Ah. Generator.
The yellowish bulbs aren’t bright, but at least we can see.
I take another look around. A love seat sits under a window on the other wall, and next to it, a ladder leads to a loft. I get a glimpse of a naked mattress up there, the tall outline of what could be a dresser. A closetlike accordion door is just beyond the ladder. A bathroom, I assume.
He comes to me, knife in hand, and slices the Kate Spade wristlet off my arm.
“Hey!” The purse was a gift from my father. That and a full-size white bag complementing it. He bought both and gave me a gift card to get whatever else I wanted. Generous and adoring, my dad. I miss him already. “That’s expensive,” I mumble, not sure why I’m arguing. I may not make it out of here alive; the purse is the least of my worries.
Tucker unceremoniously dumps the contents of my purse onto the kitchen table. My gut churns. I feel violated as he roots through my meager personal belongings. Anger eats into my organs like acid. Or maybe that’s fear. They’re becoming harder and harder to separate at this point.
A tube of cherry ChapStick rolls onto the table along with a mirrored compact, my cellphone, and the nail file. The Xanax doesn’t make an appearance and I assume it’s because the plastic bag doesn’t weigh much. I hold my breath as Tucker gives the purse another shake. A condom slaps onto the table like a bad omen.
Tonight was going to be the night Drew and I made love. The night. Our first time. But not his, and not mine. My first time was with my first serious boyfriend, out of confusion and guilt. Drew’s first time was three girlfriends ago, and now I can add Shayna to his list. The thought makes me more miserable which, given my circumstances, is saying something.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” I plea, my eyes glued to the condom. That simple foil packet serves as another reminder of how far south this evening has gone. From tequila shots to the breakup at Pinky’s, where I sat stunned, glass raised halfway to my mouth, to walking along the road to the shady 7-Eleven while I worried I’d get a public-intox citation. It occurs to me how a jail cell would be a step up from where I’ve landed. Alarming, that.
I packed my purse tonight—technically yesterday—with a very different evening in mind.
“I feel sick,” I say and it’s the truth. My nausea has not subsided. “And I have to pee.”
Tucker ignores me, picking through the items on the table. He lifts my phone and presses a button. “I’ll let you pee when you tell me your password.”
“No way.” I scrunch my face. “I’m not giving you my password.”
“Fine.” He shrugs, powers off the phone. “Enjoy your wet pants.”
He sits down at the table, stands the ChapStick on end, then opens my compact. He runs a finger along the powder and rubs his fingers and thumb together. He snaps the nail file in half with his thumb and chucks it into a cardboard box lined with a plastic shopping bag on the floor in the corner of the kitchen. Then he digs around in my bag and finds the Xanax. The plastic bag holding two yellow pills is scissored between his fingers as he asks, “What’s this?”
I shrug.
He keeps his eyes on me and drops the pills to the table, unzipping a tiny interior pocket next. My driver’s license hits the table. He pockets my fifty-dollar bill.
“Hey!”
“Consider it payment for your room and board,” he says, half his face cast in shadow.
I shift on my feet. I have to pee worse than before. Nerves, I imagine. I take a step in the direction of the bathroom, and he turns his head slowly, his eyes blinking more slowly.
“There are rules, Morgan.”
I swallow, pinch off my bladder, and move past the paneled privacy wall to sit on the edge of the mattress. The dividing wall doesn’t hide me from his view, but now I can’t see the front door. I can only see the kitchen. The window facing the deck. The cabinets.
Tucker.
My eyes trail to the kitchen drawers, and I picture knives there, maybe a hunting knife like the one on the table next to his hand, or at the very least, a sharp tool. All I need is a knife sharp enough to slice through my ropes, then my captor’s neck.
My stomach turns at the idea of brutality, at harming another person, and keeping the contents inside my stomach proves impossible. I vomit just to the left of my new sandals and hope I missed my hair.
