Brain(46)

Between the sleep deprivation, being kept on the edge of starvation, the beatings, and the continued sexual assaults, she’d been well into both visual and auditory hallucinations, so far gone she’d have told them whatever they wanted to know, if she’d only had the information.

She was so far gone, her guards became sloppy. The night guard fucked her before tossing the ice water on her, and he didn’t lock her restraints back right. She was ready when someone else came to fuck her, and she took him down, got his gun, and bashed him over the head with it to knock him out. She tied him up, got his keys and knife, and made her way out of the facility a few hours before daylight. She had to kill three people on the way out, using the knife mostly, and the gun as a bludgeon instead of shooting it and drawing attention. She undressed one of the smaller dead men, put his clothes on, used his key fob to figure out which car belonged to him, and drove herself away from her hellish prison.

She was in a strange city in the Ukraine, just on the border with Russia. No money, no clothes, and she was starving and weak. She used the dead man’s credit card to buy clothes and groceries, and she stole another car and drove across the Ukraine, filling the tank with gas on the dead man’s card before discarding it and everything else that could tie her to him.

Since there were huge hunks of hair missing from her scalp, she shaved one side of her head a few inches over her ear, and then let the rest of her hair fall to the other side, to hide the bare spots. My wolf growled as I read the part about her having to use heavy makeup to cover the red spots where larger chunks of hair had been ripped out.

She drove to the coast, pickpocketing and robbing people when she had the chance, so she could buy gas, clothes, shoes, and toiletries. A few hours in an internet café on a rented computer, and she had tickets and ID overnighted to her, along with a credit card for the identity, and some cash.

The next day she boarded a cruise ship in Odessa, headed to Barcelona, Spain, where she rented a car and drove for half a day to one of her many storage lockers, this one outside Madrid. She’d once told me she has emergency stashes all over the U.S., and enough in Europe so she’s never more than a long day’s drive from one.

Ice had written everything factually, with no emotions, but my heart broke for her as I read it.

And my wolf wanted to go find the men responsible and tear them to pieces.

I proxied through a few servers before researching Grigoriy Ivankov, and my heart went cold as I read of the things he was known for. This man had hurt her bad — worse than her icy, emotionless retelling of the events could possibly convey.

I was still researching the men who’d hurt her when Ice came into the living room and asked, “You’ve been up all night?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Enough to read through it twice, and research the people responsible for the worst of it.”

“You stayed hidden?” No panic, just plans for how quickly she could get out of Atlanta if I’d been careless.

“Of course. As far as they know, I was in a Russian coffee shop, proxying through a Caribbean corporation.” I took a breath, stood and walked to her, and brushed her hair away from her face. “You’re the strongest person I know, and the smartest.” I gave her a mischievous grin and added, “Well, except for me on the smarter part, of course.”

She rolled her eyes and turned away from me to walk towards the kitchen area. “In your dreams are you smarter than me.”

“I understand why you aren’t willing to travel to the Ukraine and Russia for revenge. It looks like Ivankov’s son was going to University in the States when it came out he was turning evidence to the DOJ on his father’s friends, and he disappeared.”

She turned and looked at me, her expression granite. “He has three sons and a daughter. His oldest son was put through similar tortures as I went through, minus the sexual assaults, from the American version of Ivankov. His son never gave up his supposed DOJ contacts, and I understand he didn’t survive the torture.”

“He didn’t give them up because they didn’t exist, did they?”

“No, but he wasn’t an innocent. I chose him instead of his siblings because I had proof he was already in the family business. When I’d received word he was dead, I let Ivankov know I was responsible, and told him if I heard he or his organization was ever after me again, I’d put a bullet in the head of his other children, one by one.”

“Would you?”

She shrugged. “His daughter is married to one of the head guys of the Georgian Mafia. I’d have no regrets fucking up both her and her husband’s life.”