Dad’s words fill me with horror now:
“It’s as good as soundproofed down there, baby girl. You never, ever go in there without me, understand?”
I’m trapped now. No one can hear me.
“MIKEY! SOMEONE! HELP!” I scream. I know it’s useless, but panic makes me try.
All I can hear is the sound of my own heart slamming against my chest. My breath, coming out in great, frantic whoops. I feel around in the dark to find my way. I know the storage area is enormous, larger than the first floor of our old house.
I grab my phone. It has eleven percent battery life left. That’s what I get for never charging it properly. I try to text Mark.
No signal.
I try to call.
No signal.
I try to check email, tapping on any app that might get me to communicate with the outside world.
No signal.
I turn on the flashlight and shine it all around.
Boxes. Bags of coffee beans. That’s it.
I climb back up the stairs and bang on the hatch until the base of my hand starts to bleed. It’s useless.
And then I hear shuffling sounds.
Right behind me.
I whirl around, my only weapon my cell phone.
The light illuminates a figure, on the ground, crawling toward me.
“OH MY GOD!” I scream, scrambling away.
It’s a human. It’s a woman. She’s moving, dragging herself toward me. I back up and slip on the slippery ground. My arm is wet suddenly.
I look down. It’s blood.
“Who are you?” I demand, shouting. I’m loud because I’m freaking out.
“Carrie?” the voice says softly. “Is that you, Carrie?”
My legs go numb, the sensation spreading up from my ankles to the top of my head.
I shine the light on the figure coming at me.
It’s Amy.
“Amy?” I gasp, running to her. She’s on the floor, her face covered in dried and fresh blood, her business suit torn and tattered. She’s filthy, one eye swollen shut, deep gouges in the skin of her face.
I reach down to try to hold her and she screams.
More blood. It’s warm.
I look down.
She’s missing an arm. There’s a gauze bandage soaked with burgundy and dried a rust color at the edges. It’s just…gone.
Someone cut it off.
“He’s coming,” she hisses. Her eye looks glassy as she meets mine. The wet metallic smell I’ve detected is clear now. It’s the scent of her blood. As I try to hold her up I smell something else. The odor of rot. The scent of infection.
“Who’s coming?” I beg. “Oh, God, Amy, what happened to you? Who is he? Why are you in here? Where’s your arm? How can you have no arm?”
And then she faints.
Chapter Fifty-Three
As Amy faints, she falls on my arm. I drop my phone. Amy’s shoulder bangs into it as she hits the floor. A sickening crack fills my ears.
The flashlight goes dim.
Oh, God. The one and only tool I have to try to get out of this horror show and it’s just been destroyed. Amy is breathing hard but steady. She’s not bleeding, but the bandage is soaked with blood. I can’t tell how long ago someone removed her arm.
I can’t see.
All I can do is feel.
Blackness surrounds me. I hear nothing. I know that above us there is a coffee shop full of customers and employees. People are sipping lattes and eating pastries. They’re on laptops and checking email. Mothers come in with toddlers. Old ladies meet for a morning talk.
And Mikey’s upstairs, knowing he trapped me in here.
I let out a choking sound that is like a sob, only ten thousand times worse.
Mikey. That face. His anger, then nervousness. What is that about? Why did he trap me in here? I sit in the inky darkness. The only sound I hear is Amy’s loud breath and my own sniffles. I pull her up against me, sliding her head and shoulders into my lap. She’s warm, but not hot. No fever.
I’m careful not to touch the shoulder where her arm used to be.
I make a weird sound of disbelief. Where her arm used to be. Whoever captured her has cut off one of her arms. Her entire arm. Where is it? When did they cut it off? Why did someone cut it off?
I go bone-chilling cold.
I know damn well who did it.
El Brujo.
My heartbeat feels like a voice. I know there’s no echo down here. Everything is muffled. At the same time, it’s like every sound is a scrape. Each time I move, I hear it magnified. Every time I shift Amy’s weight against me, it feels like the last time I’ll hear sound.