Tucker shoves the plastic chair across the floor in his haste to come to me. At the cabinet, he extracts a roll of paper towels. I mutter something about the bathroom as he cleans up my mess. My tough-girl act fades. I want to curl up and cry. No, scratch that. I want to call my dad. My dad would kick Tucker’s ass. Send him directly back to prison where he belonged. Then I can curl up and cry.
I wipe at my mouth with my bound hands and watch my captor turn on the sink and wet a wad of paper towels.
We have water. I find this encouraging because that means I can wash my mouth out.
“Please,” I say, my voice weak, the back of my throat burning. If there is a scrap of decency left in him, he will let me clean myself up. “Just give me a few quick seconds in the bathroom.”
He finishes wiping the floor with wet paper towels and while he’s bent there, I fantasize about kicking him and getting ahold of my phone. But my strength has ebbed from the evening’s activities. I’m not strong enough right now to knock him out.
Tucker rises, crossing his arms over his chest, and belatedly answering my request with “Password.”
I force a smile, trying a new approach. “Come on. I know you’re not all bad.”
“Do you.” He doesn’t ask a question, simply states those two words and challenges me with a steady blue-gray gaze.
“My throat is burning.”
He doesn’t take his eyes from mine. Then he does, disposing the wad of towels and returning to stand in front of me. His eyes wander over the ropes on my wrists to my crossed ankles. I bob my feet in silent plea to use the bathroom believing I have a shot at convincing him. His human side is alive and well, I’m sure. Then he speaks and destroys that theory.
“Password, Morgan.”
“Why?” A sob clings to my throat, but I swallow it back. I’m tired and my mouth tastes terrible and I’m scared. So scared. Can’t he see that? Does he care?
He turns his back on me for a split second.
Of course he doesn’t care. He’s just like the criminals my dad represents. My father says every person deserves a defense, but I’m not so sure. I don’t discuss cases with him, but it’s hard to miss details via the news and the Internet and the Sunday paper. Some of the guys he defends are bad guys. No doubt about it.
Tucker returns a second later, my phone in hand. He holds up the hunting knife, and my eyes fly wide. But rather than hold the blade to my throat, he slaps my phone face-up on the countertop and flips the knife upside down, the hilt hovering over the glass screen.
“Password or I destroy it.”
My freaking out would ensure he finds out how important my phone is to me. One text, one call, and I’m closer to being home. So I remain übercalm and lift my chin in challenge. “Go ahead. I don’t care.”
“No?” he asks, but the question is rhetorical. “You don’t want to call your dad? Have him come get you?”
Hope floods my chest, and my plan goes out the window. “You’d let me do that?”
He doesn’t answer. My stomach lurches. He’s lying. There’s no way he’d let me call my father.
“I can’t risk you being found. GPS.” He adjusts his grip on the knife’s handle.
“It’s off,” I lie.
He shakes his head. “I don’t believe you.”
“It’s the truth!” I shout.
“You have three seconds.” He raises the knife over the shining glass screen of my six-hundred-dollar phone. “One.”
“I’m telling the truth!”
“Two.” He raises the knife higher.
“Tucker. Please.”
Without counting to three he brings
the knife down and shatters the phone’s screen into splintered, fragmented pieces. I gasp as he sweeps the phone into the sink and turns on the water full blast.
Then I know. I’m as good as dead.
I spring to my feet and run toward him, but he catches my shoulders and pushes me against the wall. I lift my knee, aiming at his balls, but he anticipates the move, turning his hip and pressing my lower half against the wall as well.
“I hate you!” I shout in his face.
“You’re allowed,” he says. “Now calm down.”
“Let me go!” I struggle again and he tightens his hold on me, presses me harder against the wall, and I cry out in pain. The sob I’d kept at bay breaks free, and through it I mouth the words “I don’t want to die.”
I raise my chin and witness the war in Tucker’s eyes. I sense he doesn’t want to hurt me but feels as if he has to do what he’s doing. I may have a chance.
“Please let me go.” I manage a shaky smile. “I won’t tell anyone about you. Not my dad. Not the police. No one.”
The softness leaves his eyes and those gray-blues go hard as steel. “Then we have a problem, Morgan. I need you to tell everyone about me.”
