by K. A. Tucker
Jace.
Oh my God.
It was Jace all along.
CHAPTER 44
Maggie
December 23, 2015
It’s the bitter cold I feel first. I can’t say that it’s what wakes me up, but it’s the first thing I feel.
The second is the consuming darkness.
And then my fuzzy mind sorts everything else out at around the same time: the constant jolts and the loud whirl of tires; the ache in my shoulders, arms, and my wrists, which are tied behind my back; the laced water Jace handed me, that I so willingly took.
I scream. Until my throat stings and my voice doesn’t work anymore.
————
My wrists burn.
Hours of trying to break free of the rope that binds my hands behind my back have left them raw, the rough cord scrubbing away my skin and cutting into my flesh. I’m sure I’ll have unsightly scars.
Not that it will matter when I’m dead.
I resigned myself to that reality around the time that I finally let go of my bladder. Now I simply lie here, in a pool of urine and vomit, my teeth numb from knocking with each bump in the road, my body frozen by the cold.
Trying to ignore the darkness as I fight against the panic that consumes me. I could suffocate from the anxiety alone.
He knows that.
Now he’s exploiting it. That must be what he does—he uncovers your secrets, your fears, your flaws—and he uses them against you. He did it to Celine.
And now he’s doing it to me.
That’s why I’m in a cramped trunk, my lungs working overtime against a limited supply of oxygen while my imagination runs wild with what may be waiting for me at the end of this ride.
My racing heart ready to explode.
The car hits an especially deep pothole, rattling my bones. I’ve been trapped in here for so long. Hours. Days. I have no idea. Long enough to run through every mistake that I made.
How I trusted him, how I fell for his charm, how I believed his lies. How I made it so easy for him to do this to me.
How Celine made it so easy for him, by letting him get close.
Before he killed her.
Just like he’s going to kill me.
————
I’m a collection of frozen bones and numb terror when the car finally comes to a squeaking halt. The trunk pops open.
“Come on. Get up,” Jace demands. I don’t know how I never picked up on that harsh undertone in his voice before. His looks must have masked it.
I couldn’t even move if I wanted to, so I simply remain curled in an awkward fetal position, until he seizes my underarms and yanks me out. I drop to the ground, the bite of the snow barely registering against my naked legs.
Stars shine above me. It’s still deep in the night. The same night or another one, I can’t say.
“Get up or freeze out here.” As he heads toward a small cabin built into a hill, the snow crunches beneath his boots, the only sound that reaches my ears. We’re nestled within a peaceful forest, Celine’s killer and me. The only things I can see are thickets of trees and a beautiful expansive sky and a Cutlass with New York State plates that’s bordering on vintage status. Definitely not the car I climbed into tonight.
I don’t even scream. Without even trying, I know that my voice is long gone.
Is this his place?
Picking up a loose brick, Jace breaks the panel of glass in the door and reaches through with gloved hands to unlock it. He disappears inside.
I guess it’s not his place.
I stay where I am, pondering how this could have gone so differently had I not let my guard down. It was a beautiful setup, really. Cameras at Hollingsworth would have captured nothing more than a five-minute conversation and then an amicable farewell, with Jace leaving before me.
That side street was dark and empty and, I’m certain, void of any security cameras. Of course he couldn’t know for sure that I’d accept his offer, that I’d be thirsty enough to take the water he had prepared especially for me. He could only hope for it.
And it paid off.
Boots crunching against snow announces his return. “You’re a stubborn bitch, right to the end.” He hoists me to my feet by my arms. I struggle to stand, and so he ends up half-dragging me through the snow and in through the door. It leads into the cabin’s unfinished basement, nothing but concrete-block walls with exposed joists above and two naked bulbs to give some light. A furnace sits in the far right corner, a flight of wooden stairs ahead.
He shoves me at the stairs. “Climb, now.”
“I can’t. My wrists,” I manage, my voice a hoarse whisper.
