Black Rose

by Kris Thompson

  “I said shut the fuck up, you fucking whore,” he screamed, taking me by the throat again and shaking me.

  I couldn’t help but laugh. I did it. I found his weakness and cut it open for everyone to hear.

  “Stop it! Stop fucking laughing,” he yelled, but his pathetic tantrum just caused me to laugh even harder.

  He got off me and pulled up his pants, turning his back to me. He walked over to the door and rested his hands against it, his breathing labored. I allowed the feeling to wash over me; I was beating him at his own game. The fact that I knew I was hitting a major nerve caused me to laugh so hard that I had tears running down my face. I stood and braced myself against the wall. I didn’t know why I was acting this way, but I didn’t have it in me to stop.

  Without saying a word, he swung open the door and left my room, slamming the door behind him and locking it. Not even thinking, I started to walk forward.

  “What, can’t handle the truth?” I bellowed, and then grimaced as the chain pulled against my sore ankle. I grew annoyed and kicked my chained leg out, wishing I could go bang against the door as I heard his footsteps move up the stairs, but then I felt my chain go slack and I stopped. I turned to see that the plaque had pulled away from the wall. I walked over to it, and with a little effort, pulled it the rest of the way out.

  “Well, I’ll be goddamned,” I whispered to myself in disbelief.

  Emma waited until he was back upstairs and the music turned back on before speaking out.

  “Lee, oh my God, are you okay?”

  Still looking at the plaque in my hands, I smiled, nodding to myself. “Ladies, it’s time to get the fuck out of here.”

  Twenty-Six Days Missing

  —Richard

  “Don’t fucking give me that shit, Noah, I know you know something,” I yelled, feeling my whole body shake.

  Adam, Sadie, Luke, and I were all staying at the hotel where my parents had set up temporary residence. One of the hardest things I had ever done was to call my parents and tell them Emma was gone. The news had crushed them. My dad had to sedate my mom just so she would stop screaming. With the girls’ apartment now a crime scene, and my apartment too small for all of us, my parents asked us to stay with them. I think they felt better having us around. We were gathered in the living area, getting our daily briefing from Noah.

  “They are doing the best they can,” Noah said with a steady voice to all of us in the room.

  “That’s horse shit,” Luke said.

  “Watch your tone,” Noah said. “There are people everywhere looking for them.”

  “Well, they’re just wasting their time because you know as well as I do that this Thomas kid has something to do with it.” I crossed my arms and gave Noah a look, daring him to deny it.

  “No, we don’t know. Just because you have convinced yourself of something, because of your gut feeling, it’s going to get you in trouble if you go out there snooping around. Maybe even killed.”

  “But Thomas does have something to do with this. You wouldn’t be worried about us being around him if he wasn’t,” Adam said quietly.

  Six pairs of eyes looked at him in shock. Adam hadn’t spoken a word since he found out Emma was missing. Everyone had reacted with some form of distress, but not Adam. He just sat in silence, deep in thought. It was as if he had retreated into himself.

  “I’m not sure, but I recently overheard some information that doesn’t mesh with the story Thomas gave Chase,” Noah replied. “But until they have more on the guy, there is nothing they can do.”

  “Fine, then who’s David?” I asked, clenching my fists.

  Noah sighed and shook his head. “I can’t say.”

  Before I had a chance to call bullshit, Adam was out of his chair, across the room, and had Noah pinned against the wall by the neck.

  “Answer the question,” Adam shouted. Luke and I rushed forward and tried to pull him off, but his hand was locked around Noah’s neck. “Answer us or I swear to God . . .”

  “Adam, he can’t breathe,” I said, watching Noah’s face turning bright red.

  Luke pulled on Adam’s arm. “Come on, let him go.”

  He let go and stood back, watching Noah slide down the wall and onto the floor. Noah rubbed at his neck and coughed as Adam stood before him, his breathing erratic. He knelt down and pushed his index finger into Noah’s chest.

