Chapter Twenty-Four

 

RYAN

 

I don't know how long they had me in there, but the question of whether or not I'd die from it had been bothering me as long as I could remember. I can barely recall a time that someone wasn't putting the screws to me.

My entire body hurts. It feels strange to say that I've gotten used to it, but I had, like you got used to the cold during an Ohio winter. One day you just wake up, and you're sitting in a room ten degrees colder than you'd like and it's fine.

Not hurting feels strange. I feel it more where they haven't hit me. In my calves and thighs. The feeling is a strange one.

Finally they let me down. My head's still swimming, but I'm not in danger of passing out. Unlike the first crew, these guys seem to know what they're doing. They don't want me to pass out, so I won't.

Maybe they screw it up, sometimes. You never know, with some guys. They go down fast and easy. I've never had a glass jaw, but then again I've never taken a beating so bad before, either.

They pour my body into a chair. I feel as if my arms are going to melt right off, but they don't. Something in my body is still ready to fight to hold together in a human shape.

"Why are you so insistent on seeing the boss?"

I can't move enough to shrug. "I'm not."

He doesn't like it when I lie, so I make sure to do it as often as possible. I don't brace for the hit because I can't. His hand doesn't move to strike me, which is good.

"Beauchamp, you're a fucking idiot, you know that?"

I can just about still move my face to smile up at the guy who's been working on me for what feels like weeks. It might have been three hours.

"You're not going to meet McCallister."

"I'll be alright," I assure him. "I mean, I got to meet you, which is just as good."

The guy smiles. He's got a good sense of humor, this guy. I might be able to get along with him, in different circumstances. My body hurts too much not to get along with someone right now, though. "That's sweet. You know, you make it out of here, I'll have to put you on the Christmas card list."

"That sounds lovely," I manage.

He turns around and walks out of the room. I get a minute to breathe. Every time I take in a good breath, my ribs stab into my lung, so I take shallow breaths and try not to hurt myself. It doesn't work.

I try to force myself to sit upright, but my body won't move right. I try to push myself upright with my legs. They're mostly unhurt, after all. My boots scrabble off the concrete floor, legs unable to handle even the slightest bit of weight.

This time, my friend comes back in with a friend. A woman friend.

"You're lucky, Beauchamp. Someone on high must like you."

I smile at her. "Are you an angel?"

She's got a sweet voice when she answers. "Is this a pickup line?"

My head lolls to the side, in spite of my best efforts to keep myself looking like I can control my body in the least bit. "It doesn't have to be."

Her big, round lips split into a smile. She's got a soft body with curves in all the right places, and none where you don't want any. Attractive doesn't begin to describe it. She looks like a Barbie doll came to life.

"You think you're very clever, don't you?"

My face hurts when I smile, but I do it. It hurts when I don't smile, anyways. "Ain't you heard? Cops tell it from one side of the country to the other. Criminals are stupid. All of 'em, dumb as rocks. I'm a crook—must be dumb as a rock."

Her fingers burn where they touch my skin. It hurts just to be in the same room as her. Hurts to be in the same room as anything. I'm just not sure whether or not it would hurt to float in a sensory deprivation tank. Maybe not, after a while.

"You're not going to meet McCallister," she says. Everyone has been telling me that since I got here. I'd think that eventually they would figure I heard the message, but they don't seem to get tired of hearing it.

"I was just telling my friend here—I'm just here to make friends. He's my friend, aren't you, old buddy?"

The big guy behind the woman makes a tight-lipped smile in response to her questioning look. "He's very friendly, Krissi."

"I can see that," she says. She turns back to me and smiles. "You can be a real pain in the ass, you know that, Beauchamp?"

"It's not my fault," I protest weakly. "I was just born with these natural good looks and charm."

She pinches my cheek. It hurts like a son of a bitch and it's insulting to boot. I try not to let either show on my face, but my ability to hide the pain went out the door a long time ago. I decide to take a little risk.

"Are you going to kill me, or no?"

The woman looks over her shoulder. I can't tell who's in charge between them. Each seems to be answering to the other, in their minds. The guy shrugs, and the woman turns back to me.

"No, you poor boy. We're not going to kill you. We need you."

That's the best news I've heard all day. My body hurts too much for any sort of tough-guy act, but I manage to keep myself from having much of a reaction at all. At least long enough to hear what they had to say.

"Why's that?"

"You let us deal with that. You want to meet with McCallister, is that right?"

"Not any more," I tell her. "I just want to have a beer with my two new best friends."

"That's good," she says. The smile's disingenuous, but so is everything else about her.

"Besides, everyone tells me I'm not going to. I figure, eventually I had better not get my hopes up."

"See, Sasha? The boy can learn." Krissi looks back at me, stepping back. My hands aren't tied. If I wanted to, I could reach right out and grab her.

I'd have to want it real bad, though, because my muscles wouldn't want to do it, and neither would the rest of me for that matter.

"He can learn, sure. But why him?" He doesn't take his eyes off me for a minute.

I was wrong, I realized, when I thought that I could have grabbed her easy. The big guy—Sasha, she says—wouldn't let me move more than six inches before he had me caught up again. I wouldn't like what came after that. It's a good thing for me, then, that I'm not too worried about moving.

"You know why, Sasha. We can't afford to wait for another chance to come along, can we?"

The big guy lets out a long breath and shifts his weight from one foot to the other, not taking his eyes off me. "We can always afford to wait."

"You're right. Afford, that's not the right word. But why waste a golden opportunity?"

I don't like the way they're talking about me. I don't like that they're doing it right in front of me, but I especially don't like the way that I seem to be someone's golden goose.

I've had plenty of dupes. Known plenty of dupes. And I don't want to find myself in that position again.