The Trials of Tamara

by Ginger Talbot

  Of course, when the police arrived, my house had been blown to toothpick-sized splinters. They haven’t been able to pin the ownership of the house on me. Given how carefully I covered my tracks when I bought it, using a string of shell companies, I’m confident they never will. Algernon defended me indignantly to the police, pointing out that due to my years as a corporate raider, I’m a man with a lot of enemies—the kind who’d be happy to mess with me by making false claims.

  When he’s done talking, I get him up to speed, giving him as much information as I think is necessary.

  I tell him about my twin brother’s escape from a mental institution in California sometime this year, and that he’s the person who embezzled the money from my company and sabotaged my recent business deals. He was also behind the mysterious phone calls to the NYPD, the ones accusing me of taking Tamara. I tell him that Tamara Bennet was, in fact, staying with me all along, but Charlemagne kidnapped her this morning. I don’t offer any explanation for why she was with me and why I kept that information from the police, and he doesn’t ask. I pay him not to ask questions that can’t be answered.

  “You’ll have to be on the lookout for him trying to impersonate me,” I tell him. “My nose is broken, so that will be one way to tell, but given what a psycho fuck he is, he might break his own nose if he thinks it will help him fool people.” I tell him I’ll get back to him and hang up.

  Next I call my security chief Garrett, on his encrypted line. After I give him the passcode, I give him my location so he can send my helicopter to pick me up. I go through the rigmarole again, filling him in on exactly what happened, with some editing and obfuscations that gloss over the worst of the felonies I’ve committed.

  Then I settle back down to wait for the helicopter. Every passing minute chews into my sanity, and Tamara starts screaming in my ears again, begging and pleading, and I think the frozen moisture on my cheeks might be tears.

  Chapter Two

  Tamara

  I wake up with my brain wrapped in a million layers of cotton. My mouth is dry and my muscles are loose and liquid. Fear floods my body. Please let it be Joshua who has me. Please, please, please.

  Seconds tick by as I lie waiting for the fog to clear from my head.

  Drugged, kidnapped, no idea where I am...this feels familiar. Too familiar.

  I go through the same routine I did when I woke up in Joshua’s basement for the first time. I lie there with my eyes closed and my heart pounding, taking mental inventory of my surroundings.

  I’m on what feels like a firm mattress. The left side of my head throbs gently from where Joshua punched me…today? Yesterday? I don’t feel any chains on my body. The air is cool and smells faintly of apple-scented air freshener. I don’t hear anything at all. No traffic noises, no voices.

  Then I hear footsteps thudding toward me, and I go stiff with fear. Somehow, even without opening my eyes, I can sense it’s not Joshua who has me.

  I feel something pinch my nipple, and I let out a shriek and sit bolt upright. Charlemagne—or Micah as he calls himself now—is looming over me with a nasty gleam in his eye. He gives my nipple another twist and then lets go.

  “I could have let you stay there and pretend you’re sleeping all day long, but frankly you were starting to bore me,” he says.

  I look around, my vision still blurry. The bed I’m on has a heavy metal frame. I sit up and swing my legs over the side, and dizziness swoops down on me. I almost fall off the bed, but I claw at the headboard for support. Whatever he’s drugged me with is still fogging my brain and sapping my muscles of strength.

  “Take deep breaths. Don’t stand up yet. Blah blah blah.” Micah’s sarcasm taunts me as he settles down in a chair parked right next to the bed.

  I clench my trembling hands into fists and look down at myself. I’m naked. I don’t feel any aches inside me, though. I don’t think I’ve been raped.

  Yet.

  Slowly, I look around the room, and my stomach turns to water. It’s a large room with pale blue walls and no decorations. It’s brightly lit. There are no windows.

  Everywhere my eyes land reveals fresh horrors.

  The door is the door of a cage; it’s made of bars.

  At the end of the room is a video camera on a tripod, facing an ob-gyn chair. There’s a tray table next to it, with instruments that I can’t quite see from where I’m sitting. There’s a bench next to the chair with straps dangling from it.

