3. Derrick

CHAPTER 3

Derrick

When I open my eyes, I’m looking up at an enormous crack in the plaster of the ceiling, dark and ominous above the motionless blades of the hanging fan.

At first, I feel very little. But the longer I lie awake, the more sensation returns, and the more I wish I’d stayed unconscious.

My head hurts . There’s a crusty feeling on my temple, cheek, and jaw that I know is dried blood. The right side of my ribcage feels like it’s been bathed in lava. When I shift my legs, pain shoots through my left knee and thigh.

Whoever the fuck those people were, they did not pull their punches.

Fuck, are Chance and Justice all right? If one of these people hurt my dogs, I’ll kill every last one of them.

The thought of them finally reminds me that I wasn’t alone in my house last night. My stomach drops.

What happened to Raleigh?

Hissing against the pain, I force myself to sit up, and immediately relief floods my chest. I’m lying on a stripped mattress in a room that is otherwise bare. The only window is boarded up by thick planks of wood, and faded wallpaper peels in long strips down the walls.

And Raleigh is lying beside me.

She appears unharmed, her purple dress wrinkled but intact. In sleep, her lips are slightly parted, her eyebrows wrinkled against some unpleasant dream. I wish I could tell her reality wasn’t far more terrifying.

It wasn’t her brother’s people following us last night. In fact, I’m starting to think whatever horror we’ve found ourselves in is my fault entirely.

The pain in my ribs doubles when I try to reach for her, but I ignore it. I think they’re bruised, not fractured. At least, that’s what I hope. My hand brushes over the soft skin of her shoulder, her collarbone. Faint bruises, like the impressions of fingers, have bloomed along her upper arm.

The sight of them makes my chest burn even more.

“Raleigh,” I say, keeping my voice low. I don’t know if someone is waiting on the other side of the door for us to wake up, but I’d like at least a minute to catch her up. I place my palm over the bruises on her arm, hiding them from myself. “Wake up, sweetheart.”

She gives a little moan, mumbles something about ‘five more minutes’ that sends more pain through my ribs.

“We don’t have five minutes,” I say, a little louder. I cup her cheek. “Come on now.”

Raleigh turns her face into my hand, then seems to stir to real consciousness. Her eyes flutter open. The wrinkle between her brows deepens as she realizes she’s in an unfamiliar room, in an unfamiliar bed, with a man who’d just callously accused her of seducing him the last time she was awake.

She jerks away from me, tumbling off the side of the bed. I reach to catch her too late, and the movement sets my whole body on fire.

“Where the fuck are we?!” Raleigh demands hoarsely, stumbling into the corner of the room furthest from the door.

I open my mouth to respond, though what I expect to say, I don’t know. At that moment though, the door opens, and I can’t focus on Raleigh. I have to perform, for my life and for hers.

The man who walks in is almost completely hidden by his clothes. Baggy cargo pants and heavy combat boots fill out what, from his less-baggy long-sleeved shirt, looks like a wiry frame. The hood of a black sleeveless trench coat is pulled up, bathing his face in shadows. Only his eyes are visible, gray and piercing above a black cloth face mask with jagged white teeth painted onto it. His gaze flicks from me to Raleigh, and back to me, like a snake sizing up a meal, and whether or not he can swallow it whole.

He’s barely 5’5”, maybe 5’6”, and even with his clothes hiding the size of his frame, I’m sure I could knock him down with relative ease. But then two other men enter the room behind him, dressed, disorientingly, in almost identical clothes. They’re both taller, and one of them is noticeably heftier.

There’s a heavy black pistol in each of their hands.

So much for rushing the door.

“Hello Mr. Lindman,” the lead man says, his voice raspy like a life-long smoker. “The name’s Silver. It’s a pleasure to finally meet the man who killed my father.”

I didn’t need confirmation that whatever’s happening, it’s about me, but I appreciate having it. “There might be some mistake, Mr. Silver,” I say with a practiced, cautious smile. “I haven’t killed anyone that I can recall.”

It’s a fantastic lie. Back when I was trying to pit Thomas Warwick and Morgan Speare against each other, I took advantage of a firefight to kill the District Attorney right next to his wife. It wasn’t personal- he’d been a close political ally of Warwick’s. But I hadn’t lost a moment of sleep over it either.

“Is that right?” Silver asks, taking a step into the room. Every instinct in me is howling to get up off the bed, but I don’t know if my knee will give out, and I don’t want to instigate when I don’t know what this man wants. “You don’t recall killing Morgan Speare? That’s funny. You’ve sure spent a lot of the last few months bragging about it.”

Wait, Morgan? That’s who this is about? But, to my knowledge, Morgan Speare had no children of his own. Only a niece named Clara, who ended up allying with Thomas Warwick against her own uncle.

I act too slow to hide my confusion, and Silver cocks his head, eyes locked like a bird of prey who’s just spotted a weakness. “That’s what I thought.” The gun in his hand flies up, pointed straight at my chest. I hear Raleigh whimper from the corner, but I don’t dare take my eyes off the gleaming barrel. “You killed my pops, Mr. Lindman. After you made him promises and shook his hand, you sided with his enemy and burned his house down. A house that was supposed to be mine. That doesn’t sit right with me, y’know?”

Very slowly, I raise my hands in surrender. “There really has been a mistake,” I say, more measured than before. I get the feeling playing the clueless innocent won’t appeal to this man. “I never turned on Morgan. Thomas cornered me. Someone inside his camp figured out my plans with your father and he got the jump on both of us. I had every intention of seeing my deals with Morgan through.”

