The Trials of Tamara

by Ginger Talbot

  Yes.

  Finally.

  I pull up closer, window rolled down, and I don’t see Tamara, but these chicks look as scared as shit, and they’re screaming at me to stop.

  “Tamara Bennett?” I call out to them. “You know where she is?”

  “She’s back at the house! He’s got her!” the woman cries out, waving her skinny arm, pointing at the road behind her. “Micah’s got her. He’ll kill her!”

  That’s the alias that Joshua’s brother is using. Joshua told me that.

  There’s no cell phone reception out here—probably part of the appeal for Charlemagne—but I came prepared. I park the truck, climb out, and place a quick call to my FBI buddy using a satellite phone he lent me, and I tell him that kidnap victim Tamara Bennett is being held against her will at the address he gave me. And I tell him I’m going in. He tries to yell at me to wait for backup, but I hang up.

  The girls are pawing at me, howling at me to hurry up and go, go, he’s going to kill Tamara!

  I make a quick decision. These girls have got to get the hell out of here.

  “How far off the road is the house?” I ask them.

  “A quarter mile! Go!” the woman cries out.

  I hand the woman my keys and my cell phone. “Get in the car and drive until you get to a place where you can make a call. About ten miles due south and you’ll come to a crossroads with a store. There’ll be reception there.”

  They’re all crying as they scramble into the truck. I hear the screech of tires as I run, faster than I’ve ever run before. Thank God I hit the StairMaster every day. I may look like a fat, out-of-shape fuck, but I can run a mile in six minutes.

  The trees are flying by me, but every second feels like an hour. Is he killing her right now? After all this time, am I too late?

  The driveway is hidden from the road by trees, and it curves. I’m sick at the thought of what might be waiting for me around that corner.

  Tamara Bennett can’t be dead. She can’t.

  Please, God. Can you throw me a fucking bone? Do you hear me at all?

  When I get halfway down the driveway, I see a squat, ugly brick house. In front of the house there’s a dark-haired man who has his arms wrapped around a woman. She’s got her back to him and she’s crushed against his chest, and her legs are flailing. The man has a knife sticking out of his leg and his pants are drenched in blood. He looks so much like Joshua it’s freaky. In fact, the only way I can tell the difference is that Joshua has fading bruises under his eyes and a recently broken nose, and this guy doesn’t.

  The woman is skinny and bruised and her dark hair is matted, but I can tell it’s Tamara Bennett.

  My heart’s pounding in my chest. I can’t believe it. I can’t fucking believe it. I thought she’d been chopped up and fed through a wood chipper somewhere.

  In one smooth motion, I pull the Smith & Wesson M&P from my holster and point it at his head. I pray I don’t have to shoot him.

  “Drop her!” I shout. Charlemagne freezes, and his pretty-boy face bunches up into something out of a fucking horror movie. He’s got that crazy look in his eyes, the look that says he won’t be taken alive if he can help it.

  “I’ll snap her neck!” he yells at me. “Get the fuck off my property, or I’ll kill her!”

  “Charlemagne,” I spit the word out like a curse. “You sick piece of shit. I’m not going anywhere. You kill her, and I’ll shoot your dick off and leave you to bleed out. Let her go, and you live another day! Come on, asshole, you can always try to bust out of prison and take another whack at—”

  While I’m talking, Tamara suddenly hooks both her feet behind his knees and pulls them forward, sending him crashing to the ground. He screeches in pain, clutching at the knife.

  I run toward them as she rolls away. Crying, she starts to crawl off slowly. She’s so weak, so beat up, she can barely move. What the hell has this animal done to her?

  Motherfucking piece of shit.

  I should shoot him. It would be a righteous kill. Why the fuck am I still so tied up by the rules?

  I walk closer until I’m standing right next to him, the gun pointed at his head. He suddenly rolls and lashes out with his good leg, and my gun goes off, hitting him in the left arm. He doesn’t even seem to notice. Doesn’t even flinch. Is he on PCP or is he just that fucking crazy?

