Held, Pushed, and 22918 (3 Complete Novels)

by Kimberly A Bettes

  When my online shopping was done and my phone was activated, I closed the computer and finished my meal, even though my stomach was a tight ball of nerves and I had no appetite.

  I drove back to the motel and used the cell phone for the sole purpose I’d purchased it.

  With trembling hands, I dialed the number and wondered what the hell I was going to say when he answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi.” After a couple of awkward seconds passed, I added, “It’s me.”

  “I know.”

  Just hearing the sound of his voice made my heart beat faster. I’d heard it for so long, and then suddenly, I hadn’t heard it at all. And now here it was, on the other end of the line, sounding exactly as I remembered. My palms grew damp with sweat and my stomach clenched into an even tighter knot, making me regret eating the Big Mac.

  “I haven’t heard from you in so long,” he said quietly. “How are you?”

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to steady my voice.

  “I’m fine. Well, that’s a lie. But I’m better than I was.”

  “That’s good to hear. You definitely sound better than you did the last time we talked. Are you still at Alpine Grove?” I could tell he was weighing his words, not wanting to say anything to upset me. That in itself upset me. He shouldn’t have to tread lightly when talking to me. This is what we’d been reduced to.

  “No. I got out a few weeks ago. I should’ve called but…I just…I just didn’t. I needed to get myself together before I called you. You know what I mean?”

  “I do. I understand. So have you? Gotten yourself together, that is?”

  “No, but I’m getting there. It’s hard to overcome some of those fears, Wade. I’m always looking over my shoulder. Always wondering who’s in the shadows. I know it’s ridiculous—”

  “No, no. It’s not ridiculous. You have every right to look over your shoulder. I absolutely get why you do it.”

  I smiled. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that what he was saying was anything other than the truth. He did understand. He always understood me. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to fight back the tears that threatened to come.

  “I just wish I could help. You’re my wife. I should be there, by your side, protecting you from whatever you’re afraid of. In this case, that son of a bitch asshole.”

  There was anger in his voice, but I also heard a quiver, and I knew that he was fighting back tears. Wade was a take-charge man who prided himself on providing for and taking care of his family. It killed him to know he couldn’t do anything to help me through this. He felt helpless, which something he wasn’t accustomed to feeling.

  “I know,” I said softly. “But I have to do this on my own.”

  He sniffed before asking, “So where are you staying?” It was every bit as obvious that he was uncomfortable talking about my problems as it was that he was changing the subject. But it was okay with me because I was uncomfortable talking about it too. Probably because I knew that I wasn’t well yet. I still had a long way to go, but I would be fine. Eventually.

  “I’m staying at a cheap little motel. It’s nothing fancy, that’s for sure, but it’s somewhere to be until…” Until what? Until I was well enough to return to my family? Until I failed and ended up back in Alpine Grove? “Until I’ve collected myself.” I cringed as I said those generic and lazy words. Although really, that was probably a fitting way to put it since I had fallen apart.

  “Good. Do you know what your plans are yet?”

  I wasn’t about to tell him that I had an immediate plan and if it went well, then I’d work on planning for the future. Instead I said, “I think I’m going to stay here for a little longer. Keep doing my therapy.”

  “That’s probably a good idea. Do you need anything?”

  “No. Thank you though.”

  “If you do, all you have to do is ask. You know that.”

  “I do. And thank you. I appreciate it more than you know.”

  He nearly whispered, “I can’t wait for you to come home.”

  “Me too.”

  For a minute, neither of us spoke. We were both lost in our thoughts, remembering how wonderful our life together had been and wondering what it would be like when we were together again.

  When he spoke, once again to change the subject, he had to first clear his throat of the emotions that had choked him.

  “So this number that you called from, is it the number to the motel?”

  “No. It’s my cell phone. I just bought it today.”

  “Okay. I’ll write it down so if I need to call you, I’ll have it.”

