Her Pained Blue Silence Read online

  “Slow the fuck down, Narcos, who is she?”

  “She was Kingston Prentiss’ ol’ lady, until he had me nail her to a tree this morning.”

  Real silence on the other end of the line and finally, “Shit.”

  Yeah.

  Shit.

  2

  Everleigh…

  My hands hurt.

  They were wrapped in swaths of clean white bandages and looked like mummy hands. I lay on my side in the hospital bed with them carefully cradled to my chest, where they ached sharply, but whatever they had going in the IV taped to my inner arm was working. The pain was much less. They had me on fluids, too, the doctor declaring I was dehydrated some. Not surprising, with how much I’d cried.

  I was all out of tears now. If anything, I was uncomfortably numb. The shock had worn off, but the sorrow and pain was just beginning. I closed my eyes.

  I jumped when, a short time later, the curtain was whisked aside on its track, revealing a man in black leather. I scrambled into a sitting position and back up against the head of the bed, but he pulled his hands from his pockets and held them out.

  “Easy! Take it easy. I’m one of the good guys,” he said, and I froze. I eyed him warily and he finally asked, “Are you Silence?”

  I nodded cautiously, after a few more moments of sizing him up.

  “I’m Detective Sam Stahl, with the Indigo City Police Department.” He sighed, his eyes sweeping over me, a heavy weight seemingly settling on his shoulders.

  “Mind if I sit down?” he asked, gently.

  I weighed the pros and cons, and finally shook my head. King was going to kill me for even remotely entertaining the cops… But then again, hadn’t he already? At least, as far as he knew, he had.

  I waited for the cop to settle into the chair beside my bed, and then for him to say something. I mean, it wasn’t exactly like I was a talker.

  “I understand you’re, uh, mute?” he asked.

  I bit my lips together nervously and shook my head yes, anxiety jangling, more than I actually willingly nodded.

  “Okay, I’ll, uh, try to keep this to ‘yes’ and ‘no’.”

  I stared at him, frozen in place, and waited him out.

  “Do you know who did this to you?” he asked.

  The hospital had been calling me ‘Jane Doe in bed three’ since they’d put me here. I had made a strangled noise when I tried to give them my real name, and immediately flustered and sealed my lips, embarrassed. The fact that he knew my nickname meant that he also knew who I was and that I knew who had done this to me. I nodded.

  “Was it Kingston Prentiss?”

  I stared at him and wouldn’t nod or shake my head. I just stared at him, willing him to understand that I couldn’t speak in any way about what had happened to me…

  “Silence,” he said gently, scooting closer, and I tensed. He stopped and let out a frustrated sigh. “Silence, he’ll never touch you again. We won’t let him.”

  I wanted to believe him, but –

  “Detective?” The doctor stood at the door.

  The cop stood up and gave me his back, and I gasped. He turned back to me at the sound and frowned slightly.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  I nodded without thinking, and he turned back to the doctor, where they conferred in hushed tones.

  I let my eyes travel over the colors on the back of his cut. The light gray shield, the knight chess piece picked out on it in indigo thread. It was the same as Whiskey’s when he’d brought me here hours and hours ago.

  I knew it was a cop’s club. I knew it meant Whiskey was a cop, and I knew how this man must have learned my nickname.

  They were talking about me, about my name, adding it to my chart: ‘Silence,’ given name unknown, except it wasn’t unknown, it was Tate, Everleigh Tate. As much as I wanted to tell them, I couldn’t. I was tongue-tied and twisted, and finally, I decided that, ultimately, it didn’t really matter. ‘Silence’ was good enough.

  I settled down again and let the detective argue with the doctor, listening to them with keen interest. As far as the doctor was concerned, I was free to go. The detective, however, was practically begging the doctor to run more tests, to do anything he had to do to keep me at least one night, so he could get things set up with the department to take me into protective custody.

  I closed my eyes and listened intently, as finally the detective managed to win his way, though I wasn’t keen on staying here ‒ or going with him when they let me go.

