by Shari Copell
Tage was grateful Asher had made the effort to warn them from the backseat of the Lexus, an extraordinary effort at that. He loved Nicks. His information had to be correct. The girls were somewhere in this old tumbledown garage. They just had to find a way to get in.
“Son-of-a-bitch!” he heard Chelsea say loudly behind him.
“Shhh! What’s the matter?”
“I tripped over a vine.”
“What?” Tage walked back to her. Chelsea was hunched on the ground holding something.
“It’s not a vine. It looks like an extension cord.” She sounded puzzled.
Tage knelt down beside her. It was an extension cord, a yellow heavy-duty, outdoor extension cord stretched across the broken macadam. It was brand new; there wasn’t a scuff mark on it. “What the hell would an extension cord be doing out here?”
“I don’t know.” Chelsea stood and followed it into the overgrown field for a bit. “It looks like it goes all the way over to the field house.”
Tage traced the cord with the flashlight beam, lifting it when it came up out of the weeds and threaded through the chain-link fence that surrounded the football field. He followed it back across the macadam and through a casement window in the garage.
He frowned. Electricity. Someone had run electricity into the maintenance garage. Why? There was no light visible through any of the broken windows, and yet...
“C’mon.” Tage grabbed Chelsea’s hand and tugged her toward the brick building. “Someone ran electricity into this falling-down, piece-of-shit garage for a reason.”
Pain. So much pain.
Drops of blood flew into the air and landed all around Nicks every time Marius hit her. The crop actually made a splashing noise against her back. Her blood stained the floor right beside Trisha Glace’s. They’d hated each other in life; now they were sisters in agony.
Only the terror she saw in Lindsay’s eyes kept Nicks from begging him to stop. He’d said begging bored him. He would kill her if she did that. Then he’d turn his attention to her sister. It was only a matter of time anyway, but she wanted to keep him away from Lindsay as long as possible.
She’d learned to anticipate the blows. There was a rhythm to this beating. Whack! One, two, three, four, a step back, the wind up, the whistle of the crop as it sliced the air. Whack! It didn’t help much, but at least she had a split second to steel herself.
“You’re a tough one, Miss Sorenson. I’ll give you that much.”
“Shut the fuck up, asshole. I’m not interested in a single goddamned thing you have to say.” She let the hate tumble across her lips. She had nothing to lose now.
Whack! Blood flew. It splattered onto her face and across the blue upholstery in front of her. She licked the blood from her lips.
“That language. That mouth. The apple apparently does not fall from the tree. Asher had a filthy mouth on him as well.”
“Fuck you. Bet you wouldn’t have beat his ass!” She was hoarse with fury.
“Alas, I’ve never beaten a man. I prefer to beat women, the pretty ones who think they’re better than everyone else.”
“Fucking coward! Miserable bastard fucking cowardly asshole!”
Whack! She grunted as pain tore through her.
“Well, I’ve bloodied your back enough. I believe we’ll start cutting.”
“Cutting?”
Oh God, please. I can’t take any more of this. Not even for Lindsay.
“You’ve heard the saying ‘death by a thousand cuts’?”
She didn’t respond. He answered anyway.
“I’m going to find out if I can actually make it happen.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“I don’t see anything,” Chelsea whispered to Tage. “There isn’t anyone here.”
She felt sick as they prowled around the perimeter of the garage. There were no sounds, no lights, no nothing. If the girls weren’t here, where the hell were they?
“Asher wouldn’t have worked that hard to get us here if there weren’t something to find,” Tage responded, shining the flashlight off the dripping foliage beside them.
That was probably true, but...
“Hey! Look at those wooden garage doors. One of them is practically hanging off the hinges. It might be a way in.” Tage walked down the slight slope of the driveway to the door and pushed one side open with his shoulder. His body half in, half out, he shone the flashlight around inside.
“Holy shit, Chelsea! Nicks’s Mustang is parked in here!”
