Chapter 11

11

Aubree

Heat hit my face, and I was suddenly aware of a grotesque numbness in my hands. I opened my eyes to a room, lit only by the streaks of sunlight fighting their way past the god-awful paisley drapes. An upward glance spurred both nausea and relief at the sight of my hands chained to the bedpost—at least what I felt wasn’t phantom limb from being hacked alive by a madman, but I was still bound to a bed in a room that looked like it’d jumped out of an Edgar Allen Poe Home and Gardening magazine. Dark gray walls and dark wood—aged-looking furniture—coupled with the peeling paint and cobwebs gave off a Halloween vibe.

The warm scent of a cigar filled my nose, notes of cedar over the delicious flavor of musk. Had my mouth not been bone dry, it might’ve watered at the scent.

Pumping my fingers did nothing to abate the numbness, and while I felt glad they moved at all, the dead sensation made my stomach queasy. Squirming definitely wasn’t helping, but being able to move at all told me I wasn’t completely paralyzed.

In one last futile attempt to break the chains, I kicked and screamed like a madwoman. The squeak and thump of the bed beat out the rhythm of my tantrum, until at last, my muscles sagged in defeat.

“Numb?” The deep, rich voice snapped my gaze to the dark figure across the room, propped against the wall with his arms crossed.

A zap of panic shot through my body, but crackled in my hot blood like ice cubes melting in boiling water. “Do you earn bonus points if I feel dead before you actually kill me?”

“I could untie you.” Inflection gave his words an air of taunting.

Between his calm tone and casual posture, I didn’t immediately peg him as a killer. “But that would make you a decent human being when clearly you’re an—” Asshole.

Easy now. No sense pissing off the guy who kidnapped you and chained you to a bed.

Getting unchained was one step closer to getting the fuck out of there.

“A what?” He pushed himself off the wall, and the first features to come into view were his eyes—a striking cut of blue diamonds that sliced me open with his intense stare. Evocative, distracting eyes that didn’t belong on the face of a kidnapper.

Not that I’d thought about kidnappers much, I certainly didn’t fantasize about them, but I’d imagined them with coal-black, almost demonic eyes—like Michael’s. This man’s powerful glare and calm vibe told me, without a doubt, he could probably slice me open while softly chanting a dirge like an angel.

The hood of his black leather jacket concealed his hair, but the white wife beater he wore beneath provided an eyeful of muscles. Deep ridges that looked like they’d been hand carved peeked over the top and disappeared behind the shirt where the outline of his pectorals and nipples punched through the fabric. The bronze tone of his skin left me wondering if he worked outside. Maybe a construction worker?

I glanced down to see if he sported any calluses on his hands, but black leather gloves covered them. People generally wore gloves indoors to hide fingerprints. While committing crimes.

His face was flawlessly chiseled and symmetrical, those eyes set beneath dark, broody eyebrows. The smirky shape of his lips, smooth and perfectly proportioned, left me resisting the urge to bite my own.

“My husband has connections. He’ll find you. And he’ll have you killed if he doesn’t do it himself.” It sickened me to give Michael’s power any merit, but perhaps mention of the asshole might lead me to what this guy wanted with me.

Those eyes, as beautiful as they were, held a terrifying emptiness—a complete lack of empathy as he stared back with an evil glint, silently warning me that I’d said something stupid. “I’m not afraid of your husband.”

I should’ve been scared. Why wasn’t I scared?

Maybe I just couldn’t feel fear anymore. Perhaps I’d stared into the depths of the devil’s eyes for too many years. I knew the sting of a whip, the burn of a blade, and the uncertainty that I’d live beyond the next hour. I lived in a constant state of defense, and had taken enough punches in the dark that my body’s reflexes were always wired, tense.

The guy wore an air of calm over the sizzling power that rolled off him in waves. His handsome features didn’t match the faces of serial killers running through my head. Bundy. Gacy.

Don’t be stupid, Aubree.

In my defense, his black hood and dark, enigmatic personality were reminiscent of Achilleus X—the man, or woman, I’d fantasized about for months.

