Tamara, Taken

by Ginger Talbot

  I fire the gun once, over her head. “Get back here or I’ll shoot!”

  She ignores me and keeps running, so I point the gun at her, aiming for center mass. Shoot the torso rather than the head—it makes a better target, and there are all kinds of juicy internal organs in there. My bullets are hollow-point; they’ll make bloody confetti of her insides. I’ll toss her body in front of my house, flee the scene, and blow that shit sky-high, incinerating her and all the evidence.

  I will do this.

  I can do this.

  Everybody exists to serve my purposes, and when they threaten me, they need to be eliminated. Simple as that. She’s getting further and further away from me, disappearing into the woods.

  The iceman survivalist inside me pulls the trigger. But the new thing that Tamara created jerks the gun at the last second so that the bullet flies right by her left ear.

  She trips and falls to her knees but gets up again. She limps away slowly. She must have wrenched her ankle.

  I tuck my gun in my waistband and catch up to her easily and carry her back to the car. Desperation makes her wild.

  She snatches the gun from my waistband and jams it into my throat, and I stop moving instantly. Her finger is on the trigger. It doesn’t take much pressure at all to fire a Glock. She could do it without even meaning to.

  “Put me the hell down!” Her voice is trembling.

  “Take your finger off the trigger,” I snap at her.

  “You don’t give me orders anymore, asshole. Never again. Put. Me. Down.”

  I should have shot her through the heart when I had the chance.

  But no. I couldn’t ever kill her. Even now.

  I very carefully set her down and back away from her. She’s holding the gun in a two-handed grip. Not a very good one, but she doesn’t have to be good at this distance.

  “Tamara.” I keep my voice steady. “You’re right, you’re not Toy, you never were. I apologize, Tamara. I am sorry for what I did to you. And you’re not going to shoot me. That’s not you. You’re pure good, Tamara. You live to help people, to make things better. We need to get out of here, baby, before my brother shows up. He won’t kill you, Tamara. He’ll torture you to get back at me. He’ll peel your skin off. He’ll burn you alive. You wouldn’t be the first woman he’s tortured to death.” No, after what he did to those social workers, she’d be at least the fifth.

  I start walking toward her, slowly.

  The gun wavers in her hand, and her eyes go wide and desperate. She steps back, wincing in pain from putting weight on her ankle.

  “Please don’t make me kill you!” Her face twists in panic. “I can’t be your slave again, Joshua. I can’t! Just leave!”

  “You won’t be my slave.” I’m almost on her. I reach for the gun.

  She shoots me in the foot, then screams in surprise at what she’s done.

  Instantly, I compartmentalize the pain. And I glory in the fact that she couldn’t find the strength to kill me.

  I lunge forward and snatch the gun from her hand. I wrap my arms around her as she howls and cries.

  “Tamara. It will be different. I want you to come with me right now, I want you to stay with me of your own free will.”

  “Never!” she howls. And the pain of it squeezes my heart.

  This is what heartbreak feels like. No wonder people whine and cry about it so much. It’s vile. It makes me angry and sick to my stomach. It makes me want to kill people.

  My shoe is filling up with blood. Even with my ability to compartmentalize, it’s getting hard to ignore the throbbing agony in my right foot. I feel a little lightheaded.

  Yes, those are sirens I hear.

  “I understand.” I stare at her so she’ll see the truth in my eyes, but she’s twisting away from me. “Whatever happens, I’m sorry for what I did to you. And I thank you for what you did for me. You made me almost human, Tamara. If I could feel love for anyone, it would be you. You are love in human form, the most beautiful thing I’ve ever been privileged to know. You broke down my walls and set me free.” I kiss her neck gently.

  Every word is gulping up time that I don’t have, but it doesn’t matter, because I had to tell her that. She needs to know how I feel. She deserves that, and much more.

  But I’m also not ready to surrender yet. It’s not in my nature. We’re going to drive away. I’m going to blow up the house when we’re at a safe distance, and then I’m going to move us to one of my other hideouts. And I will find and kill my brother.

  I am sure of all these things. I am not a man who panics. I am not afraid at all.

  I open the trunk and drop her in with a thud as she screams. This isn’t my sound-proofed trunk; that car is in my garage, and we don’t have time to go in there. Also, I don’t know what Charlemagne might have done to the garage. He could have messed with the locks, and he could trap me in there.

  This is a fun game for him. He’s somewhere close and he’s watching. I’m sure of it. Will he be forced to kill Tamara? Can he do it? Will he go into the garage so I can lock him in? Will the police catch him before he can escape?

  Everything about this situation is fucked up beyond belief, but I will adapt and survive. If I survived my father, I can survive anything.

  “Listen,” I tell her. “Just keep quiet, and when we’re safe, if you still want to leave me, I’ll let you go as soon as it’s safe for me to do so.”

  In response, she tries to lash out at me with her foot.

  And I slam the trunk shut.

  I hear her kicking the trunk and screaming.

  I need to leave, I need to get the hell out of here as fast as I can, but instead I yank the trunk open and look down at her, at a face that’s still beautiful to me even though it’s contorted with utter hatred.

  “Tamara,” I say to her. “I meant what I said. I know you don’t believe me, but if you just do what I say, I’ll set you free soon. I’m taking up valuable time when I should be driving the hell away from here, and the cops are coming, and I don’t have to tell you this, because I’ve already got you trapped in my car trunk. I’m saying it because it’s true. You’ve made me feel things I never thought I could feel. I’m not the man that I was when I first took you. Please just trust me. I’ll get us out of here, I’ll keep you safe, and once my brother’s locked up again, I will open my front door for you and you can go anywhere you want.”

  “Lying bastard. Why don’t you bleed out already?” she spits at me. I slam the trunk again.

