The Lies He Spoke

FORTY TWO

OLIVIA 

Olivia came to with a splitting headache. The back of her head ached. Her cheek was against something very cold. It was dim.

What was she doing? She tried to roll over and a stabbing pain shot down her neck.

The Sons of Solomon.

She opened her eyes again. Hadn't she and Logan been at the bar? Where was she?

She painstakingly put her elbow underneath her and pushed herself into a sitting position, her shoulders and head screaming in protest. When she put a hand to the back of her head, it hurt something awful and her hair felt matted and crusted over with something she hoped wasn't her own blood.

The room she was in had a small window in the corner near the ceiling where some dim light filtered in through. Besides that, it was dark.

"Oh no." Olivia spotted a dark shape a few feet away from her, crumpled up on the floor. She recognized the clothes and slowly crawled over, wary of her pounding headache.

"Logan? Are you awake?"

He didn't move. Olivia swallowed her rising panic and put her hand on his shoulder. She shook him not very gently. "Logan!" she hissed. "Wake up!"

What if he didn't wake up? What if she was just stuck in this room all by herself with her unconscious brother? No, no, no. That was not happening. She shook him harder.

"Logan, wake up right now!" she said, and that finally elicited a small groan from him, which wasn't much louder than a breath but put her nerves at ease.

She released his arm because she knew he hated being touched when he was unable to move and sat back. "Are you okay?"

Another groan. Olivia took that as a yes because she didn't want it to be a no.

While Logan slowly tried to sit up, Olivia found the backpack she had been wearing in the corner of the room that she had been laying in. A quick look through revealed that they had rifled through the contents of her bag and taken her phone and her pens and the fork she had accidentally left in there last week and kept meaning to take out at home.

But Logan's razors that she had wrapped in a plastic bag and hid in an extra pair of socks that she had then hid in a pocket that lined the inside of the laptop sleeve of her bag were still there, as were her stupid tights.

One out of two things. That wasn't too bad.

"Are you okay?" Logan murmured, gingerly touching a large welt across his forehead. "Fuck, I knew I shouldn't have brought you."

"I'm fine. And if you hadn't, I would be so scared at home."

"Well congratulations. Now you're scared in a random-ass place that probably isn't supposed to exist."

"I'd rather be scared here with you than at home by myself."

"We're in some gangbanger's hideout for fuck's sake." Logan let out a painful sigh and stood up, slowly stretching out his arms and legs. He walked to the far wall and tried the steel door handle, which didn't budge.

"There's a grate," Olivia said, pointing up at the ceiling, where what looked like a large industrial air duct was covered by a cover in the ceiling. The only problem was, the ceiling was at least ten feet high.

Logan covered his face with both hands and groaned. "This is so stupid. What are we doing here?"

One minute they had been sitting outside the parking lot of the bar, and Olivia was glad she was sitting with Logan and had told him that he meant a great deal to her and he was a good brother. And now they were in a cold concrete room that had almost no light where they would inevitably be brought to someone at the Sons of Solomon and probably hurt.