Scarred

five

five

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Hush,” Archer replied.

Although Nya hadn’t expected Archer to show up at Sizzle after her shift tonight, she wasn’t complaining that he had. She’d figured he came to pick her up to take her home, but as they continued to drive, it became obvious they weren’t going in the direction of either her place or his.

“It’s late,” she whined. “If you have ideas about kinky s*x in some weird place, if outside is your thing, then I’m okay with that. But what’s wrong with right here?”

Looking around the dilapidated area they were driving through, she made the realization that this place was even more low rent than her neighborhood—quite an achievement. Most of the industrial buildings looked abandoned. They appeared to be forgotten factories and warehouses in a deserted district that she’d never had reason to visit.

Archer wasn’t forthcoming, so she filled the silence. “What are we doing out here?” she asked. “You’re not going to cut me up into little pieces, are you?” She meant it as a joke, but he kept his eyes on the road ahead and didn’t react. Getting frustrated, she took off her seatbelt and began to unbutton her shirt. “If you won’t explain yourself, I’ll just get the show started on my own.”

Finally she provoked a response, one of his hands left the steering wheel to cover hers over her breasts, stalling her unbuttoning. “We’re not out here for that,” he said.

“So why are we out here?” she asked, not seeing any other reason for the excursion. “Are we picking up one of your marks?”

Unable to imagine why he would bring her with him for something like that, she was tossing out wild theories, because nothing he’d done tonight made sense. “Nope.”

Glancing back, she knew the coupe didn’t have much of a backseat, but if they were picking someone up, no doubt she would be the one shoehorned in there.

Her eye caught on the back window, above the trunk, and she had a thought. “Wait a second, we’re not… we’re not getting rid of a body or something, are we? Why do you need me for that?” Nya had no problem with what he did and she didn’t mind being on the periphery of it, but specifically coming to pick her up from work to drag her along while he dumped a body seemed excessive and unnecessary. “I’m not digging,” she said. “I just got my nails done. One of the girls needed models to practice on for school.”

Wiggling her manicure in front of his face lasted only a few seconds before he caught her hand and pressed it down against his thigh. “No one dumps bodies out here,” he said.

Although the statement was shocking, she suppressed an urge to laugh because there was something utterly ludicrous about the fact that he knew that to be fact, not speculation.

“So where do they dump the bodies?” she asked, slouching in her seat though he didn’t release her hand. “Wait, no, I don’t want to know.” He didn’t respond or give any clue that he’d intended to. And she wondered, “Would you tell me things?”

“What things?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Anything. If I asked you, would you tell me?”

“If you asked me something specific, I might. I can’t gift you all the knowledge in my head.”

So he was in one of those moods. “My question wasn’t about volume,” she said, twisting to slide her hand out from under his to prop her elbow on the shoulder of her chair.

“I know,” he said. “Your question was about trust.”

“So answer it.”

“I’m about to.”

Turning the car into a narrow alleyway where there was no artificial light and the moonlight didn’t splice the roof of these two buildings, the road got claustrophobic. The end opened out enough for him to turn around in the crossroads formed by intersecting alleys. When he was confident the car was covered by shadow, he put it into park, killed the engine, then took off his seatbelt.

“There’s something about you, Squirm,” he said. “From that first night when I saw you arguing with Jonno, I knew you weren’t like other women. It’s not just your fire or your loyalty, there’s something else.”

Self-conscious and suspicious, Nya let her eyes roll left then right. “What’s going on here?” she asked and her lips curled up like maybe he was playing with her and she didn’t get the joke yet.

This was not somewhere for a romantic declaration of love and he wasn’t the type of guy to wax lyrical about their relationship. If he was about to whip out a ring, she was missing something major about the point he was trying to make, because they were in what amounted to an abandoned industrial slum. He’d already claimed it wasn’t about s*x, so he couldn’t be going to ask her to partake in some sordid ritual she might find offensive.

But he was solemn, not smirking. “The memory of holding you in that parking lot, imprinted itself on me,” he said. “You never talk about it and I know you don’t want me to bring it up because you hate that you were so vulnerable in that moment that you couldn’t conceal it from me, a man you probably hated.”

Because he was partly right, she wriggled in her chair knowing that she was an open book to him. Clearing her throat, she got serious. “At the time, I hated that I couldn’t pull it together, but it was your fault.”

“My fault?”

