On the Chase

by Katie Ruggle

  His words were oddly polite, but they held an underlying plea that jerked Kaylee into motion. It was hard to think, to understand what was happening or what she needed to do, and she seized on his gently worded request. Cut them free, she mentally repeated. Cut them free.

  Sucking in a much-needed breath, she rushed toward the table, her heels clattering against the concrete. Her body felt foreign and awkward, and her movements were jerky, as if she were a marionette with someone else controlling her strings. She stumbled to a halt next to the small folding table, and a small, near-hysterical portion of her brain noted how the cheap metal stand didn’t go with the rest of Martin’s decor. No wonder he hid it in the basement.

  Stop. Don’t freak out. Just breathe.

  She forced herself to focus on the task at hand. As her brain registered what the items on the table were, what horrific things the knives and pliers and hammer and—oh shit—the ice pick had been used to do, she couldn’t stop from returning her gaze to the first man’s ravaged face. He tried to smile at her, but the result was macabre.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart,” he said, but tension lay beneath his soothing tone. “Anything with a sharp edge will work. Let’s get out of here, huh?”

  His last sentence echoed in her mind, reminding her that the people who’d done this could walk in at any time. With a hunted glance at the stairs, she grabbed a small but wicked-looking knife from the table, forcing her brain to ignore how sticky the floor was beneath her shoes, or the purpose of the other tools lined up neatly, ready to be used again in an instant. She kept herself focused as she started cutting the zip ties securing the first man to his chair.

  “You’re an angel,” he said as the knife sliced through the binding around his wrist. The zip tie popped open, revealing a bloody groove where it had been. Her gaze fixed on his wrist, on that evidence that he’d struggled against his bonds. She was unable to look away from the gory sight until he cleared his throat.

  Kaylee jolted at the sound, fumbling and almost dropping the knife. Recovering her grip, she squeezed the handle tightly as she gave herself a mental smack. Get it together, Kay, she commanded, reaching for the tie on his other wrist. When she noticed how badly she was shaking, though, she stopped before she accidentally cut him.

  “You’ve got this, angel,” the man said, and his calm assurance helped. Taking a deep breath, she steadied her hand enough to slip the tip of the knife under the plastic tie. When she pulled up, it opened with a pop. His ankles were easier, and she cut his legs free in seconds before hastily backing up several steps. She almost felt like she’d opened the cage of a circus lion. Would he reward her help or just eat her?

  “Thanks, angel.” The man stood and immediately moved to the table. Although he stumbled, his legs wobbling beneath him, he managed to stay on his feet. Grabbing another knife—this one much scarier-looking than Kaylee’s—he moved to the second man and cut his hands free. As he worked, she stared, wondering if she’d made a horrendous mistake. Two out of the three were free. What if they were dangerous criminals? What if they hurt her—or killed her? She was so worried about the return of the torturers, but what if the biggest threat was already in the room with her?

  She pushed away the doubt. It was too late to worry about that now. If the men did try to hurt her, they looked to be in bad enough shape that she was pretty sure she could outrun them.

  Kaylee forced her body into jerky motion. She headed toward the last guy, who was slumped to the side, only his bonds keeping him semi-upright. He was limp and still, his head lolling to the side as blood ran from his ear and across his cheek before it dripped steadily on the floor. Kaylee seized on the fact that he was still bleeding. Dead people didn’t bleed, did they?

  “Please be alive. Please be alive,” she pleaded almost soundlessly. Kaylee sawed at the zip tie securing his hands until the plastic separated and released suddenly. His arms flopped to hang by his sides. Without the restraints holding him, he started to slide sideways, heading toward the floor.

  With a squeak of alarm, Kaylee tried to catch him, but his dead weight—no! His unconscious weight—brought her to the floor with him. She put out a hand, trying to catch herself, but her palm slid across wet concrete. Her hip and then her head hit the floor painfully, and the man’s limp body fell heavily across her legs, pinning her. For several seconds, she lay still, stunned.

