"I'm not worried," Axel tells him.
"I'll see you the morning, Everett," Axel says, taking steps away from the table. "Let's go."
Everett stands from the table, and I follow, feeling an unfamiliar heaviness in my stomach from eating a full meal. Despite feeling like I may get sick, I also feel a surge of energy, which I haven’t felt in over a year. Putting aside everything that’s happened over the last few hours, I’m grateful for at least this one meal they gave me.
I speed up to meet Axel’s quick pace, walking closely behind his heels as we cross through the lobby of the hotel and back around the corner to the fire-escape door. Axel takes a key from his pocket and looks around, checking for watchful eyes, I assume. We take the same path down the stairs as we did earlier, through the warehouse, and back to the hall of utility doors. "I just need to know where I’m sleeping tonight."
"After we’re through, I’ll show you," he says.
"I can’t watch any more of what I already saw today. I will not be a part of it."
Axel groans with annoyance and throws his head back. "God, quit it. These aren’t good people. Okay? We’re not murderers, despite what you think."
"I don’t know what to think," I mumble.
"You don’t have to think about anything."
"Tell me you’re not going to hurt someone right now," I tell him.
"Me— Axel," he points to himself. "I"m not going to hurt anyone. Neither are you."
"My name is Harley, in case you ever want to know who the hell you’re working with," I tell him.
"Is it now?" he says, insinuating some sort of disbelief. "You mean like the motorcycle?"
"Funny," I quip. "Never heard that one before."
"Hi, Harley," he says, exerting fake excitement. "Feel better now?"
"Sure. Yeah, now that I've spoken my name out loud, I feel so much better." The obnoxious connotation in my response is purposeful, yet seems to have no effect on this man.
Axel stops short, forcing me to walk into his steel-like back, then gives me a second to regain my footing before sighing with aggravation. "You know, for someone so desperate, you have quite an attitude. Have you already forgotten that I just fed you?"
"Are you forgetting I forced someone to slice her wrist for you?" I respond with haste.
"I never asked you to do that," he replies. His unchanging tone and demeanor are irking me. He has zero personality—like most serial killers, I’m sure.
"You told me only one of us was coming out alive," I remind him.
"It didn't have to be you," he corrects me as he continues down the hall.
I try to stop the words catching in my throat as they threaten to pour out in the form of obscenities, but I’m still unsure about him, other than he’s a huge douchebag.
As if he heard my silent words, he glances over his shoulder at me and winks. Seriously? "I know what you're thinking," he says.
"Oh, did you hear me call you a douchebag in my head?" I’m basically asking for him to end me right here, right now—I’m losing the battle in my head.
"I did," he says, stopping in front of a door numbered twenty-eight. Axel takes his suit coat off, hangs it on the doorknob across the hall, and rolls his sleeves up.
"Are you locking me in another room or not?" I ask with a heavy exhale.
"No."
He opens the door to the dark room, allowing in a small beam of light from the hall. I try to peek inside, but nothing is illuminated inside.
"Ready?" Axel asks as he flips on the light.
I’m not surprised to spot a man tied to a chair in the back corner of the room, but the look of shock on the man’s face makes me wonder.
8
Axel
We walk into the room and I pull out two chairs, placing them down in the center to face Norm; another murderer with a spongy brain who is just waiting to be wrung out. With his arms and legs tied to the chair, he’s detained enough to start the process.
There are days I feel like I've been conducting business like this for most of my life even, though it has only been a year and a half since Agent Roberts sought me out, offering this grand opportunity as a barter to clear my name. While grateful to have my freedom, I often wish there wasn't a stipulation to maintain what I should never have lost.
It took a while to get to the point where I’m able to conduct actions without a twitch in my heart or an ache in my stomach. I believe I'm now officially soulless and numb.
"?Dónde estoy?" Norm groans, sounding distressed and confused, just how I want him. "What da fuck is dis? You prison guards were supposed to kill me. You idiotas fuck dis up too?" More groans bellow from his throat as he tries to shift his body around. "Fuck you, mannn." Norm's words come out in long forms of slurs like he's wasted, but I'm thinking it's more likely from the concussion Everett gave him a couple of hours ago.
I glance over my shoulder to check on Harley. She’s pacing, holding her hands up to the sides of her face—clearly upset or angry—both probably. I think she can handle herself when necessary but this might be overkill for tonight.
I turn back toward Norm and laugh. "Norm, mi amigo, tendrias suerte si fuera guardia de prisión." In his native language he was speaking when we picked him up, I tell him he'd be lucky if I were a prison guard.
I walk toward him and kick his chair backward, watching as his head crashes against the cement. The impact isn’t enough to knock him out so I lift my leg and plant my heel into his face, hearing a crack echo through his jaw. The short growl he manages to emit stops before I can lift my foot. He’s out cold, but I’m sure the crack sounded worse than it was.
I finally see a reaction poking through the blank canvas Harley’s face has portrayed for the last few hours. Her eyes are wide, and she swallows hard while observing the blood from Norm's left ear pool into a perfect circle beneath his cheek.
"You told me you weren’t hurting anyone," she grunts. "Is this just for recreational purposes or is there a reason for your madness? Oh, and your Spanish accent could use some help—it’s barely intelligible." Wow. This chick has no bounds. I fucking learned Spanish, Mandarin, and Arabic in less than eighteen months and she's going to correct my pronunciation?
"I wouldn't refer to our job as recreational fun, but thank you for the linguistics tip. I will certainly take that into consideration the next time I'm torturing someone who speaks Spanish."
Harley's lip curls into a snarl as she crosses her arms over her chest. "Just tell me where I’m sleeping," she says.
Regardless of the lack of reasons I have to smile, I can't help the one fighting against my mouth, knowing I'm getting under her skin, which shouldn't be part of my goal here. However, until I figure out who the hell she is for sure, this is how things are going to be. "I'm sorry. Are you upset that you didn't feel like you were being wooed by a hot date while dining in an upscale Mexican restaurant somewhere?"
The normal pale complexion of her face warms into a soft pink, and it feels almost like a game now that I think I know how to bring her attitude down a notch.
"Yeah, Axel, a hot date who just stuffed his foot down some guy’s throat, causing blood to spew like spray paint all over the white walls," she retorts.
That didn’t last long. Whatever.
While admiring my handiwork, I lean over and pull Norm back up, righting the chair he's still tied to. "You'll learn everything you need to know as time passes," I tell her. "Right now, just think of it as your first day of training ... with many more to come." Or however many it takes for me to find out if you’re Isabelle Hammel.