by Lexie Ray
HOSTAGE
To Love a Killer, Book 2
L E X I E R A Y
Copyright © 2014Published by: Rascal Hearts
All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
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Cover Art: Rosy England Fisher
Table of ContentsChapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter One For all the times those hands had caressed her, squeezed her flesh, sending hot waves of desire flowing through her body, giving her hope, a sense of peace and safe haven, Hunter had never expected him to touch her like this.
He was rough. His grip was tight, pinching her upper arms. He felt like a wall behind her, overpowering her. There was no hint of kindness in the way Ash was handling her, no sign of compassion. If this was the man who had said he was falling in love with her, Hunter didn’t believe it. The man who loved her was gone.
As Ash held her back, limiting any prayer of escape she might have had, Hunter was forced to look at her father, the man she had fled from in the middle of the night only five years ago, the man who had promised her if she ever got away he would find her, kill her, or worse. Her father had finally come after her to make good on his promise. Hunter couldn’t believe that her boyfriend, Ash, had helped him do just that. This whole time Ash had played her, was playing her still in this very moment, as he held her back, keeping her captive. She couldn’t believe the man she thought she loved was betraying hers.
A surge of rage flared through Hunter, causing her limbs to tremble. It was overwhelming.
Her eyes darted from one corner of the apartment to the next, stealing glances, while remaining focused on her father. Hunter saw that the girls were huddled on the floor, cowering, terrified. They were the runaways who had escaped the farmhouse in the past year just like Hunter had. They had been inspired by Hunter. She had paved the way. But now they were probably wishing they had never found her here in New York. They were probably wishing they never came here to her apartment to sleep and feel hope that together they could be free. They were probably wishing they still lived on the streets and under bridges. If they were, then they wouldn’t have been captured by the men. They wouldn’t be sitting in a scared huddle on the floor, facing another round of imprisonment. Life on the streets of Brooklyn was nothing compared to the horrors of the farmhouse. Was that why none of the girls could look at her now? Because she had failed them?
Her gaze landed on a large bloodstain at the center of the hard wood floor. The way the knots in the wood had absorbed the dark blood hue, saturating deep into the grain, turned her stomach. The man whose blood had spilled there used to be Hunter’s friend. Yes, he was among the men from New Hampshire who had come to take her, but he hadn’t always been evil. That’s what the farmhouse did to people. It turned children into monsters by the time they turned eighteen. It had turned Thomas into a monster. Ash had shot him and then somehow disposed of Thomas’ body, dragging him from her apartment, leaving nothing behind except for the dark stain.
A raw, bitter odor stung Hunter’s senses. It was harsh and sharp. It was the smell of blood, rich with iron. She was starting to recognize that smell, the scent of death, the imprint of murder, when it hung in the air.
At the far wall, Travis laid dead on the floor. Travis had been another man her father had sent to retrieve her. But Travis’ rotting body wasn’t the only source of the rank odor.
In the bathroom lay Molly, one of the runaway girls. She was dead. Hunter didn’t have to see her to know that Molly’s body lay crumpled in the bathtub. She had bled to death, no doubt with a bullet hole in her chest.
Hunter had heard the gunshot earlier when she and Ash had been on the fire escape outside waiting, watching, hoping, and praying that all the girls in her apartment were alright. The second she had heard the shot, Hunter knew someone had died. It had been Molly.
Unable to pry herself from Ash’s grip, Hunter was determined not to let another girl die. But she didn’t know how to stop these men. She was sure they would kill the girls off, one by one, in the bathroom. Hunter realized she could be next.
Her father stood before her, towering over Hunter. His body was a wall, broad and intimidating. His face was in shadows. Hunter wriggled her shoulders, as if to demand that Ash loosen his grip on her, but Ash held her even tighter in response, insisting that she face her father, her own flesh and blood who had destroyed her entire life.
Her father didn’t deserve to look at her, as far as Hunter was concerned. She couldn’t stand that he had been given the opportunity to stare down at her. She hated the way his eyes felt on her, as he studied her expression, searching for evidence that she was terrified. He seemed to enjoy looking at her, not saying a word. He wanted the tension to mount. He wanted Hunter to panic, filled with fever-pitched thoughts, her heart racing over what was in store for her. He would let her imagination kill her before he did. Fear was a deadly weapon.
His name was Lorne Mann, but the girls referred to him as Grizzly, a title which best captured his tremendous body and lack of compassion. He was an animal, capable of ripping a person limb from limb without so much as a blink of remorse. Surviving life at the farmhouse had meant obeying the men at all costs no matter how close to death it might bring you. If a girl didn’t, the men would send her off to Grizzly. And she wouldn’t come back. Ever.
The last time Hunter had seen her father, it had been because she had broken the fourth rule, never go to the lake. Hunter had been sick all day. She had wanted air, needed it. She had attended dinner, but couldn’t eat. She hadn’t been able to stop throwing up. She had been nineteen at the time, and was getting too old for the farm. She had known what that meant; her days were numbered. If they stopped having a use for a girl, they would take her out, permanently. Hunter had gone to the lake to gain a moment’s peace, but what she saw there had brought a world of hell upon her.
