A strangled cry escapes from my mouth. Strangled because my face is crushed down against the blanket. He keeps my face pressed there as he continues to whip the switch against my ass and legs, and even onto my back from the uncontrolled thrashes.
My body trembles from the pain. A river of tears roll from my eyes. I have no choice but to lay there and take every lash he dishes out.
It feels like it goes on forever, his brutal attack. “You will learn,” he says. “There are consequences.” He hits harder on the word “consequences.” “Repeat it,” he orders. Loudly. Harshly.
I can’t suck in enough air to breathe properly, let alone speak.
“Repeat it,” he orders a second time, bringing the switch down again.
I choke on the tears and saliva but am finally able to force the words out. “There… are… consequences.”
“Good. You remember that, we won’t find ourselves here again.” Michael then pulls his knee from my back to roll me over. My skin screams in silent agony at the pressure from the bed pressing against it, and he kisses me, even with snot dripping from my nose. “Now go clean yourself up. Breakfast in ten minutes.” He turns to leave.
Breakfast?
I can’t move. I hurt so badly that I can’t hold my body weight up to clean myself.
Ten minutes must pass because Michael calls out to me. “Let’s go, Liv. Food’s done.”
Whatever he decides to do to me, he does to me because there is no way I can pick myself up. My back and legs are too raw. I still feel my pulse pounding through the skin burning with that same fevered agony. The most I’ve managed is to roll onto my side, bring my knees up to my chest and cry.
The clomp of his steps coming down the hall gets louder until he’s standing in the doorway.
“You didn’t clean up.” His voice isn’t as hard as it had been, but still I pretend not to hear him. I pretend he’s not even in the room. “Come on, Liv. Don’t be angry. I told you you’d need to be punished. Now it’s over.” He walks over to the bed and drops down next to me, placing his hand on my shoulder.
I continue to ignore him. Not a glance. Not a flinch. Nothing. Only my tears move, rolling down my cheeks.
Michael appears agitated. Pulling his hand back, he runs his fingers through his hair. “Okay. Alright, Liv. I’ll fix this,” he says, swiping his thumb through the wetness below my eyes, and he pushes up from the bed to walk out.
Next I hear a faucet running.
A moment later he’s back in the room with me, lifting my body gently from where I lay and we move the one door down to the bathroom. He sets me in a cool, but not cold, bath.
Again I roll to my side away from him. “There, honey. You’ll be okay now. I’ll leave you to it. Call if you need me.”
Then I hear him leave, but he doesn’t shut the door. Maybe if I just let my head drop under water… Even as I start to sink, flashes of the dark box filling move through my mind like a roughly edited movie reel. Panic grips me and I force my head above the water, gasping for breath, even though my lungs never emptied of air the brief moments I’d submerged.
I guess I’m not ready to die.
The cool water turns room temperature by the time he comes to check on me. “You didn’t call, honey,” he says. The man has the nerve to sound concerned and sorry. Really? Concerned and sorry? Well, fuck him.
As the ignoring his existence seems to be working, pulling emotion from him, I stay the course.
He lifts me from the tub and sets me on my feet on the bathmat. My back stings from the air hitting my wounds and I wince. There’s a tinge of pink to the water from some of the open cuts. It’ll be okay. I’ll be okay. I think I can stand now, if not I’ll fall, because what I won’t do is reach for him.
Luckily, my legs don’t give out, though I might just collapse from all the shivering. After draining the tub, he turns to me, pulling the drenched nightie over my head, and tosses it into the bath.
Gentle hands wrap a fluffy, white towel around my middle, as he proceeds to pat me dry.
From there he leads me back to the bedroom where we’d slept the first night. His room, or our room as it is for the time being. When he drops my hand, I continue to stand, almost catatonic to the untrained eye, waiting for whatever’s next.
What’s next is for Michael to pull one of his T-shirts from a drawer and slide it over my head. I don’t help. I don’t move. It’s up to him to pull my arms through the armholes. It’s up to him to move me to the bed.
