by Lee, Judith
It gave Cody chills that Marcus must have followed them home and waited for the perfect opportunity while he stalked her wherever she went. Cody knew he should have watched over her with more diligence. He should have kept her in his sights at all times. And he most certainly should have stayed sober that awful night.
Cameron nudged his arm. “Cody, do you think he is somewhere in Laramie?”
“I’m thinking that. I wonder…” he thought for a few minutes. “The Snowy Range Mountains are located just outside of Laramie and there are lots of cabins in that area. He would know that being a professor at the University of Wyoming.”
This time of the season there was a very good chance many of the summer residents would have turned off their power, drained their pipes and headed back to warmer climate. The winters were especially cold there and if you were there you would be snowed in until late spring. Cody knew a few people who snowmobiled back in when the snow got over eight feet high. He’d done it himself with a fellow student who had a cabin up there when he had gone to the University.
“Maybe Marcus has broken into one of those cabins. It’s already snowed up there, but the roads are probably still accessible in some of the areas.”
“But Cody, if he’s familiar with the area he would know he’ll eventually get snowed in and he won’t have enough food to get him and Tammy through the winter,” Dakota replied.
“Unless he has been planning ahead and has stocked one of the out of the way cabins that looked abandoned for the winter. We should call the Sheriff’s office and have him get in touch with the Game and Fish wardens and see what they think.”
“There are hundreds of cabins up there. How can we pinpoint our search?” Cameron asked.
Jenny who had been sitting on Jared’s lap in the corner of the room said, “We can call the power company and see who is still using electricity. Maybe we don’t even need a search warrant if we tell them what we suspect.”
Cody looked at Jenny, and said, “I think you’re right. That’s a great idea.” He started feeling hope for the first time in two weeks.
She jumped up, “I’ll get on it first thing tomorrow morning. I bet I can talk them into telling us what cabin is still using power and if that is a normal occurrence.”
Everyone in the room felt the renewed energy. Later that night Cody walked to his father’s grave, and prayed and asked his dad for help.
Chapter Twenty
Tammy woke in pain. She could tell she was in a car, probably on the floor in the back seat. She was covered up with a tarp or something heavy. There was tape across her mouth and her hands were in front of her body taped together. Even her fingers were taped so she couldn’t use them. Her feet were bent back in an awkward position and tucked next to her butt. The tape, she guessed it was Duct Tape, was wrapped around her hips to her feet. Her legs were asleep.
She studied her body trying to determine where the most pain was centered. She tried to wiggle her upper body and she felt grinding pain in the upper left part of her body. As she moved, she could feel splinters of glass slipping around in her wet shoulder. It was wet which meant she was probably bleeding. Her skin was on fire and she felt nauseous. The pounding in her head was hammering away in her skull.
Although she could still smell the alcohol on her clothes, she must have been passed out long enough to sober up. She didn’t feel drunk any more.
Where was he taking her? She moved her head back and forth trying to displace the tarp. It slid slightly off her face. With excruciating pain she rose up and looked back over her shoulder through the console opening and saw a woman, no it was Marcus with a blond wig and a pair of glasses. He was whistling a tune she didn’t know over and over. Occasionally, laughing out loud.
The car smelled like a swamp, probably from her short time in the drainage ditch. It made her want to gag. If she did that she might suffocate so she tried to draw steady breaths through her nose and slow down her pounding heart.
She was alive. And she was strong of mind.
She had trained herself for this final confrontation and now she would have to pull herself together and recoup her energy, let her body heal, and when the time was right, she was going to kick some ass.
Her thoughts went to Cody. She hoped he was following her but if Marcus has slipped through the search party which she suspected he had done with the different car and the disguise, she hoped Cody’s brothers were surrounding him and giving him strength. She would rather fight Marcus with Cody by her side but if she had to do it by herself at least Cody wouldn’t get hurt trying to save her.
She was going to live. Period.
She needed to start mentally preparing for the torture Marcus was going to dole out. Pain was something she had learned how to handle over the year she had been married to him. And when Marcus least expected it, she would find a way to escape.
It was strange how frightened she had been when she knew he was out there stalking her, but now that he had caught her, her resolve and strength had surfaced. Maybe, she thought, because she knew this was the final showdown. Tammy had something to fight for now. She loved Cody with all her heart and she wanted to be his wife someday.
Somehow he had fallen in love with her even though she had brought such a volatile past to into his life. It wasn’t bad enough that he had lost his father, but now he’d be out of his mind with worry for her. She wished there was some way she could reassure him that she was alive and somehow, someway she would get home to him.
In the darkest moments that were to come she would seal her mind off to everything but the love she felt for Cody. She knew that would get her through the blackness. She would refuse to let Marcus break her spirit.
***
Cody called Matt and told him they were flying to Laramie and would be there in about an hour. He explained how Jenny had talked the power company into searching their records of unusual electrical usage of the cabins in the area. They had found one that never had power on after the first of August, but it was on now. It had taken a few days for them to do the research. The Sheriff’s department was meeting with search parties and getting ready to go in, but they needed a search warrant which they expected to receive within an hour or two.
