Page 90 of The Accomplice
It was then she realized she was sitting upright in a chair. The sharp ties at her wrists were also fixed to the back of chair.
Her eyes opened. She blinked. There was still only darkness. No light at all.
Swallowing burned her throat. It felt raw and sore. She took two quick breaths, gritted her teeth, and pulled her head up, straightening her neck. The pain in those muscles quickly abated when her headache decided it didn’t like any neck movement at all. The pain was so bad she cried out, and salty tears rolled onto her lips, stinging them. Her mouth was so dry her lips felt like they had been baked in the sun. They were cracked, and when she tried to wet them, she tasted blood.
She whimpered, almost overwhelmed with the pounding in her head.
Kate put her back against the seat, let her shoulders relax and concentrated on her breathing. She knew if she didn’t, she would be sick and then she would panic. And that would make everything worse.
Pain gave way to confusion. Why was she here ? Was this a dream ?
Confusion gave way to memory.
The hand on her mouth.
Breath on her neck.
The prick of the needle.
The song. That fucking song.
And now here.
But where was here ?
Thinking helped.
Her old man had been an NYPD blue for over twenty years before he hung up his badge. She remembered his stories – those tight spots. That’s what he called them. Tight spots. Not pinned down behind his cruiser while some gangbanger turned it into Swiss cheese with a Mac 10, not pulling a jumper off the top of a ten-story building because he’d just smothered his baby by mistake when he was high, not watching his partner eat the business end of a shotgun when he knocked on the wrong door in the wrong neighborhood.
Tight spots.
What her father told her was that people lived or died because they were able to think things through and make good decisions. That was the key to survival. Good decisions. There was always something you could do to make things worse or make them better.
Kate’s eyes slowly adjusted to the thick darkness.
Her breathing slowed.
She was able to listen, and smell and see.
There wasn’t much to look at. She couldn’t make out any shapes in the dark, apart from what she thought might have been a ceiling panel above her. How far above, she couldn’t tell exactly, but it was a lot closer than it should have been. She wondered if the chair she was on had been put on a table, because it seemed that if she stood on the chair her head would hit the ceiling.
Her breath sounded loud, even though she had it under control now. She let out a small‘woo’and listened. The sound came back at her almost immediately, and it was dense and muted at the same time. She guessed she was in a very small, narrow room with concrete walls. Maybe an ante room in a bunker.
Her bare feet moved over the cold floor. Definitely concrete. It was level, solid and smooth. There was something else underfoot. Something which made the soles of her feet slide. It wasn’t grit.
It was sand.
For a second, the fear returned. Doubled, this time. But she suppressed the surge, breathed through it, got her nervous system under control.
The odor all around her was familiar and strong.
Grease. Motor oil. The metallic tang from tools.
It smelled like a garage, which didn’t fit with the dim outline of her surroundings one little bit. She began to shiver. She was still in her nightdress, and now she felt the cool air biting at her skin. The small tremors, like an engine, started up the fire in her head. That pain had dulled somewhat, but cold, fear and the shaking brought it back to life with a vengeance. Like someone had replaced her brain with a wrecking ball and the slightest movement sent it crashing around her skull, ricocheting off bone, trying to burst right out.
With the pain, came sickness. She closed her eyes, tried to remain still.
Think.
