"You couldn't…"
"What?"
"Look, you couldn't give me a lift home, could you? You just have to turn left at the end of this road, and my house is only a few blocks down from there. It's just that it's nearly school pick-up time and I need to phone my friend, ask her to pick up my little girl. Is that okay?"
"Sure." It was a bit of a nuisance, but Charlotte could hardly leave the woman stranded. She got back in her car, unlocked the front passenger seat. "Hop in."
"Thanks." The woman got in, fastened her safety belt.
Charlotte switched on the engine. As she pulled out onto the road, she noticed someone get out of the back of the woman's car. A male, blue shirt, dark hair…
What the hell?
Something cold touched her bare arm. Glancing down, she saw it was a gun.
Panic surged. She wanted to leap from the car, scream, wave down a passing motorist. But there was no other car in sight.
"Just drive," said the woman. "Follow the directions I gave you."
Charlotte gripped the steering wheel hard and forced herself to speak. "Who are you? What do you want?"
But she already knew the answer to the second question. She'd been lured in and trapped by Ben like Becca had. How could she or Becca have known that the charming man in the café had an accomplice waiting to ambush her?
The woman settled back in her seat, but kept the gun pointed at Charlotte. "I always enjoy this bit. When the obsessed spanko finds out what an idiot she's been. My name's Mandy, but what if I were to tell you that you know me as Panda?"
"What?" Charlotte couldn't believe her ears. This was Panda?
"Yes, yes, I know. You thought Panda lived in Singapore, and that she was beautiful and always wore gorgeous expensive dresses." Panda laughed. "That's the internet for you, sweetheart. What lonely, frustrated woman out there would want my life if I said I was plain and fat, and liked watching my husband dominate younger women? But being an adored, well-spanked wife with a perfect, not to mention wealthy husband… You're not the first to make a fool of yourself wanting Panda's life, and you won't be the last."
Charlotte wanted to bash her head into the steering wheel. How could she have been so stupid?
"And of course, you know Hayden by another name," continued Panda. "Two names actually. Ben, of course. And his forum name. Admin."
"The forum's yours?"
"Yes. We thought it would be a perfect way to find and groom willing little subs…"
Charlotte checked the rear-view mirror. Ben was tailing her. There was no car behind him, still nothing coming from the other direction. She hoped to God there'd be another car somewhere between now and wherever Panda was taking her. If she couldn't attract someone's attention she was going to die.
"You killed Marie Beckham, didn't you?" she said.
Panda chuckled. "Is that what you think? Oh, no, why should we kill a sweet little sub like Becca? She's useful!" She laughed again. "Well, she is now she's come round to our way of thinking. She does all the jobs around the house that I don't want to do, and looks after Ben's friends nicely when they come round. She resisted at first, but being chained up and subject to our discipline soon took care of that. You were clever, though, putting two and two together like that and asking about Becca. That's why we made her sign up again and respond. She'd forgotten her username and password, so she said."
The username variation must have been a signal for help. As had been the way Becca had stopped saying 'sooo' all the time in her posts and started signing them with kisses. Little things she hoped her captors wouldn't notice, but someone else might.
And Charlotte hadn't noticed till it was too late.
Panda tapped Charlotte's arm lightly with the gun. "Living with us as a sub will be everything you ever dreamed," she told her. "Rules to keep. Lists of chores to complete each day. Men to please. Long, extremely painful spankings if you don't comply. It'll be all your fantasies come true at once."
I don't think so, you bitch.
Charlotte willed herself to be calm, to think clearly. She was damn well going to escape; she wouldn't let them abduct her. She may have been an idiot sucked in by that fucking forum, but she wasn't going to go willingly into slavery, even if Panda held a gun.
"What about the other posters?" she asked, playing for time. "Are they real? Or is that you and Ben as well, making up all the posts?"
"Oh, the posters are real all right," said Panda carelessly. "Whether they're telling the truth in their posts is another question. Take Gemma, for example. She's meant to be a barrister, but she can spend almost all day every day on the forum? Either she doesn't get many cases or she's not a barrister at all. Who knows what else she's made up?" She shrugged.
They'd reached the end of the current stretch of road. Charlotte had no idea where she'd end up if she turned left as instructed and drove a few blocks down the road. Did Panda and Ben live down there, or was it some lonely place where they would ditch her car and force her into theirs? On the other hand, if she turned left and then immediate right, there was a winery about five minutes farther along the road. There would surely be tourists. She'd be able to attract somebody's attention.
Would Panda shoot her, though, if she didn't drive the way she'd been told to?
That was a risk she'd have to take.
The alternative was going the way of Marie Beckham.
Before Charlotte left home this morning she'd checked Spanking Sheilas and her Miss Scarlet email, just in case Ben pulled out of their meeting. For once, though, she'd left herself signed into both, left them in the history browser. A safety net in case something went wrong. That way, Connor would find her messages and emails if she disappeared. Give the police a lead so they could trace her.
And if the meeting with Ben had gone well, she'd planned to delete the history before Connor returned from work.
She'd thought she was being smart.
And all the time she'd been stupid.