  When I glance to my right, a jolt of panic and sorrow lances through me. There’s another bed, and Heather’s curled up in a ball, her ankle chained to the bed frame. The bed is bolted to the floor. She’s wearing only a white T-shirt and has no underwear on. She’s in good physical shape with no visible marks on her, but her eyes tell a story of nightmares. She’s watching us with a dull, stunned look on her face.

  She’s here because of me.

  There’s another tray table on wheels sitting between her bed and mine. I think I recognize a cattle prod. Pinchers. Knives.

  Sheer terror curdles inside my belly. Micah is far more frightening than Joshua.

  Even at Joshua’s worst, he always gave me choices. Do what he said, and he wouldn’t torture me. He might indulge in light whipping or a hard spanking, because it turned him on to make me squirm and cry out, but if I obeyed him, I wouldn’t suffer agonies or the threat of death.

  Joshua’s world was Old Testament brutal but rational. Survivable. Behave and live. Slide your toe over the line and it will be chopped off. The men he hunted down, they chose their own death by virtue of their evil actions.

  With Micah, there will be no choices, no safe harbor.

  I struggle not to cry in front of Micah. Joshua will find me. He’ll tear the world apart to get to me. He won’t let me die.

  I just have to survive whatever Micah’s going to do to me until he gets here. Horrifying pictures flash through my mind, images of mutilation and agony, but I quickly sweep them aside before hysteria can overwhelm me. Live in the now. Live right in this minute. He isn’t hurting me in this minute.

  I force myself to look at him, even though inside I’m quailing away from him. He’s wearing a T-shirt and jeans and sneakers, and is watching me with amused interest. He’s got Joshua’s handsome face—the same sharp cheekbones and sensual lips—but when I look in his eyes, I see two pits of slithering serpents. How could I not have seen the depth of his evil when I first met him?

  He gestures impatiently, and I see he’s got a bottle of Gatorade in his hand. He gives it to me without a word, and I drink it slowly, drawing it out so I can delay whatever he has planned for me. I’ve learned the hard way, from Joshua, that every second without pain is a blessing and not to be taken for granted.

  The sweet, salty liquid feels like heaven running down my parched throat. Reluctantly, I hand him the empty bottle, and he throws it into a trash can sitting next to the tray table.

  “Why is Heather chained and I’m not?” I ask, my voice raspy and weak.

  “Do you find that reassuring?” His voice is laced with cruel mockery. “Do you think that means I’m going to be gentle with you, Tamara? It doesn’t. I didn’t chain you because I didn’t need to. You were drugged and unconscious. Now you’re awake, you’ll be restrained as needed.”

  I take a deep breath and let it out. “I’d find it reassuring if you just let us go. Your fight is with Joshua, not me. Or her.”

  He reaches out, and I flinch, expecting a blow. He laughs, a harsh cawing sound, and strokes my hair out of my eyes. I force myself not to shudder away from his light touch, but my skin crawls where his fingers brushed against me.

  “As I recall, Joshua’s got an annoyingly high pain tolerance.” His cold blue eyes drill into me as he speaks, and I feel like I’m staring into the void. “I’ll get my hands on him at a time of my own choosing, but for now, I’m going to hurt you very badly, every day, and I’m going to videotape it. And I’ll send him the videos. And then I’ll kill you, and
I’ll send him that video too. That’s going to cause him more pain than if I took a branding iron to his pretty face.” He announces my terrible fate with threads of malice weaving through his calm voice.

  I refuse to quail in terror or beg. That’s an aphrodisiac for men like him.

  “Pretty face? Quite an ego,” I say coolly, since he also has Joshua’s pretty face. If I can just get my hands on something sharp, I’ll make his face a lot less pretty.

  His lips move into the shape of a smile, but the smile doesn’t reach his eyes, just like the night I met him at the nightclub.

  “Quite a mouth,” he retorts. “I see what Joshua liked in you. You know, you should have just gone home with me that night when I asked you to.”

  “So you could have butchered me then instead of now?” I scoff.

