Page 40 of Sugar Coated

“I brought some things that might be fun,” Lola said. She picked up the baseball bat and swung it through the air. “I figured, since you were so eager to join me here today, I’d let you take a crack at him.” She flipped the baseball bat around and offered me the handle.

I took it from her, and the moment I did I nearly dropped it. The bat was heavier than I thought it’d be, and I wasn’t quite ready for it. I lifted it up and studied the other end of the bat. The metal was shiny and new; I didn’t know if it was due to the fact that it really was new or if Lola made sure to clean it after every use.

“The keyword there,” Lola paused for dramatic flair, “is crack. You’d be surprised at how easy it is to shatter someone’s kneecaps. I hear it’s one of the most painful things.” She reached behind her and grabbed a small scalpel from the cart. “Or, you could start small. A thousand little cuts all over his body. The pain adds up. It’s up to you, cutie pie. This is your show. I’m just a side character.”

I didn’t know if I agreed wholly with that; Lola screamed main character energy. Me? I didn’t know if I was at her level yet.

“Is it better to start off small or get right into things?” As I asked the question, my fingers curled around the bat’s handle tighter. “I’ve never tortured anyone before. You’re the expert here.”

Lola set a hand on her hip, thinking it over. “Normally, I’d say dive right in with whatever you’re feeling, but if you want to make it last, it might be better to start small.” In her other hand, she twirled the scalpel around. “Really depends on what you want to get out of it, sugar.”

I debated on it, and while I did so, the man spat out, “You bitches are fucking nuts.”

That got Lola to laugh and say, “You just figuring that out now? Us bitches have always been fucking nuts—you know why?”

She stepped around me, between me and the man, and in the blink of an eye she raised the scalpel to his cheek, just below his eye, digging the sharp metal deep enough to make him bleed. He tried to turn his head away from her, but she grabbed his chin with her other hand and held him steady. The blade of the scalpel was only a centimeter away from his right eye, just below it.

“Because pathetic, wastes of space like you make us this way,” Lola growled out from behind her mask. “Thesebitcheswouldn’t be nearly asfucking nutsif it weren’t for men likeyou.” The way she said that last part made me wonder if she’d been wronged by a man before, and if it had anything to do with the long scar on her lower stomach.

Lola pulled herself back from him and forced out a hard breath. “But that’s my issue with men. Her issue’s a little different.” Once again, she offered me the scalpel—only now it dripped with some of his blood.

I shook my head, and Lola stepped out of the way. “I just want information out of you.” My eyes shifted to the bat, which I held between us. “And to hurt you a bit, if I’m honest.” I lifted the bat and pointed it at his stomach, where all of those important organs were. “Who hired you and your crew to kidnap me?”

“I don’t fucking know—”

It was actually easier than I thought it would be to raise the bat and swing it at the man’s gut, and the sound he made when the bat hit its mark told me he definitely felt it—and it hurt.

“I’m going to ask you again: who hired you?” When he only glared at me, I hit him a second time in the gut, this time a bit harder.

Behind me, I heard Lola say, “They grow up so fast, don’t they?” I glanced at her and watched her wipe a fake tear from the corner of her eye, like she was proud of me for what I was doing. Strange as it was, I supposed she was all about women and girls taking back their power in this world. For once, it was a man tied up being tortured by a woman and not the other way around.

I lifted the bat to his face, touching his lower jaw with it. “Want to try again, or should we see how many teeth I can knock out first?” I hardly sounded like myself; it was strange, but exciting at the same time.

The man didn’t reply, and I swung the bat away, ready to swing it right on back. The man’s eyes closed the moment I began the swing toward his jaw, and he cried out, “Wait!” Let’s just say the man was lucky I had good reflexes, because someone else might not have been able to stop the bat from hitting his jaw and knocking free some of those teeth.

“Caving already?” Lola questioned with a cock of her head. “See? I told you starving them always makes ‘em weak.”

I moved the bat away from his face and rested it on my shoulder, waiting to hear what this jerk had to say. If it wasn’t good enough information, I wasn’t above making him hurt some more, just to make sure he wasn’t hiding anything else.

“Look, I… I don’t know much,” he said, pausing to groan—I imagined from the pain emanating from his stomach. “We didn’t get a name, okay? We were just told to kidnap you.”

“How did you know where I’d be?”

“We were watching you. Me and the guys. For… shit, I don’t know, a while. We were waiting for the perfect opportunity to nab you, so when you snuck out that night, it was our opening.”

Beside me, Lola said, “So, somebody hired you and your crew to kidnap her, but they let you take your sweet old time? I don’t get it. Why? And did they ask you to kidnap anybody else?” Ialmost forgot I’d only met Lola because she’d been looking for another missing woman.

“No, we didn’t take anybody else. We had to lay low after the botched assassination attempt. Hawkins security went crazy after that.”

Hearing him say so off-handedly that they wanted to kill me sent a shiver down my spine. But, wait—that didn’t make any sense. They wouldn’t be hired to kill me and then, after they failed, kidnap me. Wouldn’t they just try to kill me again?

“Why kidnap me, then? Why not just try to kill me a second time?” I asked, the wheels in my mind turning.

The look the man gave me made me think I’d asked the wrong question. A second passed, then another. It was a short while before he finally muttered, “It wasn’t you we were trying to kill.”

The world around me stopped when he said that, or maybe it spun around me faster than ever. It was a short thing, but within seconds I dissociated and found myself back at that press conference, reliving it for the millionth time.

The press conference was about me. After my escape, it was assumed everyone’s attention would be on me. When that gun was raised, everyone—including Kieran—thought it was aimed at me, and after the chaos of the fallout, no one thought to double check where the gunman aimed before he pulled the trigger.

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