by April Lust
Of course, I had no proof of it; it was just a gut feeling. But it was the only thing that made sense of her car being in the lot and her door open and her not answering her phone. Goddamnit.
I was back on the bike and on the road without thinking. I headed to the only place I could think he might have taken her, although it was a Hail Mary shot in the dark as to whether it would pan out. I’d only ever seen Owen at Centerfold and at his gargantuan fugly McMansion of a home. I figured the house was my best shot. If he hadn’t taken her there, maybe I’d find a clue as to where else he might have her; or maybe I’d find him, and get it out of him somehow.
I had to think this through, but I barely had enough time to do so. If they weren’t at the house, would it be best to not let him know I was there, and then follow him back to her? Presuming, of course, he had her in some other undisclosed location. Or would it be best to overpower him and force him to tell me where she was? He was a cagey motherfucker, lowest of the low, a slick bottom-feeder.
I figured I’d just go with my gut and see where the moments took me. I couldn’t think to plan it well.
Damn, the woman had me near panic level.
Once I arrived at the gate to the suburban monstrosity, I left my bike parked behind a large berm that hid the property from street view but wasn’t too far from the wall. The dude had a freaking brick wall around the property; it probably rose about ten feet up off ground level, so it wouldn’t be an easy jump. I followed it around a corner, off street side, and finally found a section where a tree on the outside reached over some branches to his side. I figured this was going to be my best shot at bridging over, so I took it.
Success—god bless my regular workouts. Once over, I assessed the house and decided to just walk in direct. At this point, I was beyond covert ops. I wanted and needed action and result.
I approached the front door and tried the handle. It opened. No beeping of an alarm, no laser lights. I didn’t even see any cameras pointing at me. For being a rich freak sick-as-fuck depraved-porn killer, this guy was seriously lax about security. I guessed the fuckwit thought his big gate and pretty wall were enough to deter any unauthorized entrance. Well, let today be his unlucky day to realize otherwise.
The house was silent when I went in, and there were no immediately obvious signs nor sounds of movement on the first floor. With my gun in my hands, I began to search the house, approaching each room like it was booby-trapped and/or had military- or guerrilla-type guard. My careful approach ended up being unnecessary; I didn’t encounter anyone, friend or foe, in my search. I had gone through from the foyer to the living room through the dining room to a kind of service hall to the kitchen and looped back around through a hallway to a kind of den/TV room, and finally found myself in the library/study where the computer and books were, the scene of my hard-drive heist from less than twenty-four hours ago. Nada. No sign of life, no clues as to Owen or Erin.
Stumped for the moment, I tried to think my way through what I knew about Owen, about this place, and about where Erin might be. Little Danny Fletch had kept referring to this house as the house of mirrors. I wasn’t sure what was behind the phrase. I mean, yeah, there were lots of mirrors in the house: in the foyer, in the hallways, in the bedrooms and bathrooms. I just figured Owen was a narcissist. It was not a great leap of the imagination.
Looking around the library, I noticed yet another framed mirror tucked into one of the gaps on a bookshelf. It was leaning against the wall, not attached to it. I picked it up and found a fucking light switch behind it, in the middle of the wall, not near the door. I flipped the switch, and one of the bookcase sections immediately opened hydraulically, pulling back to a large recessed alcove. This guy was a piece of work. So was his house, apparently.
Lifting my handgun from its holster, I stepped into the unlit cavern, and my eyes were drawn to the only point of light: the LED of an elevator call button. An elevator. In a hidden alcove. Behind a trick bookcase. It figured. What next with this fucking guy?
Not sure whether this was a smart move that might lead to helping me find Erin, or if it would lead me in an opposite—but surely not an uninteresting—direction, I did the only thing a red-blooded American would do. I hit the call button, ready to investigate the dark side in this house of mirrors. That seemed to be what the moment called for.
By the time the elevator doors slid open, my eyes had adjusted to the darkened cavern, and I had thought enough to move one of the leather armchairs from in front of the desk to block the closing of the bookcase, just in case I had any trouble getting back out from the dark. If Owen or someone came in in the meantime and removed the chair, I might be locked in and fucked, but I’d worry about that when I got there.
Once in the elevator, I had the option to go up or down. I chose up at random. When the doors opened on the second floor, I was a little surprised to find myself in a man’s closet, a huge walk-in with a shitload of suits and shirts, ties, and mirrors all over the place. But still, a closet just the same. A hidden elevator into a closet. That’s some weird shit.
Looking at the plethora of expensive men’s attire, I figured this had to be Owen’s personal space. I peeked into the adjacent bedroom to see the huge master space, also devoid of other humanity for the time being, no different than the first floor.
After a fairly quick walk-through to make sure Erin wasn’t tied up somewhere in here or in the en suite bathroom, I made my way to the hallway and scanned every room on the floor as fast as I could. I was being less careful about making noise now—I really didn’t sense anyone else in the house, I hadn’t seen any cars outside in the drive, and I figured this was not going to be the most revealing of searches, in these rooms. Nevertheless, I had to be thorough, or I might end up wanting to kick my own ass if I passed over the opportunity and there was something important to be found up here. So I made like a professional, and I looked.