  “Please do. I don’t have a good signal here though. I had to walk around in the room until I found one. So if you ever call and I don’t answer, just leave a message. I’ll call you back as soon as I get it.”

  “Deal.”

  “So how’s Mason?”

  “He’s great. Getting big. And more handsome by the day.” I could hear the smile in his voice.

  “Well he gets that from you.”

  Wade chuckled. “Thanks. But I can’t take all the credit. You had a little something to do with it.”

  I smiled, but the next thing he said wiped the smile off my face completely.

  “He asks about you.”

  Amazingly, I managed to talk, even though my throat had snapped shut, clenched tightly around the lump that had suddenly formed there.

  “He does?”

  “Yeah. A lot, actually.”

  I couldn’t hold it back any longer. It started with a few tears escaping from my eyes and trickling down my cheeks, but it quickly escalated to sobs. I couldn’t help it. The thought of my baby having to ask about his mommy broke my heart.

  When Wade realized I was crying, he did what he always did and tried to console me, which only made me cry harder. I should be there, at home with him and Mason so they didn’t have to ask about me, and they could console me properly if I cried.

  “Hey, Nicole. Don’t cry. It’s okay. It’s all going to be okay.”

  “I should be there,” I sobbed.

  “And you will be. You just can’t be right now. Everything is going to work out. Mason’s little. In a few years, he won’t remember that you were absent for a while. All he’ll remember is that you’re his mother and he loves you just as much as you love him. You’ll see.”

  Would I? Would I really be able to be with them again, to be a family?

  I certainly intended to.

  Somehow I managed to stop crying long enough to finish the conversation with Wade. But as soon as we hung up, the tears came again. This time, I didn’t fall into the seemingly bottomless pit of self-pity and sorrow. This time, I only cried for a few minutes before I got mad. I was furious with Ron for putting me in this position, for forcing my son to have to ask about his mother and causing my husband to have to comfort me over the phone.

  My anger strengthened my resolve. I was more determined than ever to get my life back. I saw only one way to do it, so come Thursday I was going to take action.

  9

  The sex with Bethany was good enough, though it was not great. It was nowhere near as good as it had been with Nicole. Since Bethany was bound to the embalming table and unable to move, she was left with no choice but to let Ron do whatever he wanted to her. Instead of screaming and begging him to stop, she laid there with her eyes closed, crying silently, fat tears rolling down the sides of her face. So though the sex wasn’t great, her silence allowed him to imagine that it was Nicole lying beneath him.

  The problem with her was all the times they weren’t having sex. The constant sound of her begging and whining, moaning and complaining was too much for Ron to deal with. He was getting really tired of listening to her. Merely the sound of her voice was beginning to annoy him because all she ever did was bitch and beg.

  It was becoming clear to him that she was never going to be able to replace Nicole. He’d been a fool to believe otherwise. But
still, he wasn’t quite ready to give up on her. He decided to give her one more chance to redeem herself before he considered her an absolute loss and discarded her like the piece of trash that she was.

  During Bethany’s stay in his home, Ron had tried to recreate his time with Nicole. He’d brought a deck of playing cards with him to the basement and asked if she’d like to play a game of Gin Rummy with him. She declined, using words normally heard coming from the mouths of filthy prostitutes.

  He’d brought down board games and asked if she was interested in playing those. Again, she declined, calling him vile names.

  She didn’t want to partake in any of the activities he offered, and it was really beginning to anger him. She was a guest in his home. How dare she refuse to participate in friendly games with him? Who the hell did she think she was?

  “Okay, Bethany,” Ron said, once again standing beside the table with a deck of playing cards in his hand. “Let’s try this again.”

  She turned her head in the opposite direction to avoid looking at Ron, a childish move that infuriated him.

  Clearly and slowly, enunciating each word so she couldn’t later claim to have misunderstood him, Ron asked, “Would you like to play a game of cards with me? It doesn’t have to be Rummy. We can play whatever game you choose.”