“When I came off that phone and turned around, the first thing you asked about was Jamie. Not your money, not Tag, you cared about a girl who lost her life in a horrific way and somehow with that simple statement about her not making it, I saw your humanity and I wasn’t the only vulnerable one there. That was why I let myself go.”

“Women have tried to manipulate me before with s*x, tears, their big innocent eyes, fluttering their eye lashes, I can see through most things and while you were in my arms, your fire scalded me. You needed me and I’d have promised you anything.”

Wary, she withdrew from the moment in a frown. “Did you bring me out here to let me down thinking that I wouldn’t scream at you?” she asked. “So I couldn’t walk away? Are you about to tell me something I don’t want to hear?” He tried to take her hand but she took it from his reach. “No, ‘cause you know I’ll scream b****y murder anyway, don’t you? Did you bring me here to back out of our deal? To tell me you were f****d up that night and now that you’ve had the chance to think about it, it’s not a good idea? Is that what this is about? ‘Cause I’ll fight with you, Archer. I don’t care where we are.”

Poking one of her manicured nails into his hand that rested on the edge of her seat, she kept going, “Don’t think I won’t do it. I will. I’ll shout at you and I’ll storm away and make you follow me all the way home at two miles an hour, because you won’t drive away from me not out here—”

“I hooked one.”

Silenced and perplexed, she straightened. “You what?”

“I brought you out here…” He exhaled and from the way his jaw clenched and his gaze shifted towards the windshield, she could read his hesitancy. “I gift wrapped one for you, that’s why I brought you out here.”

Infused with excitement, she was beside herself. “He’s here? One of Jamie’s killers is here?”

“No,” Archer said. Not giving her a choice this time, he slanted over the car to grab both of her hands. “I got one of the guys who was on lookout. The guy who came in just before me.”

Okay, so they weren’t starting with the grand prize, but she was okay with that. Her initial disappointment evaporated when she realized this was actually for the best. It would give her a chance to test her limits and see what she was capable of, so she could begin to push her boundaries.

“Who is he? What did you do to him?”

“They call him Tulio, he works for anyone who’ll pay his bar bill. He wasn’t after Tag, but he was one of Hexam’s men.”

Hexam’s man. The situation was getting complicated, and she didn’t mind going after the men who hurt Jamie, she didn’t care what happened to them because they deserved everything they got. Except now that Tag was sleeping with Hexam’s sister, they could need all the goodwill they could gather.

“Is he still working for Hexam?”

“Hexam’s out of the country, remember?” Archer said, pulling her hands to his thighs so she had to angle herself over the center console. In a deliberate act, he wrenched her further over to force her breasts together, giving him an enhanced view of her cleavage. “Anyone not directly involved in the operation, the sub-contractors, I guess you could say, are off Hexam’s books at the moment.”

“So he was there that night as a Hexam agent?”

“Far as I know, Hexam doesn’t give a f**k about the guy, he was hired to work security, which he did for as long as Hexam needed him. Now he doesn’t need him. Guys like Tulio are easy to replace. But if you don’t want to do this, we’ll drive away now.”

“And just leave him inside?” she asked. There were four buildings around them and she didn’t know which one Tulio was in. To find him in the factories would take a lone person hours, which was probably exactly Archer’s reason for selecting this place, far away from the city in this labyrinth of desolation.

“I’ll take care of him tomorrow, he’ll last the night,” Archer said, nonchalant about leaving a man tethered, and no doubt terrified. It was humbling that Archer had taken this risk for her. Tulio could have friends, and Archer could have been caught while k********g the man who probably fought or screamed. Archer could’ve been hurt. He could’ve been killed. He could’ve been arrested.

“Thank you,” she said. “You took a huge risk that you didn’t have to take.”

“Sure I did,” he said, picking up a tendril of her hair that had escaped from her ponytail. Tucking it behind her ear, his fingers trailed to her chin. “It’s the only way to make you stop nipping my ear.”

Capturing his quick smile in a kiss, Nya hoped he intended to take her back to his place when she was finished here so she could show him how grateful she felt. “Okay,” she said, trying to psyche herself up.

Jumping in without thinking too much was probably smarter than if she’d had the whole night to obsess about what to do with her first prisoner. Archer had done this the right way. Bringing her here to shove her inside and close the door behind her forced her to act rather than hesitate. Nya had zero experience with torturing a person, she’d never punished or murdered anyone before and she wasn’t quite sure what her intention was, all she could rely on now was instinct.

