Kaleidoscope ~ Guards
Cynthia Hatch
Part 14
Her first awareness was of a terrible dizziness. She had no sense of balance, no concept of the position of her body. She wanted desperately to cough and rid herself of the sickening sweet taste that cloyed in her mouth, but something prevented it. The swaying sensation at first seemed to be within her, but as she breathed deeply, she realized she was actually moving. How - when she couldn't feel her arms or legs? Her eyes were still covered, and the memory of that hand slid into focus, but this was different. As her mind began to clear, she recognized that something was tied around her eyes, as well as her mouth, but she was still disoriented. What had happened to the rest of her?
Slowly, her brain moved into gear, and she recognized that she was being carried, her head upside down, over someone's shoulder. Her arms had been tied behind her. The instinct to struggle came sharp and almost irresistible, but it would be useless, bound as she was and sight-less. Better to let her captor assume she was still unconscious, while she registered the clues to where they were headed.
Even her muffled senses could not mistake where they were - the distant clanging of the pipes, the warm, dank air of the upper tunnels on her skin, the rumble of a subway close, very close, by. The knowledge confused her. How could her abductor know of this place? It was inconceivable that anyone living below could be her assailant, and yet the person's movements were fast and sure, as if he knew this region well.
She thought of Joe and the way he'd mysteriously turned up below the entrance to her building. This man must know that entrance, must have brought her down that way, but they hadn't gone very deep. She wondered ff they could be in a subway tunnel and held her breath as the sound of a train rushed towards them, but her abductor didn't flinch, and the train thundered past nearby.
He stopped, and there was a sound of knocking, then the unmistakable creak of an opening door. A cooler air washed over her, and the door slammed, as footsteps rang out on a different surface. She was pushed unceremoniously from his shoulder and fought hard not to make any sound at the fearful sensation of falling. She landed on her back with a jolt, though the surface that broke her fall was reasonably soft. Hands turned her over onto her stomach and felt for her wrist. Fleetingly, she thought he was going to untie her, but he merely pressed her pulse, confirming that she had survived the effects of the drug. His footsteps echoed when he moved away from her; the room must be large. It might be a cavern cut in the rock near the lower subway, but there had been a door.
She pressed her face against the soft, sour-smelling surface beneath her, gradually managing to push the blindfold up just enough to peer out from under it. From her vantage point on the floor she could make out a wide expanse of stone. She lay in shadow, but beyond the room pulsed with the feeble light of unseen torches. The man stood a few feet in front of her, but she could only see him from the knees down. Through his legs and across the cavern a heavy wooden door was visible, and she felt a rush of heightened sensation whirling through her, just before the wood splintered, and a roar echoed around the room, filling it with a horrific thunder of raw fury. Terror gripped her. Did the man have a gun? But no shots rang out. Vincent had stopped on the thresh-old. She was sure no one else would have been aware of her presence, buried as she was in the shadows, but he knew. He didn't come to her; the man must be armed.
Vincent's teeth were bared, his eyes flickering quickly around the room to assess the situation. There had most certainly been cries of terror lost in the midst of that roar, but they hadn't come from the man in front of her. Maybe he was too frightened to scream, but he spoke suddenly, and his words confused her; his voice was chillingly familiar.
"What's the matter - you forget how to knock?'
The voice was slow, cocky, tinged with nervousness, but there was none of the fearful disbelief that usually shook people confronted by Vincent.
'It can't be all that long since you found this place. You wonder how I know that, Vincent? Cause I used to hide here all the time. You and Devin and the others - you'd be crawling around like rats in the lower tunnels, looking for me, and I'd just sit here and laugh. You never came up this far. You never caught on there was a chamber here, so close to the subway."
The identity of her assailant struck her then, and the events of the last few days took on a certain twisted logic: Mitch Denton, raised in the tunnels. He had tried to kill her before, when she'd thwarted his efforts to strong-arm the dockworkers. If Vincent hadn't arrived, hadn't gotten her to the hospital so quickly, she would have died. He had told her later how he left Mitch in the warehouse that night, babbling and incapable of resisting the police who came to arrest him. But he hadn't gone to prison, she remembered now. He'd been committed to the state hospital, his mind unhinged by the terrors of that night. She'd never gotten to the release records of mental institutions, concentrating instead on prison records, as a means of identifying her persecutor. He would have known who Joe was, taken pleasure in assaulting him, but she was the one he blamed for his downfall.
