by Sofia Daniel
I clamped my mouth shut and raised my bound hands over my face.
“He rapes them?” asked the man.
The janitor’s quickened breaths filled my eardrums.
I blurted, “They all come to him willingly and exchange sexual favors for help.”
“What kind of… help?” asked the man through clenched teeth.
My gaze flicked up to Mr. Carbuncle. The mustache that took up most of the middle of his face quivered with malevolence. My stomach churned, and I reminded myself that the only way I might get through this ordeal was to create discord among my abductors.
“When a girl forgets her keys and is locked out of her room, she needs to go to Mr. Carbuncle.”
The man’s back stiffened. “What?”
“No,” cried Mr. Carbuncle. “You’ve got to believe me. I only went with the girls who visited my lodge and wanted something over and above. It was never for things like unlocking doors or replacing lost keys”
“Then what did you do for them?”
The chill in the man’s voice made me think he might be more dangerous than Mr. Carbuncle. When his elbow rose as though to pull something out of his inside pocket, I drew in a sharp breath through my nostrils. What if he had a gun? I fixed my gaze on the can of diet coke lying on its side on the dust sheet. While there was still hope of using me for a ransom, he wouldn’t shoot me… yet.
“M-Mr. Carbuncle let Charlotte into my room to search it,” I blurted. “I caught them on camera. And there was the time she put something in my shampoo, the time she put dye on my clothes, and the time they both arranged for a crowd of students to attack me.”
The janitor backhanded me across the face. My head jerked back and hit the wall, and pain ricocheted through my skull. With a nervous, high-pitched giggle, he said, “She’ll say anything to make trouble.”
“I’m. Not. Lying.”
“Shut up!” He booted me in the stomach. Pain lanced through my belly, but it was still less excruciating than the time Charlotte kicked me in the diaphragm. “Or your stepfather will need to pay another million when I make a tape of you choking down my cock.”
“Stop,” snapped the man. “She’ll be unrecognizable with these bruises. Get out and take a cigarette break.”
My eyes squeezed shut, and a boulder of regret dropped into my stomach. I’d overplayed my hand, and now the man was more concerned about the ransom money than about Charlotte’s virtue.
Mr. Carbuncle stalked out of the room, opened a door and then slammed it shut. It sounded like an external door, but I couldn’t be sure.
The man turned around, holding a huge SLR camera in front of his face. One hand held the curved grip underneath the shutter, while the other cupped an oversized lens, obscuring the entirety of his features.
A pained breath whistled out of my lungs. He wanted these photos as high-resolution as possible to capture every detail of my bruises. With photos of my injuries getting worse each day, and the inclusion of a few with Mr. Carbuncle, the man looked to shame Rudolph into paying my ransom.
After the last photo, he turned around and stepped through the open doorway. “I’ll be leaving for an hour. Maybe longer. For your own safety, don’t say anything while I’m gone to rile Carbuncle.”
Terror warbled in the back of my throat. He had his day one photo. Now Mr. Carbuncle would be free to hurt me however he pleased!
“Don’t leave,” I whispered. “He’ll kill me for telling you what he did with Charlotte.”
“He won’t let you die.” The man walked into the darkened hallway. A door creaked open, then a moment later, it clicked shut.
A wave of determination tightened my muscles, and I sucked in a deep breath. If I didn’t find a way to leave before Mr. Carbuncle returned from his cigarette break, I probably wouldn’t want to live after he’d finished with me.
Sitting with both feet firmly on the ground, I pushed my back into the wall, and used my thighs to propel myself up. The pressure exacerbated the pain around my shoulders, my lumbar, and the back of my head, but I clenched my teeth and forced myself to keep going. Sweat beaded on my brow, and my pulse echoed in my ears, but I ignored everything to push myself to standing.
I hobbled across the room, through the doorway, and into the darkened hall, hoping that the man had left the front door unlocked. It was one of those stainless steel smart door locks with a digital display. I gripped its handle with my bound hands and pulled down.
It was stuck and probably needed an app to unlock it.
