by A. R. Torre
I have failed her.
CHAPTER 66
HUNDREDS OF HOURS of work get deciphered in four easy minutes. Mike tries to drag out the process, but his finger is the only impediment. And while it still functions, the cutters stopping short of the bone, each brush against something brings a new wave of agony. The dickhead produces a bottle of pills, says it is codeine. Promises relief once he gets what he wants.
So Deanna Madden’s world is opened up to him. Mike shows him the truth, a copy of her actual driver’s license, borrowed from the Tulsa County DMV. Shows him her original lease, the term, the address. The man wants to see pictures, and so Mike opens up his Deanna spank bank, his skin crawling at the way the man’s breath quickens and pants like an adolescent teenager over her images. The images are the best of the best, three years’ worth of hand-selected shots from over twelve thousand images. They have the ability to get Mike off in five minutes. This asshole would probably last two.
He tries, in one remaining act of nobility, to hide Jeremy. Flips quickly past the folder with his images, just a couple, taken from social networks in a moment of jealous stalking. But the man’s eyes are quick, his hand jerking out and stopping the mouse’s scroll. “Who’s that?” He points.
Mike shrugs. “Not sure. A brother?”
The man doesn’t need to ask his name, Mike’s OCD organization provides that in the helpful image titling, the photos titled JeremyPacer01, JeremyPacer02, and JeremyPacer03. The man’s hand settles on Mike’s bad shoulder and squeezes it tightly, the movement bringing a rush of pain so strong he cries out. “Or boyfriend?” the asshole digs.
“Or a boyfriend,” Mike responds dutifully, any self-respect he once had circling the drain of this man’s hell. “But he doesn’t live with her,” he adds quickly. “So he shouldn’t be an issue.”
“How do you know that?” The man’s hand threatens a second squeeze.
“Please don’t,” Mike begs. “Please. The boyfriend has his own house. Lives about fifteen minutes away. I swear. They both live alone.”
“Give me his address too. In case she’s there.”
Guilt is almost as heavy as pain. It weighs him down, pulling his heart apart with sharp, dark fingers. He has failed her in the most invasive ways possible. And now Jeremy, though he could give two shits about him. Sure, there was more that he could have shared. He didn’t volunteer the fact of her wealth, the question not thought of or inquired about by this man. And why would it? No one thinks the tiny girl with the innocent smile and shitty-ass apartment is a millionaire. And no one, including himself, has any idea what she is fully capable of.
For the first time all night, Mike fights the ridiculous urge to smile, the gesture hidden in a grimace of pain at the act of picking up a pen. Writing awkwardly, he keeps his index finger up, the handwriting scraggly and rough as he records both of their addresses for this man’s sadistic needs. Yes, I have failed her. Yes, I am leading this maniac directly to her door.
A flutter of hope rolls persistent in his stomach, and the pain, for a brief moment, subsides.
I hope she cuts him to shreds.
CHAPTER 67
MARCUS WALKS FROM the house, pulling on the fingers of his gloves, noting the stubborn scar of discoloration, barely discernable on the black leather. He inhales, thickness in his chest, what feels like the beginnings of congestion clogging his airflow. Fuck. A cold is, right now, the last thing he needs.
He probably should have killed the cripple. The guy had seen his face, not that his face was anything distinct or recognizable. Any other situation, he would have killed him. But if something was wrong, if the girl wasn’t there… the cripple is the only tie he has to her. So he’d left him alive. Trussed up like countless sluts he had had before, the ritual of tying the knots peaceful in its familiarity.
The kid back there will eventually be found. Eventually be freed. Whether or not he’ll be alive at that point is up to him and his own inner strength. Marcus just needs two days. By then he’ll be at the girl’s house. By then the boy can warn her all he wants… there’ll be no one there to answer his calls.
Two days. It shouldn’t be an issue. The cripple is self-sufficient, seems to care for himself despite his handicap. Has a van parked in the back, so doesn’t need a caretaker and doesn’t have a day job to be missing from. He is a ghost, a hacker, the nerd’s profession as clear as day with his evasions to Marcus’s FBI mentions. The perfect tool to not be missed, the perfect tool to keep his mouth shut about what had happened today.