The beauty I’d extrapolated from the stranger’s face both confounded and pissed me off, that I’d notice it in the thick of a nightmare, like Red admiring the Big Bad Wolf’s lovely teeth. The man staring back at me was a stranger in the literal sense—the kind mothers warned their children to stay away from at an early age. The kind that swiped young women and turned them into terrifying statistics found on crime television shows and forensic classes. He was also what the weird chicks probably fantasized about in their twisted rape fantasies, with his dark hoodie and deep voice—a far cry from the chubby, middle-aged guys with bad comb-overs and messed up teeth, who always played the perverted kidnapper in movies. Though, maybe he stole me for a chubby middle-aged guy with a bad comb-over, and he just happened to be the pretty precursor, meant to keep me calm, before I really lost my shit.

Still, I couldn’t look away from those eyes, as much as every cell in my body screamed retreat! I’d seen them before. Behind a mask. “You … you were at the …” Realization hit me with a double dose of fuck me and a sudden case of indigestion. “I have to use the bathroom. Or would you prefer I go right here?”

He silently stared at me, his left eye twitching. I could only guess he might be fantasizing what it’d feel like to strangle me. As if confirming my thoughts, he smoothed his hands over his black leather gloves as though making sure they were nice and tight so they wouldn’t bunch while his palms throttled my neck.

Something pulled at my body—an odd sensation that I wanted to push down and smother with good sense, but I couldn’t. I hated what his unwavering stare had drudged from some primitive, animalistic part of my brain, and I was ashamed to admit that, for a kidnapper, he was gorgeous—a gorgeous bastard who’d tied me to a bed all night, while he skipped off to what I imagined was some kidnapper bar somewhere, getting drunk and bragging to all his kidnapper buddies.

I cleared my throat and shifted on the bed, my fingers turning to sausages while I waited.

After an eternity, he leaned forward and started unshackling my ankles. My toes curled at the cold leather of his gloves against my skin.

“Any chance you could start with my hands? It’s that … gravity thing, you know?”

The narrowing of his eyes alongside the slight twist of his lip said shut the fuck up, I’m not here to make you comfortable, but he went to work on my right hand, anyway. Even with his GQ face and pretty eyes, the guy radiated fiery waves of hostility like a swarm of sharks beneath a placid surface.

A line of tension ran down my spine as I watched while his black-leathered fingers unfastened the cuffs, anxious for the damage, the stomach-twisting sensation of dead weight. At once, my wrist was free, and my arm dropped.

Pins and needles, pins and needles. Ah, shit.

I shook out my wrist, pumping, pumping, pumping my fingers. Like trying to control a dead body. If the movies depicted their gaits right, the walking dead should’ve been less concerned with scouring for brains and more focused on getting the goddamn tingles to stop in that leg always dragging behind them and slowing them down. My hand pulsed with a heartbeat again by the time he loosened the other binds, and I was battling tingles in both, feeling like the green monster from Yo Gabba Gabba.

“Perhaps next time you might consider a more ergonomically correct kidnapping by installing retractable chains in the wall, instead of tethering to the bedpost.” My comment was met by an unamused stare. “Just a suggestion.” With a lingering thickness to my limbs, I flapped my arms one more time and rose up on the opposite side of the bed to where he stood.

He was huge, maybe six four or five, and if those muscles and ridges behind his shirt were any indication, he was probably pretty ripped, too. A fighter, if I had to guess. My best chance for escape would likely be outsmarting him.

“I don’t know what you’re scheming, lady. But if you think you can get past me, you’re about two seconds from getting slapped down by reality.” He had the accent of a man who’d grown up in Detroit. Hard to pick up on the night before, but clear as day, the more I listened to him talk—his clipping of hard consonants and slurring words. He probably needed money, which meant money might be a negotiating factor.

As if he could read my mind, he nabbed my purse from the nightstand, rifled through it contents, tossed it on the bed, and held up the chip I’d swiped from Michael’s office. Perhaps he’d been paid to retrieve it. “I’ll be keeping this.” He stuffed it in his pocket, and crossed his arms like a bully on the playground after stealing lunch money.

Nice going, Aubree. Probably could’ve used it as a bargaining chip. Note to self: stuff important shit down the bra, not inside the purse. I didn’t even know what was on it, but considering Michael and his Pentagon-secured office, any object holding information was probably important.