As the reality of my situation sinks in, a small, scrabbling creature grows inside my breastbone. It’s fear, clawing its way out of me.
I start to shake. I hold my breath, my body heaving as the air tries to get in. I can’t control any of this. It’s panic, pure and simple.
My body is revolting against the truth of what is happening, and I’m literally a passenger in my own meltdown.
Amy groans and rolls on one side. Her good arm is covered in scratches. I feel them with my fingertips. Because I’ve lost the sense of sight, I try to focus on what I can experience. Touch still works. Gently, I run my fingers over her arms, neck, shoulders and face. She has scratches everywhere, and one wound on her jaw that feels tender and slightly warm to the touch.
I avoid the shoulder joint where her arm has been removed.
“He’s coming,” she mutters. A streak of horror, like an electric current, zips from my heel to the top of my head.
That’s what she said in one of my nightmares.
A nightmare that has just come true.
“Who’s coming, Amy?” I ask, stroking her hair away from her face.
“The butcher…” The word comes out like a hiss, like an agonal sigh. It feels like it echoes into my bones. If I was freaked out before, now I’m completely frozen by utter terror. I can’t think. Can’t feel. Can’t move.
Can’t anything.
If he is really coming, then we’re sitting victims. We’re prey. We’re just here, waiting for our fate.
One limb removed at a time.
“Amy!” I whisper, shaking her. I feel her groan, then move.
“Wha?” Her breath is hot against my thigh.
“When did he do this to you?” The blood seemed fresh enough that it must have been recently.
“Don’t know. How many days has he had me?”
My gut clenches. Oh, holy hell. I count in my head.
“A week. Seven days.” Has it really only been a week? It feels like half my life.
“Then a couple days ago. After they came back.”
“You’ve been here the entire time?”
“I don’t know. Where am I? Where’s my mom? I want my mom,” she cries. Her sobs shake my legs, her groans of pain mixed with the crying.
Tears fill my eyes with sympathy.
I want her mom, too.
I want anyone right now.
“He’s coming,” she murmurs.
Anyone but him, that is.
“The butcher?”
She whimpers. “He cuts us.”
“Us?” Bile rises in my throat. Are there more people in here?
“The others. He’s been hiding us. All the women before me. He cuts them and then they go away. When you go away you never come back.” Her voice is slurred and she’s fading out.
I realize she’s probably hungry or thirsty, at least. I feel around in the dark and my hand brushes against plastic. My water bottle.
“Amy?” I shake her. “Are you thirsty?”
She says nothing. I feel around for her mouth, then carefully guide the opening of my water bottle to her lips. She drinks greedily, then starts to gag.
Hysteria rises in me like a vine seeking the sun. “Have they hurt you?”
She makes a weird sound. “They cut my arm off!”
“No, no,” I say, cursing myself. “I’m so sorry, Amy. Oh, my God. I meant, has he…has he raped you?”
She sniffles, then struggles to sit up. Her hand touches my hip, then rides up my body as she tries to find my face. Her fingertips touch my lips. They’re dirty and caked with something that tastes like dried blood and sweat. I don’t pull away, though.
“No. He says he has to save us all for his boss.”
His boss.
The picture of Claudia’s mother invades my mind. No arms, no legs. The Butcher, Amy called him. Is El Brujo kidnapping women and disfiguring them to meet some sick sexual sadistic need?
“What happens to you all?”
“The women. We had four of us in here. The other three, the butcher would come and take them. The screams—we’d hear the screams. Oh, God, Carrie, I don’t want to hear the screams again.”
“You won’t.” My voice is stone-cold steel. I’m faking my strength, though. I have no idea how to get out of this. No clue how to get Amy out of here.
But I will die trying.
Allie. If only I’d said something to Allie…and then there’s Mikey. Why on earth would Mikey turn on me like this? Was he part of this horrible butchering?
