“Stay the fuck away from me,” I warned.
“You really will shoot me now, won’t you?” he said, cocking his head and stepping back. “Our little girl is all grown up, eh?”
I caught a quick flicker in his gaze as it darted to my left and then back to my face. Alarms went off all through my body and I spun to the left just in time to meet something hard and heavy slamming into my temple. The smug and mocking thought that chased me down into blackness was...
I came to in another trunk. This one was much nicer than the Civic, better than the Sebring even, but it still sucked. I was bound and gagged, again. My head hurt worse than it had ever hurt before and I felt a drowsy kind of spinning sickness that made me wish I were already dead.
What the fuck was I thinking, trying to be some kind of badass tough guy? I was a porn star for Christ’s sake, not a Green Beret. I could almost see Malloy shaking his head, smirking and making some deadpan comment about the shit I’d gotten myself into now. I hated him in that moment, for making me need him and then leaving me.
The car I was in eased into a slow stop. Footsteps came around to the rear and I cringed as the trunk lid sprang open. There would be no hesitation from Vukasin if he decided to pop a cap in my bitch ass.
But the person who opened the trunk wasn’t Vukasin. Presumably it was the man who had cold-cocked me back in the lot behind that warehouse. I figured he must be the replacement for that blonde redneck thug Malloy had killed back in Vegas. This one was younger and better looking, his dark hair meticulously gelled into trendy dishevelment. The body under his basic black outfit was built more like a model than a power lifter but he lifted me out of the trunk and slung me over his broad shoulder easily and without comment.
Hanging upside down with my cheek pressed against the thug’s back, I saw that the car whose trunk had been so nice was a slick black Chrysler 300. I was getting to be a regular trunk connoisseur. I made a mental note to request the Chrysler 300 for all future abductions.
I also saw that we were behind one of those awful, trashy post-war apartment complexes that fill the low- income neighborhoods of the northern Valley. Grimy stucco. Chipped paint. Indistinguishable from hundreds of others throughout Southern California.
Vukasin was there, holding my duffel bag and talking on a cell phone.
“Yes,” he said into the phone. “I’ve got her and I’ve got the money.” He looked over at me. “Yes, I understand.”
He ended the call and gestured to the man holding me.
“Boss says we meet him at Sneaky Pete’s on West 98th by LAX,” Vukasin said, putting the duffel bag into the trunk in my place and slamming the lid. “He said it’s right next door to the meet. You load up the outgoing girls, drive out to the meet, park the van behind the warehouse and then go over and meet the boss at Pete’s. I’ll deal with Angel myself.”
“But I thought the boss said he wanted her included with the outgoing,” the thug said, adjusting me on his shoulder.
“She will be,” Vukasin said. “Only she and I have a few things we need to discuss together first.”
He caught my eye and winked.
The thug carried me through a security gate and up some stairs and then stood in front of a unit on the second floor. The place was a standard low-rent garden apartment complex, all the units facing a central garden if by “garden” you meant a single rickety bench and some weedy dirt. The interior was not visible from the street. You could do pretty much anything you wanted here and no one would see it.
Vukasin unlocked the door. Inside wasn’t a normal apartment. It was a crummy little dungeon. Bad fake stone pattern painted on the grubby walls. Rickety wooden equipment slopped thick with matte black paint. A large X bolted to one wall and studded with eyelets. A thinly padded bench with locking steel cuffs dangling from each of its four legs. Cheap, skinny floggers and flimsy paddles hanging from nails driven unevenly into the far wall. There were stains on the carpet that I didn’t care to study. I thought of Ulka and her classy set-up and wondered what she would have thought about this place.
“Just put her down anywhere,” Vukasin said.
The thug obliged by dumping me on the carpet at the foot of the X and quickly making himself scarce. One of the stains that I didn’t want to think about was now an inch from my nose.
I wondered, were all the other units in this grim complex done up as cheesy fantasy sets like this one? Was this where they shot all the
Alone with Vukasin now, I quickly assessed my situation. I was lying on my side. My hands were bound behind my back with a single short piece of nylon rope. Ditto my ankles. I was tightly gagged with a knotted handkerchief that dug deep into the corners of my mouth.
Vukasin hung his leather trench coat on a hook by the door and then squatted down beside me and pushed up my Lakers shirt, exposing my breasts. I had not had time to bind them down when I bolted from the Palmview and anyway at this late date it had seemed kind of beside the point to continue with the drag charade.
“You are really much too old for me, Angel,” he said, gripping my breast and giving it a painful shake. “But you intrigue me. Your friend Zandora, she was intriguing too. For a time.”
He reached behind my head and unknotted the gag, pulling the wet fabric from my mouth. He abruptly yanked me upright so that I was balanced on my knees, facing him. Pulling a straight razor from his pocket, he swiftly cut away my t-shirt, nicking the skin beneath more than once in the process. It was enough to pull me out of the stupor I’d been in. I had pretty much resigned myself to being shot; I’d even managed to convince myself that it would be a noble, tough guy kind of a death. But slow death by straight razor is a whole different ballgame.
Once my shirt was out of the way, Vukasin wrapped one skinny arm around me and kissed me, mashing my sore lips into my teeth like an eager teenager. I let him, focusing everything I had into working my wrists loose. They wouldn’t give and wouldn’t give and then suddenly the rope went miraculously slack, just enough to slip one hand free.
I had one shot. I remembered that tacky shirt he’d worn in Vegas, the one with the cards and dice on it, and I remembered the pistol I’d found under it, tucked down the back of his pants. He was wearing a different tacky polyester shirt today, but it was untucked the same way. I could only hope that he was a creature of habit.
When he reached down to unbutton my jeans, I made my move. The pistol was right where I’d hoped it would be. In less than a heartbeat, I had it out of his waistband and up under his chin.
“Get the fuck off me,” I told him.
He dropped the razor and backed away slowly, eyes narrow and furious. I could see that he no longer harbored any doubt that I would shoot him.
“Back up,” I told him, keeping the gun pointed at his face.
No snappy banter now. No back talk. He just stepped backwards toward the chintzy little bondage bench.
“Lie on your stomach and cuff your wrists to the bench,” I said. He fastened one cuff around a wrist and then ineffectually fumbled, one handed, with the remaining cuff.
I freed my ankles and cuffed his remaining wrist and ankles to the bench myself. I put my spit-damp gag into his mouth, knotting it securely behind his head and then took his keys from his pocket. I took his trench coat too, since the sliced up Lakers t-shirt was a total loss. I put his gun in the deep pocket and grabbed an extra set of handcuffs and a roll of thick, heavy-duty electrical tape. Just in case.
I could have killed him without thinking twice. It wouldn’t have troubled me at all. But it also wouldn’t have satisfied me. No point wasting my time on wiping out all the rest of Ridgeway’s little errand boys. Ridgeway was the one who planned this whole mess. Ridgeway was the one who needed to pay.
Outside in the thick unnatural stillness of the deserted complex, I stood with Vukasin’s keys in my hand. I could get out of town in just the trench coat and my jeans, but if I was going to get Ridgeway, I needed clothes. If the girls were shooting videos and turning tricks here, they probably had a wardrobe room somewhere in this complex. In her scene for
