by Christa Wick
Roland raised his hands, did a mocking two-step jig as if he was actually afraid of me, then jerked a thumb at the van. I started to walk past him, but he planted his palm against my chest.
"I hope you brought money. I'm thinking your piece-of-shit father's medals alone are worth a couple hundred to you, not to mention all my gas money."
"If you wanted money, you shouldn't have forced me to run over here without my purse." I pushed his hand away and stepped quickly toward the van's open side door. "I'll get it once I see you're not lying."
"Not so fast, you see what I brought when I see the money."
"No!" Looking back at him, I wrapped my hand around the door frame and stepped up, a furious red tinting my vision. "I'm not that stupid, Roland."
***********
Had I really said that? Had I really stepped blindly into a van belonging to my sadistic step-brother with "I'm not that stupid" rolling off my tongue?
Famous last words.
Opening my eyes, I tried to focus my gaze. I could still smell whatever chemical had been on the rag someone had clamped over my mouth and nose the second my head popped inside Roland's van. The lingering odor made me cough, loud racking noises that shook my body and did nothing to help my vision. When the coughing subsided, my vision cleared enough to see a masked head swimming in front of me.
A hand belonging to the head slapped my face lightly. "Coming round at last, I see."
The voice was masculine. He spoke with a foreign accent I couldn't place. Grabbing a handful of my hair, he pulled until my neck was bent at a ninety degree angle. I realized then that someone had stripped my clothes away and bound me below the neck with a sheet wrapped around my body several times and three leather restraints holding me down. Unless they had kept the items stripped from me, my trackers were gone and I was on my own.
His hand on my chin, my captor made me look left.
Roland slumped against the wall. A hole in the center of his forehead oozed blood and his open eyes were lifeless.
"You killed him. Why?"
He stroked my cheek, his masked head nodding fast and for no reason I could tell other than he was insane. Certain I wasn't going to get an answer, I closed my eyes before the crazy became infectious and I started nodding back.
He slapped my face again. "Can't have him identifying me if I let you live."
Okay, that sounded reasonable and a little promising.
I forced my mouth into what I hoped looked like a smile as I tried to remember the safety briefings Daniel had given over the last eighteen months. I'd like to say I paid attention to every last word Daniel had spoken but that would be a lie. Certainly I had memorized all his policies on building security. But I had deemed the material about kidnapping as inapplicable to a lowly secretary, even one who served the company executives.
I did remember one thing from the briefing, but only because I had fixated on the way Daniel's lips had puckered when shaping the word -- like two quick kisses.
Rapport.
Attempt to establish a rapport with your abductor.
"So," I started again and softened my smile. "What has to happen for me to live?"
"Not much." The man shrugged and grabbed a pillowcase. Slowly, he drew the fabric down over my forehead, his gaze through the mask's eyeholes malicious and dark. "Hunter Dey just has to put a bullet through his head."
**********
After the kidnapper placed the makeshift hood over my face, I heard him walk away then the door clicked shut behind him. I waited, listening intently to make sure he truly had left. The low buzz of what sounded like a one-sided conversation penetrated the door.
I tested the restraints binding me to whatever table or bench he had placed me on. There was no give. I wriggled, trying to push the hood up enough that I could see but that, too, proved fruitless. I returned to listening, forcing my body to relax when the door squeaked open.
I heard sloshing, then my captor's voice. "I thought you could use some water."
Beneath the pillowcase, I nodded, grateful for another chance to build rapport with the man who held my life in his hands. "Thank you, I am getting thirsty."
A drink wasn't what he had in mind. Water hit the sheet and instantly soaked through. Gallons of the stuff and all of it freezing cold. He saved the last gallon to dump over the pillowcase, making me gasp and sputter as it ran up my nose and froze me to the bone.
A little laugh, higher pitched than his speaking voice, and then the door clicked shut again.
Thirty seconds later, the air conditioner clicked on high.
