BOUND

by Akeroyd, Serena

  “I couldn't be seen going to your office, now, could I?” the mayor's secretary whined. “Just what in the hell kind of reason would I have had for coming to visit you?”

  “Oh, I don't know. You could have said you were trying to serve me another writ?”

  At Eva's wry tone, Marjorie Hammond flushed. Ever since Eva had started the Neuview New View, she'd been on the receiving end of countless writs and summons. Not that any of them had panned out in court. What she was doing was causing mischief, but it wasn't slanderous.

  As an upholder of the law, a shoddy one at times but accurate nonetheless, as well as a daughter of a lawyer, Eva knew which side her bread was buttered. As long as no names were mentioned, any gossip could not be considered slanderous or defamation of character.

  That meant she was free to her heart's content to make trouble.

  It had been a sorry day indeed for Neuview County when she'd ambled her way in on the Greyhound bus. Travel sickness making it impossible for her to carry on a mile more, even though South Dakota hadn't been her intended target, Texas was where she’d intended on landing.

  She'd stayed the night in a small but clean motel, and noticed in the diner the following morning a small shopfront with a 'For Sale' sign on the window. The Neuview New View, weekly paper and purveyor of local news to the seven thousand people in the county, had been on a real estate agent's books for the last two years...until Eva had seen it and taken a fancy to the notion of becoming a newspaper owner.

  Small town news hadn't interested her for long, and so, she'd turned nasty. Finding a less murderous way to police the town. Trouble seemed to follow her, or maybe she sought it out. All she knew was that for a shit small county like this one, a whole heap of nasty was going down.

  “Marjorie, what do you expect me to do with some blurred pictures of a house, and the mayor standing in front of it?” Eva sighed, before reaching for a handkerchief and blotting her brow. Ever since the Indian summer had hit, the temperatures had scorched, and with it, Eva had been sweating like a pig.

  “That isn't just any house,” the older woman spat, her frizzy red hair bristling with disgust at Eva's blasé remark.

  “No? Then whose house is it?”

  “It's the reverend's, of course!”

  “There's no ‘of course’ about it. Why does that matter? Maybe the mayor has sins he needs to confess outside of church hours.”

  Marjorie huffed. “There ain't nothing holy going down in that house, let me tell you that for nothing.”

  Eva eyed the other woman. At fifty, life hadn't truly been kind to dear, old Marj. Her hair was the color of a fox's tail, but it was as wiry as one too. Her face was lined, her eyes tired and small, bitterness coating their depths. She was a skinny little thing with huge feet. It was an odd thing to notice, but it was impossible not to notice the woman's shoes. A body saw them before they saw the woman herself!

  That Marjorie had a crush on Major Jonah Burns was as painfully evident as her sandals. Only, that crush had turned sour of late.

  At the beginning of her Neuview New View adventure, any gossip from the town hall had not come from Marjorie. So, the crush had obviously faded away, to be replaced with disgust.

  “I'm guessing you think there's hanky panky going on?” Back in New York, the words hanky and panky would never have crossed her lips. Here, where folk still turned awkward at the mention of the S- word, sex, it was one she used regularly.

  “More than hanky panky. Why on earth would the mayor be visiting the reverend at his home anyway?”

  “I don't know, to talk about stuff?”

  “Stuff that couldn't be discussed at the town meeting?”

  “Apparently so.”

  She poopoohed that. “I don't believe it. I'm telling you, something sinful is happening in that house.”

  “Sinful, like what?” Her ears perked up at the thought of something really hardcore. Murder for hire? A town hall and church merger for some illicit deal that was going down...? Her readers would really love that.

  “You know, two men.” Marjorie nodded her head urgently. She wiggled it to the side as well.

  Eva just frowned in confusion. “Yeah, two men. Since when was that a sin?”

  Marjorie gasped. “Two men in bed together is most definitely a sin.”

  “You think they're gay?”

  “Well, don't you?”