He couldn't have been released, not with the evidence they had against him. He must have escaped or worse - fallen through some chink in the system that should have seen him transferred to prison had his sanity returned. It was hard to imagine he could be any crazier than he'd seemed that night, even before his confrontation with Vincent. He had not just decreed her death; he had enjoyed the prospect of it. The knowledge of how dangerous he really was shook her, and she sensed Vincent's eyes shifting to her in the darkness. He was standing motionless. He still hadn't spoken.
'What's the matter, Vincent? Cat got your tongue?' Denton chuckled. "I really thought I could use this place a little while without running into you, but since you're here, you're welcome to stay. It could be real interesting. You see this stuff?. This is my ticket to South America. When the word comes down, we're moving it out of here, and I'll be out of your hair once and for all. In the meantime, we can talk nice. You can tell me all about the boring, little lives going on below, and I'll tell you about the life I'm gonna live in Rio - like a king, Vincent. I'm gonna be rich."
With Denton's attention focused elsewhere, she dared to roll over, moving her head so that she could see the rest of the room from the slit under the blindfold. There were several wooden crates stacked against one wall, probably containing weapons or drugs.
"What's with the silent treatment? You've usually got something to say. Hey, I don't want to hear it anyway. You can listen to me for once, but don't think you can make a move on me, Vincent. You're not that stupid."
She tilted her head back and suddenly saw the reason for his confidence. A stone ledge stretched around the room, some ten feet above them. On either side perched a man with an automatic weapon. They were both leveled at Vincent. There was no way he could get to Denton, or to her, before one or both of them unleashed several rounds of ammunition. An icy terror swept through her, and Vincent tensed. No, she screamed inwardly, but he hadn't moved. He recognized the futility of an attack, of that she was sure. An assault on one man could only give the other a clean shot, mad if he were gunned down, there'd be nothing to protect her from Denton. What frightened her most was the thought of Denton's provoking him into a rage, the fear that if he gave into blind instinct, he would forget his rational assessment of the problem and charge into certain death. She fought back her fear, needing to keep a clear head, to look for some solution that would not require force. Beyond the back wall of the chamber a subway clattered past, the noise amplified in the great hollow space.
Denton had started to pace under Vincent's enigmatic gaze. As the cavern grew quiet again, he spoke. 'Why don't you sit down or some-thing?. We could be here a long time. You just gonna stand there?"
Vincent didn't answer, and it occurred to her that he was purposely refusing to speak, that he was letting his reticence unnerve Denton, who found it impossible to guess what he was thinking.
Denton was throwing him anxious glances, even as his words remained smug. "You told me I was nothing, Vincent. Well, you don't know what a big man I'm gonna be from now on - cars and servants and women, which reminds me, you're not going to believe what I got here.' He approached the shadows where she lay. "You got good eyes. Can you see what this is? Recognize her? You should. It's the bimbo from the DA's office who messed up my operation on the docks, the same one you rescued that night when you were running around playing Sir Galahad. I thought it might be fun to teach her a couple of lessons while we're waiting to get out of here."
It dawned on her then, as she lay still feigning unconsciousness, that he didn't know. Her first assumption had been that he was using her to lure Vincent, to settle a grudge against both of them, but he didn't realize the connection. Vincent's arrival had not been planned, though Denton took a perverse delight in it, no doubt assuming that he had come once again to prevent the tunnels being used as a hideout. Denton had no concept that the most powerful weapon he could use against them - their love for each other - even existed. This gap in his knowledge gave her an idea.
He was shaking her shoulder now, telling her to wake up. He knelt and removed the blindfold and the gag, and she blinked. She squinted up at him, at his sharp features and slicked back hair, and gasped, "You!' Then she turned her eyes to Vincent and let out the most blood-curdling scream her dry throat could manage. She scooted, crab-like, her arms and legs still tied. back against the wall, still screaming, her eyes wide with terror.
"Hey, shut her up, will ya, Mitch? Somebody's gonna hear her.' The voice belonged to the barrel-chested man on the ledge to her right. He was dark with a heavy mustache, and he was peering into the shadows that hid her with a mixture of fear and disgust.
"How about you shut up," Denton yelled at him. "You think they got an army down here or something? Well, you're looking at it." He turned to Vincent with a smirk. "A lot of good all your Boy Scout tactics did you, old friend. You save her butt, and she's scared to death of you."
He walked back and bent over her, his black eyes as dead as a shark's. "Cut it out," he shouted. "Nobody's gonna hear you down here."
"Just don't let him near me," she said, her voice low and desperate. "What? You're looking to me for protection? Hey, Vincent, you hear that? She'd rather take her chances with me than have to look at your ugly mug." He reached down and untied the rope around her ankles, pulling her to her feet, and shoved her out into the light. 'Look at her, Vincent. Nice, huh? How does it feel to look at something that good and know the sight of you gives her the willies?"
