by Lake, Keri
His jaw shifted back and forth.
For crying out loud, man. Laugh!
“Anything else?” He didn’t ask as though he genuinely cared to jot a list, more like he was irritated that he suddenly had to entertain a shower and a razor.
Yeah, a new pair of underwear, a fluffier pillow, some socks to walk around in, a bottle of wine—what the hell is asking too much? “Paper and pencil for sketching. Maybe a book?”
“Book?” he echoed.
I held both palms up, butterflying them in mocking. “You know, like reading. Words on a page. Some semblance of a plot. A book.”
“What kind of book? One of those romance books with a vampire and wolves?”
His laughter, whether fake or not, took me by surprise, and for the first time I noticed that, beyond those perfectly smirky-looking lips, he had a set of beautiful teeth that made up an adorable smile, complete with dimples.
Dimples. Hardly the vision of a dark and disgusting kidnapper.
“I’m not picky. I’m a pretty voracious reader. As long as it captures my attention. Classics are good, too.”
He paused, eyes tracking slightly to the side, and without a word, left the room.
Blue’s head perked up as he passed, as though even the dog didn’t understand the sudden exit.
Brow furrowed, I stared after him, replaying the last few seconds of conversation through my mind, wondering if I’d said something wrong.
Within minutes, he returned, carrying a book whose jacket looked dusty. Worn down. He handed it to me and stepped back, crossing his arms again.
The Grapes of Wrath. “Oh, my God, this is a first edition!” I turned it over in my hands, marveling the relic. “It was one of my favorites in school.”
“You like old books?”
“Yes,” I said, cracking it open, inhaling the aged pages.
“You always smell your books?” At my nod, he nudged his head in my direction. “What’s this one about?”
“You never had to read The Grapes of Wrath in school?”
Arms still crossed, he leaned against the doorframe. “I didn’t go to school for long. Dropped out when I was sixteen.”
“You dropped out? Why?”
He shrugged. “Wasn’t my thing.”
“Kidnapping just seemed like a more promising future for you, huh?” I clutched the book to my chest, waiting for his response.
“I liked computers. Games. Piecing puzzles. I worked on graphics and storylines for a game.”
“That sounds …” Weird. “… incredible.” He didn’t strike me as a black turtleneck, computer geek type. “What happened? Why didn’t you pursue it?”
“Shit happened.” He straightened his spine as if I’d dipped into sacred territory again.
Rather than risk his silence, I dropped my gaze to the book. “It’s about a family, the Joads, who lose everything and trek from Oklahoma to California, in search of a better life. Along the way, they face challenges, loss, suffering, pain. They find that what they’d hoped would be a better life, isn’t. Tom Joad ends up killing two police officers, who killed his friend, and goes into hiding. Bad things continue to happen to this family, and through it all, they fight to survive.”
Scratching the scruff on his cheek brought his chiseled jawline to my attention. He crossed his arms again, snapping me out of my musings. “Sounds depressing.”
“It’s about maintaining dignity in the face of tragedy and prejudice.”
“So, that’s what you believe?” He pushed himself off the wall and, with his boots set apart, took on a clearly defensive stance. “Those who suffer and face prejudice are supposed to prove themselves worthy and maintain their dignity in the presence of people like you who continue to oppress?”
I reared back at his words. Where the hell did that come from? “No … wait, what? People like me?” I frowned at the accusation. “Contrary to whatever preconceived ideas you may have about me, we’re on the same side, Nick.”
“No. We’re definitely not on the same side, Aubree. We’re so opposite of each other, it’s not even funny. You may have scars, but that doesn’t mean you know the kind of pain and loss that could make you give two shits about dignity and earning anyone’s approval.” Just like that, he strode out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
Numbness crept over my body, threatening to penetrate my shield. Fuck him. Fuck him and whatever he thought he knew about me. He knew nothing. The stranger hadn’t walked in my shoes, had no idea what I’d been through and survived. My scars were the markers of my pain and loss.
