Chapter 9

9

Aubree

Iclamped my eyes shut, for fear that opening them would have me seeing what I couldn’t possibly fathom. The possibility that I’d gone from one shitty situation to another, just like that. Red bubbles floated behind my lids, and I cracked my eye open to a blurry darkness. A horrible taste flooded my mouth, metallic, reminding me of gasoline, and I swallowed it down to keep from tripping the vomit gates.

My throat was dry, my mouth like it’d been stuffed with cotton. I couldn’t work enough saliva to coat the burn, and my voice wouldn’t push past the dryness. I tried to remember anything from the evening, and the last visual I had was of putting on lipstick before the world faded to black.

The room expanded and shrank before my eyes. I could hardly take in what the hell I was looking at, and a steady thump beat inside my ears and sinuses, interrupting every observation. A window, covered in black drapes. Thump. A door that must’ve been a closet. Thump. Walls that crawled with peeling paint and branching cracks. Thump.

I closed and opened my eyes until the room sharpened, though only slightly, the edges shrinking back into a wide but clearer view. Could’ve been five minutes or hours later.

I had no concept of time.

Resistance fought against my wrists when I attempted to move my limbs. I glanced up at the leather restraints binding my arms, and the chain that tethered them to the bed.

What the ...

Pressure pulled at my chest, and I realized I hadn’t taken a breath. In and out, I slowly sucked in the stagnant air, trying to make sense of what’d happened. Why was I there? Where was there? Who had taken me?

Images danced in and out of my head. The party. Masks. Michael’s stern grip on my thigh. Lipstick. Blackness.

Panic shot through my veins, horror swimming in my blood, as realization settled over me, and my arms quaked, rattling my restraints, while tingles diffused beneath my skin.

I’d been taken. Kidnapped. By whom, I didn’t know. And from the looks of my surroundings, it was someone who was all too content with ditching me in the middle of nowhere.

Michael’s words surfaced.

And when you’re on the brink of death, I’ll dump you in some cold and abandoned shithole, where you’ll drown in your own blood before the rats can eat you to bone.

Oh, God. Was I dead already? I lifted my head off the bed, frantically searching for signs of torture, abuse. Perhaps I’d gone numb. Maybe the drug hadn’t worn off and I was seeing myself through a dream or hallucination. Maybe the killer stood beside me, while I lay there comatose and numb from shock, mutilating my body.

Maybe he’d been hired by Michael to carry out the job of killing me. For what, though? My husband had made a few attempts to kill me over the years but never seemed to have the balls to carry through. Perhaps he’d found someone willing to do the job for him.

Or worse. Michael had made so many enemies over the years, perhaps I’d unwittingly fallen into the lap of one of them.

Warmth bloomed in my veins at the thought, a sensation that had no place where I was concerned. “Not now. Please not now.” I wanted to stay in a state of terror, because that kept me sharp, alert. Kept me from doing something stupid. But hope. Goddamn hope. It spread through my body like a beam of sunlight at a Goth party. Unwelcome, but undeniably pleasant, just the same.

Whether my circumstances had gotten better or worse was yet to be seen, but maybe I’d won. Michael swore I’d never escape him, unless I was being carried out in a body bag, and there I was, chained and possibly facing a whole new slew of torture, but free from my sadistic husband.

The question was, who was my captor? Had I seen him?

Think, Aubree. Goddamn it.Through a murky haze, I heard the faint sound of a voice, mumbled conversation, jumbled inside my head, like a TV playing behind a black screen. A memory.

Achilleus X wouldn’t spare a minute on you.

Not Achilleus. I’d hoped his threat to Michael had somehow made me the object of his next attack. It hadn’t. My fantasies of being set free by the mysterious masked man had been nothing but illusion, it seemed.

Not that I knew I’d be any safer with the infamous hacker, but at least he wasn’t known for hacking up women and burying them riverside. Then again, neither was Michael, and yet, I suspected otherwise.

I had no idea who my captor was, what the hell he wanted, or worse, what the hell he planned to do with me.

If Michael’d hired him, I’d definitely need to find an escape, because no way in hell a hit man, hired by my political figure husband, would ever let me live. I’d need to get him to undo the binds, somehow. I’d come up with a good reason.

Somehow.

I should’ve been more frightened than I was, but getting handed off by psychopaths was a lot like a foster kid getting passed around, or playing a really messed up lottery, where the newbie might be less fucked up than the last guy.

I’d already been through hell and back and survived.

The charity ball should’ve been my chance for escape, with all the important guests that could’ve kept Michael distracted. I could’ve kicked myself for failing, for falling into another complication. Another house of horror that I’d have to navigate for an escape door.

The guy could’ve been some insane, leather-faced serial killer who collected the skin of his victims, but I was married to the mayor of Detroit, and no one trumped that asshole when it came to crazy.

In a fit, I tugged all four binds at once and screamed in frustration. “Hey! Hello?”

Silence.

I blew an exasperated breath. “Are you shitting me?” Tendrils of fear climbed my spine, as the questions swirling inside my head narrowed to one singular thought: what if he doesn’t come back at all?