by Lake, Keri
“Do you plan to accompany me into the bathroom, or something?”
“Do your business. And hurry up.”
I stepped inside, closing the door behind me, and, perhaps for the first time since I arrived there, reality began to penetrate my tightly woven cloak of denial. It wasn’t a joke. I could very well die in the enclosing shithole with a psychotic Bob Vila wannabe and his mysterious black gloves that were clearly meant to hide fingerprints.
Battling the urge to fall into a heap and bawl my eyes out, I gripped the sink and flipped on the faucet, desperately filling my mouth with cold tap water that damn near sizzled over the dryness. “C’mon, Aubree,” I whispered. “Time to make a Plan B. You’re not a quitter. You’re a survivor. You’ve survived worse than this.” Maybe. Who the hell knew what the rest of the house had in store for me? I looked up, staring at the section of wall where a mirror would’ve been, and was kind of thankful I didn’t have to look at myself right then. “You’ve become good at reading people.” I blew out a breath , but a whimper of hopelessness echoed somewhere in the back of mind. I quickly batted it down with my uncanny skill for deceiving the logical side of my brain.
Quick analysis. He was tall, dark and broody. Wore his hood up over his head. Maybe he was hiding something? Zero sense of humor. I mean, zero. Could be pissed. At me?
Could be sexual frustration. No, he’s too good-looking. “But his attitude is shit,” I muttered in response to my thoughts.
I buried my face in my hands. Unless the guy was a total torture-baby-animals sort of mental case, the best bet would be to try appealing to his empathetic side. Did hitmen feel guilt? Was killer’s remorse such a thing?
If that didn’t work, there’d be only one thing left to try.
Seduce the bastard. You’ve done it before and survived. You can do it again.
I’d been held captive by the apex predator, in the messed up jungle of dysfunction, and had gotten out. Not entirely free, but out. The guy on the other side of the door was nothing more than a temporary roadblock on my path to freedom. A peon, probably hired by the head Tyrantosaurus himself, my husband.
A quick sweep of the small room showed nothing that I could use as a weapon. The guy had stripped it down to the barest essentials, going so far as to remove the mirror that could’ve been cracked into jagged pieces for stabbing. Shit.
At two knocks on the door, I jumped back, nearly falling on my ass. “Just a sec!” I quickly hiked my dress, relieved myself, and scooped two more handfuls of water into my mouth.
When I exited, he was standing beside the door, arms crossed, practically growling as I snuck past him to the other side of the bed.
“Were you hired by my husband?” I asked.
His jaw shifted, as though he chewed on the question for a moment, before he spat back, “If I’d been hired to kill you, you’d already be dead.”
True, and shame on me as the kidnappee for not having come up with that brilliant deduction myself.
“But that doesn’t mean I don’t intend to kill you … eventually.”
I’d heard that phrase before. Many times before. The delay resided in thinking smart and staying one step ahead in the game. After all, my father once told me the world was a hunting ground, and the only way to identify the predators was to set a bait pile.
Just as I’d learned to do on cue, I summoned tears in my eyes and fell to a sitting position at the edge of the bed. “Please. I don’t … I don’t know if you have a family or … someone you care about. If you do, then … you know how devastating it would be to lose them.”
I glanced back, expecting to find apathy at my pathetic ad-libbed performance. Instead, he looked furious, as if he might just tear my throat out and eat it in front of me.
A tremble beat through my body as I slowly rose from the bed.
Prepare to run.
12
Nick
With nothing more than a bed between my hands and her throat, I stared at Aubree Culling in her flashy, expensive dress and three carat diamond ring, and tried to process her spewed bullshit about losing a loved one, as if she had any concept of giving a fuck about anything more than herself.
The rational side of my brain tried to convince me that she didn’t know a single thing about my past, didn’t know who I was, so how could she possibly be taunting me?
The irrational side urged me to use her comment as an excuse to cross her off the list. Maybe she did know. Maybe she and her husband sat in their hot tub, drinking champagne, toasting every life they’d stolen for their own personal greed. Maybe the two of them fucked to crime scene photos and the steady drip of coin in their wallets—their own personal pornography for the rich and remorseless.