He grabs the binding, and I wince in pain and expectation, thinking he’ll drag me. But after a few sharp tugs and the sound of cord being cut, my arms flop to the stairs, freed.
And now I know that he has a knife.
“Get upstairs.”
Slowly, and painfully, I crawl each of the soft steps that still smell of fresh pine, like they were recently built. When I reach the main floor of what looks like a small but homey A-frame cabin, Jace forces me to the left, toward a blindingly bright light and a tub of running water.
He pushes the bathroom door open and a wall of steam hits my face. “No, no . . .” My head shakes and I try to take steps back but I’m too weak, too numb.
“Get in.” A violent tug and tearing sound, and the next thing I know my dress is on the floor and I’m down to my soiled undergarments and Jace is lifting me into the bathtub.
I’m stabbed by thousands of sharp prickles as the hot water touches my frozen skin. My mouth opens, but I find no relief in my soundless screams, as he stands there and watches me suffer.
I begin to cry.
CHAPTER 45
Maggie
Even though I suspected Jace at one point, being in this situation now is surreal. I look up at him, hovering over me with arms crossed, waiting for—I assume—my body to thaw, and I still can’t believe this is happening.
That he is capable of this kind of cruelty.
“Don’t bother fighting back,” Jace warns, his voice hollow and deathly calm. He grabs hold of the plug with gloved hands and releases it. The now-cool bath water begins draining quickly.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask, and my throat burns with the question.
“Because you wouldn’t fucking stop. You just kept pushing and pushing and—” Anger slips into his tone and he abruptly cuts himself off. When he speaks again, it’s back to that eerie calm. “If you’d just left it alone, this wouldn’t be happening. I wouldn’t have to do this. You brought this on yourself. You did. This is your fault. No one else’s fault but yours.”
“Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”
He glares at me, but in his eyes, I see a wild mix of panic and fear burning bright. “She was going to destroy my life.”
“No, she wasn’t. She wasn’t the one blackmailing you. Grady was!” I’m waiting for Childs to confirm that, but I’m sure of it. “It wasn’t her fault.”
“Wasn’t it?” He bites the inside of his lip. “If she hadn’t been a whore, then none of this would have happened. But because she was a whore, she invited that sick fuck into our lives to try and ruin me.”
The water is receding quickly, exposing my pink, raw skin to the cool air, making me shiver uncontrollably. I curl my limbs around my body to ward off his icy blue eyes as they travel over me.
His lips twist in an unpleasant smirk. “Where is that confident Maggie Sparkes who liked to dress up and tease me in my office?”
I glare at him. “She’s been kidnapped. It doesn’t suit her.”
“There she is . . . Don’t worry. There’s nothing about you right now that turns me on.”
Then why throw me into the bath? I assumed it was because I pissed and vomited all over myself, and he wanted me clean before he violated me.
Even with the shock of the hot water, I still feel groggy. “W
hat did you give me?”
“It doesn’t feel good, waking up after someone has drugged you, does it?”
I glare at him.
“I wasn’t sure how well the Ambien would work on its own so I added a Percocet. You went down faster than I expected. I’m guessing the champagne helped.”
And here I was, worried about a hangover.
His voice turns icy again. “Get up.”
I use the sides of the tub to brace myself as I stand, every inch of my body sore. There’s no point in refusing him, because I’m guessing it’ll just cause me pain.
That doesn’t mean that I won’t fight back.
Jace takes several steps back, as if he can read my thoughts. “Don’t try anything because it’ll only end badly for you.” As if to prove how badly, he retrieves the serrated hunting knife from the leather holder attached to his hip, and a gleam of light catching the sharp blade stalls my plan of attack.
He changed at some point, exchanging the suit from the auction house for a simple black crewneck and black pants. I don’t know what he has planned for me, but the black leather gloves tell me it’s something that requires covering his tracks.
I need to be smart. Injuries will make it harder to run.
