Page 21 of Calling Chaos (Demon Bound #3)

20

Cooper

I t was the pain that woke Cooper, a dull throbbing at the back of his skull, like someone was drumming on the bone from the inside.

Drumming, drumming, drumming.

Had he hit his head? But when? How?

He tried to reach up a hand to feel it out, but he couldn’t move his arm.

He couldn’t move either of his arms.

Cooper blinked his eyes open. If he’d hit his head, it hadn’t dislodged his glasses, because he could still see clearly. And he was looking at a…gaming setup?

It certainly looked like one. There was a massive U-shaped desk with multiple computers and different-sized monitors. There was various other tech he was too dazed to categorize properly too. Cooper winced at the blinking lights, which were intensifying that horrible drumming in his skull.

He didn’t inspect it for long. It hurt too much, plus he was a little distracted by his restricted movements. His gaze dropped to his uncooperative arms. He was tied to a chair, thick rope wound around his chest and limbs.

Fuck. Fuck.

Sergei. Tied to a chair. Bruised and beaten, with a bloody bandage around his arm.

Was the same fate about to befall Cooper? He didn’t handle pain well. And torture…

Panic set in, swift and vicious. Cooper tried to shake himself out of the rope, tried to kick his legs for leverage. It was futile. His limbs were tied too tight, the rope was too thick, and he just wasn’t that strong. But the fear didn’t let him stop trying. It was choking him, insisting that if he thrashed long enough—hard enough— something had to give. There was no other option. If he stayed here, he was going to die. His heart would stop if nothing else.

He didn’t know how long he struggled.

Long enough for his muscles to start trembling, for that horrible, suffocating panic to give way to a strange, dark numbness. Cooper realized with a start that he wasn’t gagged. He hadn’t even thought to try screaming.

He didn’t try now. If someone had left him tied to a chair like this without a gag, that meant there was no one to hear him scream, was there?

At least, no one who would help him.

Instead he called out softly, “Hello?”

There was no answer, but one of the blinking red lights in front of him flashed to green. Was there someone watching him? Recording him? Who the hell had Cooper pissed off enough to be in this situation?

He looked around the room again, this time ignoring the tech. There were no windows, no natural light. Just an orange-yellow overhead that buzzed and flickered in a way that indicated it was on its last legs.

It wasn’t the same office he’d been knocked out in, then. It was somewhere new. Somewhere unknown.

The light that had turned green before flashed suddenly to red, and then Cooper heard the sound of a door opening behind him. The panic returned, tightening his chest and closing his throat. He didn’t breathe—couldn’t—and he was too frightened to look over his shoulder and find out what he was dealing with.

But he didn’t need to. His captor came around to the front of his chair.

The man was lanky, practically rail thin, with a receding hairline that had been buzzed to the scalp. He was wearing glasses—small, wire-rimmed rectangles. No mask or hat or any attempt to hide his identity.

Cooper didn’t recognize him, anyway. He’d never seen him before in his life.

“You’re awake,” the stranger said, his voice reedy in a way that matched his stature.

“Who are you?” Cooper asked.

He jerked back in his seat—as much as he was able, with the ropes tied around his chest—when a penlight was suddenly shined into his eyes.

“Your pupils are even, equal, and reactive. That’s good. Although, those eyes of yours are a bit unsettling.” The man lowered the penlight, rising from the crouch he’d dropped into for his inspection. “I didn’t mean for you to hit your head,” he explained, although he didn’t sound apologetic. “You went down faster than I expected.”

“Who are you?” Cooper asked again. Then, in case he’d have better luck with it, “Where are we?”

“I’m a friend,” the man told him, answering the first question and ignoring the second.

A sharp little burst of indignation cut through Cooper’s panic. This guy wasn’t a friend. Cooper had exactly one of those these days—a perfect, wild, menacing demon—and this stranger wasn’t it.

The indignation made him stupid. “Friends don’t tie their friends to chairs,” he said, shaking his restrained arms as best he could in some sort of demonstration. “Or kidnap them.”

“When you run in the circles we do, little wasp, friends do all kinds of things, don’t they?”

Cooper froze. At0micW4sp. It was the screen name he used in hacker forums. A silly thing he’d come up with as a teen. A protected identity.

And this man claimed he was a friend.

Cooper hazarded a guess. “RedRabbit?”

“You can call me Red.” There was a small smile on the man’s thin lips, one that didn’t show his teeth, but his eyes were strangely flat, void of all emotion. “You did very well on your task, Cooper.”

“And this—this is my reward?” When RedRabbit—Red—didn’t answer, Cooper tried a different tack. “What happened to Smith?”

“Oh, he’s just fine.” Red pulled a chair away from the desk, some cheap folding one, and set it in front of Cooper before sitting down across from him. “He was instructed on what to do, and he followed his instructions. There was no need to harm him.”

Smith had given Cooper up, then. Cooper couldn’t muster up any anger over it. Smith had either been threatened or tricked, and they weren’t close enough for Cooper to expect him to make some sacrifice of himself on principle alone.

Or maybe the anger would come later, when Cooper had room for something other than confusion and fear.

None of that gave Cooper any better idea of what was happening right now. “Why didn’t you message me yourself?” he asked. “You know how to contact me.”

Those flat eyes studied him. “You likely would have refused. Other hackers have tried to meet you in person. You’re notoriously shy.”

“I don’t think I’m notoriously anything.”

“You underestimate yourself.”

He really didn’t. Cooper was skilled enough, but there were more talented people out there than him. “Are you going to tell me what I’m doing here?”

