Saddles & Sabotage

by Nellie K Neves

  A scraping sound came from my immediate left and then Dallas sunk onto a chair only six inches from where I was tied. A plastic bag rustled in his hand. I held my breath, worried he might pull it over my head. His smile oozed across his face as he tasted my fear. “First, Dallas is a nickname, after my hometown. Miles is my real name, after my father.”

  The name registered in my memory, something about the case. “You robbed that medical facility.”

  “You’re picking it up so quickly.” His hands grasped mine and I felt the plastic bag fasten to one hand, making the air stale around my left. “Okay, the collection bag is in place, and I’m sure you have a lot of questions, but I’d really like to get started.”

  I heard the steel drag against steel as he removed the knife from its sheath. I turned away so I didn’t have to see the first cut. That same chuckle I’d always adored sent shivers up my spine. “Don’t you want to watch? You love watching. I’ve seen you analyzing everything. I didn’t understand why before, but now that I know who you are, it makes sense.”

  The trembling started in my hands, but spread through my body. It had to be a nightmare. “I don’t understand what’s happening, Dallas.”

  “I should feel privileged that I stumped the great Lindy Johnson.” Cold metal seared my skin as he pressed the length of the blade against my arm. “I was going to leave last night, let Wiley take the fall for everything we did together, but once I read up on you, I knew it. You’re the one I’ve been looking for.”

  My breath caught as the blade slipped along my bicep, not enough to cut, but enough to feel the razor tip.

  “What do you mean the one you’ve been looking for?” I asked. “Why have you been killing people? Why do you need the blood?”

  The tip of the blade traced my skin, like a child doodling on a clean piece of paper. “I told you that I got sick as a kid, well, maybe sick was the wrong word. I needed a transfusion. My parents never told me why, but my mother did tell me that they picked the strongest man in the entire world to give me blood. This guy climbed Everest and wrestled grizzlies, found off criminals with his bare hands. I felt how his blood made me stronger, but my body was just a boy with a child’s capabilities. My dad was drunk most of my life. He slapped us around, real bad sometimes. I imagined my donor’s power in my veins and I knew when my body caught up, I’d be strong enough to fight back.”

  The knife trailed over my cheek and I held my breath as it curved back down my jaw and over the delicate skin of my neck, but not enough pressure to cut. Memories carried Dallas far away, only comforted by the knife he played with.

  “I did too. I stood up to him in high school. I was finally strong enough. My body caught up to the blood and I fought him off my mother. He’s gone now, and I understood it at last. Blood is what governs us. With his blood all over my hands, I could see it, he had poison in him. I let it out and everything was peaceful again. Fate, Lindy.”

  “I don’t understand.” My voice was not my own, helpless and afraid. Time slipped away and I had no plan.

  “You wouldn’t,” he snapped.

  The blade twisted and bit into my flesh. Panic took hold and my breath sped in response.

  “Shhh,” Dallas cooed. “Not time yet. I didn’t mean to do that.”

  Everything about my breathing felt unnatural as he rubbed my arms with his familiar touch. Each breath caught on my stifled sobs, ragged and gasping. I had to listen, buy time, and figure out some way to get free.

  “My mother died last year,” Dallas continued, “a car crash. Death was instant. But she came to me in a dream and told me my strong blood was running out. I needed to find more so that I could stay powerful. She told me to search for the one who was worthy.” His warm lips kissed at the open wound on my shoulder, tasting my blood for the first time. “I’ve been searching all summer, and I finally found you. Someone strong enough to face down a serial killer, brave enough to conquer her own fear, and smart enough to stay a step behind me all along the way. I need you, Lindy. Fate brought you to me. I thought we were meant to be a couple, your proximity alone makes me stronger, but now I see it’s deeper than romance.”

  Tied against the legs of the chair, my lower half trembled with anxiety. “What do you do with the blood you take?”

  He laughed a little, as if he’d forgotten the most important part. “I thought that was a given. I’ve been injecting it. My long term goal is a full transfusion, but that takes time, and I never wanted to waste my resources if I wasn’t sure.” He cupped my jaw and brought me to face him. “I’m sure this time.”

