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Leslie hadn't known what striking a deal with Paula for Felix's life would ultimately mean for her, but she should have. She's an attorney, for Christ's sake. She knows exactly how dangerous criminals can be. And just because Paula is behind bars, doesn't mean she can't get to her.
“I’m working on some other avenues, so just hang tight,” she said over the phone.
“Interesting,” came Paula’s response, and Leslie understood the weight that word held.
“Well like I said, I’m working on it.” Her voice pitched upwards in betrayal, and she cringed to herself. “I just need more time.”
"Time wasn't part of our arrangement," Paula hissed back. Leslie could almost picture her standing at the payphone at the correctional facility, stone cold and contemplating the ways in which she could make Leslie suffer if she didn't come through. “We agreed you would get me released from prison. Maybe you need a reminder of what, exactly, failing to do so will mean for you."
"No, that won't--" Leslie's blood ran ice cold as she heard the line click and empty air signify the end of the call. This wasn't up for debate. Even if Paula didn't send someone to kill her, the promise of a "reminder" left the young attorney quaking in the front seat of her car.
Not half an hour later, she came to understand that she had every reason to be afraid.
She had pulled over a quarter of a mile before she reached her house, hoping to compose herself before facing everyone back home. She didn't want Felix to know just how deep she had gotten into this to save his life, and she didn't want Max to worry. Murphy...well, she just didn't want Murphy to gloat after all the times Leslie had chastised her for being the one getting everyone into bad situations.
But in retrospect, stopping on the side of the road in the middle of nearly-nowhere, no matter how close to home it was, hadn't been the brightest idea.
The glint of a headlight in her rearview mirror pulled her from her thoughts. In the few seconds as the van came closer, Leslie tried to convince herself it was nothing, and that she was being overly paranoid. Of course there are other cars on the road. It's a road.
Rationality didn't stop the fear from creeping up her spine, nor the realization that she was truly, deeply fucked as the vehicle slammed into the back of her car.
Leslie didn’t even have time to panic before the driver got out. And although Leslie didn't see any weapon in his hand, she also knew he might not need one to deliver whatever message Paula had for her. Instinctively, she locked all the doors and threw the car into drive, only to realize the collision had knocked her car into a snowbank. Instead of making her great escape, her tires spun, going nowhere no matter how frantically she slammed on the gas.
Burly and clearly muscled even under his puffy coat, the man sauntered up to her car, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out a small, black handgun. Leslie paled. She was going to die here. On a deserted road. In the cold. And it would be all Murphy Mason’s fault.
"Get out of the car," he said, his voice muffled by the scarf wrapped around his lower face.
Leslie looked past him, noting another man waiting behind in the passenger seat of the van, and shook her head, her eyes wide with fear. "Tell Paula I understand our deal. I just need more time."
"I said get out of the car," he repeated, more forceful this time. He reached for the door handle, but it was locked. Leslie flinched as he tapped the muzzle of the gun against her window. “You think this will protect you if I have to shoot to get you out? Paula doesn’t want you dead. Yet.”
Leslie trembled as she considered her options. Or rather, as she realized that she had none.
She ghosted her fingers alongside her jacket pocket, double-checking that her phone was still there, before unlocking the car door.
"Good girl," he said, reaching for her arm as she stepped out of the vehicle. "Let's go."
— — — — — —
As it turned out, they didn’t have far to go. After ushering Leslie into the back of the van, she estimated they only drove an additional mile before she felt the vehicle lurch to the side, traveling on something other than the freshly plowed road leading back home.
Home. She had been so close.
But what good would that have done? If she’d have made it back to her house, the men might have threatened Felix, or Max. Paula didn’t need them alive to get what she wanted, not technically. And though Leslie might like to consider herself someone with the guts not to work for a criminal who murdered someone she loved just to save her own skin, she didn’t ever want to be in the position to find out.
As furious as she was with herself for winding up in a situation that allowed her to be so easily abducted so close to home, the alternatives her racing mind provided her with were worse.
The van came to a halt, and Leslie found herself looking, not for the first time, for anything she could use to defend herself with should her abductor’s claim that Paula didn’t want her dead turn out to be a lie. But there was nothing. Not even a loose screw in the paneling.
