The bulb isn't bright, but after who knows how long in the dark, I flinch away, screwing my eyes up against the brightness. Instinctively, I move away from the door, but nobody comes running, alerted by the light. I open my eyes a few degrees at a time, first my right, then my left, until I am able to get my first real look at my prison.
I was right – it is a cellar. There are no windows, no way in or out apart from the reinforced steel door. The ancient, dirty bulb hangs down in the center of the space. There's nothing in here apart from a couple of things on the floor – a bottle of water, and a bucket, turned on its side from when I bumped into it.
I fall on the water. I'm so thirsty I could cry. Even though it's warm, it tastes like the sweetest nectar there is, and it's all I can do to stop myself draining the bottle right there. But I don't know if or when I'll get any more, so I need to make it last. I force myself to just take a little, just enough to quench the worst of the burning thirst. Then I put the cap back on. I can't stop looking at it, though, so in the end I put it in the canvas bag so that I can't see it any more.
That leaves the bucket. I know what it's for. I don't want to use it – I really don't – but my need is getting more urgent by the minute. I drag it into the far corner of the cellar before I awkwardly unbutton my jeans, feeling absurdly vulnerable as I use it. Crazy, because I'm not any more vulnerable than I already was. Nobody knows where I am.
Belatedly, with a sudden stab of hope, I pat down my pockets, hoping for my cell phone. Of course, it's not there. I don't even keep it in my pocket, I keep it in my purse, which is nowhere in sight.
With nothing else to do, I sit back down on the floor again, and try not to think about the water. I wonder if I should turn the light back off, but my fear of the impenetrable blackness is greater than my fear of whatever my captor will think about the light being on.
Hours pass. I know this, because I'm wearing my watch. It's literally the only thing to watch, so I sit there, staring at it, watching the second hand sweep and the minutes and hours tick by. I have another drink of water, just a small one.
I'm starting to wonder what would happen if my captor never comes back. It might not even be deliberate, either. Supposing he drops down dead of a heart attack, or gets run down crossing the street? My mind is racing with all the things that could happen to him, and I'm choking on the irony that I want him to stay safe so that he can come and let me out. Then he can die. Then he can have all the car accidents and heart attacks in the world.
My crazy train of thought means that, when I hear the sound of the door being cranked open, there's a tiny golden thread of relief buried in the mess of terror that grips me. I get to my feet. This is it.
He steps into the room, blinking at the light. It must be dark outside the cellar, too. He looks at me, his face as familiar as my own. For one wild moment, I think he's here to rescue me. Then I see the way his fists are clenched. He's not here to rescue me, not at all.
“You,” I say.
“Me,” he agrees.
Chapter Nine - Dragon
I can't process what Freeman is saying. I haul him up onto his feet, and drag him bodily into my apartment, kicking his car door closed as I pass. He's stopped sobbing now, and instead he's passive, letting me pull him along. I sit him down.
“Now,” I say. “From the top. Tell me what happened.”
My patient exterior is a lie. I'd heard enough out in the lot. They've taken her. It's clear that Tony thinks she's been grabbed by some enemy – maybe the letter writer, maybe someone else. But I know what's been going on over there, the last few days, and it's possible that she's took off somewhere, to get away from him. Or from me. After all, I did reject her just yesterday. Before I jump to any conclusions, I need to hear the full story.
I debate getting Tony a beer, to calm his nerves, but one look at his face tells me that it's going to take a lot more than that. I pour out two glasses of whiskey and hand him one, resisting the childish urge to point out that the last time I saw him, he booted me in the head, and yet I am being hospitable. It's not for his sake that I'm acting nice, it's for Honey's.
He takes a long, slow drink, and a little of his usual, collected manner returns to him. I can see that all the other stuff is still there, though, just under the surface. He takes a deep breath.
“She said yesterday morning that she was coming here, to... to check on you.” He has the grace to look slightly ashamed.