  “If she dies, it’s on your hands, and I will spend the rest of my life reminding you of that,” he growled. He got up quickly, grabbed his jacket, and walked out the door.

  “Have you all forgotten that Lee is my sister, too? That I am just as destroyed as the rest of you?” Noah yelled. He looked at me and let out a deep sigh. “Richard, it’s not that I don’t want to . . .”

  “You want us to stay out of it, but I can’t. It’s my sister and the love of my life out there,” I said, grabbing my jacket and following Adam. I ran out to the parking lot just in time to see him getting into his car. “Adam!”

  He turned and looked at me. “If you’re coming with me, then we’re doing this my way.”

  I nodded and got in the car. My phone buzzed in my pocket, but I ignored it. “What are we doing?”

  Without saying a word, Adam put the car in gear and sped off. I waited until we were outside the city before I spoke. “We’re going to Noah’s?”

  “Yeah, well . . . didn’t you say his house was a shrine of information?”

  I nodded. “I thought you’d just want to go straight to Nederland.”

  He tightened his hand around the steering wheel and growled. “That depends on what we find at Noah’s house.”

  “You know the best thing about Noah living in a small town? He never locks his windows.” I laughed as I popped open Noah’s back window and crawled in. Adam laughed and hopped in after me.

  We were quick to start going through all the folders, scattered papers, and pictures that lined the kitchen and living room. Adam was in the living room while I stayed in the kitchen. I almost lost it when I found the crime scene photos of the two girls they’d found. It looked like something out of a horror movie. They were naked, bloody, and disfigured. I had to close my eyes and take a few deep breaths to compose myself. I couldn’t allow myself to think that Lee or Emma could end up this way.

  “Richard,” Adam said from the other room, pulling me out of my small panic attack.

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you remember Tom’s brother’s name?”

  And then it clicked. Son of a bitch.

  Adam was waving a folder and smirking. “Got ’em.”

  Chapter 13

  Day Twenty-Nine

  —Lillian

  His hands moved gently up my body, not allowing one inch of skin to escape his fingertips. I writhed against his touch as he shifted my legs higher, letting his body sink deeper inside me. I bit my bottom lip to hold back my cries, which were quickly approaching.

  “No,” Richard said, panting and thrusting into me with haste. “I want to hear you. I need to hear you.”

  I threw my head back and moaned when I felt his hot mouth attack my neck. Richard had always been so attentive when it came to sex. I shouldn’t even call it sex. Richard had never called it sex. We never said we loved each other, but that was what we made—love.

  “Oh God, Richard, please.” I felt as if my release was right at the cusp of breaking through.

  He didn’t say anything, but continued to thrust into me harder. One hand tightened around my breast and squeezed. I felt his teeth against my neck, and I yelped when he bit my skin.

  I chuckled lightly. “Richard, slow down.”

  “Wrong name, whore.”

  I opened my eyes to see not my Richard, but him and his dark, demon eyes glaring down at me. I went to reach out and hit him, but my hands were tied over my head.

  “That’s right, bitch, you’re all mine,” he said, laughing.

  I opened my eyes and screamed, thrashing my arms all around me.

/>   “Lee . . . Lee . . .” Emma said. “It’s just a dream, honey. He’s not here.”

  Of course he’s not here, the chicken shit.

  I guess my little outburst had scared him off. When I told the girls that the plaque fell off the wall, everyone seemed to have relaxed, except for Emma. She was still receiving daily visits from Number Two, who we had now learned was named Thomas.

  After he left that day, Emma told us everything she knew about Thomas, confirming our suspicions that he worked for the athletic department at the university. I could tell that Emma’s forced visits were becoming more and more stressful on her. She would cry for hours afterward, feeling as if she were cheating on Adam. She swore Thomas never hurt her, or even tried to force her to do anything against her will, but it was the fact that she had to sit in that room and pretend to care for him that caused her so much pain. It made me sick.