“On the bed. Now.” The words pushed through my clenched teeth while a round of gunfire sat cocked at the back of my throat. Should she say one fucking word.
One word.
Her neck bobbed with a swallow, and she slid onto the bed.
Yeah, I knew all about losing loved ones. I’d lived the shit every day for three years, but I wasn’t about to fall victim to her manipulation. Even I could see she’d become a master of two faces—the bright white smile for the camera concealing the forked tongue of a serpent.
Standing beside the bed, I bent over her, placing a hand firmly at either side of her head. Below me, she seemed to press her head back into the mattress, as if to get away. I’d have laughed, except that her knee smashed my groin and her head collided with my nose.
Jolts of electricity raced to my nuts and I cupped my nose with one hand. “Fuck!” Ignoring the pain, I smacked aside her flailing arms and random kicks to my side and nabbed both of her wrists, pinning them hard against the bed.
“Fucking let me go!” She writhed beneath me, her knee pounding into my side.
Holding both wrists captive with my right hand, I pushed her assaulting thigh flat, climbed onto the bed, and straddled her body, crazed with the desire to knock her out. Beneath me, she bucked and arched with more strength than I’d given her credit for, until I pressed into her, my forehead pushing against hers, and at last, she stilled.
With heaving breaths, I stared into her eyes, teeth grinding, breaths mingling. It was in that moment I became aware of the way her breast had popped from her dress in the struggle and pressed against my chest. The salty taste of blood coated my tongue as it trickled into my mouth. Lifting my head away from hers, I lowered my gaze to the perfectly rounded globe, set pert with her arms stretched above her head. I licked my lips and swallowed hard, taunted by her bare skin so close to my mouth.
She made a pathetic attempt to nudge me. “Don’t you fucking dare,” she growled, and I came to my senses.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart. You don’t do anything for me.” I slipped her dress back over her breast and, still pinning her wrists, pushed off of her. “You want to live? Do exactly as I tell you. No fucking around.”
Eyes wide, she trembled, nostrils flaring with rapid breaths, as if she expected me to inflict pain. The sight of her fear cast a ripple of adrenaline through my body, warming my muscles.
I tipped my head, leaned over her, inwardly laughing at the twitch of her eye. “Are you afraid of me, Aubree?”
Her answering snarl kicked my lips into a grin. The woman put on a good front, I’d give her that.
“You should be.” Tugging her arm toward the headboard, I froze. One long scar stretched vertically down her forearm, the edges irregular, crooked. Across her wrist was a tattoo that, by the words, suggested the death of someone close to her. I hadn’t noticed it the night before, when I’d tied her the first time. Didn’t take a genius to recognize a suicide attempt.
My gaze shot to hers, and she narrowed her eyes, chin inclined in defiance like she had no intentions of explaining.
What did I care if she’d tried to kill herself? Except, the longer I stared, the more she seemed to get increasingly uncomfortable with the display, turning her head away from me.
> “What’s this?”
Her head snapped back in my direction. “What? Not as perfect when you peel the layers back?”
Evidently, she had something deeper going on, but I had neither the ambition, nor the interest, to give a shit. Aubree served a single purpose—revenge. So what that some fragment in her past didn’t match the perfection of her present life?
“Everyone has scars. What makes yours special?”
“I never said they were special. In fact, they’re my daily reminder that nothing is as special as people choose to believe.”
All the alarms inside my head screamed at once—abort fucking mission. I didn’t need Aubree Culling snaking her way beneath my skin, the way she had with the question about her husband hiring me to kill her, and then the scar, but something darker, deeper whispered below the noise in my head.
I quickly tied her hands to the bed, ignoring that nagging thought, but still, it persisted. Perhaps I’d missed something. All those hours logged, watching the Cullings, studying them day in and day out for over a year.
Maybe Aubree Culling wasn’t who I’d thought she was.
Get the fuck out.