“Where is he?” she asked.

Archer didn’t reply, he got out of the car and came around to open her door, as he had to, given the door’s fault. She got out, and took his hand upward, rubbing her cheek on his palm, she lowered it to her breast and lifted her brand to his lips, begging for him to kiss her there. He did.

Her heart was beating fast and her breathing got erratic. Adrenaline. It terrified her and energized her both at the same time. “I’ll show you,” he said and began to walk, except she didn’t, so he had to stop and turn. “Second thoughts? Get back in the car, and I’ll take you—”

“No, that’s not it… You can’t come.”

His brows almost shot off his head and he sauntered over to her. “Excuse me?”

“You can’t come, you’re supposed to remain neutral, right? I mean, that’s your thing, you’re neutral. I don’t want to upset your thing.”

“Do you think the guy was teleported here?” he asked, in his slick, condescending tone. “He’s seen my face; he knows who brought him here.”

Did that mean they had to kill him? “That doesn’t matter,” she said. “You kidnap people all the time for information. You shouldn’t hurt him for me.”

Almost smug, he tucked a hand in his pocket and relaxed. “How do you plan to hurt him?” Archer asked.

She hadn’t really thought about that, her plan was so fuzzy it was non-existent. “It’s a process, right?” she asked, her eyes flicked towards the door that Archer had headed for. “It will come to me.”

“It’s not as simple as that. That guy’s gonna beg. You have to decide whether or not he gets to walk before you step through that door.”

“Is that what you do?” she asked.

“What I do is different, I don’t do it for revenge, so I can play fair, there’s no emotion in it for me. If someone tells me what I need to know, they walk free, if they don’t…”

She didn’t want him to finish the sentence, he’d never confirmed killing anyone, he’d never denied it, but she’d never demanded a straight answer. “In front of that guy in my apartment,” Archer said. “That girl who toyed with him. The confident savvy woman who drained my sanity down to my c**k, that’s the woman who needs to walk in there.”

Yes, she could be that woman, unaffected by the pleading of another, cold, under Archer’s power, and that was when she realized that she needed him to be present. As long as he was there, she was confident no one could hurt her. That strength meant she could say what she wanted, do what she wanted, and he’d be there to back her up.

“I want to scare him, like Jamie was scared. He thought it was okay to scare me, I want him to think twice before he struts in somewhere thinking he’s entitled to touch a woman without permission.”

“Scare we can do,” he said. “Can I make a suggestion?”

Could he make a suggestion? She was going to be dependent on him throughout this. If anything went wrong, he’d have to think fast because he’d be the one to bail her out. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, suggest anything.”

Curling a finger beneath her chin, he fixated on her eyes. “If you really want to scare the guy, take your time. Don’t talk too much. Ambiguity is better than specifics, and I’d say we should leave him for a few days, at least overnight.”

Planning was necessary in what Archer did. He always seemed so laid back, yet he had to be constantly thinking, making plans, adjusting contingencies and he had nerves of steel. If any of his captives got away, if they went to the cops or sought revenge, he’d be thrown into a battle that he might not win.

Archer had planned this without her, and she had no idea how long he’d had it in the works. “How long has he been here?”

“I got him while you were on shift tonight. I sort of…” He hitched a shoulder up a couple of inches.

“You what?” she asked.

“I started without you,” he said. “You’ll see.”

She didn’t know what he meant by that statement. But it was probably good that this guy was aware of Archer and what he could do because it would make him more compliant with her.

Turning and striding toward the entrance, Archer held her hand while he led her through it. They went down some stairs into a concrete passage with old, rusted pipes running the length of it. The dark factory basement didn’t reveal much. In the distance, there was dull green light emanating from somewhere and that seemed to be their destination.

“Did you put that there?” she asked, when they stopped next to the glow of the lantern that stood by a steel door.

“Yeah,” he said. “I thought the dark down here might freak you out.”

“Thanks.”

Claustrophobia afflicted her at times, usually in times of panic and high stress. Walking into a long dark corridor might be standard operating procedure for Archer, but there was scrabbling in the walls and creaks in the pipes that made her uneasy.

With his large hand engulfing hers, she didn’t feel fear, but the light might be alleviating some of her anxiety. Nya had no idea how she would’ve reacted if they were simply walking into an abyss towards an unknown objective.

“Okay,” he said and bowed to kiss her forehead. “The floor is yours.”