  Nothing. She didn’t turn to look at him. Didn’t shake her head yes or no. Didn’t acknowledge him in any way.

  “Bethany, believe me when I say that it’s in your best interest to answer me.”

  Half a minute passed. Just when Ron became convinced that she wasn’t going to respond to him, she said, “Fuck you.”

  Ron’s jaw clenched shut, the muscles in the side of his face twitching.

  He turned around and slammed the deck of cards onto his work table, his nostrils flaring. He picked up the locking pliers from the table and held them tightly in his hand as he whirled around to face her.

  “That’s the wrong answer, bitch.”

  Quickly, he went to her left hand, held tightly to the table by the thick leather restraint. He locked the pliers onto the tip of the long, manicured fingernail on her index finger. With no warning and no time for her to register what was about to happen, he yanked, pulling the entire fingernail off her finger.

  Then the screaming started.

  Her head rolled from side to side as she wailed, crying and cursing him while begging him to stop.

  “It was a simple game of cards, Bethany,” Ron said as he locked the pliers on the fingernail of her middle finger. “All you had to do was play a simple game of cards.”

  Yank.

  Her fingertips bled, and as he started to lock the pliers onto the nail of the next finger, she attempted to fight him by folding her fingers down, placing the tips in the palm of her hand, creating a fist.

  In no mood to fight with her, Ron adjusted the pliers. With his left hand, he focused on her pinky finger, plucking it from the others and holding it out straight. She tried to pull it away from him, to tuck it back inside her fist along with the others, but it was no use. He locked the pliers onto her finger below the middle knuckle and applied pressure.

  The finger popped off with a satisfying snap, falling to the floor and laying between the bloody, discarded fingernails.

  The blood was really squirting now, shooting out the end of the stump that only seconds ago had been a finger.

  The screaming intensified.

  Ron felt that familiar rush that he loved so much. His heart raced and the adrenaline pumped through his veins. He felt alive in a way that he only felt when there was a woman tied up in his basement that he was punishing for deeds she’d done. Or in this case, hadn’t done.

  “I bet you wish you’d played nice with me now. Right, Bethany?”

  Snap! Her next finger was gone.

  She screamed louder.

  “I bet you wish you’d just listened to me and done as I said. Isn’t that right, Bethany?”

  Another snap as the middle finger disappeared, falling to the growing pile of severed appendages on the concrete floor beneath her.

  More screaming. More blood.

  When the pliers cut through her index finger, they didn’t cut all the way through. The finger hung from her hand like a limp sausage, connected only by a thin layer of bloody skin. Ron looked at the mangled digit and wondered what the pain felt like.

  He cupped his hand around the dangling finger and gave it a gentle tug, watching as Bethany’s face wrenched in agony and horror. Smiling, he continued to pull on the broken finger, slowly twisting it to add to the pain. Finally, when the skin had stretched beyond its limits, it ripped and was no longer attached to her hand.

  Then, on a whim, he held her severed finger in his hand and used it the tip of it to wipe the tears from her eyes.

  “You can only blame yourself, Bethany,” he said softly, leaving a smear of blood and tears across her eyes and cheeks.

  She looked silly lying there with blood on her face. It was almost as if she was wearing make-up, red eye shadow and rouge spread across her face like a clown who had been crying.

  This struck Ron as funny. He laughed as he tossed her lifeless finger to the floor alongside the others before continuing his work.

  When there were no more fingers on her left hand, Ron stepped over to her right hand and started on those. One by one, he clamped down on the pliers and detached her fingers from her hand. He could no longer hear the beautiful snapping sound that came from the pliers crunching through the bone. All he could hear were the deafening screams of this disrespectful whore as she writhed in agony on the cold steel table.

  Among the screaming, Bethany spat a long line of vile curse words, all directly aimed at Ron. She cussed his mother and his father, called him every name in the book, and even created curse words that hadn’t even been invented yet.