Matt said he had a friend who had a snowmobile and equipment he could use, including snow shoes if necessary, and he wasn’t waiting for any search warrant. He would be headed up to the mountain in less than half an hour. Cody gave him the location and Matt programed it into his GPS on his phone. Cody told him not to get too close, just walk or snowshoe in and just scope out what was happening. He told him not to take any chances, or do anything that would get him or Tammy killed. The cell phone service up there was non-existent so Matt said he’d take a two way radio and gave him the radio coordinates. Cody was sure they would be with the search party before they took off.
As Matt drove by the gathering spot at the edge of town he could see the Sheriff and searchers gearing up, but he didn’t stop and drove by the men. He was pulling the snowmobile trailer and he was going to make good time. He actually was very familiar with the area where the cabin was located. The snow was already about two feet high, and he’d get as far as he could with his truck.
An hour later he was lying on the ground some distance away and he could see Tammy through the window. Even from this distance she looked pretty beat up and she was naked. He got on the radio to Cody.
“She’s here at the cabin. I sure hope you get here pretty soon or I’m going in alone.” He tried to take a deep calming breath.
“We’re only twenty minutes behind you so don’t go in unless you think her life is at risk, Matt, he could be armed.”
Matt tried shaking off his anger when Marcus untied her ropes and grabbed her by her hair and pulled her to her feet. He dragged her out of Matt’s vision past the window.
“He’s dragging her somewhere.”
“Matt, this is killing me. Damn it all to hell. We’ll be there soon. Just sit tight.”
Matt watched for a few minutes and decided he was going to move in closer, but he had to hide behind a tree because Marcus had suddenly dragged her back into the main room. He threw her toward the log. She looked pale and scared. He tied her back up, winding the rope around and around her hands and feet, and then he started beating her with a stick.
“Oh God Cody he’s beating her with a stick. I gotta hang up. I’m going to try to get in there.” He hung up.
Chapter Twenty-one
The first week had been what Tammy had expected. He had started with the mind games he liked to play with her, and tied her to a log post in the main room of the cabin. He stripped her clothes and had thrown water on her several times because he told her that she stunk. She knew the physical abuse, the beatings and rough sex would start after he thought he had torn her down enough mentally. She remembered how long it had taken him during their marriage, almost a month before he started in on the physical torture. He wanted her to be a pathetic crying victim. That was his MO and she knew it well.
But it wouldn’t be as easy this time. She knew his tricks and sealed her mind off to all his words and kept quiet.
“You’re a whore, and don’t deserve to live. Tell me who you have been sleeping with you bitch!”
He commenced to tell her everything she had done wrong over the year she had been with him and didn’t stop yelling at her from the moment he got up to when he was finally so drunk he had fallen asleep on the couch. Marcus enjoyed this type of grueling interrogation. He would pull her hair back, spit in her face and slapped her if she started falling asleep.
Nights were the hardest on her body. Her skin rested against the bark of the log she was tied to, and she had slivers wedged next to the glass that was still in her shoulder. Even though she knew she had a fever, she was freezing cold toward the morning when the logs in the pot belly stove would burn out. Marcus left the large ceiling fan running all day and night to help distribute the heat from the stove, but at night when the coals had burned down, the fan was like a wind tunnel pushing cold air towards her body. She curled in on herself as much as she could by pulling her knees to her chest to retain what warmth she had left in her body. Hypothermia was her biggest fear but somehow she stayed alive each night until he woke and stoked the fire.
Every morning he would go out and cut more wood. He had a chain saw and she could hear him cutting wood and storing it on the porch. When he came back in he always threw the saw by the front door. He told her he was going to be ready for the winter, and during the winter he was going to be fucking her to keep him warm. He’d laugh and spittle ran down the side of his mouth.
He hadn’t fed her or given her water for the first two days so she was physically wearing down, but her spirit would not be broken. On the third day she decided to play along with the crying and whining he enjoyed so much, and cried and begged him for food and water. He pulled her head back and spilled water down her burning throat and fed her some bread.
Twice a day he would drag her to the bathroom, and stand to watch over her humiliation. He seemed to get some kind of perverse excitement from watching her using the bathroom. On one of those occasions she had endured enough and since her feet were untied she jumped off the toilet seat and kneed him.
Thinking back over the punishment he had given her that morning, she decided it probably hadn’t been such a good idea, but at the time it had felt so good. The belt lashes she’d received were festering and painful against the log.
In the kitchen was a broom. It was her favorite thing to look at, and she stared at it for hours remembering Jenny using it as her kick ass symbol. What she wouldn’t give to take that broom and bang it over his head, over and over again.
She was pretty sure she had been there for about two weeks. Marcus had grown a beard. He had found a rifle with lots of ammunition and when he wasn’t tormenting her or cutting wood, he would leave her to go hunting. He told her he had enough food stored for winter but he didn’t want to take any chances and he enjoyed hunting so he’d go off to slaughter an elk or deer at about the same time every day. When he brought the dead animal back, he would always cut open the belly and jam the liver down her mouth. It made her gag but she tried to think of it as food. He loved rubbing the blood all over her body before he butchered the animal.
