by Riley Moreno
“No,” he said as he managed to shake his head from side to side. “She won’t play into your hand.”
“So you don’t really know her,” Kim said. “Julie’s a romantic.”
Ethan had no way to deny that. He felt that and more every time he was close to her, inside her. When she let him hold her, when her lips crossed his flesh. But just the thought of her having to come back to this place and remember what it was to run after a summer in chains was the last thing that he wanted for her.
“And what then?” he asked as he stayed on his knees. “You going to kill us both?”
Kim’s eyes seemed to dance around the possibility, and Ethan’s soul went cold at the thought that she could really follow through with such a deadly plan.
“No,” Kim said. “Last thing I’d want you is for you to see her in a grave.”
Ethan tried to calm around her supposed promise even as he feared his own life coming to an end. Maybe she would spare Juliet, but the gun was still in her hands, and Kim’s finger curled around the trigger.
“But you’ll still get an eyeful.”
No. Don’t hurt her. Please don’t…
“Now get up.”
Ethan had no power to resist as he shambled back to his feet. Kim had the gun at his back, and he kept moving through the swath of trees. One quick glance over his shoulder, and he knew that he was back to the place where this had all started. It was the same trunk where he had kept her hidden before they had to break into a fresh run. Maybe it was crazy, but he wanted that night back. At least in that moment, the danger was in the distance. And Juliet was close, something and someone that he could see and touch. Had he the power to turn back some invisible clock, he would go back to that place. Let him move beyond her months of captivity and let him get back to the second of her salvation. He had protected her once before; no reason that he couldn’t do it again. With her it was a chance to right the wrong that was his family’s death, moments when he could do nothing but watch.
But he had held Juliet’s hand…
“She won’t come alone,” Ethan said. “She’ll seek out---”
“The lady cop, right?”
Kim kicked his shin and drove him a few steps forward as she kept laughing.
“Might be fun to add her to the mix.”
Ethan stopped where he stood and managed to look into her eyes.
“You… you can’t…”
“I can do all that and more,” Kim said. “But I’ll probably ice the cop. No reason to keep someone with her set of skills breathing.”
So if Morales was with Juliet, it promised nothing but bad news for her. Ethan could only hope that she would find a way out before the boom was brought down.
But even if Morales make her way out of the thick of it…
“She’ll just die,” Kim promised as she held the gun tighter in her hand. “Not like she’s going to fill the bill.”
Ethan turned his mind away from Morales’ possible fate and stared at Kim hard.
“And Juliet will?” he managed to ask.
Her eyes seemed to sparkle in the moonlight, and Kim pushed the end of her gun to his chest and laughed,
“How the hell do you think I won my own freedom?” she asked.
Won her freedom…?
“You…you saved Troxel and McCord,” he said. “They scooped you up and---”
“And Boone would have said fuck that,” she continued. “Let ‘em flash their moment. Nothing compared to what my ass could pull in.”
Ethan hated the thought of her made to sit and spread as strange men, one after the other and another, pounded unto her. Juliet always said that Kim was her friend. Sure she teased, but it was only her role in their friendship.
“But… but you’re free now,” he started. “So there’s no need to go back.”
Kim’s shoulders tensed, and she blinked back a fresh set of tears.
“I wish it was that easy.”
Maybe it could be. Maybe all he had to do was touch her again. The ropes around still around his wrists made that move an impossibility, but Ethan lowered his brow to her shoulder and spoke into her skin.
“It can be,” he murmured. “You don’t have to be a slave to these freaks.”
Kim hesitated, and Ethan prayed that he was bringing her closer to his side, to his way of thinking when she suddenly pushed back with a harsh smirk.
“No I don’t,” she said. “Because I’m going to swap someone else into my place.”
He tried to talk again, his mind tightening around the thought of what she was implying. But… but no. Would she really do this to her friend? Could the waters of revenge run that deep?
“Kim… you… you wouldn’t…”
“Let her fucking know what it was like!”
Before he could speak again, Kim crushed the gun into his head, and Ethan fell back as his mind swirled in a million directions. He remembered how he had found her and all he had done to bring her out of that darkness. But there was something beyond that. There were the moments when he held her, when his lips were at her cheeks, her mouth. He remembered the feel of her resting in his arms, the nights when he dared to open his eyes even as he didn’t move. Ethan never wanted to startle Juliet from her sleep. Better to watch her dream and simply hope that she had latched on to a kind of peace. If he never saw her again, he would remember her like that. Tranquil and safe. As safe as he could keep her…
“Listen to me, Ethan!”
Kim brought her gun to his back as she spit in his face. He felt as if he was finally seeing her. Maybe it wasn’t the girl that she was, the person that Juliet said that she loved. But this… this…
“Juliet will come for you,” she said. “And she will watch you die.”
Even as he started to mourn the loss of his own life, Ethan struggled to tell himself that it wasn’t the worst thing that could happen. He could almost feel her tears running through his fingers, and he the hated the idea of making her sad. Juliet would probably like the rest of her live with the sight of his lifeless body burned across her brain. But at least she would still have a chance to live for another day.