Even if Connor's information led the police to the café, the staff would say they saw Charlotte leave, say goodbye to the man she was with. That she got into her car and he walked off in the opposite direction. That was if they had noticed her at all.
Ben's description would match that of the man who met Marie Beckham, but no one would have a clue where to find him, where he went after leaving Warrandyte.
"Turn left," said Panda. "And don't try any funny business." She raised the gun threateningly.
Charlotte had no choice.
She turned left and then, heart thumping, turned immediate right, flooring the accelerator. Panda yelled, "Turn around, you bitch." But she didn't shoot. Charlotte was more afraid now of the speed she was going at as she took a corner way too fast. Instinctively she slowed down, but it was too late.
She veered onto the wrong side of the road and had to swerve out of the way of an oncoming car.
She oversteered, hit the brakes and the car spun before juddering to a halt.
The other car stopped and a male driver got out, gesticulating angrily.
Panda flung open the passenger door, leapt out of the car and ran.
Charlotte stumbled out of the car. The elderly man who'd been striding towards her furious at her wild driving paused to stare at Panda, sprinting along the road. A car shrieked round the corner and shuddered to a halt. Charlotte recognised Ben. "We have to stop them," she told the elderly gentleman. "They abducted Marie Beckham and they just tried to abduct me."
The man dug a mobile phone from his pocket. "I'll call the cops."
Panda slammed the passenger door shut and Ben hit the accelerator again. There was no way he could pass the two cars sprawled across the road, but he still drove in their direction. For one terrifying moment Charlotte thought he was aiming straight at them but, with a screech of brakes, he did a U-turn and hurtled in the opposite direction.
She made out as much of the registration number as she could, repeated it to herself, and grabbed her notebook a
nd pen from her bag to write it down.
The man was on the phone to the police. "Here, you'd better talk to them," he said, passing it to Charlotte. "I really don't have a clue what just happened there."
By some miracle, both their cars started. Charlotte and the elderly man—who introduced himself as Ted Tomlinson—manoeuvred the cars off the road and waited for the police to turn up. The wait took forever. The heat was intense, and they were constantly bombarded by flies. As they waited, Charlotte told Ted the story she planned to spin to the police, though with less detail. "I was interviewing him for a story, then they ambushed me when I was driving home," she said, flicking away the fiftieth fly to try to land on her lips. She didn't mention the spanking forum to Ted Tomlinson. It was going to be embarrassing enough telling the cops. And she felt vulnerable, too, here alone, with the hint she might be a fetishist.
"Here they are," said Ted unnecessarily as a police car turned the corner and pulled up roadside. Two uniformed officers got out of the car, and approached Charlotte and Ted. Charlotte realised she was still trembling. She tried to get the story straight in her head. She was working on a speculative freelance article for a women's magazine about Australian couples who practised old-fashioned discipline in their marriage. She'd wanted to talk to a man who offered discipline to women who wanted that style of relationship but who either didn't have partners or who had partners who wouldn't go along with it. It was only after hearing the description of the man Marie Beckham was last seen with and then seeing Ben that she wondered if there was a connection. The last thing Charlotte wanted was to be done for holding back information vital to a police investigation, or whatever the charge might be. She had no idea, but was sure there'd be one.
"Great that you got the rego," said one of the cops to Charlotte. "We're all on the lookout for it now. Now, would you mind accompanying us to the police station so we can take your statements? What are your grounds for believing that the couple in the car abducted Marie Beckham?"
"The woman—Mandy, she said her name was—confessed to it when she tried to abduct me," Charlotte explained.
"And did she say whether or not Marie is still alive?"
"Yes. She is," says Charlotte. "She told me they're keeping her as a sort of sex slave." In the corner of her eye she saw Ted Tomlinson's face flush with embarrassment. "And they planned to do the same with me."
Twenty
It was almost seven by the time Charlotte turned into her road. For a while, she'd thought she'd be at the police station half the night and Connor would arrive home before she did. Giving her statement had been as awful and as embarrassing as anticipated, especially when she sensed that the two police officers—one male playing good cop, one female playing bad cop—didn't entirely believe her.
"And you were working on this story for which newspaper?"
"I was writing it on spec. I've only been here a couple of years and I've started looking for another job. I want to break into general women's magazines and I thought if I could sell an unusual feature like this, it could help."
"And how did you come across this spanking forum in the first place?"
"Through another story I was working on. About young sportswomen who are abused. The forum showed up in the search engine." Charlotte's cheeks burned, and neither police officer looked at her directly.
"And when did you start to suspect that the gentleman you called Ben might have known something about Marie Beckham's disappearance?" asked the female cop.
"I did wonder when I first started researching the story," Charlotte admitted. "A woman called Becca had disappeared at the same time as Marie. But when I queried it, I got a message from Becca, so I believed she was a different person, and back in England."
"Really?" Female Cop's eyes bored into her and Charlotte shifted uneasily in her seat.
"I suspected but there was nothing concrete," she said. "I dismissed it because it was so far-fetched. Until today."
"Yes," said the male cop. "Run us through the events of today again."
Charlotte lost count of the number of times she related the story. But finally they'd let her go. "We'll be in touch," the female police officer told her when she left the police station.
