Even through her fear, Camila couldn’t help staring at him in amazement. She couldn’t believe he’d actually just said that to her, looked at her like that, like she was the annoyance here. She hadn't asked to be where she was in the first place. He could have left her where she was if she was such a nuisance!
Her heart cried out.
Why couldn’t you just leave me alone!
She didn’t get to say any of the million things that came to mind right then, when her body froze again because she’d caught sight of what he had in his other hand. From somewhere inside the car, Adrien had pulled a knife, and her eyes went wide as she stared intently at it.
Did he really drag me all the way out here just to kill me like this? No way, right?
Only, Camila couldn’t think of what other reason he had for brandishing a knife at her. Threatening her with it? Even if she started hopping, she didn’t think she could get far, and bound and gagged as she was, she couldn’t alert anyone to her situation or even try to attack him.
She was scared, but she kept very still, staring at that knife.
In the end, she was surprised, because instead of stabbing her with it, Adrien squatted down and cut at the duct tape on her feet between her ankles.
“Don’t get so excited,” he muttered as he rose back up. “I’m just not in the mood to carry you up the porch steps.”
Then, he force-marched her inside. In her surprise, she didn’t even struggle. She stumbled a little, but he didn’t care, keeping a tight hold on her and pushing forward, so unless she wanted to hit the ground, she could only try to keep up, since he hadn't undone her hands, or the gag around her mouth for her to voice her complaints.
Her compliance didn’t last long, though. The woman must have turned her back to him when he shot her, because she couldn’t see from below the porch steps, but when they were at the door, not too far away was an old woman lying face down on the ground, clothes bloodied with a pool of blood growing beneath her body.
A tremor went through Camila’s body, and she tried to scream, though the gag just muffled the sound. Worse, Adrien was still dragging her forward, and there wasn’t enough space for them to walk around the body to get into the house, not side by side as they were. There was a tiny bit of space, but she knew Adrien would just take it for himself and leave her to step all over a poor dead woman.
No… no!
Camila struggled. She forgot she was supposed to be worried about Adrien still had the knife in his hand, after all, but she didn’t think she could go inside, even under threat.
“Hey!” Adrien yelled, struggling to keep a hold of her. “Stop struggling.”
Camila just shook her head, making more frantic noises as she tried to get away. She couldn’t pull her eyes from the body, either, and she just knew she would have a nightmare over this soon.
Adrien did his best to keep his hold on her, but she wasn’t exactly light and she was putting up a serious fight. With a curse, he tossed the knife so he could grab at her with both hands. Camila made muffled screaming sounds as she fought against him, even as he kept tugging on her.
“I will seriously hit you if you don’t stop it,” he threatened.
Looking in his eyes, Camila stared at him in terror. Oh god! He’s insane! she thought as he gripped her with his left and raised his right to hit her. Her eyes strayed back to the bloodied bandage on his left shoulder and she wrenched away sideways, as his hand came down at her. She had moved just out of his hands path with that move, and now that her feet weren’t bound, she was able to keep herself from falling to the ground as she stumbled away from him.
“Fuck!” he growled, anger and pain mixed in his voice as he reached for her again.
Camila managed to break free again, struggling in his grip and causing him pain in his shoulder. He released her to hold onto his injury, glaring at her. She didn’t pause to look at his expression though, turning away and stumbling into the dark, praying he couldn’t see her. The knife might not be of use to him once she put distance between them, but she hadn't forgotten that he had a gun, even though she hadn't seen it.
Please, she thought frantically. Let me get away.
She couldn’t hear his footsteps behind her, and she almost dared to have hope as she pushed her body to keep moving. The highway was a bit of a distance away, but not that far. She could only hope there would be a car passing by the time she got there, but even if there wasn’t one, she would just follow the road and hope to come across one before Adrien could catch up.
Dammit! If only I had my arms free, too.
“Camila!”
She heard his scream behind her, but of course there was no way she was going to stop or turn back. She couldn’t! She had to get away. If she could just get to the—
Out of nowhere, pain enveloped her body, and she felt like she was on fire. Camila let out a rough sound in her throat before her sound cut off. She fell to the ground, her body had gone still, wracked with painful seizures. She could feel her eyes roll back in her head and she blacked out. She came to a minute later, panting through the gag and she attempted to get up. She made it to her knees.
Then something hit her nerves again and she felt like her body would turn to mush. The pain stopped and she collapsed over her knees, where her body continued to twitch uncontrollably. Her thoughts were disjointed but she had a feeling, if she hadn't had the piece of cloth in her mouth, she might have accidentally bit off her tongue.
She was leaning forward, until her forehead almost met her knees, trying to breathe as she felt drool run down her chin, mucus coming out of her nose, and her eyes overflowed with tears. She was breathing in gasps, and still trying to get her body to move even as her mind acclimated to the new horror.
When is it going to fucking stop? she thought with a sob. What the fuck is this?
“So, Camila,” Adrien said, voice sounding casual as he came up behind her. “I feel I don’t even need to ask this, but what have you learned?”