  “I was more excited at the prospect of some kind of shady land deal or some such,” Eva grumbled.

  “This is worse. Our leader, our mayor is one of those homosexuals you read about in the nationals. It's shocking, it's a disgrace!”

  “You should live in New York, love. You'd really have your eyes opened,” Eva retorted wryly. She'd soon learned that homophobia was as active now in these here parts as it had been thirty years ago.

  But then, most aspects of this place were like stepping back to the eighties. Sometimes, it was like being transported back into an episode of Roseanne. This place was like the land that the millennium forgot.

  Marjorie pursed her lips, obviously pissed at Eva's lack of reaction. “Do you want this gossip or not?”

  Eva sighed. This kind of shit was the paper's bread and butter. Already, after only four months of running the paper, circulation had tripled thanks to the new format and the new content. Her readers got off on this shit, even if it left her cold. “I do, but I'd like a little more information at first. If I publish something about their meeting up and it's to do with a business deal that I fu—mess up with my report, the paper will be in serious high water.”

  “So what?”

  “So, I need more.”

  “You write a gossip rag. How much evidence do you need?”

  “When I'm taking on the town leader and the town's religious leader, a hell of a lot more than a fuzzy photograph.”

  Marjorie sniffed. “I'll see what I can do.”

  “You do that. And next time, come to my office. We can say you were asking me for a donation for the next local charity event.”

  The other woman's reaction to what was a 'Don't waste my time' brush off, was her nose popping most firmly in the air with disgust. “I'll see what I can do.”

  “You do that,” Eva remarked, twisting the key in the ignition and setting off away from the small reservoir where Marjorie had wanted to meet.

  Dust and sand fanned out behind her, undoubtedly leaving Marjorie in a cloud of junk, but hell, the woman deserved it. One thing she couldn't abide, out of all the sins of humans, was homophobia. It really pissed her off.

  Life was shit enough without making a big deal out of who gave you a hard on or who didn't. And while that little bit of nothing photo that Marjorie had showed her would ordinarily have been enough for her to have printed something in the paper, the old bitch would have to come up with something huge for Eva to include anything about her news in the paper.

  Firing up any kind of prejudice was not in her job description.

  Racial, sexual, whatever.

  She was here to make mischief. That was it.

  Bored housewives turning to Satan to keep their asses trim, the sophomores doing drugs at the back of the burger shack on the highway, that kind of shit was where she got her kicks.

  Nosing onto the highway, she headed for the aforementioned burger shack and ordered a campero sandwich with all the extras via the drive-thru. Spotting no coke-sniffing teens in the parking lot, she didn't stay to eat her meal there. Instead, she drove to the office, parked outside, and locked up her vehicle for the night.

  She lived above the paper, and while it was a bit crappy mixing work with pleasure, the commute was fucking awesome. On top of that, she effectively lived on Main Street. She missed nothing from her vantage point. Nothing. She could see and hear all, and it was quite amusing that most folk had taken to sneaking past her shop window so as to avoid her all-seeing, all-knowing gaze.

  The irony being that as useful as her location was, it didn't exactly fill the fo
rty-page paper. Most of her news came from people like Marjorie. Good old God-fearing Christians who liked to stir shit.

  Judge not and all that.

  Eva snorted at the thought as she locked the door behind her. Switching on a light, she headed for her desk and sat her huge chicken-fried steak sandwich, with ranch dressing and potato salad—sounded gross but was fucking gorgeous—on the table. Switching on her computer, she opened the wrapping as she waited for the laptop to load and took a huge bite.

  Humming with the ecstasy of the taste, Eva flicked through her emails the instant her computer was firing on all cylinders, and spotting one from Jessie over at the diner, she frowned. Jessie was probably her only friend in these parts. Not that she went out of her way to have a friend, but Jessie was just there.

  Whenever Eva went into the diner for breakfast, Jessie waited on her table and took a seat and a moment to chat with her.

