by Bryan Smith
Jorge wasn’t quite ready to give up yet, however, even though the situation appeared bleak verging on completely hopeless. This was the first time he’d been left alone in the room since regaining consciousness. Any small remaining sliver of hope hinged on what he did in these next few moments. There wasn’t even the slightest bit of give to his bonds, though. Every attempt to move his limbs was an exercise in extreme frustration. That bitch had been devilishly thorough in securing him to the chair. He felt frozen in place.
Clearly any effort to twist or wriggle free was doomed to failure, unless he was able to change some other aspect of the equation. He thought of all the old TV shows and movies he’d seen in which people in situations like this were able to get free by causing the chair to topple over and break. Given the sturdiness of this chair and the elaborate bindings, he doubted this would work in his case, but he didn’t know what else he could do. He had to give it a shot. The only other option was to sit here and do nothing while he cried and moaned and thought about how he was probably never going to see any of his family or friends again.
He started trying to rock the chair side-to-side and at first was only able to make the chair legs lift a fraction of an inch off the floor. Just as he was about to bear down harder and redouble the effort, he stopped entirely, hearing raised voices from upstairs. He couldn’t quite make out what was being said, but the man sounded angry while there was more than a hint of defensiveness in the woman’s voice. He spent a moment wondering whether it was a good or bad thing for him that they were fighting. Could go either way, he guessed. At the very least, they were occupied with something else for now. Meanwhile, he needed to ignore them and focus entirely on the task at hand.
Maybe rocking the chair side-to-side wasn’t the best idea. He imagined it toppling sideways and falling flat on the floor with no damage done to its structure. Might be better to make the thing fall over at an angle. More of a chance of causing one of the chair’s legs to snap and break that way, he figured. In any case, he had to work as quickly as possible, because he doubted whatever disagreement they were having up there would keep them occupied for long.
His plan was far from perfect, of course. It was hard to imagine, for instance, how he might get free of even a broken chair with so much duct tape wrapped around his limbs, but that was no excuse for not trying.
He began trying to rock the chair backward with the intent of throwing his weight in such a way that would cause it to fall at an angle at the right moment. At first this was even harder than trying to rock the chair side-to-side. He couldn’t get the legs to lift off the floor at all. The couple was still fighting upstairs and so far had given no indication of hearing what he was up to. He redoubled the effort, putting everything he had into it. Finally, the front legs of the chair began to lift off the floor. What felt like maybe a mere millimeter the first time and then maybe a full inch the next.
A spark of hope ignited inside him. Maybe he really could get this done with a bit of luck. Screw that family curse bullshit. He was getting out of here and back home to his dog. The chair almost went over the next time he rocked it backward. He was sure the next time would do it.
He rocked the chair backward yet again and just as it was finally starting to topple over, he began to perceive an unexpected sound.
An engine.
A vehicle of some sort was coming up the long drive to the cabin.
12
UP HERE ON THE SECOND floor, there were two bedrooms and a bathroom at the far end of the loft. Lindsey decided to check the bathroom first for the simple reason that she needed to pee. While sitting on the can, she spent some time looking at her phone and scrolling through her various social media feeds. None of it was all that interesting, the usual political screeds and self-absorbed crap from the usual vapid people. She hit the like button on a few of the usual things her friends and followers would expect her to like, but even this she didn’t give much of a shit about. It was habit.
Much more interesting developments were occurring downstairs and she was eager to get back in the thick of things. She smiled when she heard the man she’d taken screaming in pain again. These were his loudest screams yet. Even up here, the volume was ear-piercing. This made her happy. Grant was finally really getting into the spirit of the thing, tapping that sadistic potential she’d always suspected was there.
She wiped and flushed then pulled up her shorts as she got up from the toilet. Tucking her phone away in a back pocket, she washed her hands at the basin and dried them on a small hand towel hanging from a rack. A larger bath towel was hanging from a hook on the back of the door, but there was no linen closet in here. She’d need to search the bedrooms next, but instead of immediately doing that, she lingered inside the bathroom door and listened a moment longer as Grant continued to torment the captive. She couldn’t make out every word he was saying, but she heard enough to realize her husband was so into what he was doing he likely wouldn’t miss her for at least a few minutes longer.
The surge of arousal she’d experienced while torturing the Mexican, or whatever he was, was still with her, albeit faded slightly. It increased again when it occurred to her she could take a private moment to look at the secret digital photo album on her phone while Grant was otherwise occupied.
Easing the bathroom door closed without fully pushing it shut, she took the phone from her pocket and backtracked until her butt was braced against the edge of the basin. The photo album app was designed to look like an online banking portal. When a password was entered, however, it was revealed as something else altogether—a means of storing photos the user didn’t want others to see.
She bit her bottom lip and squirmed slightly against the edge of the basin, quickly becoming aroused again as she scrolled through the dozens of steamy pictures from her wild night with Justin and Kurt. Many of them were rapidly taken shots of Justin ferociously banging her from behind in her own bedroom. These showed her with her eyes screwed shut and her mouth open wide as she screamed in ecstasy and clutched at the rumpled bed sheets. There were pictures of Justin and Kurt doing things to each other, but these she found less interesting. All had been taken the night of Grant’s bachelor party, when he’d stayed out late drinking with his work buddies.