And I still don’t have my full strength. Even after soaking in a hot bath, my bones ache and my body shakes uncontrollably. I’ve never felt cold like this before in my life, right to my core, as if I’ll never fully thaw. “Can I have a towel?”
“No. Walk.”
With wariness, I do, catching my reflection in the mirror—a hideous version of myself, the little makeup I wore to the auction streaking my cheeks. Dark bruises have already formed around my arms.
I catch Jace’s icy gaze in the mirror and I hold it defiantly, refusing to show the fear he wants to see, even as a sharp point pricks my hip.
“Here.” He throws a bath towel at me, holding it by the very edge with his gloved hand. “I can’t stand the sound of chattering teeth. Now move.”
I hug the towel around myself and stumble to keep up as he uses the edge of the knife to herd me left and down the hall, toward a faint glow of light, never laying so much as a finger on me. I think that’s intentional. Now I understand why he forced me into the bath—hoping to rid my body of all evidence that he ever touched it. That brings me some small comfort that rape isn’t on the agenda.
“In there.”
I find myself in a small, simple bedroom with a double bed adorned by a quilted blanket. A clunky wooden nightstand sits on the far side, decorated with a picture of two small children smiling out at me, and a sizeable granite rock with a clock embedded in its face, telling me that it’s nearly four a.m. Resting next to the picture and the rock clock are a set of handcuffs, a glass with clear liquid in it, and two plastic ziplock bags with contents I can’t see from here.
That’s his plan.
He’s going to bind my wrists and pump me full of drugs. That’s how I’m going to die. An overdose, just like Celine. Quick, clean, the least risk of leaving evidence of himself in a struggle. “Coward,” I whisper.
“Why? Because I’m smart? Because I’m not stupid enough to use a gun that could somehow be traced back to me? Because I’m not animalistic enough to carve you into pieces with this knife? Anyone can buy Oxy; no one will ever be able to connect those dots. Not even your overpriced PI.”
“Like I said . . . coward.”
“Get on the bed,” he demands. He doesn’t even sound like himself anymore.
He sounds like someone who’s preparing himself for murder.
But I refuse to prepare myself for dying.
My instincts tell me to run, and so I try, spinning on my heels, ready to claw, punch, knee my way to safety. Because I am going to die here if I don’t.
He’s ready for it, though. Pain explodes in my cheek as his fist connects with it. I stumble back and lose my balance, falling onto the mattress.
“You never listen, do you?” he snaps. He sets the knife down on the nightstand—at least he didn’t stab me—and, seizing my ankles with rough hands, he hoists my legs onto the bed until I’m lying on my back. I’m still so dazed, I don’t realize that he’s bound my wrists at the front with the handcuffs until after the metal click sounds.
“You don’t have to do this,” I say, stalling, struggling to breathe through the pain. I need to keep him talking. Just long enough to stall that lethal cocktail from sliding down my throat.
“Yes, I do. You won’t stop. You said so yourself, that day in my office. You’re like a dog on a bone with that fucking vase. I guess I can understand, given the value of it.” He shakes his head. “Celine and all her note-taking. Who keeps paper records still? I’m glad I was at her apartment that day when you handed those books over to that friend of hers. I thought I’d covered my ass when I deleted her pictures and that post she was writing.”
Realization hits me like a hard slap to the face. “You did take it, after all . . .” I was right the first time around. It wasn’t Grady. But then . . . why was that vase in Grady’s closet?
“Of course I did. I’m not going to leave millions of dollars behind.” He dumps the crushed contents of a pill bottle into the glass, tapping the bottom of it once . . . twice . . . I’m guessing he’s not going to stage this as a suicide, seeing as there’s no reason for me being out here, in the middle of nowhere. “I had already decided to sit on it for a while before I got it appraised, to see if Celine was right. But once I learned you guys were inventorying everything she owned, and I realized that she also kept written catalogues, I just knew that little friend of hers would find a record of it. And with my luck, he’d start thinking the same thing she did—that this was a real find—and then he’d notice it was missing. And, lo and behold, I was right.”
