Black As Night (Quentin Black Mystery #2) (22 page)

I gasped, wincing from the pressure as he forced the liquid into me.

Immediately, I felt my muscles start to relax.

“Why don’t you just do that to me during sex?” I retorted angrily as he removed the needle. “Why bother with a drug at all?”

He smiled at me cheerfully, ignoring my sarcasm.

“Takes too much concentration,” he said, tracing my cheek with a finger. “I want to think about fucking...about how good my cock feels. Not about why my girlfriend is clenching her muscles when she should be opening herself to me and feeling as good as I do...”

“Girlfriend...” I choked on the word.

Seeing him hanging over me, smiling, that heat coming off him already, I felt despair try to take over my mind. Tears blurred my eyes as I bit my lip.

“You’re a murderer,” I told him. “A child murderer...and a rapist. I’ll never feel anything but contempt for you. Never.”

He looked puzzled at first, his smile fading. Then his voice grew serious.

“That is not me,
ilya,”
he said. “I am not killing children.”

“Liar...” I said, gasping, still trying to fight the drug. “Liar...”

He clicked softly, caressing the hair off my face as he shook his head.

“Is this what concerns you? My soft-hearted
ilya
who misses her sister?” He kissed my cheek but I’d tensed, feeling another hard pain in my chest at his mention of Zoe. I knew he read me. I knew he’d taken Zoe from me too––and my parents––reading through my memories of my childhood and my time in the war like those things didn’t even belong to me.

If he saw my distress, he ignored it, clicking again, softer.

“Do not worry yourself about this, little one. I am not killing children. I do not do this...not ever. Not even the children of worms. I have been putting their souls to rest, that is all. I am not the butcher you think I am.”

“Liar,” I gasped, fighting tears again. “Liar...fucking piece of shit
liar
...I’d never believe anything you said. Never. No matter what it was...”

But I did believe him.

He probably knew that too, because he smiled. I was still watching his violet eyes, trying to think of worse things to say to him, when he slid his fingers into my hair.

Then he lowered his mouth and the moment was gone.

HE DIDN’T LEAVE me alone again for a few days.

Well, I think it was a few days. I don’t know how long it was actually. I couldn’t track time in there. I lost myself in light and dark, in his mind, his whims. I had no idea when he fed us or if he followed any kind of schedule. Food got delivered, we ate, we slept.

All I know is, at some point I woke up and he wasn’t lying next to me.

The room was completely dark.

I lay there, listening for him, but the only breathing I heard was mine.

Images tried to coalesce behind my eyes, memories of what we’d done earlier that night, what must have been hours ago now––hours before I even fell asleep. I shoved the images and sensations back violently, biting my lip hard enough that I tasted blood.

It was becoming a habit with me in here, I’d noticed.

Even so, something in that flickering taste of memory flipped a kind of switch in me.

Once it had, I was suddenly wide, wide awake.

I’d spent the last few days learning anything I could from him, even knowing I’d likely never be able to use any of it. It gave me something to focus on, I guess. It gave me something to accomplish, some goal...maybe because if I didn’t have that, I really would lose hope. I tried to pin him down about Lawless’s grandson, Pete, about where he was being kept. Solonik’s actual answers were vague, but more in the dismissive than the cagey sense. He clearly didn’t think it was important that I know. He said a few words in Thai, but mostly I got images in flashes behind his eyes.

Roiling water, the smell of fish and urine, rusting cages...

It wasn’t until the third time I asked that I realized I was seeing some kind of barge.

I tried to get more specifics, but his mind remained elusive, difficult to pin down.

Near the
wats.
Near where the killer left his bodies for Solonik to dispose of.

I tried to find out the killer’s identity from him too, since he still insisted it wasn’t him. He guarded the answer to that question more closely for some reason. Loyalty to his employer maybe, despite his annoyance with Mr. Lucky for “hiding” me from him. Loyalty to the killer himself. Whatever his reasons, I definitely got the sense Solonik didn’t want me to know. His thinking around that felt almost personal, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what that meant, unless he was friends with the killer in some way.

It almost felt personal in relation to
me
though, which made no sense to me at all.

Solonik certainly didn’t intend for me to ever get away from him.

Whatever the truth behind the child killer and Solonik, I could feel the clock running down for me. I’d been feeling it the last few times I’d been awake, with more and more urgency. Solonik’s time in Bangkok was drawing to a close. Whatever he was really doing here, and whatever his real connection was to the child-murderer, it would be over soon.

Once it was, I was gone. I was really gone.

As the thought grew more real to me, another thought rose.

I was getting out of here. Now. Before he came back.

Even if it meant killing myself.

As the thought crossed my mind, I looked up, again remembering that faint whisper of air overhead. I’d looked every chance I got, even when he left for a few seconds to use the toilet or to pay the food delivery person, or when he fell asleep ahead of me.