“You’re joining my team. You passed the initiation already.” Red gave him the same strange, dead-eyed smile. “Congratulations.”

“I already have a job, thank you.”

“Yes, I know all about your little Russian family business.” Red leaned forward, invading Cooper’s space. He smelled like menthol but not of smoke, as if maybe he’d been sucking on medicated cough drops before he’d come in. “Aren’t you tired of managing small tasks for petty gangsters? What you do now is small potatoes. What I’ll be using you for will make us millions upon millions upon millions.”

A chill ran down Cooper’s spine. It was never good when that much money was on the table. He’d learned that over the years. He started subtly testing the restraints again, even though he knew it was a lost cause. “How do you know so much about me?”

“We have a mutual friend. Said he had a little hacker, talented but meddlesome.” That smile of Red’s was really beginning to creep Cooper out. “You must have really pissed Sergei off.”

Cold dread sank in Cooper’s gut. Sergei. Here it was, then. His retaliation from beyond the fucking grave.

“Sergei’s dead,” Cooper said with a calmness he didn’t feel. He didn’t like thinking about how Sergei had died. If he thought about it, he could see it, and it hadn’t been a pretty sight. A bit anticlimactic, though, for all that there’d been fountains of blood spraying everywhere. Sergei hadn’t even had to beg Ivan for his life.

Would Cooper beg Red? Probably. His pride wasn’t stronger than his survival instinct, he didn’t think.

Red didn’t even flinch at the news. “What a shame,” he said dryly.

“You’re still not going to let me go?” Cooper asked, already knowing the answer.

“No.”

Cooper sat with it all for a moment, considering the computers in front of him, the Mafia background this man must have had to have been in Sergei’s circle of communication. He thought of what he knew of RedRabbit, before he’d known him to be Red.

Cooper knew this type.

“You want me for what? Data breaches? Ransomware? Siphoning off bank accounts?”

Red shrugged a shoulder. “How about all of the above?”

“Why do you need me specifically?”

Another shrug, although it was belied by the intensity of Red’s gaze. “You dropped into my lap. And I meant it before—you’re good. You have a reputation, even among those who don’t know the gangsters you play with. And if this goes south—and it’s more likely a matter of when, isn’t it, in this day and age?—then you’re the perfect scapegoat, given your background.” He gave a little smile, like he was confiding in a friend. “I wouldn’t do well in prison, I’m afraid.”

Cooper swallowed. “And if I refuse?”

The smile dropped. “I kill you and find someone else.”

Well, cool. There was the panic again. “Why don’t you just send me home?” Cooper asked, hoping he sounded less frantic than he felt. “No harm, no foul.”

Oh God. Panic was making him talk like a frat boy.

Red shook his head. “Oh, but I made a gentleman’s agreement, you see. Sergei wanted you gone, one way or another.”

“Sergei’s dead,” Cooper repeated.

“I believe you. But the family he was working his way into are still around, even if your boss…wounded them. I’m not planning on making enemies this early by reneging. On top of that, you’ve seen my face. You know one of my handles. I don’t trust you on your own.”

“You chose to show me your face though. It didn’t happen by accident.”

Red shrugged again. Unapologetic. Unbothered.

“That’s…pretty ruthless.”

Red cocked his head. “Given our mutual connection, you must realize you and I have similar business backgrounds. We’ve worked for similar men. You can’t be around people like that for long without catching a little ruthlessness.”

Except that was bullshit. Cooper had been around those same men, and it hadn’t made him fucking evil. He wasn’t kidnapping semi-innocent hackers and threatening their lives for no good reason.

He frowned. “I think maybe you’re just a little psychotic.”

Red gave him a full smile now, although it still didn’t reach his eyes. His teeth were too white and too square, like maybe they were veneers. “You’re braver than Sergei said you’d be. From the way he described you, I was expecting a cowering little worm.”

It was true that Cooper was acting braver than he had any right to. It wasn’t because he wasn’t scared. He was fucking petrified.

It was because he knew Chaos was coming for him.

The realization swept through him, warming him to the tips of his fingers. Chaos had told Cooper he couldn’t run or hide. He’d told Cooper he would find him no matter what.

Cooper’s taut muscles relaxed their tension, just a little. “You really think you can kill me? Have you ever even shot a man before?”

Red’s lips twitched, like he was amused with something. “I’m not a fan of guns, actually. So noisy.” He reached an arm out and dragged over a rolling stand Cooper hadn’t noticed before. It had a small metal tray, like the kind a dentist used to lay out their instruments. There were different syringes on it, and the sight of them chased away any warmth Cooper had gained. “But see, Cooper, I don’t need a gun.”

“Is that what you used to knock me out?” Cooper asked. There’d been a sting at his neck, he remembered now.

Red picked up one of the syringes, holding it in front of his eyes. “This one, yes.” He placed it back down, spreading his hand over three others. “But these three? These are the cocktail for a lethal injection. If I managed the dosage right, it should be relatively painless.” He cocked a brow. “Let’s hope I did, hm?”

And just like that, Cooper was shaking again.

Time. He needed time.

“How long do I have to decide?”

Red glanced at his phone. “Thirty minutes. We need to be leaving town soon, I’m afraid. I’ve been hearing some nasty rumors about your employer these past few days. New York suddenly feels much too small. You and I will be taking this show international.” He rose from his cheap metal chair, pushing the tray of lethal drugs off to the side again. “I’ll leave you alone with your thoughts, shall I?”