by Lake, Keri
“Welcome! We’ve been waiting for you, Lucy.” He waved a hand toward Jolana and Conall. “You’ve met my other guests.”
I swung the gun toward Kelley, but at Conall’s lurch toward me, pointed it back on the pig.
“Not a particularly wise idea coming here yourself, my dear. Straight into the mouth of the beast.”
“Let her go, or I’ll rain bullets on both your asses.” In spite of the ferocity in my voice, every muscle shook with fear. Every word arrived as a lie, a bluff, to save my own life. No doubt, Conall would probably shoot me first. My gaze flickered between them, never looking away.
“I’m sorry, Lucy,” Jolana said and slipped her hands from the cuffs that, seconds ago, had bound her wrists.
What. The. Fuck.
She sat up, undoing the binds at her ankles.
My hand trembled with the effort of keeping the gun on Conall. “What the hell is going on?”
Jolana slid from the table and dropped to her knees before Kelley, then kissed the top of his hand. “Have I earned your trust, Pasák?”
“Áno, môj nevinný kvet.” Yes, my innocent flower. Kelley turned his attention toward me. “I’m incredibly frustrated, Lucy. The terms of the agreement we made were that you turn over Mister Hawkins, and the camera with the video footage. No need to come barging in. No need for all of these … theatrics. Ridiculous heroics. You simply had to provide the address and could’ve walked away. Jolana would have been returned safely to her apartment, and you’d have never heard from us again.” He huffed and shook his head. “But you failed to listen, and I had to take matters into my own hands.”
My heart pounded in my chest. The air in the room grew thin, as all the missing pieces finally clicked into place. Click. Click. Click.
“Jolana? You … what did you do?”
Kelley stroked the top of her head, as she sat perched beside him, clutching his leg like a trained dog. “Enlighten her, my dear.”
A slight smile lifted the corner of her mouth, shadows of betrayal clouding her eyes. “That night at Sphinx. Viktor had gotten a call that someone had seen them dump Sarah’s body.”
Sarah? She worked as a dancer for Sphinx. The night I’d agreed to do the lap dances, Viktor had told me that she was traveling the country.
“I told him about the assignment you were on,” she continued. “I told him that you worked for a newspaper and had gone to the Slaughterhouse to take photos.”
Ice branched up my spine, closing in around my lungs.
The smile on her face withered, and she dropped her gaze from mine as if a moment of humanity had somehow taken over her fucking twisted head. “I told Peepshow where to find you.”
Still holding my gun on Conall, my arms burned, my body so tense with fear and shock, my muscles cramped. “You sent me that email, didn’t you? And that day … after I visited you. You told …” I snapped my gaze to Conall, who remained by the door as if awaiting an order to move. “You told him and the cop where to find me. That’s why they showed up at my apartment?”
Conall groaned. “I knew I smelled a dirty cunt in the woodpile.”
Ignoring Conall, I turned my attention back toward Jolana. “It was you. All along. You … why?”
She tipped her head back, eyes locked in some sick, lovers gaze with Kelley. “I was climbing the ladder, Lucy, and you were just one of the rungs to my freedom.”
“And Viktor?”
Her shoulders sagged in what seemed like a brief moment of remorse. “Viktor was my lover. But Pasák is my master. The one I’m most loyal to.”
Shoot them. Shoot them now.
I lifted the gun to Conall, but before I could pull the trigger, a pop and the wet sloshy sound that followed startled my muscles. My eyes skated back to Kelley, where, beside him, Jolana fell to the floor. Red velvet blood slid down her cheek, her head split open by a close-range bullet.
With a smile on his face, Kelley pointed his gun at me. “You shoot. I shoot.”
My heart froze inside my chest, the branches of ice crystalizing my lungs, and the scream trapped inside my head failed to break through. I flicked my gaze from the pooling blood, so much blood, around Jolana, and back to Conall, whose gun remained pointed at me. Trying to keep him in my sights, I opened my mouth to nothing more than the choke of a stifled scream.
“It’s all right, dear. Scream if you need to. No one will hear you.”
