“Which is exactly why I recruited him,” replied Bobby, as though I should have known this already. “He was really pissed that you had him kicked out of the salon. When I offered him a chance to get you back, he was . . . eager, to say the least.”
I wasn’t sure who I wanted to strangle more—Melvin or Bobby.
“Alec’s going to kill Melvin,” I said.
“No, he won’t. He’ll knock Melvin around a little, but he won’t be able to leave him there, and then the police will come and wrap everything up.”
Bobby was on a roll now. I had to keep him talking, get him to lower his guard again. There was still a chance I could escape.
“The police will arrest Melvin,” I said. “He’s the one who broke in.”
“First of all, he didn’t break in,” said Bobby. “He told your landlord he was your brother and had forgotten the code to your security system—nice touch by the way. That had to be Alec’s doing.” He scratched his chin. “Second, he was just there to apologize for what had happened earlier. At the most, he’s going to get carted back to the hospital. Alec’s the one who went apeshit and tore up your place. Lucky you weren’t there. He does have a history of beating up women.”
“That’s not the way I heard it,” I countered, but the dread was already sinking in. Alec had assault charges on his record. Even if they’d been dropped, it looked as though he had a capacity for violence.
Bobby shook his head. “Wow. You’ve really got him by the balls, haven’t you? He told you everything.”
I glared at him. “Melvin’s going to rat you out once the police question him.”
“He better not,” said Bobby. “Otherwise he won’t get the second installment of a very nice paycheck.”
From down the street came the sounds of sirens. The police were on their way. I just needed to get their attention.
“Get up,” Bobby said. “We’re going for a ride.”
He hauled me up by the arm and pulled me against his side. My head was throbbing now, and I spit a mouthful of saliva and blood onto his sweatshirt.
“Really?” he asked, clearly disgusted. “That’s unhygienic.” He wiped it off with his sleeve.
“Let me go.” I thrashed as best I could, but my knee had twisted in the fall, and it felt like someone was digging a knife into it every time I moved.
“Soon,” he said. “First we’re going downstairs. You’re going to be a good girl and keep quiet, otherwise I’m going to shoot you.”
“You can’t,” I argued as he dragged me down the first of the stairs. I let my body go limp and made him carry me. “Even your big-shot lawyer wouldn’t be able to save you from prison after that.”
Bobby frowned. He was so strong it barely hindered him to pull me down the second flight of stairs.
“You’ve got a point. I guess I could just have your favorite stalker kill Alec.” He opened the door at the bottom of the stairwell and backed us through. I could hear people talking twenty yards away, but no one passed by.
I tensed, and he pulled me upright. “He wouldn’t.” He hasn’t yet.
“For enough money, some people would do just about anything.” He opened the door at the bottom of the stairwell. “It would tie things up nicely if Melvin shot Alec with that pistol I gave him. Jealous lovers battle to the death. Poetic, isn’t it? Just one call and I can make it happen.”
“You can’t buy everyone.” Melvin may have been under Bobby’s spell, but that didn’t mean he would kill someone.
“Yes,” said Bobby. “But you can buy some people.”
A cold silence crept through me. Alec was close, maybe hurt, and Bobby claimed he could have him killed if I didn’t play along.
“I don’t believe you,” I said. I didn’t believe Melvin could better Alec—Alec outweighed him in fifty pounds of muscle alone. And if Bobby wanted me dead, he would have done it already.
Rule number one of self-defense: If you can run, do it.
Barefoot, and on a twisted knee, I spun and clawed Bobby’s face. When his hold loosened, I pushed back and sprinted in the direction of the street.
“Goddammit!” I heard Bobby shout behind me.
Twenty feet and I was free. Bobby wouldn’t dare take me down in full view of the restaurant.
Fifteen.
He got the back of my shirt. I powered on, feeling the fabric strain then rip. My breath was harsh in my ears. Gravel dug into the pads of my feet. I opened my mouth to scream; it had to be loud enough to rise over the bass from the clubs.