A tremor rocked her insides, and she forced her head up to glare at him. He was obviously just playing with her now, and she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. She could just imagine the mess she was right then, and seeing the amusement on his face totally killed her pride. Right then, she wished she still had a gun in her hands, pointed right at him. She would have pulled the trigger without a second thought.
Adrien just seemed more amused by her look of defiance, and he smirked as he lifted his hand. Camila’s eyes shifted to it, and she noticed the small, black rectangle he was holding. He pressed something on it, and Camila’s throat scratched with another scream that wouldn’t fully come out. Her body flopped sideways onto the ground, and she rolled around until she had her back bowed, eyes closed as she suffered through the next round of shock.
Again, ten seconds later, Adrien stopped it, and this time, Camila was left sobbing once more, her chest heaving as she tried to breathe at the same time. Spit was overflowing in her mouth, and as she slumped back onto the ground, before she could even care about hurting her hands beneath her, she choked on spit and rolled onto her side, hacking a few times. Not that it helped.
Damn. Damn you, Adrien!
It took her a bit of time to regain herself.
Adrien chuckled, seeing the image she made on the ground. “You know, I think I like you like this, Camila. Obedient and at my feet, exactly where you should be. You know, if you hadn't fought me so hard you wouldn’t have wound up this way, though. I want us to get along. Really.”
Camila didn’t trust him at all. Not with that widening, maddening grin on his face.
With her body trembling, she rolled once more, squirming until she was back to kneeling, then looked up at him again with the same glare from before after she’d blinked her eyes clear.
Adrien chuckled some more. He turned the rectangle in his hand around so she could see, then lowered his thumb on the button that brought so much pain to her. Her body instantly froze as she star
ed at that hand, feeling afraid as she waited for pain to hit her again. Right then, it wasn’t like she was suddenly brave, but she had always been stubborn. Her willpower was all that was keeping her up, but it wouldn’t be enough to last through another of those shocks. Seeing the look of fear that crossed her face, Adrien laughed at her as he pulled his thumb from the button.
“I gotcha,” he chortled, bending over and wrapping an arm around his stomach. “You should have seen your face.”
Camila looked at him with disgust and horror. He was hurting her, and here he was seriously treating it like some fucking joke? She’d had people scare her before and give her similar reactions, of course, but not someone who thought that shocking her into submission was a new one. More than anything, it made her angry.
“You fucker!” she cursed at him.
But no matter what she said, no matter how loud she tried to be, the gag muffled her words and made them incomprehensible. Adrien, though, looked like he knew what she was trying to say, and it just made him laugh some more.
Camila felt totally humiliated. She was going to try spewing some more curses at him, whether he got to hear them or not but to vent her own anger, when she gave a full body twitch that upset her stomach. Feeling sick, Camila hacked, her stomach and throat spasming as she tried to throw up, even though besides the spit she’d just swallowed, there was nothing for her stomach to expel. Lucky for her, because the gag was still there, and it would be too disgusting to choke on her own vomit.
She didn’t miss how Adrien immediately backed off with a quiet, “Whoa.”
It took her a minute to realize he was fastidious. For someone on the run, besides the bandage over his shoulder, he was actually really well-dressed in pressed dark slacks and a dark shirt, with leather shoes on his feet.
Her mind couldn’t focus on it for long, though, not while she was dealing with shock, literally, and also a creeping case of bad nausea that she couldn’t figure out the reason for. She could stand the shocks, but the attack of nausea had been sudden and out of nowhere as the pain was fading. She wondered if it was a side effect from the shocks.
“Now, then,” Adrien murmured to himself after a minute when she didn’t look like she was going to throw up. “Let’s go inside and set up, shall we? No naughty games this time, Camila. We’ve got a lot of shit to do if we’re gonna sleep tonight, you know? Behave.”
He repeated the word, but the force behind it this time had doubled. Just from his voice, her body gave a fearful shiver. This time, when he picked her up by the arm, she didn’t fight him as much, though she could feel the nausea rise again at the feeling of seeing that body again. So she tried to squint and roll her eyes up not to see the ground, feeling her stomach give a few spasms before calming down again.
As Adrien dragged her inside, Camila made a mental note to find that rectangular clicker the minute Adrien went to sleep.
Chapter Nineteen
Samuel
“Dammit!”
A day. A damn day had gone by already, and still he didn’t have any leads! Hell, neither did the police, even though he wasn’t banking on them this time. Even if they found nothing, his security team, the newly hired ex-military guys he’d added to the semi-untrained men he’d previously hired should have by this point already, or what the hell was he paying them such exorbitant fees for? They had come at the recommendation of Jacobs, but he didn’t know them personally and he regretted hiring them sight unseen, but the other men weren’t ready to go out into the field as it were to track down leads on Adrien. The mercenaries, because that is what they really were, were giving his crew on the job training.
Samuel hadn’t been idle though, no. He’d meticulously searched Adrien’s room from top to bottom, going through pockets, and searching the bottom of the dresser drawers looking for anything that would tell him what Adrien had been up to all this time. The only thing he’d found were left behind pill bottles for his meds. Obviously, Adrien had stopped taking them.
