1
Livy
The scent of gasoline singed the hairs inside my nose.
The acrid odor was what woke me. I tried to lift my head, but my mind was in a hazy fog. I was tired. So damn tired.
I must have been drugged. Lolling my head to the side, I tried to force my lids to open and blink. Beside me, or maybe it was behind me, there was a voice. It was saying blurred words. My fogged brain could make no sense of it.
Think. Wake up. Clear the fog. You need to think.
I finally managed to open my eyes, but when I did, all I saw was empty blackness.
I chanced another sniff and winced. That was gasoline. Where the fuck was I?
"Wake the hell up. We have to get out of here."
My brain started to process the words a little better. That voice. Why was that voice familiar?
I felt as if I was being jostled or moved. "Wake up, damn it. I do not belong here."
Suddenly, I knew why that voice was so familiar. That was April Van Linsted. She’d used the same pinched tone with me earlier. At the Gem Gala.
The Gala. Okay, the gala, the boys, the heist.
What in the world had happened? Think, Livy.
Piece by piece, as if an unseen hand started to put together the parts of the puzzle of my last hours, things started to click into place. And just like a real puzzle, my brain occasionally tried to jam the odd piece into places they didn't belong before finally finding the correct spot.
I had followed April Van Linsted. I’d thought she was after one of the guys. She’d been calling for one of the security guards, pointing back at the room and then... What? What had happened?
I had heard a sound? Sensed movement maybe? There had been a man, bigger than me, dressed in black and wearing a balaclava. But his eyes were flat, cold, not like one of our guys. I'd quickly turned on the balls of my feet to run toward security, but then I’d felt a prick in my neck, and...
And then I woke up here with April Van Linsted. I tried to force my mouth to say words. I made my throat contract and release, moved my tongue, all the things that signified speech, but I couldn't do it. No words came out.
I licked my lips and tried again, but all I managed was a scorching fire in my throat, as if someone had shoved a hot poker down it.
My last attempt was the best one, because actual sounds formed. "Are we?"
That wasn't right. I was missing a word. I cleared my throat, wincing through the pain. "Where are we?"
"Does it matter? And how the hell would I know? All I know is that we're in a couple of chairs, we're tied together, and there's no way out. Oh yes, and it's dark in here."
Why was she shouting? “Please don't shout. I have to figure this out. Do you know who took us?"
"As if I would associate with the kind of people who would kidnap someone. I'm April fucking Van Linsted."
I sighed. Clearly, she was going to be no help. I glanced around. Small slivers of light told me we were in a large garage or something. There were dark voids I couldn't see properly, but I thought I detected the outlines of some kind of large equipment. That would certainly account for the gasoline smell.
"Did they drug you too?"
“How would I know? All I know is that someone forced a bag over my head then shoved me into some kind of tight space with you. I must have passed out.”
Maybe they’d only drugged me. Why not keep both of us quiet? Or was I the more dangerous of the two of us? "Do you know how many people there were?"
"Why would I worry about such a thing? I was too busy worrying about my life."
As co-kidnappees went, April Van Linsted was the worst. "I'm asking so I can figure out how many men are holding us. Do you know how long we drove? It might give some clues to our location."
"I don't know. Thirty minutes I suppose."
Thirty minutes. On a Saturday night, London traffic was notorious. If April was even close to accurate in her time estimation, that left very few options. It might be safe to assume we were at least somewhere accessible to people, which helped with our avenues for escape.
Are you seriously considering escaping? Ben will come for you.
I would have loved to believe that. But he didn't know where I was. I doubted that the people who had taken us were dumb enough not to have checked for my tracker and removed it, so he wouldn't know where I was. As options went, it was either sit there with April Van Linsted or figure a way out. I couldn’t count on them launching a rescue mission for me.
You don't know Ben.
He might come for me, but the least I could do was give him a hand and try to rescue myself. Besides, chances were that if I didn't do something, April and I would both end up dead.
I tried to move my wrists and discovered April was tied to a chair behind mine. the chairs were fused together somehow and likely bolted to the ground to keep us in place. "April, can you move your hands?"
There was a bit of silence. "A little, why?"
"I'm trying to figure out if we can get out of our restraints."
"Are you joking?"
Through gritted teeth, I said, "Look, I know you don't want to be here. Neither do I, so we have to work together, okay?" She was the last partner I would have picked for anything, but she was all I had at the moment.
I was startled by a clattering noise. It sounded like metal grating on metal followed by a loud creaking sound and then a roar, and suddenly light poured in. I had to blink rapidly to adjust to the sudden brightness. Three men walked in, stocky, burly, and one of them looked vaguely familiar.
My stomach twisted when I realized it was the same man who had mugged me the night of the party at the Van Linsted estate.
He recognized me too. When our gazes met, he leaned forward, leered at me, and then said something to one of his partners, whom I didn't recognize. The guy he spoke to was even bigger, burlier. Built like a damn tank. I made a mental note to avoid him if at all possible.
Tussling with him would just be trouble for us later. When he spoke, his voice was low, guttural. His accent was vaguely Eastern European. I knew it wasn't Russian or Lithuanian. My mother had been posted in Russia at one point in my childhood, so I was familiar enough with the language to recognize it if needed. No, they were speaking something else. Not Slavic exactly. I mentally tried to catalog the languages and the accents of my mother's friends whom I'd met over the years. I couldn't place it, but I knew I would eventually.
As he spoke to his friend, he said the word Libret more than once. What the hell did that mean?
The stockier one continued to leer at me as he approached us. He and his friend had bottles of water, uncapped, and I knew better than to drink. So when he tried to place the bottle near my lips, I turned my head.
With an evil smile, he grabbed my hair tightly and forced my head to turn. I winced at the pain as he tried to force the bottle into my mouth. Some of it trickled into my mouth, which I immediately sprayed back out onto him.
His friend laughed. That humiliation earned me a sharp crack across the face, and pain exploded in my cheekbone. My body jerked with the force of it. Agony and fear made me want to crawl into a deep dark hole and pass out right then, but I knew I couldn't afford to let myself do that.
Whether she wanted to or not, April was depending on me. Ben was counting on me to come home. And I didn't fucking want to die. My head rolled and I tried to bring it back up. Behind me, I could hear the sounds of swallowing. Shit. There was no telling what kind of drugs could be in what she was drinking. I didn't know what else they'd given her.