by Anna Blakely
Shit. Shit. Shit.
His eyes widened with surprise to see her standing there. Then, he smiled.
“Oh, good. You’re awake.”
She glared at him, her blood boiling. “No thanks to you. What the hell did you give me?”
“Just something to help you relax. I couldn’t have you taking another swan dive out the car, now could I?”
Asshole.
“Let me go, Caleb. You could just walk away right now and disappear. Start fresh somewhere. Everyone already thinks you’re dead, and I promise I won’t say a word to anyone. Just let me go. Please.”
He looked confused. “Why would I want to do that? That would defeat the whole purpose.”
“The purpose of what?” she yelled, staring back at him like the psycho he was. “You know you won’t get away with this. People are going to miss me. They’ll come looking for me.”
Caleb’s lips curled up into an arrogant smirk. “They won’t know to come here. And with everyone thinking I’m dead, no one will be looking for me, either. Maybe they’ll think you simply decided to run off on your own.”
“My car is still at my apartment, remember? My purse and keys are still in it. They’re going to know something happened to me.”
Eventually.
Charlie schooled her expression, refusing to let him see she had any doubts about being found.
“Hmm. Good point.” He nodded. “Big-time lawyer murdered. His ex-wife disappears without a trace. It’ll make for a good story.”
“This isn’t a story!” she screamed. The pain in her head increased, causing her to wince, but she kept on. “Jesus, Caleb. You killed a man in order to fake your own death, and then you abducted me. What the hell’s the matter with you?
He looked back at her with genuine bewilderment. “Nothing’s the matter, Charlotte. Not anymore. I have you back, now.”
Caleb took a step toward her. As he did, Charlie stepped back. Rage filled his crazy eyes, and he raised his arm, the gun’s barrel pointing directly at her head.
“Don’t do that. Don’t act like you’re afraid of me.”
He closed the short distance still separating them. This time, as much as it pained her, Charlie stood still.
Using the barrel of the gun, Caleb brushed her hair from her eyes. “I thought I’d die when you left me. I wanted to. I love you so much, Charlotte.”
“Right.” She jerked her head away from the gun. “You love me so much you beat the shit out of me for years.”
“That was for you, too, Charlotte. Sometimes you have to be broken down so you can be built back up. It’s what makes you stronger.” With a curled lip, he added, “Just ask your hero. He’d tell you. The entire military is based on the concept.”
“Except this isn’t the military, Caleb. This is my life.”
“You’re right. This is better than the military. I’m better. Better than Derek West, that’s for damn sure.”
“No. You’re not.”
His face reddened. “You think West is so fucking smart? He’s in police custody right now because of me.” Caleb slapped a hand to his chest. Then, he laughed. “It was so easy, too.”
He always did love to talk about himself. Get him to talk, Charlie. Get him to tell you everything so you can help Derek.
“How’d you do it, Caleb? How did you get away with it all?”
She’d opened the door, and as expected, the narcissist stepped right in. Charlie listened closely as Caleb told her everything, committing every detail to memory so she could tell them to the police, later.
“It was so simple, really. A couple of cuts on my arm and a trashed apartment and the scene was set.”
He pulled one of his sweater’s long sleeves up to reveal a large, white bandage.
“Went a little deeper than I’d originally planned, that only made it more believable. Anyway, after that, I slid down the laundry chute. Laundry service was done for the night, so before I staged the apartment, I placed one of the full bins underneath the chute’s opening. Worked like a charm, too.”
Caleb beamed with self-pride. “After that, I found my replacement.”
“Replacement?” Charlie asked, feigning ignorance. She wanted to know who the poor man was who’d been killed.
“Remember the homeless person I mentioned earlier? Yes, well, he was actually the man your precious West hired to bring me those fucking divorce papers. Turns out, he’d also been hired to keep watch over me.”
“You killed Shane?” Charlie wanted to cry.
The poor man had given his life trying to protect hers. When Derek finds out, it’ll crush him.
“Was that his name?” Caleb asked with indifference. “I didn’t bother asking. You should’ve seen it, Charlotte. It was brilliant, actually. The guy was sitting against the corner of the building, near the alley, like he had been every night for the past few weeks. I just walked up to him, acted like I was going to give him some money, and stabbed him. Poor bastard never saw it coming.” He chuckled. “Can you believe he even sat in a spot the building’s new cameras couldn’t see? It was like it was meant to be.”
This man is so deranged.
“How did you get the body away without anyone seeing you?”
“The place was dead, no pun intended.” He laughed at his own joke. “My car was just around the corner. All I had to do was carry him a few feet and drive off. Found an abandoned warehouse, parked behind it, changed the guy’s clothes and put my wallet and watch on him. A little gasoline and a match, and whoosh!”
The excitement in his eyes was mortifying. “You act like you accomplished something great. Caleb, you murdered someone. Don’t you see how wrong that is? How wrong all of this is?”
His eyes went dark again. “You’re wrong. You left me to shack up with another man.”
“Caleb, listen—”
“No, you listen!”
