Hailey

I’d dehydrated myself from crying. I didn’t think I could. Sobbing to the point where my tongue stuck to my teeth wasn’t something I was used to. Then again, neither were dead bodies.

I could still see his feet.

Red-speckled black oxfords over black socks.

Blood trails all over the concrete.

The air smelled like pennies—like sweaty palms chock-full of copper. The scent could make you sick if you breathed it in long enough, but a mouth full of old blood was worse than the smell.

Tasted a lot like pocket change. The cuts on my lips were deep enough to stick my tongue into and stung enough to make me dizzy. I let my chin hit my chest and shut my eyes until the spinning stopped.

I was really starting to look the part. Black-eyed and busted-lipped—portrait of a modern black dahlia. If I ended up freezing to death, they’d find me grinning too, flipping my kidnappers the bird with frostbitten middle fingers.

Picturing my front page New York Times debut was worth wasting the oxygen over. At least a sense of humor kept my mind off the cold.

The wires around my legs and arms were the first to freeze. Cillian had me strapped so tightly to the chair that every time I moved, the cables rubbed my skin raw. Bad day to wear shorts. The sheriff wasn’t much better off than I was.

All the blood on his pant legs had frozen the pleats in place. His skin must’ve been rock solid judging by the frost forming all the way up to his utility belt. His gun was gone. Liam was probably responsible. If he had that, he most likely had gotten a hold of Rusty’s—

Keys.

The full set peeped right out from under his empty holster. Enter Hailey Houdini. If there was one thing I was good at, it was falling. I rocked back and forth, rattling the metal against the hard floors until I did just that.

The chair hit the concrete and shattered the chilled silence while the frozen cables cracked around my arms and legs. I wriggled free. You never know when a little water weight will come in handy.

Moving was the hard part. My hands and feet stayed clumsy and numb as I tried to lift myself off the ground. I needed time. Time to defrost my fear and my fingers, time to work through the pain, time to convince myself to get close enough to a corpse to grab his keys.

I didn’t even have thirty-seconds. When a girl falls in a room, and four men are there to hear it, is she safe and sound?

        “Who let the kitten out of her cage?”

Liam’s voice cut straight through the cold and a dull, gnawing sensation crawled around the corners of my stomach. My body tensed, a subtle warning to brace myself for him—for them. I was alone. Liam wasn’t.

        “Where were you planning on going, love? There isn’t a door in this house that’ll open for you,” Cillian said with a painted smile on his lips.

He grabbed me by the hair, tore my scalp apart by the strands, and dragged me over to Liam. He looked different. Like the crow’s feet around his eyes had quadrupled since the last time I’d seen him. His left arm hung in a makeshift sling. Good to see Rusty leveled the playing field.

        “What’s the password on that fancy phone of yours?” Liam asked.

I stayed silent and swallowed the coming consequences.  Liam couldn’t do much with a dead arm, Cillian’s strong point was intimidation, Marcus seemed harmless, and Caleb couldn’t even look at me. As long as I had something they needed they couldn’t touch me.

Maybe they’d slap me around a little, but I’d already made up my mind that I could take it. Cold makes you numb to a lot of things, threats included.

Liam snatched my face in his hands and dug his fingers so hard into my cheeks that his nails grated against my gums.

        “I believe I asked you a question.”

I stared at him straight-faced and shaking but kept my mouth shut.

        “It’s your life, girlie. Hold your tongue as long as you like, but eventually I’ll make you talk,” he said.

Liam ran his fingers right along the edge of my lips before putting them back into his mouth.

        “I’m curious. Does the rest of you taste salty or are there sweeter spots?”

I crashed my forehead straight into the bridge of his nose and recoiled from the shock. His blood spattered onto my skin while he stumbled backward growling under his breath. Marcus darted over to Liam while Cillian snatched me by the arm and dragged me to the center of the room.

Caleb stood by the door with my phone in his hands like he was waiting for orders. Waiting to make mistakes.

        “Caleb, follow me for a minute,” Liam said.