  I was at a disadvantage when it came to my own agency with my inability to effectively communicate. With my inability to speak in any sort of social situation, I could conceivably communicate in other ways such as writing or even, potentially, with sign language if I had ever learned it, but not with my hands in such a state. I had holes clean through them about the third of a size of a dime.

  They’d irrigated them and contemplated surgery on the one to repair whatever vein had been compromised to cause it to bleed so much, but then had dismissed it when the bleeding had begun to stop on its own. I’d been started on antibiotics and pain medicine, but they’d left the holes open to heal and close from the inside out.

  I wanted to know why, had no way to ask, but had been lucky enough that the doctor seeing to my wounds had been educating some students of some sort ‒ something about this being a teaching hospital. One of them had said it was because if anything had been left in the wounds, that stitching them closed could trap any potential infection and it could make things worse.

  So, they’d bandaged me up, had given me a shot in my arm for tetanus, and had started me on some powerful antibiotics and IV fluids to ward off any infection and to help me recover from my slight dehydration.

  I contemplated what would happen to me, and the answer was, I didn’t know. I despaired, feeling lost and lonely, cut off from the world, trapped. My anxiety was spiraling, but I lay quietly. I couldn’t fix any of it. I couldn’t stop whatever was coming. I needed to be patient, to wait, to see what it was I was dealing with before I could deal with anything at all.

  For now, all I could do was lay still, my heart and mind racing, until the next dose of pain medicine took me far away from all of it by finally plunging me into an exhausted sleep.

  3

  Narcos…

  I shouldn’t be here. I couldn’t help myself, though. The guilt was driving me up a wall. I knew I could trust Driller when he said she was all right, but it was like I couldn’t let myself believe it, not until I saw her myself. I wouldn’t know where she was taken after this, so it was my last chance to see her before they took her to a safe, undisclosed location. I might not see her again for a couple of years, and that would be only if we managed to get enough to take King and the rest of his merry band of assholes to trial.

  Nailing them for drug trafficking and distribution was my job, but that was just the tip of their dirty iceberg. Drugs, guns, murder and mayhem… these guys did it all. They were a bunch of sovereign militia types, the worst of the worst. Sovereigns didn’t recognize the laws of today or the authority of the police and government as it stood now. It could be a pain in the ass for modern law enforcement.

  None of that mattered right now, though, not with her lying there, looking fragile and wan in the hospital bed, her hands wrapped in thick white bandages, resting on top of the thin tan hospital blanket in her lap.

  Pasquale grumbled behind me and I glanced back at him.

  “I have rounds, you know. My own patients to see.”

  “Yeah, yeah, sorry. I’m good. I’ll, uh, catch you later.”

  He gave me a look like he wasn’t impressed and said, “Motherfucker, if you wake that sleeping beauty up and I get in trouble, I would like to kill you.”

  I shook my head and made a motion with my hand indicating he should quiet down himself and pump the brakes.

  “I’m not going to wake her up, but you might!” I hissed.

  He gave me another unimpressed loo
k and rolled his eyes. He shifted on his feet and said, “Ten minutes and you had better be gone, before someone finds you here!”

  “Copy that, Princess,” I muttered.

  He arched one of his overdone brows and turned like a model on the runway, fierce as shit, and went out the door of her room, out into the hallway, and disappeared. I turned back and her eyes were open, regarding me dully. I sank into the chair beside her bed and pressed my lips together, getting choked up.

  “I am so sorry,” I whispered.

  Her expression gave me no quarter, and I got it. I did. I wouldn’t forgive me, either.

  “I couldn’t blow my cover, and I know that’s no excuse, I just… I just feel so awful, you don’t even know.”

  I braced my elbows on my knees and pressed my fingertips into my forehead at the top of the bridge of my nose. I was perilously close to breaking over this, the desolate feeling of devastation rolling through me like angry storm clouds boiling across the sky. I brought my hands down and clasped them together, and her vivid green eyes searched my face, emotionless. Her expression was as stoic as I’d ever seen it; I was used to her wearing a semi-charmed Mona Lisa smile just about always.