Threats and promises. They have been Marcus’s bread and butter in his life of excess. The boy won’t speak. Not when his bank account is drained and he’ll need more cash. Not when he doesn’t want police attention any more than Marcus does. Before leaving, Marcus had threatened the boy with calling the Feds, taking his amateur hacking empire down, should the boy ever call the cops. Then, an end-of-tunnel light: the return of some of his money, a hundred-grand hush gift, should the boy deliver on his begged promises and keep his mouth shut.
Marcus is jittery, this wait for her lasting too long. The months of house arrest, tacked on to the twenty-two months in the pen, and he is dealing with sex withdrawals from hell. He needs to touch a woman, needs to feel the rise and fall of her skin, her breath, the soft wet wrap of her mouth around his shaft. His cock had been about to burst, knocking on that door. And now he has to wait even longer. A couple more days that stretch before him like years. He doesn’t pity the experience that the camgirl will undergo as a result of his level of need.
Getting in the car, he gives one last look at the house and starts the engine.
CHAPTER 68
JEREMY STARES DOWN, watching her sleep. She is so beautiful, so peaceful when she sleeps, all of her fight gone. He’s almost forgotten how serene it makes her look—his last opportunity to see her sleep four months ago—a three-day period when exhaustion had dragged her into sleep for ten hours at a time. She’d been a stranger to him then, their lives unexpectedly colliding—the beautiful girl with the cold shoulder returning from a trip and launching herself into his arms, fully surrendering into his care. She’d let him feed her, hold and kiss her, her sleeping body trusting in its innocent press against his own.
Four months ago, he might have just been in the right place at the right time: the only source of a vehicle on that fated Thursday night of her departure, the only available warm body on the Friday night of her return. Whatever the reason, that situation had gotten them here, to a relationship. Love. He still doesn’t believe it, that he’s become this lucky. That this delicate beauty with the balls of a giant and the soul of an angel has chosen him. Accepted his love and created her own.
He watches her sleep and wonders at the nap. It’s eleven a.m.—the time in which she normally cams, her schedule very regimented and rarely deviated from. He pulls the blanket higher on her, noticing her clothes, another oddity on a woman that spends the majority of her time naked.
He straightens, his time tight. He needs to go. Doesn’t have time to linger, his minutes owned by UPS, packages impatiently waiting in the truck. Leaning over, he presses a kiss to her head before stepping to the kitchen, and setting a bag on the counter, soup inside. He gives her one final glance, her breaths even, her face tranquil as it peeks from a mess of dark brown hair. Saving the image in his mind, that of his wildcat asleep, he heads for the door, his feet pausing on the threshold, a foreign item snagging his attention. Spinning slowly, his mind questioning the sighting, his eyes lock on the gun, a 9mm lying casually atop a giant Charmin Ultra box.
A gun. He didn’t know she had a gun. Then again, he didn’t know she had a hundred grand to drop on a car that she hasn’t driven since. More questions that he is afraid to ask, terrified of the answers. He steps toward the gun, eyeing it warily, her cell phone lying next to it as if to provide indisputable evidence to its ownership. He stares at the gun as if his examination will morph it into something else. Anything else but a weapon tha
t can kill with careless abandon.
If he knows only one thing about her with certainty, it is that she avoids weapons. Tries to cut steak with a butter knife for God’s sake. Doesn’t keep plastic grocery bags in the house because they can be used to suffocate.
Yet here, lying out as if it was used yesterday, a gun.
He stares at it, then her. It, then her. And, in the pit of his stomach, a seed of doubt grows a little larger.
CHAPTER 69
“TELL ME YOU haven’t driven.”
That’s how he starts our session. I cross off any chance of an enjoyable chat and pop my gum loudly into the phone, a habit I know he abhors. “I haven’t driven. But I can drive. I’m fine. We’ll never know if I can handle things like this if I don’t try.”
