Nathan smirks, amused as he blinks up at Alex, playing as if he’s stupid. “Tell you what, how about you pick one of the three questions, and I’ll answer only that one question. Deal?”
Alex throws his glass at the plastic barrier, and it shatters. “You don’t get to tell me shit! I am in control here!”
Nathan rolls his eyes and nods. “Yeah, right, I get it. Whatever you’re going to do, can we just,” Nathan made a ‘move it along’ circle gesture with his index finger, and closed his eyes once more, not wanting to continue entertaining this conversation.
“How did you know about my deal with the Judge? How did you know about my payments? Who are you working with?”
Nathan wonders how long it would take for him to sit here calmly and quietly before Alex loses the last of his self-control and loses his mind. “Does it matter?”
“Yes, it fucking matters! Tell me who you are, who you really are!”
Nathan barely keeps from laughing. “Ah, now that’s the one question that I cannot answer for you. I have no idea who I really am.” It’s honest, probably the most honest thing that he’s said in a very, very long time.
“What the fuck does that mean? How can you not know who you are? That is so fucking stupid.” Alex is on his feet now, pacing. “Everybody is somebody; you didn’t discover me by accident; are you FBI? CIA? Fucking tell me, or I will keep you alive for months just to hack pieces off of you one by one.”
Nathan rolls his eyes. He shifts on that thin mattress until he’s sitting upright with his legs folded underneath him, hoping that his calmness is only pissing Alex off more. He would love it if only the prick would open that door. He would love nothing more than for the idiot to attempt to handle him in one on one combat. That would end very well for Nathan, and then he could take his time learning all of the things that he needs here.
“Bradley Kramer,” Nathan finally answers, staring Alex straight in the eye.
“What about that fucking prick.” Alex’s face instantly darkens, and he holds himself very still.
“I work for Bradley Kramer. He’s a good friend of mine. Told me where to find you, gave me everything I need.”
“That prick, he doesn’t know shit. Try again.” Though there is a slight stammer to his words. “He can try; that restraining order was a fucking joke. As if he could keep me away, I taught him a lesson though. I taught him good.”
“So you admit that you started the fire that killed his wife and daughter?”
“Killed them?” Alex laughs. It’s a dark and sinister sound. “Killed them? So he truly believes that they are dead then? I wondered...I’ve been watching the way that he has been wasting away into practically nothing. I must admit; it’s sort of a thrill knowing so much more than he does. That I won - he might have ruined my career, but I’ve more than gotten even with him. I’ve ruined his entire life.”
“Ruined the life of his wife and daughter too.”
Alex smiles, full set of pearly white teeth on display as he arrogantly stomps over to a light switch by the staircase. “Oh, I would say that’s an accurate statement,” he states as he flips on the switch, illuminating the other half of the basement that they are in. The other surgical room that Alex mentioned is right across the hall from him. It’s set up similarly to his own with the plastic barrier, only there are two mattresses on that side, and the compartment seems twice as large - and there, chained to the wall, is the woman from his vision. The woman that he was in that vision, with her daughter curled into a ball at her feet. Emma. They have been here the whole time.
Chapter Six
T he two girls hardly look alive. The mother has her arms shackled spread to either side, and her hands dangle limp from her chains. It’s hard to tell from this distance if she’s breathing or not. Their clothing is ratty and torn. It appears that he hasn’t bothered to shower or change them in the year that they have been contained in this hell prison. Nathan’s mind is reeling in an attempt to fit this new piece of information together with the rest of the details that he has already figured out.
The sudden introduction of bright light finally causes Emma to stir. What is the wife's name again? Lila, her name is Lila. Will she hear him if he starts to scream? Will she hear her name if it’s called to her? Nathan doesn’t want to even venture a single guess as to what must have happened to the two of them down here. Alex is a twisted fuck, and even worse, that woman upstairs, Tabitha, is clearly in on it.
The shock of it is messing with his memory. For a handful of moments, Nathan’s vision is split between the vision that he can see with his own two eyes in the present, and a twisted montage of things that Lila has seen. She’s not a woman that Nathan knows, but for whatever reason in the course of this case, they are linked. He sees the flashes as if he’s her yet again.
