Page 112 of The Diamond in the Rough

“Wherearewe, anyway?” the anxious man asked. I still didn’t know his name. The driver was Mulrooney and the aggressive one was Gennaro.

“Don’t worry, Edson, someone will make sure you get back,” Mulrooney said, but there was an undercurrent to his voice that almost made me feel sorry for Edson, which was apparently the nervous guy’s name. I had the feeling Gennaro and Mulrooney had decided that Edson wasn’t what they were looking for in a fellow conspirator, and that probably meant that he’d become expendable.

If he hadn’t helped kidnap me, I’d have felt a good deal more sympathy for him. As it was, I still liked him the best of the three, but that wasn’t saying very much.

I wondered which of them to target if I had to pick one.

Definitely not Edson, although I had the feeling he’d be much less concerned about kidnapping and killing me if I managed to kill one of the other two men. People tend to not feel bad for you once you show that you’re potentially deadly.

They also tend to treat you as a much more significant threat.

Unfortunately for me, the strength it would take for me to take out one of them would likely leave me incapable of doing it again.

There were three of them, and one of me. So even if I succeeded in taking one of them out, there would still be two of them left.

One way or the other, to quote Hart, I was fucked.

I wasn’t honestlysure how much longer it had been. Another hour? Thirty minutes? More? Less? Fear and the struggle to keep other people’s thoughts out of my head while also trying not to draw attention to myself was exhausting, and it both sped up and slowed down time so that I had no idea how far we’d gone, how long it had been, or where I could possibly be.

Maybe they’d taken me back to Tranquil Brook.

But the van slowed, then stopped, and it got even harder to pretend to be unconscious—I had to keep my breathing slow and even, or they’d realize I was awake. I wasn’t ready to try to fight my way out yet.

I wasn’t going to ever be ready to fight my way out, but I was going to try.

“You think he’s awake?” Edson’s voice asked, and something—a boot, possibly—nudged me.

“Who cares?” Gennaro asked, and the probably-boot nudged me again. At least it was a nudge and not a kick. “Bring him. He doesn’t like being carried, he can wake the fuck up.”

Edson sighed, and rough hands began to move me, presumably to get me into position to carry me. I debated ‘waking up’ to avoid it, but then figured that I might get a better chance to run if they thought I was still out of it, and tried to convince my muscles to go limp.

I heard the front door open and close, then heard the side door slide open, letting Edson heft me up and over a shoulder, my head hanging down, blood slowly accumulating in my face as he carried me.

I risked opening one eye just a sliver.

Then a little more.

I couldn’t see either Gennaro or Mulrooney, so I opened my eyes all the way so that I could look around a little.

The three of them were carrying me across a gravel half-moon driveway toward a big Southern-style house that looked far too much like Tranquil Brook—although it wasn’t—for my comfort. It was in disrepair, paint peeling off the siding and the wide, wrap-around porch, plants either dead or overgrown, steps rotting and split.

Mulrooney pushed open the door, and it let out a loud, protesting creak.

The inside smelled strongly of mold and rot, and the tile floor was spotted with moss and tufts of dried weeds.

I couldn’t risk moving too much to try to see whether or not the roof was intact, but I had the feeling from the growth on the floor of what had once probably been a grand foyer that it was missing in at least a few places.

Nobody had lived here for a long time.

It was hard to tell whether or not anybody had evenbeenhere in a long time.

“Where the fuck are we?” Gennaro asked.

“Garraway’s place,” Mulrooney answered, his voice short , tight.

“He lives in this shithole?” Gennaro asked.

“No, dumbfuck,” Mulrooney snapped. “But it works for what we need it for.”