Panic choked my breath, and not even both hands could hold the gun steady as trembles wracked my body. Dead. He’d shot her. Dead. “It’s … it’s not …”
“Don’t feel guilty. Jolana wasn’t quite what she seemed. Nothing but a pawn, since the day I found her eight years ago. She’d run away from a father who’d been selling her body for years to pay for his drug addiction.”
I frowned and shook my head in disbelief. She’d lied about everything, including her father, who was supposedly rich and connected. Knots coiled inside my stomach as everything began to come together.
“Always sad when you find out that the princess is actually nothing more than a pathetic whore. You’d be surprised what a few months on the streets will do to a person. So willing to do whatever it took to keep a roof over her head.” He waved a hand in the air, still keeping the gun on me. “Enough of that. All water under the bridge. Let’s begin, shall we? I have something I’d like to send to your boyfriend. I’m sure he’ll find it riveting.” He flipped on the camera, and acid burned my throat as reality began to sink in.
I glanced to the side, where wooden shelves lined the room, perhaps once filled with wine and liquor, but since replaced by what looked like the old fashioned farming tools I’d once seen on a museum field trip as a young girl. Drops of blood spattered the table where Jolana had been strapped, and my throat turned dry with the sudden awareness that I’d stumbled upon their torture room.
They were about to film my snuff video.
58
Jase
I slammed through the door of the apartment, eyes scanning the path to the bedroom where I’d left her, looking for any sign. A clue. Something that would lead me to where she’d gone.
Torn zip ties lay scattered across the bed. I scooped up Lucy’s clothes left draped on the chair and rummaged through the pockets. Nothing.
Twisting around, I nabbed her duffle bag and dumped the contents onto the bed. Perfume, SD cards, deodorant, clothes. Nothing that’d give me a clue about Jolana and where to find Lucy.
I headed toward the living room, rubbing my hand through my hair.
Fuck!
Gaze trailing over the room, I caught a flash of white on the desk. A scrap of paper.
An address. One that I knew was in the Palmer Woods area.
Tucking it into my pocket, I bolted through the front door.
* * *
I parked Dax’s car in what appeared to be an abandoned mansion, with weeds growing up from the cracks in the pavement, the windows boarded up, across the street from where my Camaro sat in the circular drive.
Sticking to the shadows, I crossed the street to the Victorian mansion, where no other car was visible. I made my way to the edge of the house, keeping to the brush, and peered through the windows.
Two armchairs sat around a small pedestal, in what looked like a parlor. No sign of anyone about.
Along the brick, I slid toward the front window, where I couldn’t see beyond the large drapes, from where I stalked toward the front door, eyeing the crack where it’d been left open.
A peek inside showed no movement, only darkness and the faint outline of a staircase in the distance. I widened the crack and stepped inside, my trigger finger at the ready. Left to right, I swept the room with the barrel of my gun.
The quiet unnerved me, as I crept through the foyer and lifted my gaze toward the top of the staircase.
An outcry halted my steps. From below.
Twisting around, I headed toward a door at the side of the staircase.
Another scream echoed
through the walls and had my heart leaping into my chest.
Lucy.
I tugged the AR around to in front of me and opened the door, through which a winding staircase beckoned me inside. Down the stairs, I crept quietly, ready to blast the first thing that got in my way.
Her third cry shattered, leaving a heavy quiet
Fuck! Panic burst in my chest, and on a rush of adrenaline, I sprinted down the remaining stairs. Reaching a large wooden door, I peeked into an anteroom, where a ship-like door stood ajar.
One step inside, and I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. As I spun around, sharp pain exploded at the side of my head, into a blaze of glittering stars.
A bulky, shadowy figure, holding an shovel-shaped object, stood off to the side, while the room pulled a tilt a whirl, right before a hard surface slammed into my back, knocking the wind from my lungs, and my surroundings flickered to blackness.
* * *
I opened my eyes to a blur, beyond which I could barely make out faces staring down at me.
Two? Four?
