by Jessie Cooke
“Lucien, please, let’s just talk about this rationally.”
She watched him breathe in deeply before he said, “We will, but not here. Come on...” He tried to grab her arm and she pulled away from him. She wasn’t leaving with him; if she did...she was as good as dead. Her fight or flight kicked in and she ran for the back door. Before she got there she felt him grab a handful of her hair. Her head snapped back and she fell to the floor. His face was red and contorted with anger as he looked down at her. Twisting her hair up in his hand he said, “Get up.”
With tears in her eyes, willing them not to fall, she struggled to her feet with him still pulling at the roots of her hair. As soon as she was upright, she let her right knee come up and land in the soft mass of flesh between his legs. Lucien screamed, and she heard him call her a filthy name, but she was already halfway out the door. She could hear him grunting, but she didn’t look back as she ran for the gate. She threw the latch open and then she was out in the alleyway. Screaming for help, she began to run. After a few seconds she couldn’t hear him behind her any longer, but she didn’t stop. The high brick fences probably blocked out the sounds of her screams; she had to make it to the end of the block and around in front where she could knock on someone’s door.
She ran hard and just as the street was right in front of her, she heard the sound of an engine revving. Simultaneously as she stepped out of the alley, Lucien stepped on the gas in that little blue sports car. The last thing she remembered was the excruciating pain that shot through her ribs as she flew up into the air. She was unconscious before she hit the ground.
19
The two and a half hours it took Blackheart to get to Atchafalaya were hell. He almost got arrested before leaving the coroner’s office. Detective Stone wanted to interview him about Booger, but he told her it would have to wait. She got pissy and was ready to hook him up when Petit found his balls and told her to stand down. Blackheart called Le Singe before he left, but they weren’t there yet either and he was afraid the anxiety over where Sally was and what was happening to her might just kill him before he got there.
He was about an hour out when his phone rang. He pulled over and took the call from Le Singe, but it was nothing but bad news. They had searched the house and found nothing. According to Le Singe it looked like it had been sitting empty for years; the rodents and bugs had taken over. He had sent men out to the cabins on the property but hadn’t had a report back on that situation yet. By the time Blackheart ended the call he was pissed at himself for wasting the three minutes it took to hear nothing. He took off again and the thoughts continued to race through his head. He’d known for most of his life that he loved Sally, but it had taken the past few weeks for him to realize that he was hopelessly in love with her. When he thought about things he couldn’t live without, Sally was at the top of that list, and he wanted to kick his own ass for not realizing sooner that he was pushing her away. If anything happened to her, he would blame himself, and he wasn’t sure he could survive it. The asshole could have anything else he had, and Blackheart would rebuild it...but not Sally, he couldn’t take Sally.
He was more sick to his stomach by the time he got to the Guidry mansion than he had been looking at one of his brothers dead on a slab in the morgue. He almost dropped his bike as he tried to get off in a hurry. He got inside and found Le Singe, Gabriel, Chance, and a guy they called Berto still inside. Le Singe had them moving furniture and searching underneath things looking for some kind of secret room or passageway. “Anyone searching the swamps?” he asked, breathlessly.
“Yeah, boss, Mims and Turtle are on that, and Lowlife is out looking on the roads nearby and knocking on doors. I heard back from the guys at the cabins—nobody’s found nothing except it looks like Miss Sally or someone might have been up at her Paw Paw’s cabin recently.”
Blackheart figured that’s where she’d gone the weekend after the shooting when she took off on him. It was right after that that she started seeing Lucien, so he figured that was when she met him...that and the fact that Lucien bought the house convinced him this was where he was holding her. But there was that part of him that worried he was wrong, and if that was the case, was he wasting precious time? Was he fucking around while Sally was being hurt...or worse? He yelled, at the top of his lungs. He had to get it out before he exploded. His men stood by silently as he threw a punch into the wall. The walls were cement and he yelled again when his fingers crashed into it. “Fuck! What about the attic?”