His forearm latched around my throat. I dug my chin in, scratching at his wrist. I struggled, fought with everything I had.
The air in my lungs was dwindling. The pounding of my heart echoed through my head. I turned my cheek, tried to bite, but my jaw closed on his sweatshirt alone. My throat was on fire.
A black frame surrounded my vision. I couldn’t pass out. I had to keep fighting.
“That’s it.” I heard Bobby’s voice as if he was calling from the end of a long tunnel. “That’s it. Go to sleep.”
The street before me faded, and went dark.
Thirty-three
The first things I registered were a pounding in my head and a sharp pain in my wrists. I opened my eyes, groaning, then immediately squeezed them shut as another hard throb slammed through the back of my skull. Gradually, a consistent whirring sound filtered through the headache. My cheek rested against a strap of some kind. A seat belt. My eyes shot back open. I was in a car. My car.
Another rule of self-defense: Never get in a car with the bad guy. Once he’s got you there, you’re not getting back out.
“Good morning, sunshine. Or I should say, good evening.”
I turned to find Bobby in the driver’s seat. He looked huge in my small car. Four long, pink scratches stretched from his eye down his jaw, lit by the glowing gauges in the dashboard. The gun rested in his lap. It was so dark outside I could barely make out the road ahead in the high beams.
My wrists, resting on my lap, were bound together by a bungee cord so tight my fingers prickled. My ankles were bound as well.
The last events I could remember came crashing to the forefront of my mind.
“Where’s Alec?” My voice was scratchy. How long had we been driving? The clock on the dash said 10:14 p.m. Almost three hours had passed since Alec and I had left his father’s.
“Probably in jail by now, where he’s going to be for a long time,” said Bobby. “Did you know he stole the design for a plane engine from Green Fusion and tried to get a patent on it? That’s a serious offense.” He had the audacity to try to sound shocked.
My throat was dry and aching. I wished for water, but wouldn’t have trusted it coming from Bobby even if he offered.
“Where are you taking me?”
I twisted my wrists a little, stretching the cord. There had to be some way to loosen its hold. I kept working them from side to side, searching for a weak point as we drove into the night.
“Somewhere quiet,” he said.
Dread coiled in my stomach. My teeth began to chatter.
“You’re going to kill me.” I meant to ask it as a question, but it came out as a statement.
Bobby sighed. He tapped the handgun against the driver’s-side window.
“You’re what we call a loose end,” he said. “You’ve seen a little too much. And now with Alec going away, I really don’t have the time to keep tabs on you.”
I glanced at the key in the ignition. It was my spare key—the one I kept in the junk drawer in my kitchen. Dangling from it was the cheesy flip-flop key chain I’d bought at a gas station my first week in Florida.
Bobby had been in my apartment—that had been why my things were out of place. The thought of his thick fingers on my stuff made me ill.
“Why didn’t you just do it back at the restaurant?”
“And do what with the body? Carry it across the street in front of everyone? Or leave it? That would go well. Max wants to develop
that property. It’s bad business if one of his previous employees ended up dead there.”
Being referred to as a dead body made the bile rise in my throat.
“Is this what you did to Charlotte?” I asked, unable to hide the tremor in my voice.
He glanced my direction. “Worried you won’t be able to swim with your hands tied together?”
He was going to push me over the edge. Drown me. My ankles worked back and forth, the cord making my skin raw. I tried to be subtle so he wouldn’t hear.
He sighed loudly. “The thing about Charlotte is she had a hard time listening. I asked her nicely to get her ass out of her car, but she didn’t.” He flexed his hand over the steering wheel, showcasing its crisscrossed scabs.
“You punched a hole through her window.”
“She’s a redhead,” he explained. “Stubborn, you know? She liked to taunt. Said she was going to talk to a reporter and send us all to jail. So we raced to see who could get there first. It wasn’t my fault she couldn’t control her own car.”
“You drove her off the road.”
“She drove herself off the road,” he said, making a clear distinction. “I just gave her a little push.”