  Then the weight disappeared from her legs, jerking her back to reality. The first man was pulling his unconscious friend’s arm over his shoulder. The second supported the unresponsive man’s other side. Her gaze landed on his face, and she flinched so violently that the back of her head bumped against the floor again. There was a gory mess where one of his eyes should have been. Bile rose in her throat, forcing her to swallow several times. Barely able to keep from vomiting, Kaylee ripped her gaze away from the empty, bloody socket.

  “Up you go, Angel.” The man with the swollen face offered the hand not holding on to his unconscious buddy. When she grabbed it, he pulled her up, almost lifting her to her feet, and she scrambled to get her wobbly legs to support her. “Let’s get out before our friends come back, yeah?”

  Kaylee couldn’t speak. The best she could do was a jerky nod as she moved to follow the trio. The stairs were too narrow for three big guys to stay side by side, so they were forced to turn sideways. The unconscious man’s boots struck the edges of the treads, and each thud made Kaylee flinch as she climbed the steps behind them. Every sound seemed thunderous, too loud to not be heard everywhere in the mansion, and each step they made, each inch farther that the men dragged their unconscious friend, felt horribly, painfully slow.

  When they finally reached the door, all the air left Kaylee’s lungs so quickly and completely that her head spun. After a quick glance into the hall, the men slipped through the doorway. Kaylee hurried up the final few steps, not wanting to be left behind. The thought of being trapped alone in the bloody basement made her stumble forward, rushing to flatten her hands against the opened door.

  The man with the swollen face glanced at her as he hitched the unconscious man higher. “Better not go back to the party like that.”

  Confused, Kaylee glanced down and saw that, on her hip, a white section of her color-block dress was now smeared with dark red. Blood. The salmon she’d eaten earlier threatened to climb back in her throat.

  “You have a car here?” he asked.

  She stared at him without seeing his face. All she could see was blood. It was only after he repeated the question that it finally penetrated. Kaylee nodded.

  “Head that way.” He jerked his head to the left. “Turn right at the T, and you’ll get to some stairs. They’ll take you to a back entrance.”

  “What about you?” Her voice was a husky imitation of its usual self. Her throat felt as rough and sore as if she’d actually been screaming the entire time, instead of just wanting to. “How are you getting out?”

  His half grin contorted his abused face, twisting the cuts and bruises and making his eyes almost disappear. “We’re going out the other back door. Good luck, Angel.” He and the other man started making their painful-looking progress in the opposite direction, the unconscious guy slumped between them, his boots dragging across the polished hardwood floor.

  The sight of them walking away, leaving her alone, sent a surge of panic through her. She had to bite the inside of her lower lip to keep from calling after them. They were strangers, but it had felt like they’d been on her side. Now she was on her own.

  At the thought, the voice in her head screamed at her to get out of the nightmare house. As she moved out of the doorway, Kaylee stepped on something and stumbled slightly. She glanced down and saw her silver clutch. Her fuzzy brain wondered how it got on the floor, until she recalled that she’d used it to prop open the door. Automatically, she bent to grab it.

  Once it was in her hands, she remembered that i
t held her phone. “I can call the police,” she called in a carrying whisper to the retreating men.

  They stopped abruptly. “Won’t help,” the one missing an eye said. His voice was raspy, too, and she wondered if he had been screaming. The thought made her shudder. “The Jovanovics have deep pockets and a wide reach. Just get out and get far away from these people.”

  It felt wrong, not calling for help, and Kaylee’s fingers tightened around her clutch. Urgency was building in her, panic expanding like air inside a balloon, stretching her tighter and tighter. She needed to get out before she broke. Turning away from the men, she hurried in the opposite direction. It was hard to believe that Noah’s family had the entire police force on their payroll, but she’d wait to contact them, just in case. Later, after the men had a chance to get out and she was safe, Kaylee would call. The thought of being out of this nightmare mansion, of being home, made her hurry her steps.

