,” Evil Murtaugh said. His voice wasn’t particularly deep, and he had small hands. Definitely not my type. “You’re getting one chance and one chance only.”

One chance was better than none. I’d have to give it my best shot. Go for the gold on the first try. Beginner’s luck, don’t fail me now.

“Where is Mimi Jacobs?”

Shit. Well, when all else fails, lie. “She’s in Florida.”

“Where’s Floyd?” Evil Riggs asked his partner.

“Florida,” I repeated. Geez. I tried again. “Flo-wi—”

My head whipped to the right again, and pain shot all the way from my jaw down my spine in white-hot waves. Still, I had a feeling Evil Murtaugh’s love taps would’ve hurt a lot worse had I not been drugged out the ass. Now I had to regain my bearings all over again. I sighed in annoyance.

Evil Murtaugh kneeled before me and lifted my chin so I could look at him. It really helped. I could almost make out the color of his crystal blue eyes. And I would’ve bet my last nickel the other one might have had crystal blue eyes as well. I knew they’d creeped me out for a reason. Freaking fake FBI agents sucked.

“This is going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me,” said Evil Murtaugh, aka Special Agent Powers.

I smiled. “Not if the guy standing outside that window has anything to say about it.”

Both my kidnappers whirled around. Before they could do anything, Garrett Swopes put two into Evil Riggs, his draw so quick, it barely registered. Of course, nothing was registering clearly for me, but still. Evil Murtaugh drew his gun and shot back, forcing Swopes against the outside wall. It was all quite loud. I tried to give Swopes some help by head-butting Evil Murtaugh, but all I managed to do was to lop my head down for a good view of his shoes again.

“Woohoo!” Angel said, whooping and hollering and jumping around. I couldn’t take him anywhere.

There was some more gunfire, and someone kicked the door in. He had nice shoes, too. Shiny. Suddenly, Garrett was untying me. He was wearing dusty boots and jeans. And Evil Riggs might or might not have been dead at my feet. I mean, he looked dead with his eyes open and unseeing like that. But I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions.

“He went out the back,” Garrett said to the guy with nice shoes. Who knew he kept such good company?

I managed to raise my head long enough to identify Deadly Ninja Guy of the Three Stooges. He hadn’t changed much since he and his cohorts had broken into my apartment the other morning. “Mr. Chao,” I said, utterly surprised. “How did you guys find me?”

“Mr. Chao and I traded numbers a while back when I busted him tailing you,” Garrett said, struggling with the ropes. He gave up and brought out a wicked-looking knife.

“You mean, when you were tailing me, too?”

“Yeah. He’d been tailing you for days.”

“Mr. Chao,” I said, my voice admonishing. “I do have a nice ass, though, huh?”

“Should we go after him?” Mr. Chao asked, a soft Cantonese accent flowing from his tongue.

Garrett cut me free, and I fell forward into his arms like a ragdoll. “Where the hell did my bones go?” I asked. This whole upright thing had me stumped.

“You and your buddy can,” Garrett said, answering Chao. My question had been fairly rhetorical anyway.

I looked up to see Frank Smith, Mr. Chao’s boss, his charcoal suit impeccable. He had a grin on his face, as though he lived for such events.

“I just want to get Charles to safety,” Garrett continued.

“You wearing your Juicy underwear?” Smith asked, clearly humored.

“How did you find me?”

Smith gestured with a nod. “Mr. Chao noticed two men loading something large into their trunk in the alley behind your apartment building.”

“Large?” I asked, suddenly offended.

“He called me,” Garrett said, trying to help me stand, “to come check out your apartment while he followed the vehicle, just in case. Sure enough, you weren’t home.”

“By the time we figured out they had kidnapped you, Mr. Chao had called me as well, and we all met behind that hill over there.” Smith pointed out the shattered window. All I saw was a stark brightness.

“The cops are on their way,” Garrett added.

“Charley,” Angel said with a startled voice, a split second before a shower of bullets rained down on us.

Garrett shoved me to the ground behind a rather disgusting mattress and box spring, and both the other men took a dive as well. The sound was bizarre. Gunfire from a fully automatic weapon echoed and zinged around us as bullet after bullet punctured the Sheetrock, the paltry furniture, and dinged against the ancient sink. Then it stopped for what I assumed was a reloading. Mr. Chao grunted in pain. He’d been shot, but I couldn’t tell how bad.

“We have to get help,” I said to Garrett as I tried to stand.

“Charley, damn it.” He jerked me back down behind the broken and rusted bed. “We have to figure out what to do first.”

“We could, I don’t know, take Mr. Chao and get the fuck outta Dodge.” The spike in adrenaline must have de-fuzzed my tongue. I was suddenly having no problem articulating my opinion.

Garrett wasn’t even paying attention to me. For real? We were pulling this shit again? “If we wait it out, the cops will be here any minute,” he said.

“If we grab Mr. Chao and head for that back window, we could get the fuck outta Dodge and wait for the cops out there.”

Another round of gunfire blared around us. “Son of a bitch,” Garrett said as bullets ricocheted in every direction. “Who the fuck is that, anyway?”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that he told me his name. It’s Let’s-Get-the-Fuck-Outta-Dodge Redenbacher.”