A cry of frustration flew from between my lips, and I rushed back to the room. If the apartment wasn’t too high off the ground, I would have to jump.
As soon as I crossed the threshold of the room, my gaze locked onto a tall, dark figure standing outside the window. He held his smartphone like a torch, its flash illuminating the empty space.
Chapter 15
I froze at the doorway, my heart in my throat, and stared at the dark figure at the window. He was too tall to be Tom, the Saturday Correspondent’s tech guy, and wasn’t wearing the uniform of a police officer. Whoever he was, he had to be better than an enraged and oversexed Mr. Carbuncle. The man made a shooing motion with his hand, which I interpreted to mean he didn’t want me to come any closer.
With a nod, I remained at the doorway. My gaze darted to the front door, which remained closed… for now. How long did it take to smoke a cigarette? Two minutes? Five?
The dark figure tucked his smartphone away, plunging himself in semi-darkness. Then he drew his arm all the way back and punched the glass with his gloved fist. Shards flew into the room and clinked over the parquet floor and onto the electric heater beneath the sill. I clapped my hand over my mouth and gasped. Had he hurt himself? And what the hell was he standing on, a ladder? We had to be several stories high, as there were no views of street lights from beyond the window.
The dark figure hooked his arm through the gap he had created in the broken glass and fiddled with the window lock. After a moment, his arm sagged.
“Emilia,” said a familiar, smoky voice. “See if you can open it from your end.”
My hands dropped from my face. “B-Blake?”
“Hurry!”
I rushed over to the window, the soles of my boots crunching over broken glass, and twisted a metal lever on the window lock. Like the one on the door, it was stuck fast. I peered at its mechanism and found a tiny keyhole. “It’s locked.”
“Climb out, then.” He raised his head, as though looking over my shoulder. “Hurry, before he comes back.”
Jagged shards clung to the window frame, looking like they would slice me open if I dared to climb out. “We have to clear the glass.” I glanced over my shoulder at the dust sheet. “Hold on.”
Blake picked at the pieces of glass with his gloved hands and threw them down into the room. I picked up the cloth in my arms, rushed back to the window, and with a combination of fingers and teeth, I wrapped it several times around my hands, so it resembled a mitt. While I removed the pieces of glass in the lower part of the window, Blake took care of the ones above. All throughout, my hands shook, and my heart hammered against my chest, urging me to hurry the fuck up before the return of Mr. Carbuncle.
As soon as I cleared all the bottom shards, I wiped the glass from the top of the electric heater, hoping I’d caught the worst of them. “Th-that will have to be enough. We can’t risk him coming back.”
Blake offered me his gloved hand. “Take it slow,” he said in a voice too panicked to be soothing. “I’ll catch you.”
I stepped forward, but my mind conjured up an image of a long, rubber ladder that would sway like an upside-down pendulum the moment I added my weight to Blake’s. One foot stumbled over the other, and a band of panic wound around my chest and squeezed my lungs, making me grip the windowsill.
“W-what are you standing on?” I asked.
“A balcony. Hurry. We still have a way to run.”
The tightness around my chest l
oosened, giving me the courage I needed to crawl out. I grasped Blake’s hand and placed a knee onto the electric heater. The movement sent pain lancing across my ribs, making me hiss and flinch.
He drew in a gasp. “Emilia, are you—”
“I-I’m fine,” I lied.
With Blake’s help, I hoisted my other knee up onto the top of the electric heater. Blake reached through the window and wrapped his arms around my back. His touch aggravated every single bruise on my ribs. A whimper caught in my throat, and I stiffened with the pain.
He stilled. “I’ve hurt you.”
“Keep going,” I said between clenched teeth. “Please.”
He continued pulling me through, each touch exacerbating my already battered body. Mr. Carbuncle had either bashed me about while I was unconscious, or I’d been too scared to feel the extent of his blows during his interrogation.
My feet cleared the window sill and they landed onto the concrete floor of the balcony with a thud, giving my insides an agonizing jolt that made me double over and clutch my stomach.