She heard the men exit the van and quickly pulled her phone out of her pocket. She didn’t want to drag anyone else into this, but she did want them to know what had happened to her if she never made it back.
She only had time to punch out four words in her Notes app before the van doors swung open — “Paula’s men have me.”
Leslie slipped the phone back into its place in her coat and blinked at the dazzling white of the snow outside.
The burly man had been the one to open the door, but despite his smaller stature, the man who had been waiting in the passenger seat — the one she had yet to interact with — had an aura about him that sent all of Leslie’s fears rushing back to her.
He climbed into the van.
“You know why you’re here?” he asked, taking a seat across from her while the other man waited outside, easily blocking any chance of escape. His eyes were cold, almost lifeless.
“I know Paula thinks I let her down, but I have another lead—“
He held his hand up, silencing her.
“You did let Paula down. What you say you can do in the future, well, it matters in that it’s the only reason you’re still alive right now,” he said. “But it doesn’t change the fact that you already pissed her off once. The sooner we get on the same page about that, the faster this will go. Now, do you know why you’re here?”
Leslie took another deep breath and nodded.
“I let Paula down.”
The man smiled, a one-sided curl of his lips that only served to make his overall demeanor even more threatening.
“My job,” he began, “is to make sure that only happens once. Do you understand what happens to you if you let her down again?”
Leslie’s stomach dropped through the floor, pain gripping her chest and holding tight. She nodded.
He paused, before lowering the gun to his side. He then sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and looked Leslie in the eyes.
“Good. I hate threatening people. My least favorite part of what I do. It’s so…abstract.” He jerked his head towards the open door. “You can get out now.”
Leslie blinked, uncertain at first that she had heard him correctly, before pushing herself to her feet, her head bent slightly to accommodate the height of the van. She held onto the wall as she moved towards the exit. She didn’t trust her legs to hold.
The bigger man stepped aside when she reached the door, but before she could brace herself to step down, she felt a harsh blow between her shoulder blades rip the air from her lungs — and then she was falling.
Her left wrist caught the brunt of her weight, something inside of it snapping as it plunged through the snow and jammed against the ground below. She choked and sputtered on the ice, trying to regain the breath that had been knocked — punched? — out of her by the man allegedly letting her go.
“This part is much more fun,” she heard him say.
The words filtered through the fog of Leslie's brain as she slowly, slowly managed to turn her head to look over her shoulder. Her left wrist pulsed with tiny, sharp needles of pain. She felt as if someone had taken a fork to the back of her neck and was raking the tines through her spine. It hurt to move.
“Get her up,” the smaller man said, and a hand under her arm hauled her to unsteady feet.
Biting back nausea, she brushed away the bits of snow clinging to her face and sucked in a harsh breath.
“What—“
Before Leslie could even ask why this was happening, why they were punishing her after their conversation made it clear she knew, she knew, what was expected of her and what the consequences would be if she failed again, her captor’s fist collided with her cheekbone.
Her head whipped to the side. She slumped against the man holding her upright, knees buckling and head spinning. Warmth trickled down her cheek and into her hairline, and she could feel the swelling begin to throb in time with her heartbeat.
“Getting a second chance doesn’t mean you get to avoid consequences for failing the first. I need to make sure you really, truly understand, Leslie,” the man in charge said.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed as she regained some of her senses, her tears freezing on her cheeks. “I’m sorry.”
He said nothing, but then his hand was on her face, soothing the pain in a twisted turn of events that made bile rise up in her throat, even if it took her a little longer to understand why. His fingers trailed down her throat, traced the protrusion of her collarbone, before dipping down towards the V-shape of her skin left exposed by both her blouse and her jacket.
“Please,” she whimpered as his other hand found curve of her hip. “I’m sorry. I won’t fail again. I promise.”
“I believe you,” he murmured, leaning in close enough that she could feel his breath on her cheek.
The sturdy body of the other man behind her provided Leslie no relief as she realized just how trapped between the two she was. There was nothing she could stop them from doing. No one to hear her scream, as if she even dared.
But then his hands were gone, stripped from her body in a literal sense although she could already feel that this touch would linger in her nightmares.
“Finish the job then let her go,” he called back to the burly man still keeping her from crumpling to the ground. “She can walk back to her car from here.”
