Page 81 of Lust
It was a gift.
He turned the box over in his hands. How long had that been under there? Curious, he tore the paper off. He stopped breathing. It was their baseball mounted on an official stand, displayed in a glass memorabilia case. Liza had scrawled on the only remaining white patch of spaceI love you.
He wasn’t sure how long he stared at it. Long enough to cramp. Long enough for the coldness of night to seep into his bones. He wiped his eyes, cleared his throat, and placed it gently to the side before collecting the last of the sketches.
I’m coming for you, Liza.
Turning his attention to the sketches, he noticed they featured women in pain. Faces. Beds. Pipes. Angry charcoal strokes. He squinted at a page, then stood, flicked on the light, and held it to see better. Was that... a conveyor belt in the background? Hooks on the wall? Cautious hope hit him. He rifled through other sketches and found more of the same.
He redialed Parker’s number on Lilo’s cell. He answered in two rings.
“Joe,” Parker said.“You have something?”
“Maybe. I need to speak with Evan. Does he have more of those sketches?”
A shuffling sound came down the line, and then Evan spoke. “My man, what do you need?”
“I’m looking at these drawings Liza brought over. The ones with the women. I’m noticing the hooks and something like a conveyor belt in the background. Liza said you dreamed these scenes, is that right?”
“Yes, I dream of them, but I don’t remember everything. Keep talking, maybe you’ll jog my memory.”
“It seems like an industrial place. Metal?”
Evan made a sound, something like a thoughtful grunt. “Yeah... sharp curved hooks were dangling from the ceiling... big metal corridors... plastic strips hanging from a ceiling.”
“Shit,” Joe murmured. “I think I know where it is.”
He shuffled reports until he found two things. One was Geoff’s and Brigg’s notes from interviewing the crazy woman at the shelter. She’d said she escaped from aliens who wanted to impregnate her, but... what if they weren’t aliens, but the Syndicate scientists?
He found the paragraph he needed. She’d said she come from the industrial area where they’d found the dead body. Joe quickly searched through the papers for the second thing. Gareth Smith’s rap sheet. His father had pressed charges because he’d lost his livelihood—a meatpacking plant.
“Joe?”Evan asked.“You got something?”
“Yeah. A meatpacking plant.” What’s the likelihood of a Smith family-owned and abandoned meatpacking plant in the industrial area? “Give me a few, and I might have an address.”
He cut the call and went to his room to find his laptop, but the room was still a mess of tangled sheets and Liza’s sweet scent. He ignored the pinch in his heart, got to his knees, and searched beneath the bed. There were vague memories of kicking it last night. He found his laptop and pulled it out when Lilo’s cell phone pinged.
Odd.
He checked the incoming message. It was from Sloan with two addresses of meatpacking plants in the city, and one out of town. Only one plant was abandoned. That had to be it. He let her know.
By the time he received a reply he was in his car, and on the road.
26
The soundof a helicopter woke Liza. Wind buffeted her face from the open cabin. She hadn’t been out for long. Across from her, Daisy’s empty gaze aimed outside, watching the lights of Cardinal City get smaller. Next to Liza, two black-clad soldiers held automatic rifles. A test on her hands revealed they were secured. From the feel of the tie, it ran up her entire forearm and cut into her skin at intervals... almost like they’d... she tested it gently but didn’t want to look over her shoulder. It would alert them to her wakefulness.
Her bindings felt like thin strips of plastic. Must be cable ties. Liza was strong. She could break out of a few, but not the amount they’d used. She would have to find a way to cut them.
Without moving her head, she inspected the length of her body. Her belt was still on, but the only weapons she had synced to her outfit were a grappling hook and two shuriken throwing stars at her hip. Both were most likely left on her because of the same reason she’d had trouble detaching her karambits. If she could get her wrists around to the shuriken without being noticed, she could set herself free.
If only she had Wyatt’s ability, she could smash through the ties... or Tony’s fire to melt the plastic, but she had poison. Her facemask was still stuffed into her mouth like a gag, and her new battle gloves covered her hands. Since Liza’s suit was non-responsive, she wasn’t sure if the intuitive valves would work. Her best bet was to get the ties cut, and the gloves off. If she tried to release poison now, it might get trapped, and Liza didn’t want to test whether her own body could take a concentrated dose of tetrodotoxin.
She kept a wary eye on Daisy and tried to wriggle her fingers out of the gloves, but they fit snugly. She shifted her hands to the side of her back and started to rub the cable ties against the shuriken, but when the helicopter started its descent, she knew time was running out.
They lowered into a big agricultural type yard. Fenced pens and runways led to industrial sheds and multiple giant two-story warehouses. The old stench of death filled the air, and since Liza could only breathe through her nose, it was sickening.
From the look of the rusty and old metal equipment sitting outside the warehouses and empty yards, the place was an abandoned abattoir and meatpacking plant.