He moved fast, his free hand grabbing the hair on the back of her head.
“Everything I did was for you. Everything!”
Blinking he regained his composure and released his grasp. Then, as though he were a completely different person, Caleb smiled and calmly said, “Dinner will be ready in a few hours. Why don’t you try to get some sleep until then?”
Charlie lost her cool. Using her non-dominant hand, she swung her arm up and punched him square in the jaw. It wasn’t as hard as she would’ve liked, but the unexpected move still took him off guard.
He stumbled to the side. Charlie ran for the door, but Caleb recovered much too quickly.
He grabbed her hair again and pulled, making her cry out from the pain. The hand still holding the gun quickly wrapped around her midsection, pulling her roughly against his body.
When Caleb spoke again, his warm, nauseating breath hit the back of her ear.
“I might have known you’d need a little more convincing after whoring yourself out to that prick. You’re going to learn that fighting me won’t do you any good, Charlotte. Soon, you won’t have a choice but to accept the fact that you belong with me.”
“I will never belong to you, Caleb. It doesn’t matter what you do to me.” Charlie tried to pull away, but his hold only got stronger.
He laughed. “We’ll see. Now, I really must get everything ready for our date, and I can’t be worrying about you trying something foolish. It’s time for you to rest again, darling.”
“Go to hell.”
Caleb transferred the gun to his left hand and did something she couldn’t see with his right.
“Maybe someday. But not tonight. Tonight is all about us.”
She felt a painful sting on the side of her neck followed by a tingling sensation under her skin.
“No!” she screamed, realizing what he’d just done. “You sonofabitch!”
“Shh,” Caleb whispered in her ear. “Just relax, Charlotte. Don’t fight it. Give in to the sleep, and when you wake up, I’ll have everything ready for us.”
Charlie tried yelling at hi
m again but couldn’t. Her tongue was suddenly much too heavy, and as much as she fought against it, she could no longer keep her eyes open.
As the blackness consumed her, she thought about Derek and prayed he was out there somewhere, looking for her.
****
“Where the fuck did he take her?”
With the laptop resting on Jake’s hood, Derek’s fingers flew across the keyboard in search of some clue as to where Caleb would go.
After finding Charlie’s locket, they’d pulled off onto a gravel road and regrouped.
Though it went against her innate need to protect the law, York shocked the hell out of Derek when she called in a favor with a friend in the NYPD homicide division.
Even more surprising was when the straight-laced detective talked the guy into getting Caleb’s personal laptop out of evidence so Derek could access it remotely.
At first, the other detective had argued, saying they needed a warrant, but York assured him they were only going to use what they found to help them find Charlie.
Fortunately, hearing about everything Porter had done up to this point and that an innocent woman’s life was at stake had been enough to convince him.
After only a handful of tries, Derek figured out Caleb’s password—Charlie’s name and numerical birthdate—and was in. He began with a search of the files saved to his desktop before moving on to his other documents.
“There are some files here that are encrypted,” Derek muttered to no one in particular. “Fucker’s a lot smarter than I gave him credit for.”
From somewhere behind him, Mac snorted. “His files are encrypted, but he uses his ex-wife’s name and birthdate as his password? Doesn’t seem very smart to me.”
“It’s been changed recently,” Derek explained. “My guess is the password before this one was much more secure.”
“It’s like the guy just snapped,” Coop commented. “You think the divorce was the trigger?”
Guilt had Derek clenching his jaw. “Most likely.”
Picking up on his mood, Trevor reminded him, “She wanted the divorce, D. You need to remember that.”
He pictured her on the beach that day, sobbing in his arms from the overwhelming relief that she was no longer married to the shithead.
“I know.” He continued his search. “I just can’t help but think there could’ve been a better way to go about it. I thought my threat to go public with what we’d found would be enough to make him back off for good. Instead, it sent him over the edge, and now we don’t even know if she’s alive or...”
A hand squeezed his shoulder. “Focus,” Eric ordered sternly. “Porter wants to control Charlie. Not kill her.”
Drawing in a deep breath through his nose, Derek prayed his brother was right and kept going. Finally, after nearly an hour of skimming through the numerous files, he finally got a hit.
“I think I found something!” he announced excitedly. The others gathered around him.
“What’s that?” York asked.
“A contract and deed to some farmland here in Texas. The listed buyer is a corporation, but I’m willin’ to bet it’s fake.”
His expert eyes flew over the details, focusing on only the important parts.
“According to this, the property includes a house that sits on several acres surrounded by woods. It was recently acquired, too.” Derek thought about the date and looked up at his boss. “It was purchased the day before my car was busted up.”
“Makes sense.” Jake nodded. “He secures a place nearby where he can hold her, at least temporarily, then starts his attacks against you.”
“Where’s it located?” Mac asked anxiously.
Derek quickly searched the address on the deed, the hope he thought he’d lost rushing back in one giant wave.
“It’s two hours north of here.”