  During Thomas’ visits he would still check on all of us, making sure that we had food and water, but he seemed to always do it when we were asleep. Normally the sound of the music turning off would rouse me from my sleep, but he kept it on so we wouldn’t hear him moving around. At least, that’s what I thought. The guy seemed like an all right kid, and I believed Emma when she said he wasn’t hurting her, but if he ever opened my door he was going to get a mouthful of steel plaque in his face. I wouldn’t kill him, but I’d make sure he wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon.

  I used my newfound freedom to try figuring out how to break down the door. It was locked, of course, but it was loose. I tried kicking it down, throwing myself against it, even swinging the heavy plaque against the hinges to break it down, but it wouldn’t budge. This motherfucker was becoming more annoying than the plaque.

  “Lee, please, just give it a rest for a while,” Anna asked. “My ears are killing me.”

  “At least it’s drowning out the noise of Patsy,” Kandace said.

  The last few days had been filled with nothing but tension and questions. When was he coming back? What else did Emma know about Thomas? Was she sure she hadn’t seen the other guy before? I could tell she was becoming annoyed, and I couldn’t blame her.

  I didn’t have any questions for Emma. Unlike the other girls, I didn’t have a need to know more about these men. Kandace had become obsessed. She asked Emma every possible question you could think of about Thomas. What they talked about, how he dressed, if he shaved, things that didn’t mean shit when it came to getting out of here.

  Sara had become quieter than usual. She only spoke to Anna in whispers, and that was only to prove she was still alive. Anna felt that Sara was starting to fade away, and in time would stop answering her calls altogether. Anna was starting to feel that maybe he wasn’t going to come back, and that my plan to get out would fail, but I wasn’t worried. I could feel it in my bones that he would be coming back soon. He was never able to stay away from us for long. He needed this—like the air he breathed. And I would be ready.

  My body was slowly healing itself, and I pushed myself to start exercising again. I did push-ups, sit-ups, squats, and even set the mattress against the wall to use as a makeshift punching bag. I had to be ready.

  With every punch I landed on the mattress I would see his face. His dark eyes. Punch. His short brown hair. Punch. That grin he would have every time he hit me. Punch.

  “You’re dead,” I yelled, punching the mattress as hard as I could. “I’m going to fucking rip your heart out.” I lifted my chain and started swinging my plaque against the mattress. I ignored the onslaught of feathers that flew around me as I continued to slash away at my now-tattered mattress. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!”

  I screamed and fell to my knees and clutched my chest. My heart felt like it was about to rip itself out of my chest.

  “Lee, are you okay?” Emma asked.

  I got up and let the plaque fall from my hands. “Ask me that after we get out of here.”

  I lifted my hands and closed them into tight fists.

  I’m ready.

  Twenty-Nine Days Missing

  —Richard

  Adam and I had been camped out on the edge of the Reed property for three days now. The Reeds owned a double wide at the bottom of a steep hill, which sat on a pretty open field. The two of us set ourselves up at the top of the hill where we could hide behind an array of thick trees and bushes. We had a tent set up a few yards back, hidden within the trees, and enough water and canned beans to last us a week. I wasn’t worried, though. We weren’t going to be here that long.

  We decided it was for the best not to let my parents or Luke know where we were or what we were doing. We only turned our phones on to call Luke and see if he had heard anything.

  “When are you two coming back?” he asked.

  I had him on speakerphone so Adam could hear the updates on Noah.

  “When we find the girls,” Adam answered.

  “Luke, I’ll call you tomorrow unless something happens. Tell Mom and Dad I’m fine and not to worry.” Every time I called Luke, the only thing he could talk about was how frantic Mom had been about Adam and I being gone.

  “Yeah, as if anything I have to say at the moment means shit,” he grumbled, hanging up the phone. I pulled my thick jacket tighter around me, shivering at the feeling of the soft snow that had started to fall. It was almost pitch black outside. The only light that we had was the bright moon that glowed overhead.