There in the lake, floating in perfect stillness, Hunter had found the barrels. There had been so many barrels submerged in the water at the lake’s edge. Hunter had discovered them immediately when she broke through a wall of cattails that separated the field from the lake. She had been compelled to go there, drawn to the lake. It had been a great feeling, but she didn’t know why it had come over her. The feeling had propelled her on, enchanting her forward until the water was as high as her waist, not that she noticed. It had been then that Hunter opened one of the barrels. She had needed to see what was inside. What she had found made her blood run cold, the body of one of the girls. That was the moment Hunter understood where the girls went after they left the farmhouse. It was also the exact moment Hunter had been caught by one of the men. He had screamed at her, cursing her for being there, then dragged her off to her father’s house to be punished. Her father’s house had come to be known as the “shadow house”. It was the place for which all the rules had been created, rules that were designed to insure a girl never had to be taken there, as long as she followed them.
What had happened to Hunter there that night, what her father had done to her, was so evil, so excruciatingly painful that her spirit could not survive. To this day, Hunter could feel the emptiness, the vo
id, the dark abyss that had replaced her innocence ever since. For the most part, she tried not to remember, blocking it from her memory, but she could still sense it, lurking in the dark underbelly of her subconscious. The hollow feeling never left her.
Suddenly an image flashed through Hunter’s mind. It was memory, not more than a remnant, she had forgotten, of the shadow house. Confusion swirled through her mind, clouding her understanding and comprehension of what she was remembering. In her mind’s eye Hunter saw blood, the straw, shadows. She remembered the house, its architecture, its smell, how it was so far in the woods no one would hear her screams.
Then in an instant all of it, every image, every memory, vanished from her mind.
Her eyes focused, anchoring her to the present, immediately filling her vision with her father, as he stood over her. She studied his cruel expression, the familiarity of his menacing smile.
“Tie her up,” he said, instructing Ash. The edge in his tone sliced through Hunter, jolting her. She was desperate to back away, but couldn’t. “The van will be here soon.”
Ash yanked Hunter, forcing her to cross the room and then lowered her to the floor with the rest of the girls. He braced her down, digging his knee into her lap, with no concern for her comfort, as he extracted thick plastic ties from his jeans pocket. Hunter glared at him coldly, doing everything in her power to stab him with her hateful gaze, hoping to stir up his humanity, or at the very least make him feel guilty, but Ash seemed beyond affect. He simply began to tie her wrists together behind her back with the plastic.
She had only known Ash a week, less than that perhaps. Their time together had been a whirlwind of mystery. Unraveling the secrets and lies, attempting to grasp whether he was a friend or enemy, had taken every ounce of energy and instinct that Hunter had. Ash had convinced her he was on her side, despite the fact that her father had hired him to come after her with instructions to return her to the shadow house, and Hunter had believed him. She had believed Ash had switched sides, abandoned his contract with her father, and was only interested in protecting her.
What a fool she had been. How naive was it for her to have trusted him? But she loved him.
Even in this moment, when she knew she should simply write him off as another villain she hoped to destroy, Hunter kept wondering if he loved her. Had he ever loved her? Why was he doing this now? Why had he betrayed her?
That’s when the tears began to well up in her eyes, blurring her vision. Her nose started running, but she refused to sniffle. She refused to reveal to these men that she was breaking down. She refused to let them see that they had broken her.
She could feel Ash’s warm fingers, long and firm, brushing against her wrists as he secured the plastic ties. His touch was almost like a caress, tender but subtle, brushing against her. The fact that she still craved Ash’s touch was making this all the more painful. The tears finally rolled down her cheeks as despair filled her heart.
Ash rose to his feet and stepped away from Hunter. She could feel him looking down at her. She sensed those steel blue eyes of his, studying her from above. And that’s when she realized the plastic around her right wrist wasn’t tied off properly. Her wrist felt loose, swimming inside the tie. If she wanted to, she could slip her hand through.
Without thinking her gaze darted up to Ash, meeting his, and they stared at each other. Her brow furrowed as she considered the possibilities. Was Ash really on her father’s side? Had he abandoned her, leaving her to certain death? Or was this just another elaborate illusion? Was he about to help her escape?
Ash’s expression revealed little until his eyes widened ever so slightly. Ash was trying to connect with her by allowing the light behind his eyes, the essence of his spirit, to reveal something to her. But she didn’t know what. The rest of his face, however, remained stone cold, unwavering, without so much as a hint of mercy.
If he had intended to tie her wrists in such a way that she could get free, if tying her wrist loosely hadn’t been a simple accident, then Hunter thought she would see a plan forming behind those eyes. She thought his gaze would contain an air of conspiracy, something she could cling to and use in order to overtake Grizzly. She continued to hold his gaze, but still got virtually nothing. What was he waiting for? Or was he merely tormenting her with hope?