“Ain’t nothing up there but critters,” Chance said. “I checked it out good, boss.”
“And nothing in the basement?”
“Nothing we could find, boss.”
“Fuck!” he yelled again. “Get out of here and find her! Search every fucking tree, cove, and stick out there! Look for footprints in the mud—if you have to, pull open the jaws of every fucking gator in this swamp! Find her!” The men all scattered but Le Singe. When they were gone, Blackheart looked at his VP with tears in his eyes and said, “Booger is really gone, and I know this fucker killed him. We have to find him, Singe.”
“We will, boss. Tell me what you want me to do.”
“Go down to the basin and get the pirogue. Take it up and down this swamp, Singe. We have to find her.” Le Singe nodded and put a hand on Blackheart’s shoulder for just a second and his eyes softened.
“Miss Sally’s the toughest lady I’ve ever known. We’ll find her, and she’ll be okay.” Blackheart nodded, and wished he really believed it.
Sally’s eyes were shut tightly, and her body still. She wasn’t sure if he was there in the room, watching her, and she didn’t want him to know she was awake, until she had a plan. Her body throbbed and ached all over. She remembered running from Lucien and coming to a dead stop before everything went black. She wasn’t sure, but she thought he hit her with his car...and she felt like it. She tried to keep her breathing even and unlabored so he might believe she was asleep if he was watching her. She felt a tear trying to leak its way out of her eye and willed it to stop. She needed time to figure things out before the monster put his hands on her again.
Very slowly and gently, she moved her wrist. It hurt, but it didn’t feel like she was tied down. She did the same with her ankles, and her conclusion was that she was lying on some kind of cot, but she wasn’t tied to it. Her first question was why? Why wasn’t he afraid of her running away? The possible answers to that terrified her. If he wasn’t afraid of her leaving, and he wasn’t in the room, that meant she was somewhere that no one would think to look for her and somewhere that she’d never be able to escape.
She tuned into her sense of hearing next, and at first she could hear absolutely nothing. Being unable to hear any breathing in the room other than her own quelled some of her anxiety. The idea of him sitting there watching her was much more terrifying than the idea of being alone. She listened closer to the silent room, straining so hard that it made her head ache even more than it already did...and still, she heard nothing. Her sense of smell was telling her she was somewhere near the swamp. She could smell mud, and rot, and the wet, filthy hair of animals. She was dry as a bone, however, so she wasn’t in the water. Of course she could be on the water, in a boat maybe. But if she was, the boat wasn’t moving. She’d been on boats enough in her life to know that if she were on a moving one, she’d know.
She lay there for what seemed like a long time, listening to the sounds of her own breathing and trying to assess the damage to her own body, based on the pain. The worst of it was in her ribs every time she breathed in or out, so that told her that at least one was probably broken. She wasn’t having trouble exchanging air, though, so that meant her lungs hadn’t been punctured at least. Her back was sore, but nowhere near as excruciating as her ribs, and her arms felt achy, but intact. She wiggled her hips slightly and a searing pain shot through her right ankle, so it was either sprained or broken. If there were any way out of this place she was in, speed would not be on he
r side, thanks to her injuries.
Again, she lay there for what seemed like hours and finally she had to admit that she knew she was alone, and the only reason she hadn’t opened her eyes yet was because she was gripped by terror at the idea of what she might see. It took her some time to fight through that and convince herself to pull her eyelids open...all at once, like ripping off a Band-Aid. It was something she’d said to patients for years, just pull that tape off and get it over with.