He disappeared with Caleb out the door. I looked to Marcus for some kind of reassurance, but there wasn’t even a sliver of the kindness I’d seen in his eyes earlier.

He left me standing in the middle of the room—waiting, shivering, freezing, falling apart a quiet piece at a time. The silence wrapped itself around my throat and sucked the air out of my spirit.

I should’ve listened to Liam. I should’ve given him answers instead of resistance. I wasn’t a superhero. I wasn’t a saint. I was a broken girl, in a broken room, full of broken people.

Broken people were the dangerous ones.

Caleb came around the corner with Liam at his heels and didn’t waste anytime approaching me. Liam dragged something into the room behind his back while Caleb blocked my line of vision and tried to redirect my attention back to him. He was so close I felt the heat radiating off of his body, but the chill in the air stole it away.

        “Lift your head up,” he whispered, his voice icier than the air.

I stared into his thinning grey-blues hoping to find the boy with the southern charm I’d crashed into at the station. But he wasn’t there—he was hollow. Chilled tears scattered down my face as he pulled a tattered blindfold over my eyes and tugged the fabric tight.

        “I’m gonna need that password, Hailey. Just be easy about this and nothing bad’ll happen to you.”

        “Watch those promises, Caleb. You’ll only upset her when you can’t keep them,” Cillian said.

Mom would’ve told me to fight, to stay stronger than I felt, and to put up and keep up my dukes. But I couldn’t even make a fist. This was helplessness—frozen hands, raw fear, and no fight.  

Caleb prodded me for the password again, and those four little numbers, the one I never should’ve said, came tumbling off my tongue.

        “Get our man on the phone, Caleb, and make sure you switch the video on so he can see everything.”

Liam sounded close, too close, enough to make the blood slow to a near stop in my veins. There wasn’t enough air to breathe around him, and there wasn’t enough room to run.

        “Hailey? Where the hell are you?”

Good old Dad. I’d been missing twelve-hours, and disappointment was the first thing to fly out of his mouth. I kept mine shut. He didn’t need to hear that I’d been crying.

      “Mr. Anderson, it’s lovely to speak to you again, face to face. You know I’m not one to hide behind a ski-mask, sir.”

Liam slapped his arm around my shoulders and pulled my body close like he was posing for a candid. He didn’t need to touch me to put me in my place. I felt small enough as it was. My dad was watching.

        “My guys at the Bureau have been waiting for this phone call all day, Mr. Evans, you’re in quite a bit of trouble, but I’m sure by now you’re aware of that. Hailey, I think you owe me an explanation.”

        “I wanna talk to mom, Dad. Can you tell her I’m okay? I need her to know that I’m okay.”

        “I’m not telling your mother anything, sweetheart. You think I don’t know the difference between a real crime and a cry for attention? CNN’s been airing tapes of you running around with some boy at Union Station since this morning. Took a hell of a lot of convincing to get the press to buy your antics as a kidnapping. But don’t you think for a second that I’m stupid enough not to know exactly what you’re running away from.”

I lost it. Collapsed down on my knees and screamed until my voice broke into jagged little pieces. He wasn’t listening. He wasn’t watching. He wasn’t paying attention. He never did. I was sitting purple-faced and bleeding on camera, and he still wouldn’t accept what was happening for what it was.

I hated him. I hated how easily he wore me down, how he always assumed the worst, how he didn’t care. He never had.

        “Sorry to break up the family drama, but, unfortunately, senator, you know better than I that this situation is very real, and your daughter is very much in danger. We can show you if you like. You’re a smart man, I’m sure you understand the value of dramatic demonstrations.”

One of the four boys pulled both my hands behind my back and loosely wound them in wire cable. The metal didn’t bite into my wrists like it had the first time. My body was too numb to feel it.

        “I’ve got the nation’s finest sitting in my living room listening to every word you say, young man. So think real hard about what you’re gonna do before you do it,” Dad said.