Time passed. I had no idea how much. It seemed like forever. He returned, dragging something that sounded like furniture but small and not too heavy, like a table or a chair. Shivering, I tried to keep calm. I thought about Daniel and Aldon and Hunter covering me with their bodies, warming me and protecting me.
More sounds penetrated my thoughts, the noise recognizable only as a shuffling followed by a soft thump.
Feet shuffled again until I could tell my visitor was standing next to my head. He roughly removed the pillowcase. His spidery fingers captured my head and forced me to look at his face as he bent and studied me.
His thumbs stroked my cheeks, then my still wet hair, then my cheeks again. "I see what they see -- when they look at you."
He thumbed the edge of my mouth.
Okay, not that kind of rapport. Please not that kind.
Still holding his face close to mine, he forced me to look left. A chair, like I thought. The soft thump had been my kidnapper propping Roland on it. My dead step-brother was maybe a foot from me, the back of his head so much more horrific than the neat round hole in his forehead.
Straightening, my kidnapper put the pillowcase back over my head.
"They like to play games with you, your lovers." He drew the straps securing me tighter. "Maybe tie you up, maybe spank you. I bet you moan so soft and sweet."
I didn't answer, another part of Daniel's briefing rising to the surface of my mind -- trying to build rapport with a psychopath could get me killed before help arrived. I was one-hundred-thousand percent positive Mr. Scarypants was a psycho.
"Put you in the dark, maybe." He whispered into my left ear, which meant his head was right up against Roland's. "Then they fuck you, right? Do you moan all soft and sweet for that, too, or just the pain?"
I swallowed, terrified, every muscle tense as I heard him shuffle around the chair.
He grunted and then I heard…
What?
Metal meeting muscle?
Another grunt followed and I heard the thick, clinging sound again. My stomach somersaulted as I realized my captor was stabbing Roland's corpse.
Grunt, stab, grunt, stab, grunt...
My throat convulsed. I pressed my lips tightly together, vowing not to throw up inside the pillowcase. Just a body, its former inhabitant not even a very nice person, I reminded myself. It was dead, I was alive. I needed to stay that way.
Don't panic, Mack. Hold it together.
The stabbing stopped. I heard the chair fall on its side, Roland's body with it. Something long and hard swiped against my thigh and I knew he was cleaning the blade against the sheet wrapped around my body.
Draping an arm across my chest, he squeezed my shoulder and whispered in my ear once more. "In a little while, you're going to make a recording for me. You're going to beg Hunter to save you. You're going to make it good or you're going to pay."
Lifting his body from me, he cupped the side of my face, the pillowcase still separating us. "Because if I have to do that to you, you won't be dead when it happens."
**********
I don't know how much time passed before my tormentor returned. Freezing, terrified, and unable to see, I drifted in and out of consciousness. I heard his voice a couple of times, only his voice, no one else. Sometimes it sounded like half of a conversation between good friends. Other times he yelled.
He yelled the last time, the sound of his anger draggi
ng me back to awareness a few seconds before he entered the room. I heard the chair being righted, heard him settle his weight onto it and fiddle with some piece of electronics.
I slowly drew a deep breath in, screwing up the courage to talk to him. He was a psychopath, but I was already close to being killed because I would not make the recording. So another attempt at winning him over was my last chance.
"You're very good at what you do." I spoke softly, intent on drawing him physically closer. I heard him shift in the chair then offer a non-committal grunt. I continued. "You must believe very strongly in what you're doing to do it so well."
That earned an amused laugh and a verbal response. "I believe in getting paid, Miss Mack."
His tone didn't sound crazy when he answered. He sounded like a businessman.
"If this is about money, my bosses--"
He interrupted with a derisive laugh. "You mean your lovers, and money means nothing if I'm not alive to spend it."
"You're as good as dead, then," I told him. "You'd have a better chance if you betrayed whoever is paying you. Daniel will make sure you die if you kill me."
