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I cracked open one eye and discovered that the sun was setting, the long shadows of the quarry walls making it darker down here than it probably was up above the rim.
I had a feeling I was probably in the old Deepwater Quarry, conveniently located along the river where they could chuck the body when they were done with me.
I tried to move my hands, only to discover that they were tied behind my back, and my whole body felt like absolute shit—a lot like I had after Bazan had attacked me during the séance at work… except substantially worse. Which meant that Garcia had stripped a lot more from me than Bazan had.
I wondered why he’d stopped. What he thought I might know that was worth beating out of me. Or what he thought I could give him.
I wasn’t particularly looking forward to finding out the hard way, because it was absolutely going to be the hard way. You don’t get tossed in a fucking gravel pit if it isn’t going to be messy as fuck.
The only question now was when they were going to show up, because at the moment I appeared to be alone.
I couldn’t hear anyone talking, breathing, or moving around, and one benefit of gravel is that it’s noisy as fuck, so if someone were there, I’d probably be able to hear them. But as far as I could tell, it was just me and the birds.
It was a struggle, but I managed to roll myself onto my back—and hands, which was really not comfortable, since they were tied behind me, putting my shoulders in a painful twist. It did tell me that I was missing both my gun and my phone. I’d have bet that one or both were probably at the bottom of the James right about now. But that was a problem for hypothetical future me, assuming I managed to get my ass out of this shitshow.
I’m a ex-cop. I know just about every possible way to get your arms out from behind you in the book. But they’d ziptied mine together tightly, wrists crossed and zipties keeping them that way by making an X on either side. I wasn’t quite flexible enough to work them under my ass to get myself back around with my hands in front of me.
So I rolled back onto my side, deeply worried about how exhausted that simple movement made me. If I was going to have to fight for my life—and it was pretty fucking clear to me that was how this was going to go down—I didn’t want to be exhausted by rolling over.
Rest and food were how I’d recovered the last time someone had tried to strip my magic. I didn’t have food, but I didn’t have a lot of choice but to rest.
So I lay there and tried to summon the strength to get my legs under me.
The first time I tried to stand, I got blindingly dizzy and promptly threw up, at least managing to roll half onto my side so that I didn’t end up face-planted in my own vomit. Panting, I rolled the other way so I didn’t have to smell it, struggling to keep the nausea down. Literally.
So standing was out of the question.
I decided to try side-crawling next, and that was less catastrophic, but I only made it a few feet before the dizziness kicked in, black fingers creeping in at the edges of my vision trying to steal my consciousness.
But it was a few feet closer to freedom than I had been, so that was what we were going with. Not efficient by any means, but it was better than lying there waiting for death. I was going to be an asshole for every breath I had left, because fuck the Ordo. If they wanted me, they’d have to take me kicking and screaming.
Inching my way across the gravel floor of a quarry pit didn’t do much for my levels of exhaustion, but even though resting was probably what my body needed, it wasn’t what I could afford to do. If I wanted any hope of getting the fuck out of here—of ever seeing Taavi again and remedying the fact that I hadn’t told him how I felt and how much he meant to me—I had to make forward progress, even if it was at a fucking snail’s pace.
The sun was gone by the time I made it to the start of the sloping road that led up and around the wall of the quarry—it wasn’t even close to escaping, and the gloom of the twilight made this whole enterprise so much more dangerous, but I was starting to hope that they’d just dumped me and hoped I’d die on my own. That maybe—just maybe—I was going to actually be able to drag my pathetic ass to safety.
That’s when I heard the engine and the crunch of tires.
Fuck.
There was a very, very,veryremote chance that this vehicle was my salvation. Like less than one percent chance. Less than half a percent. What was far more likely was that it was Garcia or some of his cronies coming to finish me off.
I rolled myself away from the actual driving path, because I at least wanted to punch some dicksteak if I was going to die here, rather than get run over by their goddamn truck.
It was one of those big black things that gangsters drive, a Escalade with tinted windows and spoke-style hubcaps. I almost rolled my eyes it was so fucking cliché. But that would have taken energy, and I needed every drop of mine.
Garcia was one of the people who stepped out of the Escalade. So was a slight, older woman I recognized from one of the old photos of Antonio and Izar Pelayo. My guess was that this was Celestina Pelayo, Izar’s literal witch of a mother-in-law. Over her long black dress she wore a heavy gold pendant that looked a lot to me like the missing Xipe Totec, although from where I was lying, I couldn’t be completely sure. And then I got distracted by the emergence of a human-shaped mountain of muscle I could only identify as a goon. I was pretty sure he was here to kill me, or at least hold me down so one or both of the other two could do it.
“Well, well.” Garcia’s smile was no longer fake, but it definitely looked more like it belonged on a piranha than a person. “Mr. Hart. I have to say, I’m impressed at your… tenacity.”
Truth be told, I was also impressed with my tenacity, but I wasn’t about to acknowledge that I might agree with him about anything. So I went with my old standby.
“Fuck you.”
Nobody cares if you’re rude to the guy who’s about to kill you. In fact, it’s pretty much expected etiquette if you’re about to get beaten to death. That, or pleading for your life. I’m sure that would have been more satisfying for Garcia, though, and I was trying very hard to be as obnoxious as I could possibly be if these were going to be the last few minutes or hours I had on this earth.
Because fuck them.
“Now, now. That’s hardly language to use in front of a lady.” Garcia seemed amused by me more than anything. That was annoying.
