It was only when she'd learned Josiah got off on humiliating the girls, she'd realized how to get through this. She had to be strong, she had to endure. Enduring meant survival. Enduring meant life outside of this fucking prison.
With each cry a girl released, Josiah felt pleasure. But the pleasure was never enough. It bored him in the end, and so, he sought another poor creature to torment.
In her case, she intrigued him. Her silence made him think she was worthy. Deserving of his attention.
That dubious honor meant she had toilet breaks, where he carried her to the bathroom and stood there, watching as she let nature take its course. He washed her, brushed her hair, and fed her by hand.
The disturbing relationship was escalating, and Lucia knew she had to make a move. The infected cut on her shoulder was just the chance she needed. He kept on cleaning it, apologizing as he did, had even given her antibiotics, but it wasn't clearing up.
One thing the darkness had done was made her aware of herself. At times, when the temperatures soared, she was certain she could feel each bead of sweat slip from her pores. Her awareness was such that she knew the infection was spreading in the cut on her shoulder. She needed to move and fast.
Her only freedom was in the bathroom, but he watched her every move. She was weak, so fucking weak it sickened her, so that even if he wasn't watching her, she doubted she could have tried to escape.
She was sure her Pops would be ashamed of her. He'd survived the Vietcong. He'd been tortured, been weak, but he'd managed to escape. What use was she? After all his fucking training, all the hours of practice, and she fumbled at the final hurdle.
When the nights were long, and the transient train of girls were sobbing their horror out, she imagined that night. Envisioned how she'd do it again, how she'd do it differently. Each time, she realized that no amount of Krav Maga would have spared her this fate. No amount of training could stop a drug slipping through your system.
A fucking date rape drug had led to this. She'd been cautious. Never left her drink unattended. When she'd danced with her friends, even then, she'd either finished her cranberry juice or taken it with her. How it happened, when, she didn't know. A part of her wondered if Josiah had been on the staff at the bar she and her friends frequented. It was the only thing that made sense.
His hours gelled with that. He was around to torment them through the day, but not so much through the nights save for three of them when he either had days off or a shift change. Either side of her nose, two pinpricks of light were her only indicators as to the hour, and just seeing those pinpricks made her eyeballs ache.
She wished she could see him. Verify if he'd been the one tending bar. All her training at the academy wasn't getting her anywhere, and it was that training that was keeping her sane, as well as knowing her Pops would want her to survive. To fight.
The outer door opened. With it, came a faint gust of wind. She shivered as it brushed her exposed skin. Josiah kept her naked, but at night, when he left, he placed a blanket over her body. It didn't cover her fully, her sides were bare, but it was more than she'd had originally. Now, with the infection, her temperature was running high. The gust of air, fresh without the stain of the squalor in here, was wonderful, but it made her shiver nonetheless.
Her companion in this road to hell started screaming behind her gag. If the gust of air and the creak of the door hadn't been enough warning, Lucia had it now.
“Josiah?” she whispered, her voice croaky. She rarely used it now. Sometimes, when she did, she didn't recognize her own voice.
“Yes, baby?”
She wanted to cringe at the endearment. In fact, screw that, she wanted to tear his fucking head off. Who in their right mind could do this to someone and then call them baby?
What a fucking question, because Josiah, quite evidently, was not in his right mind.
“I think it's getting worse. I feel woozy. I don't think the antibiotics were strong enough.”
It was weird how he'd even tried to help her when he killed the other girls as easily as he did. But the terms of affection, the way he cared for her, all of it told her how this relationship was progressing.
She was playing the psychopath at his own game and was starting to win.
Now, what the fuck did that make her?
“I know. I felt your fever yesterday. I got you some stronger medication.” She felt him hover at her side and forced herself to remain still when he brushed her arm. Every day it was both easier and harder not to cringe. Revulsion filled her, but she needed to keep him sweet. If she kept him sweet, then she lived another day, and even if that other day gave him another opportunity to touch her, to hurt her, she was alive, and that was what counted.
“Thank you, Josiah.”
He had a thing about her saying his name. She didn't know why, but she sensed it made him feel good. Maybe it was a bit of normalcy in this horror show he was running down here, but she always felt him pump up a little. Almost like she'd stroked his ego.
“I need to roll you over onto your belly to administer the antibiotics. It's an injection.”
For a second, the words didn't compute. The word injection flooded her head, reverberating in her ears like he'd spoken at the end of a long tunnel.
If he had to turn her over, then she'd be free to move. And if she was free to move, then maybe, just maybe, there was hope.
Trembling with excitement, she whispered, “You'll have to help me, Josiah. I don't think I can move.” He liked her dependent, but he got off on her strength, so while she'd have liked to have shivered and shaken a little more, made him believe she was really ill, it would be unwise to tip the scale.
Playing the infection-card had been a risky maneuver because weakness was the trigger for him to start killing. In this, however, she could only assume he was too far down the rabbit-hole. He'd even stopped cutting her since the infection had started over five days ago. For some reason, he'd placed her on a pedestal, and God help her for that dubious honor. Especially when he took out his frustration on the other girl.
