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The water they pitch over her head is ice cold, and she shivers violently as her clothes become drenched.
Her hands, laced together with rope and strung over a hook hung from the ceiling, chafe against the thick rope; she knows there are already welts, can feel them deepening each time she moves. Still, she struggles, attempting to escape her bonds.
She hopes Ellie is far away- hopes she finds Joel, hopes they make it back to Jackson. She’d managed to get the door to their cage open, managed to get Ellie out the door and through the sham of a restaurant before they’d captured her- but at least the teenager was out, and safe. That was what mattered to Tess.
The blindfold is soaked and freezing against her skin and she shivers again, struggling against the ropes.
“I’m going to ask you one more time,” David’s smooth voice is slightly rattled when he speaks, and Tess takes pride in that. “Where did she go?”
“As far away from you as I can fuckin’ get her,” she snarls, and he must not like that answer, because she gets a smack across the face, catching her off guard. Her vision behind the blindfold goes white, and the pain stings.
“Hit her harder,” David says simply, and the next blow is to her abdomen, a fist striking her.
“I won’t-” Tess pants, inhaling desperately around the punches. “Tell you anything, you bastard.”
“Well, that’s a shame,” David says, and she can’t pinpoint what the sounds are- but then her arm is being yanked, and something sharp is being jabbed into her skin, a plunger being pushed as something enters her veins. “Something tells me that daughter of yours would have been nicer. Prettier, too.”
It takes a moment, but then she feels it; the loopy-ness that comes from narcotics, but this time heavily concentrated, not the occasional pill she’d pop in the QZ.
Tess’s head lolls, and she quickly loses sensation in the tips of her fingers as drowsiness enters her limbs. Her muscles loosen, and she shivers as she becomes hyperaware of the cold clothing clinging to her skin.
“How about now, hm? Feeling more…cooperative?” David’s voice is sinuous and soft, and Tess wants to shy away from it, the words like slime on her skin. She frowns, and works her jaw until she can spit in where she approximates his face is. By the disgusted noise he makes, she hits her mark.
“Fuck you,” she gets out, just before a fist smacks into her jaw; it hurts enough that she knows something’s bruised to all hell, and there’s a chance one of her molars are cracked.
Then she hears the click of the safety of a gun, and freezes, only for everything in her to go molten as Joel’s familiar voice says in a voice edged in violence: “Don’t fuckin’ move.”
Small hands work to untie her blindfold, and Tess blinks against the light as everything comes into focus. Joel, a gun to the back of David’s head; his henchman on his knees, hands tied behind his back as he glowered at the room; Ellie standing before Tess with wide eyes.
“Tess, darlin’- you alright?” Joel doesn’t lower his gun, but flicks his eyes to hers, and she nods once. She’s in pain, but it’s manageable- Ellie helps her lift her arms up high enough to get the rope off the hook, and then uses her knife to get her rope bonds undone.
“Kill him,” Tess says, jerking her head in David’s direction. “He’s a pedophile.”
That’s all it takes for Joel to pull the trigger; David collapses in a heap, and Joel is quick to dispense of his henchman next. Then he’s closing the distance, tenderly touching Tess’s bruised jaw with gentle fingertips; she winces slightly, and he goes to remove his touch, but she clings to his fingers, holding them against her face.
“Alright?” he asks against, softer this time, and she nods, hands moving to touch his chest; feel his heart beating beneath her hands.
“Thought you’d take Ellie ‘n leave,” she murmurs, and he shakes his head immediately, thumbs stroking along her cheekbone.
“I’ll always come back for ya, Tessa,” he promises, and brushes his lips to her forehead. “C’mon. Let’s go home.”
Her fingers lace through his, and then Ellie laces her fingers through Tess’s, and they make their way out of the restaurant and into the winter morning.