Page 17 of Harmless
LJ and Carter lived in a small apartment complex, mostly consisting of fellow bikers and Valkyrie network cohorts. Usually, I could hear a neighbor or two talking, laughing, barbecuing, the roars of bikes and cars coming or going, but now there was nothing.
It was too damn quiet, and my own breaths and heartbeat thundered in my ears. My instinct was to fill the silence, work out this rescue plan aloud to myself or head back inside to chat with my cousins. Noise and chatter was comforting, familiar. This abject quietness left me feeling vulnerable and exposed.
I suppose that was the point.
Placing my hands on the balcony railing, I took a long, shaky breath. The kind you took before jumping off a cliff. And then I closed my eyes.
And I listened.
7
TORRANCE
“You better quit that.” Santos’ voice came from my left, about ten feet away was my best guess.
“Why?” I didn’t lose momentum, didn’t lose a breath in my push-up routine. Without weights to throw around and test myself, bodyweight workouts were my only option, aside from crawling up the wall from going stir-crazy.
“You’re going to exhaust yourself. We’re not eating or staying hydrated enough to sustain working out like that.”
“Relax, I’m not going that hard.” I paused at the top of my push-up, walked my hands and feet back to the wall, then took my feet up the wall to go again, this time from a modified handstand position. “I’ll be bored out of my skull if I don’t move around.”
“So move, but don’t exert yourself.”
“What are you, my mother?”
“I’m just trying to keep us both from getting killed.”
“I know my limits. Just trying to burn off some energy, alright?”
“Alright.” His voice carried a don’t-say-I-didn’t-warn-you tone.
I rolled my eyes, not that he could see, and kept going. “How do you stay sharp, Butcher?” I brought a fist to the small of my back to keep lowering and lifting myself one-handed.
“Mobility,” he said. “Keeping my joints flexible. And spatial awareness. Devin taught me a lot about how to move and react.”
“Yeah? What’s his story?”
“If we ever get out of here, maybe he can tell you.”
Only then did I stop, my pulse slightly elevated and only a bit of shallowness to my breaths. I brought my feet down to the ground, coming to sit with my back against the wall. “We will get out, Santos. Rori won’t leave us behind.”
There was silence for a while, then a sigh and some shuffling as Santos rearranged his sitting position. “I hope you’re right. I really do.”
“She will. I have zero fucking doubt.”
“That’s great, Torr.”
I wished he could see my face. Not just because the pitch-black darkness routine was getting old but so he didn’t miss the glare I was shooting him. “What the hell, man? I thought you believed in her too. What happened?”
Santos’ laugh was dry and absent of any humor. “I’ve been enslaved for most of my adult life. Every shred of hope I ever had turned out to be for nothing. That’s what happened. So, sorry for being skeptical of anything turning out differently this time.”
I crawled forward until I found him, my hand coming down on the shin of one leg stretched out in front of him. “You thought the psychological effects of this place were getting to me? Well, I think they’re getting to you now, buddy.”
He snorted. “Probably, who knows.”
I squeezed the leg my hand rested on. “No way, man. You’re not giving into apathy now. You’re fighting this.”
“If you don’t stop touching me, I’m gonna be fighting you.”