  “Wiley was helping you?” I asked as the knife set to my skin again.

  “Helping is a relative term. He got me the job at the medical office so I could get us supplies. He liked my idea, the injections, and the new blood. I’m AB positive, universal receiver. It makes it simple. When Wiley came around, we had to start blood typing. Limited what he could use, but didn’t slow him down at all. He enjoyed the hunt more than I ever have. I’ve been helping him learn a few things, mostly when we went on overnight trips. The guests sleep hard and we got quite a bit done in one night.”

  If I didn’t know better I would assume he talking about laundry or stacking wood for winter, not slaughter.

  “So, Tumbleweed?” I let the words fall off into the abyss as he chuckled.

  “Tim gave us a run for our money, that’s for sure. He was tracking us all the time, came close a few times. He was as sharp as you, maybe more so. While you were in the hospital, I paid him a visit, forced him to write the note. I thought I would have to stage suicide or something. Wouldn’t you know it, he keeled over. Real sick, I guess. It sure worked out for me in the end. After that, I had to wait for someone to find him.” He touched the knife’s tip to my nose. “You really helped with all your running around terrified of him. No one saw me coming.” His face contorted into jealousy as the blade twisted. “I need that inside me. I need everything that makes you strong, inside my veins.”

  I closed my eyes and struggled to control my fear, but my impending death forced my tears over my cheeks. “Do it,” my voice cut against my tight throat, “stop messing with me and do it. Kill me.”

  “Hey,” it was Dallas’ voice, but it chilled me, “don’t cry. Come on, Cass, I’m not going to kill you. I need you. If this all works out, we’ll always be together like you wanted all along.”

  The slip of names gave me hope, but only for a moment. The pressure increased as the blade pushed against my arm. My desperate begging tumbled from my lips, “Dallas, please don’t, please.”

  “I have to,” he said, but there was no apology, only excitement. “This is going to hurt.”

  A cry of pain exploded from my lungs as he sliced a two inch gap in my arm. Tears stung and burned as I shook the chair in my struggle to free myself. Pain whipped against my face as his palm caught me across the jaw. The metallic glow of blood bloomed on my tongue. Every trace of the cowboy I adored was gone.

  “You’re sick!” I spat blood at the cement floor. “You’re insane and demented. Kill me and get it over with!”

  Fingertips jabbed into my flesh as Dallas forced me to look at him. “You know, you might be right? I think something is a little broken inside me. I tried draining the blood with needles and tube once, but you know what I found?” Pain pressed opened my mouth in a gasp as he forced my face to stare at the blood that trickled from my wound. “I missed this part. I like to watch the blood spill out.” He released my face and shoved me away from him. “Feel free to scream. No one can hear you.”

  I kept my mouth clamped shut for as long as I could, but as he carved and sliced and clipped away at my skin, the agony became unbearable. My battered screams tortured the dying night and his smile only grew.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I had a hard time tracking days, the sun rose and set, but the count felt wrong, four days felt too short for what I’d survived. The IV kept me calm, some painkiller mixed with a sedative, and a sal
ine drip to keep me hydrated.

  The bandage on my right arm felt fuzzy, new since that morning’s bleed out. He’d nicked something on accident and my head went dark. Lost once more to the void, I vacillated between Dallas’ ranting about my blood making him strong, and my father telling me I’d always been weak. The contradiction glared and I ached for release.

  I’d managed to avoid seeing his injections in the beginning, but eventually I supposed it was inevitable. He rotated the injection sites. That was why I’d never seen the marks. A cry of glee slipped from his chest as he emptied the syringe into the bulging vein at his thigh. “Stronger already,” he murmured as if it had instant effect. “Fate, this was beautiful fate, Cassidy.”

  He mixed the names up often, but it meant nothing. It was a sign of his slip into a full psychotic break, not a term of endearment.