Dr. Derek sighs, the sound heavy. “You’ve lost control, Dee. The car, the trips outside… your boyfriend. We haven’t changed your medication and you’ve had no reduction in your… desires. I’m starting to think that you are a danger to others.”
A danger to others. The four words that can get me put in a padded cell, my arms through a straitjacket. Medication dispensed via syringe if necessary. My jaw tightens, and I regret every time I have opened my mouth and told him the truth. He has never taken this path. Never threatened me before. “I’m not a danger.” I say the lie quietly, in the sanest voice I can manage. I cannot be locked up and medicated. I will behave. I will restrict myself more. I can do it. I can do anything to avoid that.
“What happened the other night? The night you called me. You still haven’t told me about it.”
“Nothing. I had a panic attack. I stayed in the apartment. Simon showed up.”
“To lock you in.”
“Yes.”
“Listen to yourself, Dee. You need help.” He pauses, and I tighten my fists as I wait for what is next, as I wait for what I already know is coming. “Maybe now is the time. When you get help. When you move somewhere where you can interact with others in a controlled environment.”
“I’m not being locked up.”
“You’re already locked up. Might as well be getting help through the process.”
“You don’t understand. All these calls, all these years, and you don’t understand.”
“Neither do you.”
I hang up the phone, stare at it. Stare at the blinking duration of our call, twenty-one minutes too short, and wonder what he will do.
He could commit me. If he thinks I’m a harm to myself or others, he could have me committed. I have impressed him, so far, with my dedication to seclusion. But he doesn’t know what happened in Georgia. If he finds out, I’m certain that he will fill out that form. First, turn me in for murder. Then, send me to the loony bin. Either way, seems like it’d be bad for our friendship.
But any action Derek eventually takes will be difficult. He doesn’t have my address. I filled out a client information sheet when I first hired him. Put on it a bogus address. Requested that billing be done via e-mail. He knows my real name: Deanna Madden. Nothing else. All he has is my phone number, a number that Mike has protected in some superhacker fashion that guarantees me anonymity. So if he does call the goons, they’ll knock on a few empty doors, waste a few hours wandering through Harrisville, Utah—then scratch my name off their list and move on. Committing potential criminals is pretty low on their priority list.
I could end it right now. Pay his bill and move on. Find a new psychiatrist, be less truthful about the depravity of my mind. But what little success I’ve had these last three years, I owe in part to him. He knows me. Will call me on my shit. Has the greatest chance of keeping me in line. I, in some way, shape, or form, need him.
CHAPTER 70
SOME TWENTY-ODD HOURS after the psychopath left, Mike’s chair pushed far enough out of reach to tease, his wrists handcuffed to the bed frame, a strip of duct tape firm and sticky against his mouth, someone rings the doorbell.
Three years ago, before Jamie, there was Tiffany. She was perky, one of those girls who had too many aspirations: fitness trainer, nutritionist, talk show host, celebrity—the least and most attainable of which was life coach. She was hired as an assistant, but viewed Mike as a life coach project, someone to practice her insanity on before she reached the point of charging for her inspirational pushiness. They didn’t last long together. Six months. Long enough for him to find Jamie. Six months of healthy food, no soda, no weed, cheery Post-its next to his sink reminding him to Brush Your Teeth! and Don’t Forget to Smile! Six months of misery. The sole reminder of the Tiffany servitude now exists in a white box that sits atop his fridge. It connects wirelessly to a cheap doorbell mount on the front door, and plays a cheery tune when the doorbell button is suppressed. There were twenty-two tunes to choose from, but it was December when Tiffany installed it, so “Jingle Bells” was chosen. The button, a cheap white piece, permanently affixed to the brick with liquid nails, sticks if pressed too aggressively, causing “Jingle Bells” to play on repeat until the button is gently worked free.