Every door opened into crystal-clean space—I figured he’d had some maid service come through it in the morning hours, cleaning up after last night’s debauchery. Bedrooms, bathrooms, a couple of closets. There were a lot of mirrors.
But there was nothing showing me where Erin might be and nothing cluing me in as far as Owen’s other holdings.
Done with this floor, I sped back to the master bedroom and its fancy closet to recall the elevator. It was time to explore the basement in this house of fucking mirrors.
Chapter 13
Erin
“Agh!…Ugh!…Ehn!…Ogh!…Nuh!…Ehn!…Ahn!—” So went the keening.
“—Rgh!…Rgh!…Rgh!…Rgh!…Rgh!…Rgh!…” And his guttural ejections.
…And on and on and on…
They painted a clear enough picture, even for my loose hold on consciousness. Maybe they were what were tying me to this world, keeping me from a peaceful blackness. They were my latest torture.
I thought—hoped—I was losing my hold on reality. The eerie, tortured pitches of that voice I knew to be so beautiful but that now sounded so awful, so ugly, so inescapable and incessant, and the rhythmic counterpart of his vicious grunts—both together were blocking my thoughts from forming coherently and blocking my mind from releasing into a void.
I was so very, very cold. My wet hair continued to drip down my neck in a painful release of internal heat that I could feel seeping out of me, moment after moment. My body was uncontrollably shivering with each breath.
After all of the day’s Taserings, I ached throughout. My muscles had no understanding of how they ought to respond to the overstimulation of nerves. My head was pounding, too; it felt like a vice had hold of my brain and was squeezing relentlessly. It was beginning to make me nauseated. I began moaning in time with the girl, to give voice to my pain, as if that would ease it. It almost did, but not really.
Not to mention how I burned. Even in the midst of freezing to death, every part of me that had been lashed was on fire in the cold air of the cell. My breasts, my belly, my arms at my sides, my thig
hs, my sex. He’d gotten me everywhere except for my face and neck and back.
I was entirely raw. And that lovely now-ugly voice kept up its rhythmic keen of pain and horror. And I moaned and groaned in empathetic counterpoint, letting her know my share of pain, too. Solidarity in torture. Not that that eased the pain in any way; it didn’t, for either of us, I’m sure.
I had no way of knowing if she heard me. And really, what did it matter? I had never been raped, though I could see now that that particular experience was just beyond my horizon. Perhaps minutes, surely not more than hours away. I now knew without a shadow of a doubt I had to brace for that horror, too.
Because of the ties binding my wrists and ankles together, and the other straps holding my legs apart on either side of this table from hell, my shoulders and hips were aching, as well, stuck too long in unnatural positions with no ease for movement.
My breath came in shallowly, and I struggled to control it to avoid hyperventilation. Gah, my entire being was so overly stimulated with ache, pain, cold, discomfort, contraction, shivers, nausea…I had never before been so physically and mentally overwhelmed.
I began just wishing for death. It would have been a welcome end to this horror.
As my mind drifted toward that thought, and my keening softened in a dreamlike state of wishfulness, I saw my sister in my mind’s eye: angry, fierce, and vibrant. She yelled at me silently, berated my weakness, and challenged my capitulation.
She was right. I had to fight. I had to wake up. I had to get out of here. I had to get the girl out of here. I could not give in. Owen could not win. I had to take him down, or die trying.
This—tied up like a fucking pig on a spit—was not the way I would go down. Fucking Thea. Thank the fucking gods for my fucking little sister, Thea. I had to fight, for Thea. For me, too. But primarily, I’d say my main motivation at that point was for Thea.
I gathered my spite for the sick bastard who had done this—this, to me. This, to the other girl with the beautiful voice. And worse, to my sister, who died at his hands, before she even got to experience real life.
So, no, I was not going to give in. I was not going to die. I was going to nail that fucking bastard to the wall.
I began to move my fingers and arms and wrists and feet and ankles and legs, trying to open some millimeters of space in which to maneuver or jostle the rope ties. I did this not without new pains accompanying the movement; the ropes burned and scratched my skin, sometimes pinching where it caught against tiny hairs or where it was just too tight.
Still, I didn’t give up. I kept twisting and stretching, even though nothing seemed to move, I put all I could into my muscles, willing something to shift.
After many moments, I began to feel some space. I think perhaps my wet skin had dampened the rope when he had first bound me up, which could only have helped. Praise god for wet skin and drippy hair!
I was starting to feel actual space now, between my wrists and ankles. I could turn my hands around partway, could feel my fingers run along the lowest-positioned parts of the ropes.
