Fic: "Revenge" 1/2 (Veronica, Lamb) R
Yeah, I don't know. It happened. This is not a 'shipper fic, just so's we're clear.
Title: Revenge.
Author: Jacqui, wily_one24.
Characters: Veronica, Lamb, ensemble, mentions of L/V.
Rating: Hard R... and not the good kind.
Wordcount: 8,004.
Disclaimer: Not mine, this is why.
Summary: Bad things happen to good people...
Spoilers: Set post 2.22 and pre-season three.
All fic found here
A/N #1: The majority of this was written in the hiatus, before season three, therefor any resemblance or direct contradictions to characters introduced in that season is purely coincidental.
A/N #2: I have no idea how this came about, apparently I just felt the need to randomly torture my favourite character. I wasn't even going to post this, because I see it as little more than a gratutious, irredeemable torture fic, but fickledame convinced me to both finish and post it. So, uh, blame her!
Onto the fic...
*~*~*~*
REVENGE, part one
*~*~*~*
It really is too easy to push right through the front desk and into his office.
Apparently, both Inga and Sacks know not to bother stopping Veronica when she has her resolve face on. Of course, given the looks they give each other as she passes them, all raised eyebrows and half smiles; they might just hate their boss as much as she does.
Almost.
“Okay, I’m here.”
She doesn’t wait for him to speak, just crashes his door open and stands right in front of his desk. In return for such pleasantries, Lamb doesn’t react, he waits a whole twelve seconds before looking up from the file he’s pretending to read, hand twirling a pencil beside his head.
When he does look at her his eyes are highly amused, even if his face is a mask of boredom.
“So I see.”
Veronica rolls her eyes.
“Look, we can do this all day, but I have a shift at the Hut in half an hour, so I’d rather we get this over with quickly.”
His eyes travel up and down slowly and she can just see the curl of his lip when he takes in her work skirt and vest.
“And this is?”
She crosses her wrists in front of her. Not even Blind Freddy would mistake the gesture as submissive or in any way giving him the upper hand.
“I’m turning myself in. You obviously think you have something on me, so I’m just saving you the time of getting your lackeys out there to bring me in. Charge me, so I can prove how much of an ass you are and be on my way to serving coffee and cake.”
He laughs.
“As much as I’m sure there’s several extra curricular activities I could charge you for, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Then he winks, he damn well winks at her and she grits her teeth. “Believe me, when I find something good, I’ll let you know.”
She’s reached the end of her rope.
“You’re having me followed!” At his eyebrows skyrocketing into his receding hairline, she narrows her eyes. “What? You didn’t think I’d be able to spot a couple of undercovers tailing me day and night? What is it this time? Has to be serious for you to spare that kind of department resource.”
“Seriously.” Lamb spreads his hands out, clearly amused at her rant. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
This, she wasn’t expecting, and it kinda takes the wind out of her sails.
“You don’t want to accuse me of anything?”
“You seem disappointed, Veronica.”
She blinks.
“I’m free to go?” Then it dawns on her. “You want me to start my shift then you’re gonna have some deputies arrest me in front of everyone, aren’t you? God, can’t you just…?”
“Veronica?” He steeples his hands in front of his face, eyes glowing with laughter. “I don’t have anything on you. I’m not charging you with anything. And I’m not having you followed.”
Okay, that’s it. She’s had enough, he’s obviously not going to make it easy on her and she’s just stretching out his twisted fun by being here in the first place, letting him get to her like that. Fine, if he wants to play, Veronica can do the same.
“Sure. Yes.” So she nods. “Obviously. Random people always hover around me, watching my every move.”
He sighs, deep, as if he’s truly bothered.
“I have work to do.” Gesturing at the file he hasn’t even bothered to close, he grins. “Real work, not imaginary work from the overactive mind of the likes of you. So, if you don’t mind…”
“Fine.” It’s a huff and it’s childish and she just can’t help it. “But don’t think I can’t evade your tail, deputy.”
She hits the tone of that last word with the scorn it deserves, the kind of scorn Leo never got. And, just because he’s Donald Lamb and he can, he waits until she’s done her little spin, walked over to the door and is just about to stride all the way through it before he coughs.
“Oh, and Veronica?” He smirks when he nods at her. “If I wanted my tail anywhere near you, you wouldn’t be able to evade it.”
She screws up her face, giving him exactly what he wants when she can’t even come up with a half decent reply.
“Ew.”
“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, will you?”
***
The door hasn’t even finished closing when Lamb reaches for the telephone and hits speed dial.
He doesn’t waste time with pleasantries.
“Update?”
“Update?” The voice scratches through, bored and amused. “She’s leaving your office. Right now, as a matter of fact. If you need an…”
Impatience surges through him.
“I’m glad you think this is a laughing matter.”
“Can’t be that bad, can it?” There’s something absolutely infuriating about the voice on the other end, part superiority and part casual. “I mean, hiring outside forces when you’ve got a whole Sheriff’s department at your fingertips?”
If there’s one thing Donald Lamb hates, it’s people who think they know so much, when they obviously know so little. Yeah, he’s well aware of his issues with superiority, he just doesn’t give much of a damn. He doesn’t have to; he’s the goddamn Sheriff.
“You want to get paid? Don’t jerk me around.”
There’s always a trump card somewhere.
“Fine.” And the voice is back to bored again. “She didn’t leave the apartment all morning, except to walk her dog, which took thirty six minutes. Then she got in her car approximately twenty minutes ago and drove to the Sheriff station. Right now, she’s headed to a small café, a drive that takes ten minutes from here, where she’ll probably spend hours serving coffee and pretending she likes it. Then she’s most likely going to go spend a few hours sucking face with the Echolls kid. Then she’s going to go home and do whatever it is teenaged girls do behind their closed doors. You happy?”
“Ecstatic.” He says, the tone of his voice implying anything but.
***
Veronica sighs.
There’s nothing new or particularly interesting about this case. She’s sitting in her car, nursing a thermos of particularly strong coffee. Coffee that she poured straight from the cappuccino machine at work before she left, because if she has to spend several hours sitting outside a seedy hotel waiting for someone to get their jollies and then show their face, she deserves to have something that doesn’t taste like dirty dishwater, thank you very much.
She waits and she sighs and she wishes there was something, anything that set this case aside from the multitude of all their other sordid and tawdry divorce slash cheating slash impulse control problem cases. It’s just another downtrodden wife with suspicions of her low life husband spending his halfhearted affections on somebody else.
If these guys were to smile at their spouses every now and again, maybe lash out on a bouquet of flowers, then the women would be far less likely to suspect foul play. But they would always cheat and they would always fall short.
Life is like that.
Behind her Backup begins to growl, because even though she’s still taking cases her father doesn’t know about and wouldn’t approve of if he did, she’s still cautious. It’s a deep rumbling in the back of his throat that makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
“What is it, boy?”
Her neck strains as she looks in the rearview, eye scouring the landscape. She sees nothing. Another brief search of the street ahead of her provides nothing as well. As far as she knows, she and her car are alone. And she should know, she spent a great deal of effort evading the two hacks sitting in their car across from the apartment complex. As if she wouldn’t be able to trace them back to Lamb with a few quick strikes of the keyboard on her laptop.
Backup doesn’t let up, though, his growling getting louder and more insistent.
“Backup, chill.”
He doesn’t.
It makes her fingers tremble as she snaps the lens back on her camera and shoves it across to the seat next to her. She hates the way even her elbows seem to shake and her chest tightens. There is nobody near the car, not that she can see, but she knows from experience that the unseen is always worse.
Her fear scares her.
“Who’s there?”
Never show fear. That’s the first rule. And she’s totally breaking it as her voice rattles in her throat, breaking on the first syllable, as she quickly winds the window up. Cranking the handle as if it’s a lifesaver. She should have brought Logan, even if he spent the entire night bitching about boredom or making lewd comments and tracing his fingers in wrongbutohsoveryright places that drive them both crazy by the end of it.
Her other hand reaches for her bag, two words echoing through her head; taser and phone.
A short, sharp yelp escapes her throat when Backup’s growl suddenly turns to a bark.
“Dammit. Quit it.” She drops the handle on her bag and tries to fumble at the keys in the ignition instead. “There’s nobody…”
Her words are cut off as the window next to her explodes, shards of glass scratching at her face and arms as she raises them to protect herself. A scream escapes her lips as she feels hands reach in and grab her forearms.
Backup’s barks become loud and grating, infused with threat and helplessness in the backseat.
Her whole body goes stiff, resistant, as she’s pulled from the car.
She sees and feels everything in slow motion. The tall, black clad figure that’s stronger than her, clutching at her arms and dragging her from the window, the ragged shards of glass tearing at her abdomen, the second dark clad figure holding a trash can lid against the back window, preventing Backup from breaking the glass like he’s so desperately trying to do.
Her legs twist around the head of her seat, a last ditch attempt to keep them from getting her. One of the hands lets her left wrist go to dig at her hip, trying to free her. She flails at it, her hand scrambling down her body, trying to break his grasp on her, slipping in the blood that wells in the gashes there.
Her screams turn into desperate rasps in her throat.
She can’t stop struggling, flailing, twisting, screaming. Anything, just trying to get away. There are too many images in her head of who and how and exactly how much she doesn’t want this to happen. They can’t be Lamb’s men, because he’s a prick and an ass and the biggest thorn in her side now that all the other contenders are dead, but he wouldn’t do this. He wouldn’t have her attacked like this.