The visitor this morning was an aggressive type. Probably a delivery. Jamie knows his hatred of the bell. It’s been discussed, amid clouds of reefer smoke, sticking the entire box into the fireplace and lighting the shit on fire. But it has become a source of humor, a way to bring back up the ridiculousness that was Tiffany. So they had left it. And now, that decision is causing this aggressive visitor’s push of the bell to stick, starting an incessant repeat of “Jingle Bells” to blare loudly through the space. Propped up against the bed, Mike sends a curse out to whomever is listening.
One round of cheery chorus.
Two rounds.
Three.
Four.
Thirty.
Seventy-two.
He vows to stop counting at one hundred, but gets up to two hundred and thirty-nine choruses before he manages to, while in the confines of holiday hell, his right shoulder now just a roar of dull pain, fall asleep.
CHAPTER 71
I HOLD UP a pair of lace pink thongs. “These?”
Missy0002: next
I bend over my dresser, arching my back, rummaging through the layers of lingerie. I pull out a pair of black underwear, with more bows and ties than would ever reasonably fit underneath clothing. I keep my back and ass to the cam and turn slightly, dangling the panties off a finger. “How about these?” I glance at the screen.
Missy0002: yes bb. put those on slowly.
There’s an art to putting on panties in a way that is sexy and not awkward. I lie back on the bed, raise my feet in the air, and slide the black cloth slowly down the length of my legs, trying to stretch out the action as long as possible. When I get fully down, I roll onto my side, smiling into the camera and shimmy the silk over my hips, my fingers sliding over the panties and making sure that everything is in place.
We are thirty-six minutes and five panties into the chat. I have gotten little-to-no feedback from Missy, who seems content to pick out underwear, watch me put them on, and sit there silently for a few minutes as I model them. I’m bored, have been since the third pair, but at seven bucks a minute, this is easy. No anal, no ice cubes, no nipple clamps. A little boredom is fine at two in the afternoon.
The site freezes, my image halting in a facial expression that can only be described as a yawn. I wince, and lean forward, refresh the feed. My webchat window disappears and an error message displays. I frown, check another website. It’s not my Internet. Other sites load without fail. I return to my website and check a sub-URL, but everything is down. I growl, hoping that the site properly closed the cam session, charging panty boy properly before spazzing out on me. Then I stand, turn off the lights, and grab my phone. I call Mike first, leave him a message, then call the hosting server.
It takes four menus of prompts and fifteen minutes of elevator music, but I am finally connected to Nancy, a woman who sounds nothing like a Nancy, her Indian accent so strong I can barely understand her. We have ten minutes of awkward communication b
efore I come to the questionable understanding that my payment method was declined. I argue the issue in a manner that, despite my best attempts, comes off snobby in all three of the ways I try to word it. “It’s a bank draft. There’s tons of money in that account.”
“I understand, but the payment has been declined. We cannot activate your hosting until you give us a new payment method.”
I curse under my breath and give her my debit card number, listening to her repeat the information in painstakingly poor English. “Yes,” I mutter.
There is silence for a long moment, then she announces: “Declined also.”
“I’ll call back,” I promise, hanging up the phone, urgency in my movements, and pull up my bank’s website, ready to call customer service and hop on a new ass. My anger turns to panic upon log-in, when my eyes rest on my balance and see a bright red $0.00.
Technically, if you look under that number, I have $-1,137.88. I stare at the figure, in shock, then click on “Recent Transactions.”
My eyes skip over my traditional purchases, zeroing in on the $37,219.22 withdrawal dated yesterday. An ACH wire, one that emptied out my personal checking account to the penny. I click with dead fingers, back to my accounts tab, and click and drag through menus until my money market accounts are displayed. All three accounts show a zero balance. I stop breathing for a moment, my chest seizing.
I don’t check the accounts often. I prefer to let the stacks of money pile up, unobserved, an effect that heightens the drama when I do take the time to log in. It’s probably been months since I logged in, so I don’t know the extent of what is missing. I could go through the torture of clicking on each account and calculating the sums, but it’s a waste of time. Over a million dollars is missing.