  He pulls something from his pocket, and as it’s slashing toward me. I realize it’s a hypodermic needle. Before I can get away from him, it jabs into my calf. Suddenly my vision goes blurry and my body goes numb. My hand is a thick, clumsy paw, and the gun falls from my fingers and hits the ground with a thud.

  Panic boils up inside me. He’ll kill me. He’ll kill Tamara. I was so close…so close…

  I can hear him laughing, but everything has turned to a red haze. I try to make my legs move.

  “My brother sent you, right? You have any idea what I’m going to do to you?” His voice is hoarse and raspy. “How long I’m going to make it last?”

  Then I hear Joshua’s voice. I think it’s coming from the thick bushes that hem in the driveway.

  “Tamara!” he cries out. “Hold on, baby!” His voice is very far away.

  How the hell did he get here? Am I hearing things?

  Am I going to die? And when I do, will I see my Rosa and Valentina again, or for my sins, am I going to the hot place?

  Their faces swim through my head as I pass out.

  Chapter Nine

  Joshua

  County jail isn’t anywhere nearly as unpleasant as I would have imagined. Yes, the food is disgusting, and there’s nothing pleasant about sharing a cell with ten foul-smelling men or pissing in a stopped-up toilet while they watch. But by the second day, they all knew not to look. One of the men, who kept staring at my dick when I pissed on the first day died in his sleep that night, or at least nobody will ever be able to prove how he died. One of the other men somehow bounced off a wall and shattered every bone in his face. Oops.

  After that, they were eating out of my hand. I was the king of the cell. They practically bowed when I walked past them.

  And the filth of this place? I embrace it.

  I like cleanliness. I like order. That’s why dirt and chaos are my friends. That which hurts me strengthens me. Being in a place like this is the same kind of trial that my father put me through as a child, and the same kind I put myself through after I left him, to make sure I never got soft.

  I know Tamara is in a hospital, covered in bruises and cuts, with a fractured ulna in her right arm…but she’s safe now. That’s all that matters.

  My brother is under police guard at a different hospital, waiting to be transported to a special high-security lockup when he’s well enough to be transferred.

  I was standing over him with my gun trained on the spot right between his eyes when the police pulled up. It’s a shame. I wanted to see what the inside of his head looked like, but the police would have shot me right there if I’d pulled the trigger.

  They cuffed me and marched me away before I could speak to Tamara. I wanted to run to her. I wanted to tell her I was sorry I let her down, but they hustled me off and stuffed me in a squad car before I could say a word.

  My brother has been charged with multiple counts of kidnapping and assault and one count of murder. He has refused to speak to the police at all, from what my lawyer says. He hasn’t told them anything about me, about our past. He’s refused to even give them his name.

  My security chief Garrett followed my instructions and released Dr. Barnard and his two sons. I made the boys a deal before I flew to California. I promised them I’d save their mother and sisters, but they couldn’t say a word to the police about me kidnapping them. Am I a manipulative asshole? Did I promise things I had no way of knowing I could deliver? Hell yeah. I don’t lose a wink of sleep over it.

  Dr. Barnard won’t dare say a word, because if he rats me out, then I’ll tell the police about our deal and they’ll know he took
bribes to keep my brother locked up. He’d go to prison right along with me, and lose his medical license.

  Mrs. Barnard has filed for divorce and is demanding full custody of the kids. She blames him for what happened to her and her children, and she’s right.

  He’s lost his manhood and his family. I’ll settle for that, for now.

  The police and the district attorney have done everything that they can to build a case against me. The fact that they’ve failed means they have been unable to get testimony against me from the one person who could have put me away for life.

  Tamara.

  The days float by in a haze. I need to see Tamara. I need to touch her, to be with her, but I can’t, and my hunger is eating away at me. I’m still holding tight to my emotions, stuffing everything into a little box. When I get out of here, I need to hunt, and I need to do it soon. If I don’t bleed off some of the emotion boiling inside me, I’m going to explode like a supernova, consuming everything around me with the fire of my rage.

  My lawyer manages to get me out after five days.

