Deep

by S. R. Jones

  Ian starts to say some bullshit about how he likes to have tea and cakes with the women he brings down here and I let my eyes drift shut again, then my head slumps forward and I fall to the side, letting my head hit the ground and ignoring the new burst of pain. I keep my face slack, relaxed.

  “Shit,” he grumbles. “He better not die on me. I’m not done yet.”

  He sits and drinks his tea, and I don’t move. I breathe deeply, regularly. I want the fucker to come over and look at me, but maybe he won’t and this whole little charade will be for nothing.

  I wait for the longest time, but he sits there drinking his bastard tea, and muttering to himself. After he finishes his tea, he takes it out of the room and up the stairs, and I think fuck it. Why wait for him to come to me? Once more I sit up and try to get my legs undone.

  I can’t though. The shit used on them is so thick and sticky, and I can’t get where it starts. I bring my legs up to my face and start to use my teeth on the bindings nearest my knees. It hurts and my teeth kill as I tear and tear at the thick black tape. Eventually though there’s a rip and I succeed in making a tear in it. I get my fingers in there and pull the rest of it off. I throw it to one side and I can hear him moving around again, water running. I still need to get the stuff off my ankles though.

  He’ll be back down here soon and once he sees the tape gone from by my knees, any element of surprise will be over. Shit. I need to move fast.

  I scrabble around on the floor, trying to find something sharp. Anything. Finally, I find something in the farthest point I can reach to my right. It’s cool and flimsy but has a sharp edge. As I haul it up with now shaking fingers, I see it’s an old-fashioned ring pull from a can. The sort they used to use back before all the sharp edges were removed from them for health and safety reasons. I want to cry out my joy at the gorgeous piece of thrown away rubbish in my hand, but I don’t. Instead, I get to work.

  Sawing at the tape around my feet, it takes me less than a minute to break some of it off, and allow me to get my fingers in there and rip the rest away.

  Free!

  Holy shit, I can breathe again. My mind focuses, as if being tied up somehow dulled my responses. Then I grin. I grin fucking huge, because I am finally free from the tapes and the cuffs and Ian is still upstairs messing around. The fucking idiot.

  Silently, I cross the floor ignoring my nakedness, ignoring the pain in my feet as I stand on pebbles, and grit, and sharp bits of rubbish. I reach the door and listen carefully for a moment. There’s no noise immediately outside it, and Ian is still doing something upstairs that involves water. He’s singing too, an off-key rendition of ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’, which is creepy as fuck.

  I pause for a moment before opening the door, sending up a prayer that the hinges aren’t rusty and creaky. It swings back without a sound and I follow up with another prayer of thanks. Then I am in a long, dark hallway. Definitely a basement—there’s a few other rooms off to one side, and then there’s a set of concrete stairs leading up to where I can hear Ian murdering the classics more clearly. He’s moved on to Sinatra now.

  There’s a clatter of pots, and then more water, and a click. I think he’s put the kettle on. I pause and sure enough there’s soon the hissing sound of water heating up. I use the cover of the noise to continue my ascent. At the top of the stairs, I pause and take in the scene. It looks like a warehouse. Boxes everywhere, and in one corner a small kitchen area, with a shabby table, small fridge, and a sink. Ian is at the sink messing about with a dainty china teapot that matches the cup and saucer. There’s also a matching cake stand on the side and I wonder if he fed those women cakes too before he killed them?

  On silent feet, I creep toward him, but some sixth sense must have alerted him to my presence because as I near him he screams, grabs the kettle and flings it toward me. I dodge to one side but boiling water hits my right leg.

  I cry out at the burning pain, but I can’t take my attention from Ian who is now scrabbling furiously through a drawer. He pulls his hand out with a knife in it, and comes at me, jabbing forwards.

  It’s easy to avoid his thrust, and I spin, grab his wrist, and twist hard. He lets go of the knife with an angry scream and kicks my shin with his heavy boots. I don’t leg to of his wrist but twist it further, and then I aim three fast blows to his ribcage.

  He goes over like a rag doll. Now, I let go of his wrist and pull him up by his hair. His face is puce, and he’s trying to get a breath in. I decide to hinder rather than help and punch him again in his stomach. He goes down, and I’ve not fully let go of his hair, and some of it comes out in my hand.