He was enjoying this exercise in cruelty, as she'd hoped he would. Never before had she found stupidity such an attractive attribute.
"You think his face is bad news - did you get a load of his hands? Show her, Vincent. He rips people apart with those claws, tears their guts out so fast they barely have time to scream." She tried to display a trembling horror, and he propelled her within two or three feet of her goal. "Wouldn't you like to touch her, Vincent?" Denton wheedled. "Go ahead. She can't stop you. It's your big chance."
Slowly, Vincent brought his left hand up to lay it on her cheek. His expression hadn't changed, but she could read the subtle messages in his eyes. In back of her Denton couldn't see her face, and she smiled, letting Vincent know how much she loved him, showing him she wasn't afraid. The touch of his hand closed the last link of their bond, a physical confirmation of the love and strength he'd been sending her ever since he entered the room She'd had no clear plan of action in mind when she'd used Denton's ignorance to get herself closer to Vincent, but their rapport allowed her to glimpse with horrifying certainty his own intentions. In a split second flash of illumination she knew that he was about to pull her behind him to the relative safety of the shattered door, a safety he couldn't possibly reach before the two gunmen had cut him down. He moved fast, but desperation made her move faster, and she hurled herself backward, bumping into Denton, spinning around him, so that he stood between her and Vincent's outstretched hand.
"Did you see that? He tried to grab me. Keep him away from me!"
Denton laughed. 'What did I tell you, Vincent? She's a bimbo. Don't think you fooled me. You were gonna play hero again, weren't you? You were gonna toss her out of here. It would have been the last move you ever made. and for what? She's too stupid to appreciate it." He shook his head, still enjoying the joke. 'When are you gonna learn, Vincent? You gota take what you can get, when you've got the chance."
He retreated farther back into the chamber, safely away from the towering figure, pulling her along with him. "Me and Vincent go back a ways. You're probably not gonna buy this, but there was a girl down here had the hots for him when we were teenagers. She was real nice, pretty like you, but stuck up. She wouldn't have anything to do with me or any of the rest of the guys for that matter. All she cared about was Vincent here. Well, you know what she got for her trouble?" He leaned his face close to hers, the torchlight gleaming on his oily hair. "0ne day he got her alone, and I won't tell you what he did to her - use your imagination - but I can tell you, nobody's seen her since."
She looked at him through a mask of terror, wanting nothing so much as to spit in his face.
He chortled. "You know, Vincent, I'd give you this one, if I thought you'd know what to do with her. Where else are you gonna have such a golden opportunity?. She's scared out of her mind, tied up. I'm telling you, you could have a lot of fun, but what would you do? Probably recite her some poem, try to save her when she's too dumb to want saving. I don't know what Father taught you, but it wasn't enough; it was never enough. Now me, I've got an appreciation for good-looking women." His beady eyes raked over her. "Nice body, don't you think, Vincent? Soft hair." He took a handful of it, rubbing it between his fingers. "Sexy mouth." She stood her ground, not flinching from his touch, unwilling to show her fear to either the man who would hurt her or the one who would protect her, but Denton must be mad not to feel what was happening, not to be aware of the turbulent energy flooding the room, the tide of barely contained vengeance that was palpable in the air around them. Perhaps it had reached him. as he suddenly let go of her hair and turned back to the still figure behind him.
"Damn it, Vincent - will you say something?"
'What should I say?" His voice was a low rumble, and she realized it was the first time she'd heard him speak since that night on the balcony. A sharp cry came from the left, followed by a crash that echoed off the stone walls.
"Jesus, Mitch, it talks"' The man hunkered down on the ledge was pallid, his thin arms covered with tattoos. He was gaping at Vincent, his hands shaking.
"You moron, get down and pick it up. If that thing had gone off. it would have blasted a hole through the wall."
'That's what will happen anyway, if you try to shoot someone in here,' Catherine pointed out. "That, or the bullets will ricochet and kill you."
"Don't try to tell me about guns, lady. or these tunnels. I know 'em both. What do I care ff the whole place caves in? What's it gonna bury -a bunch of half dead losers, that's what. Get over here. Wayne." The thin man, who she could see now was very tall and probably stronger than he looked since Denton had chosen him as a guard, had scrambled down the wall to retrieve his weapon, but now Denton was motioning him to come closer. "Go over there, and take a look at my buddy Vincent. I want you to see what you're up against, so you'll be a little more careful. Go on. He won't bite you." He gave a short laugh. "Not when there's an innocent bystander to think of." He slipped his hand into the pocket of his jacket and brought out a thin-bladed knife, pointing it at her throat. "You're into innocence, aren't you Vincent?"