“But before that…”
Kim started to laugh, and Ethan felt a surge of strength coursing through his veins as he rammed her head into her chest.
“What?” he asked. “What are you going to do to---?”
“I’m in charge, you fucker!”
She hit him with the gun, and Ethan fell back. As his eyes reached towards the stars, he tried to tell himself that Juliet might not come. Morales would talk her out of such a wrong move. Maybe he’d become what Kim should have been. A corpse under a nameless, shallow grave. While he didn’t want to think of her spending the best years of her life looking for him only to unearth his rotting body, at least it would mean that she was still able to draw breath, her heart beating. Ethan went still, thinking that it was the only way to save her when Kim fell back to his side, her lips at his ear as she spoke softly.
“I’m going to set her up in style,” Kim started. “Give her a taste of what it feels like to be tied up and fucked from every angle. She thinks she had if rough before…”
Kim’s voice trailed off on a wave of wicked laugher, and Ethan tried to sit up, wanting to break his bonds and crush her throat when Kim suddenly slapped him hard and pressed the gun into his cheek.
“No more flowers,” Kim started. “No more hope of happily ever after.”
Ethan screamed and tried to break free of her hold, not caring if a bullet pierced his skull when she hit him again.
“Kim, don’t do this…”
His voice trailed off, and he tried to recall the sight of Juliet’s sweet face as Kim played with the locks of his bloodied hair.
“Picture her spread wide,” Kim muttered. “Her ankles tired down to a bench. Two prime points of entry right there. One man’s up her ass while another is in her cunt. Can you see that, Ethan?”
Without wanting to, Ethan pictured
Juliet struggling and squirming as her body was violated.
“And you’ll see it all.”
That would be the worst of it. Ethan right there and unable to touch her, to save her.
“It… it doesn’t have to go down like this.”
Ethan tuned his eyes to Kim, hope in his stare as he prayed that she would just tell him what he needed to do to keep her from changing her mind from this most horrible course of action.
“Would you have save me?”
His mind turned around that possibility. Given the chance, yes.
“Of course,” Ethan whispered. “Of course I would have saved you both.”
Kim seemed to tense, and she lifted her hand into the air.
“I wanted you to pick me!”
Her blow was sharp and swift, and Ethan endured her assault. She had every right to be angry. But it wasn’t Juliet’s fault. Maybe it wasn’t even his. But if she needed someone to blame…
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have left you.”
She suppressed the blow and started to fall into him. Ethan accepted her touch and tried to find her eyes when she suddenly grabbed his chin and gave him no choice but to look at her.
“Damn straight,” she said. “Because I could have made you feel like this.”
Kim kissed him softly as she pushed her hand into his pants. She began a slow, smooth stroke, ad Ethan tried to lean into it. Was her hand so bad? She obviously knew what she was doing with her fingers. So he tried to accept and pretended to be pleased when she dug her nails in deep.
“What the hell are you---?”
His screams grew stronger as she pushed deeper, and when he could no longer suppress his cries, no matter how hard he tired, Kim pushed his head back to the grass.
“Taking what always should ace always been mine!”
She kissed him fast, and Ethan worked to meet the curve of her mouth. If she had been the one in the room, shuddering in all of her nakedness, of course he would have saved her. And maybe he would never have known what to call Juliet in the space of the night.
“Come here.”
Kim growled as she mashed her mouth to his, but Ethan could only keep up the show for so long. The truth of the matter was that he had saved Juliet, loved Juliet, and if he was going to die, he’d be dammed if he left this world on the back of a lie.
“No!”
Biting down hard, the blood bursting through his tongue, Ethan couldn’t bring himself to kiss her again. Not when she had him at gunpoint. Not when she wasn’t Juliet. Kim glared down at him and tried to force the barrel of her gun between his lips when he managed to move his head to his shoulder.
“I can’t,” he said. “I’m sorry…”
Kim peered down at him and touched the tears trailing down his face.
“So I just don’t do it for you, huh?” she said. “You want ‘em scared, right?”
In some ways, that was Juliet. Almost from the moment that he had found her. But now it was more. He wanted to take her away from the point of all fear and just assure her that she was safe. Ethan snorted and forced his gaze to Kim’s.
“She’s not scared,” he said. “Not when she’s with me.”
Those words had to mean his death sentence, and even as Ethan lamented the thought that he would never hold Juliet close again, he told himself that he would never regret his choice.
“Remains to be seen,” Kim challenged.
She stretched away from him, and Ethan tried to catch his breath when Kim screamed into the night and rammed the butt of her gun into his side. Turning to his side, Ethan moaned and writhed, but Kim just kicked him again and laughed as she clicked the trigger and pressed her lips to his ear.
“But it’ll be a lot of fun to find out.”
24
“Hang tight. We’ll get there.”
Sitting with her face nearly pressed against the glass, Julie held her breath and gripped the handle of the car door as a familiar landscape started to come into view. How long had they been driving? Just enough time exit the city and keep one’s eyes open for a place to stop and grab a bite to eat. Despite the darkness that now replaced a long ago high noon, the air smelled very much the same as it had when Kim was her preferred travelling companion.