  I glance over at the sink. At that teapot, and the cup he used, and the one next to it. I stare at the matching saucers, and the fucking cake stand, and I see red. He’d have brought Kate here if he hadn’t found out we’d been together. Tortured her, sexually abused her, and in-between fed her tea and cakes.

  With a grunt, I lay into him, kicking and kicking at his face and body. My bare feet probably aren’t doing too much harm, so I pull him up and punch him in the face, twice. His jaw makes a satisfyingly sickening crunch on the second hit.

  “Reece!” I pause.

  What the fuck?

  “Reece?”

  Liam. I’d recognize his dulcet tones anywhere. They are outside the door at the end of the warehouse.

  “In here,” I call back, but I don’t let go of Ian, or Duncan as he’s truly called.

  I also don’t go to let them in, because then they’ll stop me and I want him dead.

  With a cold fury I’ve never experienced before, I look at his ordinary, almost friendly face, and I plough my fist into it.

  There’s the sound of wood splintering and glass shattering and still I keep on hitting him. Holding him up by his hair and punching him with my other hand on his body and face.

  He’s making a strange gurgling sound now, and blood splatters my cheek as he coughs.

  “Fuck’s sake, Reece!” There’s an alarmed tone to Luka’s voice I’ve not heard before. Not even in the depths of war.

  “Let him go.” It’s an order. A command, and as it comes from Liam, and I’m programmed to obey his orders in the heat of battle, I do.

  Ian sinks to the ground like the sack of shit he is, still gurgling and coughing.

  “Christ, your leg.” Liam is taking it all in. “We need to call the paramedics…and the cops. Can’t keep this from them, your prints are everywhere, and if you don’t get medical treatment you might die.” His eyes are cool, calculating. Ever the one ready to sort shit out and make it right.

  I look at Ian. I doubt he can make this right. This fucker must die. I need him dead. Even from prison he could be a danger. He’s the sort of obsessive freak that will stop at nothing to get to a woman he fixates on.

  “I need to end him,” I tell Liam. My voice is oddly flat. I look down at Ian, Duncan, what the fuck ever, and his bloodied, already swelling face, gives me nothing but satisfaction.

  A rage I never knew lived inside me before roars to life. It’s rage at this freak, but also at those men who raped and tortured a guy who knew nothing. Took away his soul by the most horrific ways and did so in front of me for days on end. Rage at a world that is so fucked it spits out these damaged, sick souls to wreak havoc in it. Rage at my own impotence then, and now.

  Now, though, right here, in this shabby place, I own the ability to do something. To make things better the only way I know how. By removing the human stain that is Ian/Duncan/whatever from this Earth.

  I start to kick him, hard, his head snapping back, and Liam curses.

  Then hands are on me, pulling me back, but I’m struggling, fighting against my own brothers. “Let me go,” I scream at them. “Fucking let me go.”

  “Reece?”

  One word. Said softly, and I stop. Kate’s stood there, right in front of me, staring at me as if she doesn’t know me.

  I look down at myself and see I’m dirty, bloodied, na
ked.

  “I told you to stay in the fucking car,” Liam bites out at Mags who is right next to Kate.

  “Shit, Reece, your leg.” Kate is staring at my thigh, and I follow her gaze to see it’s red and already looks like it will blister.

  “Here,” Maggie gestures for me to follow her. “Come stand by the sink.”

  I do as she says, all the urge to kill gone now Kate is here staring at me with terrified, concerned eyes.

  Maggie starts to fill a glass with chilly water and pours it over my leg. I hiss at the contact, but she repeats the process over and over.

  “You’re going to need a hospital.” Luka looks at my leg with narrowed eyes.

  “Do you think you can find me some clothes?” I ask.

  “Your boxers are here but it will hurt like hell pulling them over the burn.” Liam holds up my silk boxers and I thank the Lord I wear them and not tighty-whiteys. They’ll hurt, but not too bad, and I need to be covered. I have no fucking dignity right now.

  “Give.” I hold my hand out.

