“Are you well?” she asked. She looked back and forth at both her parents.
“How is Ricky?” asked her mother.
Ricky was Wendy’s son, several years older than Avril.
“That’s not why we’re here,” said her father before she could correct her mom. “Why don’t we just get to it, shall we?”
“Okay,” said Cindy. “I have a problem and I really need your help. I know things haven’t been good between us, but—” She hesitated, not wanting to grovel, but then she just blurted out, “Please, please help me.”
She didn’t know what else to say, how to start, how to tell them.
Her parents didn’t reply. Her mother had her eyes closed and may have fallen asleep, but her father just glared at her, silently telling her to get on with whatever the hell she wanted.
“I made a terrible mistake, and now Avril has been kidnapped. They’re asking $500,000 in ransom money or they might—”
Might what? How could she finish that sentence? All the possibilities seemed so terrible.
“—they might not let me have her back.”
“I think you’d better tell us more than that.”
She nodded and tried to catch her breath. As she looked at her father, she briefly felt like she was a child being lectured at for her failing grades, being told she’d never be a success like her older sister or even her younger brother. In seconds, she’d reverse-aged to being a teenager and all she could think about was how to slink away. She glanced at her mom, who was still sitting there with her eyes closed, and she wondered if something was wrong with her.
“Well?” asked her father.
She told him. She talked about trying to hire a contract killer on the Internet and how he had ended up tracking her down, killing her cat, and then he’d stalked Avril and finally taken her. She told him about the live video feed and the subsequent threats.
When it was all over, she just stopped. She thought she’d start crying again but it seemed that all her tears were gone.
“I need you, Daddy.”
For a moment, he didn’t say a word. Then he shook his head and said, “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. I can’t believe you can’t come up with a better story than that.”
“What?”
“You think just because we’re old that you can tell us anything and we’d believe it? May I tell you that I have used the Internet myself? I read the New York Times sometimes and I’ve even found episodes of some old TV shows that I watched many years ago. The Wild, Wild West and even Gunsmoke. Your mother and I enjoyed that. So, don’t think I don’t know what the Internet is. Your story makes no sense.”
“But it’s all true.”
“That’s enough! If there were murderers on the Internet, don’t you think the police or the FBI would have stopped them?”
Cindy didn’t know what to say. She felt guilty but she had no idea why. Her eyes focused on the floor, feeling one of her last chances to save Avril slipping through her fingers.
“You should go now.”
“Daddy, please! You can’t turn your back on your own grand-daughter!”
“Go now! Before I call the police myself.”
She stood and started to walk to the door, but as she left, she glanced back.
“Bye, Mom.”
Her mother blinked and waved a hand. “Say hi to Ricky!”
* * *
Tony loved withholding information and he especially loved it when somebody was dying to hear it. He knew that Deb wanted to know whatever it was he had come over to tell her, and so he wanted to hold out just a little longer.
“Take your clothes off,” he said.
Deb only hesitated a few seconds before taking off her T-shirt and pants. When he kept staring at her, she took off her bra and panties too.
Only when she was naked did he smile.
“Go sit on the bed.”
She did, and he sat in an armchair near the bedroom door. He stared at her body, feeling his cock start to stir, not so much from seeing her body but more from seeing her vulnerability and unease.
“Aren’t you going to get undressed, too?”
“Soon,” he said. “We need to talk first.”
“Okay. What about?”
“Remember that first time we met? In your store? I showed you something. Do you remember it?”
“Sure. The lottery ticket.”
“You know how much it’s worth, right?”
“It was a lot of money. A lot.”
“One million three hundred thousand.”
She nodded. Tony suspected she knew the amount right to the penny. How could she not?
He stood and walked to her so that he was towering over her. He took her left breast in his hand and caressed it. Her nipple started to react as soon as he touched her, and he saw her face change. She caught her breath and looked at his face, at his lips.
“I want you to take the ticket and cash it.”
Deb looked at his eyes. “What do you mean?”
He took her other breast now and squeezed her nipple between two fingers, hard enough to hurt. Her eyes squinted a bit but she didn’t make a sound.
Got you well trained, bitch.
“I’m a little worried about losing the ticket. I need you to cash it so the money is safe.”
He pushed her back onto the bed and forced her legs apart, spearing a finger inside her pussy. She wasn’t ready and he knew it hurt her, but he didn’t give a shit.
His cock was fully erect now, and part of him just wanted to take her, to satisfy himself. It’d been several days since he’d been with her and he was overdue.
“I’ll do anything you want,” she said.
He moved his finger in and out and after a while, he felt her relax and his finger moved easier.
“I can’t do it myself. Certain people would try to take it.”
She was breathing harder, moving her hips in time to his movements. “What do you mean?” she whispered. “Who could take it?”
“My wife.”
Deb’s eyes popped wide open and stared at him, and her body stopped moving.
“You have a wife?”