When she first opened her eyes, all she saw was darkness. Her heart began to race even faster as she wondered if she was underground. Had he buried her alive? She had no idea what Lucien wanted from her. She couldn’t believe how wrong she’d been about him. The anger she felt at herself gave her a burst of energy, or bravery at least. She held onto the cot with both hands and pushed herself upright, unable to stop the cry of pain that escaped from her throat as she did. Her head spun and her vision went blurry, but when the tears in her eyes cleared, they began to adjust to the darkness and things began to take shape. She reached out next to the cot she was lying on and found a small nightstand or table. She gripped onto that and turned her body so that her legs were off the side of the cot, and once again scanned the darkness, trying to make out the shapes in the room. She could see shadows about six feet from her but couldn’t make out what they were. Using the nightstand to push herself up to her feet, another cry escaped her lips when she put too much weight on her injured ankle. Balancing herself on her left foot she more or less hopped over toward what she thought was a wall. Every hop or step brought more pain to every aching muscle in her body. She was breathing hard and sweating by the time her hand made contact with the wall, and as soon as it did, she jerked it back and gasped. The wall was dirt, soil, mud...she was underground...she was buried alive.
Blackheart searched the entire house again, from the attic to the basement. He hadn’t shed a tear in his life since his mother died. He didn’t even cry for Jean Luc, or the man he’d killed to avenge his father. But as he began to admit to himself that Sally could be anywhere, and he might never see her again, he couldn’t stop the tears from leaking out of his eyes and rolling down his cheeks. He was kicking himself for not telling Petit what was going on and he was about to call the detective and put out a missing persons report on Sally when he had another idea. He wasn’t sure why, but he just couldn’t shake the feeling that Sally was in that house, somewhere.
He listened to the phone ring twice and then heard Zane Zimmerman’s deep voice come over the line. “Zane, I need a big favor.”
“Name it.”
“You have anybody over at the clerk’s office in St. Mary’s Parish?”
“Yep, got one or two good friends there. What do you need?”
“This is a big one, but when I was a kid I remember old man Guidry doing some work to his basement. I remember because he pitched a big damned fit about having to file plans with the ‘crooked government.’ Can you get me a copy of those plans?” Knowing Sally’s Paw Paw as well as Blackheart did, he wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to find out the old man had put in a hidden room, or closet, or something.
“I’ll do my best. You want them sent to your phone?”
“Yeah, and as fast as possible, thanks.” He ended the call and then just stood there. He was in the middle of the basement and he thought he could actually feel Sally. He told himself it was probably wishful thinking...his imagination...but fuck if he had any other ideas.
20
Lucien sat outside the thin door, listening to Sally scratch around like a mouse in a cage. The sense of power that having her all to himself gave him was like the biggest shot of adrenaline he’d ever received. If he could bottle that feeling, he’d make a fortune. He almost went in as soon as he heard her moving, but he forced himself to wait. Sally had to be punished for what she’d done to him, sinking her knee into his balls and then running. He’d had to sit with a bag of frozen peas on his lap for an hour before the swelling went down. No, she’d have to learn quickly who the boss would be in their relationship. He knew he’d have to break her. Sally had a strong, wild spirit that he found attractive...in the outside world. But here in their castle she’d have to be broken and tamed like a wild horse. Now that they were alone together at last, he’d have plenty of time to do that.
Lucien’s eyes went to the wall behind his desk. It was filled with photographs of his beloved Sally. He’d started taking pictures of her the summer he came home from the Marines, and he had quite a collection. He still had a ton more in his storage facility, along with all of the things he’d managed to take from her room over the years. He loved looking at the pictures, and he’d hung his favorites on the wall of what would be his office, once he and Sally settled into their new place and their new life. He had candid photos of her riding her motorcycle, holding babies on the front porches of the trash she serviced in her job, and sitting at the counter of her favorite bar. He had photos of her sleeping, cooking, showering...and even pleasuring herself. Those were his favorite, the look of ecstasy on her face as she brought herself to climax...thinking of him, he was sure.