“Emilia!” Blake grabbed my arm, his voice breathy with concern.
“I’m fine,” I gritted out. “We have to keep moving.”
A four-foot-wide, concrete balcony stretched across the side of the building, ending in a metal partition, where it continued over the territory of the next apartment. My stomach clenched painfully at the thought of all that climbing. I could barely walk in my battered condition.
Blake crouched onto one knee. “Get on my back.”
I drew back, wrapping my arms around my middle. “But I’ll slow you—”
“Now. You’re clearly injured and can’t move fast.”
I edged toward his back and placed my arms over his shoulders. He was right. But I hoped I wouldn’t weigh down his movements or cause him to overbalance as he traveled through the balconies. Blake hooked his arms under my knees and stood. My insides groaned with the pain of being jostled, but I pressed my lips together and breathed hard.
Blake turned to the left and hurried toward the barrier separating the apartment from that of its neighbor’s. Each footfall made my insides hurt, but I tightened my aching stomach muscles to lessen the impact.
Behind us, a door from deep within the apartment yawned open.
My heart jumped into my throat. “He’s back!”
Blake scrambled over the partition of the first balcony and sprinted across the second. From further away, another door slammed open.
“Fuuuck!” shouted Mr. Carbuncle.
My insides turned cold, and a whimper reverberated in the back of my throat. “H-hurry,” I whispered. “He’ll be at the window, now.”
Blake didn’t reply. He vaulted over the second balcony partition and sprinted across the next. I clung to his back, tightened my grip on his shoulders, and clamped my legs harder around his middle. Each of his movements sent lances of pain through my insides. None of that mattered. Blake might be younger, but he was built like a runway model, not a mountain gorilla like Carbuncle. And I was weighing him down.
Mr. Carbuncle’s furious roar made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, and he made the pained cry of someone who had just slashed himself on a shard of broken glass.
My breaths quickened, and my pulse thrashed harder between my ears. If he ever caught up with us… Terror blanked my mind, and I focussed on the sounds behind us. The dull thud of heavy feet landing on concrete, a muttered curse, and the stampede of running footsteps.
Blake’s thrashing heartbeat reverberated through his back and into my chest, making my own accelerate to match his.
The sound of a body hitting metal, most probably Mr. Carbuncle crashing against the barrier between balconies, made the lining of my stomach tremble. I couldn’t look over my shoulder, in case I slowed Blake’s movements, but the crash of feet mere yards behind us was indication enough that Mr. Carbuncle had built up his own rhythm of hurdling over the barriers.
Sprint, leap, thud. Sprint, leap, thud. Blake ran like a man chased by a demon. I clung tighter to his torso and closed my eyes, clenching my teeth against the red-hot pain of my organs thrashing within an already agonized body. Tendrils of fear clawed at my spine, as though sent by Mr. Carbuncle himself.
It was probably my fevered imagination, but someone’s hot breath warmed the back of my neck, and panting breaths filled my ears.
But when the tips of huge fingers swiped at my back, I screamed.
Up ahead, something creaked. “Did you find—”
Blake swerved left, barreled into someone, and shouted, “Close the door!”
A door slammed shut. Blake tripped, stumbled, and righted himself. Behind me, a key turned in the lock, just as heavy fists pounded against metal and glass.
“What the devil is going on?” asked a cultured male voice.
My limbs, which up until now had been rigid, flopped with relief, and I slid down Blake’s back and onto the parquet floor. Adrenaline receded away, and every ounce of pain it had kept at bay surged forward. I curled into a ball on the ground and groaned.
“Emilia!” Blake knelt at my side.
“I-is she alright?” asked the other voice.
“No.” Blake’s voice broke. “That man out on the balcony hurt her.”
“We must call nine-nine-nine!” cried the man.
“I have the sergeant’s mobile. They’re somewhere in the building.”
Overwhelming, red-hot pain settled through my insides, up one side of my face and pounded to the beat of my heart. I squeezed my eyes shut and refused all offers of a drink or a pill or a sofa. Right now, I wouldn’t be able to take another jostling.