  He no longer found her amusing. Nicole would never say such disgusting things to him. Nicole had class that this gutter rat couldn’t even dream of having.

  Done with the pliers, he tossed them onto the work table. From the shelf above, he grabbed a small tube of gel, intent on silencing her screams.

  She didn’t seem to notice what he now held in his hands. In her agony, she paid him little attention as she rolled her head side to side, squeezed her eyes closed, and opened her mouth wider in order to scream at the top of her lungs.

  Ron approached her from the side opposite the work table. He was right handed and needed the perfect angle to achieve his goal. He came in fast, wrapping his left arm around her head and grabbing her mouth. He applied pressure on the bottom of her jaw, forcing upward to keep it closed. She fought him. Boy, did she fight him. But he held firmly and didn’t let go.

  It wasn’t easy, but he spread the gel across her lips, emptying the entire tube. He threw the empty tube to the floor and used his now-free right hand to hold those full and pouty lips of hers together, careful to not get any of the gel on his fingers.

  After enough time had passed to allow the super glue to set, he let go of her head and mouth and watched as she tried to scream through sealed lips.

  Ron smiled.

  She was still loud, but not nearly as loud as she had been before. Her screams were muffled, and by the end of the night they’d be silenced forever. But first, he wanted to have a little fun.

  10

  Thursday started off bright and sunny, but by noon the sky had become overcast. A thunderstorm was on the horizon, threatening to drench the city with rain and rattle the windows with claps of thunder.

  After loading my things in the car, I searched the motel room thoroughly to make sure I hadn’t left anything behind. I took great care to not overlook anything, searching every nook and cranny of the room for any item that I might’ve forgotten.

  No matter how the day went, I would not return to the room. Just in case things went badly, I didn’t want to leave behind any incriminating evidence. I even considered wiping the room so my prints wouldn’t be found,
but decided that was an unnecessary trouble. I’d used an alias when checking in and had paid for the room in cash a week at a time. There was no way anyone could trace me to the motel, and even if they did, it was a motel. There were sure to be dozens of fingerprints found in the room. Who’s to say I didn’t stay a night here at some point? The important thing was making sure that none of the items I’d purchased were left behind.

  Once I was satisfied that I had loaded all of my belongings in the car, I pulled out of the parking lot, leaving the motel behind me.

  I stopped at a drive-thru and grabbed something to eat. I wasn’t hungry but it was going to be a long day and I would need my strength to get through it. By the time I drove across town, parked, and settled in for the wait, the aroma of the food had filled the interior of the car, and my stomach had begun to rumble with hunger.

  Ron’s book signing was scheduled to start at 1:00 PM. I didn’t know what time he would arrive, so I set up surveillance at just past 11:00 AM. I ate the fast food, keeping my eyes focused on what lay beyond the windshield.

  Nearly an hour passed before I saw Ron’s car. From where I was parked down the road, I could see him as he pulled out of his driveway and turned onto the two-lane blacktop, heading into the city where he would be greeted by his adoring fans.

  I remained parked in the driveway down the road from his house for half an hour after Ron’s car faded from sight to be sure that he didn’t return home.

  When enough time passed that I was positive he wouldn’t be back until after the signing, I pulled into Ron’s driveway, where I quickly drove around the house and parked on the back side, out of sight from the highway.

  I got out of the car but didn’t close the door. Not yet. I stood—my right foot still flat on the floor board, left foot on the grass—and looked slowly around the yard. Unsure of exactly what I was looking for, a guard dog perhaps, maybe a trap or two, I visually inspected every inch of the yard but found nothing menacing. Rose bushes, trees, a wooden bench next to a water fountain, a concrete bird bath, a stone pathway that led to the back deck, and a well-manicured lawn all gave the impression of serenity. There was nothing at all to suggest that this was in fact the lair of a maniac.