“Is Mikey part of this, Amy?” She’s leaning against me now and I hold her, rocking slightly. It’s like soothing a small, hurt child.
“Mikey? Mikey Boynton? He’d never do anything like this. Why?”
Why?
Good question.
I hear her take a very deep, very shaky breath. “I’m so glad to see you.”
“Can’t see anything,” I reply.
She lets out a small laugh. “I’ve really been kidnapped for a week?”
“Yes.” My heart is breaking. She sounds so lost. So hopeless.
“A week? They’ve had me for a fucking week?” Her voice is gaining power.
“Yes.”
“Do you have food?” Her stomach gurgles as if to emphasize her need.
I paw around in the dark to find my purse. Thank goodness I’m a pig when it comes to the cinnamon croissants. “I have an extra croissant.” The brown paper bag the clerk put it in earlier makes a crinkling sound.
“I’m drooling. They’ve given us bread and water and cheese.”
I hand her the entire thing. I smell the sweetness of the bread as she brings it to her mouth.
“Mmmmmm,” she moans. It’s good to hear a positive sound from her.
A few bites later, I feel her fumbling in my lap. “Here,” Amy says. She’s shoving part of the croissant my way.
“No, you eat it,” I insist.
“We don’t know how long we’ll be in here, Carrie. We need to save some.”
And with those words, I fall apart in an instant.
Chapter Fifty-Four
The low moan that comes out of me starts as a small sound but quickly grows. It becomes a bellow, a long, horrified hum that turns into a shriek as it passes, endless and eternal, between my lips.
“CARRIE!” Amy screams. “STOP IT! STOP IT!” I hear her panic. She’s frantic, pulling at me.
I can’t.
I can’t stop.
This is the sound of feral fear.
“YOU CANNOT DO THIS!” she shouts.
I can’t stop.
And then wham! My head is on the ground, a sickening thump like a melon being dropped from a roof filling my head.
She’s on top of me, hitting me, one-handed.
“SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!” Amy growls, over and over as she hits me.
I come to my senses and shove her off me. It’s easy.
I have two hands.
“Quit hitting me!’ I shout, panting with exertion. I realize my eyes have adjusted, and there’s the tiniest hint of light at one end of the tomb.
Tomb. Some part of my subconscious is thinking of this space as a tomb.
“No fucking way,” I mutter to myself as I hear Amy sitting up. “I am not going to die in here. No fucking way.”
“Me neither,” Amy adds.
“I have too much life left to live,” I say, thinking of Mark. Tears fills my throat. The room is stifling. We take for granted such simple things, like opening a window when we need fresh air. I have no such freedom.
I may never again.
“Plus, you can’t die a virgin,” she adds.
“What?” Is she seriously talking about my sex life at a time like this? We’re sitting ducks, trapped in a secret storage space after Mikey double-crossed me, and she’s worried about what my vagina has or has not had in it?
“Just pointing out the obvious,” she giggles, though her voice is weak. It’s a crazy sound, like she’s gone out of her mind. Not that I blame her…
“I’m not a virgin.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Not anymore.”
“WHAT?” she shrieks. Her hand flails, brushing against my nose.
“Quit hitting me!”
“I’m trying to hug you, you stupidhead. Oh, my God! You had sex, Carrie!”
I start laughing in the dark. The sound is spooky and unhinged.
“Didn’t do me any good. Mark has no idea where I am. None.” I feel around on the ground for my phone. The glass is cracked. I push buttons desperately. Nothing. No light, no…nothing.
“How did you find me, then?” she asks, breathing slowly, like she’s trying very hard to stay in control.
“Long story.”
She laughs bitterly. “It’s not like I have anything better to do than listen, Carrie.”
I can’t believe my best friend in the world and I were just beating each other up in the dark.
“Where’s your arm?” I ask. It suddenly occurs to me to ask.