Flashes of her being ripped from Emma’s arms as that bitch Tabitha plays with her daughter’s hair. Twisting it into neat braids despite the fact that they give them nothing more than a bucket of their own piss to wash with. Emma being dragged by her ankles kicking and screaming down the hallway toward the surgical suite and being strapped down onto the table. Her feet forced up into the obstetrical stirrups that Alex placed here on purpose with only the goal of keeping her legs strapped in place and splayed open in mind. Unable to move - unable to do anything but scream and cry for him to stop.
Images of her being thrown, still bloody, back into the room with her daughter and in the position to where she cannot cry any longer, where she cannot scream anymore because she doesn’t want to frighten Emma any more than she has already been frightened. Going over and over the same questions if she has been hurt, if the bad lady has touched her in a bad way. Asking if she’s okay. Singing to her whenever Emma’s tummy gets all grumbly. Attempting to make shadow puppets on the wall to keep her daughter entertained and playing silly sing song games like ‘This little piggy went to market’ and rocking her for hours to keep her asleep until she is allowed to put Emma on the stacked mattresses and curl into a ball around her while silent tears soothe her to sleep. She doesn’t know why this man took her; she doesn’t know him, and she has to assume that it’s random; that they were at the wrong place at the wrong time. She plays over the day that he kidnapped her and her daughter over and over again in her head, cursing herself for not fighting harder, telling herself over and over again that there must have been something that she could have done more. Some little detail that she cannot remember that would have changed the entire outcome, would have made it better for them somehow. Something, anything that she could have done.
Mostly she cries until she’s too dehydrated to cry any longer. She starts to count her ribs under her own skin as the healthy weight she normally carried melts away, but Emma needs to eat, and they never give them enough for both of them to eat enough. Emma is a growing little girl, and she’s always so hungry, so nearly everything goes to her, which makes her weaker, means that she can fight back even less. It makes it hurt more whenever he takes her. She can’t ignore the pain when the bruises come and they take longer to heal each and every time. The worst is when she’s too weak to scream, and he shoves her in the box. A small hole in the wall that she presumes used to be a walk in freezer where they placed all of the dead animals back when this was a hospital. He leaves her in there for days at a time until she scratches her nails bloody and breaks her toes kicking at that door until she’s allowed to have her daughter back in her arms. The hole takes the fight out of her, so even when she’s too hollow inside to scream...she screams anyway.
Somewhere along the line, she loses hope - and spends all of her days telling Emma every detail of every story and movie that she can remember. She tells Emma everything, despite the fact that she’s only speaking in bits and pieces, everything is going to be delayed from growing up here in such a small space. She doesn’t know what the man will end up doing with them. She never knows, and he doesn’t seem to want anything from them but pain. He seems to only exist to
get off on pain. Such monsters never existed in her childhood. Things and people like this weren’t cautionary tales told to her at any point in her otherwise sheltered life, and now she’s having the worst sort of reality crash course. She knows that she should be stronger for Emma...but it’s so hard. It hurts so much when he cuts her; it hurts so much when he doesn’t. His appetites are deranged. Daily, she wishes nothing more than to be given sandpaper so that she can scrub her skin over and over again until she’s nothing but a raw, bloody mess. Perhaps then he wouldn’t want her anymore. She doesn’t want to die because she doesn’t know what he will do to Emma when she’s older. Every day is fear. Constant, unending fear.
Then the vision shifts to something more than the numb regular terror; there’s a new person. Suddenly, Nathan is Lila, staring at himself in a cell like her own, across from her. For a moment, they are one, and Nathan can’t sort out their vision into two again. He hasn’t even realized that she’s fully awake until he realizes that she can see herself through him as well. It is a connection unlike anything that he has ever felt before, one that he wishes he could hold onto, that she might borrow some of his strength. That she could take peace in knowing that no matter what happens, this is almost over. Even if Nathan cannot figure a way out of these cages on his own, this whole thing will be over soon. He wishes that he could tell her that she will be back in her husband's arms before the night is over and that should she like to chop off every single appendage of Alexander Paulson’s body before they leave him down here to rot, that he would happily be the one to stand there and rock Emma to stay asleep while she did it. What kind of monster normalizes a child falling asleep to the sounds of her own mother's screams as if it’s alright. Nathan wants to cut this asshole into pieces, or at the very least, he wants to watch Lila do it. Honestly, he knows now that he would be fine with either turn of events.