  There’s a limo waiting for me outside the prison. I head straight to the hospital. I have so much I need to tell Tamara.

  When I get there, Ruiz is just leaving Tamara’s room. From what my lawyer’s heard, he’s been fired from the NYPD for going rogue.

  His face flushes with anger when he sees me coming down the hall. Apparently, our recent adventure together and the fact I saved his life haven’t gained me any favor with him. “I heard you got out. Figured I’d try to talk sense into her one more time,” he says coldly. “You’ve got some kind of hold on her. You fucked with her head. I know Stockholm syndrome when I see it. Don’t get too comfortable, asshole. I’m sticking to you like white on rice.”

  Once upon a time, I would have gloated in my triumph, and humiliated him. There’s nothing he can do to me now. But something in me has changed. I’m far from a decent human being, but I am less cruel than I used to be.

  Because of Tamara.

  And he did save her life.

  Of course, he should have told me he’d figured out where my brother was, but I had a tracking device on his car, so I was never far behind him.

  Standing outside the room, with him blocking my entrance, I stifle the urge to hurl him out of the way. “My offer still stands,” I say to him.

  “You think I did this for money?” he scoffs.

  “Not that offer. Well, that’s still there if you want it. But the other thing we discussed. Making life a little more…fair.” I’d cheerfully kill the rich little shit who gave his daughter the fatal overdose, or the asshole boss who caused his wife to die. Why not? Even if they’re not worthy fighters, it would still be fun.

  I see the temptation in his face. But he shakes his head firmly.

  “I’ll never work with you,” he says.

  “That’s not what I was suggesting.”

  “And I don’t take favors from killers.”

  “Who did I kill?” I smile gently, but I won’t be separated from Tamara for one more minute. “If you could prove anything, I wouldn’t be standing here. Now step out of my way before I lose my temper.”

  He’s blocked me long enough, and I have a short fuse these days.

  He turns around and goes back into the room. “Tamara, Joshua’s here. I’m telling you, you deserve better than this. Let me call security for you.”

  I walk in behind him. Tamara is sitting up in bed, hooked up to a monitor, an IV in her arm, covers pulled up to her chest. Her other arm is in a sling. Even after five days in the hospital, she’s painfully thin and ghost-pale, with dark hollows under her eyes. Greenish-blue bruises bloom on her arms and face.

  My heart leaps in my chest when her eyes meet mine, and I just stand there, drinking her in. Just to be in the same room with her, breathing the same air, makes everything right with the world.

  “It’s all right,” she says to Ruiz, her voice weak and raspy. “I’ll talk to him. And thank you again for everything you’ve done for me, Alfredo. You’re a good guy.” He hesitates in the doorway. “I’ll be fine,” she says to him. “Really.”

  “You can call me any time,” he says to her. With a dark look at me, he leaves.

  I can’t take my eyes off her as I cross the room. My girl, my beautiful girl. I sit down in the chair next to her bed, strange emotions churning inside me.

  “I’m sorry I took so long to find you,” I tell her, reaching out for her arm. She moves it out of my reach, and a spark of anger snaps in me.

  She’s still mine. I can touch her when I want to.

  I restrain myself, though, for now. She’s been through hell, and I’ll go easy on her. At first.

  She looks at me wearily. “Thank you for saving us.”

  “Of course. It was my fault he had you.” I came to save you. I didn’t give a damn about any of the rest of them.

  She shakes her head, her dark hair rustling on the pillow. “No, it wasn’t. He set me up to meet you, knowing he was going to kidnap me in the end.” She tugs the blanket up a little. “I knew you’d come for me. I knew you wouldn’t sleep until you found me. That’s what kept me going, every day.” She shudders, her eyes drifting away to a dark place.

  I know what those days were like, because I watched the videos. Every minute of every video.

  But she believed in me. She knew I wouldn’t abandon her. I feel the ice inside me thaw a little, and I’m not ashamed to say that my eyes burn with unshed tears. Her faith in me wraps around me like a warm blanket.