I hauled ass out of that room. Wouldn’t let her shit infect me. She was the smiling face behind The Culling propaganda. The gentrification of inner city trash, and the driving force behind the brutal deaths of my wife and son.
A faithful, loving Stepford wife who served her husband’s every morally corrupt whim. Scarred or not, she remained the enemy, for the same reason every soldier under Hitler’s rule deserved to go down with the bastard dictator—they believed in the lies.
Alec and I had plotted for too long, to let some manipulative piece of work destroy it with her fake tears and pleas for sympathy. I’d lost the ability to sympathize long ago.
Still seething, I made my way to the kitchen and braced my hands on the countertop. Reel it in. A part of me’d never subscribed to the part of the plan that included kidnapping her. I had a feeling that spending too much time with Aubree was a bad idea. Didn’t help that she was a natural beauty, with her long chestnut hair, honey-toned skin, golden eyes, and that dimple in her cheek that gave her a sort of playful, youthful appearance—something the cameras and news reports hadn’t fully captured.
Throwing back the cupboard door, I nabbed the bottle of tequila, popped the cap, and tipped it back. After taking a long swill, I slammed the bottle onto the countertop and shook off the burn in my throat. From beside the sink, I grabbed a rag, flipped on the faucet, and soaked the corner of it before holding it to my nose, daubing away the drying blood where she’d gotten in a good punch.
“You play a nice game of bullshit, Mrs. Culling, but you’re not going to bullshit me.” Pinching the rag to my nose, I squeezed the remaining blood and, sniffing, I swiped up the bottle and tossed back another swig. I set the bottle down, glanced over in the direction of the staircase. S’pose I should feed her something. Much as I’d have liked to starve her, Alec would probably go apeshit.
It’d been a long time since I’d cooked a meal for a woman, though, and I had no idea what the hell they ate.
In a palette of color, I arranged cut strawberries, eggs, salsa, avocado, toast and sausage on a plate. All things Alec claimed he’d observed watching her eat. Back upstairs, I reentered her room, grabbing the chair propped against the wall on my way, and took a seat beside her.
The tracking of her eyeball from the corner of her eye had me inwardly chuckling. Only the liquor kept me cordial. With the fork, I stabbed a strawberry and placed it to her lips.
She snapped her head away from me. “I’m not hungry.”
“I didn’t ask you if you were hungry. Eat.”
“Fuck you,” she spat back.
My tongue raked across my teeth as my grin widened at her pathetic act of rebellion. “You’d love that, wouldn’t you?”
She cut her gaze back to me, chin inclined again, and I knew something feisty was itching to fly from her mouth. “I’d rather walk a mile with a cucumber up my ass than fuck you.”
“I can arrange that.” Hell, I’d have paid to see that shit. “You’re something else, Pistol Lips.”
Her eye twitched. “What did you call me?”
“Pistol lips.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Firing off at the mouth. Seems to be your signature trait. Should’ve grabbed a muzzle instead of the chains.”
“I—”
As soon as her mouth opened, I shoved the strawberry inside.
Nostrils flared, she chewed and swallowed. “You’re—” Another word, another strawberry slipped past her lips, and she growled, lifting her head up off the pillow, chewing all pissed off and gnashing her teeth.
The strawberry juice trickling out the corner of her mouth damn near broke me, had me choking back laughter, like I’d gotten a glimpse of some kind of rabid animal inside of her, ready to tear me apart. “Got something else to say?” I held up a forkful of eggs.
The corner of her lips lifted, eyes shooting daggers, and she nodded. “You’re a fucking d—”
In went the eggs.
She remained silent while I fed her the remaining plate full of food, until the last bite, when she looked up. “Why me? Why am I here?”
I’d expected the question—was surprised she hadn’t asked it sooner. Didn’t mean I planned to answer her. “Open your mouth.”
The groove of her brow deepened for only a moment before her eyes softened to sadness, and she opened her mouth wide, closing her lids. The sight was incredibly erotic, particularly when the tip of her tongue slid out ready to accept the last strawberry.