If he didn’t have to stay behind to look after Brianna and Morganna, Samuel would have been out there searching for Adrien himself. Hell, he’d have gone to the loft that Adrien had leased and gone through it with a fine tooth comb as he’d done here. However, he couldn’t leave, so he’d had to trust the task to his security team.
There was no way he could keep waiting. He knew that the longer they waited, the longer Camila was missing, the higher the chances that she could be suffering. If they were too late, they might not catch up to Adrien before he killed her.
“I have to do something, screw waiting for answers.”
After checking up on Morganna and his sister, Samuel moved to his private office and closed the door behind him. He didn’t lock it just in case someone came looking for him with important news. Sitting behind his computer, he let it log on as he tapped his hands on top of the desk, looking off to the side in thought.
Where could Adrien be? What could he be planning?
He was really worried whenever he thought about it. He’d never really learned how to read his brother, but as far as he knew, this was the worst thing Adrien had ever done in his life. Adrien had always been a little rougher around the edges. Samuel had known about Adrien’s BDSM events, and his penchant for extoling pain and punishment. However, those events had been consensual, and though a few had ended with some injuries to the women he’d partnered with, he’d never killed any of them. He hadn’t wanted to believe that Adrien was capable of that either.
Samuel gritted his teeth. He’d been wrong and he’d missed the signs that something was very, very wrong with his brother. He’d been blinded by family loyalty. And it had cost good men their lives. Adrien’s body count, well, what Samuel knew about was now three. He couldn’t allow him to take any more lives. Especially not Camila’s.
Once his computer came on, he clicked on his private browser and typed in the message board Jacobs had told him about. It was on the dark web, and Jacobs had only known about it because of one of their buddies, Vernon who’d started the board. As he planned out his message in his head, he recalled the conversation with Jacobs.
“Jacobs, I need people, former military, you know who’s out? Who’s good?” he’d asked.
Jacobs had looked at him, frowning. “You aren’t gonna let us do our job, are you?” Jacobs had commented, his voice hard. Looking around, he’d gestured for them to enter Samuel’s office and closed the door. “Remember Vernon?”
“Sargent? Dark hair, Dark eyes, kind of crazy?” Samuel had arched a brow at him.
“That’s him. He’s got a page on the dark. Contact him. He’s running mercs, pay them enough, they’ll come through.” Jacobs had written an address on a notepad on the desk. “Anyone asks, this didn’t come from me.”
Samuel had contacted Vernon as soon as Jacobs had walked out the door. He’d been right, he’d found they guys he needed. Now he had another task. He pulled up the message board and wrote: Investigators needed. Private. Sensitive task. Possible danger. Money negotiable.
After about ten minutes, he had several inquiries. He gave them each his number along with a time to call, and then took their calls. Several of them were interested. For every one of them, he promised them a hundred thousand dollar reward if they could find his brother and Camila. They would get ten thousand for just getting viable leads, anything that could help corner Adrien before he did something. He was spending a fortune, but he hardly cared. There was plenty more where that came from, and if he had to liquefy more of the family assets for this, it didn’t matter. Money was something he could always make more of, but he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he let something happen to Camila at the hands of his brother.
After all the calls came through and he set them on their tasks, he had nothing else to do. He locked up his office and went to look after Brianna. He was worried about her, especially since she’d reverted to the same girl she’d been before Camila had come into their lives.
She har
dly ever left his room, even when he tried to get her out of it. She looked really scared, and he knew she was also worried about Camila, but she wasn’t trying to communicate, either. She wouldn’t even sign or write her thoughts out when he provided her with paper and pencil. It was as though she’d reverted back to the young traumatized child she’d been years ago. Everything she’d learned through therapy was gone.
Samuel allowed his mind to go back to the time after this first happened. He’d been a child himself, and he hadn’t really known what had happened. He’d come in from playing in the yard to a very quiet house. He’d seen his brother leaving with someone he hadn’t recognized, so he’d gone in to see what was going on. He hadn’t known Adrien was going anywhere. He’d found his parents in Bri’s room, she had been curled up in a ball, a cast on her arm, which he’d thought was weird.
“What’s wrong with Bri?” he’d asked.
His parents had looked at him and said, “It was an accident. Bri was injured.”
“Well where did Adrien go? I saw him getting into a car—” he’d attempted to question them.
His mother had smiled, but thinking back now, he realized that her smile hadn’t been a real smile, it had been tight and fake. “Adrien is having an adventure. He’ll be back in a few weeks.”
His parents had taken care of everything back then. Only this time, his parents weren’t around to help. Though, if they were he feared their answer would be to throw Adrien back in the psych ward and dope him up on more drugs. As if the ones he was supposed to be on weren’t working. He sighed. If Adrien had been taking his meds, Samuel bet that all of this probably wouldn’t have happened.
Shaking his head, he tapped on his bedroom door. “Brianna?” he called gently, opening the door to his room.
Because she’d been sleeping in his bed, he’d spent his nights on the sofa. He didn’t want to be far away at night, especially since she’d had a few nightmares ever since the whole thing.
Tangled Obsession: Book 2 of the Obsession Trilogy Page 11