It wasn't bravado. I believed every last word of it. I just hoped I lived to see it not happen.
My kidnapper sighed, the sound almost regretful. "I really hoped you wouldn't make me have to do this. I take no pleasure in hurting women."
Liar!
"You should be terrified and ready to beg for your life."
I laughed, surprised I could make such a sound, let alone speak. I was beyond terrified, but what he wanted me to do was inconceivable. I'm just Casey Mack, a nobody from outside Tallahassee. A really big girl with a really small footprint. Hunter had a real chance to change the world for the better. Even if he couldn't, I would not betray him or the love I felt for him by begging that he exchange his life for mine.
Tears spilling down my cheeks, I drew one last breath in, my entire body vibrating with anticipation. "You'd better just get on with it then, asshole."
The chair scraped along the ground as he rose. The blade slid from its sheath with a deadly whisper. I felt the tip rest against my cheek and shut my eyes, relieved, at least, that the pillowcase over my head kept me from seeing what was about to happen.
"I think I will start with shallow punctures, give you the opportunity to change your mind." The blade lifted and his free hand smoothed along my torso. "But where should I start? Your full breasts?"
He cupped one through the sheet, tried the thumb the nipple awake. He would have gotten a better response from Roland's corpse.
His palm surfed quickly over my stomach to rest against my mound. "Maybe here, where you bleed anyway."
Oh, yeah. Mr. Scarypants was a grade A psycho.
He made that high pitched tittering laughing sound and I knew he'd made his decision. As if framing his strike zone, he spread the sections of his hand so that the thumb was at a ninety-degree angle from the straight run of fingers.
I sucked a ragged, tearful breath in, the fabric clinging to my face before billowing out.
From his movements and the faint sounds, I imagined the hand holding the knife tighten its grip around the hilt, imagined the slow rise of the blade as he reconsidered how deeply he would penetrate -- his twisted brain decided to go all the way, through the bone and tissue to bury the tip in the surface beneath me.
The blade rose higher and higher in my mind. He breathed in, inhaling as Hunter had in the gym when he pulled on the weights.
Please don't exhale…please…
Something splintered, shattered. Metal, its sound hollow and rolling, skipped across the floor. The room lit up, the light penetrating my closed eyelids a fraction of a second before the explosion reached my ears.
All sound stopped for a few seconds. Something heavy tumbled against my legs then scrambled away. Voices flashed briefly between the crackling and ringing in my ears, then shouting, the static of the explosion beginning to fade.
Daniel -- Daniel's voice and then that sick, wet clinging sound of metal pushing through a human body and being pulled out, before being reinserted to the hilt. A weight fell across my hips, a warm liquid soaking through the sheet.
I started crying, calling Daniel's name.
Please, God, no. Daniel, please, not Daniel…
Someone wrenched the pillowcase from my head. Wet hands gripped the side of my face, the coppery tang of blood so thick in my nose that I could taste it.
"Casey, baby, open your eyes and tell me you're okay."
One hand left my face for a second, shoved at the weight on my hips. I opened my eyes to Daniel's worried stare and the last of my dead captor sliding off my body. Yanking the knife from the dead man's chest, Daniel sliced through the first restraint.
"Baby, tell me if you're hurt."
"I'm--I'm…" There wasn't enough oxygen in the room to fuel my words.
"Is any of this blood yours, baby?" He cut through the last two restraints. Tugging the sheet just far enough from my skin he could get the blade under it and facing away from my body, he sliced the fabric apart.
I grabbed his shirt, stopping him with a hard jerk towards me.
"Casey." He captured my wrists but didn't pull my hands away. "I need to check you for injuries."
"I'm--okay. You're here," I sputtered. "I'm okay."
I could have repeated the words a couple hundred times but he blurted a smile, nodded then wrapped his arms around me and hugged me tight.
Hearing the approach of heavy boots hitting the floor fast and hard, he lifted his head and growled a command for everyone to stay back. The steps froze at once. Running his hands over my body, he spoke to the men out in the hall.