“A simple box cutter, Miss Sorenson. Brand new with a blade that’s never been used.” Marius held it right in front of her face, forcing her to focus on it.
Red, like the one her father kept in his tool box in the garage, only this one had been purchased for a more sinister purpose.
Nicks panicked as he yanked it away and walked around the table where she couldn’t see him. “What are you going to do with that?”
He pulled her hair aside from behind her. “I think we’ll start cutting at the head and neck. The veins are much closer to the surface of the skin in those areas, which will result in more bleeding. The internal jugular vein lies here...,”he pressed a finger under her chin and ran it down the side of her throat, “...and runs the length of the neck to here. I may start with that one.”
Marius leaned against the massage table, muttering to himself, studying her as though he were going to dissect a cadaver.
“The length of the external jugular vein runs from the corner of the mandible just below the earlobe and drains into the subclavian vein.” His fingers traced the path. She heard him sigh; his foul breath hit the side of her face. “All perfectly good veins to cut. To say nothing of what interesting things might occur if I cut into the subclavian artery. That may be too deep to access with a box cutter though. The blade on this one is rather short.”
She was not going to survive this. This next round of torture would have her begging him to stop. She stared at Lindsay across the room, anchoring herself to those beautiful eyes, asking forgiveness. I’m sorry, little sister. I can’t do this anymore.
“Oh, let’s just see what happens with this new blade first,” Marius muttered.
Nicks felt a hot sting on the side of her neck as he pushed the tip of the box cutter into the skin then pulled it slowly, deliberately toward him, cutting a trail of fire as he moved.
She arced her body off the table and screamed, piercing and shrill, a sound that came from some dark place within her. “Stop! Stop it! Don’t do this. I can’t—“
“Is there something you’d like to say, Miss Sorenson? The safe word, perhaps? I’ll stop if you say it, but then I’ll have to kill you and move on to the lovely Miss Lindsay.”
Lindsay had held her gaze the whole time but when she heard Marius say that, she sobbed and curled forward, slumping against the concrete wall.
“Lindsay, don’t you dare look away! Look at me!” Nicks yanked on the handcuffs that held her fast to the table. She needed that constant eye contact right now like she needed air to breathe. “Please, Linds. I need to see your face.”
Lindsay looked up. “I’m here, Nicks. I love you.”
“So it’s like that, is it? I think not. That’s cheating, Miss Sorenson, and I abhor cheaters.” Marius came around the table and headed toward her sister, pulling the cloth she’d been gagged with earlier from his pocket.
Lindsay pressed against the wall and tried to hide her face, but she was no match for Marius. He tugged her toward him, yanked her head back, and deftly tied the rag around her head.
The eye contact with her sister had been permanently broken. Nicks was on her own. At least Lindsay wouldn’t have to watch her die now.
Warm blood ran down the front of her neck. The room tilted at a crazy angle and blurred. She was sliding into merciful unconsciousness.
Blinking, she watched Marius stand in slow motion. She’d tried to hold on and be strong, but she had no more fight left in her.
The
safe word. She needed to say it before she passed out, so he would bring this to an end. Licking her lips, she tried to focus on him. “Please don’t cut me anymore. I beg you.”
He smiled as he took a step toward her. “Very well, Miss Sorenson.”
Peripherally, she thought she saw the door to the locker room swing open. She was barely able to move her head to look.
It really is true, she thought. Your mind did try to comfort you when death came calling. You truly did gather your loved ones to you for a final goodbye, whether they could be there physically or not. And she was grateful for that.
Her mother and father stood in the doorway to the locker room, their eyes wide as they stared back. She wasn’t going to be with them much longer. “I love you. I’m sorry. I did the best I could,” she said before the darkness took her.
That horrible scream still echoed in Chelsea’s ears, but it wasn’t as horrible as the sight before her. Nicks was on her stomach, handcuffed to a table. Her T-shirt had been torn open. And her daughter’s back was a bloody mess.
The girl’s eyes flickered closed then opened in surprise when she saw them. Chelsea could hear her murmuring as her eyes fell closed again but couldn’t make out what she was saying.
