“I have no idea,” I glance through the window where my captive is currently gagged and blindfolded. “But I’m going to find the fuck out.”
“More torture?” Nine asks. “Because honestly, I don’t know how you can stand it yourself. That fucking music, ugh. EDM is torture enough without being at that volume. What happened to old fashioned torture, you know with knives and shit.”
“Ear plugs,” I reply. “That’s how I put up with it. Came up with the idea after selling dope to kids at a rave. The noise cancelling feature kicks on when I hit the button.”
Nine slowly claps. “I’m impressed, Pikey-boy. It’s good to know you’re not just a pretty face. I guess Mickey’s not the only genius in da house.” He crosses his feet on my desk. “So, you going with knives or no? You haven’t yet answered me.”
I close my eyes and imagine slicing Mickey’s skin and bleeding the truth from her. My eyes snap open. I shake my head. “I can’t go stripping her down for parts if I don’t yet know the value of her whole.”
Nine shuts his laptop and shoves it in his bag. “While I truly enjoy your comparison of torture to vehicular theft, I gotta get back to my place and handle my own problems. Let me know what you get from her. If anything.”
“Poe drinking again?” I ask. Poe is Nine’s girl. She’s got more issues than most magazines, but somehow, even her anxiety levels Nine out.
Nine sighs. “No, it’s worse. She stopped drinking. Don’t know what to do with her when she’s not cradling a bottle of vodka like a baby in her arms.” Pausing on his way to the door, he reaches into his laptop case, pulling out a folded document. “I told Preppy what was going on. With the skeleton crew, the girl. All of it.”
“I’m not trying to hide shit from your brother or anyone else for that matter. I want him to be informed and assumed you’d fill him in on the not so pleasant details that my fucking life has become,” I reply.
He grimaces. “Yeah, that’s not what I’m getting at.” He hands me the document then takes a white box out of his bag and sets it on the desk. “Preppy made me promise to give this to you. Trust me. I didn’t want to, but then he said something about him being my only family and making me swear on a stack of fucking pancakes that my dick would fall off if I didn’t give it to you.”
“Sounds serious,” I laugh.
His eyes go wide. “More serious than you could ever imagine. There were cloaks and paddles and shit.”
“I’m not surprised,” I reply. Because I’m not. Preppy isn’t just off his rocker, he’s not even on the fucking porch.
Nine heads for the door. “Read it and weep. Or laugh. Or call a support hotline.”
I eye the white box then unfold the papers. I have to admit the heading is catchy and so very Preppy.
A Kidnapper’s Commandments: A complete guide to caring for your captive.
Chapter Ten
Mickey
I’ve retreated into a dark place. One where only my broken soul and the sound of my own despair are welcome. I’m drowning, choking on my own ability to break free from the prison I’ve created within myself.
Save me, I say to no one because the only person who can truly save me is myself, and at this point I’m not sure that’s possible.
The despair drains me like blood from my veins, taking everything I have with it, including the will to live. I feel my life force fading, and soon, I’m on the floor gasping for breath as my heart slows to a scary pace I feel struggling to beat within the pulse in my neck.
Sadness bleeds through me. Invading me like a parasite I can’t shake as it seeps through my vessels.
Tell him, my sister Maya’s voice whispers in my ear. Tell him and this will all be over. He could help you.
“I can’t,” I reply, tears spilling down my face. “I can’t tell him. If I do, I’ll lose you forever. All of you.”
Despite the saying, the enemy of my enemy is not my fucking friend. I don’t have any friends. All I have is logic, my memory, and a strong need to get the fuck out of here and finish what I’ve started.
One solution at a time. You don’t do one of your experiments and throw everything out at once, right? You introduce one at a time.
“Variables,” I correct her. Maya was never into science except for the time she was partnered with a cute boy as her lab partner. “They’re called variables.”
Whatever, you get my point. Don’t try to think of how you’re going to get out of here all at once like it’s one problem. Ask yourself what needs to happen before you can think of escaping.
It hits me. “I need to be untied.”
Start with that, sis.
I can do that. I can. If I prove that I can be of use to Pike somehow, maybe I can persuade him to untie me.
The answer comes to me the second the door slides open, blinding me with light from the outside. “I have a photographic memory,” I blurt, needing to get all of my cards on the table before the torture begins and I can’t think straight.
Pike slides the door shut with a bang. “Why am I supposed to care if you have a photographic memory?” he asks with an eyebrow cocked as he approaches. Today, he’s not bare-chested as usual. He’s wearing a white tank top with a black leather jacket and tight, low-rise jeans. His heavy boots echo against the concrete as he approaches.
“It could be helpful to you. We could trade. I could help you with something, and you could untie me,” I offer. “I’m not trying to escape,” I lie. “I just want to be untied. I could help you. I swear.”
“I don’t negotiate with terrorists,” he replies.
Straightening my back, I clear my dry throat. “But terrorists can negotiate amongst themselves.”
“Now, you’re a terrorist?” He laughs. “At least, you admit it.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do.” He shakes his head, “No. That’s not how this works. The trade is your life in exchange for fucking answers.” He shrugs off his jacket and sets it on some sort of rusted metal tank. He crosses his arms showing off his bulging biceps. Ironically, the word truth is tattooed across the middle of one of them.
