Page 18 of Not Taken

“Oh, don't make a fuss, Eli.” Sam laughed, growing closer. “I've done all this for you. It would be rude to try and escape now.”

I was about to fight, until a muffled shout came from my left.

I squeezed my eyes closed as Jones' cry pierced through my struggle.

Chalmers would be there too, then. They were inseparable now. Even in death, if Sam had his way.

Pulling me upright, I finally coughed, the warm metallic blood was too much to hold in my mouth. It seeped over my lips, and I let it go. I wasn't swallowing back down my pain, no matter how easily the cable sliced into my flimsy throat.

Fuck, I'd wanted it to be fast. But I also expected this.

A quick twist and my back slammed into the wall, my shoulder whacking off a solid surface, hard, metal. Another clang, a rattle. I'd taken part in enough of Sam's theatrics to know a drainpipe when I heard one.

“What do you think?” Sam asked as a knife nicked my wrists and freed them. Each meathead had already grabbed an arm and they were forcing them backwards. “It will be a fitting end for you three.” Sam sounded so pleased with himself. He had no idea I was the king of fitting ends.

There was no point asking for forgiveness or listening to the thugs taunting me. Another reason the Donelli's were so successful was loyalty.

I was tied up to the drainpipe and slowly losing consciousness. Looking at it logically, they had already won.

The meatheads were standing right in front of me, though the pounding silence beating around us was more suffocating than the thin strip of plastic cutting through my Adam’s apple.

“I've got two friends of yours I'm sure you'd love to see again,” Sam goaded. “Though it was only three days ago you met up at that diner, you piece of shit.”

I let out a rough grunt as Sam backhanded me across the right cheek. The sack over my head did nothing to lessen the blow.

I coughed, cloying blood coating the dry first layer on my chin.

He stepped away from me as pain oozed from my pulsing jaw, joining the chorus of agony within me.

I rocked my head up, the back of my skull thudding off of the metal pipe. It rang hollow, high, thin, maybe thin enough for me to work with.

“And you!” There were three more steps before Sam stopped on my left. “You really gave me the runaround there. I thought we’d never catch you!” There was a dull thud and Jones gave a muffled yell.

Sam kept talking while my training kicked in. Even if I wanted to focus on the man that had reshaped my reality in the darkest way, the agent inside me was trying to find a way for us to escape. I’d been a soldier before I became an agent, and I couldn’t stop myself.

Jones was an annoying little shit and Chalmers was as good a person as an agent could be, and they didn't deserve to die here. I would have stopped fighting if it was just me, but I was responsible for them, even if I didn't want to be.

It started with learning the terrain. Eyes closed, I tracked Sam’s movements while extending my hearing, picking up any background noises around us. A plane flew high above us, a quiet rumble behind the three or four men at two o'clock.

Two in front. At least two to my ten , Sam and Jones on the left. No confirmation of Chalmers, but she would know to keep quiet.

Until a slap rang firm from my right and she cried out.

“You bastard!” Jones shouted, along with more clanging. I had to assume he didn't have a sack over his head. I wasn't sure if that was better or worse for him.

I curled my numb fingers into fists, testing the give of the cable tie. My hands were probably already blue. I stretched my neck, but there was no relief there either.

And here I'd been wishing for death. I should have done it when I had the chance. I had a gun with me all the time, I'd been in enough fights. It was my need to feel Sams’s last heartbeat that kept me going.

Jones had only ever been a handler. Chalmers knew what it was like. You could see it in her eyes when you looked at her. She knew what it meant to give up part of yourself for a cause that meant fuck all in the end.

“Take off his bag,” Sam said. I heard him step away. Then more footsteps, a knife at my throat, and a burning slice from collarbone to ear, dulled by the burlap sack.

The moment I choked, heaving a breath before spitting blood, the bag was whipped off my head.

I was hit with intense white light beaming down from above as the main flood lights shone straight into my face.

I swung my head to both sides. Chalmers and Jones were in the same positions, hanging limp with wide eyes glued to Sam. If Sam decided to go for us, we had no chance. I didn’t want to give him any reason to kill them, though I’d never heard of Sam offering mercy without a price. A quick scan of the loading bay ended with my gaze on Sam’s twisted face.

---