  Friendship had not always been an unusual concept, but since her early twenties, it had become something to avoid rather than embrace.

  In Jessie's case, she wouldn't be avoided, and so, they'd become friends. Eva hadn't really had much say in the matter.

  Look at this. You put us on the fucking map. Wooooot!

  Frowning at the email subject, she clicked on the link in the body of the message and then froze when it led to a large online paper.

  Small town's BIG mouth. The Neuview New View is stirring up a storm in Tornado Alley.

  Choking on her sandwich, Eva put the huge behemoth down and carried on reading the rest of the article. Mischief, gossip, slander, lawsuits...it was all there. The whole nine yards. But worse than that...on a national website were the two worst words imaginable.

  Eva. Kingston.

  She closed her eyes, thanking God that a photo hadn't been uploaded with the article. That would have really stirred up some shit for her. Running a hand through her hair, she grimaced when she realized those fingers were covered in meat juices. Pulling away, she read through the article once more, seeking damage control.

  There was no real reason why Martinez would think that name and the paper had anything to do with the Lucia Kingston he knew. Rather than focus on her, the proprietor, the article was focusing on the amusing blips in rural, Midwest life. They'd even included some of her finest headlines:

  Do-It-To-Your-Sheep

  Dr. Lucifer, MD, owner of Neuview's only Plastic Surgery Center

  Do you want some coke with your Coke?

  Eva pulled in a shaky breath. She was safe because there was no way Martinez could put one and one together and come up with her, tucked away in South Dakota. It just wasn't going to happen.

  Reaffirming the belief, she picked up her sandwich again and started eating.

  That delicious, fried, naughty goodness wasn't there anymore, though. It tasted like ashes, because deep in her heart, she knew that Martinez wouldn't have stopped looking for her.

  Big headed, sure, it might have seemed that way. It wasn't like she was the best thing since sliced bread, with tits the size of a bus station, and an ass so fine grown men drooled. But gang bosses were a whole other species of human. She'd managed to save his pride and spare his ego too much damage by ensuring he could free himself from her bindings without any outside help, and it was also to her advantage that no one had known her true reasons for being at HQ, save Juan. Still, she knew it wasn't enough.

  He was waiting for her, biding his time, and with this damn article, she'd just given him an opening.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  She'd never imagined her shenanigans here would gain notoriety. Sure, the paper was unusual, but Neuview County encompassed just under seven thousand hardy souls. Good God, if she'd thought her mischief would escape notice anywhere, then it had to be here.

  “Goddammit,” she grunted as she threw the delicious campero sandwich into the trash can beside her desk. “Who knows where this will fucking lead?”

  She could just imagine the breakfast news stations making a huge fuss out of this. It was the kind of shit they touted first thing on a morning to the uninterested masses. In the morning, she'd probably get a call asking her to go to New York for an interview—like that was going to keep her low profile.

  As she slammed a hand on the desk, Eva got to her feet and turned off the laptop. Thoroughly pissed off, too angry to work, she made sure the door was dead bolted then trudged upstairs.

  Even though it was ridiculous, she made sure to check her small kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom before she got undressed. Since Martinez's little escapade, she'd started double checking everything now. Looking under the bed, in the wardrobes, getting into every nook and cranny to determine if she truly was alone in her place or not.

  She hadn't managed to discern Martinez's hiding place, and for a woman who relied on knowing her home was secure—on a tangible level, more so than most—it was a living nightmare knowing someone had slipped inside her net, and she hadn't caught him.

  Eight years ago, before the world had turned into a darker place, Eva wouldn't have thought to check her laundry cupboard for stow away gang lords, but now, she did.

  She had to.

  For her own sanity.

  Chapter Twelve

  In the blurred horror of being abducted, raped, and tortured, Lucia Kingston had come to realize the worst aspect of it all was the lack of sight.

  The fucking bastard who did this to her kept her blindfolded. The ceaseless pitch black made her feel like she'd fallen into an abyss and there was no hope of escape. Enduring his sickness was one thing, but being deprived of a basic sense was killing her.

