Deathwish__Siren_Book_6__-_Katie_de_Long.pdf

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Deathwish
Siren #6
It should be deja vu, waking up in a closed metal room, locked in with Calder Roane. But this
time, it's not my doing. This time, it's out of my control.
I think I know why we're here. I assume it's a mob hit, giving me a taste of my own medicine. I
assume, once again, that Calder doesn't belong here.
But does he assume I do?
One, Camilla Greenwich
He's next to me, his back firm against mine, our fingers pressed together. The position's not even
slightly comfortable, but in the darkness, there's nothing left in the world but his fingertips against
mine. Worlds of expression and connection in such a tiny bit of flesh.
Both of us, in the back of a van, him unconscious, and me nearly so. Our wrists cuffed behind
us, palm to palm, fingers interlaced.
Something hard crashing into my head, sending me to sleep alongside him.
When I wake next, he's gone. But the handcuffs on my wrist aren't. No. My nightmare's only
starting. I can only pray he's already dead, in a makeshift grave somewhere.
If he's still alive, he's in his own nightmare. So I cling to the memory of that last touch, my
body half-asleep and almost dead.
And I open my eyes to the same foul-smelling darkness.
Those warm fingertips against mine, they're more real than the steel walls behind me, the ridged
metal floor beneath me.
They're more real than the corpse next to me.
Oh, Calder. You should've run while you had the chance.
We. We should have run when we had the chance.
* * *
In the harsh light of an overhead bulb, the corpse's features are stark. Brown hair, mousy and mid-range,
turned darker by the blood crusted in it and the light. Strong shoulders, and just a hint of a beer-belly.
Workers' coveralls, the kind my dad wore for so much of his life.
His facial features are almost impossible to make out past the shadows thrown by the chunks of
skin and hair exploded outward from his scalp. But they're close enough to make me remember every gory
detail.
My dad committed suicide when I was young. He put a skylight in his skull, and took half his face
in the process. I held his twitching hand in one one of mine, and the phone in the other, knowing deep
down that he was already gone and no ambulance could bring him back. I knew death well, even at that
age.
And there's no doubt in my mind that me ending up here, with this fellow, it's not an accident.
My new friend's hands are empty, but there's a gun at his feet. I can't reach it, not with my hands
cuffed behind my back and very little mobility.
My stomach burns; I must have been like this for two days now, wiggling my wrists in the cuffs
until they bled, and then some more, only to realize that even the lubrication of the blood won't let my
wrists slip through. And who knows how long I was under before that, drugged or concussed.
I'm gonna die here, of dehydration or starvation, my thighs sticky from my own piss. But that
seems like the least of my problems, at this point.
A glint at the body's feet catches my eye—a small key, perfect for the cuffs. But even when I roll
away and grope for it, I can't pick it up. The flooring has deep ridges, probably for drainage, and I can't
actually see enough behind me to know how close I'm coming. If my arms were in front of me, at least I
could see. It's my only hope, really.
I put as much of my weight on my restrained wrists as possible, and gradually manage to shimmy
my shoulders off the ground and support my weight on my hands. Even curving forward, I can't thread my
hips between my wrists. But this is a start. At least I'm more or less sitting up.
I sit back on my hips again, taking the weight off my wrists. If I stretch, I still can't get them far
enough up to rotate—the cuffs are too restrictive.
But if I don't find some way to get free, I'm just going to waste away here, naked and alone. Maybe
a little pressure would help me stretch further. I test it, sliding my hips away from my wrists until my
shoulder screams in its socket. I'm closer, but still quite a ways away.
I shift, testing my weight from wrist to wrist, trying to ease the joint's pain.
If there's even a chance Calder's out there alone, I can't let myself give up.
If I get a little more weight on it, I can pop my left shoulder out, and hopefully have the mobility to
manipulate my right arm in front of me. Or maybe I'll just break my arm. But trying something's better than
doing nothing.
It's a moot point, though—the tension from my own weight isn't enough. I need something more to
increase the leverage.
My eyes fall on the chair, and the body in it.
I lean toward the corpse and seize his pantleg in my teeth, yanking on him until he topples
forward, right toward my chest. His weight falls across me, and with a sickening pop, my shoulder
dislocates and the ground slams against my back.
“Ahhhhhhh,” I howl. It's not like anyone's likely to hear.