The hand digging into her hip suddenly grabs her own flailing, clawing hand and tosses it aside. She grabs at the first thing she can and feels the cold glass of the windscreen as she hears the sound of cloth and foam and the tearing of the head of her seat between her knees.
Eventually the pressure is too much, fingers twisting too painfully as they move from her hip to the top corner of her thigh, and her legs let go. She’s pulled from the car and an elbow hits the side of her face. It shuts her up instantly as she reels from it, gasping, doubling over.
A dark sack falls over her head, covering her, and everything goes black.
She can taste the drug they’ve laced the cloth with.
***
He’s tired.
It’s one am and he’s tired and he should be in bed, but no. He’s also restless and awake and driving around for no good reason other than to blink wearily at the side streets. There’s nothing happening, of course there’s nothing happening, this is his town and he likes to stay ahead. That’s why he’s here, to make sure nothing is happening. There’s also a strip joint five blocks up and they have the best girls
At least, that’s what he tells himself, it has nothing to do with the fact the tensions that ratchet up his spine the longer things stay quiet.
Not at all.
Lamb is a simple man. He gets up, he goes to work, he comes home, and he occasionally likes to see some half naked women grinding against a pole. The fact that his job makes him Sheriff of Balboa County and gives him power he could only otherwise dream about in his warm wet ones, well, that’s just gravy, isn’t it?
He sees a familiar black LeBaron parked to the side of the street up ahead.
Although, a man could get lucky if he plays his cards right, and Lamb hesitates for just a second to scan the rest of the street. He can’t see the car following her, but that’s the whole point, right?
This late at night, he could write Veronica up for any number of charges. He’s got a long standing dream of catching her in the middle of playing sleuth, dressed in the skimpy costumes he’s seen her wear, and writing her up for solicitation.
The charges wouldn’t stick, of course, but it would be funny as fuck to watch her fume while he does it.
He smiles lazily as he pulls the car to a stop and idly puts the flashing red cherry on the roof. The red swings all around the road, highlighting her car at regular intervals. If only this had happened months ago. He can just about see the flush of humiliation climbing her cheeks if that lawyer had asked her if she’d ever been picked up for charges of solicitation as she sat in front of a courtroom. In front of everyone. In front of her father.
Luck is not his lady tonight, not that she ever is, in fact he has strong suspicions that Luck has long since stopped being a lady and now turns tricks for whoever has the biggest wad of cash.
The driver’s side window is smashed in and he can see blood on the windscreen. Not to mention the large, completely rabid dog that charges him as he approaches. Fuck. There is also, he notes again as he scans the surrounding street again, no car trailing hers at a safe distance. He grabs his phone and doesn’t even bother lying to himself about why he has that number programmed into his cell.
“Hello?”
The voice is, understandably, groggy and slurred with sleep.
“Keith, I need you to not ask questions and come get your dog.”
“What? Who is this?” The slur is slowly fading away into confusion. “Donald? Donald Lamb?”
“Yes, now come calm your dog the fuck down.”
Surely the man can hear the snapping and the growling through the phone.
“Backup?” And he can hear the sudden snap to clarity. “Where’s Veronica? What happened to Veronica?”
“Keith.” He bites his lip. “Can’t you just do what I say for once? Just once? I’ll explain when you get here, but I need you to get your goddamned dog before I call Animal Control and they deal with it.”
It’s a few seconds of giving the address before Lamb punches down on the end call button with his thumb and immediately dials another number.
“Hello?”
Goddamned fuck. This voice is slow and hazy with sleep, too.
“Aren’t you supposed to be tailing the Mars family?”
“Uh, yeah.” And the snap to awake happens sooner this time than it did with Keith. “We are. We’re parked outside the apartment right now. There hasn’t been any movement in hours… oh, I think that’s the father now… you’re good.”
“You’re fired.” Lamb snarls. “You’re fucking fired.”
He snaps the cell closed with a vicious click. Maybe Veronica is right when she looks at him with that smug grin; maybe he and his entire team are useless as fuck.
***
It’s not a slow awakening.
Veronica comes to and finds herself stumbling, her feet falling over each other as hands clutching hard underneath her armpits and at her shoulders drag her. There are at least two of them and she’s still in the dark, dank hood. Her mouth opens and her back twists.
A foot slides underneath hers, uncompromising and firm as she stumbles into them, allowing them to keep dragging her forward.
She doesn’t stop struggling.
“This is her?”
Veronica stops cold at the voice. She doesn’t know it, she’s never heard it before, but she knows where she is. And she knows the most likely candidates that have her. She knows why she didn’t have a chance in hell of escaping before.
The voice has an Irish accent.
“This little cheerleader is the one you were talking about?”
“Don’t underestimate her, Cor, she’s learned a lot from her old man.”
Yup, that’s definitely Liam Fitzpatrick on her right.
“She’s kinda hot, too.”
And Danny Boyd to her left. Veronica hates being right.
“Well then,” The other voice comes closer, “let’s take a look.”
The hands at her arms don’t let go, but the hood is drawn from her head and Veronica has to blink several times in the light before she finds herself staring into the face of someone unmistakably related to the biggest crime family in Neptune.
Oh, shit.
***
Lamb hears the over-revving of the car before he sees it turn the corner. He knows who it is.
Keith doesn’t even bother parking, stopping the car in the middle of the road as he barges out. Lamb sees the odd mixture of sleep pants and tee shirt, covered with a jacket and topped off with old sneakers. He doubts even Keith knows what he’s wearing.
“Where is she?” There’s a fire in Keith’s eyes that Lamb knows. “Where’s Veronica?”
He gestures to her abandoned car further up.
“For all I know she’s in the goddamn trunk, but I can’t get close enough to check. Call your dog off.”
As Keith walks towards the LeBaron, calling for the dog gently, Lamb knows the exact second he sees the broken glass and the bloody handprint on the windscreen. There’s no way in hell she’s in the trunk and if she is, it’s not going to be good.
He watches as Keith kneels on the ground, running his hands over the dog. The mutt is trembling, quivering with fear and anger and he’s stopped barking, but the growls still sound low and deep from his throat. When he’s sure that Keith has a good enough grip, Lamb walks over to the car quickly.
“Why are you here?” Keith calls over, voice already alert and analyzing. “Why aren’t there other squad cars here? You should call for support.”
“Because.” Lamb taps the trunk and he knows it’s going to be empty, but his chest still sinks a little as it sounds hollow and there’s no response. His eyes scan the interior, trying to figure out the hows and whys of it. “I already know who’s got her.”
“What?” There’s anger bristling under that question and Lamb prepares himself for the onslaught. “What do you mean you know?”
He doesn’t waste time, standing up straighter and flipping open his cell. It’s times like this he misses the shoulder walkie on his uniform.
“Cormac Fitzpatrick was released two days ago.” He dials the switchboard and his eyes meet Keith’s. “Word is he’s got a hard on for you.”
***
“What…?” Veronica can’t stop the plea in her voice. Yeah, never show fear, right. “What do you want?”
“What do I want?” His neck and arms are covered in tattoos and it’s not nearly as endearing on him as it is on Weevil as he pretends to seriously think about that and watches her with eyes glinting with amusement and threat. It makes the salt flow past her teeth and over her tongue. “I think I want the last twelve years of my life back.”
He pushes his face right into hers, nose-to-nose, mouth to mouth and eyes to eyes. He doesn’t hate her; he doesn’t feel anything for her besides what a cat feels for the mouse before he tears it to shreds. She thinks she’d rather see burning passion there.
“Think your daddy can give it back?”
It slams into her, her father’s voice calmly reading Kendall’s emails out. Prisoner 246219, San Quentin, Cormac Fitzpatrick, Liam’s older brother and patriarch of the Fitzpatrick clan. She’d wondered how he’d known that from just the prisoner number, but now she knows.
His breath smells of mint and she wonders if it’s going to take four and half weeks until she can brush her teeth without gagging again. The same amount of time it took before she could look at an open flame without clawing at her throat.
Thirty-two days and five hours, actually, she timed herself.
“So, you’re the Sheriff’s little daughter?” He steps back, thankfully, and Veronica takes a breath. “You know, my brother in law here, Danny, is right. You grew up nice.”
Veronica stops breathing at the appreciative tone in his voice.
“They bloodied you up a little.” His hand comes forward and his finger traces a line down the side of her face, she can feel the swelling already and knows she’s going to have a hell of a bruise. “A lot actually.”
Her stomach muscles contract, pulling in and away when his hand travels down to play with the shreds of her work shirt, the vest having been discarded long ago in the car. Her teeth close in hard on her bottom lip when he pulls it apart, buttons flying. The sleeves hang around her shoulders, but the skin of her chest and abdomen are bared.
Danny is holding her left arm tightly, but impersonal, he’s just getting the job done. It’s Liam whose fingers dig in the most cruelly. Pinching the tendons under her right arm and jerking her to keep her still when she tries to struggle. She hasn’t forgotten the feeling of his hand around her throat and the knowledge that he would have pressed harder if she’d given him reason.
Cormac’s hands have been gentle with her, personal in a way the other two haven’t, and it’s him she’s most terrified of.
“No.” She finds her voice and hates it all in the same second, hates the crack and the weakness and the plea. “Please, no.”
“No?” His eyes glitter at her meanly as he steps even further back. She can feel the terror, inching up her spine each vertebrae at a time, popping up a notch or twelve when he pulls handcuffs from his pocket. “I don’t believe I was giving you a choice.”
One tilt of his head spurs the others into action and she’s brought forward again, pushed several feet further into the darkness. The windows are small and high, she can’t help scanning the room and she thinks they’re underground.