  I’d broken him. That was the ironic bit. It was my lie that had tipped him from dabbling in his insane tendencies to a full-fledged break from sanity.

  I’d triggered my own torture.

  He told me stories before each session, his side of the summer’s events. The night I’d caught him and chased him to the river. He was the one who’d thrown me over. When Tumbleweed tried to fight him off, Dallas dove in and pulled me out at the last minute.

  “I needed you out of the way,” he told me as the blood dripped from my thigh, “how was I supposed to know you couldn’t swim?”

  He never took his eyes from the blood. He had a twisted fascination with the patterns and the rhythm as it weaved and carved designs over my skin. “I was worried when you said you were sick, but multiple sclerosis doesn’t exist in the blood. Like I said before—fate.”

  I watched him close the plastic bag on day five with a rubber band. Not much there. There never was, not with the way he preferred to take it from me. It reminded me of the goldfish bags I used to get at the fair if my ping pong ball landed in the right glass jar. Only there was no fish, and no prize this time.

  My mind remained in a state of haze, muscles that reacted too slow and refused to protect me. But the glaring contradiction of watching the hands of someone I’d cared about occupied with the destruction of my body and mind crippled me. Between the drugs and the pain, I couldn’t find the trap door and the confusion swallowed me in an abyss.

  As he watched the blood trickle from new wounds on my right arm, my voice asked the question I’d ached to know. “Was any of it real? Did you have feelings for me, Dallas?”

  For once he looked up and saw me, not the vessel that held his treasure. “Oh it was all real, Cass. I would’ve changed for you. You made me feel strong, stronger than I’ve felt in my entire life, but it wasn’t real. It was your blood that I was attracted to.”

  A particularly deep cut on my forearm broke through the sedation and I cried out. His sick smile at my pain only deepened the contradiction of my memories with Dallas.

  “Did you kill them all?” I asked.

  He thought about it, as if he was remembering a project he’d shared with a friend and wanted to give credit where credit was due. “I did the first five I believe. Wiley did the one in the meadow without me, but he screwed up and left it for the vultures. He also threw that one body in the river. Oh and the fisherman. There are a few of mine you’ll never find. Wiley had a flair for the dramatic, and I really didn’t approve. It draws unnecessary attention to the craft.”

  “The shower?” My strength faded with every drop he drained.

  The memory upset him. “Wiley, all Wiley. I wasn’t sure at first, but he was the one who ransacked your room and the one who wrecked your brakes.” He took his anger out on my flesh and nicked another hole in the underside of my forearm. “I could’ve slaughtered him for that.”

  Wrong. All wrong.

  Dallas was angry because Wiley had nearly killed me, and yet he carved away at my skin like a whittle block. Something had to give, something couldn’t be real. But as I looked at him, I could see the soft blue eyes that had watched me from the opposite side of the table all season, and the contradiction remained.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Days in the cabin rose to well over one hundred degrees and he rarely cracked a window because he worried my screaming might alert a lone camper. When I wasn’t drugged, the heat tore me apart. My joints ached beyond my tolerance and crushed me like a soda can. The open wounds Dallas inflicted burned as my sweat rolled through them, both the scabbed and the oozing. In the beginning, he’d wrapped them in gauze, but after a week he left them open to allow a clear canvas for his work. A muddled mind told me relapse was imminent, if not death.

  Nights were the worst. Bound at the hands, elbows knees and ankles, I was allowed the bed to sleep, but Dallas tethered us together at the waist so that he could sleep next to me. Many nights as he ran his fingers through my hair, I fantasized about chopping it all off. Every night I prayed that my disease would take my life as I slept, but every morning I woke up and the torture started again.

  On what I thought was the eighth day, though I feared I’d lost track, Dallas gave me a reprieve.

  “We’re traveling tomorrow. We need to be at the Grand Canyon in four days. I don’t want you looking too bad when we get there. I don’t plan on letting anyone see you, but we should be careful.”