  “It shouldn’t have taken me so long. I threw everything I had into it, Tamara, I hope you know that. The world stopped turning for me. I went days without sleep and did nothing but search and search.”

  She shifts in the bed and grimaces with the effort of movement. The hell my brother put her through…the things he did to her body…. Choking anger sweeps through me, and I clench my fists.

  “I know,” she says, her eyes hollow and tired. “I never doubted it. If I hadn’t known that, I think I would have gone insane.”

  “He’ll never touch you again,” I vow. “Nobody will. I’ll keep you safe.”

  Her eyes narrow. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll keep myself safe, thanks. I’m not leaving here with you.”

  “Oh no?” That’s what she thinks.

  She fixes her gaze on me, with the strength and ferocity of a lioness. “Listen. You saved me, and Astrid and the girls. I will always be grateful for that. But you also held me prisoner for five months, and you tortured me and nearly broke me. You hung me over a damn electric plate, Joshua. You locked me up in the dark for weeks. If your brother hadn’t kidnapped me, you would never have let me go.” Her dark eyes burn holes into my soul. “I would have been your caged little sex toy for the rest of my life.”

  “You were much more than that to me.” She is everything to me. She is the first woman to challenge me, to enchant me, to capture my heart. Before I met her, I didn’t even know I had a heart.

  She just looks at me with rebuke and hurt.

  “I understand why you’re angry at me,” I say. But I can’t quite bring myself to say I’m sorry. Am I sorry I took her, possessed her, forced her to crave my touch? Am I sorry for all those nights she screamed my name when she came? I’d be lying if I said yes.

  “If you really acknowledged everything that you’ve done to me, you’d understand why I won’t leave here with you.” Her chest moves up and down as her breath speeds up.

  She looks so pale, so tired.

  “Don’t upset yourself,” I say. “Are they taking good care of you? Do you need anything?”

  She shakes her head. “Just time to heal.”

  I reach out again and take her hand in mine. She looks down at our entwined hands. “It’s okay that you’re touching me,” she says, almost as if she’s speaking to herself. Then she looks up at me. “I thought that after what he did to
me, I wouldn’t ever want a man to touch me again, but…I don’t mind you holding my hand.” We sit there in silence for a few seconds, then she slowly slides her hand out of mine.

  I lean in and brush my lips against her neck, and I hear the hitch of her breath.

  “Stop,” she whispers. I straighten up.

  “You liked it,” I point out mildly.

  “Yes. That’s why you need to stop. Because I’m not going to fall into your trap again.” Then her lips twitch up in a smile. “It felt good. I’m glad to know that I can let a man touch me again and not want to scream or run. I can still feel pleasure. He didn’t ruin that for me. But it stops now. I’m not going to get used to being with you.”

  “You can let me touch you,” I clarify. It’s an important distinction. I feel a wave of relief sweep over me. She loved sex. Loved having me touch her and dominate her. I’m grateful that she can still enjoy my hands and mouth on her. And I can’t wait to be with her again, to kiss her sweet flesh, to wash away all memory of him.

  She gives me a wry look. “You think I’m eager to run out and start dating again? I had no idea you were the jealous type.”

  Is she kidding? I’d fucking eviscerate a man if he looked at her too long. But we don’t need to talk about that now.

  “When you check out of the hospital, I’ll be waiting to pick you up. I’ve got the resources to protect you in case my brother escapes again.” That’s a scare tactic, but I’ve never believed in playing fair.

  And it works. I see the flicker of fear in her eyes. “He’s under guard. He won’t escape.” She says it a little too forcefully.

  “We can’t be sure of that, Tamara. He escaped from an extremely secure psychiatric institute. Seduced one of the nurses, it turns out. As long as he’s alive, we can never relax. If I get the opportunity, I’ll kill him.”

  She stares at me, eyes widening. “He’s your twin brother, Joshua. Yes, he’s an evil bastard, and he should be locked up forever. But for you to kill him…you don’t know what it will do to you. It will be like killing a piece of yourself.”

  It would. But it doesn’t matter. “I have to. You’ll never be safe until he’s dead.’