Page 19 of You Were Warned: Part One

“Don’t tempt me, Lucky. You are a very pretty man, and I could work with that. Maybe it’s how you can make it up to me.”

Everything goes black, and the world starts to fade.

“Stay awake for me, Lucky.”

“Who are you?” I ask.

“I’ll tell you later.”

I know there won’t be a later. My body goes limp, and then there is nothing.

The intense smell has my stomach recoiling. I roll sideways and retch onto the floor over and over. Then I drop a short distance onto my hands and knees, my limbs shaking violently.

“Nice to see you back in the land of the living, Lucky.”

I don’t know where I am, but the floor beneath me is concrete, and shifting my gaze up, I spot the bars. Before I can process much more, my stomach lurches again, and I sit back on my haunches and lean my body against the steel frame of the bed.

“My name is not Lucky,” I say hoarsely, wiping my mouth on the sleeve of my jacket.

“Yeah, it is,” the man says.

I look up, and he’s sitting with his back against the wall. There’s a weird hat on his head, and with his black-and-red outfit and face paint, he looks like a jester.

“Why?” I say.

It covers most things. Why is he calling me Lucky? Why am I here? And better yet, why am I alive?

He looks at me with curiosity and smirks. “Because apparently even you can’t kill you.”

I settle back against the bed frame, spreading my legs to avoid the vomit in front of me. “Where am I?”

I should be petrified, but after months of running, I have no emotion left. If he wants to kill me, he should just hurry and get it over with, though it seems pointless when he could have saved himself the trouble and let me do it myself.

“Safe,” is all he says, and I laugh.

I haven’t been safe in months, but he thinks locking me up in a dingy cell will fix the problem.

“That isn’t an answer.”

“But it’s the only one you’re getting,” he replies while standing and taking out his phone. Then he puts it to his ear. “Yes. Now.”

He steps up to the bars, pulling them closed and locking them, while I shake my head and laugh. The entire situation is comical. Someone—okay, multiple people have been following me for months. I could have handed over what they wanted, but others would have gotten hurt. I could have given it to the police, but I have learned the cops are as corrupt as they come, especially when it involves people like my client, who would have the information as soon as I turned it in.

I look around, but there isn’t much to see. There’s a second bare cell beside me, but at least mine has a toilet and a bed with a flimsy mattress. The area outside the cells has a free-standing tub in the corner, and I would hate to know what that is used for.

A second man arrives within ten minutes, coming down the stairs and glaring at me through the bars. “In or out,” he says to the jester-looking man.

“In.”

They unlock the cell, and the other man asks me to move onto the bed. It allows the Jester to grab a bucket of water and clean my vomit down a drain in the floor.

The new man has me follow his finger with my eyes, and he asks what pills I took. I tell him, since apparently this jester guy wants me alive. Counterproductive, really, since you don’t kidnap someone who’s trying to kill themselves and then lock them away, which usually means I will die here. The man hands me a pill and tells me to put it under my tongue.

“What are you giving him?” the Jester asks.

“Something to help with the nausea, unless you want to keep mopping up vomit. Though he will feel like shit for a few more hours.” The man closes his bag and looks down at me. “Good luck with your hostage situation.”

Once he leaves and goes back up the stairs, the jester guy comes back and sits against the wall in the same spot, holding a bottle of water. I figure I may as well try to find out why I’m here, what he planned to do, and what his plans are now.