The Last Bus Through the Tunnel

Chapter 3 Four Predators

I came around with blood on my tongue and pain behind one eye. The engine was running again, though the bus had not moved. No one outside could have heard me over the mechanical rattle.

Damon laughed and pulled off his silk tie. It was the same deep crimson Arthur favored. He bound my wrists behind my back and pulled the knot tight.

"Let's try this again," he snarled, his face inches from mine. "No more biting."

They forced me down. The hard plastic edge cut into my ribs, and Damon's tie tightened whenever I pulled at my wrists. I screamed until my throat gave out, then pressed my face into the seat and waited for the next breath.

Somewhere during the assault, the drugged fog receded. Details stopped sliding away as soon as I noticed them. I stopped spending air on screams and began to catalogue what I could see and hear.

It was an old habit from my investigator days. At a crime scene, I used to repeat the fixed details before anyone else could contaminate them. I had assumed the pills had taken that discipline from me along with everything else.

*Subject One: Damon. Scar over right eyebrow. Old burn scar on the back of his left hand. Steel watch. Leader.*

*Subject Two: Thick neck. Cheap whiskey and sweat. Gold-capped back tooth.*

*Subject Three: Younger. Keeps touching his coat zipper. Won't look at me.*

*Subject Four: Quiet. Efficient. Watches the doors.*

Their voices separated from the engine noise.

"Arthur said get it done before dawn," one of them muttered.

"Told me Reese's new dock is finally clean. That shipment can move next week," another replied.

*Reese. Senator Reese, Arthur's political rival. Clean dock. Shipment next week.* I repeated the words until I had them in order.

When they finished, they adjusted their clothes and left me across the seat. Every movement hurt. My coat and dress hung open where they had torn them, and Damon's tie was still knotted around my wrists.

The younger man looked at me once, then returned to his zipper. The quiet man checked the tunnel through the windshield. I fixed both reactions in memory.

Damon pulled up his pants and retrieved a small black video camera from the opposite seat. Its red light was on. He angled it over my torn clothes, then aimed it at my face and held it there long enough to capture the bruising.

"Arthur will like this," he said. "Any judge who sees it will think you're a crazy, cheating whore."

He switched off the camera.

The brakes hissed. The doors opened onto the gray light before dawn.

They dragged me to the opening and threw me onto the damp mountain road.

I landed on my shoulder. Loose gravel pressed into my cheek, and the wet road soaked through one sleeve. I couldn't move until the bus had started again. Its taillights shrank into the fog and vanished around the next bend.

Birds had begun calling in the trees. The ordinary sound made the empty road feel worse. I pushed onto my hands and knees, stopped when my shoulder buckled, then said the details aloud so I wouldn't lose them.

"Damon. Right eyebrow. Burned left hand. Steel watch."

They had left a witness who remembered how to work a case.