The one on my left side was not positioned well for my purposes; the knot was laid at the top of my wrist, and I still didn’t have enough room in there to completely turn my arm over to grasp it or work at it with my fingers.
But the one on my right was perfect. The knot lay just inside the small hollow I had opened between my inside wrist and the drop below my anklebone. It was just enough space to maneuver my first few fingers and thumb into.
I praised all that was holy for my months of working in difficult stilettos with tiny buckles and knots; my fingers were strong and they knew what to do.
After several moments of pulling and tugging and twisting and shifting and huffing and squirming and breathing and believing, I felt the knot finally slip its grip, and I was able to pull the end free from its grasp on the other part of the rope. I was moments away from right arm and right leg freedom…
And suddenly I had it. I almost cried. I wasn’t sure what would make the best next move, but quickly realized I could not very well help out my left side before releasing my torso from its belting to the table, so that had to come first.
I think the strap that bound me around the waist was an actual man’s leather belt. The buckle was located under the table, but conveniently for my purposes, it was just under the edge on my right side. When I discovered this, I almost laughed with relief. It took me several moments to get the strap out of the buckle—it was awkward, working it behind me and several inches below with the table edge in the way, but ultimately I managed it.
At this point I was able to sit up and shift myself into a better position in which I could maneuver the last major hurdle: untying my left wrist from ankle. It took the work of several moments, but finally I had free space, motion, arms, legs, body.
I was so flooded with adrenaline that it overpowered my awareness of the cold, of my shivers, aches, and pains—well, for the most part. I still ached and I needed to stretch; I felt pinpricks all over. But I could move again. I was no longer tied down and presented like a turkey on Thanksgiving.
I was still locked up behind a heavy hydraulic cage door in a cell in the basement from hell, but I had a fighting chance now.
And no way was I going to waste it.
Chapter 14
Torch
Nothing happened on the way to the basement.
But as soon as the doors opened there, I had to take a deep breath. I’d never been to Versailles, but this hall of mirrors certainly earned the descriptive title just as much, though in a much shadier perspective. The carpeting was a deep red, like blood. The ceiling was black, and the doors were painted cream. It could have been used as part of the set in The Shining. There were mirrors everywhere along the walls where there weren’t doors, with dimly lighted sconces interspersed, so it was impossible to tell how long the hallway was, nor how many doors and lights there were. It looked like it went on and on forever. It was like being in the madhouse at a fucking freak show.
What made my entry here a gazillion times worse were the sounds of life: an eerily keening voice, high-pitched. I didn’t think it was Erin—I had never heard anything like it from her before. It was counterpointed with a man’s loud grunts, definitely of the powerful thrusting kind.
I was listening to a rape; there’s no way it could have been anything else.
The problem was that the sounds almost seemed to echo in the hallway, and there was a third voice—god, was that Erin?—moaning, as well, which seemed to be separate but somehow also in conjunction with the feminine sounds of Owen’s current victim. It confused my comprehension somewhat, and my instinct to go to her first warred with my need to help the woman in obvious and immediate need.
My blood was pounding in my veins in rage and frustration, and adrenaline, too.
So I headed toward the first sounds I had identified, starting at an almost-run down that endless-seeming hallway from hell. It was disconcerting, the optical illusion with all the mirrors and sconces and doors, and with not knowing how far I needed to go.
I found keeping my focus on the mirror facing me at the far end of the hallway was the best way to manage understanding the space visually. Then I relied on my ears alone to pinpoint the sounds. I slowed as they got closer, and it took me too many moments to finally zone in on one door in the middle of the hallway. Or, it appeared to be in the middle. Fuck, everything was in the middle.
Didn’t matter. I found the door, I was pretty sure.
I sent up a silent prayer that I was making the right choice, to help this woman before Erin. Then I braced myself to power into the room.
I raised my gun to my shoulder, put my back to the wall by the door, and took a deep breath, ready to rain hell on Owen, and hoping with all of my heart that the woman inside was not Erin.
It flashed in my mind that it might have been Carly. God, I hoped not. I wanted to find her, but not like this.
When I threw open the
door, in a semicrouch with my gun in front of me with both hands, I found myself standing directly in front of another door made of bars of steel, and what I perceived to be a cage—the woman was strapped to a table inside the cage, so Owen, too, was inside it. I stepped in far enough to give me a clear shot at him. I wasn’t worried that he’d have a gun ready to counter my own; he had obviously been otherwise occupied before my entrance.
I immediately targeted Owen’s left side, which was facing me as he faced his victim, who was naked and trussed up on the table like a fucking turkey.
He was shirtless, and his pants were falling partway down his legs. And he was, indeed, raping her viciously.
“Get the fuck off of her, you motherfucker, now!” I heard myself roar.
Owen’s head snapped in my direction at the intrusion to his sick scene, his eyes wide open in surprise and displeasure, and his body kind of slowly stopped pumping. He clearly had not anticipated a third-party entrance. My nostrils flared in satisfaction; I was at a distinct advantage here.