Lila strains against her bonds, and Alexander laughs. “I put that there so that she couldn’t hold her daughter. It’s her punishment for being naughty.” Alex turns back to Nathan, “Perhaps I will have to find even more creative ways to hurt you both. Perhaps I’ll have you fight to the death, and whoever wins, I’ll allow you to leave. Wouldn’t that be fun? I’ve never had this many toys in my basement at once.”
Lila looks down to Emma, awake now with her thumb in her mouth, holding the threadbare blanket that they have been given around her tightly as she presses into Lila’s leg for heat and comfort. What sort of sick fuck can look at that poor child and be self-satisfied. It’s a particular form of cruelty to allow that to happen. To enjoy it is even worse. Nathan’s lip curls upward. “I’m going to enjoy killing you very much.”
The company needs to hurry up. At this point, Nathan doesn’t even care that he will be in trouble for fucking this up. He doesn’t care that he might not get to learn anything else about himself; he cares about getting that child out of here. She needs to be back in her home; she and her mother need access to clean water. Their skin is sallow and waxy over their skin, and he can see their signs of obvious dehydration and starvation from all the way over here.
“Does this make you feel powerful, you prick? Is this how you get your rocks off, mother fucker?” Nathan spits.
“Ah, now I’m finally getting a reaction out of you. Yes, to answer your question, this is exactly how I get my rocks off. It’s why I have stayed in this imbecile town for so long. I didn’t mean to keep them this long, but Lila there...she’s such a nice plaything. Every time I have to bump into her husband looking more and more like a shell of a man, I like to come back here and bury myself to hilt in his wife while she cries because I know who really won here. I know who has all the power. I took it from him, and he will never have the audacity, the nerve to work again. Everything that he tried to do to me and more, I’ve done tenfold. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“You’re a sick fuck.” Nathan feels bile rising in his stomach for how twisted that is. He barely manages to keep from puking down the front of his button down shirt. “So what do you need me for? Another sick, twisted power fantasy?”
Alex scoffs. “Maybe, my Tabitha up there...she likes to watch. So maybe I’ll give you to her and let her have a chance to play for a while. She never liked Lila’s face too much. I think she will take Emma for her own once I finally tire of Lila there. Tabitha and I can raise Emma like our own daughter...wouldn’t that be hilarious the next time that I run into little Bradley Kramer, and he sees somebody that looks like his daughter but can’t possibly be. Yes, I think that I will enjoy that very much.”
Lila gasps and attempts to pull the heavy metal chains from the wall until her wrists start to bleed, and the thin skin is tearing.
“I’m going to enjoy killing you, you fucking asshole,” Nathan says with perfect clarity.
Alex marches back up to the front of the plastic divider and grins, clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “And how do you plan on doing that? You’re not going to leave this room until I decide to drag you down the hallway. Perhaps I can have you spend some time in my favorite place, the box; that might break you of your spirit a little bit.”
Nathan doesn’t bother asking what the box is; he already knows from Lila.
“Would you like to see it?” Alex pulls a syringe from his pocket and pulls off the plastic cap with his teeth, starting to push the yellow fluid up to the top of the needle until a small bubble forms and he flicks it off to make sure that there are no more air bubbles inside, clearly not wanting Nathan to die before his time. “Perhaps once I’ve started cutting off pieces of your skin, you will feel more like telling me who you work for, and how they have found me here. Won’t that be a fun little experiment for the both of us?” Alex seemingly cannot control his enthusiasm.