“I know, baby,” he murmured the words as he stepped away from her 'bed.' She heard the sound of running water, felt the slight heat that came from the faucet. She felt it a little more when he placed something at her side, and she knew it was the water.
Lucia had to play this right. She had to let him feel at ease, let him relax, make him believe she was weak. And that wouldn't be too hard, because she was frail. She could feel it and despised herself for it. She'd be relying on every ounce of energy left in her debilitated frame to help get her out of here.
If she fucked this up, then only God knew what Josiah's reaction would be.
That left her with one option. She couldn't fuck up. She had to do this, and she had to win.
Feeling sick at what might happen if she failed, she kept quiet as he unfastened the bindings at her ankles and, then, started on the ones at her wrist. Leaning over her, she could smell his aftershave. It should have repulsed her. She wished she could smell his body odor, and then, she could say it was a disgusting scent, but one of her high school boyfriends had worn this particular brand, and she'd always loved it.
Not anymore.
Still half-leaning over her, he murmured, “Now, be careful. If you roll off this support, you'll hurt yourself.”
She heard that for what it was, a veiled warning. Deciding to heed it for the chance at being allowed to move, she replied, “You'll have to hold me. I might fall off, Josiah.”
He stroked a hand over her hair. “I'll keep you safe.”
Hating the need to stay sickly sweet, she thanked him and felt excitement flood her veins when her bindings were finally released. She'd never been completely untethered. Even when he washed her, he left her tied down. He gathered her to him and carefully rolled her over.
Tears flooded her eyes at the new pressure points being touched from her chest to hip to thigh. It was agonizing, but it was wonderful. Lying in the one
position for so long had made her numb. Her limbs seemed to come online one by one with a pleasure/pain that bordered on blissful.
Everything still worked.
Thank God.
She was too busy glorying in the new position to really take note of his hiss. His words shocked her out of her delight. “Why the hell didn't you tell me, Lucia?”
“Tell you what, Josiah?” she asked, genuinely confused.
“No wonder the antibiotics aren't working. You have sores on your shoulders and above your ass. I never noticed them before.”
“I do?”
“You didn't feel them?” The accusation in his voice almost amused her. He was angry at her for not taking note that her body couldn't cope with lying in the same stranglehold for days on end.
“No, I didn't, Josiah. I'd have told you if I had. You take such good care of me. Why would I lie to you?”
She hadn't known there were sores on her back, but they made sense. The one part of her he never really saw was her spine. Tied down the way she was, he had a frontal view, and when he carried her to the bathroom, she was too busy gasping in agony for him to realize parts of her body were protesting at being constantly laid upon. As light as she was, he struggled to carry her anyway, and with her wriggling in pain, his attention was most definitely elsewhere.
He simmered down at her compliments, tutting a little but otherwise staying quiet. He moved away. She felt the movement in the air, and cautiously, she reached for her blindfold and tugged it down a centimeter. The light, as dim as it was, blinded her. It pricked her brain with small needles, sending shards of agony down the backs of her nerve endings.
She was hard-pressed to withhold a sob of pain, but she did it. Just in time, too. Seconds later, she heard a splash of water and hissed, finally feeling the sores as he started to wash them. She could smell disinfectant, that bitter tang in the air, and winced when they made contact with broken skin—so much for knowing her body, she hadn't even realized the flesh of her back was infected.
Josiah was thorough, but then she expected no less with this strange obsession he had with her, and she took the opportunity to look around her prison. The centimeter of visibility was nothing, but to her, it was like being given a set of binoculars.
When he'd cleaned her up, Lucia heard Josiah moving around. He was obviously secure in her docility, and that was something she was thankful for. She tilted her head to the side, and saw him fumbling with a vial and a needle. He swore under his breath when the vial kept slipping from his fingers.
“I have first aid training. May I help, Josiah?” she asked, trying to sound secure in her capabilities but gentle enough not to rouse his suspicions.
“You do?”
“Yes. I was a girl scout.” That was a lie. Her grandfather had taught her everything she knew. Had the Eagle Scout rank been available for girls, she'd have earned that after Pops' life lessons.
After an incident as a child where she'd set fire to her parents' bed, he'd taken that side of things very seriously. That was why it was ironic she was here. A drug had downed her, when nothing else could have.
She listened to his movements and followed the sounds, using the slight gap in her blindfold to look around the room.
She'd always believed that she was being held in a cellar, either that or a basement or garage. But it appeared to be neither. It was a room. Like any other. Just a room. Nothing befitting the gruesome circumstances of what happened in here. The wallpaper was blue and cream stripes, old-fashioned but normal. There was a sofa pushed against a wall, and that was where normality ended.
Directly opposite her was the terrified woman Lucia heard endlessly sobbing when Josiah was in the room. She was naked and standing tied to a cross as Lucia had been before she'd been promoted to lying down. She was covered in bruises, some purple and fresh, others yellow and aging. There was a pattern to the cuts Josiah liked to bestow on his victim, and she knew the two of them would share the same scars.
