Mess With Them, You Mess With Us (Chenford, Wopez ,Marper)

Part 5 - Bargaining

Wesley regained consciousness first, slowly lifting his head up and looking around him. Lucy and James were both out cold, either side of him. Lucy had a noticeable bruise, turning purple, across her face and eye, as well as the cut on her neck which had now stopped bleeding and left a small trail of dried blood across her white top and down her chest. She also had cuts and bruises on her wrists from the zip ties, the men had tied hers much tighter than his and James'. She had really been through it. She had clearly fought them much harder than they had, and he immediately felt guilty about that. His fear had paralysed him, and he went willingly, without a fight. And here Lucy was, covered in injuries, and she had also been the only one to try and buy them time by talking her way through it. That was his lane; he needed to step up now. He took a slow, deep breath, and started to think. The men weren't in the room, it was mostly complete darkness and absolutely freezing, but there was a small plug-in lamp in the corner of the room, shedding a small amount of light on them. They could be seen, but none of the other areas or rooms in the warehouse were visible. He thought back to Lucy's first kidnapping, and the tactics both Lucy and Caleb had used. They might be able to second-guess these kidnappers' decisions, and find some way of getting out of there. If this was anything like the first one, the warehouse would be surrounded by acres and acres of wilderness or desert; these people never selected heavily occupied areas to hold hostages. If they managed to break free of the restraints somehow and run, there would be nowhere to shelter themselves from the bullets which would be inevitably fired at them. There was probably also a trip-wire around the perimeter now, as there had been at Rosalind's uncle's cabin. He blinked hard and thought back to his experience in the car, roughly how long the journey was, anything at all he could hear, and a realisation struck him. He heard the sound of a train, not long before they stopped. That meant, there was a set of train tracks somewhere near here; if they could find it, they might be able to shield themselves from injury, and jump on a train to escape. The main problem was, he had no idea what direction the tracks were in, how often a train would even be running, hell, he didn't even know how long he had been there or what time it was. He had been unconscious for an unknown amount of time. His thoughts were suddenly cut off by the sound of footsteps approaching.

"Morning blondie, how was your little nap?" One of the men joked, sarcastically. In reality, he had been unconscious for about 2 hours but he had no idea. Wesley didn't respond to their question. "Just you awake, huh. Would you say you're the alpha of this little entourage? I thought it was Little Miss Mind Games over here, but she's still out cold, clearly not as tough as she pretends to be. Maybe we should put that to the test..." the man continued, walking over to Lucy, kneeling down beside her, inches from her face, and tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear, smirking.

"Look, are you gonna tell us- me, what your plan is? How is hurting us, gonna affect Angela, Tim and Nyla if they have no idea we're even here? Plus, there's other things you're risking by carrying out this plan..." Wesley responded, trailing off at the end.

"And what would that be, blondie? I'd make your explanation quick, because if you don't, I'm gonna slit your little friend's throat." The man replied, with a sadistic chuckle. He pulled out the same blood-stained switch blade he used to cut Lucy's neck earlier on, as proof he wasn't bluffing.

Wesley took a deep breath. This was his one opportunity to save Lucy's life, and if he messed this up, he would never forgive himself. "Look, both me and my wife have personal beef with Elijah Stone, he has expressed on multiple occasions that he wants to be the one to personally kill both of us because of what we've done to him. At this moment, he is the heaviest hitter in both the drug and gun trade. You, just having been released from prison, are gonna be wanting to get back in the game, I would imagine. If you kill me here, Elijah is not gonna take too kindly to that; he knows everything about everyone, and I'm willing to bet he'll block you himself as an act of revenge. He doesn't like decisions being taken out of his hands; trust me, I should know. And, as far as James goes, every reformed criminal on the South side of LA has his back. These are men who would willingly turn back into criminals for him. Men who have very big, powerful connections into the industries you want to get back into. The second any of them hear about this, let alone if you actually do anything to James, they will pull out all the stops to not only kill you, but make sure you are never able to reenter this line of work if you do manage to survive. So, you need to decide what's more important to you. This act of revenge against our other halves, or any future security for yourselves. You can never get a real job, because of the felonies on your record, and if you go through with any of this, you'll never work in the drug, money laundering, gun or prostitution trade ever again. Just ask yourself if this is really worth it." Wesley took a deep breath and concluded his speech. At this point, James started to wake up and look around, dazed. The men paid him no notice; Wesley's words must have somewhat sunk in.

"You make some interesting points Mr Evers, but none of that explains why I shouldn't hurt Miss Mind Games over here. He starts grazing the razor-sharp switch blade against Lucy's face, making a shallow cut along the side of her cheek, from her temple down to her jawline. She was still unconscious at this point. Wesley squirmed in his chair; these guys were not going to give up easily. They really wanted to hurt somebody today.

"Okay look, she was wrong earlier, Tim doesn't want her dead, at all. She's actually the only person he cares about in his entire life, she just doesn't know that. But Angela talks to me about this stuff, so I know the ins and outs of most of them. But, aside from the fact Tim would make it his life's mission to kill you for hurting her, and he would succeed, you're also forgetting, Lucy is a police officer, and you should know what they are like when someone harms one of their own. If you kill her, it will be the entire LAPD's sole mission to find and destroy you, you'll never make it 5 minutes without one of them finding you and putting you in prison for murder, kidnapping and a whole host of other felonies. You will literally never get out. I think you underestimate their capabilities; your only play here is to let us go and give up. None of us have seen your faces, so we still don't actually know your names, faces or who you even are, so we would have nothing to tell, except some men in black ski masks abducted us. It's not exactly going to lead them straight to you, is it. But you're risking everything, for a bit of petty revenge. As a lawyer, I'm pretty much an expert on weighing up options and deciding which is the best to take, and I am telling you, this is the worst choice you could possibly make." Wesley appealed, desperate for them to stop hurting Lucy. At this point, she started stirring, which was abruptly cut short by another blow to the other side of her head with the same baseball bat used the first time, by one of the other men. Wesley flinched.

"Sorry, she was annoying me." The man responded, matter-of-factly, shrugging his shoulders. They all had injuries, but Lucy had been through the absolute ringer. At this point, more of her body was covered in cuts and bruises than wasn't. Wesley and James looked at each other, fear and panic in their eyes. Her body wouldn't be able to take much more of this. They hoped to God their wives were looking for them; if they weren't rescued soon, Lucy could die.

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