Backup couldn’t fit through the glass in those windows, let alone her.
“Please.” She begs again, even as her right hand is forced forward and she feels the cold metal close around her wrist. “Please, stop.”
Danny chuckles next to her, the sounds of it sliding down her back with drops of sweat.
“This’ll go a whole lot easier if you save your throat.” Cormac winks at her as he reaches for her left hand. “You’ll need that later.”
It’s sudden, the way he closes his fingers around her elbows and jerks them up. Her shoulders wrench as he stretches her hands up above her head, the skin burning with irregular movement. His body is hard as the arch of her spine presses her front into him. She can’t help the snap of her head back and immediately she sees the hook.
“When I have you screaming.” Cormac finishes with more than a little relish.
All hands fall away and she’s left dangling.
“Please let me go.” There are tears in her eyes as she twists, tugging at the bonds. All it does is grate at the skin of her wrists, pulling against the bones painfully. “Please, I’ll do anything.”
“Well, now.” Cormac eyes her carefully, cupping his chin thoughtfully in one hand. “Isn’t that interesting?”
He’s backed himself against a wall and she watches him reach across to a small control. The red button, she realizes, is connected to the chain above her and it slowly stretches her up. Her whole body arches as she struggles to remain in contact with the ground.
Eventually, she’s left with her toes scrabbling for purchase and her shoulders screaming for release.
“Liam, gag her, she’s getting too loud already.”
***
“No.” Lamb spins around and takes a deep breath, spreading his chest out and drawing himself up to his full height. “Are you listening to me? No.”
Keith doesn’t back down.
“For god’s sake, Keith, get back in your car with your dog, drive home and wait until I call you.”
“I’m coming with you.”
He seethes for just a second, before he remembers this isn’t a bitch fight to see who has the biggest balls.
“Look, I’ll get her back and when I do, she’s going to want to curl up with fluffy slippers and hot chocolate and everything else teen girls love, with her dog and more than likely you.” He can see the truth of it seep into Keith’s eyes. “They want you there, that’s the whole point. If you walk in, I can’t protect you as well. That’s not what she needs.”
It’s a low down dirty thing to use Veronica to keep him leashed at this point and if Donald Lamb had a conscience at all, he might feel bad about doing it.
He doesn’t, so that works out nicely.
***
She’s expecting a cloth gag, a rag as dank as the hood that was over her head, a man’s tie or a woman’s scarf, something soft to block her tongue from working properly. She only gets the last bit right. Liam grasps her chin between his thumb and fingers and forces her mouth open, shoving a small rubber ball between her teeth. The whole contraption clips shut behind her head and she can’t even move her jaw up and down.
She feels like she’s going to swallow her tongue.
Her nostrils burn with the sudden need to pull oxygen inside her lungs.
“They said you were a fiery one, Veronica Mars.” Cormac steps back into her line of sight from somewhere off to the side. “It kinda makes me wanna see how much.”
He’s teasing her, trying to push her further and she doesn’t know into what. She’s already begged and the tears are still flowing. She can’t even scream past the taste of rubber. All she can do is whimper as he reaches out and traces the tip of his finger down the side of her arm.
“I’ve been locked away with nobody but men for company for twelve years.” He whispers it, hot and sweaty in her ear. “I can’t tell you how incredibly frustrating that is.”
Her eyes snap shut as she trembles against the hand playing with the rags of a shirt still hanging from her shoulders. The toe of her right shoe twitches against the floor and she can feel it pull all the way through her shoulders and up to her wrists.
His hand closes on the tight scrunch of muscles at the back of her neck.
“Open your eyes, Veronica.”
He squeezes and it makes her whimper as she hurries to obey. To the side, she can see Liam watching with detached interest and Danny as he licks his bottom lip. The fingers at the back of her neck close, one by one, over the collar of her shirt.
The remains of her shirt are torn suddenly and the scream rising in the back of her throat sounds like nothing more than a muffled groan as the pain of her wrenched joints sears through her body.
“A man could get very desperate after twelve years, don’t you think?”
She’s got nothing left but her bra, her skirt, stockings and sensible flat-soled shoes. Cormac stands next to her, just barely touching her skin, and she can feel the tight muscles of jail yard weights in the heat that pours off him.
If she turns her head, she could see him, but she won’t give him that as she stares straight ahead.
“And you?” She feels her scalp prickle when he begins playing with her hair, picking strands of it up and pulling lightly. “You’re just a little doll, aren’t you?”
Breathe in, her brain screams at her desperately, and don’t forget to breathe out. Breathe in, swallow, don’t scream, and breathe out. Breathe in, Veronica; don’t think about the metal that bites into your thumb joint when you squeeze your fingers into fists, don’t scream, and don’t forget to breathe out.
--Daddy, please save me this time, please…--
“I wouldn’t worry, though.” Cormac’s voice comes thick and heavy and fetid against her ear as his hand flattens itself on her shoulder blade. There’s something vaguely threatening about the way it sits there, hovering over her skin and the thin white strap of her bra. “As desperate as a man gets, I still like my women willing.”
Her body jerks away from him by instinct and she groans at the added pain.
“Don’t worry, little girl. I’m not going to hurt you like that.” His other hand comes to rest flat just below her collarbone. He’s sandwiched her between his hands, front to back, and there’s an edge to his voice that makes her want to close her eyes and run. “A man learns a lot of different ways to hurt people in jail.”
She hears and feels the sudden crack.
Veronica’s knees give out and not even the ball gag can stop her screaming.
***
The River Stix is too damn obvious, but he’d been hoping.
So Lamb takes his dejection to a few places. Places that just aren’t listed in Miss Minchin’s ‘Proper Guide to Policing A Community’. Hell, he’s fairly sure not even Keith knows about some of them. The wad of bills and greasy slick smile still work if he doesn’t have a uniform. Just like anywhere else in the world: the lie has to be sweet and the wad has to be big.
Eye wateringly, nut crunching big.
A piece of paper is slipped into his palm; sticky and folded so often it’s barely even tissue anymore. He waits until he’s out of the bar, back in his car and several blocks away before he even looks. His eyes squint as he reads the address.
He really hopes she’s still alive for the amount of money he just forked over.
***
They’ve lowered the chain so that her feet can rest flat on the floor and she’s stopped silently begging for her father to break through.
Veronica can’t even struggle anymore, she trembles as she tries to stand as still as she possibly can. Each and every movement is agony and she finds herself wishing for the simplicity of a trapped, fiery death. Or the quick fall off the top of a building. Anything.
Anything but the burning all along her entire back.
Her breaths come in labored pants now, hard and fast, puffed through nostrils she’s sure are going to be red and swollen with effort. If she makes it out of here, her traitorous brain supplies.
“I’ve got one last message for your daddy, think you can give it to him?”
She doesn’t answer, because she knows he doesn’t really care. The words should give her hope, a brief flickering; an assurance that she will make it out. But she doesn’t think it’s going to be that easy. It’s not as if they’ve gone to all this trouble to ensure she passes a love note across town.
The hand that pushes her skirt up makes her think that he’s a liar.
“Liam tells me you ran out on him a few months back, just when you were having fun. Is that true? Because, if so, that was very rude.”
That’s when she hears the buzzing and fresh tears pour out of her eyes.
--Don’t move, Veronica, don’t you dare move.--
It burns.
***
The place is deserted when he kicks the door in.
Dark and empty, not even dust bunnies blow across the floorboards. Lamb swears, instantly convinced that he’s got the wrong address. That he’s been screwed royally, in more ways than one. Three other late night officers begin to crawl over the place.
The gun lowers as he walks from room to room, his forearms aching from keeping it steady.
But it’s not the wrong address; he feels it in his gut as his eyes fall on the door leading down to the basement. His hand scratches at the wall as he slowly takes the steps, finding the light switch easily and flicking it. It’s an empty room, abandoned. There’s nobody left.
Except the girl strung up by her wrists.
“Shit, Veronica!”
She twitches when he gets close and he takes it as a good sign that she’s still alive.
“Are you okay?” The look she gives him when he rounds to her front tells him that she’s most likely going to live and he has to agree that it really is one of the more stupid questions he’s ever asked in his entire life. Then he sees the gushing track marks down her face, the tension across her features and the gag in her mouth. “Fuck, okay, hang on.”
His gun nestles easily into the holster as he takes his keys out of his pocket. The Mars family aren’t the only ones who know how to pick locks. As he steps closer, her eyes widen and she shakes her head. Not much, but softly, slightly, enough for him to notice.
“Just relax, okay?” The frightened look in her eyes makes him nervous. “I’m just going to get you down.”
She doesn’t settle, her face getting tighter and her eyes getting louder. He hears some of the most gut wrenchingly awful sounds that he thinks are pleas coming from her throat.
“Veronica, it’s me.” And he’s not stupid, he knows that he’s nowhere near the top of her list of favorite people. He’s fairly certain she has a whole separate list just for him and there’s nothing favorite about it. But she has to realize that he’s not the fucker that did this. “It’s Donald Lamb. I’m here to help, okay? I can’t get you out if I don’t get those cuffs off.”
The sounds in her throat become a screech when he reaches up to examine the locks.
He’s standing in front of her, he can’t help it, and if he wants to get a good look at the cuffs he’s going to have to keep pressing closer. Her face reaches his chest and for a second he thinks she’s going to relax against him.
He doesn’t expect her knee in his groin.
“Fuck, Veronica!” White-hot pain shoots up to his kidney and he doubles over, hands coming to grasp at the sudden pain radiating up from between his legs. And he tries not to hear the sound of a scream trying to push out of her mouth. “I’m trying to help!”