  She raised her hands feebly off her lap and set them back down carefully and I stared at them for a while. At the spot of rusty crimson on the back of one of the snowy-white wraps, my heart sank. My eyes flicked back to hers and I could swear I was drowning in the depth of her emotion, but I could only dream of interpreting it without help.

  It switched from the nameless feeling she’d attempted to telegraph to sorrow and she sighed, her eyes closing. She opened them again, meeting my eyes, then very deliberately turned her head away from me to stare out the window, across the alley, to the empty brick façade across from it. When I stood, she flinched and I swallowed my guilt down hard.

  “I’ll make it up to you. I don’t know how, but I will,” I vowed.

  She turned onto her side, carefully hunching forward and cradling her ruined hands against her chest.

  “I’ll put them away,” I said. “You’ll be safe.”

  She looked over her shoulder at me and frowned and the look said all it needed to. I’ll never be safe.

  “I’ll fix it,” I swore. “I promise.”

  She scoffed and turned her back on me again, only this time, I felt thoroughly dismissed. That was all right; that was okay. I had work to do.

  I slipped out of her room and strode up the hallway, punching the down button for the elevator savagely with my fingertips, staring at the dark crescents of her dried blood still trapped under my fingernails. I closed my fist, and let those nails bite into my palm. Nausea at my actions rolled through me like a rogue wave, sucking me under and tumbling me dizzily like I’d been caught in a riptide.

  It’d been hard not to notice Silence. She was a beautiful girl, in her mid- to late-twenties, with long auburn hair down past her butt and vivid green eyes, the likes to put that National Geographic photo to shame. She had creamy white skin and cute little freckles, and a body that was to die for under those hippy-chick skirts and peasant blouses she liked to wear. I always wondered where the hell King had picked her up, but he was a closed-mouthed bastard on the subject, and her? Well, she didn’t speak at all.

  King, the misogynistic chauvinist bastard that he was, thought that was great. “A gash that can’t go spillin’ secrets, can you believe my luck?” he’d always say, and I’d laugh right along with the lot of them like it was funny. The look on Silence’s face said otherwise, deep hurt had been in her eyes, and for whatever reason, you could just tell that she had a real love for King despite all his bullshit.

  He’d hurt her real bad with his betrayal, and I felt double the guilt for it. She hadn’t sold him out at all. I had, but I’d never dreamed that it’d fall on her, or that I would do what I’d done to save my own skin. The poor woman.

  Fuck! This elevator was taking forever. I bowed my head and heaved a heavy sigh. All I wanted to do was get on my bike and go for a long ride, by myself. No one to bother me. I knew it wasn’t going to happen, but it’s what I wanted with just about every fuckin’ fiber of my being.

  My cell buzzed in my pocket and I fished it out as the elevator pinged and the doors opened. I stepped on board and frowned at the screen. It was Joker. I let it go to voicemail. I didn’t want the sounds of the hospital getting picked up and diming me out. I went back to my bike in the garage and as soon as I got back up onto the street, my phone started blowing up with notifications. I went a few blocks and pulled over and fished it out again.

  Joker: Answer your fuckin’ phone man.

  Wraith: Where the fuck are you? Joker’s trying to get you.

  King: Bring your ass in. We have something to discuss.

  Shit.

  I pulled out my other phone and dialed up Driller.

  “Yeah, man, what’s up?” he answered.

  “Dunno, but the Crescentia boys are hot to fuckin’ trot and want my ass back like A.S.A.P.”

  “Probably to celebrate you patching in, yeah?”

  Shit. I’d forgotten all about that, with everything else.

  “Shit. Yeah. Didn’t even think about that.”

  “Go party, make sure you got the right gear on.”

  I winced.

  “Pasquale?” I asked.

  “Drag Queen dimed your ass out, for sure, Brother. What the fuck are you even thinking, going to the hospital like that?”

  “I dunno, man,” I said honestly and sighed.