“What do we have here?” asked Grizzly in a gravely tone that made Hunter’s skin crawl.
He leaned down towards Hunter, who recoiled, chin to chest, wincing. Her father hooked his thick finger under the neckline of her shirt, scooping up the chain that hung beneath.
Grizzly drew the chain up, pulling the entire length of it out from under her shirt until the bullet pendant emerged.
“You kept it,” he said. The statement implied so much more than the words. The fact that she still wore the bullet necklace he had given her was giving Grizzly all kinds of new and twisted thoughts.
The rise of excitement in his voice told Hunter that Grizzly was hoping she missed the farm, hoping perhaps that she didn’t want to let it go, as though keeping and wearing the necklace was evidence of all that.
“I’ll never forget where I came from,” she said in a low tone, brassy with resentment. “It doesn’t mean I’d ever go back there.”
“It means you miss something about it,” he countered. “You used to kill all on your own,” he continued, causing Hunter to grimace in self-disgust. “Do you miss that?”
Hunter pressed her lips together in a hard line, refusing to answer, and diverted her glaring gaze.
Grizzly began to laugh in a deep booming tone intended to mock and degrade Hunter. What he had referred to captured the worst part of Hunter’s past, choices she had made that she deeply regretted. Nothing hurt like the truth, but he was wrong about one thing. She didn’t miss it.
“I bet you miss a lot about life on the farm,” he said, his words twisting with darkness, stabbing into her most raw wounds, wounds that would never heal, wounds he had given her. “Remember when I gave you that bullet? Do you remember what you had to do to get it?”
Hunter said nothing, did nothing to give away the disgust that was creeping up her throat. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.
“Ash, here, has the same one,” he went on. “I have a feeling you already knew that, but do you know how he earned his?”
Hunter’s ears perked up, though she remained determined not to let her poker face falter. The fact of the matter was that Ash had not explained to her he also had a bullet. His was on a key chain and he had dangled it in front of her face only the day before in order to calm her and get her back on his side, to trust him again. But when she had demanded he explain how he had gotten a bullet, his explanation meandered down a confusing path that created more questions than it had answered. Ash had implied he had gotten the bullet key chain when he had been hired by her father to find her, but that didn’t ring true. The New Hampshire men didn’t have bullets, only the girls did. It had never made sense that Ash would have one. It had led Hunter to believe his connection to her past, the farmhouse, and the atrocities of the barn was much closer, much more entangled in darkness than she could have ever imagined.
“Tell her, Ash,” he said, while Hunter and the girls continued to wait for the van, succumbing to the inevitability that they would all return to the farmhouse and be submerged, once again, into the sick sexual games her father liked to play.
Ash backed away, tucking himself behind Hunter, out of her line of sight. He couldn’t bear for her to see him. He couldn’t bear the eyes on him, large brown, eyes he loved, to turn dark with hatred from hearing the truth.
“Go on,” Grizzly barked. “Tell her.”
“I killed a girl,” said Ash, lowly under his breath.
“Not just any girl,” said Grizzly.
Something in Grizzly’s tone indicated the corners of his cracked mouth were curling upwards, smiling at Ash’s history, or so Hunter thought. She didn’t know for sure. She still refused to look a
t him.
“No, not just any girl,” agreed Ash in a whisper. After a long moment, the air grew thick with remorse, and Ash finally said, “I killed my sister.”
His voice was nothing more than a thread of regret.
“His own sister,” echoed Grizzly, before kneeling down in front of Hunter, catching her gaze, looking her dead in the eye. “That’s the kind of soldier I need.”
Hunter’s mouth twisted downward into a frown as she began to cry. The tears stung as they welled up in her eyes. They felt hot, full of rage and fury as they streamed down her cheeks. She would die before she allowed herself to become one of her father’s soldiers.
The worst part about Grizzly was that he had a way of planting sick ideas in her head, tormenting her to the brink of madness, so that when she finally did commit some unthinkable, horrifying crime, she would actually believe it was her fault, when in fact it had been his idea all along. He had manipulated her. His mind was the playing ground of pure evil.
“It wasn’t your fault, Ash,” said Hunter through her tears. She had to get Ash on her side. She could tell he was being manipulated. She knew now that there was no way Ash had chosen this.
“It was,” he responded quietly.
“It wasn’t your fault. I’m telling you, Ash. Listen to me. You’re a good person,” she said with determination, though she was too afraid to look anywhere but at the hardwood floor.
“Shut up,” said Grizzly, but Ash was already in the midst of speaking.
“I’m not a good person, Hunter,” said Ash. “I killed her before I met any of you, before your father found me. I killed her to get out of my own fucked up past, to get out of my house and away from my horrible father.”
Hunter could hear his voice crack, splitting with the pain that was overcoming him.
“I don’t care about any of that,” she whispered. “I know who you are. This isn’t you.”