“So you killed Celine for money?”
He scoffs. “What kind of a bottom feeder do you take me for, Maggie?”
And now he’s coming at me, grabbing the back of my neck and hoisting me into a sitting position. He lifts the lethal cocktail.
He’s not going to put that in my body. I’m not going to let him.
He must see the unspoken determination in my eyes because he picks up the knife. I gasp with panic as he approaches me, aiming the edge at my neck until I feel a sharp pinch. “So here’s how it’s going to work. You’re going to drink every last drop and not move, because if you move, this knife will slice open your throat and you’ll bleed out quickly.”
I close my eyes as tears slip down my cheeks. As much as I’d like to defy him and fight, my survival instincts keep my body frozen in place. Maybe there’s not enough Oxy in this drink to kill me. Maybe someone will rescue me in this isolated part of the woods.
He presses the glass to my lips. “Open!” I do, and he pours the liquid down my throat. I struggle to swallow against the chunks of too many pills and the burn of alcohol.
I’m going to die here tonight.
I wonder how long it will take.
I glare at him, waiting for him to pull the glass away. His eyes flicker to mine once but then shift away quickly as he does. As if he can’t actually face what he’s about to do to me.
Good. At least he feels guilt.
“You shouldn’t have killed her,” I mumble bitterly. “If you hadn’t killed her, I wouldn’t be here now. So this is all your fault. You have no one to blame but yourself.”
He shakes his head, tucking the knife back into the holder hanging from his belt. “She would have turned on me eventually. Do you even have any idea what your friend’s mental state was that night?”
I wince against the gritty pill residue left on my tongue. “No, I don’t. Why don’t you tell me?”
CHAPTER 46
Celine
November 15, 2015
I can still fix this. I know I can.
I smear the tears from my cheek with my palm as I gaze at his picture.
It’s been weeks since I found out that Jace slept with his assist
ant and I still can’t shake the hurt. That day, when my phone beeped with a group text from Marnie to Dani and me, saying “Guess who’s banging her boss! Shhhh . . . ,” followed by an image of Jace lying asleep in his bed, it was like someone punched me in the gut.
I bolted from my desk and ran for the office restrooms, but not before several people saw the tears streaming down my face and sent Dani in to check on me. Of course I used my dying mother as the excuse. How horrible am I! But I had no choice. I couldn’t tell her the truth.
It was wrong of Natasha to take this of him—he would hate it if he knew. It was probably also wrong of me to print it out, but I couldn’t help myself.
Natasha shouldn’t have taken it and Marnie shouldn’t have forwarded it, but I’m glad she did. It proves how easily personal, private information can spread. I’m glad we kept our relationship under wraps. Now there’s no one to question why we broke up.
I deleted all record of the photo from my possession, except for this printed copy. It’s helped ease my anxiety, helped me drift off to sleep. Almost more than the alcohol.
What if I can’t fix this, though?
I trace my finger over his image, sleeping so peacefully. “You are going to ruin me,” I whisper. God, I’m such a fucking mess.
I fold up the picture and tuck it into the secret compartment of the lockbox that Maggie got me for my birthday years ago—the most thoughtful present she’s ever given me—next to the wad of cash I’ve managed to set aside. It’s enough to cover rent and bills for December and January. After that . . . well, Maggie will come in and save the day, and there’s nothing Mom will be able to do to stop her.
I need to get ahold of myself. I’m usually pretty good outside the comfort of my apartment, forcing smiles with Ruby and Dani. But the depression has bowled me over. I reach for the full bottle, a new prescription that I filled this morning at the drugstore. I told my doctor that I needed a stronger dose, that this time it was bad.
But it won’t be forever, I promise myself. It’s going to get much better, soon, because I have made the discovery of a lifetime with this vase.