  Liam passes them to me and I pull them on, being careful to hold them away from the burn as I pull them up my thigh.

  “I need to call an ambulance,” Luka says looking at my leg.

  “And the police.” I sigh.

  I will probably be questioned, maybe arrested, because I doubt they’ll see the level of damage I did to this sick fuck as self-defense.

  I sigh and nod, resigned to my fate but pissed as hell that Duncan, or whatever the fuck he’s called, will get to live.

  Kate comes to stand by me. She has a towel in her hands. “I think it’s clean. Smells freshly laundered. Should we dampen it and put it on his leg?” she asks Mags.

  Luka is making a call, and I’m feeling tired as hell all of a sudden. I need to sit down, and I push myself off from the sink and stumble to the chairs by the tatty table. My adrenalin has dissipated, and my head is splitting.

  I sit down and put my head in my hands. I can’t even look at Kate. She must think I’m a monster, and it kills me to realize how much I care.

  Chapter Twelve

  Kate

  Reece is sat at the table, head in his hands, burned leg straight out in front of him. My heart aches. I’m also conflicted. I thought I didn’t care if my stalker lived or died, but he’s a bloody mess. He’s laid on the floor, Ethan close by him, watching him, but I doubt he’s fit to even stand let alone try anything.

  His face is grotesque. So swollen and battered it’s barely recognizable as human. One eye looks bloated and enlarged, the other collapsed. His jaw is hanging at an odd angle, and his ribs are already blooming with bruises.

  Reece did this.

  He did it, and I don’t know how I feel about it.

  He looked like a crazed animal when we entered the warehouse, naked, battered, blood on him, and not his own. The way he kicked and punched, to see it turned my stomach however much I hated my stalker.

  “What the fuck, dude?” Liam is talking to Reece, voice low but I tune into them.

  “I don’t know, mate. I lost it.” Reece sighs and scratches his cheek. “I kept thinking of what he would have done to Kate. Bastard cattle prodded me, on the fucking balls, and tasered me, around my kidneys a few times. Think he might have damaged them.” He stops talking for a moment, then lifts his eyes to Liam’s, meeting his friend’s dark gaze. “He has a teapot, two cups, two china saucers, and a cake stand. A fucking cake stand. He rapes them, tortures them, and then forces them to have some sort of fucked up afternoon tea. I saw that cake stand and I lost control. I’m gonna make it right, though. Face up to it. He’s not going to walk because I lost it.”

  And with those words, those simple words, I suddenly get why Reece lost it. My eyes track to the cake stand and the cups and saucers and they are the most horrifying things I’ve ever seen.

  “You’re not facing up to anything,” Liam says. “Not without the best fucking lawyer money can buy.”

  Reece laughs. “Mate, I know you’re minted, but the type of lawyer we need to sort this shit? You’re talking five, six, thousand a day!”

  “When the jury sees what he did to those women he murdered, when they hear the letters he sent to Kate, hear how he used a cattle prod on you, and a taser on your kidneys. Hear how he tortured a goddamn hero, they won’t convict you.”

  Liam is confident, final.

  I only wished I shared his belief. I’m terrified Reece will go away for this. The UK law isn’t the greatest when it comes to self-defense. As if reading my mind, Liam continues.

  “We won’t only fight through the courts, either. We’ll make it clear to the Crown prosecution service that if they decide to take this further then we will fight in the court of public opinion, too. They’ve already had cases where the papers got hold of the details of some person or other facing a trial for defending themselves or their property and it provoked a strong reaction, imagine the reaction to this! A war hero, facing trial because he beat up a guy who raped and murdered women, stalked them, and furthermore, took said war hero and tortured him. It would create a furor.”

  Sirens sound in the distance and I’m half relieved Reece is going to get medical help for the burn to his leg, and the damage to his lower back the taser has done. I can see burns and bruises forming on his body and it makes me sick. But, I’m also half terrified he’s going to be dragged into custody as soon as the medics declare him stable.

  And I still don’t know how I’ll feel about all of this when it settles. About him, and what he did. I knew he was a warrior, a man who could and did dole out violence when it was necessary. But today, he went beyond that, and yet his explanation made sense. We all have the capacity to lose it, to let our inner demons take over. I glance to the cake stand once more and suppress a shudder.