Chapter 4
Now What
Tucker
From my position by the window in the tiny camping cabin, I lean on my elbow, two fingers to my temple, rubbing my lip with my ring finger while I think. Things haven’t gone well so far, but then what did I expect?
That I’d kidnap Morgan Young, contact her father, and work out a trade? Aaron Young would throw me in prison faster than my father had.
Morgan calmed down, finally, but only because I caved and let her go to the bathroom.
I gave her a modicum of privacy, even though I didn’t allow her to shut the door. I couldn’t trust her. Not yet. And I couldn’t let her know that seeing her like this: shaking and puking, her hands tied together, was eating me alive. At one point, I’d protected her and now…
My eyes stray to the ropes trapping her ankles. I couldn’t risk her running again. I was committed to this path, so I retied her. Then put a gag over her mouth for good measure.
After about a half hour, she fell asleep on the mattress by the kitchen. I took the moment of peace to check the generator—full tank—and get the food from the car and stock the mini-fridge and cabinets. I hadn’t planned on meals for two, so I could only hope the meager supplies I’d purchased at the 7-Eleven would be enough to get us through. I hadn’t planned to be here longer than a few days. Now I’m not sure what the plan is. I just know what I can’t do. I can’t let anyone find us. I haven’t decided what to do yet. With her or with myself.
Morgan shifts. Her eyes open, but she stares at the floor, her lashes fluttering every so often when she blinks. I’m leaning in the plastic chair in the adjoining kitchen, legs outstretched, ankles crossed.
Eighteen months in prison is a long time to be inside, to be exposed to the kinds of monsters behind those bars. The most interesting part of staying in Baybrook Penitentiary was that while I sat and reflected on “what I’d done” (the judge’s words) for the last year and a half, bigger criminals—my father, for example—guilty of crimes far more heinous than mine, walked free.
No. Not walked. Trotted.
Victor Noscalo walked proud and strong, his back straight and his chin up. But knowing what he was—what he was capable of—I never understood how he didn’t wake each morning wallowing in shame. Unless he had no remorse.
I thought of Jeremy and clenched my jaw. Of course he had no remorse.
Flipping my cheap flip phone end over end on the table, I consider my options. Morgan’s father is my only ticket out of this mess, but I don’t have the stomach to arrange a hostage situation. Her suggestions that I would hurt her or rape her—Jesus, I’d never—were enough to make my blood run ice cold. I couldn’t even do away with my father and he was pure evil straight from hell. For a criminal it’s turning out I don’t have much of a stomach for violence.
Go figure.
I stopped at the 7-Eleven intending to hold up the clerk for the money in the drawer. Chicken shit that I am, I couldn’t do it. Instead I took my basket of purchases to the counter and pulled out the two hundred bucks I’d snagged at my brief stop to my old bedroom. Then Morgan strolled in and stole my breath. Dressed in white, a halo practically encircling her golden head, she stopped my world.
From the bed across from room, she clears her throat. Her white clothes are dirty from the trunk, her shorts filthy from where I’d held her down on the deck. She bends her head and scratches her chin with her thumb and I see a spot of blood matting her hair. Blood.
My stomach twists. I hate this. I hate all of it.
It’s been a few short hours since she’d come in contact with me and already she’s…unclean. My mouth pulls into a frown. The idea I’d infected her somehow didn’t sit well. Nor did the fact I’d restrained her with ropes and a gag.
The gag is loose, though, and I tell myself this is some sort of kindness on my part. There’s no need, not really. We’re deep in the woods. I can’t imagine anyone would hear her scream. I hate screaming. Agony in general. That I’m responsible for her distress makes me want to vomit like she had earlier.
When the Youngs first moved into my neighborhood, they fascinated me. The pretty golden-haired girl and the dad in his tie and the mom in her sundress were just too perfect. They’d even had a dog back then. Blond and shaggy, its pink tongue lolling out of his mouth. The Young family represented a dream of a perfect family. A dream I’d awakened from way too soon.