But her eyes keep pleading him, begging him for something.
“Okay, okay, hang on.” The steps he takes to return to her are slower and more cautious. “Don’t hit me again, I’m going to take the gag out. Okay? You’re okay with that?”
This seems to calm her and she stays still, her only movement the heaving of her breaths coming in spurts. His fingers inch along the taut band of elastic stretched around her jaw to the back of her head, quickly finding the clasp and releasing it.
The ball comes out of her mouth wet and slimy and she gasps, big deep breaths.
“My back… my back…” It’s all she can manage as she pants, gulping down air. He tries not to hear the scratched, drawn out sound of her voice. “My back… my…”
A slightly sick feeling enters his stomach when he walks around her in a circle.
“Oh, jesusfuck.”
He doesn’t even know how he gets the cell open and to his ear so quickly, but he’s shouting at the paramedics, telling them they should have been here five minutes ago if they want to keep their jobs and also to bring a face wedge while they’re at it. Then he calls over his shoulder at the men upstairs.
“She’s down here!”
***
Veronica is going to cry again, she knows it, in the bone weary way she finally lets herself believe that it’s over. Even if she has to be rescued by none other than Donald Lamb. At this point she wouldn’t care if Aaron Echolls rose from the dead and came to find her, as long as he got her out.
Everything hurts too much to care about the particulars.
“The paramedics are on their way.” And she’s not used to this side of him, the side that newspaper photographers and little children get to see just before Election Day; soft and caring and actually doing his job. “But I’m still going to have to take those cuffs off.”
She doesn’t want to cry in front of him, but she doesn’t have a choice.
“No!” It falls out of her mouth without her permission. “God, no, please. Please, please, please…”
“Veronica.” He doesn’t touch her again, just moves until his face is directly in front of hers. “I’m not going to lie, it’s going to hurt, but we need to get you down.”
She’s hated those cheap blue eyes for as long as she can remember, but right now she’s more than grateful for them as he holds her attention. She doesn’t want to focus on the footsteps behind her, the comments and exclamations of voices she barely recognizes as night shift deputies. She really doesn’t want to focus on his hands rising up to her wrists again.
“Don’t kick me again.” He tries to make his voice light, but she can hear the stretch of his vocal chords. “But I have a plan.”
Veronica closes her eyes when he steps forward again, pressing right into her. He shifts then, crouching just a little so that his knees bow forward and she ends up falling just a little bit forward.
“Lean on me, okay?” His voice is serious and calm and she finds herself wishing that he’d make some wiseass remark. “When I release you, keep your arms up, lean them on me.”
In the time between Cormac, Liam and Danny leaving and Lamb charging down the staircase, Veronica’s fairly sure she blacked out, she has no idea how long she’s been hanging there, unable to move. Her arms have become dead weights that ache and throb.
Her hands are puffy and dead, swollen, and she can feel the bite of metal as it scratches her release at the bony joints of her wrists, feels the wetness of blood welling there. She doesn’t know exactly what they did back there, but her back and shoulders scream in agony and she knows she can’t move her arms even if she tried.
It would be a relief to finally get the weight off her ankles and knees if it didn’t make the pain triple and spread like wildfire through her blood and to each nerve ending. There’s no other choice but to bury her face into Lamb’s shirt and bite down hard.
He grunts a little.
“I’ve got you.” It comes as a whisper in her ear and it surprises her a little. “You’re doing good.”
She doesn’t want it to be him, holding her up, making sure her arms stay above her head, not moving. She doesn’t want it to be him letting her lean, holding her with care. It makes her sob. And she doesn’t want him to see that, either.
***
He’s a simple man. He likes to keep things easy, draw a line and stick to it. Sausage and egg for breakfast? Good. Bacon? Bad; too clichéd. Miller and Coors? Good. Budweiser? Bad. Donald Lamb? Very, very good. Veronica Mars? Evil spawn of Satan sent to be a pain in his goddamn side.
Easy. Simple.
Except that line is being crossed as he waits for the paramedics to arrive. Sometimes he forgets exactly how small and tiny and fragile she really is. He can still see the disbelief in those smarmy FBI agents’ eyes as he described her, told them they had to be careful with her. He still remembers that she played them all and that the glow of being right was somewhat lessened with the fact that she played him most of all.
Right now, he doesn’t see the bitch he usually portrays her as.
The sound of gurney wheels being lowered to the ground makes her stiffen against him and he instantly begins hushing her again, even as he meets the eyes of the paramedic who has come up behind her and they both flinch.
He’s seen grown men break under less and maybe he’ll tell her that when she’s not half delirious with agony.
They carefully maneuver her, whimpering and biting down on her cheeks, to the waiting gurney. She lays face down, head cradled in the wedge and arms still raised above her head. In this position, he can see the fight slip away from her, see her begin to lose it.
There’s no reason for him to grasp her fingers and even less for her to grip him back.
“Veronica?” He says it softly, but firmly enough to keep her attention away from the men strapping her down and clinically describing the carnage in front of them. “Did they do anything else? Are you hurt anywhere else?”
Her fingers twitch in his and he hears her swallow.
“My thigh, they… inside my thigh.”
There are two paramedics, one deputy and Lamb and they all frown as they look up. Slowly, one of the paramedics lifts her skirt and they all hiss. There’s a bright green clover tattooed on angry red skin high up on the sensitive flesh.
Fuck.
The Fighting Fitzpatricks really wanted to fight this time. There’s no coming back from it now, even though he knows they already have airtight alibis for the entire night, character witnesses, high priced lawyers and Veronica’s word will mean next to nothing.
“I’m gonna call your dad.” He tells her, his thumb tracing patterns across the back of her hands. “He’ll meet us at the hospital.”
“No!” It’s fear in her voice. “Don’t tell him. Not like this. Please.”
She’s making it really hard to say no and he wonders if this is what everyone else feels right before they become her willing lackeys.
“He has to know, Veronica, he’s going out of his mind already.”
***
She passes out again, falling in and out of consciousness and remembering the strangest things along the way.
They strap her down on the gurney, firm wide belts clipping over the backs of her legs and hips, but they cut the straps of her bra away.
One of the deputies is throwing up in the kitchen sink when they roll her by.
This is the first time she’s ridden in an ambulance with the alarm sounding and that realization surprises her, because given everything that’s ever happened in her life she thinks that should have happened sooner.
They tell her that when they get to the hospital, they’ll give her something for the pain. She thinks she tells them it’s too late, but she’s not sure.
Sunlight is just bleeding into the dark and the air is slightly cool when the ambulance doors open in the Emergency bay.
One of the doctors, a woman with a soft voice and softer hands, recognizes her name, asking if it’s really -that Veronica Mars from the news--.
During all this, Donald Lamb doesn’t let go.
***
He lets go when they finally sedate her and her eyes flutter closed without chance of opening again, her fingers going limp in his.
The curtains whisper blankly as Lamb steps out of the OR and finally looks down to see his gun sticking awkwardly out his holster, not having been placed right, the shoulder of his shirt is torn and wet, and his hands clench of their own accord.
Adrenaline can go fuck itself; he’s never been a fan of the junkie tremors.
There are little half moon indentations in the creases of his fingers, aching and deep, blue in the worst of them, tinged red for the rest. He can feel his blood pulsing through to his fingertips. It matches the ring of dents on his clavicle and he thinks he can feel the echo of teeth.
A loud voice demanding answers to questions makes itself known and he reaches for his back pocket.
“Keith, over here!” He flashes his ID at the security guards, just in case they don’t already know him. “He’s fine, let him through.”
“What happened?” Keith’s face is red and screwed up. “Where is she?”
“Listen.” He says it calmly, evenly, exactly how they’ve all been trained in these situations as he grabs Keith’s shoulders to stop the man speeding through the curtain. “You need to be prepared before you go in there, it’s pretty bad.”
All the color fades as Keith’s eyes drop down to the mess all over his clothes.
“What did they do?”
His mouth opens and closes for a second too long, trying to delay the moment, to come up with the right way to say it. Keith’s eyes bulge with frustration and his shoulders bunch under Lamb’s hands.
“They wish-boned her, Keith.”
It’s one second, a half choked moan that sounds like a growl, and then Keith turns and bashes a fist into the wall. Lamb can practically see the knuckles split as it happens. Keith hisses angry breaths through his teeth and Lamb counts to five before continuing.
“Looks like they hung her up by her wrists and completely dislocated both scapula. That’s the worst of it. They also tattooed a clover on her thigh and there might be some damage to her wrists, various cuts and abrasions all over. They’re assessing the shoulder damage now, but it looks like definite surgery. Steel plates, screws, months of therapy, that sort of thing.”
Nothing more really needs to be said.
Both of them have seen the damage one inmate can do to another, both of them know the viciousness that can be turned from each inmate into a united force against a cop, any cop, but especially the arresting one. It’s a shift, a wave that goes right through Keith, leaving no visible sign except the crinkles that form at the edge of his eyes and mouth.
“Listen to me.” Lamb says firmly. “You need to stay here. Do you hear me? Stay here and focus on her. She’s okay. Leave the rest to me.”
“But…”
“For once in your goddamn life, Keith, let me take care of it.”
They share a look, hard, and he thinks there’s an understanding between them.
“Make it hurt.”
Lamb nods, just once, a quick affirmation as he clicks his tongue inside his mouth. He watches Keith slip in behind the curtain, but doesn’t stay to see or hear anything that follows. There’s not much time and he has a lot of blood to wash from the front of his clothes.