  Despite his unspoken promise, he couldn’t resist opening a few new cuts in my cheek to watch the blood trickle over my skin. There was no pulling away on my part. I’d learned to hold still. If I jerked he’d cut deeper. My resistance only made him angry, as if I were betraying him. The last beating had left me unconscious for a couple hours. Still, I couldn’t help the automatic tightening of my muscles as the knife slid over my cheekbone.

  I was glad I couldn’t see myself. I hadn’t showered in over a week. Scabs and crusted blood marred my tanned skin. Nausea churned my gut at the smell of our body odor. I thought of the corpses I’d seen and wondered where I rated on the scale. When my body was found, would Dayton grimace at the sight?

  I could see the cuts on my legs, some long, most short and shallow. Dark satisfaction filled my chest knowing that either Dallas or my disease would kill me; I’d never be beautiful again. No way would I make it out alive.

  “Where are they?” I gasped as my vision blurred for the second time that day.

  The symptoms had tripled in the past three days. All the health I’d earned over my summer had vanished. Though I still felt every nick and cut he inflicted on me, my limbs were numb and weak. Vertigo created the illusion that gravity had lost hold. I wasn’t well, and time was near an end. Still the thought persisted, and I said it again, “Where are they?”

  “Hmm?” Dallas’ vision focused on the racing droplets that slipped over my neck. I’d played similar games with raindrops on windows as a child.

  “I sent a message to Ryder. I thought they’d come for me.” My stomach churned with queasiness and I feared I might be sick. There was no way for me to know how much blood he’d drained from me. Weakness was my reality. “Where are they?”

  The drops disappeared into my stained tank top and Dallas used the tip of the knife to extract more pain and more blood from my cheek. I jerked away, but he pinched my face in his grasp and cut deeper. “They came on day two. You missed it.” I could hear the annoyance in his voice and I wondered if he would beat me again.

  “What?” I blinked and my tears joined the race. “Who came?”

  His eyes narrowed as my tears fell and smeared the droplets of red. My emotion ruined his game. “The detective, and Isabelle, a whole squadron of cops, I think. They picked up Wiley and left.”

  My last hope for rescue melted away. “Won’t Wiley rat you out?”

  He considered the thought. “If he were conscious, but I gave him something to help him sleep.” Noting my downturned expression he clarified. “He probably isn’t dead, the poison mimics drug overdose, probably a coma. Not like anyone could find me if they tried. Dallas doesn’t exist.”

  “And they thin
k I left with you,” I concluded with my last breath of hope.

  “And tomorrow we will,” he agreed. “You and me, together against the world. I’ll give you something extra in your drip so we can sleep longer.” His smile twisted up into something that was supposed to be affection, but his psychosis marred the effect. “After all, you need your rest. Every day you make me stronger, and I love you for it.”

  Love.

  Fate.

  Trust.

  All words he’d ruined forever.

  All words that would always be tainted and twisted in my mind.

  I spent my last night in the cabin tied to a chair with an IV in my hand. I prayed for release, for anything that would take away the endless pain.

  Chapter 29

  It wasn’t the light that woke me, but faint sunlight filtered through the dirty windows. I could make out no sound, no intruder, no rescuer who’d alerted my senses, but still my vision was clear and my mind was aware.

  That was it. My mind was clear for the first time in days. I glanced at the floor and saw my IV on the ground. Something had broken in the night and it fell loose. The sedative that had kept me at bay was no longer in my system. Ironically, it was my pain that had woken me.

  Dallas slept on the bed, sprawled out and without a care in the world. My thoughts moved into overdrive. If I could get free, I could escape. Digging back to my time with Amos, I remembered a certain lesson in escape tactics, specifically zip ties.

  “They’re nothing more than plastic, Little Sparrow. If you struggle, they’ll bite back, but if you strike them against something the little pieces inside fracture and it’ll fall apart.”

  With my watchful glare glued to Dallas, I shifted and rammed the zip ties against the chair. He didn’t react so I did it again, then once more. The fourth time the ties busted open and my arms fell forward. I stared up at the ceiling and whispered, “Thank you, oh thank you.”