  As she reached the end of the hall, she snuck a quick glance behind her. The men were nowhere to be seen. Sucking in a shaky breath, she turned right toward the stairs…and what she hoped was safety. She refused to think about how she’d gotten so terribly lost in the rabbit warren of a mansion just a short time earlier, or about how easy it would be to get turned around again. The thought of running through Martin’s gilded house, frightened and trapped, made her throat close. There was a door right in front of her, but would it lead to escape or a continuation of her waking nightmare?

  Turning the knob with shaking fingers, she didn’t know whether to be grateful or scared that it wasn’t locked. The door opened to a neatly kept yard, lit by an almost-full moon and discreet landscape lights. She was out. Relief flooded her, even as a hundred other emotions—fear and paranoia and horror—pounded through her veins. The cool night air felt good on her flushed cheeks, and Kaylee bent at the waist, trying to catch her breath and make her brain reboot. A revolving chain of images flashed in her mind—blood and knives and the one man’s ravaged, empty eye socket. Her next inhale sounded like a sob, and she forced herself to stand up straight.

  There was no time to fall apart. She was out of the house, but Kaylee definitely wasn’t safe yet. Even though he’d been sitting innocently at the dining table with her and the rest of his guests all evening, Uncle Martin had to have given the order for those men to be tortured. After all, they were in his house. Her memory of his flat stare seemed even more menacing now, and she hurried to follow a flagstone path that led to the front of the house.

  With every step, Kaylee’s shocked brain was tuning back in to reality, her fear spiraling into panic. Surely they would’ve noticed her extended absence by now. What if the men’s escape had been discovered? How fast would they put the two together?

  Her breaths were getting quicker, louder, and she forced herself to slow. Hyperventilating until she passed out was not a good escape plan. In fact, it was a very bad escape plan. When the panicked haze had cleared slightly, she hurried along the path again. Her shoes were loud on the flagstones, and she shifted her weight to the balls of her feet.

  The path ended at the entrance to what looked like a garage. Kaylee wasn’t about to go through another unknown door leading to who-knew-what horrors, so she turned, stepping onto the grass and staying close to the exterior of the building.

  Her heels sank into the soft, sprinkler-fed lawn, and she shifted to her toes again. A light flickered to life right above her, and she froze, feeling like she was a cat burglar caught by a police spotlight. Clenching her jaw against the need to scream, she looked away from the glare, not wanting to lose her night vision.

  No one yelled or chased her or shot her or did any of the horrible things she was expecting. Instead, the night remained quiet except for the chirping and buzzing of nocturnal wild things.

  Must be motion-activated, she decided, and her pent-up breath escaped in a whoosh. All the creatures around her went silent, and she hesitated again, hoping her relieved sigh hadn’t been loud enough to catch someone’s attention. A small walkway peeked from around a corner, taunting her with its normalcy.

  She forced her feet forward, heading toward the small paved path. As she rounded the corner, Kaylee could see the lights from the front of the estate. She was hit by concurrent feelings of hope and fear, the need to get into a populated spot warring with the panic that someone knew, that she would be grabbed as soon as she stepped into the closest puddle of light—grabbed and taken to that horrible basement room. This time, she’d be the one tied to the chair, the one with the swollen face and empty eye socket and—

  It was too much. Kaylee turned off her brain and jogged toward the front entrance, silently praying as hard as she could. The valet startled as Kaylee walked toward him. She’d lengthened her stride and was trying to project confidence, although she didn’t know if she was succeeding.

  “Can I…help you?” the valet asked, his voice squeaking a little in the middle, even though he looked many years past puberty.

  “Yes, please.” Oh God, not the quivery voice! Kaylee pinched her arm hard, trying to shove back the tears. All that did was make her want to cry harder. “Could you get my car? It’s the Infiniti Q50. And hurry? Please?”

  Instead of running off like a good valet, he visibly swallowed and took a step closer. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, I just…I need to leave.” Her brain frantically grabbed for an excuse to explain why she was running out of Martin Jovanovic’s mansion, shaking and near tears and streaked with blood—oh God, the blood. How could she explain the blood? Quickly, she shoved her hands behind her back and hoped that the stains on her dress wouldn’t be that noticeable in the poor light. “My boyfriend’s been cheating on me, so I broke up with him, but he’ll be following me, and I need to be gone before he makes it out here and tries to convince me that he’s the perfect guy that I thought he was, so if you could hurry, that would be great, and then you won’t have to watch a really uncomfortable scene with yelling and tears and drama, okay?”