The scratches on the side of the black SUV I’d seen at Maxim’s house came to mind. Bobby must have sideswiped her while they were driving. I wished I’d had Alec’s wire from the FBI so that I could have recorded our conversation. It worried me that Bobby was talking so freely. The only reason for him to do that was because he knew for a fact I wouldn’t, or couldn’t, repeat what he’d said.
“Someone had to see,” I said. “Bridges have surveillance cameras.” My father had once told me the cops had used the footage off a bridge in Cincinnati to catch a murder suspect. I was grasping at straws now, trying to cling to any hope that his actions would be discovered.
“Did you know just one lonely employee works at the transportation authority after hours?” Bobby asked. “I paid him a little visit after Charlotte and I went our separate ways. That footage is long gone, and if he’s smart he’s not going to say a word about it.”
I had to hand it to him; Bobby wasn’t as stupid as he looked. But the fact that he’d known just what to do made me wonder how much thought he’d put into this ahead of time, or if he’d done something like this before.
A small pop, and the binding around my ankle loosened. I checked on Bobby in my peripheral vision, but he didn’t seem to have heard it. I began working the ties more vigorously. Ahead in the distance was an arcing line of streetlamps. A bridge.
“Where are we?” I asked, desperate to tell someone—the police, my father, Amy, Alec, though there was nothing he could do now to help me.
Bobby ignored me.
I wished I had my regular keys and the pepper spray attached to them. Immediately I started a mental inventory of what I could use to defend myself. There wasn’t much. I could unlock the door and jump from the car, but we were going too fast. With my arms and legs bound I’d probably break my neck. I didn’t see his cell phone—it was probably in his pocket. Not that I had time to call the cops anyway. My glove compartment was filled with registration papers and condiment packages. No help there. The backseats were laid flat to accommodate my clunky massage table and my duffle bag filled with oils. There was a silver basin farther back that I might be able to swing if I could get my hands on it.
In the rearview mirror I caught sight of headlights, the first I’d seen since I’d come around. Someone was a few miles behind us, driving fast enough to catch up. If I could turn on the interior lights when they approached, I might be able to wave them down for help.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said.
Bobby wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “People really do say that, don’t they? I thought it was just in the movies. You don’t have to do this.” He finished with a sniveling face.
“Well, you don’t,” I said. “You could be, I don’t know, a decent human being and let me go.”
“But what then?” he asked. “You sit at home for a couple days, then start thinking about it—how Bobby and Max fucked everything up for you, and how they should pay for it, and next thing we know, you’re trying to file a statement with the police and I’m right back in the same situation.”
My ankles were free. I’d slipped them out of the stretchy cord. I kept my legs pinned together so he couldn’t tell. I focused on my hands, keeping them low and in the shadows so as not to attract Bobby’s attention. The urgency was beating through my veins. I had to break free by the time we got to the bridge, otherwise I was going into the water.
“I did think about letting you go,” he said after a moment. “This was Max’s idea. If it helps, he was conflicted about it.”
“Yeah, I bet,” I said, hating that I’d once lathered him up with oil and rubbed his tense muscles.
“He was. You don’t understand how upset he is that Alec was going to turn him in. Max loved him. Like a son. Or a really good dog.” Tap, tap, tap went the gun against the window. “He needed a suitable punishment for that betrayal, and your death just happens to be it.”
I focused on Bobby’s words. He’d said that Alec was going to turn him in, not that Alec had turned him in. It was possible Maxim Stein didn’t know Alec had gone to the FBI, that Alec still might have a case against him.
I hoped Stein was going to rot in some dark dungeon for what he’d done.
“How did your uncle find out about that?”
The car behind was closer now—a couple miles back. But we were only a few miles from the bridge. I turned away to hide my wrists in the shadows and began pulling the cords apart with a new desperation.
“Charlotte told me they were going to the police before she went for a swim,” he said. “She was practically bragging about it.”