“I don’t care about my life,” I reply, feeling the weight of my words on my shoulders. “It’s the least of my concerns.”
“And I don’t care about your memory. I don’t see how it will help me considering…” he lifts his chin. “It didn’t help your family.”
A bolt of shock courses through me. I snap my eyes to his. “What do you know about my family?” I grate.
He shrugs and pulls up a chair in front of me, straddling it with his long legs, resting his forearms along the back. “Nothing. Just that no one has seen your Mom, Pops or even poor Mallory, Maya, or…Missy, was it?”
“Mindy,” I seethe, hating their names on his lips.
He snaps his fingers. “Mindy, that was it.” He shrugs although there’s a knowing look in his eyes. “No one has seen them in years. Whatever happened to them, I wonder?” he muses. He points to me. “Do you know? Or maybe, you’re the one who went off the rails and murdered the whole lot of them. Maybe, when I found you that night, you’d just gotten done strangling each one of them as they slept.”
He’s not right, but he’s hitting way too close to home. My stomach turns. I close my eyes, and I’m met with the beginning of a memory I can’t relive again. Not while I’m with him. He can’t see me at my weakest. Not now. Not ever.
“Enough. My family is fine. They’re in hiding because of me. Something I did. You’ll never find them, and I won’t ever tell you anything about them. That’s not part of the negotiation.”
He unsheathes his knife from his boot and points it at me. “You still think this is a negotiation? That’s…cute.” He stands again, slowly circling me. “We’ll see about that. Often, people who don’t want to be found are quite surprised when I show up at their door.” He’s in front of me now, gazing down at me with something unreadable in his eyes. He wets his bottom lip with his tongue and rakes his g
aze over my legs. “I wonder if all of your sisters share your…assets.”
My blood boils. I lick my dry lips and narrow my eyes at the smug fuck. “Fuck you. Leave them out of this.”
“Are you threatening me?” He crouches so we’re at eye level. “You won’t leave me out of this, so why should I leave them out of it?” He leans in so close I can feel his breath on my lips. “You started this game, Mic. And, unfortunately for you, this is how fucking I play.”
He pushes off and grabs his jacket, starting back toward the door.
I begin to panic. He can’t leave. Not yet. I have to be untied. “I can’t tell you what you need to know, but I can give you anything else. Whatever you want!” I call out.
He stops and turns back around slowly. “Whatever I want?” I can hear his smile as much as I can see it. There’s an implication, an innuendo in his voice that makes me shiver.
“No!” I cry, pulling at my restraints to no use. “Not that. That’s not what I meant!” My wrists burn against rusted metal.
He stalks back over to me, looming over me like Zeus high on his mountain. “A tempting offer. But you look so good all tied up. Keep bloodying your wrists like that, and I might just keep you after all.”
“Bloody wrists turn you on, you sick fuck?” I reach the familiar fork in the road where fear and anger meet once again. And right now, I choose to go down the path that is anger.
He smirks. “Amongst other things.”
“Like what?” I spit. “Barbequing babies?”
He crouches low so we are eye level. I flinch as he swipes his finger across the wet tear on my cheek and rubs the moisture between his thumb and index fingers. He licks at his thumb seductively, and I feel myself redden all over. “Like these.”
I hold his gaze. “You get off on my tears?” I scoff. “Wow, your parents must have abandoned you at birth.”
His eyes darken. He stands abruptly.
Apparently, I’ve hit a nerve.
“Shortly after, but it’s not my past that’s led to you being tied up here. It’s yours. You can’t blame anyone for this shit but you. Whatever I do to you is your fault and your fault alone.”
I want to argue, but I can’t. “You’re right. It’s my fault,” I admit. “It’s the truth. There are others to blame for my actions, but the choice, all of the choices, were mine.”
“Then, why don’t you tell me who those others are, and this will all be over,” He offers, gently. For a nanosecond, he sounds sincere, his words holding the slightest drop of sympathy.
I feel another tear fall. “I can’t. I told you. I just can’t.”
“Then, this is your doing.” Pike takes something from his pocket and tugs it over my head. It’s a blindfold. He lowers it over my eyes. It’s thick, blocking out even the faintest hint of light. Yet, despite my complete lack of sight, I find myself instinctually turning my head from left to right, seeking out his hard footsteps that move in slow calculated precision from one side of the room to the other. He’s pacing.
No. Not pacing.
Stalking.
“You’re trembling, girl,” he murmurs from somewhere in the room.
Of course, I’m trembling. I’m terrified. The sick sound of satisfaction in his voice snakes its way into my brain. His every word is a bang of a battering ram against the imaginary door I’ve placed between me and him until it smashes open. I wait for the overwhelming fear to cripple me, but it never comes. What I find instead of fear is something else entirely.
My balls.
“You’re afraid of me,” he says, sounding as if he’s directly in front of me. “I can smell it. Your fear.” I hear him inhale deeply.