Through a fog of confusion, I squinted my eyes, and the memory of what'd happened splashed through at the zap of pain striking my skull. As I lurched forward, tension hit my chest, and it took seconds to realize I'd been strapped to a chair. My hands had been shackled behind me, both of them throbbing and burning from the sharp bands slicing into my skin.
A chain crisscrossed my torso, drawn so tight against my ribs, I could hardly breathe. All the metallic links converged into a single master lock, taunting me where it sat sticking up from my knees. I couldn’t even move an inch, and the pulses of pressure in my fingers felt like they might explode into a bloody mess.
Before me, David stood alongside another muscled bastard, who Lucy had pointed out from the video a while back. Conall. “Jase,” David said, shaking his head. “How I wish this was a different circumstance.”
“I’ll kill you, motherfucker! Where is she? Where is Lucy?”
He stepped aside, revealing a white sheet dotted with splotches of dark red blood.
Fury rocketed inside my veins, and I kicked forward to reach him.
“Uh-uh. I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.” He pointed toward the steel chair beneath. “Beneath that chair is enough TATP to blow you to bits. Not enough to collapse the house, but enough to have police picking up parts of you all over the place. And it happens to be very, very unstable. Mere friction could set it off, and on metal, well, it’s just too unpredictable.”
I knew what TATP was. We’d fucked around with it as kids. I breathed hard through my nose, jaw clenched tight, my eyes locked on the unmoving lump beneath the sheet. “What do you want from me?”
“I’m glad you asked. First, you’re going to tell me who you’re working for. See, a very large sum of money was stolen recently, and I don’t take very kindly to that, as it reflects poorly on me. Second, I thought I might film your reaction, as you watch Conall rape your woman for the camera.”
My blood raged with the need to pummel his fucking face. Every muscle tensed, adrenaline pumping through me, urging my body to break free and rip him apart. “I’ll get free, cocksucker. I’m coming for you. And I will blow your fucking face clean off your head.”
“Unlikely. I have a very important meeting in two days that I need to prepare for, so I’ll be leaving in just a moment. Conall will make sure you have a nice, cozy view of your girl. If you attempt to move, you’ll explode, so I suggest you remain still, enjoy the show, and when it’s all over, if you give him the information he’s looking for, he’ll simply leave the two of you to rot in here. Unless you explode before then.”
“Fuck you.”
Tugging at the binds, I wriggled my wrists, the raw sting searing my skin with futility. I wouldn’t escape the chains, weaved so tightly around my bones, unless I broke the lock that rested on my thighs like a buoy across miles of open water.
His smug grin set my bound fists twitching. “It’s a shame your brother died. I could’ve made a lot of money off of him, if he hadn’t been so fucking stupid.” Hands behind his back, Kelley paced in front of me, stoking up the urgency inside of me to strike out at him. “First, he hacked the site, then he stole the files. And I’d have never known it was him, if he hadn’t been so foolish. Bragging to Bridger, of all idiots. Thinking he could trust that little bastard. Reed was such a poor judge of character. He should’ve known Sean would do anything to be liked, even selling out the only friend he ever had.”
“Reed knew it was you behind the videos. The killings. He threatened to expose you. That’s why you had them break into our house.”
“I couldn’t let some drugged-out piece of shit ruin the career I’ve worked hard for. There are legions of faceless internet freaks willing to pay lots of money to watch others suffer. And who gives a shit about a bunch little bastards from the streets? People pass them all the time, never sparing them a single thought. No one cares about some runaway little bitch, until she lands in a dumpster and becomes fucking fodder for the news. Political gossip.” He came to a stop in front of me, and tipped his head. “Your brother is one less drug addict on the streets. One less webcam freak show. One less waste of human body parts.” His mouth slid into a smile. “Don’t tell me you don’t feel just a little relief that he’s gone. That you no longer have to deal with his threats of suicide. His downward spiral into depression. Tell me that you don’t appreciate not having to stare at the god awful truth, that, no matter what, you could never have saved him, anyway.”
A spasm of pain struck my skull as I ground my teeth. “You fucked him up. You, and every piece of shit before you who claimed you could help him. I will kill you, Kelley. I will watch you suffer for all you’ve done.”
