Chapter Four: No Insults?

Sometime after Adriel left, I must've fallen asleep because when I next opened my eyes, there was someone else in the room. The moment I realized that, I tried to shimmy away from the intimidating presence of a human perched on the chair in the room by my bedside but even the slightest of movements caused great pain to my raw wrists. How I managed to sleep without feeling pain was beyond me.

"Who are you?" My question was supposed to sound bold. Unfortunately, it came out as a pathetic squeak, betraying my fear and strengthening my captor's power over me.

"Thomas."

So 'Tommy' wasn't Scary Cop; he was an entirely different guy. His whole being screamed 'bad guy'. I didn't need any introductions to know he was the leader of whatever dark ops was going on here. Call it an intuitive hunch. Raven hair that looked like it was pushed off his forehead casually - though upon random glance it did look like he had put in work to give off that 'I couldn't care less' look. Deep brown eyes with flecks of gold in them yet void of any emotion, straight nose, lips that looked like they were only put there for talking and not for facial expressions.

My description of him was painstakingly detailed because I couldn't stop staring. I was scanning his features like a scanner on a printer.

"Where's Adriel?" I dared to ask, not caring if I told on him. So what if he gets in trouble? He was the one who knocked me out in the first place. He deserved it.

"Busy." Thomas leaned forward, the silver cross hanging from a thin chain around his neck making little clinking noises as it moved against the single dog tag he wore together with it. Instinctively, I leaned away but not before catching a whiff of him. Some natural fragrance, something like the fresh outdoors: leaves and grass and a hint of vanilla. He rested his elbows on his knees as he laced his long fingers together.

"I know you work for Danny."

The mention of my boss' name made my eyes go slightly wide though I managed to control myself, masking my astonishment by shaking my head. "I don't know what you're talking about."

He gave me a sadistically spine-chilling smile and produced a silver throwing knife from his pocket. Like it was normal to carry around sharp objects. That freaked me out.

"Whatever experiment you want to do on me, just know that I consume ice cream, cookies, milkshakes and pizzas every other day. I'm extremely unhealthy so maybe you want to find another person to carry out your experiments on," I blurted out. Thomas raised a dark eyebrow.

"No wonder the guys complained about your weight," he murmured, half lidded eyes openly roving over my body. I frowned. I wasn't fat. I was just curvier than other girls, like that girl who sang 'All About That Bass'. What was her name . . . Regan Taylor? Something Trainor? Yeah, I'm all bass, no treble.

Indifferent to my obvious discomfort at being called 'fat', Thomas went on.

"I don't know what Adriel told you but no, I won't be experimenting on you. I just need info." He leaned back in his seat. The way he was twirling his silver knife between his fingers was greatly disconcerting. He had the thing dancing between his fingers the way some people toy with a coin or a pen. I was waiting for the moment he would accidentally nick his finger. Maybe that would knock his deeply sexy confidence down a notch.

What the hell, D? This guy kidnapped you and not three minutes after meeting him you think he's hot?! You must have gotten hit harder than I thought.

"I – Info on what?" I stuttered hopelessly, blushing in spite of my situation.

"Where is Danny?"

Again, I shook my head, pursing my lips. As mistreated as I was sometimes, I would never betray my friends, especially Danny. Part of the reason was, if I did and he found out, I would be castrated even though that was scientifically and theoretically impossible.

Thomas raised both eyebrows this time. His eyes, two pools of unfathomable emotion, bored into me. His stare alone was enough to make me want to crawl into a hole and hide forever. He made me feel so inadequate, especially since he was twirling that damned knife. Is this what it was like to be female? A lock of dark hair fell over his forehead, partly obscuring his left eye.

"I'm going to ask you one last time, princess," he said in a low voice. "Where is Danny?" He pronounced each word deliberately.

"I don't know," I responded stubbornly in the same manner as he did.

He stood up abruptly, and leaned down to me, pressing the cold metal of his knife to my cheek. I gulped as the sharp edge pressed into my skin.

Noted with caution: he was definitely dangerous. Didn't that Ariana lady have a song called 'Dangerous Woman'? Not relative to what I'm about to say; I felt more 'in danger' rather than 'dangerous' but, well, something about Thomas made me feel debilitated in so many ways that it was just unexplainable.

I tend to make a lot of useless references when I'm scared.