Once I’m settled, he starts for the door but turns. Pacing instead of leaving. I want him to leave, just not enough to talk to him.
“Come on, Liv honey. We’re good now. Talk to me. Please, what can I do?”
Nothing. There is literally nothing he can do aside from attempting to kill me that will elicit even a sound. Yesterday I felt sorry for him. Today, I hate him. I’d kill him with my bare hands if I thought I could take him down.
“No. No.” He continues to pace the room, becoming more agitated with every step. At least that’s how it looks to me, pulling his fingers through his dark brown locks, almost yanking them out at the roots. “We have to get past this. Couples fight, Liv. If you stop this behavior, you’ll see I’m right.”
Still, I give him nothing.
“Fuck this.” Michael stomps out the door. I can hear him doing whatever he’s doing in the rest of the house.
When he walks back in he’s back to angry, tension suffusing the room. “Liv. Look at me now.” Before I ever roll over, the whoosh from the switch is back as he smacks it against the bedding. A warning.
One which I heed. He gets the flinch. But he’s also brought me a plate of food. “You need to eat,” he says.
I take the offered fare, and with a heavy stomach, I take my first bite, chewing until the cold bacon, now coated in the solidified fat, becomes macerated in my mouth. I want to gag from the fat but he waits, watching me. Once I swallow Michael steps out again.
A minute later he’s on the bed with his own plate. “See. This is nice.”
At his pause, I know he’s doing that thing where he’s waiting for me to answer. Before I give in to what he wants, my gaze darts to the switch lying parallel to his leg farthest from me, then darts back to look him in the eye and I force a smile. “Yeah. Nice,” I reply.
Back to acting like we’re this happy couple, he piles his eggs on a toast point and brings the whole thing to his mouth. “I think we should try for a baby,” he says, still chewing his food, then he swallows and reaches to rub my belly.
Food sticks in my throat as I blanch. If someone’s eyes could pop out of their sockets, I think mine do, metaphorically speaking.
“Shit, Liv.” He slaps my back several times, allowing me to gag up the bite, which I fold into the paper towel he’d brought me with my meal.
Saved by the knock—wait. A knock? At first I’m not completely sure the knock, which actually sounds more like a pounding, isn’t from a creaky water heater or furnace. Though judging from the way Michael whips his head around to glare at the entrance to the hallway, placing a finger to his pursed lips to shush me, I’m going to say it’s not.
“Wait here.” Framed as an order, he actually sounds concerned. I guess he wasn’t expecting visitors. Set so deep in the woods, this place, you’d have to be invited to know how to get here. Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t come knocking to teach about the word of God. Kids aren’t selling chocolate bars for a fundraiser to help send their team to training camp.
I know he said to wait here, but something feels off and I won’t be taken off guard. Sneaking on soft feet out the bedroom door, I hang back at the edge of the hallway, barely peeking my head around the corner.
Only Michael’s back stays in view from this vantage point as he fishes the keys from his sweatpants pocket and unlocks a metal box sitting on the small fireplace mantle. The pounding knocks become louder.
File that away for later, the metal box is where he keeps his gun. Then he step
s completely out of view to answer the door. The tension looms heavy, displacing all other emotions for the time being. I hold my breath and wait. Despite only taking seconds, the waiting seems to stretch out forever.
All of a sudden there’s the loud crack of a gun fired. I hear the thud of a body hitting the floorboards, and then a rapidly moving river of dark liquid spreads into view to pool on the once-shiny wood planking.
For some bizarre reason I’d been scared for Michael. Then it hits me, in that instant. My Gage. What if Michael just shot my Gage?
He’ll be angry. Michael will take it out on me and there’ll be no one close enough to rescue me. And my Gage. The tears come so fast and furious, they’re blinding. I frantically wipe them away with my hand while searching around for an escape.
The obvious choice would be the window, but what are the chances he would have left them unlocked?
Although… he had left the front door unlocked. I sneak as quickly as I can back into the bedroom and quietly shut the door. Turning to the closet, I pull a sundress off the hanger and roll it up to wedge beneath the door. It should provide me a little extra escape time.