The muscles in the one arm spasm and twitch as nerves fire and misfire. I can't move my fingers.
Can't entirely feel them. My heart races. But carefully, I can bring my arms forward, letting the limp arm
just hang.
I shove the corpse off me, and reach toward the key, my dead arm following my good arm
gracelessly. I prop it between my legs to steady the keyhole, and after several tense minutes trying to twist
my wrist to get the key in right, it finally clicks and the cuffs open. I undo the ones on my ankles, too.
Thankfully the same key works for both. Only once I'm completely unrestrained do I try to assess the
damage to my arm, probing it with a hand to my shoulder.
My shoulder sits unnaturally under my palm—it feels as though there's a gaping hole in my body
where the arm once connected neatly to the joint, barely covered by skin. When I probe the edges of the
hole, my fingertips sink in disturbingly deeply. Pain blossoms in my head, and my vision goes red. Dimly,
it sinks in that I yelled, and collapsed again.
I massage my shoulder, probing to see how I'm gonna have to jerk the arm back into the socket, or
whether I tore something and won't be able to fix it. The ligaments are tense, but it helps with the spasms.
I don't quite have the leverage to get it back into the socket, not with as taut as the ligaments are.
So I lean against the chair to prop myself into position, and put my full weight on it, until an internal
crackle reverberates through my frame. Tears stream from me, but feeling comes back to my fingers
almost immediately. My arm is still spasming, but as I massage it, they begin to ease. And though my
movements are hesitant at first, I can move my arm.
One hurdle down. Now—where the fuck am I?
Two
The door's locked, and the walls are solid sheet metal. No vents within reach. No windows. Am I
intended to escape from here? If so, the front door's the only way. And it's sealed tight.
The back wall's stacked with gallons of water. And there's a plastic cup in the sink. I greedily
down most of a gallon before the weight of it in my stomach triggers nausea. I lay flat on my back to keep
it down. Still, after days without food or drink, it's heaven.
Giddy laughs tumble from my deliciously wet throat. There's a curious irony to this whole thing. A
week ago, I was murdering my way through mob underlings, and screwing my new fiance senseless. A
fiance who I only got to know while I was torturing him much this way.
If it hadn't been so long, I might consider the possibility that Calder thought it would be fun to turn
the tables on me. But those who took us, they weren't fucking around. They were armed to the teeth. I
could see him deciding a mock-kidnapping would be fun, but not one involving heavily-armed men.
The bare bulb flickers, and that moment in the dark unleashes an embarrassing amount of fear. I
might as well be a scared child, watching the lightning flash. I stumble forward a step and stand on the
chair to reach the hanging bulb, and twist it in a little tighter. The flickering stops.
I almost step on the corpse when I get down. It seems disrespectful, so I grit my teeth, and heft his
stiff body back into the chair. He seems marginally less creepy there, and it seems less disrespectful than
leaving him on the floor.
“Who were you, buddy?”
I rifle through his clothes, and find a little notepad, but no wallet, phone, Swiss army knife...
nothing that's gonna do me any good. And the only other thing in the room's a sheaf of blank paper. That'll
make for a good escape attempt, surely.
It feels good to hear my voice. “It doesn't seem right. I wonder what your name was?”
I tip his face to the light, trying to memorize what's left. Stubble, a few freckles, and full lips. A
hint of a tattoo above the edge of his t-shirt. “I bet you were the biker type. The bad boy. Like James
Dean. Mind if I call you James?”
And then I can't help but laugh, bitterly. There's no way I'm at the point of talking to a corpse.
“Well, I certainly hope they didn't kill you on my account. I think you're supposed to be a message,
but if they wanted to make it clearer, they should've picked someone more... weathered. Smooth skin, no
scars—you're a pretty boy.”
Like Calder.
I never thought I'd miss the weight of my engagement ring. I'd only just begun adjusting to it. But
they must have taken it when they captured us. Now, the question seems pressing: can you be widowed
before you're married?
I hesitate, and pick up the gun. It has a reassuring weight in my hand, but a closer inspection
reveals the joke. “Really? A cap gun with the mechanism removed? I mean, I hadn't actually figured you
sat there and tongued a gun willingly, but it does remove some of the verisimilitude. It makes it clear that
you're a message, though.”
Hysterical giggles bubble up, making me laugh until my empty stomach heaves. “At least they can't
say I shot the messenger.”

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