“Here, take this.” He reached behind his back.

“Is it a get-the-fuck-outta-Dodge-free card?”

He placed a small pistol in the palm of my left hand.

“Dude, I’m totally a righty.”

“Charley,” he said, exasperation filling his voice.

“I’m just sayin’.”

“You stay here,” he ordered. He climbed onto his knees, apparently readying himself to do something heroic.

The first bullet that found its mark inside Garrett’s body sent me into a state of shock. The world slowed as the sound of metal meeting flesh hit my ears. He stared at me, his face a mask of disbelief. When a second bullet convulsed through him, he looked down at his side, trying to find the entry point. By the time the third bullet hit him, I knew what I had to do.

As a line of rounds paraded across the wall behind us, the gunman’s spray stopped and reversed, careening back in my direction as he did a standard sweep pattern.

So, I climbed to my feet, locked my knees, and waited.

Garrett collapsed against the wall, his jaw clenched in agony as each incoming round ripped chunks of Sheetrock out of the threadbare walls, ricocheted against the metal sink, and slashed through the rickety furniture as though it were paper. The room looked like the hapless victim of a Friday-night pillow fight.

Where was a son of Satan when you needed one? Maybe he was still mad at me. Maybe he wouldn’t be there this time — he didn’t show up when the parolee intent on cutting out my heart attacked, a first — but it was a risk I was willing to take, for Garrett.

I waited for one of two things to happen. I would either be shot dead right then and there, or Reyes would come. He would save the day. Again. And all of this, all the noise and chaos, would end. I felt the concussion of gunfire ripple over my skin, the heat of an object moving faster than the speed of sound vibrate along my nerve endings.

I closed my eyes and whispered softly, unable to hear myself over the gunfire. “Rey’aziel, I summon you.”

The reverberation of a round thundered past me. And another. They were getting closer. The next one would hit me in the neck, possibly severing my jugular.

I opened my eyes, braced myself for the impact, and watched in astonishment as the world slowed even more. The debris hung in midair like ticker tape frozen in time as a line of bullets pushed slowly through the atmosphere toward me. I studied the one closest. The one that had my name on it. The metal was white hot, the friction of traveling so fast heating the metal instantaneously. Then the world came crashing back as a powerful force threw me to the ground, knocking the breath out of me. The bullets I’d been watching sank into the wall over my head with popping sounds.

And everything darkened, starting with my periphery and closing in around me until I fell into a beautiful black oblivion.

What seemed like seconds later, my eyes fluttered open and I found myself floating toward a crumbling ceiling I didn’t recognize. I looked back at my body, at the pool of blood growing in an arc around my head. Then I looked up at the dark figure lifting me toward the heavens and I ground my teeth together, curled my hands into fists.

Freaking Death. I was so going to kick his ass.

I jerked my arm out of his grip and fell back to Earth. Reyes was in front of me at once, his dark robe undulating around him. But I had already been in full swing and clipped him on the jaw.

“What the hell was that for?” he asked, lowering his hood to reveal his perfect face.

“Oh.” I shrugged sheepishly. “I thought you were Death.”

A grin slid across his face, bringing to light his charming dimples, which in turn caused a shiver to dance along my spine. “That would be you,” he said, eyebrows raised teasingly.

“Right, I’m Death. I knew that.” I looked down at my body sprawled unappealingly across the floor. “So, am I dead?”

“Not hardly.” He inched closer, placed his fingers underneath my chin, and turned my head side to side to check out the damage from Evil Murtaugh. “You should have summoned me earlier.”

“I didn’t even know that I could. I just took a chance.”

His brows furrowed. “Usually you don’t have to. I can feel your emotions before they surface.”

“They drugged me. I was really happy.”

“Oh. Next time summon me earlier.”

I lowered my head, hesitant.

“What?” he asked.

“I was attacked the other night by a guy with a knife, and from what I remember, my emotions were pretty strong then. You weren’t there.”

“Is that what you think?”

I blinked up at him in surprise. “You were?”

“Of course I was there. You were doing just fine by yourself.”

I couldn’t help but snort. “Apparently, you went to some other chick named Charley’s attempted stabbing, ’cause I was almost killed, mister.”

“And you dealt with it. Told you, by the way.”

“Told me what?”

“You’re capable of more than you think.” A most sensual grin tipped the corners of his mouth, and he closed the distance between us. “Much more.”

“Garrett!” I shouted, and woke up an instant later beside him. Back in my body, I scrambled up and looked around for Reyes. Had I dreamt all that? It would be just like me, really. But the gunfire had stopped. “What happened?” I asked Smith.

“The gunman is dead,” he said, helping Mr. Chao. “And the cops are almost here, so we’re leaving.”

“Wait, did you stop him?”

He pulled a groaning Mr. Chao to his feet and wrapped his arm around him. “Not me.”

“Wait, Garrett,” I said as he wrestled his colleague out the door. An SUV pulled up with André the Giant, aka Ulrich their third man, at the wheel.

“The cops are almost here. Apply pressure.”

“Thanks,” I said at his back. Turning to Garrett, I realized the blood I saw in an arc around my head was not mine but his. I sought out the worst of his wounds and, well, applied pressure.