Everything hurt so much, I thought I would die. Blake knelt beside me, rubbing my hands, one of the few parts of my body that didn’t hurt. He murmured to someone on the phone and asked the man in the apartment for his floor and apartment number.
Moments later, a heavy fist pounded on the door. It opened and a group of even heavier footsteps entered the room.
Just as a male voice called my name, I passed out.
I awoke, not in a busy emergency room, but in a well-appointed office with a middle-aged man clad in a tweed, three-piece suit, standing over me. Square, horn-rimmed glasses magnified his cerulean-blue eyes, and his thin lips turned down at the corners. The only thing that indicated he might be a doctor was the stethoscope around his neck and two nurses in navy blue uniforms flanking him on both sides.
“Ah, Miss Hobbs,” he said in the same kind of difficult-to-understand upper-class accent as Duncan and Coates. “I’m glad to see you’re back with us.”
My gaze darted around the room. It reminded me somewhat of Edward’s study back in Elder House, with its mahogany bookshelves, matching leather desk, and chesterfield sofas, but I lay on an examination table in the corner, and at the wall in front of me was a sink hanging beneath three different types of dispensers. On the other side of the room, certificates adorned the walls along with framed pictures of the skeletal and muscular systems. This had to be some kind of upscale doctor’s office.
“My name is George Chumley-Stokes,” said the doctor. “Mr. Simpson-West insisted you be brought here for treatment instead of the local A and E. I gave you a mild sedative when you arrived, as you were rather agitated, and you’ve had X-rays, CT scans, and an ultrasound. Fortunately, there are no cracked ribs or significant internal injuries, but you’ll be sore for a very long time.”
“But I feel fine.” My face was tight.
His eyes softened. “That will be the morphine, my dear. It should last until bedtime, and after that, you’ll need to take a course of analgesics and anti-anxiety medications to help you rest.”
“Where’s Blake?” I asked.
“He’s in the waiting room,” said the Asian nurse. “Would you like us to let him in?”
I nodded.
Dr. Chumley-Stokes furrowed his brow. “Two police officers are also outside. Are you ready to speak with them?”
/> “Yes.”
A moment later, Blake stepped into the room, his face pale, and eyes bloodshot. As soon as we locked eyes, he flinched. The movement was so slight I might have missed it, if it hadn’t sent a bolt of fear through my gut.
“Wh-what’s wrong?”
“Enough time has passed for the swelling and bruises to emerge.” The doctor clapped his hand on Blake’s shoulder and gave him the kind of squeeze that indicated they knew each other extremely well. He said to Blake, “Your young lady is fine and just needs a little rest and care.”
Blake’s shoulders sagged with relief, and the corners of his mouth flickered into a smile. He crossed the room, sat at a chair beside the examination table, and took my hand. “How are you feeling?”
“Not too bad, considering,” I replied.
Before he could say much else, a pair of uniformed officers stepped through the doors. The shorter of them, who wore the flat cap of a sergeant, asked, “Miss Hobson, what can you tell us about Peter Underwood?”
Chapter 16
I knew the name, of course. Peter Underwood was Charlotte’s older brother. The one she said worked for the Saudi Royal family but had amassed enough gambling debts to ruin the Underwood family fortunes. What I didn’t understand was his connection with Mr. Carbuncle.
The police revealed that the Saturday Correspondent had shared recordings of Peter Underwood dragging me across the hallway and down a few flights of stairs into an empty apartment. Because he had positioned me face-down, they were unable to work out exactly how many flights of stairs I’d been moved, and which apartment they had used as their hideout.
All throughout the explanation, Blake stared at me with the kind of tight expression people used to hold themselves back from saying something they would regret. I had no doubt that once the police had left, he would explain how he had managed to find me before them.
The sedative must have still lingered in my system because I remained calm as I told the officers as much as I could, considering I had been unconscious for most of the ordeal, and they probably had the footage from the camera in my hair. The taller constable wrote down my statement, read it out to me, and got me to sign.