Without another word, he grabbed the computer and jumped in the truck. The others started to fall in line but stopped when York hollered at them.
“Wait!”
All eyes fell on her.
“How do we know for sure Porter was the one who bought this place? He’s a lawyer, right? Couldn’t this just be a contract he oversaw for a client?”
Derek shook his head. “I can’t take that chance.”
“Look, Derek. I know you want to find your girlfriend, and so do I, but we can’t just go barging into someone’s home without being certain it’s his. It’s bad enough we’re doing all this off the books. I can’t protect you.” Her eyes skimmed the others before landing on Eric. “I can’t protect any of you if it turns out you’re wrong and you get caught.”
Taking precious seconds, Derek went back to the computer and began another search. This time, he looked for files containing financial records.
It wasn’t long before he found records from a savings account listed under the same name as the corporation. The only other name on the account was none other than Caleb Porter.
“Here. There’s your evidence.” Derek turned the screen toward York. “The guy’s the sole signatory for an account with the same company’s name. Look.” He pointed to a line on the spreadsheet. “A withdrawal in the amount of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars was dated the same date the deed was signed. After that”—he pointed to the following transactions—“there are three transfers from this account to another one. One on the day my car was trashed; the next one on the day Charlie discovered someone had been inside her apartment. The last one is dated the day of the fire.”
“Payoffs,” York mumbled as she studied the screen.
Eric looked at her. “We find out who that other account belongs to, we’ll find the bastard Porter paid to do all that shit.”
“Since then”—Derek continued—“there’s only been one other transaction. A withdrawal of the remaining balance, which was more than enough for Porter to live comfortably for the rest of his life.”
Mac looked York in the eyes. “Still think that farmhouse belongs to someone other than Porter?”
The detective shook her head. “No.” To Derek, she said, “We’ll do this your way, as long as you swear you’ll try to take him alive.”
“Scout’s honor.” Derek held up two fingers.
York gave him a tip of her head, and in less than a minute, they were back on the highway.
“I didn’t know you were a Boy Scout.” Trevor glanced at Derek from the back seat.
With a smirk, he turned to his friend and said, “I wasn’t.”
****
Chapter 24
“Wake up, gorgeous. It’s time for dinner.”
Charlie could hear Caleb’s voice, but she didn’t want to open her eyes. She’d much rather stay in the peaceful oblivion the drugs had taken her to.
“I know you’re awake, Charlotte. It’s time to get up now.”
Damn. Charlie knew she couldn’t hide in the darkness forever. Plus, the sooner she got upstairs for their dinner, the better chance she may have of getting away from the crazy asshole.
Slowly, she opened her groggy eyes. The headache and nausea were back but not as bad as before. From the light coming in through the tiny window, she guessed it was early evening.
Must not have given me as much this time.
“There you are.” He smiled down at her, his fingers gently brushing her hair from her eyes. “I hope you’re hungry. I made a feast.”
She wondered where the hell he’d learned to cook because the fucker had never lifted a finger in the kitchen before.
Charlie chose to remain silent, forcing herself to hold back the run of curses and screams she wanted to blast him with. As much as she hated it, she needed to play nice in order to bide her time until she could figure out her next move.
Caleb held out his hand, and she begrudgingly took it. With a surprisingly gentle tug, he helped her off the bed and onto her feet.
Keeping her hand in his, Caleb led her through the room and up the stairs, into the main part of the house.
&nbs
p; Once there, Charlie looked around, surprised at how large the house actually was. It was a farmhouse with lots of windows throughout.
Plenty of places to break out of.
Caleb continued holding her hand until they reached the dining room to their left. In the center was a beautiful, cherry-finished table set with floral-patterned china and several large dishes and serving bowls filled with steaming food.
She smiled sadly, the scene reminding her of the meal Derek had prepared for her that very morning.
Moisture welled in her eyes, but Charlie forced it away. Crying wasn’t going to help her escape.
But that might.
Her gaze landed on the large glass vase positioned in the center of the table. It was filled with an array of beautiful, red roses. They were just like the ones Caleb used to bring home for her. A peace offering after he’d beaten her.
I hate roses.
He pulled out one of the chairs for her. “Have a seat.”
Charlie noticed the gun tucked in the front of his waistband as he helped her scoot the chair closer to the table. As expected, he sat down in the chair to her right. The head of the table.
Like when they were still together, she passed him the food so he could fill his plate first. Only then was she allowed to get some for herself.
After everything she’d been through, she was far from hungry. Naturally, Caleb wouldn’t let her be.
“Eat up.”
He said it with a smile, but his eyes held a familiar warning. She’d better do as she was told, or else he’d give her one of his reminders.
Filling her fork with some mashed potatoes, Charlie forced the bite down. It took great effort on her part not to show how insane she thought he was.
The man was going through the motions, eating and taking sips of his coffee as if this were any other dinner. Over the next several minutes, he continued to act as though they were a normal couple sharing a normal meal.
The man was certifiable. She was never going to be able to convince him that what he was doing was wrong. Her only way out would be to fight.