I’d come to the conclusion that there was definitely a window there, although one that had been not only painted but also boarded over. The board was loose enough to let in a whisper of air from a poorly sealed frame, and that was pretty much it. I had no idea where the window led; he was obviously holding me underground somewhere, but for all I knew that window simply led to a higher floor in the same building.
 

Solonik locked the door of the room where he kept me, even when he was inside.

When he left, he locked it with additional measures. I’d heard the sounds a few times now, so I knew he had some kind of padlock on the other side, not simply the lock on the door handle, which I might have been able to break if I could get free.

If I could get free.

Everything was moot until I figured that part out.

Whatever I did to get out of here, first I needed my hands. And my feet.

Sliding my body down the bed frame, I threw my lower body into an inverted shoulder-stand. I lost it the first time I tried and my legs came crashing down on the bed, my belly heaving and trembling from the exertion and the odd angle. The second time I tried, I managed to catch my balance. Sending up a silent thanks to my yoga teacher in Seaside, I carefully leaned my legs and lower torso sideways, feeling for the part of the wall where I felt the breeze with my bare feet. My right foot tapped that section of wall...tentatively at first.
 

Then a bit harder.

The material there definitely gave. It also didn’t feel anything like the lower wall. Plywood maybe, nothing particularly thick. Likely water-warped which maybe accounted for the breeze. I lost my balance briefly and couldn’t catch it with my ankles bound together. I landed back on the bed, panting, then I threw myself immediately up into another shoulder-stand.

That time, I tried kicking at the wood.

I didn’t expect to make it through the wood itself.

I wanted to break the glass. If I could have kicked it straight on, I was reasonably sure I could do it, but with the sideways angle I was less sure. I didn’t have a lot of choices though, with my wrists still tied to the metal ring above the bed. I tried again, and again.

I could feel myself running out of time.

I didn’t want to think about where Solonik was...burning another child’s corpse in his sick parody of “purification,” raping other women...hunting Black.

The combination of thoughts made me grit my teeth. I swung my body harder that time, putting most of my weight behind it.

I was rewarded with a cracking sound.

I also lost my balance. My legs and lower body crashed back down on the bed. I was sweating by then, and my wrists hurt so badly from the repeated chafing I was biting my tongue against the pain. Even so, I didn’t wait, but threw myself back up into another shoulder stand. That time, I launched my whole body at the plywood covering.

A crashing sound greeted me. I let out a low gasp, losing my balance again.

That time, when I got back up in the shoulder-stand, I worked to jam my bare toes under the edge of the plywood. I gasped a few times at sharp edges, feeling something slice open my big toe. Groaning at the pain that shot down my leg, I forced that same foot harder and deeper into the crack until I finally felt what I’d been waiting for.

Pieces rained down past my foot, nicking my leg. At least one good-sized one fell down through that opening I’d created, and landed on the bed.

Extracting my toes and feet from the plywood made me gasp again as I sliced more skin on my way out. Biting my lip harder now to keep from crying out, I felt around frantically on the bed with my leg and back until I found the shard that fell, and was relieved to find it was as big as I’d thought when it landed. Then I slid my body up the bed, wincing again at my foot as the cut bottom bled on the sheet. I found the shard with my feet again and managed to grip it between the soles.
 

Holding it as tight as I could, gasping with a focused concentration and a near-terror I might drop it, I scooted down the bed again, then threw my lower body up, this time into a plow position, with my feet up over my head to where my hands were. I managed to keep hold of the glass as I did it, my whole body shaking with exertion as I plucked the piece of glass from between the soles of my feet.

Gasping again, I let my feet fall back to the mattress, still panting with exertion.

I didn’t wait, but started sawing, hard, through the rope.

It seemed to take forever.

I barely breathed while I did it. I sawed methodically, gripping the shard in a death grip, oblivious to it cutting my fingers or hands in my determination not to drop it. It got slick with sweat––then with blood––but I still gripped it with every ounce of strength in my fingers, sawing determinedly at the rope between my wrists, right at the point where I pulled it taut between my hands. I nicked my wrists and winced but didn’t stop, didn’t loosen my hold. I kept sawing, my eyes closed, my jaw clenched as I saw in my mind where each strand parted.

When it finally came away, some part of me didn’t believe it at first.

I still gripped the shard in my hand, still held onto it for dear life, when suddenly, I yanked on my wrists and they pulled completely away from the wall and from one another.

It took every ounce of my willpower not to scream aloud.

I gave myself two deep breaths, then I lurched up to a seated position. Without waiting, I began to saw through the rope on my ankles.

That one didn’t take as long...the angle was a lot better. Even so, I didn’t take out the gag until I’d cut through the last of that rope.

I stood up on the bed at once. Gripping the edges of the plywood in my fingers, I was startled to feel how loose it was. I’d actually split the wood in half with one of those kicks, and now, when I yanked on it, a piece of it came away from the window in my hands, causing more glass to rain down on the bed. I yanked harder on the wood.