She'd felt the shape of the cuts as he'd inflicted them on her. He sliced in a straight line, dug the point in, then veered off in a V shape. It was only as she saw the other woman, standing there shaking like the earth was quaking beneath her feet, that she realized the cuts weren't Vs but 7s.
From the academy and the psychology course she was taking, she knew serial murderers tended to follow patterns. It was those patterns that usually gave them away. They were indicators the police could follow to determine if the same killer was behind a murder.
Usually, those patterns were founded in the sick fuck's psyche. Some reason, small or large, took a vital hold of them, and they enacted that pattern for a certain purpose. It became a driving urge to fulfill the rhythm that called to them.
In this case, the number seven obviously held some kind of importance. And that pattern, something shared by all serial murderers, had been broken for her.
She was alive. The others were dead.
There was a reason for that, and that reason could not be good.
“I can administer the injection, too,” she told him cautiously. “Why does it have to be on my butt?”
Josiah stilled, turning to her with a frown she wouldn't have been able to see ten minutes ago. “That's where they put injections, don't they?”
It was her turn to scowl. “Not usually. Maybe for insulin, but not for antibiotics. Unless you have pain meds for me too?” she tacked on when he flushed, and she could tell he was embarrassed. In a situation like this, humiliated anger was not good. Quickly, to cover up her faux pas, she whispered, “Please, hurry, Josiah. I'm starting to feel faint in this new position.”
That dissembled his humiliation, and he hurried over, vial and needle in hand. He handed them to her then swore under his breath. “I'll take your blindfold off now. The door is locked, Lucia.”
Another threat. He was aware of how much trust he was passing over to her.
Shit, did she take this opportunity to escape now or wait until he trusted her more?
She didn't know how long she'd been down here. Girls came and went, the rapes never stopped. Every day more cuts came, and through it all, time passed without any real measure. At first, she'd kept the number in her head of what day it was and how long she'd been down here. But now, it was too hard to remember.
Could she stand another moment in here? She wasn't sure she could, even if those extra moments would ensure a more successful escape.
The other girl, the endlessly sobbing one, would die soon. It was on the cards. Josiah had already started shouting at her when she wouldn't stop crying. That never boded well.
But she couldn't think about the other girl. She had to think of herself, and the truth of it was she had to try. As soon as she had injected the medicine, he'd fuck her. That never stopped. Two times a day, three, he came to her.
She was sore, so fucking sore, and the idea of adding that to her list of aches and pains—
No. She had to give it a go. She had to.
In fact, fuck that. She'd do this.
Or die trying.
Chapter Thirteen
Present day
“You see what you've done with your goddamn gossiping?” Jonah Burns, mayor of this illustrious town, spat at her over her morning coffee.
She was too damn tired to argue. The dream had come again last night, and the last thing she needed was a schmuck in her face first thing after having Josiah floating about her subconscious. “I'm a reporter, Joanie. I report what the county wants to read.”
His face flushed at her nickname of him.
The rest of the town, hell, the county, treated him with the utmost respect. Almost like he was the Messiah. It was pathetic, and he never seemed to understand why she didn't feel the same way.
She could have told him that pissant little pricks were a dime a dozen in New York, but that insult might have just popped the vein that throbbed at his forehead whenever they came to blows.
Of the verbal variety, of course.
<
br /> Either way, she left him in the dirt. The guy's ego was no shield to his stupidity.
“The county does not want their dirty linen being spread around. And it certainly doesn't want that dirty linen going national. Dear Lord above, what are we going to do if the papers get interested?”
She ignored that. “You say that people don't want their gossip being spread, but my circulation has tripled, Joanie. What does that tell you? The folk 'round here are bored silly. Enough to engage in the crazy shit they pull and crazier still to want to read about it.”
His finger came out, and he wagged it. Like a red rag to a bull, she grabbed his finger, twisted his wrist round, and bent it back. Inches away from breaking the joint, she glared at the sputtering dick and said, “You put your finger in my face again, I'll fucking take it off. You threatened me, Joanie, do it again, and I'll go to the sheriff.”
Jonah gawked at her, nursing his hand when she released him. “You attacked me.”
“I didn't see it that way. A man goes up to a woman in New York and starts getting in her personal space, well, that's a big no no. I was in my rights to defend myself.” Slight stretching of the truth there, but still, she could see the cogs working in his brain. “Wouldn't look good, Joanie, this being an election year and all that. You threatening harmless women as they eat their breakfast...”
He stared at her, his upper lip curling into a sneer. “This isn't the last you've heard about that article. I'll shut down that goddamn rag, if it's the last thing I do.”
“You just keep on trying, honey.” She dismissed him by looking down and starting to read the book she'd brought to entertain her during her morning meal. She didn't process a word until he stalked off, mumbling angrily under his breath.
“He has some clout in this town, Eva. You don't want to piss him off too much.” Jessie's cheerful warning had Eva rolling her eyes.
“I live to piss off guys like that, didn't you know?” She swerved into the corner of her booth and stared at the other woman as she wiped down the counter.
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