“Come on, tough guy,” the Viking said, unlocking one cuff and hauling Gary to his feet. Gary swayed slightly, as if an opponent had just delivered a haymaker. She’d watched old videos of him in the ring, looking like that, big and yet childish, glassy-eyed but calm. The Viking turned Gary’s body 180 degrees and shoved him, face-first, into the wall of the van.
“Don’t hurt him,” Dominique called out.
The Viking didn’t answer, and she started to wonder where the Bug was. He finished recuffing Gary’s back, then nudged him out of the van. He checked Dominique’s chain, saw it was secure, and followed Gary out, jumping to the ground. He turned to look at her, then banged it shut. He didn’t forget the lock, much to her dismay.
She struggled with the handcuffs and the chain, determined to be gone before he came back, but it was hopeless. In the glow of the LED lights, Dominique noticed for the first time that there was cushioning on the inside of the restraints. She pressed her thumb against one and it gave way slowly, like a rubber mat. Padded handcuffs? These weren’t standard issue. When she started to really look at them, they made her think of fancy B&D gear they put in the window of Agent Provocateur. She could almost hear the Viking’s voice, rasping on her name. She shivered, and not from the cold. For the first time, she wondered who the real target of the kidnapping was.
Chapter 6
Twenty minutes after Gary was taken out of the van, the lock clicked again. The door opened a crack and a man poked his head inside. “Hi,” he said casually.
“Hi,” Dominique answered, stupefied that he wasn’t wearing a mask. The man was in his late twenties, with bad skin and a scar on the left side of his face, bisecting his cheek. If anything, it made him more interesting than nature had. His black leather jacket was zipped open. Underneath was a T-shirt with pagan reign embossed at the top and an image of a clawed, golden bird underneath, with foreign writing Dominique didn’t recognize. It looked a little like the bird on the necklace the Viking sported, but it only had one head.
“Bumpy ride?” he asked.
She nodded. He got into the van. He was the same height and had the same thick build as the Viking, but his manner was tentative.
“I’m supposed to unlock you, okay? Just promise you won’t do anything stupid.”
“Okay.” She braced herself to run. Why the hell had she worn boots with four-inch heels? Still, she could sprint in them if she had to.
“Because here’s the thing,” the man said. “If you run away, your boyfriend Gary is going to get a bullet.”
That brought her thoughts to a screeching halt.
“My brother is in the house with him right now,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you. No one’s going to do that. But if you do something wrong, Gary will get hurt.”
She stared at the man. His blond hair was just a little too long to be presentable, but it suited him. His nose had clearly been broken and not perfectly reset. That and the scar on his cheek made him look ready to take on the world. His cold blue eyes were just like the Viking’s, which wasn’t surprising since they were brothers. His were wide-set and angled upward at the outer corners, giving him the sly, suspicious gaze of a jungle cat. He was actually close to handsome, Dominique thought. The architecture of his face was impressively Slavic. If his nose had been straight and his skin weren’t pockmarked and his eyes weren’t so feral, he would have the makings of a model. So close and yet so far.
“Do we understand each other?” he asked.
She nodded. What else could she do?
He released her from the chains in the van and recuffed her hands. He stepped out of the van and politely helped her down. They crossed the clearing together, boots squishing in the muck. Inside the house, he shut the door behind them and locked it. He called out something in a language she recognized as Russian. She didn’t know any words beyond da and nyet, but there were so many models from that part of the world, she caught the cadence of his speech without comprehending the content. No one answered him.
The hallway was only dimly lit, but Dominique could make out a broad staircase swooping up and angling to the left. The floor, the steps, even the paneling on the walls seemed to be fashioned from the same dusky wood. Gray slats of light filtered in from the rooms on either side of the hallway. A solitary lightbulb illuminated a living room with antique furniture covered in clear plastic. As her eyes adjusted, she could make out dust particles hanging in the air. She sneezed.
“Where are we, exactly?” she asked.
“At an old house in the middle of nowhere.”
“Come on. Are you so worried I’ll escape that you can’t tell me where we are?”
“I’m not supposed to. That’s not part of the plan.”
The air inside the house was damp and sour. There was the distinct aroma of mildew mixing with mustiness and decay. More than that, Dominique couldn’t identify, except to say it was all bad.
“So where’s your brother and his other partner in crime?”
Something glinted in the man’s eyes, and the corners of his mouth turned up. “You think I can’t handle you without their help?” He nudged her down the hallway, toward the back of the house.
“Where’s Gary?”
“Come into the kitchen,” the man said. “I need to explain some things to you.”
There was the smell of fish in the air, as if they were by salt water and not in the middle of a copse. Underneath it was an overwhelming scent of decay. Dominique’s stomach was empty, but it heaved a little anyway, twisting to the side just like the house.
The hallway opened to a kitchen