One picture in particular was her special favorite. She was in her wedding dress and a nude Justin was positioned above her in the bed with his cock rammed down her throat. His sculpted physique was truly something to behold. He was like one of those old Greek statues come to life, only even more impressively muscled. Moaning softly, she pushed a hand down the front of her shorts and started rubbing her clit, slowly at first, then with rapidly increasing intensity.
She was so into it the creaking of the door didn’t register as Grant pushed it open and came into the bathroom. By the time she sensed his presence, he was already several steps into the room and hiding what she was doing was not possible. In desperation, she tried tucking the phone away in a back pocket of her shorts, but he snatched it away from her before she could do that. She screamed at him and tried to snatch it back, but he backhanded her and sent her sprawling in an awkward heap to the floor. When she tried to get back to her feet, he kicked her in the stomach hard enough to blast the air from her lungs and leave her temporarily immobilized.
Looking up at him through eyes bleary with tears, she curled into a fetal ball and clutched at her aching stomach. She was stunned by the savagery of the assault. Never in a million years would she have guessed Grant capable of assaulting her so violently. Even through her tears, she could see her husband’s rage building as he stared at the image on her phone, his face twitching and turning red as the hand gripping the phone trembled from the mounting fury. He looked like he was about to blow a gasket by the time he finished scrolling through her formerly secret photos. She wished she could rewind time a few minutes and resist the temptation to look at them.
When he looked at her again, it was like looking into the face of a stranger. Th
ere was murder in those glaring eyes. She sensed it as clearly as she’d ever sensed anything. If she didn’t do something to defuse the situation right now, the guy tied to the chair downstairs wouldn’t be the only one who’d die in this cabin tonight. “Grant, honey . . .” She sniffled and choked back a sob. “I can explain. If you’d just listen . . .”
“You fucking worthless whore!” The muscles in his neck stood out in stark relief as he roared and raged at her. He turned the phone around and put the screen up close to her face as he knelt in front of her. “How long have you been fucking my faggot cousin behind my back, you dirty fucking cunt!?”
He grabbed her by the throat and throttled her, making the back of her head bounce off the floor. She clawed at his hand with her long nails, drawing blood but failing to budge it even an iota. All the while, he continued to roar at her. Her head was throbbing and she was starting to feel queasy, bile rising in her throat. Spittle flew in her face as he screamed at her. In those moments, he looked more like an uncaged wild animal than a human being.
With a hard flick of his hand, he sent her phone sailing across the room. She heard it smack the wall and fall into the tub. Now he had both hands wrapped around her throat and was still increasing the pressure. Her vision turned blurry and she knew she was moments away from dying if she couldn’t make him stop somehow.
She knew there’d been an element of risk in what she’d done with Justin and his boyfriend. Even arrogance. When doing a thing like that, there was always a chance of getting caught, especially when one kept photographic evidence of the transgression. Yet she’d never truly believed it would happen. She’d believed her husband too easily pliable and oblivious, and she’d been completely confident in her ability to deflect his suspicions should any ever arise. His initial meekness in dealing with their captive had only reinforced this belief. She’d believed she could get away with anything. About that, she’d clearly been wrong to a horrifying degree. She’d been wrong about so many things. By goading him into hurting the man downstairs, she’d awakened within him a capacity for violence, possibly sealing her own fate.
Summoning the last of her fading strength, she reached up and jabbed a long thumbnail into a bulging eye. That did the trick. His hands came away from her throat as he stood up and reeled backward, clapping a hand over his injured eye. He stumbled and crashed into the wash basin, cracking his lower back against its edge. He cried out again and dropped to his knees. In the same instant, Lindsey rolled onto her side and tried pushing herself into a sitting position. Her breath wheezed as she struggled to draw in air.
The relief she felt at having staved off imminent death was immense but was tempered with the knowledge that she was far from out of danger. Grant was already getting back to his feet before she was able to sit up. Rolling toward him, she grabbed him by the ankle of his left foot and yanked as hard as she could. His feet came out from under him and he pitched backward again. He shrieked in pain as his back again crashed against the basin and he dropped to the floor.
He was moaning and writhing around weakly on the floor as Lindsey at last managed to stand up. She stared down at her husband and spent several seconds mired in indecision about what to do. He was at least temporarily incapacitated, albeit not unconscious. Her instinct was to run. Take the keys, get in the truck, and speed away from here.
The wheels in her head were spinning as she weighed all the angles. She could go to the police and report the assault, have Grant’s wife-beating ass hauled off to jail, but that would require having to finish off the captive on her way out the door. Dead men tell no tales, after all. She’d also have to arrange the scene in a way that would throw the weight of suspicion on Grant. She could portray him as an unhinged maniac who snatched the brown-skinned stranger off the street for racist reasons. At the same time, she could paint a picture of herself as a victim, too, a woman terrorized into staying with him while he tortured and murdered that poor, unfortunate man.