***
end part one, onto part two
Questions? Comments?
Title: Revenge.
Author: Jacqui, wily_one24.
Characters: Veronica, Lamb, ensemble, mentions of L/V.
Rating: Hard R... and not the good kind.
Wordcount: 8,004.
Disclaimer: Not mine, this is why.
Summary: Bad things happen to good people...
Spoilers: Set post 2.22 and pre-season three.
All fic found here
A/N #1: The majority of this was written in the hiatus, before season three, therefor any resemblance or direct contradictions to characters introduced in that season is purely coincidental.
A/N #2: I have no idea how this came about, apparently I just felt the need to randomly torture my favourite character. I wasn't even going to post this, because I see it as little more than a gratutious, irredeemable torture fic, but fickledame convinced me to both finish and post it. So, uh, blame her!
Onto the fic...
*~*~*~*
REVENGE, part one
*~*~*~*
It really is too easy to push right through the front desk and into his office.
Apparently, both Inga and Sacks know not to bother stopping Veronica when she has her resolve face on. Of course, given the looks they give each other as she passes them, all raised eyebrows and half smiles; they might just hate their boss as much as she does.
Almost.
“Okay, I’m here.”
She doesn’t wait for him to speak, just crashes his door open and stands right in front of his desk. In return for such pleasantries, Lamb doesn’t react, he waits a whole twelve seconds before looking up from the file he’s pretending to read, hand twirling a pencil beside his head.
When he does look at her his eyes are highly amused, even if his face is a mask of boredom.
“So I see.”
Veronica rolls her eyes.
“Look, we can do this all day, but I have a shift at the Hut in half an hour, so I’d rather we get this over with quickly.”
His eyes travel up and down slowly and she can just see the curl of his lip when he takes in her work skirt and vest.
“And this is?”
She crosses her wrists in front of her. Not even Blind Freddy would mistake the gesture as submissive or in any way giving him the upper hand.
“I’m turning myself in. You obviously think you have something on me, so I’m just saving you the time of getting your lackeys out there to bring me in. Charge me, so I can prove how much of an ass you are and be on my way to serving coffee and cake.”
He laughs.
“As much as I’m sure there’s several extra curricular activities I could charge you for, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Then he winks, he damn well winks at her and she grits her teeth. “Believe me, when I find something good, I’ll let you know.”
She’s reached the end of her rope.
“You’re having me followed!” At his eyebrows skyrocketing into his receding hairline, she narrows her eyes. “What? You didn’t think I’d be able to spot a couple of undercovers tailing me day and night? What is it this time? Has to be serious for you to spare that kind of department resource.”
“Seriously.” Lamb spreads his hands out, clearly amused at her rant. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
This, she wasn’t expecting, and it kinda takes the wind out of her sails.
“You don’t want to accuse me of anything?”
“You seem disappointed, Veronica.”
She blinks.
“I’m free to go?” Then it dawns on her. “You want me to start my shift then you’re gonna have some deputies arrest me in front of everyone, aren’t you? God, can’t you just…?”
“Veronica?” He steeples his hands in front of his face, eyes glowing with laughter. “I don’t have anything on you. I’m not charging you with anything. And I’m not having you followed.”
Okay, that’s it. She’s had enough, he’s obviously not going to make it easy on her and she’s just stretching out his twisted fun by being here in the first place, letting him get to her like that. Fine, if he wants to play, Veronica can do the same.
“Sure. Yes.” So she nods. “Obviously. Random people always hover around me, watching my every move.”
He sighs, deep, as if he’s truly bothered.
“I have work to do.” Gesturing at the file he hasn’t even bothered to close, he grins. “Real work, not imaginary work from the overactive mind of the likes of you. So, if you don’t mind…”
“Fine.” It’s a huff and it’s childish and she just can’t help it. “But don’t think I can’t evade your tail, deputy.”
She hits the tone of that last word with the scorn it deserves, the kind of scorn Leo never got. And, just because he’s Donald Lamb and he can, he waits until she’s done her little spin, walked over to the door and is just about to stride all the way through it before he coughs.
“Oh, and Veronica?” He smirks when he nods at her. “If I wanted my tail anywhere near you, you wouldn’t be able to evade it.”
She screws up her face, giving him exactly what he wants when she can’t even come up with a half decent reply.
“Ew.”
“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, will you?”
***
The door hasn’t even finished closing when Lamb reaches for the telephone and hits speed dial.
He doesn’t waste time with pleasantries.
“Update?”
“Update?” The voice scratches through, bored and amused. “She’s leaving your office. Right now, as a matter of fact. If you need an…”
Impatience surges through him.
“I’m glad you think this is a laughing matter.”
“Can’t be that bad, can it?” There’s something absolutely infuriating about the voice on the other end, part superiority and part casual. “I mean, hiring outside forces when you’ve got a whole Sheriff’s department at your fingertips?”
If there’s one thing Donald Lamb hates, it’s people who think they know so much, when they obviously know so little. Yeah, he’s well aware of his issues with superiority, he just doesn’t give much of a damn. He doesn’t have to; he’s the goddamn Sheriff.
“You want to get paid? Don’t jerk me around.”
There’s always a trump card somewhere.
“Fine.” And the voice is back to bored again. “She didn’t leave the apartment all morning, except to walk her dog, which took thirty six minutes. Then she got in her car approximately twenty minutes ago and drove to the Sheriff station. Right now, she’s headed to a small café, a drive that takes ten minutes from here, where she’ll probably spend hours serving coffee and pretending she likes it. Then she’s most likely going to go spend a few hours sucking face with the Echolls kid. Then she’s going to go home and do whatever it is teenaged girls do behind their closed doors. You happy?”
“Ecstatic.” He says, the tone of his voice implying anything but.
***
Veronica sighs.
There’s nothing new or particularly interesting about this case. She’s sitting in her car, nursing a thermos of particularly strong coffee. Coffee that she poured straight from the cappuccino machine at work before she left, because if she has to spend several hours sitting outside a seedy hotel waiting for someone to get their jollies and then show their face, she deserves to have something that doesn’t taste like dirty dishwater, thank you very much.
She waits and she sighs and she wishes there was something, anything that set this case aside from the multitude of all their other sordid and tawdry divorce slash cheating slash impulse control problem cases. It’s just another downtrodden wife with suspicions of her low life husband spending his halfhearted affections on somebody else.
If these guys were to smile at their spouses every now and again, maybe lash out on a bouquet of flowers, then the women would be far less likely to suspect foul play. But they would always cheat and they would always fall short.
Life is like that.
Behind her Backup begins to growl, because even though she’s still taking cases her father doesn’t know about and wouldn’t approve of if he did, she’s still cautious. It’s a deep rumbling in the back of his throat that makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
“What is it, boy?”
Her neck strains as she looks in the rearview, eye scouring the landscape. She sees nothing. Another brief search of the street ahead of her provides nothing as well. As far as she knows, she and her car are alone. And she should know, she spent a great deal of effort evading the two hacks sitting in their car across from the apartment complex. As if she wouldn’t be able to trace them back to Lamb with a few quick strikes of the keyboard on her laptop.
Backup doesn’t let up, though, his growling getting louder and more insistent.
“Backup, chill.”
He doesn’t.
It makes her fingers tremble as she snaps the lens back on her camera and shoves it across to the seat next to her. She hates the way even her elbows seem to shake and her chest tightens. There is nobody near the car, not that she can see, but she knows from experience that the unseen is always worse.
Her fear scares her.
“Who’s there?”
Never show fear. That’s the first rule. And she’s totally breaking it as her voice rattles in her throat, breaking on the first syllable, as she quickly winds the window up. Cranking the handle as if it’s a lifesaver. She should have brought Logan, even if he spent the entire night bitching about boredom or making lewd comments and tracing his fingers in wrongbutohsoveryright places that drive them both crazy by the end of it.
Her other hand reaches for her bag, two words echoing through her head; taser and phone.
A short, sharp yelp escapes her throat when Backup’s growl suddenly turns to a bark.
“Dammit. Quit it.” She drops the handle on her bag and tries to fumble at the keys in the ignition instead. “There’s nobody…”
Her words are cut off as the window next to her explodes, shards of glass scratching at her face and arms as she raises them to protect herself. A scream escapes her lips as she feels hands reach in and grab her forearms.
Backup’s barks become loud and grating, infused with threat and helplessness in the backseat.
Her whole body goes stiff, resistant, as she’s pulled from the car.
She sees and feels everything in slow motion. The tall, black clad figure that’s stronger than her, clutching at her arms and dragging her from the window, the ragged shards of glass tearing at her abdomen, the second dark clad figure holding a trash can lid against the back window, preventing Backup from breaking the glass like he’s so desperately trying to do.
Her legs twist around the head of her seat, a last ditch attempt to keep them from getting her. One of the hands lets her left wrist go to dig at her hip, trying to free her. She flails at it, her hand scrambling down her body, trying to break his grasp on her, slipping in the blood that wells in the gashes there.
Her screams turn into desperate rasps in her throat.
She can’t stop struggling, flailing, twisting, screaming. Anything, just trying to get away. There are too many images in her head of who and how and exactly how much she doesn’t want this to happen. They can’t be Lamb’s men, because he’s a prick and an ass and the biggest thorn in her side now that all the other contenders are dead, but he wouldn’t do this. He wouldn’t have her attacked like this.
The hand digging into her hip suddenly grabs her own flailing, clawing hand and tosses it aside. She grabs at the first thing she can and feels the cold glass of the windscreen as she hears the sound of cloth and foam and the tearing of the head of her seat between her knees.