"I'll come back tomorrow and if you still refuse to tell me . . ." He let his words trail off and turned to leave. I hadn't realized how fast my heart was beating until he had closed the door behind him. A trickle of something warm rolled down my cheek and I assumed I was crying absent-mindedly, again . . . until I felt the sting.

"He actually cut me," I breathed.

I'm done for.

Later that night, when light ceased to struggle in from the curtained window and the cut on my cheek had crusted over with blood, the room door slowly opened. For some reason, I was feeling tired again despite having literally laid in bed the entire day. I was hungry, thirsty and not in the best mood.

"Psst. You awake?" came Adriel's soft voice. He slipped in and closed the door quietly behind him then came to perch on my bed again. He turned on the bedside lamp and saw the crusted cut on my cheek. "He cut you."

"Why did I have to get involved?" I said softly. I was stressed to the point where I'd resorted to thinking out loud and I didn't really expect Adriel to reply.

Surprisingly, he sighed. He seemed to be rummaging around somewhere. I didn't bother looking.

"It's what you agreed to when you got into this business, love," he explained nonchalantly. He took my chin in his hand with surprising gentleness and turned my face towards him. With a damp cloth, he dabbed at my cut. I could smell the alcohol on the cloth and it stung the sliced epidermis.

His words did have a point. I knew what I was signing up for when Danny thought I was old enough to help out; I had agreed to it and promised to be loyal. Kind of regret that swear now that I was caught up in some nasty kidnapping-ransom business. Oh, naïve little me! What have you done?

"Yeah, I guess so," I agreed reluctantly, more than a little mad at myself. "Didn't have to go slicing me up, though."

Adriel laughed at the tone I used, a sound that was somehow inviting and easy despite the situation. I relaxed a little then tensed back up upon remembering that my life could be taken at any time while I was here. "That's how he is. Seeing blood makes him more at ease, in a way." He then shuddered, somewhat uncharacteristically. "It's like he's secretly a vampire."

"Sadist much?" I said, referring to the blood part he'd mentioned.

"That's what I thought too, when I first started hanging out with him. I was barely fourteen then and I was terrified even though he's only three months older than me." Adriel tilted my head then nodded. He reached for the antiseptic cream. "But he ended up as the closest thing I knew to a family. Well, him and Kieran."

"Scary Cop?"

Adriel laughed again with a little snort. "He only looks scary. Trust me, once you get to know him, scary is the last word you'd use to describe him." He finished dabbing cream at my cut. I was feeling a smidge better from our short talk. "There."

I looked directly into his eyes, trying to gauge the genuinity of his words. "Why are you being so nice to me?"

"It's who I am," he grinned. "Out of the three of us, I'm the least scary but the most gullible. Oh, here," he pulled up a bottle of water from where it rested on the floor, "you must be parched."

Gratefully, with Adriel's help, I guzzled the entire bottle in under two minutes. He also offered me a packet of crackers which I greedily gobbled down.

"Oh, I have wafers in my pocket, if you'd be so kind as to fish them out." Might as well. They were the paper-wrapped kind that got soft if left uneaten for too long. I didn’t appreciate soft wafers and, Lord knows when I'll get to eat them if not now. Tonight might be my last on earth. Or tomorrow. It was hard to tell when my life depended on kidnappers.

"What, no insults this time?" Adriel reached into my front pockets, trying to push his hand into the too-tight space. Luckily for him, his fingers were long enough to curl around the wafers and scoop them out. "Why do you have these?"

I shrugged. "Didn't have time for breakfast this morning." A pause. "It was this morning, right?"

Adriel nodded, peeling back the paper wrapping from the wafer and holding it out for me to eat. I took a bite, chewing pensively. They were still good, of course, if not a little crushed.

"I'm sorry I can't help you out more," he apologized after I was finished.

"I'm sorry you and your friends are jerks."

He grinned, appreciating the insult and got up to leave. I stopped him at the last minute, knowing that once I let him go now, no one would return to my room even if I screamed my throat raw.

"Wait."

Adriel looked down at me expectantly.

"I need to use the bathroom."

True to his word, the leader came to see me the next day. I stubbornly refused to share what I knew so he granted me a couple of parting 'gifts'.

"I'll decorate you beautifully," he promised softly, voice a gentle carass on my skin. An incongruous setting against the steel blade breaking past the epidermis and slicing through my flesh. My face was screwed up, lips pressed together to keep them from quivering and to prevent any noises from escaping. Obviously, he had the upper hand here but I wasn't about to bolster his ego by giving him the satisfaction of hearing my cries.