  The valet blinked rapidly before turning and jogging away. Kaylee hoped he was heading toward the parked cars and not just running away from the crazy girl. Now that she was alone with only night sounds and the fading footsteps of the valet, she could hear her heartbeat pattering in her ears. She was breathing too fast, each inhale catching on a tiny bit of a sob.

  “Calm down,” she muttered. “Calm down, calm down, calm do—”

  Someone grabbed her arm and yanked her toward the house.

  Chapter 2

  Kaylee stumbled as she was jerked backward. She tried to get her feet under her, to get some leverage to pull away, but her heels and the force with which she was being hauled toward the door made it impossible. Sucking in a breath, she opened her mouth to scream, only to have a hand clamp over her face. The fingers around her forearm released, and she tried to twist away, but her captor caught her around the waist and lifted her off the ground.

  They were headed for the front doorway, and she struggled harder as her panic boiled over. Images rushed through her mind—the tortured men, the blood on the floor, the instruments lined up so neatly, ready to be used. She couldn’t go back in that house. If she did, she knew she wouldn’t be coming back out.

  Sinking her teeth into her captor’s meaty palm, she squirmed and thrashed in his grip. Kaylee heard him swear, and she recognized Uncle Martin’s voice. The knowledge that it was him, not hired muscle, not someone she could possibly convince to let her go, sent a fresh spear of terror through her. Ripping her arm free of his grip, she sent a hard elbow into his gut.

  His breath wheezed out of his lungs at the blow, and she elbowed him again. This hit loosened the arm around her waist. The memory of a self-defense class she’d taken years ago rose in her mind, and she turned, bringing her fists up close to her face.

  Martin was red-faced and panting, although she wasn’t sure if it was from exertion or pain. His expression cou
ld only be called a snarl. It scared her, and she hesitated for the briefest second. His hands rose as if to grab her again, and the movement knocked her out of her paralysis.

  Her knee slammed into his groin, and he yelled, his body folding in the middle as if to protect himself from another attack. Grabbing his head, she pushed it down as she raised her leg again. Kaylee felt his nose connect with her kneecap, felt it crunch and flatten, but it happened too fast for her to cringe away. Blood poured from his broken nose, and his eyes rolled up as if he were about to pass out.

  With a groan, he fell to his knees, and Kaylee ran. The valet had just gotten out of the driver’s seat of her car and was now frozen in place, his gaze locked on Martin struggling to his feet. Kaylee shoved the valet out of the way as she dove into the car, and he stumbled back a few steps, just far enough that she could shut the door.

  “Stop her!” Despite the nasally edge to his voice, Martin’s fury was obvious. Looking confused, the valet reached toward the door handle. Fumbling the gearshift into drive, Kaylee stomped on the gas pedal.

  With a squeal of tires, the car shot forward, leaving an enraged Martin behind her.

  * * *

  Kaylee couldn’t keep her leg still. It bounced up and down, betraying her nerves. If the room where the desk sergeant had brought her had been bigger than the tiniest of closets, she would’ve paced, but she’d scarcely be able to fit in two strides before running into a wall.

  Shifting in her chair, she pressed both hands on top of her thigh, trying to physically stop the nervous twitch. It didn’t work. With a shaky sigh, she gave up on keeping her jittery leg still and glanced around the room.

  Besides her very hard chair, there was a small table—barely bigger than a kid’s desk—and a second chair. A detective was supposed to come in to talk to her. As soon as Kaylee had mentioned the name Martin Jovanovic, the cop who’d brought her to the interrogation closet had said that Detective Grailley would want to speak with her. At least the cop had let her go to the bathroom first to wash up, and he’d given her a department hoodie that was warm and covered the worst of the bloodstains on her dress.