An idyllic setting can hide the ugliest of lies—I know that better than anyone. But Morgan lived a good life. Her parents loved her. Loved her in a pure and wholesome way. Aaron is the kind of man who would protect his girl with ferocity if anyone dared harm her.
He fights for his clients the same way. I wonder if he’ll fight for me and my case against my father as vehemently. Morgan’s mouth moves around a white cloth acting as a gag.
Probably not now.
Aaron is a good man, but goodness has limits. The man who would fight fiercely for his daughter is unlikely to fight for the man who took her. If he knew what I’d done, he’d probably get in line behind my father to kill me.
It’d be no less than I deserve.
My father has no goodness. Not an ounce. He is the opposite of Mr. Young in every way. Victor Noscalo is the sort of man who takes advantage of people less than him because they fear him. I’m no longer afraid of Victor, and my brother, Jeremy, ceased being afraid of anything the day my mother shrieked bloody murder when she found him hanging in his closet by his neck.
I close my eyes against the scene, forcing the gruesome memory to a locked box in the corner of my mind. I once again flick a glance in Morgan’s direction. Her eyes are closed, her breathing deep. I rub my hand over my face, hoping I can get a few minutes of sleep. I slept with one eye open in prison, much like I had at home, so I’m accustomed to getting little to no rest.
With my father lurking the halls near my childhood bedroom, there wasn’t a lot of relaxing happening. He preferred to pluck me out of my room at night and entertain himself with balled fists and leather belts. And then things got worse. So much worse.
Turn around. You know what to do. Don’t start giving me lip now, boy.
A violent shudder rattles my shoulders at the memory. I wonder if I’ve become more like him than I intended. I am holding Morgan here against her will. I’m keeping her because I need something for myself. My actions are reprehensible in every way, and all for a girl I would have shielded from this kind of violence at one time in my life.
Hell, I had.
I allow myself to fantasize about giving her the keys, letting her go home. I could take the coward’s way out…the easy way out. I could string up a few bedsheets, like Jeremy had. I don’t have an attic ladder handy, but I could leap off the loft. A mirage of my brother hanging overhead, his eyes frozen o
pen, mouth ajar, stares down at me, and my limbs go cold. He was fifteen to my seventeen when he died, and that’s the age he is whenever I see him in my mind. Stuck forever in that dangling position, not aging a day.
Imaginary, purple, hanging Jeremy shakes his head in his homemade noose in answer to my morbid vision. I concede without argument. I won’t take the easy way out for one simple reason: the kids. A bunch of kids I don’t know, unaware of the potential danger awaiting them if I don’t get my father turned in to the authorities before the camp opens.
For that to happen, I need proof—proof of what he is capable of so he can never, ever get close to a minor again. I owe it to Jeremy, and to my mother. I fought to save her from my father’s sickness. Went to jail so she wouldn’t find out what kind of man she married. I succeeded with her. She’s safe in Italy now.
A small moan of protest sounds in Morgan’s throat as she jerks her head in my direction. Her eyes fly to mine, as if she’s just woken from a bad dream only to find it’s real. The clouds have parted and the moonlight slanting through the blinds behind me reflects in her eyes.
Her lips close around the gag and with some effort, she swallows. Witnessing her tied, immobile, unable to speak is like taking a lance to the chest. Another soft murmur and I go to her, unable to stay away.
Still, I have to be smart. My fingers go to the gag.
“Bite me,” I say, keeping my voice low and menacing, “and you’ll wish you hadn’t.” Her eyes stay wide as she nods in acquiescence. Makes me hate myself a little more, but in this scenario I am the bad guy so I’d better get used to the fucking part.
I remove the gag and she licks her lips. Full lips, straight white teeth thanks to braces. A mouth full of metal hadn’t affected her stunning beauty or her level of popularity. Not even a little. She pranced around the school like she owned the place—but not with an ounce of pride. Morgan doesn’t have to try to look like she has it all—that’s just who she is. A born princess.
Forgotten Promises (Lost Boys #1) Page 4