There’s movement in the house. Time is running out.
I walk back over to the window and pull the curtain open, lifting the shade there. The window has a latch. When I try it, the damn thing unlocks with a soft clicking sound. Michael really thought keeping my shoes would keep me here.
A screen becomes the last barrier between me and freedom. There’s a white plastic spring mechanism situated at the bottom of the wire mesh I have to pull on with each thumb simultaneously to release it.
Holy crap, it worked.
Freedom!
Almost. I spill my body down over the sill, walking my hands down the exterior wall until I’m in a handstand, with my hands on the hard earth. A tuck and roll, then I take off in a crouched run toward the forest. Michael carried the keys to the SUV on him. There’s a second vehicle blocking it off anyway. I waste precious seconds to look inside the second vehicle. No keys.
That would’ve been too easy.
And so I run. My heart pounding so frantically, I swear there’s an outline pushing against my T-shirt. Once I hit the base of the woods, the ground goes from hard, dry, and compact soil to soft, squishy mud, where the sun hasn’t penetrated enough to dry it out after the last rain.
It’s icy cold against my feet, especially squishing up between my toes.
A loud crash sounds from behind me, back toward the house.
I keep running along the path Michael took me down yesterday. My feet keep slipping out from underneath me. Although I don’t fall, all the little slides slow me down.
Movement. I hear movement behind me, a twig snap, the soft squelch of mud. It could be anything. It could be the wind, an animal. My mind… or it could be him.
Him.
No way can I outrun him. Not in my current state. I’m surprised I can hear anything else, what with paying such close attention to the soft noises coming behind me and the blood rushing to my ears.
But I hear it. The low buzz from a wasp nest. I know I’m close, which means I have to leave the path to follow the buzz. I stumble over a branch, scraping my knees and the palms of my hands, palms I throw out to brace me for impact. Both knees and palms bleed. A small consequence if it means not spilling larger amounts from a bullet.
The branch I can use. It’s a little harder, little heavier than I anticipated, and it’s sunk partially in mud. I bend down and yank as if my life depends on it, because it does. Pulling with all my might. Pulling so hard, I stumble backward, falling on my ass. But I dislodge the branch and pick it up, carrying it along the back of my shoulders in order to be able to carry it. I’m not far.
Soft twig snapping from behind reminds me he’s close, too. Reminds me to get my butt moving faster.
Pay dirt. I see the hive swelled in the armpit of a birch tree, right where the trunk and a thick branch come together. When the next twig snap becomes too close for comfort, I move the branch from my shoulders to hold it a little less than halfway from the middle and take a mighty swing. All the while remembering what Gage and Raif taught me years ago.
“Don’t forget to follow through,” Raif barks from the pitcher’s position. Not a mound. We’re just jerking around at a local park.
I blink, not understanding what he means. “Follow through?” I ask.
“How’d you hit fifteen and not understand a follow through? We go to games all the time.”
“How’d you reach seventeen, already such an ass?” I counter. “I don’t go to the games for the games.”
My brother grumbles while Gage behind me barks out a laugh. I know what he’s thinking—he thinks I mean for the players. No. I always go for Gage. To get to sit so close to him, to feel his excited hugs when the Cubs score.
“Here.” He startles me out of my zone. “This is follow through.” Gage then wraps his body around mine from behind, repositioning my hands on the bat. Each one of his placed just above and just below mine. “Now,” he says, “when you swing, keep swinging. Wrap the bat around us.”
Together, we swing the bat once with no pitch so he can show me exactly what he means. The second swing, we crack that ball. It flies.
I pick up the branch and swing, totally missing the target. The momentum practically moves me in a complete circle.
Concentrate, Liv. That swing costs me valuable time. I pick up the branch again and swing once more, this time connecting with the hive. A flurry of angry wasps swarm about, looking for someone to hurt. I drop the branch and run for my life opposite the wasps and my tracker, leading farther away from the path. Farther into uncharted territory. At least uncharted by me.