  She hates me, but it doesn’t change my feelings in the least.

  I blink hard as I quickly pull off my shoe and use my sock to bind my foot wound and slow down the bleeding, then I limp over to the driver’s side car door and climb in. My eyes are watering.

  Am I crying?

  Elizabeth is dead, because of me, because of my monstrous selfishness.

  Tamara might not choose me. If I keep my word to her and let her go, she might leave. After everything I did to her, she’d be insane to stay with me, and my beautiful girl is many things, but she is not insane.

  Yes. I am crying. I am a man who is capable of sorrow, who is able to shed tears. There is something astonishingly freeing in this. I wish I could have cried for my brothers. For my mother. They deserved my tears. This feeling is like a scouring fire, cleansing and painful at the same time.

  “Thank you, Tamara,” I whisper, and I turn the key.

  * * *

  Tamara

  It’s suffocatingly hot and dark, and I scramble wildly, trying to find a trunk release latch. Joshua probably disabled it. I kick the trunk lid, uselessly.

  Will he really set me free?

  Of course not. He’s lied to me before without even blinking. And he’s not the kind of man who’d sacrifice his life for someone else.

  He called me Tamara. He opened up the trunk again, and I could hear sirens. He took the time to tell me how he felt about me, even when it meant he was risking prison, or death.

&n
bsp; I want to believe.

  If he were willing to let me come and go as I pleased, would I come back to him?

  I can’t possibly be thinking that. Not after what he’s done to me.

  Me, in an empty apartment… Going to work, talking to people on the subway… I’m trying to picture it in my mind, but all I see is a blank screen. What would I do without him? Where would I go? I can’t imagine life without him anymore. I don’t know if it’s because I forced myself to stop thinking about the outside world in order to survive, or if it’s because I’ve developed some twisted, symbiotic attachment to him.

  Or a terrible mixture of both.

  The car starts to move.

  Elizabeth is dead, and shockingly, that makes me feel awful. I was vile to her, but she was as much Joshua’s victim as I was. She was so wretched that she killed herself to escape her eternal torment.

  We’re bouncing over rutted roads. I’m trapped. It’s dark. It’s like a coffin.

  Calm down. Calm down.

  The car stops.

  I coil my legs back so I can lash out with a kick when he opens the trunk. Nothing happens.

  The car sits there for a long time. Have the police pulled us over? That must be it. I start kicking the trunk and screaming at the top of my lungs.

  The thought of Joshua being arrested makes me feel queasy. That’s ridiculous. It’s so stupid. I will tell the police everything. I have to.

  Would he really have set me free?

  I want to believe it. After all this time, after everything I’ve been through, I still want to believe in the basic decency of humanity, and more, I want to believe in him.

  I don’t understand my snarled, tangled feelings for him, but I don’t want him dead. I had the chance to kill him, but I couldn’t do it.

  What will I do? What will I say when I’m freed? I don’t even like the idea of him being in a jail cell for the rest of his life, but I refuse ever to be a prisoner again.

  I will have to tell the police what he did to me. It’s like Joshua has shaped me into his own image; made me hard and selfish, a survivalist. It’s either him or me, so I choose me.

  Nobody is answering me, and I can’t hear a thing. My throat hurts, so I stop screaming.

  The trunk opens, and I lash out, and someone grabs my legs and drags me out of the car.

  I look up at the handsome face looming over me.

  He drops me on the ground with a painful thud.

  “We need to change cars,” he says to me.

  The sirens are closer. We’re on a dirt road hemmed in by trees, and light snow is drifting down on us now. I shiver and hug myself.

  I look up at him, keeping my voice steady. “Joshua. The police are here. Just let me go, and I won’t say anything. Just like we agreed.”

  He shakes his head, smiling.

  “No need to pretend, princess. You know I’m not him. But I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced. I’m Charlemagne. Or I was. I go by a different name now. You may call me Micah.”

  My shoulders slump in despair.

  “So Joshua is dead?” The thought makes me want to weep, or vomit.

  I don’t want him to be dead.

  I want him back. I want to hit him and hurt him and forgive him. I want to believe him. I want to trust him. I want to destroy him. I want him to really, truly love me, so we can be together forever.

  “Of course not.” Charlemagne’s eyes glow with madness. “Don’t be an idiot. That would be way too fucking easy. He had me locked up like an animal, Tamara. Now that he’s fallen in love with you, I finally have the perfect weapon. I’m going to pay him back.”

  He scoops me up in his arms. We’re on a narrow dirt road, and there’s a car parked up ahead—no, a van. I scream and struggle wildly as he opens up the back door, but he holds on to me easily.

  Lying on the floor of the back of the van, I see a woman, hog-tied and gagged.

  The shock of recognition punches me in the stomach. Heather.

  No wonder she didn’t report me missing. Her eyes are huge with fright and she’s making desperate grunting noises.

  It’s my fault she’s here. She’s going to die in agony, because of me.

  Charlemagne holds up a syringe and horror rips me apart, and I scream and scream.

  “Night night, Tamara.”

  …Be sure to read part 2, The Trials of Tamara, to be released May 7!

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  Also by Ginger Talbot:

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  This is a dark romance, complete with trigger warnings! Part 1 of a complete 3 part series.

  No cheating, HEA guaranteed at the end of the series. If you love heartbreaking cliffhangers, one-click now!

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  This is a dark romance, complete with trigger warnings! Part 2 of a complete 3 part series.

  No cheating, HEA guaranteed at the end of the series. If you love heartbreaking cliffhangers, one-click now!

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  This is a dark romance, complete with trigger warnings! Part 3 of a complete 3 part series. No cheating, HEA guaranteed.