Black Oil, Red Blood

Chapter 22



The sun was starting to come up, and the shadows were long and deep, which is why I hadn’t seen the gunman earlier. He was a tall, lean man who wore a black suit with a white shirt and a black tie.

Two more men in black t-shirts, obviously black-suit-man’s subordinates, stepped forward and flanked Nash, guns drawn, aiming for me and Miles. One of these guys had a shaved head, like Miles. The other one had a full head of dark hair and a respectable-enough looking face, but his forearms were covered in a solid mass of colorful tattoos, including a wide variety of skulls, dragons, and bloody daggers.

Black-suit man pressed a gun to Nash’s temple, effectively holding him hostage. “Drop your weapons,” the man said, “or you’re all going to get hurt.”

I looked at Nash for direction. He gave me a tense nod, so I tossed my gun on the ground. Beside me, Miles did the same.

I looked around desperately for Lucy, but didn’t see her anywhere.

“Hands up,” suit man said.

We raised our hands obediently.

Skinhead and tattoo guy pounced on us, guns drawn, trigger finger ready to shoot. Tattoo guy edged around behind me, put his arm around my throat, and flexed his muscles. I felt the squeeze on my neck and struggled to breathe. With his other hand, he pressed the barrel of his gun to my head. The steel cut into my scalp. The gun barrel was hot, as though the gun had recently been discharged.

I glanced over at Miles, who was now held captive in the same manner by Skinhead.

“Ease up, will you?” Miles said. “You’re gonna leave an imprint.”

Skinhead told him to shut up, using both “F” words in the space of one sentence.

Miles struggled, but he was no match for his captor. The guy was a half-head taller than him and much better built.

I looked back at Nash, who was frantically glancing all around us, presumably looking for anything that might give us an advantage. I waited for him to pull out some patented super-Nash move and regain control of the situation like he’d done before, but when his captor spun him around and cuffed his hands behind his back, I knew I couldn’t count on Nash for a rescue this time.

My stomach churned at the thought of what might be coming next. I didn’t know who these guys were or what they wanted. I wasn’t ready to die, even though my career was in shambles and I had no house to go home to. I thought of Lucy. What had happened to her? What if I had lost her, too?

Black-suit guy jerked his head toward Miles and Nash, and skinhead walked forward. He spun Miles around and cuffed his hands behind his back, too.

Then black-suit guy turned to me and wrenched my hands behind my back. A pair of cold metal cuffs clicked into place.

Tattoo guy calmly walked over to two rickety folding-chairs by the wall, dragged them into the middle of the room, and unfolded them. Then black-suit guy yanked me toward one of them and shoved me into it. He stood back and aimed his gun at my head.

Miles looked terrified as tattoo guy manhandled him into the other chair.

Having run out of chairs, skinhead secured Nash to a metal support pole that was holding up the roof.

A dim light bulb feebly lit the dusty room. The far corners of the vast space were dark.

I felt like I might start hyperventilating, so I closed my eyes and concentrated on taking deep, slow breaths.

Suit man was having none of that. I felt slaps across my face. Suit man grasped my head in both his hands and roughly peeled my right eyelid open with his thumb. He examined my pupils. Satisfied that I wasn’t going to pass out on him, he let go.

Under the light of the naked bulb, I was able to get a good look at suit man for the first time. He was white with dark brown eyes, dark hair, and a slightly crooked nose. No unusual marks. No disfiguring scars you’d typically associate with a villain or anything. He was pretty ordinary looking and wouldn’t seem scary if I’d met him on the street. But in this situation, I don’t mind admitting I was scared. I had seen enough TV to know that the fact that he hadn’t covered his face probably didn’t bode well for my chances of seeing tomorrow.

I eyed him and the two guys in black t-shirts warily. They certainly weren’t cops. But they didn’t look like run of the mill thugs, either. They seemed too clean-cut for a gang. They looked more like military, or private security.

Suit man crouched down in front of me and waited, to make sure I was focused and giving him my full attention. “Now,” he said. “Where is Cameron Gilbert?”

My jaw dropped. “You’re asking me?” I croaked. My mouth was dry. Throat parched. My head hurt, and my burns ached. “I haven’t got the foggiest idea!”

I watched, horrified, as the man slid the spaghetti strap of my camisole off my shoulder and peeled it down to reveal my bandages.

He stuck his fingernail under the corner of one and ripped it off. I winced.

“Leave her alone,” Nash said. “She’s telling the truth. She doesn’t know.”