She makes gurgling sound, half-sob, half-pain. “I don’t know. They just started cutting and I passed out.”
I reach for her and hug her, holding her close. “Oh, my God, Amy. Those monsters.”
She sobs against me. “I woke up in the dark. It was just me and Aureliana by then.”
“Aureliana?” Why does that name ring a bell?
“One of the other women in here.”
Oh. Now I remember that name. The television. The news broadcast.
She was one of the kidnapping victims.
No.
She was one of the bodies they found.
“And then they took her, too. She had one arm left and they took her and I don’t know where she is and oh, Carrie, he’s coming back and you’re next.”
You’re next.
“No. NO!” I hiss furiously in her ear. “Mark knows what’s happening. He’ll find us. He’ll rescue us.”
“Mark? Mark Paulson, town cop?” She makes a derisive sound. “Right. He can find us at the local donut shop, or pull someone over for a broken tail-light, but Mark isn’t exactly—”
“He’s a DEA agent who is deep undercover, Amy.”
She starts coughing, the sound oddly dry and wet at the same time. I hear something in her neck make a popping sound, then she seizes.
“He’s a what?”
“Drug Enforcement Agency. It turns out he’s been part of a deep undercover operation for years. Before my dad was arrested. He thinks Dean Landau is behind everything.”
“You mean behind the drug trafficking at the university?”
“Worse. That’s he’s…that the dean is…” I realize I have to say the truth. It’s not like Amy’s going to blab it to anyone else. Besides, this may be the last chance I have to talk to anyone.
Mark will save us. I know he will. And yet…
“Mark thinks the dean is El Brujo.”
Because everyone in the U.S. has heard of El Brujo, I don’t even have to explain what I’m talking about.
“Mark thinks what? That Claudia Landau’s dad is the biggest drug dealer ever?”
“Yes.”
“You said ‘worse’. Carrie, what’s worse than that?”
I swallow and feel my dry throat click.
“He’s the head of a massive sex slave operation. Amy, those women who keep coming in and out of here are probably being sold into the sex slave trade.”
I hear nothing. She doesn’t make a sound. I can’t even hear her breathe.
Finally, she whispers, “And I’m next.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
“No! You’re not next. I won’t let that happen.”
Her fingers crawl up my chest, accidentally brushing against my breast. She finds my collarbone, then feels for my face. Her warm breath grows closer. She’s inches from me.
“You can’t stop them, Carrie. In fact, you’re probably next, too.” She grips my shoulder with iron ferocity. “You can’t fight them. They’re too strong.”
“They?”
“The butcher and his friend.” She spits out the word friend like she accidentally ate a bug. “Hyper, fast-talking asshole.”
I turn into a block of ice.
“Does he call you ‘Girlie Girl’?”
Her fingers dig into the soft flesh between my collarbone and my neck muscle.
“Yes.”
“That’s Frenchie,” I say, my voice flat. If I let the fear creep in, I’ll just sit here in the dark and cry.
“You know him?”
“I’ve had the distinct displeasure of meeting him at the dean’s house.”
“Why were you at the dean’s house?”
“Delivering a dog to him.”
“Carrie, you’re not making any sense. You never deliver dogs to people. Why would you start with the Landau family? And my mom would never want a dog to go to them. She knows what a jerk Claudia is!”
Her mom. Minnie. Oh, hell. I have to explain.
“Um, your mom’s in the hospital,” I start.
She interrupts me with a shriek. “What? What happened to her? Oh, my God, please tell me mom’s okay. Please, Carrie. Please.”
“She’s fine,” I say, trying to stay calm. “She had a nervous breakdown after you were kidnapped. She’s being sedated and kept calm. Elaine’s visiting her every day.”
Elaine. The thought makes chills run through me. Elaine and Brian are my stalwart comfort figures. But what if I can’t trust them after all? I thought Mikey was a good guy, and look at what he just did to me.
Dangerous To Love Page 193