  A horrible gurgle comes from the floor, and my tormentor is watching me through his one half open eye. “You ruined it,” he slurs.

  “Shut the fuck up, or I swear I’ll finish what Reece started.” Ethan’s words are cold, hard, and leave little doubt he means it.

  “Do it.” My stalker spits out blood onto the floor. “Do it. I don’t fucking care. Never did. It’s all so pointless and boring. My girls are the only thing that made it worthwhile, and I suppose they’ll be taken away from me now. No new ladies for me to get to know, to woo, to play with. And I did like playing with them so much.”

  He stares at me, then looks to Maggie. “Do you know, the female body is remarkable, really. It can take so much punishment. So much pain, and not break.”

  “Holy shit,” Ethan looks to Liam. “I’m going to fucking wring his skinny neck.”

  There’s a darkness in Ethan’s gaze that tells me he means what he says. His isn’t an out of control anger like that Reece displayed. Ethan is more than capable of putting his hands around this man’s neck and squeezing the life out of him, and doing so because it would make the world a better place.

  Something odd happens, a moment of communication between Ethan and Liam. I see them both consider my stalker, their faces set, hard. Are they weighing up killing him?

  “Put your hands where I can see them.”

  The shout comes from the door where a gaggle of police burst into the room. “Hands,” one of them shouts again. He seems to be the lead as he heads into the room, pointing to his men to cover each wall.

  The spell between Liam and Ethan is broken and they move to do as the cops say.

  We all hold our hands out or up. Reece puts his flat on the table in front of him, palms down and doesn’t move. He’s only in his boxers and he’s starting to look like utter shit. Pale, with a sheen of sweat on his forehead and upper lip.

  Liam moves forward, hands out in front of him. “I called you, officers. I’m Liam, and I work in private close protection, also government contract work, too. You can check my credentials if you wish by taking my wallet out of my back pocket.” He nears the police and turns around.

  One of them reaches forward
and pats Liam down, before plucking his wallet out of his pocket and looking inside as Liam continues.

  “The man at the table is Reece and he works for me. He has been working on a protection case for Kate here, against a man who has been stalking her. We had reason to believe her stalker had perpetrated crimes against other women, so we were using some help from sources in MI5 to try and track him down.”

  I see one of the officer’s eyebrows shoot up when Liam namedrops the intelligence agency.

  “We pretty much figured out the man stalking Kate was Duncan Jacobs. We’ve built a compelling case, which of course we will share. As we were about to move on him, he found where Kate and Reece were holed up, broke in, terrorized Kate and tied her naked to her bed. He proceeded to knock Reece out, then bring him here, where he proceeded to torture him, including tasering him repeatedly in places like his kidneys and his genitals.”

  One of the cops winces, and I see him glance at Reece, and then at the man I now know is called Duncan, on the floor.

  “I know you guys won’t get a say in this, but know this and pass it on to the lawyerly folks. My boy here gets prosecuted for defending himself against a raping, murdering piece of shit, and I’ll make a stink so fucking loud that all the major papers will run with it.” Liam holds the head copper’s gaze for a moment and then leans back against the sink.

  “I don’t have any clothes,” Reece mutters.

  I hate this. He’s somehow defeated. Not physically, but inside, mentally or emotionally, he’s shutting down. I’m not sure what’s going on.

  “We’ll have to take him in,” one of the officers says.

  “Not going in a fucking cell, not after this and not after before,” Reece whispers the words, but I hear them, Liam does too, because his face pales.

  “Look.” Liam turns to the lead officer. “You can’t take him in now, he’s injured. You can cuff him and have an officer ride with him when the ambulance gets here, but you can’t take him in.”

  The police man nods to his colleague. “Stay with him.”

  He goes to Reece and starts to read him his rights. Then he slaps the cuffs on him and Reece stares at them with a sigh. The officer has cuffed Reece to the front, not behind his back. The guy seeing to Duncan doesn’t give him the same courtesy. Despite his grave injuries, Duncan is cuffed with his arms behind him, and then pulled unceremoniously to his feet.