Eventually the pressure is too much, fingers twisting too painfully as they move from her hip to the top corner of her thigh, and her legs let go. She’s pulled from the car and an elbow hits the side of her face. It shuts her up instantly as she reels from it, gasping, doubling over.
A dark sack falls over her head, covering her, and everything goes black.
She can taste the drug they’ve laced the cloth with.
***
He’s tired.
It’s one am and he’s tired and he should be in bed, but no. He’s also restless and awake and driving around for no good reason other than to blink wearily at the side streets. There’s nothing happening, of course there’s nothing happening, this is his town and he likes to stay ahead. That’s why he’s here, to make sure nothing is happening. There’s also a strip joint five blocks up and they have the best girls
At least, that’s what he tells himself, it has nothing to do with the fact the tensions that ratchet up his spine the longer things stay quiet.
Not at all.
Lamb is a simple man. He gets up, he goes to work, he comes home, and he occasionally likes to see some half naked women grinding against a pole. The fact that his job makes him Sheriff of Balboa County and gives him power he could only otherwise dream about in his warm wet ones, well, that’s just gravy, isn’t it?
He sees a familiar black LeBaron parked to the side of the street up ahead.
Although, a man could get lucky if he plays his cards right, and Lamb hesitates for just a second to scan the rest of the street. He can’t see the car following her, but that’s the whole point, right?
This late at night, he could write Veronica up for any number of charges. He’s got a long standing dream of catching her in the middle of playing sleuth, dressed in the skimpy costumes he’s seen her wear, and writing her up for solicitation.
The charges wouldn’t stick, of course, but it would be funny as fuck to watch her fume while he does it.
He smiles lazily as he pulls the car to a stop and idly puts the flashing red cherry on the roof. The red swings all around the road, highlighting her car at regular intervals. If only this had happened months ago. He can just about see the flush of humiliation climbing her cheeks if that lawyer had asked her if she’d ever been picked up for charges of solicitation as she sat in front of a courtroom. In front of everyone. In front of her father.
Luck is not his lady tonight, not that she ever is, in fact he has strong suspicions that Luck has long since stopped being a lady and now turns tricks for whoever has the biggest wad of cash.
The driver’s side window is smashed in and he can see blood on the windscreen. Not to mention the large, completely rabid dog that charges him as he approaches. Fuck. There is also, he notes again as he scans the surrounding street again, no car trailing hers at a safe distance. He grabs his phone and doesn’t even bother lying to himself about why he has that number programmed into his cell.
“Hello?”
The voice is, understandably, groggy and slurred with sleep.
“Keith, I need you to not ask questions and come get your dog.”
“What? Who is this?” The slur is slowly fading away into confusion. “Donald? Donald Lamb?”
“Yes, now come calm your dog the fuck down.”
Surely the man can hear the snapping and the growling through the phone.
“Backup?” And he can hear the sudden snap to clarity. “Where’s Veronica? What happened to Veronica?”
“Keith.” He bites his lip. “Can’t you just do what I say for once? Just once? I’ll explain when you get here, but I need you to get your goddamned dog before I call Animal Control and they deal with it.”
It’s a few seconds of giving the address before Lamb punches down on the end call button with his thumb and immediately dials another number.
“Hello?”
Goddamned fuck. This voice is slow and hazy with sleep, too.
“Aren’t you supposed to be tailing the Mars family?”
“Uh, yeah.” And the snap to awake happens sooner this time than it did with Keith. “We are. We’re parked outside the apartment right now. There hasn’t been any movement in hours… oh, I think that’s the father now… you’re good.”
“You’re fired.” Lamb snarls. “You’re fucking fired.”
He snaps the cell closed with a vicious click. Maybe Veronica is right when she looks at him with that smug grin; maybe he and his entire team are useless as fuck.
***
It’s not a slow awakening.
Veronica comes to and finds herself stumbling, her feet falling over each other as hands clutching hard underneath her armpits and at her shoulders drag her. There are at least two of them and she’s still in the dark, dank hood. Her mouth opens and her back twists.
A foot slides underneath hers, uncompromising and firm as she stumbles into them, allowing them to keep dragging her forward.
She doesn’t stop struggling.
“This is her?”
Veronica stops cold at the voice. She doesn’t know it, she’s never heard it before, but she knows where she is. And she knows the most likely candidates that have her. She knows why she didn’t have a chance in hell of escaping before.
The voice has an Irish accent.
“This little cheerleader is the one you were talking about?”
“Don’t underestimate her, Cor, she’s learned a lot from her old man.”
Yup, that’s definitely Liam Fitzpatrick on her right.
“She’s kinda hot, too.”
And Danny Boyd to her left. Veronica hates being right.
“Well then,” The other voice comes closer, “let’s take a look.”
The hands at her arms don’t let go, but the hood is drawn from her head and Veronica has to blink several times in the light before she finds herself staring into the face of someone unmistakably related to the biggest crime family in Neptune.
Oh, shit.
***
Lamb hears the over-revving of the car before he sees it turn the corner. He knows who it is.
Keith doesn’t even bother parking, stopping the car in the middle of the road as he barges out. Lamb sees the odd mixture of sleep pants and tee shirt, covered with a jacket and topped off with old sneakers. He doubts even Keith knows what he’s wearing.
“Where is she?” There’s a fire in Keith’s eyes that Lamb knows. “Where’s Veronica?”
He gestures to her abandoned car further up.
“For all I know she’s in the goddamn trunk, but I can’t get close enough to check. Call your dog off.”
As Keith walks towards the LeBaron, calling for the dog gently, Lamb knows the exact second he sees the broken glass and the bloody handprint on the windscreen. There’s no way in hell she’s in the trunk and if she is, it’s not going to be good.
He watches as Keith kneels on the ground, running his hands over the dog. The mutt is trembling, quivering with fear and anger and he’s stopped barking, but the growls still sound low and deep from his throat. When he’s sure that Keith has a good enough grip, Lamb walks over to the car quickly.
“Why are you here?” Keith calls over, voice already alert and analyzing. “Why aren’t there other squad cars here? You should call for support.”
“Because.” Lamb taps the trunk and he knows it’s going to be empty, but his chest still sinks a little as it sounds hollow and there’s no response. His eyes scan the interior, trying to figure out the hows and whys of it. “I already know who’s got her.”
“What?” There’s anger bristling under that question and Lamb prepares himself for the onslaught. “What do you mean you know?”
He doesn’t waste time, standing up straighter and flipping open his cell. It’s times like this he misses the shoulder walkie on his uniform.
“Cormac Fitzpatrick was released two days ago.” He dials the switchboard and his eyes meet Keith’s. “Word is he’s got a hard on for you.”
***
“What…?” Veronica can’t stop the plea in her voice. Yeah, never show fear, right. “What do you want?”
“What do I want?” His neck and arms are covered in tattoos and it’s not nearly as endearing on him as it is on Weevil as he pretends to seriously think about that and watches her with eyes glinting with amusement and threat. It makes the salt flow past her teeth and over her tongue. “I think I want the last twelve years of my life back.”
He pushes his face right into hers, nose-to-nose, mouth to mouth and eyes to eyes. He doesn’t hate her; he doesn’t feel anything for her besides what a cat feels for the mouse before he tears it to shreds. She thinks she’d rather see burning passion there.
“Think your daddy can give it back?”
It slams into her, her father’s voice calmly reading Kendall’s emails out. Prisoner 246219, San Quentin, Cormac Fitzpatrick, Liam’s older brother and patriarch of the Fitzpatrick clan. She’d wondered how he’d known that from just the prisoner number, but now she knows.
His breath smells of mint and she wonders if it’s going to take four and half weeks until she can brush her teeth without gagging again. The same amount of time it took before she could look at an open flame without clawing at her throat.
Thirty-two days and five hours, actually, she timed herself.
“So, you’re the Sheriff’s little daughter?” He steps back, thankfully, and Veronica takes a breath. “You know, my brother in law here, Danny, is right. You grew up nice.”
Veronica stops breathing at the appreciative tone in his voice.
“They bloodied you up a little.” His hand comes forward and his finger traces a line down the side of her face, she can feel the swelling already and knows she’s going to have a hell of a bruise. “A lot actually.”
Her stomach muscles contract, pulling in and away when his hand travels down to play with the shreds of her work shirt, the vest having been discarded long ago in the car. Her teeth close in hard on her bottom lip when he pulls it apart, buttons flying. The sleeves hang around her shoulders, but the skin of her chest and abdomen are bared.
Danny is holding her left arm tightly, but impersonal, he’s just getting the job done. It’s Liam whose fingers dig in the most cruelly. Pinching the tendons under her right arm and jerking her to keep her still when she tries to struggle. She hasn’t forgotten the feeling of his hand around her throat and the knowledge that he would have pressed harder if she’d given him reason.
Cormac’s hands have been gentle with her, personal in a way the other two haven’t, and it’s him she’s most terrified of.
“No.” She finds her voice and hates it all in the same second, hates the crack and the weakness and the plea. “Please, no.”
“No?” His eyes glitter at her meanly as he steps even further back. She can feel the terror, inching up her spine each vertebrae at a time, popping up a notch or twelve when he pulls handcuffs from his pocket. “I don’t believe I was giving you a choice.”
One tilt of his head spurs the others into action and she’s brought forward again, pushed several feet further into the darkness. The windows are small and high, she can’t help scanning the room and she thinks they’re underground.
Backup couldn’t fit through the glass in those windows, let alone her.