“I am so not cut out for this,” Miles groaned.

Him? What about me? Sheesh.

Black suit man ignored him. “I think you do. Not only do I think you know where he is, I think you know what he knows.”

“Believe me,” I said, voice shaking, “I wish I knew both of those things, but I don’t.”

The man stood, grabbed my chin, and yanked it upwards. “I don’t expect your friend Nash over there to know anything. You just brought him along for the ride. Your pet paralegal, maybe. But probably not. You, on the other hand. . .

“You know me?” I asked.

“Oh yes. I know you. We’ve had our eye on you for some time. You’ve spent hours with Schaeffer, and Schaeffer has spent hours with Gilbert, and now here you are on Gilbert’s turf, which makes me think you’ve been working with him all along. I want to know where Gilbert is.”

“Why didn’t you ask Schaeffer that before you killed him?” I asked, now certain I was looking at the face of his murderer.

The man laughed—a laugh with no mirth. “I did. He gave me this address. After a little persuasion.”

I glanced at Nash, who was carefully avoiding my gaze. He hadn’t told me Schaeffer had been tortured. I had suspected as much, though. These thugs never would have found his file stash in the secret room if they hadn’t used methods I could barely bring myself to contemplate.

My stomach churned as I contemplated our situation. Even if suit man tortured me, I couldn’t give him any information because I didn’t have it. How long would it take for him to give up and realize that I had no information to extract? What on earth did he plan to do with me between now and then? Several scenarios flashed through my brain, none of which seemed remotely palatable. I wondered if I should just start begging him to kill me now. Would it make any difference? Would it shorten the agony?

Nash struggled against his bonds. “She doesn’t know anything, and even if she did, she has no evidence! You and your thugs destroyed all of Schaeffer’s files when you burned her house down. You know that. You’re wasting your time here.”

The man in black cracked his knuckles. “Oh, I don’t think so,” he said. “We came here looking for Gilbert. Unfortunately, he’s not here. But now, I have you, and you will lead me to Gilbert.”

“I swear, we don’t know where Gilbert is,” I said.

“And yet here you are, so far from home.”

“I came here looking for him just like you,” I said. “We got the address from a friend.” The futility of my protest seemed to fill the room. Who was I kidding? This guy was never going to buy it.

Black suit man slapped me across my face. “You think I’m stupid. You think I’m stupid, huh? You expect me to believe you drove all the way up here just to visit an empty building? Huh?”

He pressed his finger into my exposed burn, and I screamed bloody murder.

“Stop this! Stop this right now!” Nash said. “She doesn’t know anything! We got the address and came here hoping to find answers. That’s all.”

I felt faint. My head lolled to one side. Beside me, Miles sat frozen, his face rigid with fear. I could feel the curtain drawing over my vision again.

Black suit man’s palms slapped me back to consciousness.

“Maybe you didn’t tell your friends,” he said. “But you know.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I swear. You have to believe me.”

“Where is the virus?” he asked.

The what? What on earth was he talking about? First Cameron, now some mysterious virus? I wondered just exactly how much I was supposed to know but didn’t. What else? What else could there be?

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Tell me,” suit man said, “or I will rip out your fingernails one by one and bury them in the wounds in your chest.”

The room swayed. I said nothing. What else was there to say? How could I possibly convince this crazy man of the truth?

“Pliers,” the suit man said to his accomplice.

The guy in the black t-shirt lifted a pair of pliers and walked toward me, then circled around to my back. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him crouch beside my tied hands, and I felt the pliers clamp down onto my right pinkie nail.

I squeezed my eyes shut, but not tight enough to hold back the tears.

“I swear,” I said, trembling. “I don’t know anything. Believe me, I wish I did. If I did, I would tell you. I really like my fingernails. I’d do just about anything to keep them.”

“Last chance,” suit man said.

The pliers tightened.

I felt them pull.

Just as I was about to be sick all down the front of my shirt, I heard a zip, zip! and saw suit man crumple to a heap on the ground in front of me.

I turned to look behind me and saw t-shirt man on the ground, too. Both men had bullet holes through their foreheads.

From out of nowhere, a red and brown mass of slobbering fur launched itself at me and started licking my face.

Lucy! My tears flowed faster than she could lick them away.

She was followed by a tall man with a shock of nearly white blonde hair and strikingly blue eyes.

“Hi,” he said. “I’m Cameron Gilbert. I had the place under video surveillance and would have been here sooner, but there was a wreck on I-30. Is that your dog? She’s cute. I found her hiding under a car out back.”