Based on what I could piece together by observing the shifts in light and counting the times he visited me, I had been in captivity for approximately five days. Possibly more. Each time I denied Thomas of what he wanted, he left me with new open wounds that were not exclusive to my face. In my helpless state, I began to wonder about the type of psychological disease the guy had. Normal people didn’t just cut other people up like this. Unless he had issues with himself and this was his way of coping with them. I frowned when the thought crossed me, a pang of sympathy for him prodding me. It must be hard for him to cope this way. Then again, I was the one who deserved pity. Me, the poor unfortunate captive, not his stinking rear end. Thankfully, I was never hit or violated, merely sliced open like a virgin pack of beef, each cut deeper and longer than the last. The pain was incredibly real. I could visualize the epidermal layer splitting open neatly, could see the blade slicing through nerves and flesh, severing micro blood vessels. The horrific images I conjured up had me mentally screaming. And lying in my own blood was traumatic as I waited for the minutes to tick by slowly for the little platlet dudes to get to work. Even after that things were still bad because the feelung of the crusted wound disturbed me. My resilience surprised me.

My endurance training was really paying off. At least I salvaged a little comfort from that.

Thomas never cut me on my face after that first time though. I wasn't sure if that read as good news or bad news. Maybe he regained some of his humanity; maybe not because the cuts he left on my belly stung even more than the facial ones. Most likely not because he had this way of staring at the fresh blood welling out from my cuts, like he was hypnotized by it. Again, he might be dealing with his issues but I digress. While I pondered on his mental state of mind, paranoia crept in, making itself comfy before giving birth to fear. Minutes melted into hours and I spent each one replaying scene after scene of what could possibly go down the next time Thomas returned.

Such was my relationship with Thomas the Leader.

Ah, you're wondering how I managed to survive without food.

Adriel snuck in every night to clean me up, feed me and keep me company. I doubted that his leader was unaware of his actions like he claimed but it was not my business. He stitched the deeper cuts with steady precision, yet another scream-worthy procedure I had to endure with a pillow pushed over my face. The first few nights he did his work quietly; I was too tired to do anything but lay back and I hated the fact that he was in cohorts with that maniacal blood-guy. The times that we did converse, I found out that I genuinely liked him because of his sincerity and humour, despite the fact that he deserved all my hate. How could I despise a guy who wore cartoon shirts and expressed his feelings openly? It takes a real man to admit his true emotions. He was endearing that way and we talked about the most random things during his nightly visits. He claimed that Tommy - "don't let him catch you using his real name," Adriel warned me, "he hates it." - was going to let me go soon.

Yeah, right. And cows could line dance.

Reflection on my situation only gave me me bigger headache. Talk about confusion. The roles I was taking on didn't make sense at all: unwilling torture victim by day and unlikely patient cum companion by night. Balance only came easy once i had adjusted properly, eg. I was getting used to it. However, I still felt like I deserved an Oscar for my dual-personality act. Talking to Adriel was only an advertisement from my predicament.

Something hit me in the head one night. Methaphorically. Something that I should have noticed from the moment Tommy mentioned Danny’s name. I was so caught up in my anxiety for the blood leader’s visits and Adriel’s company that it had hindered my ability to think rationally. Plus, the pain left little space to think about anything else and my mind was strangely blank most times.

I got one thing out of the way since I came here: they were not the police. Yes, not even the corrupt ones. Policemen had an aura to them, which these people lacked. These guys had known I would be using the back roads to get to the other side of town. Definitely a tip off from someone. Judging randomly, I would guess they were from a group, too. The word gang sounded too... coarse, so I preferred group. Surely by now, Danny must have gotten word from Parker about my failing to get the drugs to him. Danny would be spitting with rage looking for me, and not just because I’d lost his drugs. He would scour the entire country if he had to. At least, I hoped that was the case. Eventually, he’d find me but I hadn't the slightest how long that would take. And these guys here seemed like professionals. Who knows how long I’ll be left here? Would I even still be alive by then?

If, on the off chance they were enemies, I'd be wading in shark infested waters. There was history between Danny and some dudes from a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, I never got to know the full story but I had a hunch that I'd bumped into the wrong people. I bet my Notre Dame on it.

On the eighth day, Tommy walked in as he usually did, twirling his knife in his hand. I was in a lousy mood, had been for a few days now and I didn't want to deal with him.

“Give. Up. Thomas.”