“She did,” I say. “She left about sundown.”
His eyes narrow as he calculates how long she was here, but he doesn't comment on it.
“Then I don't think she came home. I didn't- we'd had a disagreement about a couple of things, and I didn't want to seem like I was checking up on her. I just thought she was in her room, pissed with me. But then I got a picture, on my cell, a couple of hours ago.” He shows me.
It's Honey, slumped in the trunk of a car. She looks like she's simply fallen asleep, but I know better. There are no marks or bruises on her face. Drugged. My blood is turning to ice water in my veins. Part of me, the deeper, primal part, wants to lash out with rage and fury, to tear down anything and anyone in my path. It's the part of me that unloaded on Carl, the part that I fight to keep in check every day. The part of me that I get from my father. I won't give in to it, I tell myself. I have to think clearly.
“This is a text message?” I ask.
“Email,” he says. “Some throwaway internet account.”
“Anything else?”
“A second email. But no more since.”
He shows me the second email. It's another photo, this time a picture of a handwritten letter. It's the same as the letters that were being sent, the sick twisted ones. The intent is clear – this guy wants Tony to know he's the one behind all the other shit. But the wording of the letter, clearly visible, is different.
Pay up, you gangster piece of shit. 2 million in cash gets you what's left of your precious daughter after I get what's mine.
“That's it?” I ask.
“Isn't that enough?” he roars.
“No. There'll be more to come,” I say, ignoring his rage. Stay calm, stay calm, stay calm. “A drop off, or something. If he wants money, he needs to tell you how to get it to him.”
“Oh. Yeah.” He clears his throat. “Listen, son. I know we had a disagreement, the other day. Tempers got out of hand. But I could really use your help with this.”
Unbelievably, he slides his pudgy hand into his jacket pocket, and pulls out a thick wad of cash. He holds it out to me.
“Fuck you,” I say, swiping at his outstretched hand with my fist. The money flies everywhere. “Fuck you, and fuck your money. You think you know everything, don't you? You think you can buy anyone. You think that all you have to do is open your fucking wallet, and everyone jumps, because you're Tony fucking Freeman. You think you see everything happens.”
I am right up in his face, yelling.
“You see nothing. You know nothing. And right now, you're going to tell me every last fucking detail that you can think of that might help me get her back, or god help me, I will kill you right here and now!”
I push him away and pace the room, trying to rein my temper back in. He sits back down, dazed.
“I don't know much,” he begins, hesitantly. “I've had some guys looking into the letters, but they've not turned up much. They stopped looking, in the end. The letters stopped. I figured it was just some pervert, getting his rocks off.”
“When did they stop, exactly? And when did they start?” I say.
“The first one was in May, early May. The last one was the day before my birthday,” he says.
There's something there, a pattern in the information. I can nearly see it. I close my eyes, my mind racing. You gangster piece of shit. Get what's mine. Gangster piece of shit. Tony's birthday. Gangster piece of shit. The engagement party. Get what's mine, get what's mine, get what's mine...
I open my eyes.
“Tony, when did you first meet Carl?”
“The- the golf tournament. At the end of April,” he says faintly. “You can't think...”
“It makes sense,” I say. “The letters started after you met him, and ended when they got engaged. He called you a gangster piece of shit the other day, and the note uses the same phrase. He talks about 'getting what's his' – Honey and him never, you know, did anything like that. Now the wedding's off, and he wants money. And he's a sick bastard with a track record of violence towards women.”
I wasn't completely sure, but spelling out to Tony has convinced me. It's him, the douchebag. I know it.
“The son of a bitch!” Tony roars. “I'll kill him! I'll bury him! That mother fucker!”
I give him a few seconds to work through the worst of it, but he's wasting time ranting. Time we don't have. Time Honey doesn't have.
“We need to find him,” I say. “Sit down and think. What do you know about him – where does he live, where is his office, who are his friends? We still have some time, he's not sent the drop point through yet. If we ask around, then maybe we can get a beat on where he's keeping her.”