“Call me crazy,” Silver hisses, “but I don’t believe you.”

A bead of sweat slips down the side of my face, trailing through the dried blood. I have seconds to fix this, and all I can do is repeat myself.

But then Silver jerks the gun up, pointing it at the ceiling. “Luckily for you, you’re more valuable alive than dead, at least for now. You’re a hotshot sheriff, so you’ve got political sway. You’re buddies with Thomas Warwick, so you’ve got an in with him. So you’ll tell me all Thomas’s biggest weaknesses, and I’ll let you live.”

This should be a good opportunity, but my stomach immediately sinks. Whatever this gun-toting maniac asks me to do, I can’t agree. Not in front of Thomas Warwick’s sister, who can report on me the second we get out of this- if we even do. Maybe I could lie, say whatever I need to say in order to survive, but this man has already tracked me down, broken into my house, and physically injured me. If I betray him after all that, I don’t even want to consider what would happen next.

Not to mention, a weakness of Thomas Warwick is in the room with us, and Silver has no idea.

“I don’t have any ins with the Warwicks,” I say, slow and calm. “Thomas left me a bloody mess in my own office the night the Speare estate burned down, and he’s been watching me ever since. If I agreed to help you, he’d know within hours, and he’d be all too happy to kill me.”

I don’t dare look at Raleigh, who would let Thomas know even sooner than that. Right now, she’s a civilian who got caught in the crossfire. If I draw attention to her-

The gun cocks in Silver’s hand. He levels it on me again, and my whole body seizes. The world narrows to Silver’s eyes and the barrel hovering beneath them. “Funny. So would I. And I’m the one who’s in the room with you, holding a gun to your head. So why don’t you start taking me seriously, huh?” He lets the words hang in the air, waits until I nod before going on. “I’ll repeat myself only one more time, Mr. Lindman. You’ll tell me what makes Thomas Warwick tick, and I’ll let you live.”

I have to lie. If I don’t agree to help this man, I’m dying today, and god knows what will happen to Raleigh before they kill her too. I lick my lips, open my mouth-

The door behind Silver bursts open. Another man, dressed the same as his colleagues, rushes in. “Boss- you need to-”

Silver whips to face the newcomer. “I’m in the middle of a fucking interrogation, and you don’t even bother to knock?!” he demands. I half expect him to level the gun on his own goon, but he keeps it trained on me.

His henchman stumbles back. “S-Sorry boss. I’m sorry. I-I just-” He looks around the room, takes in Raleigh and I and the gun I’m staring down. “There’s something important I need to-”

“It can’t fucking wait?” Silver hisses.

“No boss, no! I need to tell you right now!”

Silver turns back to me and sighs, rolling his eyes in a what can you do way that I’m clearly supposed to sympathize with. “Two seconds, Mr. Lindman. Don’t worry, I won’t forget about you.” He looks to his two companions. “Keep ‘em company, fellas,” he orders, then follows the newcomer out of the room and slams the door behind him.

Somehow, the second Silver is gone, the temperature in the room drops. The taller goon takes a step closer, looks me over slowly. Then, for the first time since any of them came in, his eyes flick to Raleigh, still pressed into the corner. My blood goes cold.

Silver had been purposely ignoring her, perhaps uninterested in a hostage who didn’t directly relate to his goals. But his henchmen have clearly always been aware of her presence.

The goon looks back to me.

“Maybe we need to sweeten the deal for you, huh Sheriff?” he asks. He’s affecting the same rasp as Silver, but it’s deeper, more like a growl. “We did interrupt your good time, after all. Seems only fair, right?”

Whatever he’s about to say is going to make this situation ten times worse. I know it, even before his raspy voice goes on:

“What if we let you finish what you and your pretty friend started last night? That’s pretty fucking generous, right?”

We’re both quiet at first, trying to absorb the implications of this offer. The goon lets the moment stretch, then pulls a gun out of his own coat. His cohort follows suit. The two men raise their guns and cock them.

I can’t believe I’m even thinking this, but I wish Silver would come back. At least his threats were straightforward.

The goon says, “I’m waiting.”

Raleigh chokes, realizing what he means. “You’re sick ,” she hisses.

I have no better words myself. Two guns instead of one are pointed directly at my face, and I’m under no illusions that they won’t go off if I refuse this ‘generous’ deal. And if I try to bluff, tell these fuckers that Raleigh isn’t important enough to me to be used as a hostage, they could kill her outright. Or do what they want to her themselves. Then I might as well kill myself anyway before Thomas can get his hands on me.

From a mile away, I hear my own voice say calmly, “You’re right. That is very generous.”

The goon nods, accepting this gratitude magnanimously. He still hasn’t lowered the gun.

He’s waiting for us to get started.

Gritting my teeth, I ignore every instinct and turn my eyes away from the guns. I look at Raleigh, pressed as far into the corner of the room as she can get. She’s already staring at me, her hazel eyes so wide I can see the whites of them.

I’m not going to ask her to come to me, closer to the guns and the men threatening our lives. Instead, I brace myself against the pain in my ribs and knee, and push out of the bed.

My knee holds, and I limp around the end of the naked mattress toward Raleigh. She tries to shrink away, but there’s nowhere else for her to go. I hate that she’s looking at me like I’m the one about to hurt her, but worse than that, I feel sick that I have no choice.

I was wrong about tonight. I was wrong to suspect her.

Raleigh Warwick was just looking for a good time, and fate led her to me instead.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, and reach for her.