My wrists weren’t coming loose. The bridge was in sight now, and though there was a stop sign at the base, Bobby didn’t show any signs of slowing.
“You’re not ever going to run the company,” I said. “One day someone’s going to find out everything you’ve done and you’ll get what you deserve.”
He laughed. “Can I tell you something?”
“What is this, confession?”
“I don’t even want Force,” he said. “I still can’t believe that with five wives and a hundred side dishes, Max doesn’t have his own kid to pass it on to. I like my life as is.”
“Being someone’s henchman.”
“It sounds sexy when you say it like that.”
I snorted. “You man the gate. You’re one step above mall security.”
“You didn’t seem to mind that Alec did the same.”
Bobby looked down at my legs and I froze, thinking he’d seen that I’d freed my ankles. Instead, his gaze lingered, and I scooted against the passenger-side door to put more distance between us.
“I know you aren’t wearing panties,” he said in a quiet, creepy voice. “Or a bra. You’re normally not my type, but those tits may have changed my mind.”
Unable to help myself, I curled into the door. The thought of him fondling me when I was passed out was too much to handle. What else had he done? I pinched my legs together, trying not to think of it.
“Don’t get so uptight,” he said with a laugh. “I prefer active participants in the bedroom.”
That came as a relief, but only a small one.
I wasn’t going to make it to the other side of this bridge. I didn’t know if Bobby planned on throwing me over, shooting me, or both, but I wasn’t about to find out.
In a burst, I lunged across the divide, grabbed the wheel, and jerked it as hard as I could toward me. I saw the cement barrier marking the edge of the bridge one second before we slammed into it.
Thirty-four
The airbags deployed like an explosion, and I was only just able to block my face with my forearms. My head slammed against the headrest, and for several dizzy moments, time seemed to stand still.
Bobby�
�s face gradually came back into focus. The airbag had broken his nose; it was already bruising, and blood poured from both nostrils. I started to pull at the bindings around my wrists only to find that the crash had dislodged the cord. As I found my breath, I searched for his gun, but it wasn’t on his lap any longer. It must have been on the floor.
I didn’t have time to look. I needed to run.
Shaking the cord free, I reached for the door handle and gave it a jerk. It was stuck. I tried again and again, but the door didn’t budge. Panic flooded me. I was trapped in a car with a man who wanted me dead. My time had run out.
“What the fuck . . .” Bobby touched his face, looked at the blood on his hands. In a matter of seconds he would realize what I’d done. I needed to hurry.
Abandoning the door handle, I looked up. The windshield had cracked but was still in place. Behind me, the table had slid forward in the impact and my duffle bag was now within reach.
I scooted down in the seat, wedged my shoulders against the cushion, and kicked at the windshield with my bare feet. My twisted knee sent a jolt of pain up my leg as I gritted my teeth and kicked it again.
“You crashed us?” Bobby asked.
He was staring at me, blinking. And as a light from behind the car drew closer, a bright reflection off the broken rearview mirror shone on his face, and I could see that his eyes were out of focus.
Frantically, I reached between the seats and snagged the first thing I could get my hand on in the duffle bag—the box of massage oils. They’d broken in the crash and the sharp scents of peppermint and cinnamon invaded my senses.
Survival instincts took over. I backhanded him in the face with the box. He swore again and clutched his nose.
“You stupid little bitch,” he said.
The windshield had popped out in the corner. One more kick and I had my exit.
Outside, the lights were blinding. The driver who had been following us was finally here, but I couldn’t wait for a rescue. I had to keep fighting.
I had to get back to Alec.
Bobby grabbed my hair, and I hit him again. The box opened, and the shards of glass rained down over his sweatshirt. I snatched one of the larger pieces and drove it into the hand that restrained me, making him howl in pain. At that moment his car door ripped open and he was dragged from the vehicle. The distraction was all I needed to dislodge the window. I scrambled up over the swollen airbag onto the hood and down the crunched metal with only one broken headlight to guide the way.
The Masseuse Page 29