Raul is quiet for a beat. When he speaks again the smirk is audible. "Your Goldilocks. Alright. Just don't get sloppy. Cops are already closer than I'd like."
"I won't."
I hang up. Stand in the dark outside the storage unit and listen to the city doing what Miami does at 3 AM, which is hum at a frequency that sounds almost like quiet.
She's in there. Safe, for now, which is the best I can offer.
The rest I'll figure out in the morning.
CHAPTER 22
HARVEE
The dripping reaches me first.
Slow, distant, methodical. A faucet somewhere in the dark doing its patient work. I surface toward it like it's the only sound in the world, which it might be, because the rest of the space around me is absolute black.
I bolt upright and something snaps tight around my ankle.
Cold metal. A chain, pulling taut when I move, biting when I twist. I reach down and feel the cuff and my hands start shaking before I've fully understood what I'm touching.
My heart seizes. Bile climbs my throat.
Where am I.
The air is thick and damp, smelling of concrete and rot and something older underneath it. Whatever I'm lying on is rough, and the blanket covering me smells of mildew and years of storage. I yank at the chain. It holds. I yank again, harder, and it rattles loud in the dark and holds.
I scream.
"HELP! SOMEBODY HELP ME!"
The sound comes back at me off the walls, louder than I sent it, mocking. No doors visible. No windows. Just black in everydirection and the distant drip and my own voice breaking itself apart.
"PLEASE!"
I thrash until my nails snap against metal and my wrists burn and the tears are coming fast and hot and I can't stop them and I can't stop screaming and no one comes. Nothing comes. The darkness doesn't shift.
My stomach revolts. I double over and vomit onto the blanket, hot and acidic, the smell hitting immediately. I'm still chained. I can't move away from it. I can't clean it up.
I shove the blanket off and curl onto the couch with my knees to my chest, sobbing until my body runs out of the energy to do even that, and then I close my eyes and let the dark take me back down.
The thunk of a car door pulls me up again.
Light bleeds under the door. Faint gold at first, then the overhead fluorescents snap on with a harsh buzz and I flinch away from it, eyes screaming.
A man stands in the doorway with his back to me. Broad shoulders under a black t-shirt. Dark curls. A small tattoo above his right elbow, a rose in black ink, just visible when he moves.
Something in me responds to the shape of him before my brain catches up, heat pooling low and immediate, which is completely insane given the circumstances, and then he ruffles his hand through his hair and turns slightly and I see his profile and everything crashes back at once.
The mail room. The collision. Tobacco and vanilla. His hand catching my arm.
The bar on Friday. His face near the door, eyes wide, finding mine across the room right before everything went dark.
He's been following me.
"Don't scream," he says, voice flat and low. Not reassuring. Just a warning. "We need to talk. And if you make me regret unchaining you, those won't come off."
My throat closes.