“There's no need for all that,” he says, stabbing his phone with his fat finger. Despite his anger, his fear, his grief, he manages a tiny smirk. “I, uh, fitted a tracker to his car. When they first started dating.” He looks up and sees my expression of disbelief. “I wanted to make sure they weren't getting up to anything!”
“Tony... you're fucking crazy,” I say, half in shock, half in admiration.
“You're a fine one to talk,” he mutters.
He shows me the screen – it's a satellite map of the woods, out beyond the interstate. There's a small green marker in the center.
“How far?” I say, grabbing my keys.
“Maybe an hour,” he says. “Don't get your hopes up, though. It might not be him.”
I don't answer him. I don't need to.
It's him. I know it.
Chapter Ten - Honey
The emotions flicker through me uncontrollably as I stand there, trembling. It's all mixed up in my head, and I don't know how to feel, how to react. I start laughing, but it's not a genuine laugh. It's hysteria. From somewhere far away, I can hear myself, and I realize I sound like a crazy person.
It's him. It's Carl. I have a strange sense of relief, that I'm being held prisoner by someone that I know – which is insane. At the same, different strands of fear are running through it all. The old fear is there, like a familiar pain. The fear I felt every time his eyes would tighten during conversation. The fear I felt every time he came home from work and it hadn't gone well. The fear I felt when he didn't like my clothing, my attitude, my hair, the weather. Reflexively, I cringe. I've taken the bag off my head, turned the light on, seen him with my own eyes. He's not going to like any of that, and I know I'll pay the price for pissing him off. I realize that I'm hunching over, instinctively trying to protect myself from the volley of kicks and punches that will begin at any moment, but I can't help it.
There's a new fear, too. This one is a slow burner, not as finely tuned as the old fear. This is the fear that remembers all the words that were in the letters, all the things he said he was going to do to me. Things that are far, far worse than kicks and punches. The new fear remembers the way he would get hard whenever he turned violent. That stuff in the letters wasn't just some finely crafted bullshit, to scare my father. He's completely genuine in his intentions. And there's nobody here to stop him, nobody at all...
“I knew you were fucking him,” Carl spits, his face a twisted mask of hate.
“Wh-what?” For half a second, I think he's talking about my father, and then I remember where he grabbed me – outside Dragon's apartment.
“Don't try and deny it, you fucking whore. You went running to that thug as soon as I left you, even after you saw what he did to me!”
He points to his face. He's a mess, bruised and swollen. I think he may even have some teeth missing.
“It's all your fault! You did this!”
As he yells, I can see spit forming on his lips. He's losing control of himself. I've seen him angry before, but I've never seen him this unraveled.
“All you had to do, all you had to do, was buy a stupid fucking wedding dress, so that we could get married. After everything I went through, everything I put up with!”
He's advancing towards me slowly, as he speaks. His clenched fist is bouncing against his thigh, in rhythm with his words. I start to back away, deeper into the corner of the cellar.
“I worked for that money,” he's saying now. “Do you hear me? I earned it. I let my reputation - my good name – be dragged through the dirt. Not just associating with a common criminal, oh no! Actually agreeing to marry into the family!”
He leans against the wall casually, smiling.
“Have I hurt your feelings? So sorry,” he says, clearly anything but sorry.
“You can't possibly have thought that someone like me would marry someone like you, though, surely? At least, not for love. The truth is, sweetheart, I'm a little short on cash. Well, quite a bit short, actually. Marrying you would have been a good deal for both of us – you'd have got a better match than you ever could have hoped for, and one way or another, I'd have got hold of the funds I need to cover my ass. Everyone knows that criminals deal in large sums. I've been drip-feeding the idea of a money-laundering scheme to your moron father for quite a while, now – but he made it clear that he wanted to keep the business strictly in the family.”