“Please.” She begs again, even as her right hand is forced forward and she feels the cold metal close around her wrist. “Please, stop.”
Danny chuckles next to her, the sounds of it sliding down her back with drops of sweat.
“This’ll go a whole lot easier if you save your throat.” Cormac winks at her as he reaches for her left hand. “You’ll need that later.”
It’s sudden, the way he closes his fingers around her elbows and jerks them up. Her shoulders wrench as he stretches her hands up above her head, the skin burning with irregular movement. His body is hard as the arch of her spine presses her front into him. She can’t help the snap of her head back and immediately she sees the hook.
“When I have you screaming.” Cormac finishes with more than a little relish.
All hands fall away and she’s left dangling.
“Please let me go.” There are tears in her eyes as she twists, tugging at the bonds. All it does is grate at the skin of her wrists, pulling against the bones painfully. “Please, I’ll do anything.”
“Well, now.” Cormac eyes her carefully, cupping his chin thoughtfully in one hand. “Isn’t that interesting?”
He’s backed himself against a wall and she watches him reach across to a small control. The red button, she realizes, is connected to the chain above her and it slowly stretches her up. Her whole body arches as she struggles to remain in contact with the ground.
Eventually, she’s left with her toes scrabbling for purchase and her shoulders screaming for release.
“Liam, gag her, she’s getting too loud already.”
***
“No.” Lamb spins around and takes a deep breath, spreading his chest out and drawing himself up to his full height. “Are you listening to me? No.”
Keith doesn’t back down.
“For god’s sake, Keith, get back in your car with your dog, drive home and wait until I call you.”
“I’m coming with you.”
He seethes for just a second, before he remembers this isn’t a bitch fight to see who has the biggest balls.
“Look, I’ll get her back and when I do, she’s going to want to curl up with fluffy slippers and hot chocolate and everything else teen girls love, with her dog and more than likely you.” He can see the truth of it seep into Keith’s eyes. “They want you there, that’s the whole point. If you walk in, I can’t protect you as well. That’s not what she needs.”
It’s a low down dirty thing to use Veronica to keep him leashed at this point and if Donald Lamb had a conscience at all, he might feel bad about doing it.
He doesn’t, so that works out nicely.
***
She’s expecting a cloth gag, a rag as dank as the hood that was over her head, a man’s tie or a woman’s scarf, something soft to block her tongue from working properly. She only gets the last bit right. Liam grasps her chin between his thumb and fingers and forces her mouth open, shoving a small rubber ball between her teeth. The whole contraption clips shut behind her head and she can’t even move her jaw up and down.
She feels like she’s going to swallow her tongue.
Her nostrils burn with the sudden need to pull oxygen inside her lungs.
“They said you were a fiery one, Veronica Mars.” Cormac steps back into her line of sight from somewhere off to the side. “It kinda makes me wanna see how much.”
He’s teasing her, trying to push her further and she doesn’t know into what. She’s already begged and the tears are still flowing. She can’t even scream past the taste of rubber. All she can do is whimper as he reaches out and traces the tip of his finger down the side of her arm.
“I’ve been locked away with nobody but men for company for twelve years.” He whispers it, hot and sweaty in her ear. “I can’t tell you how incredibly frustrating that is.”
Her eyes snap shut as she trembles against the hand playing with the rags of a shirt still hanging from her shoulders. The toe of her right shoe twitches against the floor and she can feel it pull all the way through her shoulders and up to her wrists.
His hand closes on the tight scrunch of muscles at the back of her neck.
“Open your eyes, Veronica.”
He squeezes and it makes her whimper as she hurries to obey. To the side, she can see Liam watching with detached interest and Danny as he licks his bottom lip. The fingers at the back of her neck close, one by one, over the collar of her shirt.
The remains of her shirt are torn suddenly and the scream rising in the back of her throat sounds like nothing more than a muffled groan as the pain of her wrenched joints sears through her body.
“A man could get very desperate after twelve years, don’t you think?”
She’s got nothing left but her bra, her skirt, stockings and sensible flat-soled shoes. Cormac stands next to her, just barely touching her skin, and she can feel the tight muscles of jail yard weights in the heat that pours off him.
If she turns her head, she could see him, but she won’t give him that as she stares straight ahead.
“And you?” She feels her scalp prickle when he begins playing with her hair, picking strands of it up and pulling lightly. “You’re just a little doll, aren’t you?”
Breathe in, her brain screams at her desperately, and don’t forget to breathe out. Breathe in, swallow, don’t scream, and breathe out. Breathe in, Veronica; don’t think about the metal that bites into your thumb joint when you squeeze your fingers into fists, don’t scream, and don’t forget to breathe out.
--Daddy, please save me this time, please…--
“I wouldn’t worry, though.” Cormac’s voice comes thick and heavy and fetid against her ear as his hand flattens itself on her shoulder blade. There’s something vaguely threatening about the way it sits there, hovering over her skin and the thin white strap of her bra. “As desperate as a man gets, I still like my women willing.”
Her body jerks away from him by instinct and she groans at the added pain.
“Don’t worry, little girl. I’m not going to hurt you like that.” His other hand comes to rest flat just below her collarbone. He’s sandwiched her between his hands, front to back, and there’s an edge to his voice that makes her want to close her eyes and run. “A man learns a lot of different ways to hurt people in jail.”
She hears and feels the sudden crack.
Veronica’s knees give out and not even the ball gag can stop her screaming.
***
The River Stix is too damn obvious, but he’d been hoping.
So Lamb takes his dejection to a few places. Places that just aren’t listed in Miss Minchin’s ‘Proper Guide to Policing A Community’. Hell, he’s fairly sure not even Keith knows about some of them. The wad of bills and greasy slick smile still work if he doesn’t have a uniform. Just like anywhere else in the world: the lie has to be sweet and the wad has to be big.
Eye wateringly, nut crunching big.
A piece of paper is slipped into his palm; sticky and folded so often it’s barely even tissue anymore. He waits until he’s out of the bar, back in his car and several blocks away before he even looks. His eyes squint as he reads the address.
He really hopes she’s still alive for the amount of money he just forked over.
***
They’ve lowered the chain so that her feet can rest flat on the floor and she’s stopped silently begging for her father to break through.
Veronica can’t even struggle anymore, she trembles as she tries to stand as still as she possibly can. Each and every movement is agony and she finds herself wishing for the simplicity of a trapped, fiery death. Or the quick fall off the top of a building. Anything.
Anything but the burning all along her entire back.
Her breaths come in labored pants now, hard and fast, puffed through nostrils she’s sure are going to be red and swollen with effort. If she makes it out of here, her traitorous brain supplies.
“I’ve got one last message for your daddy, think you can give it to him?”
She doesn’t answer, because she knows he doesn’t really care. The words should give her hope, a brief flickering; an assurance that she will make it out. But she doesn’t think it’s going to be that easy. It’s not as if they’ve gone to all this trouble to ensure she passes a love note across town.
The hand that pushes her skirt up makes her think that he’s a liar.
“Liam tells me you ran out on him a few months back, just when you were having fun. Is that true? Because, if so, that was very rude.”
That’s when she hears the buzzing and fresh tears pour out of her eyes.
--Don’t move, Veronica, don’t you dare move.--
It burns.
***
The place is deserted when he kicks the door in.
Dark and empty, not even dust bunnies blow across the floorboards. Lamb swears, instantly convinced that he’s got the wrong address. That he’s been screwed royally, in more ways than one. Three other late night officers begin to crawl over the place.
The gun lowers as he walks from room to room, his forearms aching from keeping it steady.
But it’s not the wrong address; he feels it in his gut as his eyes fall on the door leading down to the basement. His hand scratches at the wall as he slowly takes the steps, finding the light switch easily and flicking it. It’s an empty room, abandoned. There’s nobody left.
Except the girl strung up by her wrists.
“Shit, Veronica!”
She twitches when he gets close and he takes it as a good sign that she’s still alive.
“Are you okay?” The look she gives him when he rounds to her front tells him that she’s most likely going to live and he has to agree that it really is one of the more stupid questions he’s ever asked in his entire life. Then he sees the gushing track marks down her face, the tension across her features and the gag in her mouth. “Fuck, okay, hang on.”
His gun nestles easily into the holster as he takes his keys out of his pocket. The Mars family aren’t the only ones who know how to pick locks. As he steps closer, her eyes widen and she shakes her head. Not much, but softly, slightly, enough for him to notice.
“Just relax, okay?” The frightened look in her eyes makes him nervous. “I’m just going to get you down.”
She doesn’t settle, her face getting tighter and her eyes getting louder. He hears some of the most gut wrenchingly awful sounds that he thinks are pleas coming from her throat.
“Veronica, it’s me.” And he’s not stupid, he knows that he’s nowhere near the top of her list of favorite people. He’s fairly certain she has a whole separate list just for him and there’s nothing favorite about it. But she has to realize that he’s not the fucker that did this. “It’s Donald Lamb. I’m here to help, okay? I can’t get you out if I don’t get those cuffs off.”
The sounds in her throat become a screech when he reaches up to examine the locks.
He’s standing in front of her, he can’t help it, and if he wants to get a good look at the cuffs he’s going to have to keep pressing closer. Her face reaches his chest and for a second he thinks she’s going to relax against him.
He doesn’t expect her knee in his groin.
“Fuck, Veronica!” White-hot pain shoots up to his kidney and he doubles over, hands coming to grasp at the sudden pain radiating up from between his legs. And he tries not to hear the sound of a scream trying to push out of her mouth. “I’m trying to help!”