The air pulsed with a sharp crack. She gasped and jumped a foot off the ground.
What the hell was that?
Tage grunted and stumbled backward into her. Chelsea wrapped her arms around his waist and spun him to his knees as he swore. When she straightened, she noticed her light blue hoodie was stained with blood.
“Get out of here, Chelsea! Before he shoots you too!” Tage said hoarsely.
Shoots me? Wha...?
“Hello, Chelsea. Close the door, please.”
She fisted her hands. Fucking hell. Marius. Behind her. Marius had shot her husband.
Chelsea turned and placed herself directly in front of Tage. “What do you think you’re doing, Albert?”
Her insides dissolved into a quivering mass of terror. Albert Marius stood not twelve feet away from her holding a pistol against the side of her thirteen-year-old daughter’s head.
Lindsay was tied to a metal pipe, nearly naked, wearing only a short skirt—tulle covered with blue-and-red sequins. Nicks lay bloody and unconscious to her right. Tage had a wound in his shoulder from the pistol Marius was holding on Lindsay. We’re all going to die tonight.
Marius’s face went blank. He pulled the gun away from Lindsay’s head. “Did you just call me Albert?”
“That’s your name, isn’t it?”
“You’ve never called me Albert.”
Chelsea went blank for a moment. The man looked like he was going to burst into tears. “I’ve never had a reason to call you Albert. Does that upset you?”
“No. Hearing you say my name makes me happy. I always wanted you to notice me. You’re as pretty as you ever were, Chelsea. I wanted you to talk to me.”
Okay, this had just taken a hard left into weirdness, but she sensed an opportunity. “You were a teacher, Albert. I was underage. That kind of relationship was against the law.”
Marius took a step toward her. She did likewise. She had to get close enough to get the gun away from him.
“Would you have talked to me if it weren’t? Are you saying we could’ve had a relationship?”
She swallowed to keep the contents of her stomach intact. “That’s a hypothetical question, Albert. You were a teacher. I was a student.” He seemed to like that she used his first name. Hopefully, repeating it back to him would win his trust, convince him she was on his side.
“I used to lay awake at night and think about you.”
She tried to smile at him, but didn’t feel it at all. These revelations were shocking. She searched her memories, but couldn’t find an instance where he’d paid any more attention to her than he did any other girl. There’d been no signs of his interest, nothing that would’ve raised a red flag. He was just Mr. Marius, her biology teacher.
“I’m sorry, Albert. If you sent out clues, I missed them. I was a young, dumb girl back then.”
“She...,” he gestured toward the table where Nicks lay,“...is Asher Pratt’s kid, isn’t she? You...you fucked him.”
Uh oh. His tone was accusatorial. His eyes narrowed in condemnation.
Chelsea put her hands up and took another step. “I made a big mistake with Asher. As I said, I was young and dumb. I thought he loved me. He didn’t.” She held his gaze, hoping it would reassure him. “I should’ve looked for someone older. More mature. Like you.”
“Nicole has an attitude just as Asher did. She needs to be punished.”
“I think she’s been punished enough, don’t you? I think you’ve taught her quite a lesson here tonight. She’s sure to behave more appropriately after this.”
He lowered the pistol even more. “I’d like to talk about us.”
Keep talking. You’re getting through to him, Chels.
“Of course. Would you like to go somewhere for coffee?”
“Yes.” He gestured around the room with the gun. “What about them?”
“I don’t think anyone is going anywhere, do you? But they won’t let you into Starbucks with the gun, Albert. And quite frankly, the gun scares me. We can’t get off on the right foot if I’m afraid of you.” Taking another step forward, she extended a hand. “Give me the gun. We’ll leave it here for when we come back.”
He hesitated, started to hand it to her, then drew it back. “You’re just trying to take it away from me.”
She feigned disappointment as she dropped her hand. “Then I’m afraid I can’t talk to you about us. I can’t be relaxed and honest if you have a gun, and I’m afraid. I’m sorry, Albert.” Shaking, she turned away, praying her bluff would work.