He ignored her. He took his finger out and took off his pants. He pulled her to him and slid his cock inside her, feeling her hot juices all around him. He didn’t wait, just started thrusting hard into her, deeper and harder each time, just wanting to fuck her.
She closed her eyes and he felt her timing her own rhythms to his.
This time, he decided to slow down and actually allow her to have an orgasm first. When she did, she screamed in pleasure and that was enough for him to come, too.
After, he lay down beside her. She reached across to hold him to her but didn’t say a word.
Tony wanted to go to sleep but he knew he couldn’t be away from home too long. He needed to find out how Cindy did with her parents.
“So, we’re good about the whole lottery ticket thing?”
Deb nodded. “Anything you want. I’ll always be here for you.”
He kissed her. “And that other thing? The wife? We’re cool, right?”
She pressed herself into his body, hugging him. She didn’t say anything, just nodded.
“Good. I have to go now.”
Chapter 18
August 7
There was a light rain sprinkling down on the Manipulator as he walked toward the abandoned barn where he had imprisoned Avril. He didn’t mind the cool sprinkling, since it’d been so hot in Seattle for the past few weeks. The shower was a nice break from the heat.
He allowed himself a moment to stand there and stare up to the sky, his red baseball hat in his hand, the tiny raindrops splashing on his face.
I may be a sociopath, but I can still enjoy life’s little pleasures, he thought.
He laughed at that. When he had been a teenager in high school, his class mates called him that: a sociopath. At first he was pissed and he got into several fights before somethi
ng clicked and he realized they were right. A sociopath is a person with no conscience, and that actually described him perfectly. He truly didn’t give a shit who he hurt. As long as he benefitted, that was really all that mattered. It worked just fine for him.
Since then he wore the label with pride. He also decided he should try to hide who he really was, since he had to live in a society that frowned on such behavior, but whenever he lost his temper and ended up hurting somebody (usually badly), he shrugged it off and moved on with his life. No regrets, ever.
Now, he knew, being a sociopath was pretty much a tool of the trade. How else could he have kidnapped a poor little ten-year-old girl, kept her trapped in chains, and barely give her any food or water?
“Only a monster could do that,” he said. He laughed out loud.
The old barn stank, but he didn’t care. He settled into his control center and checked out the video feed from the basement. Avril was sleeping. He checked to be sure she was still breathing, and she was.
He’d carried a small tote bag with him, and now he opened it to retrieve a six-pack of beer, a hypodermic needle with a small bottle of liquid, and a set of pruning shears.
He popped the cap on one of the beers and put the others in the refrigerator.
From his console, he selected an album, Magical Mystery Tour by the Beatles. He skipped the title song and moved to “The Fool on the Hill.” Although he could hear the music easily enough from his computer, it would be much louder in the basement, where he’d run wiring leading to some expensive speakers he’d stolen from the store.
At first Avril didn’t react to the music, but as he turned the volume up a notch, he saw her stir. She called out but he didn’t try to make out what she was saying. He didn’t care.
On the second computer monitor, he activated the web cam on Cindy McKay’s laptop. She was there, staring at her own monitor, deep sadness covering her face as she whispered Avril’s name.
The Manipulator leaned closer to his high definition monitor. It felt like he was only a couple of inches away from Cindy’s face, like he could kiss her if he chose.
She had already told him that she’d had no luck getting the ransom money from her parents and begged for more time.
It was that exact moment that Avril became a liability instead of an asset to him. It was the child’s job to get her mom to get the fucking money.
He turned up the volume of the music louder. The Fab Four had moved on to sing “Flying.”
The Manipulator chugged the last of his beer and threw the empty bottle to the far end of the room where it smashed against the brick wall. The floor at that end of the room was covered with broken glass.
“Soon, Cindy. This will all be over.” He held his hand into the shape of a gun and fired it at the image of Cindy on the screen. She continued to watch her daughter struggle.
He stood and grabbed his supplies. Before going to the basement, he flicked the audio controls so that Cindy would only hear the music and no other sounds coming from the basement.
As he lifted the old trap door and climbed down, John Lennon’s voice blasted him as if he were in the front row of a live concert.
“Good,” he said.
As he reached the bottom of the stairs, Avril noticed him there. He stared at her and she glared right back at him. She shouted at him but he couldn’t hear her.
Avril knew what he looked like. He’d never tried to hide his face, because there was never any chance at all that she’d ever leave.
Besides, even if she hadn’t seen his face, it wouldn’t have taken long for her to figure out who he was, no matter how well he disguised himself. Cindy, on the other hand, didn’t know, so before he moved into the field of vision for the camera, he put on a long scraggly black wig and perched the red baseball cap on top. He was always careful to never face the camera when he transmitted video, so she could try all she wanted to figure out who he was. Good luck with that.
He took his supplies and put them on the little table near the girl.
She stared at him, and for a moment, he thought she was going to just stay quiet, but then she yelled at him.
“Daddy! Please let me go home!”
He smiled at her and shook his head.