“Yes, I’m sure. Until then, give Lucy my regards when she wakes up.”
Kelley turned away from me, toward the door, patting Conall on the arm as he left the vault.
My gaze shot to Conall, whose mouth slid into a grin, and another rush of adrenaline blasted through my veins like ice water.
“This is my favorite part. Just me and you.” He pulled back the sheet, exposing Lucy’s half-naked body, her arms cuffed to what looked like a metal pipe that’d been fused along the edge of the table, and her unbound feet pointing toward the bottom corners of the slab. Her upper clothes had been cut open, revealing her breasts, and blood splotched her stomach like she might’ve struggled. Her lower half had been stripped completely.
I curled my wrists against the binds, my eyes on him, while he rounded the table, running his fingertips down her unmoving body. “I’ll rip your fucking throat open!” I wanted to tear him apart, limb from limb for touching her.
Conall’s laughter bounced off the walls and pounded through my skull in a murder-worthy beat. “You can’t do shit, asshole. You move, you blow up.” From the table, he lifted my blade, twirling it in front of me. “Know what I hated most about this bitch? The way she looked at me. Always staring at my face.”
As he slid the knife across her cheek, my muscles trembled with the effort to break the chain. “Fuck you!” I writhed in the chair, while he laughed and licked her blood off the blade.
Lucy jerked, her head rocking back and forth, and a gasp broke her sleepy state. Her arms tugged helplessly at the binds, and my heart burned inside my chest when she lifted her head, her pants of breath letting me know she’d gotten a look at herself and Conall beside her. “No! No!”
“Morning, sunshine. Rise and grind.” Conall slid his hands beneath her body and flipped her over, leaving her bound arms tangled over one another in a what had to be an uncomfortable crisscross at her wrists.
She twisted her head to the side, and fear danced across her eyes as they locked with mine beneath a watery shield of desperation
Behind her, Conall unbuckled his belt, and I rocked as much as I could against the chains, my face hot with anger and hysteria rattling my nerves.
“Maybe I’ll let her live. Hell, maybe I’ll
let both of you live. Because the next time the two of you fuck? Guess who she’s going to be thinking about.” That twisted fucking punch-worthy grin of his slid like snakes across his face.
“Unchain me, Motherfucker. Five minutes. Five fucking minutes is all I need.”
His brows winged up. “Five minutes, is all? See, I believe in long, drawn-out torture. The kind that takes days. Hell, weeks. I once kept a bitch chained to my bed for two weeks watching her starve to death. Fascinating.” Obsidian eyes bore into mine—black, lifeless, lacking every emotion, except hate. “I can’t wait to see how long it takes for you to break. While watching her …” As he massaged Lucy’s ass, her brows came together, and she bucked against him. When his hand clenched her flesh, a scream ripped from her throat, before he smacked her ass so loud the crack echoed inside the vault. “… undergo training.”
“Training for what?” Jaw stiff, I spoke past the painful grinding of my teeth.
“To become a slave. Sold at auction. A worthless, piece of shit toy for someone like me. Someone who enjoys the sounds of screaming and suffering.”
“Go to fucking hell!” Lucy shook, her crisscrossed arms trembling.
“We’ve already arrived, sweet tits.” Conall reached beneath and gripped one of her breasts, tugging it, until Lucy’s yelp brought a smile to his face.
Rage and sickness churned in my gut. “I’ll fucking tell you! I’ll tell you everything you need to know. Where to find the video.”
“That’s great.” He slid his hands under her stomach and hoisted her up onto her knees, while Lucy squirmed against him. “I’m still fucking up your girl in front of you. I don’t care about some useless video. I don’t care about the money that was stolen. I’m not doing this because I have to.” His tongue swept across his lips as he rubbed his hands down the back of Lucy’s thighs, inciting a twitch of her body. “I’m doing it because I want to. Before we get to fucking, though, I thought we might do a little foreplay. Some pain exercises.” He brushed her hair from her ear, gaze on me as he whispered, “I like to know I’ve broken you before I stick my dick inside your cunt.”