"Have you caught Ben and Mandy yet?" she asked them.
"Not yet," Female Cop answered, stony-faced.
There was nothing on the news as Charlotte drove home. She hoped the police caught them quickly, couldn't bear the thought of the 23-year-old backpacker still trapped at their house. Relieved to be home, Charlotte swung into their drive.
Connor's car stood in the car port.
Shit. What was he doing back this early?
She hoped he hadn't been on the computer.
Still, the story was going to come out anyway, once Panda and Ben had been caught. She'd have to stick to the same tale with him, insist she'd been researching a story. She hoped he'd believe her.
She pulled up next to his car and made her way slowly down the drive towards the house. When she turned the key in the lock, she could hear Connor's voice. He was sitting at the kitchen table, talking on the phone.
"—the truth is, Dad, I've looked after your garden for the past five years while you've gone off with the caravan, and you've never once said thank you or said anything that wasn't critical."
Charlotte closed the door quietly. Wow, she thought. Connor standing up to his dad for a change. Easter was approaching so Tom and Pat would be headed up north soon.
"I think it's time Martin took a turn helping you," Connor said. "If he doesn't have the time, you're always saying how great he's doing financially compared to me, so he can pay somebody to do the gardening for you. I think five years is more than enough time for me to have helped out without thanks. So either ask Martin or find someone else to do it. Look, I've got to go, Charlotte's home. I'll talk to you later."
He put the phone carefully back in its cradle.
"Wow, I could hardly believe my ears," said Charlotte, opening the fridge door and taking out the half-full bottle of red wine. If she ever needed a drink, it was right now. "Good on you for standing up to them."
"Where've you been?" he asked her, his voice as cold as it had been when he was talking to his father.
"You're home early," she commented, keeping her tone light.
"We finished up early today. I was looking forward to spending a bit of extra time with you but you weren't here."
"I—there's something I need to tell you," she said, putting down the bottle and opening the cupboard for a glass.
"You got that right."
He'd checked the computer. He knew. She could tell from his tone, from the barely disguised fury on his face.
"Would you like a drink?" she asked him.
"No. I'd like to hear what you've got to say for yourself."
She carried her drink across to the kitchen table and took the opposite chair. "Connor, I've been such an idiot," she burst out. "I'm so sorry." When he didn't respond, she added, "Did you look on the computer?"
"I did."
"You know what happened?" Tears fell now, and she wiped them away with the back of her hand. She took a slug of wine. "I met this guy. Ben. It turns out he and his partner—who calls herself Panda—abducted that backpacker Marie Beckham, and they tried to abduct me. I've had to go to the cops. That's why I'm so late." Her voice broke on a sob, and she glanced at him. She wanted his sympathy, for him to reach out to her, take her in his arms, let her cry on his shoulder, comfort her…
Instead, she jumped as he thumped the wooden table with his fist. Red wine slopped over her glass.
"You fucking stupid bitch," he said. He rose from the table, strode across the room. "How could you do that? You could have been killed! Meeting some guy you don't know… And what do you mean they abducted Marie Beckham and tried to abduct you?"
Charlotte explained. She hoped the story would calm him down but it didn't.
"So now this will be all over the papers? This abd
uction?"
"I suppose so," she confessed.
"And how do you think this'll look for me? Wife abducted after meeting some creep she's met on a fucking spanking forum. I'm going to be a laughing stock at work. Not to mention Josh, what it'll do to him. He's only thirteen, he's at an impressionable age! He's got enough shit in his life without taking stick for your fuck-ups."
"It's okay," she hastened to reassure him. "The police think I was working on a story about couples who practise domestic discipline. They won't think I'm into spanking. And I can write a story, too, about Becca's abduction, if she'll talk to me when she's rescued. It'll be something else for my portfolio, and it'll be extra money, we—"
"You're unbelievable," he said. "You fuck up my life, run the risk of ending your own, and all you can think is that you might have an extra story for your portfolio. I've read your emails to Ben. You know what that does to me? How do you think that makes me feel? If he hadn't turned out to be a creep, would you have continued to see him?"
Charlotte looked away. "I don't know."
He leaned over her and grabbed her chin, forcing her to look at him. "WOULD YOU?"
Charlotte swallowed, scared. He was so angry when she needed to be loved, forgiven, consoled. She remembered Ben's good looks, his easy charm, how disappointed she'd been when he'd only suggested another lunch date. "All right," she admitted. "I was going to see him again. But only for lunch."
"When?"
"Next week."
"While I'm in Queensland?"
"Yes," she confessed. "But nothing would have—"
He hauled her to her feet. This time the glass tipped over and the remainder of the wine spilt everywhere. "Look out," Charlotte gasped, but Connor didn't care. He sat down, held her in a vice-like grip across his knee and started smacking. His first slap was so hard she screeched. He slapped her over and over again, each one harder than the last. She winced between slaps, gasped and yelled when his hand struck her bottom and thighs, and tried to focus on surviving the spanking that was once everything she dreamed of, but now was so painful she wanted it over. Wanted him to stop smacking right now.
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