Sally had done a good job of pretending she didn’t remember him, and he’d been hurt. But the more he thought about it, the more he came to the realization that she just hadn’t wanted to admit that she’d lusted after him when he was only a boy. He felt the heat when she looked at him, both back then and the day at the cabin. He wouldn’t be able to actually feel something that strongly if it wasn’t real, he was sure of it. Sally had been playing hard to get, sowing her wild oats and giving him time to prepare. This space underneath the basement of the Guidry house hadn’t ever been completed, and that had taken him some time. He had to solidify it first and put in drains because since it sat below sea level, it was already flood damaged when he found it. Once that was done and the walls were reinforced with concrete, he had to figure out how to pipe air in from the outside and do it in a way where it wouldn’t be noticeable to someone snooping around outside, and he’d also had to put in the pipes for water and plumbing. He had to find a place to hide a generator, which he hid in plain sight in the upper basement. The extension cords dropped down underneath the heavy generator through the floor and the only way anyone would ever discover it was if they moved the big, heavy apparatus. He had to move in and stock two freezers and a refrigerator and fill a walk-in pantry. He’d had to fill two closets with essential clothes that he and Sally might need, and of course he’d had to decorate the room he knew would become the favorite of both of them, the place where they would sleep, and play.
It had taken him years to get it all prepared. He’d been so patient because he knew that best-laid plans always came to fruition before rushed or haphazard ones. He’d learned that young, when he’d spent years planning the deaths of his parents. He’d learned it in the military when he lay on his belly for hours waiting for the target he’d immobilize with one shot. He’d learned it in his business as he spent years building a small fortune and putting it in places that no one could ever find or trace back to him if they did. Lucien knew that Sally wouldn’t understand all he had done for her at first. She wouldn’t understand that she didn’t need a job, or people. All she needed was him. He was the best man for her, the only one. He could barely even remember his life before loving her and someday soon she’d see just how lucky she was.
Lucien stood up and set the frozen peas down on top of the desk. He knew he’d be okay when he thought about punishing Sally for what she’d done and he felt his cock swell. He would punish her first, and then he’d reward her. He’d give her what he knew she wanted. He’d fuck her like the devoted little slut he knew she would soon become.
Blackheart was walking around the exterior of the house. The sun was beginning to go down and soon he wouldn’t be able to see anything without a flashlight. He had to find her, but if it turned out that she wasn’t somewhere in the Guidry house after he wasted all that time looking for here there...he’d never
forgive himself. He started out toward his bike to get a flashlight when his phone rang. His heart sped up when he saw that it was Zane calling him back. “Zane?”
“Hey, Evan, Andre Guidry filed two sets of blueprints. One was a living area he wanted to build in the basement and the other was a basement he wanted to add, underneath the basement.”
“Son of a bitch! There’s another layer?”
“Yeah, I’m sending the plans through now but wanted to give you a heads-up. I’m not seeing where the entry would be to this second basement if he ever got around to putting it in, but if anyone is down that low, they’d need some kind of system to pump air in, and they’d probably need an electric generator to do that. That’s what I’d be looking for, unless of course you can see something on these plans that I’m not seeing.”
“Okay, Zane, thanks.”
“Let us know if you need anything else. We heard about Booger, and we’re so damned sorry. Elise has been on the phone with our boy out in California for over an hour, trying to convince him to quit his club.”
That made Blackheart smile in the midst of all the angst he was feeling. He’d known Zane’s boy most of his life and the big guy, who went by Maz now, had stars in his eyes the first time he’d seen Blackheart and his crew drive up on their Harleys. If anyone could convince anyone to do anything, it would be Elise, but Blackheart doubted that was going to happen. Maz loved being a Westside Skull, and from what Blackheart gathered the last time he’d seen him, he loved California as well.
He thanked Zane again and pulled up the blueprints that had just hit his email. He used the flashlight to look them over. The basement wasn’t finished. There were two walls that Andre had planned on putting in that weren’t there, and the room that he’d planned on building underneath the basement looked like just one big room with no plumbing—and on the plans Blackheart was looking at, there was not even a hint of where air might be piped in. With another curse, he went back inside and down to the basement. It was two rooms at the moment, both reinforced with cement walls and a wood floor. He could hear the generator running and that’s when it dawned on him that he’d heard it the first time he was down there too...but there weren’t any lights on in the basement, and nothing that should be sucking electricity.