“You know I can’t do that, pumpkin.”
He thought again of being a sociopath. Who else could kidnap their own daughter and keep her locked up this way?
Avril started to cry, as he knew she probably would. He wondered how she had any tears left in her, but it seemed she still had some. It’d been at least twelve hours since she’d had any water, a couple of days since she’d eaten. Her body had always been thin, emaciated like her damned mother, but now her clothes seemed to just hang off her bones.
“Your mother hasn’t been good, Avril. So you have to pay the price.”
Tony McKay took out the syringe and drew the liquid. He’d purchased the Desflurane via DarkNet, of course. It was illegal to have it outside of a hospital, where it was used as a general anaesthetic. The supply from DarkNet came with exact instructions on dosage, but in reality it didn’t matter that much. He got it right and she lived a little while longer, or he didn’t, and she died.
Either way, he’d get what he wanted.
It didn’t take long for Avril to fall unconscious. He propped a pillow behind her head, even though he wasn’t quite sure why he bothered.
Tony stared at his daughter, waiting a few moments for the drug to take full effect. As he watched her breathe, he wondered how the end game of the kidnapping was going to play out. Cindy had screwed things up so he wasn’t going to get the money from her parents. Was the whole thing a waste of time? He’d counted on that money. He’d expected to dump Cindy and go far away to work on his music. Between the ransom and the lottery money, he’d be set for quite some time. He’d keep Deb in the loop for a while, because he liked to use her, but there was no future with her. Surely she must have recognized that by now.
Five minutes had passed since he injected the anaesthetic.
Tony reached into the bag he brought and took out the pruning shears. He’d purchased them from Amazon.com for about eleven bucks after reading that they were ideal for cutting light branches up to 5/8 of an inch in diameter.
Avril’s fingers were thinner than that.
Her hands were bound by chains, but he checked to be sure they were completely secure, just in case something happened and the drug didn’t keep her knocked out.
But the drug did work. He was able to snip off both of her pinkie fingers with almost no effort. It really did remind him of pruning an apple tree.
He had an urge to continue snipping off all the rest of her fingers and then her toes, but he managed to resist. Let Cindy believe there was some hope for the kid. She could manage life without her littlest fingers.
A heat gun was already in the basement, carried in along with the other initial supplies he’d brought down there two weeks earlier. He plugged it in and got the tip red hot and then used it to cauterize the stumps of Avril’s fingers.
Through it all, she didn’t move.
He dropped the severed digits into a small ice cooler that he’d purchased. He didn’t want them rotting any more than necessary.
When he was done, he left his daughter and went back to the main floor of the barn. It was getting dark outside, and it was Sunday evening. No point rushing anything, so he stored the cooler in an empty cupboard and went back to check on his video feed.
Avril was still unconscious. When she woke, she’d be screaming in pain. He wouldn’t be around to hear her, though. He shrugged.
He checked and was slightly disappointed to find out that Cindy apparently hadn’t been sitting at her computer, and so wasn’t aware of the surgery that had been done on the girl.
“You’ll find out soon enough, I guess,” he said to the quiet monitor.
He turned off the lights and drove back home. Cindy was asleep when he got there, and he quietly slipped in beside her
in their bed. He yawned and thought of his lottery winnings (at least that was secure!) and drifted off to sleep.
In the morning, he called Jesse to let him know he’d be a bit late for work.
He dropped back to the old barn and retrieved the cooler, wiping any fingerprints away and then carrying it while wearing latex gloves. He drove to the train station and rented a storage locker, putting the cooler inside.
An hour later, a teenaged boy retrieved the cooler. Tony had found him looking for odd jobs on DarkNet. The boy earned a bitcoin for just taking the cooler to the Fed Ex office and shipping it to Cindy McKay at the local radio station. The boy, of course, had no clue who had hired him, and neither did he care.
Chapter 19
August 9
The room was dark but not dark enough to stop Avril from being able to see. It made her wonder if it was just about sunset, or maybe it was early morning just before the sun was about to rise for the day.
Ever since her daddy had stolen her and chained her in “the dark place,” lights had sometimes turned on and off for no reason. When the artificial lights were off, there was never any blazing sunshine, but somehow the outside light drifted in, possibly scattered from a small window behind her. She’d never been able to turn her head far enough to know for sure.
She’d just woken but her head still felt foggy.
“Daddy?”
There was no answer, and she wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. It seemed like she’d been locked away for weeks or months, but she really had no clue how long it’d been. She knew her daddy rarely said anything to her, and she’d stopped asking when he’d let her go back home.
Juicy must be wondering where I am.
She wondered, too, if her mommy knew where she was. Would Daddy take her without telling Mommy? She really didn’t know.
“That kid is a freak,” her dad had said. She’d heard that several times and she always felt terrible. Maybe Mommy thought the same thing, but she’d never said anything so cruel. It was enough to wonder, though, if they had both planned on hiding her away in the dark place together.
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