  I knew Luke was having a hard time keeping our parents calm, but how could any parent stay calm in this situation? He’d left a voice mail yesterday letting us know that Noah had called to say a hiker had found the body of Linda Baker lying on the side of the road. Just like the others, her body had been beaten beyond recognition and she had been brutalized. Luke told us that Dad had to sedate Mom again when she heard the news on television.

  I knew what I was doing was wrong. I should have at least called my dad to let him know I was okay, but we weren’t playing by the normal rules anymore. This was about finding Lee and Emma; we wanted all of them, and we wanted the ones who took them.

  I rolled my eyes when my phone went off again, turning it toward Adam and showing him it was Noah again. Noah was leaving a countless number of voice mails on my phone, yelling at Adam and me to turn up, or else. As always, I hit the ignore button on my phone and turned the thing off to conserve the battery. Noah wasn’t stupid; he knew where he could find us. He knew we had broken into his house and taken his file on David Reed. If he wanted the two of us to come forward, then all he had to do was come to the Reed property and arrest David and Thomas . . . or send the Boulder County Sheriff to come pick us up. We knew we were doing the right thing. The police were moving too slow, acting like they had all the time in the world. Adam and I knew better, and the body of Linda Baker proved that.

  “Richard,” Adam whispered, motioning toward the trailer house. I took out my binoculars and saw a dark Jeep pull up beside the small home. Thomas, and a tall man we didn’t recognize, exited the Jeep and went straight into the house.

  “You think that’s David?”

  “I have no doubt in my mind,” Adam replied.

  “So what do we do? Call Noah?” I asked, handing my binoculars to Adam so he could get a better look.

  “Fuck Noah,” he said on a growl. “Like I told you, Richard, we’re doing this my way.”

  As Adam kept his eyes glued to the brothers below, I decided to pull out the folder we’d found at Noah’s and look through it again. I had the damn thing memorized by now—both of us did—but for some reason I kept finding myself reading it like it was a best-selling novel.

  Finding the folder on David Reed had been a blessing and a curse at the same time. David Reed was the older brother of Thomas. There was no record of a father, but they had a mother named Wendi who lived out of state. Noah had somehow recovered police reports accusing her of child neglect as far back as when David and Thomas were toddlers. One report stated that when the boys were examined, they showed s
igns of having been abused for years, and David seemed to have gotten the worst of it. The state had taken them from their mother and placed them with some out-of-state relatives for a year. During that time, Wendi Reed left her abusive ex-husband for a new one, but not before she proved she was stable enough to have the children back.

  This routine had gone on for years until David and Thomas became legal adults. After that, David disappeared for a short time—it looked like Noah couldn’t seem to find anything on him between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five—but Thomas lived his life pretty openly. He had worked odd jobs all over Colorado until he settled in Boulder, landing a full-time job at CU.

  The mistake Thomas made was telling Noah that David was “down south” working security at a mine, because Noah checked. David was hired down in Canon City, an hour south of Colorado Springs, but relocated after having too many incidents between him and some of the women on the site. He had been moved to an abandoned mine called Black Rose, to stand security until further notice.

  “Down south, my ass,” Adam said.

  We sat there, staring at the small house, waiting for something—anything—to happen. My watch let out a quiet beep, and I looked down to see that it was midnight. Day thirty. It had been thirty days.

  I huffed. “What the hell are they doing in there?”

  “Look, there’s movement,” Adam whispered.

  I ducked down and, sure enough, Thomas and David were getting back into their Jeep.

  “We need to get back to the car,” I said, gathering our stuff.

  “You don’t think the girls are here somewhere?”

  “In that tiny shit hole?” I asked, nodding toward the double wide. “No, but they might be driving to where they are. Come on.”

  We followed the Jeep at a good distance as there weren’t many other cars around. After a while, Adam turned off his lights and relied on the moon and the distant taillights to light our way. He slowed down when the Jeep turned right and disappeared into the trees before us.