The upside of this approach was it would eventually allow her to wipe her hands more or less clean of this clusterfuck and return to something resembling her normal life. She’d have to start over again in a lot of ways, of course, but it’d be worth it in the end. No longer bound to a man who’d harbored a hidden and shocking capacity for explosive levels of jealous rage, she’d be free to search for a new long-term lover. She might eventually find someone even better for her than she’d falsely imagined Grant would be.
Or she could go another direction entirely, try a lone-wolf kind of thing for a while. There might be a lot fewer complications that way if she decided to pursue an ongoing career in murder. Almost as soon as this occurred to her, she knew it was what she wanted. That freedom to live whatever way she wished and kill whenever she felt like it. For so long she’d lived a life constrained by concerns about the necessity of presenting an image of normality to the world. She’d always believed marriage was an integral part of that. Maybe she’d been completely wrong about all of it all along. She saw now there was no good reason she couldn’t do whatever she wanted without a constant male companion by her side. Never mind what she’d told Grant earlier—for the first time in her life, she would be truly, completely free.
All these considerations flashed through her head in a span of mere seconds. Grant was still down there on the floor, writhing and moaning, but that might not remain the case much longer. His moans were louder and he was squirming around with a little more vigor. Allowing him more time to recover would be a mistake.
She glanced around the bathroom, looking for something good to use as a weapon. She smiled when her gaze landed on the toilet tank. The heavy porcelain lid would work nicely as a tool for bashing in Grant’s skull. Before she could take a step in that direction, a pair of unexpected sounds stopped her in her tracks.
There was a crash from downstairs. She could think of only one explanation for that. The bound man had managed to topple the chair over. Even if he managed to partially shatter the chair by doing that, she doubted he’d be able to get free, at least not without many more minutes of unimpeded struggling. His elaborate bindings would slow him down considerably, giving her more than enough time to kill Grant and then get back downstairs and finish off the captive.
She took a first step toward the toilet.
And then, a second later, she at last perceived the sound of an engine coming up the drive toward the cabin. Again, she stopped in her tracks. She felt her heart stutter as a jolt of alarm flashed through her.
Grant was sitting up by then, staring blearily at her and wincing from the pain of his injuries. “You hear that, too, right?”
“Yeah. Shit.”
There was a moment of intense eye contact between them.
Then Lindsey let out a big breath and held out a hand. “Truce?”
Grant sighed and nodded. “Truce.”
He reached out and gripped her extended hand, allowing her to help him to his feet. There was another of those moments of sustained, intense eye contact as they listened to the sound of the engine getting louder and louder. The loud rumbling went on another moment.
Then the engine cut off. Moments later, the front door creaked open and someone entered the cabin.
Grant and Lindsey nodded at each other. Then they raced out of the bathroom and hurried downstairs.
13
PIERCE WEATHERBY MAINTAINED A DEATH grip on the minivan’s steering wheel the entire way up the narrow and winding private drive to the old family cabin. Even with his brights on, it was often barely possible to tell where the edges of the drive gave way to the perilously steep drop-offs to either side. For the life of him, he’d never understand why guardrails had never been installed to reduce the possibility of some calamitous accident.
He’d always found the journey up the narrow drive at least somewhat unnerving, but it’d never been so outright scary as now. The reason for the disparity was simple—all those other times he’d driven up to the cabin in broad daylight. In daylight,
it wasn’t too bad so long as one paid close attention to what one was doing. Perhaps foolishly, he’d thought it would be much the same at night, his familiarity with the terrain making up for the lack of abundant sunshine. It’d been a long time since he’d been so egregiously wrong about anything.
The worst part about it was he had no one to blame but himself. The idea for the impromptu trip had been his own. Given the chance to do it again, he’d still think the trip was a good idea, but he’d probably delay their departure until early the following day. Instead he’d made an impetuous, perhaps foolish decision to leave late in the day in the midst of a moment of stress.
He’d spent the bulk of the day listening to his family squabble over a range of the pettiest things imaginable. Mostly it was the kids, but Piper, his wife of twenty-odd years now, had gotten in her fair share of verbal sniping as well. Some of it was directed at the kids, but quite a bit of it had been directed at him. This was nothing new, but it’d been getting steadily worse over the last several weeks, ever since the beginning of August, when he’d taken early retirement from the highly successful company he’d founded over a decade ago.
He understood it.
They weren’t used to having him around all the time. In the past, even when he wasn’t busy at the office, he was away traveling on business. He was often gone for a week or more at a time. By putting an abrupt and total end to all that, he’d disrupted long-established routines for all of them.
In particular, the kids had enjoyed a level of autonomy not common among their peers. As long as they weren’t out getting into trouble—and that had never been a serious issue with either of them—they were allowed to do pretty much as they pleased. This state of affairs was mostly their mother’s doing. Being away as much as he’d been, it’d been only practical to leave the establishment of household rules and child-raising responsibilities up to her. He’d never had an issue with this until he was suddenly home all the time and discovered how lax she’d been with them. As best he could tell, there’d been no real rules at all. After getting out of school each day, the kids were often away from home until long after dark, often not getting back from wherever they’d been until nearly midnight.