Mesmerized, I set it on her tongue, silently chiding myself for the hard-on pressing against my jeans. What kind of sadistic bastard … The kind of arousal I felt for her had nothing to do with feelings, or any level of attraction to the woman. I wanted the opportunity to take from Aubree Culling—something that would cut her as deep as I’d been cut. A hate fuck, where I’d leave her in pain and sobbing, drowning in her own self-loathing, the way I had that first year, before Alec had approached me with the idea of revenge.
I wanted her to feel small, vulnerable, weak.
She opened her eyes, and only then did I notice the way my hand trembled in front of her. I quickly lowered the fork and shot up from the chair.
I might’ve been a killer. A ruthless son of a bitch, but I wasn’t a rapist. To keep from doing something stupid, I had to get away from her.
“I want to see it,” she blurted.
“See what?” I couldn’t hide the disgust in my voice, knowing she’d caught sight of my momentary weakness.
“Your scar. Earlier, you said, we all have scars.” She lowered her head back onto the pillow. “Let’s see yours.”
The woman thought she’d softened me.
“Fuck off,” I said, walking out the door.
13
Nick
Aside from bringing her a plate full of lunch, I managed to keep my distance from Aubree for most of the day, locking myself away in my room, surfing the deep ‘net. Nothing quite fucked up the day like a dose of the darkest bowels of web, and I’d hit the jackpot when I stumbled upon the Blue Orchid site, a copycat of the original child pornography site that’d been busted by the authorities a few years back. Only an idiot would assume the name of a high profile case, but then again, folk could get away with shit like that on the deep ‘net.
It was there that I found my next victim via a naked twelve-year-old girl named Sapphire, presumably for her blue eyes.
The chip that I’d stolen from Aubree turned out to be a bonus as well, which had me questioning why it’d been given to her. On it, blue prints and contracts, approved by the city council president, for residential development of Brightmoor were listed alongside contact information for some of the city’s most notorious criminals, including Angelo Donati, Capo of the Donati crime family. It seemed Brightmoor would be leveled out and some fancy condos bu
ilt around a shopping complex. Only problem? Lot of old timers still called the shithole their home—some who’d been there for years and couldn’t afford to just up and move.
It seemed I’d stumbled upon the plan for Devil’s Night. Giving me more reason to be suspicious of the woman. Why would Culling entrust her with such vital information? Information I didn’t suspect would be anywhere but that chip—portable enough to be tossed, if necessary.
In my room, I performed my usual weapons check: two Glocks strapped across my chest, dagger in my boot, hunting knife with a gut hook sheathed at my hip. After tucking the mask inside the pocket of my jeans, I made my way back to Aubree’s room and set dinner down on a chair.
Her eyes roved me up and down. “Heading out?”
Ignoring her question, I unchained her arms and legs, watching with pointed interest as her eyes turned quizzical.
“You’re leaving me untied?”
“Yeah.” I glanced back at the plate of chicken, rice and vegetables. No fork or any utensils, meaning, she’d have to eat with her hands. “I don’t have time to feed you.”
With widened eyes, she stared up at me. “Fun night planned, huh?”
Twisting on my heel, I headed for the door. “You could say that.”
Upon exiting the room, I locked it and whistled for Blue, who obediently trotted up the stairs. Without a word, he sat beside the door, and smirking, I squatted in front of him. “Don’t let her go anywhere. Got it?” A lick of his tongue across my cheek affirmed his understanding, and I pushed up from him, wiping the dog slime from my skin.
On my way down the stairs, I checked my texts. I’d sent the first about two hours earlier, requesting an hour with Sapphire.
I’d received a response: ‘three hundred, anything I wanted’.
Vomit gurgled in my throat. Fucking twelve years old. It used to be drugs that ruled the streets, but with the DEA making so many busts, a lot of criminals had turned to sex trafficking. Unlike the one-time sale of crack cocaine, they could turn profits all night long on one girl alone. A gang-bang meant triple or quadruple the sales.