       “Mr. Anderson, I’m ready to die for this. I hope you can say the same. Marcus, pick up that hose. Caleb, get a wide shot of the freezer. I want our senator friend to see what kind of substandard conditions we’re working with here!”

The dull pain kicked to life again, moving out from my stomach and into my bloodstream.

       “Senator, please gather all your pig friends around your lovely phone so they have a proper view. Once we’re finished here, I’d like you to post our little production on the Internet! My brothers and I wanna get good and famous. Make sure you get the credits right. Last name is Evans but you already know that. E-V-A-N-S. Our mother’s name was Deirdre. You put her in an early grave, and today, sir, God’s punishing you for it.”

The frigid kick of water pressure knocked me face first onto the concrete. I tried wrangling my hands loose, but the cables froze faster than I could free them.

The skin of my back rippled and split under the unending stream pounding me apart a piece at a time. My lungs fought to breathe in the thinning air. Everything slowed. Everything stopped.

My eyes slid shut while the cold caved in. Liam’s liquid bullets breathed life into new bruises all over my body. I waited for the blackout, for a break in the pain, for the end I was seconds away from begging for. The water rained down harder, dousing my spirit until I couldn’t scream anymore.

Do you believe me now, Dad?

        “Like what you see, senator? I’ve changed the terms of our little agreement to make things more interesting, and believe me, you’re daughter’s very interesting.”

        “Careful, Evans.”

        “My brothers and I are going to make the most of the private time we have left with your beautiful Hailey, so I suggest you find your way out to our neck of the woods. I’m not a very patient man, senator.”

Silence hung heavy in the air long after Liam hung up the phone. I was the only sound. The only one squirming. The only one squealing. The only one suffering.

        “Holding up alright, Cal?”

Marcus’s voice lilted through the air, his telltale concern towards Caleb giving away his weakness.

        “Yeah.”

        “Liar, you’re paler than a ghost!” Cillian said.

He broke into ragged laughs, each one ricocheting through my veins.

      “He’s right, Cal, you need a little color in those cheeks. Some manly flush, I think,” Liam said, eyes burning holes into my black and blue back.

        “Let’s go. I don’t wanna be in here anymore,” Caleb said.

His footsteps started in the direction of the door and stopped short.

        “The girl’s cold, Cal. You planning on letting her freeze ‘til she stops breathing?”

Cillian’s concern sounded as transparent as his sincerity.

        “Cillian’s right, go on and warm her up for us,” Liam said.

Something was wrong. Everything was wrong. Maybe I hadn’t heard things right, but I couldn’t figure out the conversation. Not the direction, not the danger in its undertones. I didn’t want to understand. I wanted to disappear.

        “She has nothing to do with me, Liam,” Caleb said.

       “Oh, but that’s where you’re mistaken, kiddo. The thing is, you’ve still got some manning up to do, Cal. You’re so goddamn soft it makes me want to carve my intestines out. I’m only saying this ‘cause I see all that beautiful potential you’ve got. But you’re wasting it feeling sorry for her. I’ve forgiven you all day only because you don’t understand yourself well enough to know that it’s only lust. So, I’ve got an offer, and if you refuse it, I’ll kill the both of you. And I’m a man of my word, little brother.”

Fade in. Fade out. Conscious one minute, gone the next.

I kept having this memory, back from two summers ago when I took a run down the Virginia Beach shoreline right before sunrise. It was one of those dark blue mornings when the sand was cold enough to bite.

I stepped out of my house barefoot and the 6:00 a.m. chill rattled right through my bones. I could’ve gone back inside, but I ran and kept running until the cold burned off. When I finally fell into the rhythm of things, both feet in time with my heart beat, I broke into a sprint so fast I felt steps away from flying.

Like I could out do the angels.

I came back to the cold room for a few seconds, long enough to remember someone cutting my clothes away. When he covered my mouth, I didn’t scream. When he held me down, I didn’t fight. ‘Cause I was gone again, sprinting through the sand on an empty beach, racing the sunrise.

Free.