"Are we clear?"
"Clear, Thor."
I recognized the voice as belonging to Paul Rasmussen, who runs lead on the lab security team.
"Good, grab a full set of sweats and some footies." Daniel stroked the hair away from my face. "I'm just going to the door, baby. I won't be more than ten feet away while I get you some clothes."
I nodded. He started to pull away then stroked a finger under my chin.
"There's no reason to look down at the floor, love."
I shook my head, the motion a little too vigorous.
"I won't." I'd seen enough sights to haunt my dreams for a lifetime. Closing my eyes, I tilted my head back so that my face pointed toward the ceiling.
Listening to Daniel walk to the door, I tried to slow the rapid thrum of my heart to match the pace of each footstep, then slower when he stopped and softly spoke to someone in the hall. A minute or two later, he was back at my side. I watched him upright the chair and drape the sweats over it before he opened a small bag. Grabbing a disinfecting wipe, he studied my face. His own still showed signs of stress.
He started with my cheeks, gently cleaning the blood from them where his hands had touched me. Finding his silence unsettling, I questioned him.
"Where are the police?"
An angry huff of air escaped his tightly pressed lips. "My guess is they're still trying to pull their heads out of their collective ass and get a response team deployed."
"How long has it been?"
He stopped the slow cleaning of my thighs to check his watch. "Six hours, thirty two minutes."
"That's fast--I"
He shook his head and I knew what he was thinking.
Not fast enough.
I fell silent and watched him erase the stain of another man's blood from my body. His arms were bare. He wore a bullet proof vest with a black t-shirt beneath it. A utility belt hugged his hips, a knife and sheath attached on the left, a holstered gun on the right.
Seeing the strain on his face, I wanted to crack a joke about the whole thing being worth it since he was sexy as hell in tactical gear, but I doubted he would find it funny. It would probably earn me a trip to the spanking bench.
I drew an uncomfortable breath and held it.
"What?" His head whipped up to meet my gaze. "Did t
hat hurt? Are you okay?"
I shook my head then nodded. "I'm fine, just exhausted."
Really, I was afraid there would be no more visits to the spanking bench, no more mornings of waking up with one or all of them next to me. We were at an early stage in our relationship. What if the kidnapping made them realize they didn't really love me?
Grabbing the sweat pants off the chair, he helped me step into them then tugged the sweatshirt onto my torso. Seeing the bodies on the floor for the first time, I started to sway. He gripped my shoulders.
"Maybe we should take you by the hospital."
I shook my head. "I just want to go home, Daniel. Please."
His gripped tightened, his gaze narrowing as his mouth pressed into an even tighter line. "Baby, you damn well better mean the estate."
"Yes." I blinked, tears splashing hot and fat against my cheeks. "That's home, right?"
Daniel jerked me to his chest, his arms enveloping me and squeezing the air from my lungs. He buried his face against my neck and hugged me close. "That's right, love. It's your home."
**********
The estate didn't feel like home, not that first night or the many nights that followed.
Several hours passed after my rescue and return before Aldon and Hunter arrived. When they did, they were distant. Aldon took a few tentative strokes of my hair, kissed my cheek, but didn't say a word. I wasn't brave enough to make him.
Hunter would not approach me at all.
The days that followed were more of the same -- Aldon and Hunter absent or ghosting briefly through the halls. Only Daniel seemed to want anything to do with me.
He slept in my room.
In a chair.
A gun on the dresser beside him.
On day ten, he found me crying in the library. He led me to the couch and pulled me into his arms. I stiffened, my reaction provoking the same response in his body.
"Casey, baby, don't you want me to hold you?"
He sounded hurt. I wanted to soothe him, wanted to be exactly where I was. I curled my fingers around the collar of his shirt, fearful he would change his mind and push me away. I drew a sobbing breath in, my face heating with renewed heartache.
"You haven't held me since the rescue."