  “Tamara. Sweetheart.” He says it with mild reproof. “I’m not that kind of serial killer.”

  Sweetheart. I’m going to torture and kill you, sweetheart.

  I rake him with my hateful gaze. “All right then. What kind of serial killer are you?”

  “The kind who kills for revenge.” His lips curl again in that imitation of a smile, and his voice is light and cheery. “That’s why I’m going to kill you. For revenge.”

  A wave of panic threatens to sweep me away. I let out a shaky, hysterical laugh. “You’re sitting there, perfectly calm, not angry at me, having a conversation with me and telling me you’re going to torture and murder me, when I’ve never done a thing to you.”

  “Yes.” He cocks his head to the side, and he’s staring at me in a creepy way. There’s a sly feline look of cruelty in his eyes, the look of a cat batting a mouse between soft paws. The hair on the back of my neck rises, and every instinct in my body screams for me to run. But there’s nowhere to run.

  I shudder and slide down the bed a little to get farther away from him. “You’re studying me, aren’t you? To see what my reaction is? To try to learn what normal human behavior looks like so you can mimic it?”

  “Yes. I’ve almost got it down, I think. I’m a pretty good actor.”

  “You’re a lousy actor. You’re as human as a scorpion, and I’m glad I turned you down that night, you freak.” I spit the words out with venom.

  The insult bounces off him without impact. Calling him names may make me feel a little better, but ultimately it’s a waste of my breath. Harsh words can’t hurt him, as he’s completely unconcerned about what anyone else thinks about him. Like all psychopaths, he’s an extreme narcissist, and his opinions are the only ones that matter in his world.

  “I’ve always wondered. Why did you turn me down?”

  I look away. Why should I share information with my executioner? “Because I just wasn’t that into you.”

  His gaze frosts over. He stands up abruptly, and I stiffen, but he walks over to the tray table closest to us. He picks up a Taser and heads for Heather’s bed.

  She struggles into a sitting position, her eyes widening with fear.

  “Please don’t… Please…” she whimpers, scooting away from him.

  I leap to my feet, but I’m still dizzy and weak, and fall to my knees, banging them painfully on the wooden floor. “Stop! I’ll tell you!” I yell.

  He ignores me. He points the Taser at her and presses a button, and her body goes rigid and then spasms. He just stands there, his finger on the button as her body shakes and she makes agonized grunting noises.

  “Stop it!” I shout louder. “I said I’ll tell you! Leave her alone!”

  He ignores me.

  I don’t beg him again. What good would it do? I just press my lips together hard and twist away so I’m not looking at her convulsing, tortured body.

  He finally finishes and sets the Taser down on the tray table with a clang. I hear Heather gasping in shock and misery. “You didn’t have to do that to me. Why did you do that…?” she wails. I glance over at her. She’s picking at the Taser’s little metal prongs with shaking hands, ripping them from her shirt.

  Micah grabs my arms and hauls me back onto the bed, his fingers digging painfully into my flesh. “Now, where were we?” he says pleasantly, his fingers pinching tighter and tighter.

  I suck in an angry breath but force myself to bite down on my rage. It will only make things worse. Not just for me, but for Heather.

  I’ve descended to a new level of hell. Knowing I face my own torture is bad enough, but knowing he’s going to torture her too and there’s nothing that I can do to stop him… How can I survive this?

  “I didn’t leave with you because I’m not into hookups.” I force the words out. “You asked me to leave the club with you right then and there. And then we’d either have done it in your limo, or maybe I’d get lucky and you’d actually let me sleep in your bed. And then you would have sent me on my merry way in the morning without bothering to get my number, and I would have felt gross and rejected. Why bother?”

  He relaxes his hands, holding me lightly now. “What should I have done instead?”

  I grimace in disgust. I’m helping a lunatic figure out how to more effectively seduce women. I silently apologize to his future victims and keep talking. If I don’t, he’ll torture Heather again. “Well, I guess if you were genuinely interested in me, you should have asked for my phone number and asked me out to dinner, or at least coffee.”