Nathan pushes himself upward until he’s in a standing position, staring the man holding him captive down. The zip ties on his wrists won’t be the easiest thing to get through, but he has faith that he can manage it. He just needs the man to open that plastic barrier and step foot inside, and Nathan will rush him. Anticipating that opening somehow so that he can be ‘sedated,’ Nathan steps backward. This will force Alex to have to come further into the room. Really, he hopes that Alex is stupid enough to do it; he hopes that the man is high enough on his own power trip to be foolish and to make a mistake. It will only take one. Just a moment and then Nathan will free himself and find a way to free them as well. Nathan’s eyes scan the plastic barrier once more for a sign of a door, wondering how that’s going to work when a scream sounds from far away. Alex startles enough that he jerks and drops the syringe. Weak. He is nothing but a weak man pretending to be something bigger than he is. Nathan wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if Alex has always had this problem, leaving a trail of hurt people everywhere that he goes in his life.
Upstairs, Tabitha screams as the sound of glass breaking can be heard all the way down here. It sounds like at least three people have stormed in through the front office. The company, no doubt. Nathan is willing to bet that they are the other Doe operatives like himself coming down here to rescue him, Lila and Emma at this very moment. The screams start to draw closer, and Alex runs up the concrete steps. Not to Tabitha’s aid as it would otherwise appear but to slam that divider door shut right in her face so that he can save himself, or at least he thinks that he can.
“You son of a bi-” Tabitha’s last words before silenced shots shut her up. Nathan really hopes that he shot her right in her mouth; that would be fitting in his opinion. Looking across the way to Lila, Nathan attempts to offer her a calming smile as if he somehow planned this, which he sort of did. They almost did him a favor by attempting to kidnap him as well. Without having been placed down here himself, Nathan never would have known that these two girls are still alive after all of this time. He would have assumed that Alex had killed them, and in doing so would have executed Alex, eliminated Tabitha and ended up leaving these two down here to actually rot to death. Somehow, that didn’t sit right wi
th him. Somehow, this is a detail that the company missed. If he’s incredibly lucky, this will be grounds enough to have his accidental kidnapping dismissed as an error in judgement. Though that might be pressing his luck.
Alex runs into the surgical room and comes back with a gun - apparently intent on executing Nathan or Lila from the way he can’t seem to decide which door to open. He chooses Lila’s, but it's obvious that he’s intending to go for Emma, hoping to use her as a deterrent from being murdered himself, but Alex’s hand slips and ends up opening Nathan’s door instead. The thick, plastic barrier slides sideways into the wall and disappears from view, and Nathan grins savagely. He doesn’t even need hands for this. Alex’s face shifts into a clear mask of terror as he attempts to steady his hands just long enough to lift his gun, but Nathan is too fast.
Nathan’s joined wrists slam upward into Alex’s throat, and the man makes a gurgling sound before crumpling to the ground, and Nathan spits on him. He steps over Alex to the control panel, and the other plastic barrier melts away into the wall as he staggers over to Lila, attempting to free her from her chains at the moment that his team breaks down the door. “It’s okay, it’s all over now,” he says to Lila who clearly doesn’t trust him. “Your husband sent me - I’m here because of Brad...he misses you very much…”
The Doe operatives clear the spaces and turn to Nathan for instruction; he orders them to find something to wrap Emma in and to take her to a medic and get her ice cream. Nathan gestures to Lila that she can follow them if she can walk, and he offers to carry her up the stairs if she can’t. The masked Doe operative cuts his hands free, and Lila glances from them to Alex.
“What will happen to him?”
Nathan studies her expression carefully. “What do you want to happen to him?”
“Put him in the box to rot.”
Nathan nods, and grabs Alex by the wrists and starts to drag him down the hallway, and Lila almost looks shocked that he would do it. Clearly, the fact that he’s not police dawns on her. With shaking legs, she follows and walks into the box with him, stopping to grab a scalpel to make a few body modifications of her own, and Nathan turns his back to give her the privacy to do whatever she wants. He doesn’t ask, and whenever she comes back out a few moments later with blood covering her hands, she doesn’t offer the information. She simply shuts the door and bolts the locks into place. As nobody knew about this basement, it’s unlikely that anybody will ever find his body, and he will die a very slow death. That much they are certain of.
A Ruthless Victim Page 4