The blood would get him turned on enough that he’d fist himself in front of her, sometimes spewing his seed all over her head and shoulders. That burned like hell but at least he hadn’t taken to raping her. She thought she knew why he hadn’t done that to her yet; it was because in all his great planning he had forgotten to bring condoms. And since she had been captured she wasn’t on the pill anymore and she hoped with all her being that he still deplored having sex without his condoms since he thought she was such an unclean woman.
A few days later, when he was dragged Tammy to the bathroom, she pretended to lose her balance and as she started to fall she grabbed the broom and hit him over the head several times. Oh damn right. She would have kept swinging but he grabbed her by the throat and started squeezing. When she started to lose consciousness he released her long enough to pull back his big fist and hit her cheek so hard she fell to the floor.
He dragged her over to the log and tied her up and beat her up with the broomstick. During one violent blow to her shin, she heard her bone pop, and she could see it sticking out of her skin as blood oozed down her leg. Surprisingly it didn’t hurt. He must have damaged her nerves, she thought, with little emotion. She was trying to get to her out-of-body mind state, but each blow seemed to be harder than the last. Finally, he stopped because he was breathing so hard. He pulled out his knife and for a moment she thought this was it. He was going to kill her.
He started grabbing clumps of her hair and cutting them off all over her head.
“That’ll teach you, you bitch. You always did love your hair too much. Next time I’ll shave it all off, do you hear me?” He pulled her chin tightly in his hands and pulled her head up so he could look in her eyes.
She knew he was losing it more than she was. How ironic that she was just making him more insane which is what he was trying to do to her. She almost smiled because Cody would tease her about her role reversal reasoning.
Remembering him brought tears to her eyes. She wanted to go home. She wanted Cody’s arms around her.
Marcus pulled back and looked at her as she cried. “That’s better. That’s the kind of submission I want from you. You cry your little eyes out and maybe beg me some more and I’ll remember to feed you sometime today.
He closed his eyes and reached inside his pants. He made her sick. He was so demented. At that moment she saw a flash of someone outside the window. She looked up to see Marcus’s eyes still closed, and she looked back at the window. It was Cody, no her mind was playing tricks on her, it was Matt. What was he doing here? Marcus would kill him. Her eyes darted up to Matt and she made a stop motion with one of her hands and then she looked at the table so Matt could see that Marcus had a rifle. Thankfully he backed away.
Later Marcus grabbed his rifle, put on his heavy winter gear and took off. Her eyes snapped back to the window, hoping and praying that Matt was hidden. After about ten minutes she heard the door open and Matt ran in and knelt beside her. He put his hand on her cheek. She could only see him with one eye because the other one had swollen shut.
He reached for a blanket and wrapped it around her. “Hi honey, sorry we’re so late to get you…you look like you’re having a bad hair day.”
“You think?” and she laughed through her tears.
He was glad to see the spark return to her eyes. He took out his knife and started cutting through the rope at her hands.
“Will he be back soon?”
“In an hour or two, he’s gone hunting. At least I hope so. You shouldn’t be here Matt, he’ll kill you.”
He looked at her battered body and said, “And you think he’s not going to kill you? I was supposed to wait fo
r the Sheriff, Cody and the search party, they’re not far behind me but I’ve got to get you out of here. Can you walk?”
She looked at her broken leg and his eyes followed her to the bone sticking out.
“I’m going to kill him with my bare hands,” he snarled.
“No Matt, go outside and wait for the others. If he finds you in here before they come… he’s got a rifle. Please go.”
Matt ignored her and kept sawing away at the ropes wrapped around her hands and legs. “I’m not leaving you.”
They both heard the door open, and Marcus stepped in with his rifle leveled at Matt.
“Move away from her!” he screamed.
“You’re going to have to go through me to get to her, you sick bastard.”
Marcus lowered his rifle and pointed it at Tammy’s head. “Drop that knife, and back away now. I was planning on killing her sometime this winter after I had my fun with her but I can speed that up today.” He advanced on Tammy and put the rifle next to her temple.
Matt rose up and backed away from her, his hands in the air.
“Turn around you stupid cowboy.” Matt turned around and Marcus swung the barrel of his rifle at Matt’s head and he dropped like a stone.
Tammy watched him drag Matt over to a chair that was made of logs, and he dumped Matt there and started tying him up. When he was secure, he turned on Tammy with rage.
“Is this another of the cowboys you slept when I went to prison? You whore!”
Tammy started shaking her head, “I’ll do anything you want, just don’t kill him.” She started crying and begging.
Marcus smiled. “Well then maybe we’ll keep him around for a while, so we can see how compliant you will be for me.” He started removing his winter coat, overalls, and wet boots.
“This is going to be fun. Maybe I’ll even make him rape you so I can watch, since I can’t touch your nasty crack after you have had all those other men. Maybe he can watch while I stick the broom up your butt!” he cackled insanely.