With a renewed sense of strength, I straighten my shoulders. The restraints around my arms and wrists binding me to the bed tighten, biting into my already raw skin. I ignore the pain. “No. I’m not afraid of you.”
“No? But you should be afraid.” He’s close now. So close I feel his cool breath against my forehead.
I tip my chin up defiantly and smile, but it’s far more than just a smile.
It’s a challenge.
“No,” I repeat without a tremor in my voice. “It’s you who should be afraid.”
I smile in satisfaction, but my victory is short-lived.
The music blares through my skull. The blindfold is ripped from my head as the lights blind me once again.
Chapter Eleven
Mickey
“I’ve made it four days,” I tell Mallory. “Four entire days. I don’t know what his plans are now, but he’s got to know at this point I’m not going to give him shit.”
She points to the door and giggles.
“Not helpful,” I mutter.
The bay door slides open. Pike enters like a storm cloud on an already rainy day, here only to wreak havoc and cause chaos.
I mentally prepare myself for another round of sensory torture. I sit as straight as I can, reminding myself that I’ve endured so much worse and can take so much more. At this point, I’m surprised I can still hear Pike’s boots on the ground.
Or anything at all for that matter.
“Hello, there, Mic,” his voice is slow and smooth with a note of amusement tickling his slight southern drawl. I hate that he’s taken to calling me Mic. It’s what my sisters call me. He hasn’t earned the right to use the nickname. He’s not special like they are.
Although, he is unique.
Grungy leather jacket. Longer than fashionable blonde/brown hair. The first time I saw him years ago I remember that the colorreminded me of our cat Penny. A blend of rockstar, biker, and fallen angel…with the devil’s eyes.
“Who were you talking to?” he asks, doing his usual twirling of the sharp end of a knife in the palm of his hand.
“My sister,” I answer.
He looks around the room. “Funny, because I don’t see anyone in here, and the only voice I heard was yours.”
“Just because she isn’t here doesn’t mean I can’t talk to her,” I argue.
He whistles. “Ah, so you are still a nut job.” He nods to himself. “Good to know.”
I’d rather be assaulted by the music than his insults. I’d prefer physical hurt than emotional hurt. “I’m crazy?” I ask. “You’re the one playing the villain in this movie. People without mental problems don’t hold people captive.”
“I’ve got my issues, but insanity isn’t one of them. You’re here because you stole from me, not because I’m the crazy one.”
I’m so over his holier than thou act. “Don’t keep playing this off like you’re the innocent one in all of this. You’re no victim,” I yell, growing angrier and more frustrated. “You obviously don’t know what it means to love so deep that you’d do anything for anyone. Anything at all to protect what that love means. You can call me crazy because I talk to my sisters, but it isn’t crazy. It’s love. Unyielding, irrational at times, never-ending love.”
Pike looks at me for a beat or two with an unasked question in his eyes. “No. I don’t know what that means. I don’t fucking want to. But I do know what I’d do to punish those who cross me and fuck with my business, and I assure you it’s much more than anyone would do for the lie that is love.” He smiles, throwing my words back in my face. “And that’s hate. Unyielding, irrational at times, never-ending hate.”
I roll my eyes. “Are you going to get to the torture part of the day, or is this it?”
“Ah, the crazy girl has got jokes. I must not be doing a good job of torturing you if you’re still capable of humor.” His words turn dark. “I’ll have to remind myself to do a better job in the future.” He looks at me as if he’s trying to figure me out. “But for now, we’re going to switch things up a bit.”
I feel the blood drain from my face as I think of all the things his words could mean.
He sees my panic and chuckles. “Don’t worry. There’ll be no knife-play today. In fact––” He taps the end of my nose with the blade. “––I’ve decide
d that I’m going to keep you alive.” He quickly adds, “For now.”
“Why?” The second the word passes my lips, I want to take it back because it sounds as if I’m questioning his choice. I press my lips together to prevent another one from jumping ship.
“Why?” he repeats. Pike crouches so we’re at eye level. His eyes burning with intensity. “Because I’m going to use you.”
My mind reels. There are a thousand different ways of how Pike could use me racing through my brain and not a single one of them are anything less than terrifying. I swallow hard. “Use me for what?” I dare to ask.
Pike smiles, but it’s not a happy one. It’s the evil kind with nothing but wickedness behind it. The kind that sends a thousand spiders of fear running down my spine. A smile that has been summoned straight from the depths of hell.
“Bait.”
Chapter Twelve
Mickey
“Papa, I messed up,” I confess, my head swimming as his image appears before me.
He smiles and points to the door.
“No, I can’t leave,” I reply, tugging at my restraints. “I’ve tried.”
His eyes drop to the ropes binding my wrists and waves them off as if it doesn’t make a difference that I’m tied to a chair. He points to the high window.
“Really? There’s no way I can—”
He nods his head and smiles. Yes, you can. I hear him say although his lips don’t move. You’re the smartest person I’ve ever known. There is nothing you can’t do.
“I can’t do this. I thought I could. I thought I was strong. I wanted to be strong for you and for mom and for my sisters, but it’s too much.” Tears spill down my face. I’ve been fishing. It never ends well for the bait.
Pike: The Pawn Duet, Book One Page 7