We should have kept going. Or we should have known better than to trust those damned boys. Maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference. But maybe there still would have been a small chance to stay human…
“Julie? You still with me?”
Turning her eyes to face Morales, the cops caramel knuckles quickly changing several shades of white as she gripped the wheel and hit the gas pedal harder, Julie managed to nod and muttered something that sounded like yes under her breath.
“You sure about that?” Morales asked.
“You… you that’s not her,” Julie finally said through chattering teeth. “That… person… that’s not Kim.”
Morales was slow to provide anything it the way of either an observation or an explanation. How could she do anything but nod her head?
“She hasn’t been Kim for a long time now. Just a lot of sorts of your girl.”
And on some level Julie understood and accepted as much even though the idea of her friend back from the dead in some other alien form tugged at her heart. But to snarl like a mad person? To take hold of Ethan who would have saved her if given the chance, who was only trying to be…
“She’s going to kill him,” Julie finally said as a sharp shiver ran through her entire body.
“Julie, you don’t know that.”
“I do,” she said as she shook her head sadly. “Last thing that I ever wanted for him.”
They started to move deeper into the forest, and Julie tensed at the sight an unwelcome and all too familiar tree.
Did he remember? Had he tried the same trick as second---?
“Stop,” Julie demanded.
“No,” Morales said. “Not yet. Not until we---”
“I said stop here!”
Wrestling the steering wheel from Morales’ grip, Julie watched as the cop had no choice but to hit the brakes and slow to a sudden stop. The car stopped short of a tree, and as soon as Julie felt that it was safe to move, she took a deep breath, nothing but Ethan on her mind as she pushed the door open.
“Julie! Wait!”
Drowning out the sound of Morales’ voice, Julie fell into the forest, dirt crunching under her nails as she moved deeper into the depths.
“Julie! Stop!”
Morales ceased to exist as the past started to swirl around her.
It hurt more than anything. To feel powerless. Especially when the only one that she loved was at stake. But she had run this road before. With Ethan’s help, she came out the other side and known him. Where was he now? Hurt and scared if Kim’s fury was to be believed, and as the sound of a snapping twig, she glanced over her shoulder, expecting to see Morales again when there was nothing but night air and a soft spring breeze. Julie stated to call out for the cop when she slapped her hand to her mouth and forced her tongue to stay silent.
Looking all around her as her eyes blinked wildly, Julie saw the hollowed tree, the first place where he had hid her and hoped. She remembered what it was to be in a strange man’s clothes, not knowing what he wanted to do with her even as part of her hoped…
They won’t get you again. I promise you that.
Terrified without the backup that Morales had tried to summon before she put a stop to her efforts, Julie bit down of her lip and started to crawl back into the tree. Despite the cover of the bark and the fresh smell of the earth, the place was like any other tomb without Ethan shushing her sobs and begging her to wait for the next moment, the right second to run.
“Ethan…?”
Impossible? Maybe. Absolutely. But she tried to will him back to her side, and she pressed her face into the dirt and wept without him. Why hadn’t she let him explain? She loved Kim. She knew what she had endured and almost understood her r
age. But even when he kept the truth from her ears, he was never anything but gentle. What other man would want to link his life to her marked body without a second thought and only a sweet smile?
“Oh my god,” she whispered. “I let him down. I…”
Maybe… maybe not. But I’m not giving up without a fight.
Ethan’s words echoed in her ears, and Julie crawled back into the night as she brushed the soil and the pebbles from her skirt. Morales was still nowhere to be found, but Julie spied a jagged twig just resting just below their tree. Snatching it quickly, she took off the way they had once came and swallowed hard as it all came back.
So like you want to serve people?
You better learn fast, cherry. They pay big bucks for a good time.
I’ll go easier if you tell me that you want it.
Julie fell to her knees, the bile leaking from her lips as she curled her free arm around her stomach and tried to focus. She had tried to tell herself that this was the stuff of nightmares, and they were nothing if she could wake in Ethan’s arms and see, touch his face. But without him…?
“I’m going to find you,” she swore as she moved back to her feet and kept moving into the shadows. “Just wait for---”
At her third step, a hand surrounded her arm, and Julie was forced back with a squeal as she saw the nightmare she had yet to face in her dreamscape in the flesh.
“You?”
The man still wore a mask, and he tried to tackle her into the ground when Julie’s fingers held the branch tighter, and she swatted wildly at her assailant.
“Get the fuck away from me!”
Hitting his covered temple, Julie couldn’t help but take some pleasure when the cap tore, and the man fell. Part of her wanted to keep bashing his head in and reveal his battered skull. But he… the man might…
“Where is Ethan?”
Forgetting her fear, Julie fell on top of him. One arm hit as both legs kicked, and she kept the branch steady as she tried to peel the mask from his face. Again she just saw his lips when he got a single fist free and smashed it into her jaw. But the hit was weak, and Julie recovered quickly.
“I asked you a question you son of a bitch!”
The man stayed silent and tried to take hold of her ankles. Dancing back, she swiped at him again, her back steadied by the back of the tree, their tree, as she licked her lips and watched the man writhe.