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Then two men were storming into the room.
She’d peered up at them through the dark, expecting to see Roman.
But it hadn’t been him. It had been Max.
He’d said something in Russian when he’d laid eyes on her, a curse from the sound of it, and had ordered the other man to find the key to her shackle. Then he’d fumbled to insert the key into the lock around her wrist. It wasn’t until he’d pulled off his jacket, draped it over her shoulders, and guided her out of the room that she’d comprehended how they’d freed her.
They’d stepped over the two dead bodies — Meat Face and Snake Eyes — outside her room, playing cards strewn around them, and Max and the other man — young, thin, and nervous — had guided her down several flights of rusted metal stairs in a building that was bigger than she’d imagined while she’d been locked away in her room.
She’d started to think the stairs were endless, that she was in some kind of nightmarish maze, when two shots sounded just below them.
“Copy. We’re almost down,” Max had said.
She’d thought he was speaking to her, but when she looked up at him she saw his earpiece and realized he was talking to someone else.
Then they’d descended another staircase and Max had moved her forward, through the shadows of the buildings, hulking metal and concrete strewn about like the Legos Olivia loved to play with.
“Olivia…”
She was free. She could see her daughter.
“We’re going to get you to her,” Max said.
A sob caught in Ruby’s throat. She was alive. She was going to see her daughter.
They’d emerged onto a desolate street, old factory buildings all around, and she’d been hit by the smell of the canal. She looked back as Max hurried her toward one of two SUVs idling by the curb.
She knew this building. It was the old grain terminal in Red Hook.
She barely had time to register the horror of it — the grain terminal had been abandoned for decades, a forgotten part of the city’s industrial history — before she’d been led past the first SUV, its windows so dark she couldn’t make out who was inside, to the second one.
Now they were driving through the darkened city, gliding past streetlamps and stoplights as smoothly as if they were on a ship flying through space.
“Are you cold?” Max asked.
She shook her head, but she hadn’t realized she was shaking. That her teeth were chattering.
“Turn up the heat,” he told the younger guy at the wheel.
“You’re in shock, Max said. “We’re getting you to a doctor.”
“I don’t want a doctor,” she said through her chattering teeth. It felt weird to use her voice. She’d hardly spoken in the time she’d been held prisoner, which she guessed was in the neighborhood of two weeks. “I want my daughter.”
“You don’t want to see Olivia this way, do you?” Max asked gently.
At first she didn’t know what he meant.
She wanted to see Olivia. Full stop.
Then she looked down and realized she was dirty and half-naked under the jacket, her legs strangely thin.
And that was just the part of herself she could see.
She hadn’t showered in weeks, hadn’t even been able to brush her teeth. She’d been using a bucket as a toilet (shame heated her face even now).
No, she didn’t want Olivia to see her this way.
“We’ll have you looked at by a doctor,” Max said. “You can shower and clean up, eat something. Then… we can talk about Olivia.”