  Maybe, if he hadn't kept her blindfolded she'd have wished for something to cover her eyes. He had to store the tools he used on her somewhere. Considering one of her wounds had become infected, she figured he didn't clean his stuff. The prospect of looking at bloodied knives should have made her stomach twist, but to the endless darkness, she'd have preferred to look at such a horrifying view.

  Weird? Definitely. But nothing in this fucked up situation was normal.

  If she managed to get out of here alive, and she fully intended on surviving this nightmare, she knew that normal would never exist for her again.

  The stuff he'd done...it wasn't something you recovered from. It wasn't something the shrinks could take away.

  This was in her head. Forever.

  A part of her wanted to weep for her lost innocence. But the other part was too furious to shed a tear for what was.

  Lucia was different than the other girls. For some weird reason, he never did the same things to her as he did to them.

  Josiah kept them gagged for the most part, and she knew why. They were all noisy. Especially one—she'd screamed, sobbed, retched on her own terror. The noises, without her sight, had put Lucia more on edge than anything.

  It was a terrible admission to make, but it had been a relief when the bastard had killed her.

  One thing she was learning, it was everyone for him or herself, and hearing those wretched sounds constantly had played games with her own mind. Another one had cried when their tormentor wasn't even in the room.

  It wasn't like Lucia blamed her but to constantly weep?

  The senses she was coming to rely on had gone haywire, because she never knew when the bastard was there. The noise had taken away those few moments she had to shore her defenses for whatever the fucker was about to do to her. When the end had come for the other girls, Lucia had felt nothing but gladness.

  She'd also learned that her silence, that her stout resolve, was keeping her alive.

  When she'd been taken, there'd been another girl with her. He'd killed her, and when the next poor sobbing bitch had arrived, Lucia had felt sure her time to die had come. But, he'd shocked her.

  She was still alive when three others had lost their lives.

  The only difference being, she refused to pander to the man's ego.

  And his ego was fucking enormous.

  He
thought he was the fucking king of his castle. He ruled this domain, beating and torturing whomever he wanted because he could. He got off on the sobs, on the pleading, but in the end, it tired him. Bored him, and the girls would soon be freed to another kind of kingdom.

  Not that she believed in the kingdom of God anymore.

  That had disappeared on what had to be her tenth day when one of the others had been killed, and she'd been caught in the arterial spray. He'd left her there, listening to the dying gasps, that horrifying death whistle, as the hot liquid had dried on her flesh. Blind, she'd heard the gurgles of blood escaping the gasping mouth of the dying girl, and she'd had to lie there and listen.

  No God would allow this to happen, and Lucia had gone from theist to atheist in one fell swoop. It was then when she'd decided she'd survive this. No bastard was going to take her. This was not going to happen. If she rejected it outright, then she could cope, and her coping mechanism intrigued the sick fuck keeping her captive, making him keep her alive.

  Sure, that meant being tortured, but she was breathing. Where there was breath, there was hope, and she couldn't forget that. She couldn't lose hope.

  The problem was, her muscles were atrophying. Lying flat on her back, on what felt like a St Andrew's Cross, her hands were tied above her head, her feet to posts at the bottom of the cross. She tried to tense and release the muscles in an attempt to keep them working, but she doubted it was enough. Her arms went through painful spells of numbness in Josiah's, the bastard, absence. He let her go when he was there, rubbed her arms, cleaned her up, even massaging oil into her limbs to keep the skin supple.

  He didn't do that to the other girls. He didn't pet them like he did her. She smelled the piss and shit in the air and knew he let them defile themselves where they stood. At first, she'd had the same treatment. She'd been standing, rather than lying down, and she'd had to go when nature dictated—where she stood. Somehow, that had broken her more than anything. The horror of the situation, the pain of the rapes and the cutting had torn at her, but being made to do that had rattled at her mind.