  “Get your head back in the fuckin’ game or you’re gonna get yourself killed,” he said, and he wasn’t playin’. I knew he was right, but I don’t think he knew how deeply this whole thing had affected me. Hell, I couldn’t believe how shook I was over her.

  “I’m good,” I said, and I at least sounded convincing.

  “You fuckin’ better be, asshole.”

  “I said I was, now, I am,” I said, the first thread of anger worming its way into my voice.

  “Good. Report as soon as you can.”

  “Don’t I always?”

  “That you do,” he said quietly.

  I ended the call. I went back to my real apartment, got the mask off my face, traded my true colors for the farce that was the Knights of Crescentia’s logo, and with a heavy sigh, went down to the garage to swap bikes and take the other exit out of the garage.

  That was one of the reasons I’d chosen this building; there were three garage exits onto three different streets surrounding it.

  When you were me, and into the shit I was into, you always needed to leave yourself multiple escape routes.

  It wasn’t paranoia when they really were out to get you.

  At least, they would be, if they ever figured out I was a cop. I’d cut it real close tonight; there was honestly no tellin’ if I’d given any of the boys a reason to suspect me as being anything other than one of them…

  I guessed I was going to find out.

  4

  Everleigh…

  The hotel I was kept in was so boring. It was me and Detective Stahl, for the most part. A male nurse, Pasquale, came daily to check on my hands and change the bandages. He was kind to me, and a bit of a fashionista who got me. He’d snuck me down into the basement of the hospital to go through big, giant laundry bins of clothing to find some things that suited me.

  The clothing I’d arrived in were a mess of blood that would never come out of the white cotton, at least, not completely. Of course, I never saw those clothes again, anyway. Detective Stahl had taken them.

  He sat at the little table in the hotel room on his phone and I eyed him from where I sat on the bed. He didn’t look like a ‘Detective Stahl’ to me. He didn’t even look like a ‘Sam’. He looked like a ‘Driller’, the name on his cut. But, I didn’t want to let myself get too familiar with him. He was a cop, after all. Not that I’d ever had anything against the cops. They’d never bothered me and I’d never bothered them.

  The
Knights of Crescentia, on the other hand? They were into so much illegal shit, it wasn’t any wonder why they had a natural distaste for the cops.

  In the beginning, my best friend Mariah and I had both been dying to get out of our small town in Indiana. Neither of us cared how, and when the Steel Wraiths rolled through town and stopped at her bar, going with them seemed like a good idea to her, and where she went, I went. Even though I knew it was, in all probability, a bad idea, anything was better than that town.

  Sledge had been not my type – physically, at least. He had been, when it came to almost everything else: philosophy, reading, his views on what the world was and what it could be… There was only one problem. Monogamy wasn’t exactly his thing, and it had hurt. So too had his cruel streak. Not physically, he’d never hit me, but he was mean when he was drunk and he was drunk nearly all the time. He didn’t hesitate to make fun of my mutism to get a laugh out of the rest of the guys, and I hated that.

  Mariah had stood up for me, and we’d been okay, but then… Then we’d met the Knights of Crescentia and King had swept me off my feet. She’d begged me to stay with her, to go home, but there was no home for me. I had no roots in that town, and I’d ridden away into the sunset and a new life and had relished the adventure of it – right up until the dream had become a nightmare.

  King’s drug use had begun to wear, to become more habit, more need than recreational. He’d been becoming increasingly paranoid, until the night he’d had me crucified to a tree. It broke my heart that he would think I would betray him. I would never betray him – any of them ‒ but now that they had betrayed me, all bets were off. I would figure out how to testify, by god, and the secrets I could tell ‒ I would ruin them all for this.

  They said hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and I think nailing a woman to a pair of trees definitely falls under the category of ‘scorned’.

  I stared at the white bandages wrapped around my hands. The right one had gotten infected, and I was taking strong antibiotics. It was painful irrigating the wound, so Pasquale was a godsend. He made sure to give me a painkiller when he arrived, and then waited, talking at me, for it to take effect, before we did the deed. It didn’t help much, but it was better than nothing, and things were getting better… except for the extreme, unending boredom.