  He nods, not looking at me. “So I should have pretended I was interested in getting to know you as a person. Interesting.”

  “Interesting? Joshua always says that,” I sneer at him before I can stop myself. Maybe not the smartest thing to do, considering how enraged he is at his brother.

  He slaps me across the face, hard, and my lip splits and starts to bleed.

  My self-defense training kicks in and my body twitches with the need to strike back, but I force myself to settle down. I just glare at him.

  I’ll wait for an opportunity, but now is not the time. Not when my muscles are still weaker than wet linguine strands and all his attention is focused on me. I will need the element of surprise and the ability to hit hard if I am to have any hope at all of escaping him.

  Yes, I trained in Krav Maga and other techniques with Joshua for months, but I never got to the point where I even came close to being able to kick Joshua’s ass. Or Micah’s. Aside from the fact that they’re both physically larger than me, they’re also both naturally stronger, more coordinated, and faster than I am. And there aren’t many women who can take on a man in a fight and win, especially with a mere few months of training.

  Micah was locked up for years, but he never let himself get weak and flabby. He’s still carved from the same mold as Joshua, with rock-solid muscle and an air of lethal grace. And since he hacked into Joshua’s video security system, he’ll know about those months of training. Every trick that Joshua taught me, he’ll know, and he’ll be prepared to counter them.

  I also don’t know how I’ll get out of here. A glance at the door shows me an eye-level panel to the side of the door frame, so it’s probably a retina scanner. I would have to knock him unconscious, drag him over to the door, use his eye to open the lock. But I don’t know what I’ll even find beyond that door. Does he have anyone working with him? Would I just escape this room and run right into a security guard?

  My best hope of survival is to learn more about where we’re being held captive, then wait until he’s distracted and deliver a knockout strike. Then I’ll kill him while he’s subdued. I have to tell myself that my chance will come. It’s the only way of keeping my sanity.

  He bares his teeth in a frightening smile that looks like a snarl, and I flinch away involuntarily. When he drops that mask, I see snakes slithering under the surface of his skin, and he’s the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen.

  “I think you’ve had enough time to recover,” he says. “It’s important for you to have your strength. You’ll need it so you can scream.” He means the words to frighten me, and they do. My heart is beating against my ribc
age as he grabs me and hauls me across the room to the chair.

  I flail weakly and struggle, but I haven’t recovered from the drugs, and it wouldn’t matter if I had. He overpowers me quickly and forces me into the chair.

  I manage to climb halfway out of it as he’s cuffing one of my wrists to the chair’s arm. He looks up at me dispassionately. “Lie still and put your arms and legs down, or I’ll shove a red-hot poker up Heather’s cunt.”

  I stop fighting instantly. I’m sure he means what he says.

  He straps me down, my legs splayed open, with the camera pointed obscenely at my exposed sex like a leering eye.

  Rape. Torture. Mutilation. Death.

  Tears fill my eyes. I can’t help myself.

  He said he’d send Joshua videos every day. He wants this to last. That means he won’t kill me right away.

  Oh God, Joshua, come for me. Please find me. Please. Will Joshua still want me after I shot him in the foot? After I tried to escape? Don’t abandon me, Joshua, please…

  Micah looks down at me with his alien eyes. “You shouldn’t have turned me down, Tamara. If you’d gone home with me that night, I would probably have screwed you and forgotten you. But instead I couldn’t stop thinking about you. And then I realized that Joshua might find you as intriguing as I did. And you’d be the perfect weapon to get back at him.”

  He walks over to the tray and pulls on a black ski mask that obscures his face. He’s thought ahead. Joshua won’t be able to take this video to the police to use against Micah.

  Stiff and helpless, I can do nothing but watch as he turns on the camera and fiddles around on the tray. Then he comes over with a wad of something wet and cold and rubs it across my right nipple. I smell a whiff of something astringent; he’s sterilizing my nipple.

  He grabs something from the tray; it’s an alarmingly thick steel needle, and it’s attached to some kind of silver jewelry.

  “Hold still now,” he says to me. “This is going to hurt like a bitch.”