I'm not even shocked. The way he kisses my father's ass, the way he seems to have little to no interest in me – I always figured he wanted something from my dad. The only real surprise is that he's broke. The way he enjoyed looking down on everyone else, you'd think he was rolling in it.
“Now that you've fucked it all up, though, I've had to move to Plan B. Do you think it will work?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, he was quick enough to get rid of you, when he thought that you were going to get... hurt.”
His eyes darken at this, and I feel a chill of dread.
“He'd have married you off to the garbage man, if he'd asked. Anything to get you out of the house and away from danger. So, now that you're well and truly in danger, do you think he'll pay to get you back?”
“You know he will, Carl,” I say dully. “That's been the whole idea, hasn't it?”
He beams at me, as if I am a slow student who's finally grasped a simple concept.
“Yeah, I guess it has,” he says. “I mean, I was happy enough to go the wedding route, but then of course I'd have been stuck with you. This way is more of a pain in the ass, but it's quicker.”
He moves towards me once more.
“That doesn't mean we can't have some fun, though,” he says softly.
I sink to my knees in terror, trying to curl up into a little ball until it is over, what ever IT may be.
He's standing over me, his breath becoming quicker and louder as he enjoys the moment, and the power he has over me.
I look up at him. When Dragon found out what Carl had done to me, he had beaten the crap out of him – I can still see the evidence in the bruises and the welts on Carl's face. When Carl knew that my father would learn what he had been up to, he ran, rather than face my dad's vengeance.
But me? I'm nothing to him. Barely even a person. I'm cowering on the floor, next to a bucket of my own piss. Waiting for it to happen. Waiting for it to be over. Waiting for my father to pay up and get me out of here. All I've ever done is wait, while other people have made my decisions for me. Enough is enough.
I stand up, my hand wrapped tightly around the handle of the metal bucket.
“Fuck you, Carl,” I say. “Fuck you.”
Chapter Eleven - Dragon
I'm driving as fast as I can, without attracting the wrong kind of attention. Cop attention. Maybe some people would call the police in a situation like this, but Tony do
esn't want to, and I agree with him.
There's nothing that they can do that we can't do ourselves, and plenty that they can try and stop us from doing, when we catch up with that motherfucker. It's killing me, though, the pace and the traffic. I want to blast through them all. Anything could be happening while we piss about, crawling along...
Tony isn't helping. The tension is pouring off him in waves, and his eyes are fixed on the small screen, as if staring at the marker will somehow make everything be OK. Personally, I'd feel a lot happier if that marker was moving. If Carl is driving, it means he's not doing anything else – not doing anything to Honey. The sick bastard.
My eyes keep being drawn back to my knuckles, as they grip the steering wheel. They're still red and marked from when I was slamming my fists into his face. I should have killed him when I had the chance, or Tony should have, instead of worrying about his precious chain of command and who's business it was to beat the little creep's face in.
I think he knows this, though. His attitude towards me has changed considerably since the last time we met. He's not acting like the boss any more, and in a way it's a little unnerving, to see how quickly and how thoroughly he's come undone. Somehow, I've ended up in charge of the situation. On the one hand it's good, because it's like being alone. And being alone in a fight is all I know. On the other hand, I'm really struggling to keep my temper in hand, and the added pressure isn't helping any.
But I have to, there's no choice. Everything depends on me, and my ability to keep a level head. To think rationally. Because she's out there, alone, with no one to protect her.
Regrets keep piling into my head, one after the other. I should have ended Carl. I should have told her to stay, when she asked when we could see each other again. Because she was asking more than that, and I knew it. Everything I'd told myself, everything I'd told her, about why we couldn't and shouldn't be together – it was all bullshit. The truth is simple – I was scared of letting her in. Scared that she'd make the commitment, break with her father and be with me, and then she'd find out that maybe I wasn't worth it after all.
Dragon: A Bad Boy Romance Page 8