There’s a loud “Fuck!” from where I’d been moments before. The asshole ran into the wasp frenzy. Serves him right.
I am going to escape. I am going to survive this.
God, if I would only spend as much time paying attention to where I’m running as I did celebrating in my head.
The thin birch branch, which I don’t see because I’m not paying attention, hangs low. I see it too late to avoid the branch attack as it cuts across my neck, cutting off my windpipe, and I fall to my scabbing knees, clutching at my throat. Not even able to cough. But alert enough to hear, “Fucking bitch” behind me and feel something blunt hit the back of my head.
12.
Gage
The Lords hit Smithfield in a precession of pipes and eardrum-shattering rumbles befitting the road royalty that we are. Battle ready and here to conquer. If I hadn’t seen it, been a part of it myself so many times over the years, I’d be standing out on the sidewalk watching the invaders in awe just as so many of the townspeople are now.
I watch for a different reason, to lead them back to Liv’s place. After hiring a restoration company to clean the place up, it was supposed to be a surprise for her. Now it’s headquarters to get her back.
Swear to Christ, if she’s not my Liv when I get her back… If the damage inflicted is more than she can handle so she shuts down again—or worse, needs hospitalization—I’ll always love her, always take care of her, but there will be fucking, fucking, hell to pay. My impact’ll reach every corner of this fucking globe. Everywhere a horde exists, I will decimate them. I’ll stalk the stalkers and make them wish they’d never been born. Every man who ever hurt a woman will die by my hands.
The world better hope I get her back intact.
The thing with the guard had been going well. I dropped Liv off and drove back to the hotel we were staying at in Virginia Beach to get some of my paperwork finished and return some calls.
I was maybe an hour deep in work when my phone rang and Smitty’s name popped on the screen.
I answered it.
“Hello?” I called into the line. No response. There was a noise and rustling. “Hello?” I called again. Then the line disconnected.
It fucking disconnected.
A bad feeling stirred i
n my gut. It could’ve just been a butt dial. But no, that was no butt dial. I left Liv at Smitty’s with that crazy bastard still on the loose. So I grabbed up my keys and raced out of the hotel down to my truck.
The drive took no time. Or maybe it took too much time and I shouted out expletives at the goddamned traffic blocking me in so I couldn’t speed.
“Move the fuck over,” I yelled to the car in front of me. When nothing happened, I honked. “Come on, Grandma. Move.”
Grandma couldn’t hear me yell, but she heard the honking. My great-grandchild graduated from college in the time between clicking on her blinker and merging over into the next lane.
My skin felt tight. I pounded my fists against the steering wheel. Okay, I need to calm the fuck down.
Though, the second grandma cleared my lane I pressed down the gas pedal, breaking away from the rest of the pack.
Mayhem was the only way to describe the scene I rolled up on. Red and blue lights flashing, so many cruisers and officers. Yellow tape kept all the gawkers back. At least one ambulance waited to receive passengers.
God, there was so many cars, I ended up double parking and hopping out and down. “Out of my way.” I shoved past people who didn’t react fast enough.
And I slipped under the tape to two uniforms jogging over to me. “You can’t be here, sir.”
“My girlfriend was working here this morning.”
Aw, fuck. That was when my eyes found the spray of blood and brains along the door. My heart rate quickened and I felt about to puke on my boots. “The girl? What happened to the girl? Is she here? Was she hurt?” Questions ripped from my mouth rapid fire, not giving the officers time to answer any one of them.
So what do they do? Cops began harassing me, pressing me back away from the scene. “You need to calm down,” Twat One said in his big boy authoritative voice. I needed to calm down? No, what I needed were answers about Liv. The pressing turned to shoves.
But thank fuck I saw Drinkswine. “Officer Drinkswine,” I called out and immediately got his attention. He nodded once and walked over to the three of us, taking in the scene. Twat One and Twat Two each got a firm grip on my arms just above my wrists and braced, their palms to my shoulders, holding me to the spot.
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (Brimstone Lords MC 3) Page 10