She headed back toward her wounded husband, trying to plan her next move. What could she do or say now that had even a remote chance of working?
“Wait!” he called behind her.
She stiffened, turned her head. “Yes?”
“I really want to talk to you, Chelsea. Be alone with you. Take the gun. We’ll tie your husband up.”
She faced him, sick to her stomach. This had to work. The gun hung from his right index finger by the trigger guard. It was hers for the taking.
She moved toward him slowly and held her hand out again. “Thank you, Albert. It pleases me that you’re willing to do this for me.”
He made no move to lay it in her hand, so she reached out with three fingers. He allowed her to touch it then grasp it. She finally had the pistol in her hands. She blew out a breath of relief and took a step back.
Before she could pull the hammer and raise the gun on him, Tage’s brawny arm shot over her shoulder and smashed Albert Marius in the face. He looked dazed for a second then he collapsed to the floor in a heap.
Tage pounced immediately and rolled him over. Chelsea ran to Lindsay. She untied the girl, pulled her own hoodie off, and dropped it over her daughter’s head.
It couldn’t have been more than forty-five degrees in the garage. Chelsea’s long-sleeved T-shirt would soon be inadequate in these temps, but poor Lindsay was shivering uncontrollably.
She stood and collapsed into her mother’s arms. “I can’t believe you found us!”
Chelsea held her tightly. “We never would’ve stopped searching for the two of you.”
“Nicks was so brave. She kept Marius from hurting me.”
“Did she? You’ll have to tell me all about it later.” They didn’t need to relive any of it now. She wanted to get her daughters—and her husband—out of this horrible place and into a hospital.
Chelsea turned to check on Nicks. Tage had found the keys in Marius’s coat and was now freeing her from the handcuffs. She stirred and moaned as Tage spoke to her.
“Hey, baby. It’s Daddy. Nicks, can you open your eyes?”
“Daddy?” Her eyes fluttered open for a moment then fell shut again.
Chelsea, still clutching Lindsay, wal
ked toward him. “Tage, your shoulder...”
“...is fine. Stay here with Nicks while I handcuff Marius. Let’s see how he feels about a taste of his own medicine.”
“You aren’t going to kill him, are you?”
Tage glared at the unconscious Marius then dropped his gaze to Lindsay. “No. Lord knows I want to, but that would make me no better than him.”
Chelsea nodded, surprised at the restraint he was showing.
Nicks whimpered and opened her eyes. “Mom?”
“I’m here. Lindsay’s here too.”
“She...she okay?”
“I’m okay,” Lindsay replied. She gave Nicks’s hand a squeeze. “Daddy punched Marius in the face. He’s putting handcuffs on him now.”
Nicks nodded weakly.
“We’re here now, Nicks. You’re safe.” Chelsea examined her daughter’s back. “God, what did he do to you?”
There wasn’t one square inch on her back that hadn’t been flayed open. The blood obscured the wounds, but she had a feeling this was worse than it looked. Chelsea thought about folding the torn edges of Nicks’s T-shirt over her back, but she didn’t want the fabric to stick to her injuries.
“He beat her with that whip on the floor over there—the kind they use for horses. She didn’t scream once. She only screamed when he started to cut her,” Lindsay said.
“Excuse me... he cut her?” Chelsea felt sick to her stomach again. That must’ve been the shriek they’d heard as they’d ventured farther into the garage. It was, in fact, what had led them to the door of the locker room.
“With a box cutter. Right here, on her neck.” Lindsay pointed at the oozing wound. “That was the only time she screamed.”
“Sorry,” Nicks mumbled. “It...h...h...hurt.”
Dear God in heaven, it must have hurt like hell. No wonder she screamed. Chelsea fisted her hands and turned to Tage, who was now searching the unconscious and handcuffed principal’s coat. “You have my permission to kill that rotten bastard. If you don’t, I will.”