Leslie saw him return to the van and climb back into the passenger seat even as tears blurred her vision. In that time, the bigger man gripped her more tightly against him, giving her too much space to panic about what “finish the job” meant to him, personally, before she found herself spun around to face him.
His left hand was back on her shoulder as his right fist collided with her stomach. She doubled over, gasping for air and stumbling, to her vague frustration, even closer to him.
Two more hits to the same soft flesh and she felt her knees buckle beneath her.
A sharp backhand to the side her face that hadn’t already been aching from the last blow and she dizzily realized she was now on the ground once more. The hazy sun bore down on her and Leslie blinked, staring back. Wondering how, in such short time, this had become her life.
A kick to her ribs sent both her mind and body spinning again as she reflexively curled onto her side. Her stomach contracted, but there wasn’t much in there to come back up. Her body was acting out on its own, separate from logic and control. She couldn’t even keep track of where the pain was centered anymore. Her entire being was pain.
The burly man’s foot nudged against her upward-facing hip, and she shivered before rolling onto her back. Giving in, in the hopes that it meant this might finally be done.
Opening her eyes, Leslie felt the world teeter, then right itself, and she fought past the tangle of nerve endings lighting up the pain receptors in her brain, calling out for her attention. She saw the bigger man loom over her and then she felt his glove settle on the bare skin of her neck and begin to squeeze, the pressure slow and methodical.
The pressure on her neck increased and she closed her eyes and gritted her teeth against the ache of her injuries, using her remaining strength to try to twist away from his grasp.
“Stop. Stop it!” she rasped as the pressure increased, the vision of this man with his hand around her neck becoming a vague oval of light that only recently had formed into color and shape. “Please. He said—”
The grip slackened, and her head lolled back onto the ground. The cold was starting to crawl past her skin and bury itself deep within her bones, but she still couldn’t tell how much of her shivering came from the temperature and how much came from the shock of this entire experience. The fear of dying, and the fear of pain without the release of death.
“You should know better than to make deals with the devil,” he spoke, almost sadly. “It never ends well for those who do.”
Leslie flinched as the gloved hand invaded her vision once again, but after a moment, she realized it was outstretched as an offering rather than a threat.
She reluctantly accepted it, uncertain how she’d have ever found her way to her feet again otherwise.
“It’s a shame about that car accident you got into,” the man said. Her head spun. Her face throbbed. Her torso felt like one giant bruise. And her heart clenched at the insinuation — she was to lie to the people she cared about. She had been through all of this, and she wasn’t even to find comfort to help fight back the turmoil bubbling up inside of her, independent from the physical pain.
He let her go, and despite everything threatening to overwhelm her, Leslie managed to stay on her feet.
Something was soon pressed into her right hand, which was on the verge of numbness from the cold.
It was her phone. She hadn’t even noticed it had fallen out of her pocket.
“If you need to call for help, I would advise calling someone capable of discretion,” the man who delivered her to this hell told her. “It would be pretty embarrassing to explain to the police how you wandered off in the wrong direction after some careless driver smashed into the back of your car.”
She swallowed thickly, and nodded her head. She understood. God, after all of this, she would cop to understanding just about anything they wanted. Part of her hated herself for being so weak, so susceptible to the threat, the promise of pain. Most of her just wanted to go home.
The man returned to his van and soon drove off at a casual pace, turning right onto the road, and leaving Leslie to understand she was to go left to get back to where she came from.
As she put her phone in her pocket — how useless bringing that along had been when she didn’t even bother to call for help — she noticed the blood staining the snow in striking patterns. It seemed to be coming from her nose and mouth, and she wiped her face with the sleeve of her jacket.
The pain seemed to be fading, growing distant as the cold numbed her body. But still her mind raced, wondering how she would get out of this, how she would find a way to keep her promise to Paula, keep this secret from Max and Felix, and, the thing that ultimately got her here, keep Murphy out of prison.
All she had wanted to do was help her brother, and instead she wound up bruise and broken on the side of the road, wondering if worse was yet to come.
Leslie walked in a daze, one foot in front of the other, until she reached the road. She turned left, heading towards the supposed comfort of home. But understanding all too well that when she got there, in one way or another, she would still be alone.