But her eyes keep pleading him, begging him for something.
“Okay, okay, hang on.” The steps he takes to return to her are slower and more cautious. “Don’t hit me again, I’m going to take the gag out. Okay? You’re okay with that?”
This seems to calm her and she stays still, her only movement the heaving of her breaths coming in spurts. His fingers inch along the taut band of elastic stretched around her jaw to the back of her head, quickly finding the clasp and releasing it.
The ball comes out of her mouth wet and slimy and she gasps, big deep breaths.
“My back… my back…” It’s all she can manage as she pants, gulping down air. He tries not to hear the scratched, drawn out sound of her voice. “My back… my…”
A slightly sick feeling enters his stomach when he walks around her in a circle.
“Oh, jesusfuck.”
He doesn’t even know how he gets the cell open and to his ear so quickly, but he’s shouting at the paramedics, telling them they should have been here five minutes ago if they want to keep their jobs and also to bring a face wedge while they’re at it. Then he calls over his shoulder at the men upstairs.
“She’s down here!”
***
Veronica is going to cry again, she knows it, in the bone weary way she finally lets herself believe that it’s over. Even if she has to be rescued by none other than Donald Lamb. At this point she wouldn’t care if Aaron Echolls rose from the dead and came to find her, as long as he got her out.
Everything hurts too much to care about the particulars.
“The paramedics are on their way.” And she’s not used to this side of him, the side that newspaper photographers and little children get to see just before Election Day; soft and caring and actually doing his job. “But I’m still going to have to take those cuffs off.”
She doesn’t want to cry in front of him, but she doesn’t have a choice.
“No!” It falls out of her mouth without her permission. “God, no, please. Please, please, please…”
“Veronica.” He doesn’t touch her again, just moves until his face is directly in front of hers. “I’m not going to lie, it’s going to hurt, but we need to get you down.”
She’s hated those cheap blue eyes for as long as she can remember, but right now she’s more than grateful for them as he holds her attention. She doesn’t want to focus on the footsteps behind her, the comments and exclamations of voices she barely recognizes as night shift deputies. She really doesn’t want to focus on his hands rising up to her wrists again.
“Don’t kick me again.” He tries to make his voice light, but she can hear the stretch of his vocal chords. “But I have a plan.”
Veronica closes her eyes when he steps forward again, pressing right into her. He shifts then, crouching just a little so that his knees bow forward and she ends up falling just a little bit forward.
“Lean on me, okay?” His voice is serious and calm and she finds herself wishing that he’d make some wiseass remark. “When I release you, keep your arms up, lean them on me.”
In the time between Cormac, Liam and Danny leaving and Lamb charging down the staircase, Veronica’s fairly sure she blacked out, she has no idea how long she’s been hanging there, unable to move. Her arms have become dead weights that ache and throb.
Her hands are puffy and dead, swollen, and she can feel the bite of metal as it scratches her release at the bony joints of her wrists, feels the wetness of blood welling there. She doesn’t know exactly what they did back there, but her back and shoulders scream in agony and she knows she can’t move her arms even if she tried.
It would be a relief to finally get the weight off her ankles and knees if it didn’t make the pain triple and spread like wildfire through her blood and to each nerve ending. There’s no other choice but to bury her face into Lamb’s shirt and bite down hard.
He grunts a little.
“I’ve got you.” It comes as a whisper in her ear and it surprises her a little. “You’re doing good.”
She doesn’t want it to be him, holding her up, making sure her arms stay above her head, not moving. She doesn’t want it to be him letting her lean, holding her with care. It makes her sob. And she doesn’t want him to see that, either.
***
He’s a simple man. He likes to keep things easy, draw a line and stick to it. Sausage and egg for breakfast? Good. Bacon? Bad; too clichéd. Miller and Coors? Good. Budweiser? Bad. Donald Lamb? Very, very good. Veronica Mars? Evil spawn of Satan sent to be a pain in his goddamn side.
Easy. Simple.
Except that line is being crossed as he waits for the paramedics to arrive. Sometimes he forgets exactly how small and tiny and fragile she really is. He can still see the disbelief in those smarmy FBI agents’ eyes as he described her, told them they had to be careful with her. He still remembers that she played them all and that the glow of being right was somewhat lessened with the fact that she played him most of all.
Right now, he doesn’t see the bitch he usually portrays her as.
The sound of gurney wheels being lowered to the ground makes her stiffen against him and he instantly begins hushing her again, even as he meets the eyes of the paramedic who has come up behind her and they both flinch.
He’s seen grown men break under less and maybe he’ll tell her that when she’s not half delirious with agony.
They carefully maneuver her, whimpering and biting down on her cheeks, to the waiting gurney. She lays face down, head cradled in the wedge and arms still raised above her head. In this position, he can see the fight slip away from her, see her begin to lose it.
There’s no reason for him to grasp her fingers and even less for her to grip him back.
“Veronica?” He says it softly, but firmly enough to keep her attention away from the men strapping her down and clinically describing the carnage in front of them. “Did they do anything else? Are you hurt anywhere else?”
Her fingers twitch in his and he hears her swallow.
“My thigh, they… inside my thigh.”
There are two paramedics, one deputy and Lamb and they all frown as they look up. Slowly, one of the paramedics lifts her skirt and they all hiss. There’s a bright green clover tattooed on angry red skin high up on the sensitive flesh.
Fuck.
The Fighting Fitzpatricks really wanted to fight this time. There’s no coming back from it now, even though he knows they already have airtight alibis for the entire night, character witnesses, high priced lawyers and Veronica’s word will mean next to nothing.
“I’m gonna call your dad.” He tells her, his thumb tracing patterns across the back of her hands. “He’ll meet us at the hospital.”
“No!” It’s fear in her voice. “Don’t tell him. Not like this. Please.”
She’s making it really hard to say no and he wonders if this is what everyone else feels right before they become her willing lackeys.
“He has to know, Veronica, he’s going out of his mind already.”
***
She passes out again, falling in and out of consciousness and remembering the strangest things along the way.
They strap her down on the gurney, firm wide belts clipping over the backs of her legs and hips, but they cut the straps of her bra away.
One of the deputies is throwing up in the kitchen sink when they roll her by.
This is the first time she’s ridden in an ambulance with the alarm sounding and that realization surprises her, because given everything that’s ever happened in her life she thinks that should have happened sooner.
They tell her that when they get to the hospital, they’ll give her something for the pain. She thinks she tells them it’s too late, but she’s not sure.
Sunlight is just bleeding into the dark and the air is slightly cool when the ambulance doors open in the Emergency bay.
One of the doctors, a woman with a soft voice and softer hands, recognizes her name, asking if it’s really -that Veronica Mars from the news--.
During all this, Donald Lamb doesn’t let go.
***
He lets go when they finally sedate her and her eyes flutter closed without chance of opening again, her fingers going limp in his.
The curtains whisper blankly as Lamb steps out of the OR and finally looks down to see his gun sticking awkwardly out his holster, not having been placed right, the shoulder of his shirt is torn and wet, and his hands clench of their own accord.
Adrenaline can go fuck itself; he’s never been a fan of the junkie tremors.
There are little half moon indentations in the creases of his fingers, aching and deep, blue in the worst of them, tinged red for the rest. He can feel his blood pulsing through to his fingertips. It matches the ring of dents on his clavicle and he thinks he can feel the echo of teeth.
A loud voice demanding answers to questions makes itself known and he reaches for his back pocket.
“Keith, over here!” He flashes his ID at the security guards, just in case they don’t already know him. “He’s fine, let him through.”
“What happened?” Keith’s face is red and screwed up. “Where is she?”
“Listen.” He says it calmly, evenly, exactly how they’ve all been trained in these situations as he grabs Keith’s shoulders to stop the man speeding through the curtain. “You need to be prepared before you go in there, it’s pretty bad.”
All the color fades as Keith’s eyes drop down to the mess all over his clothes.
“What did they do?”
His mouth opens and closes for a second too long, trying to delay the moment, to come up with the right way to say it. Keith’s eyes bulge with frustration and his shoulders bunch under Lamb’s hands.
“They wish-boned her, Keith.”
It’s one second, a half choked moan that sounds like a growl, and then Keith turns and bashes a fist into the wall. Lamb can practically see the knuckles split as it happens. Keith hisses angry breaths through his teeth and Lamb counts to five before continuing.
“Looks like they hung her up by her wrists and completely dislocated both scapula. That’s the worst of it. They also tattooed a clover on her thigh and there might be some damage to her wrists, various cuts and abrasions all over. They’re assessing the shoulder damage now, but it looks like definite surgery. Steel plates, screws, months of therapy, that sort of thing.”
Nothing more really needs to be said.
Both of them have seen the damage one inmate can do to another, both of them know the viciousness that can be turned from each inmate into a united force against a cop, any cop, but especially the arresting one. It’s a shift, a wave that goes right through Keith, leaving no visible sign except the crinkles that form at the edge of his eyes and mouth.
“Listen to me.” Lamb says firmly. “You need to stay here. Do you hear me? Stay here and focus on her. She’s okay. Leave the rest to me.”
“But…”
“For once in your goddamn life, Keith, let me take care of it.”
They share a look, hard, and he thinks there’s an understanding between them.
“Make it hurt.”
Lamb nods, just once, a quick affirmation as he clicks his tongue inside his mouth. He watches Keith slip in behind the curtain, but doesn’t stay to see or hear anything that follows. There’s not much time and he has a lot of blood to wash from the front of his clothes.
***
end part one, onto part two
Questions? Comments?