The stranger lifted a gloved hand, ushering me toward what I was certain was something else, entirely. My head snapped between him and the door. “I … isn’t that a closet?”

“Was.”

My heart sank at the revelation, and with reluctant steps, I inched toward the door I’d been convinced had to be a closet. What the hell kind of bedroom didn’t have a closet, after all?

I opened the door to find one of the do-it-yourself variety bathrooms, complete with a plywood floor and a pedestal sink. No mirror. The rack that extended to the back of the small room stood empty and useless. No window. No vent. And no possible chance for escape. I’d been certain the only place I’d be relieving myself would be out of my prison room, with a front door in my sights and freedom at my back.

“You look disappointed.” The close proximity of his voice tightened my muscles.

“Do you plan to accompany me into the bathroom, or something?”

“Do your business. And hurry up.”

I stepped inside, closing the door behind me, and, perhaps for the first time since I arrived there, reality began to penetrate my tightly woven cloak of denial. It wasn’t a joke. I could very well die in the enclosing shithole with a psychotic Bob Vila wannabe and his mysterious black gloves that were clearly meant to hide fingerprints.

Battling the urge to fall into a heap and bawl my eyes out, I gripped the sink and flipped on the faucet, desperately filling my mouth with cold tap water that damn near sizzled over the dryness. “C’mon, Aubree,” I whispered. “Time to make a Plan B. You’re not a quitter. You’re a survivor. You’ve survived worse than this.” Maybe. Who the hell knew what the rest of the house had in store for me? I looked up, staring at the section of wall where a mirror would’ve been, and was kind of thankful I didn’t have to look at myself right then. “You’ve become good at reading people.” I blew out a breath , but a whimper of hopelessness echoed somewhere in the back of mind. I quickly batted it down with my uncanny skill for deceiving the logical side of my brain.

Quick analysis. He was tall, dark and broody. Wore his hood up over his head. Maybe he was hiding something? Zero sense of humor. I mean, zero. Could be pissed. At me?

Could be sexual frustration. No, he’s too good-looking. “But his attitude is shit,” I muttered in response to my thoughts.

I buried my face in my hands. Unless the guy was a total torture-baby-animals sort of mental case, the best bet would be to try appealing to his empathetic side. Did hitmen feel guilt? Was killer’s remorse such a thing?

If that didn’t work, there’d be only one thing left to try.

Seduce the bastard. You’ve done it before and survived. You can do it again.

I’d been held captive by the apex predator, in the messed up jungle of dysfunction, and had gotten out. Not entirely free, but out. The guy on the other side of the door was nothing more than a temporary roadblock on my path to freedom. A peon, probably hired by the head Tyrantosaurus himself, my husband.

A quick sweep of the small room showed nothing that I could use as a weapon. The guy had stripped it down to the barest essentials, going so far as to remove the mirror that could’ve been cracked into jagged pieces for stabbing. Shit.

At two knocks on the door, I jumped back, nearly falling on my ass. “Just a sec!” I quickly hiked my dress, relieved myself, and scooped two more handfuls of water into my mouth.

When I exited, he was standing beside the door, arms crossed, practically growling as I snuck past him to the other side of the bed.

“Were you hired by my husband?” I asked.

His jaw shifted, as though he chewed on the question for a moment, before he spat back, “If I’d been hired to kill you, you’d already be dead.”

True, and shame on me as the kidnappee for not having come up with that brilliant deduction myself.

“But that doesn’t mean I don’t intend to kill you … eventually.”

I’d heard that phrase before. Many times before. The delay resided in thinking smart and staying one step ahead in the game. After all, my father once told me the world was a hunting ground, and the only way to identify the predators was to set a bait pile.

Just as I’d learned to do on cue, I summoned tears in my eyes and fell to a sitting position at the edge of the bed. “Please. I don’t … I don’t know if you have a family or … someone you care about. If you do, then … you know how devastating it would be to lose them.”

I glanced back, expecting to find apathy at my pathetic ad-libbed performance. Instead, he looked furious, as if he might just tear my throat out and eat it in front of me.

A tremble beat through my body as I slowly rose from the bed.

Prepare to run.