I rubbed my finger across the scar on my wrist, pushing back the tears forming in my eyes. I’d been to the bottom. Been broken. Stomped on. I got back up. Scraped what little self-respect I had left inside of me, and picked myself up. He didn’t know that. And I didn’t have to tell him—the guy meant nothing to me.
He was right—I didn’t need his approval.
19
Nick
Flashlight in hand, I descended the staircase into the bowels of the abandoned Michigan Central Train Station. While I should’ve been preparing myself for the next round of horror, images of Aubree’s naked ass under that dress had me about one thread from losing my mind.
The woman did things to my head. If not for the fact that I was forced to bring her meals, I should’ve stayed away from her room. I was certain I’d be plagued with nightmares after the trafficking bust, and yet, a drunken night with Alec had ended in dreams of Aubree waking me up and riding me in my bed as I lay half passed out.
The fuck was wrong with me? Two days ago, I’d wanted to tear the woman apart, and suddenly all I could think about was hiking up that dress and burying my dick inside her panty-less ass.
With the heel of my palm, I knocked my temple. “Get her out of your head,” I muttered, rounding the last flight of stairs. I had to focus. I had a job to do. The last thing I needed was images of her tight body and firm breasts jockeying for my attention.
Faint, almost ghostly screams echoed down the hall, as I trudged through water stagnant enough to leave a putrid sting in my nose. I followed the sounds that, to any other trespasser, might’ve been mistaken for the horrific cries of a ghost.
In time, he would be.
Brown and black stains coated the tunnel walls. The brick had been chipped away, crumbled in some parts, not only with age, but from scrappers who’d cased the place for all the copper.
Light bled beneath a door from inside, where I’d placed a lantern two nights before, when I’d imprisoned Julius after abducting him. As I reached there, muffled screams came into sharp clarity. The raspy quality of his voice told me the asshole must’ve screamed for two days straight.
In the center of the room, Julius sat blindfolded and strapped to a chair. “Who’s there? Please! Someone help me!” At his ankles, large wounds glistened where rats had obviously chewed. Fuckin’ room stank like shit, and I choked back the urge to upchuck right there on the floor. “Man, if that’s you. Please. I’m … I’m sorry … for what I did to that little girl.”
Those images, as much as I wanted to forget them, gave me the fuel I craved. The motivation to do what needed to be done.
According to Rev, word on the street was that Julius’s big brother Brandon had put out a manhunt for him. He wanted any information on the masked vigilante, as I’d been referred to in the news.
“I’ll do anything … you want. Anything, please.” His shoulders juddered with a sob. “Just get me the fuck out of here! Please! There’s voices at night, man! And fucking rats!” His skin had grown pale, mottled, as if he’d become sick from his wounds.
“I understand there’s an abandoned factory somewhere in the city where women and kids are housed before getting distributed to various pimps.” Arms crossed behind my back, I circled him, sloshing the shallow water pooled on the floor. “Is that true?”
“I …” He gulped a swallow. “I don’t know anything about that.”
“It’s my under
standing that they’re drugged. Raped. Beaten. Tortured. Kept in cages. Like animals.”
His tongue swept over his lips, and he trembled as if he might cry again. “The girls we get are … they’re kept at motels. Not abandoned buildings.”
“According to your criminal records, you lured the girls to this abandoned shithole. Sweet talked them.” Julius had a reputation of being a sweet talker. “I’m just giving you a taste of how it feels to be taken out of your element. Scared shitless. Willing to do whatever it takes to get free.” I came to a halt in front of him. “Are you willing to do whatever it takes to be free?”
“Yes, yes, man. You want me to suck you off? I’ll do it. I don’t give a shit. Let me go, and I won’t tell a single mothafucka what happened here.”
“I don’t want you to suck me off, Julius. I want you to help me with something.”
“Anything!”
“So eager.” I smiled at his pathetic stupidity. “No wonder you don’t feel guilty raping little girls. I almost don’t feel guilty for what I’m about to do, either.”
His blindfolded face lifted, vacillating back and forth as he seemed to search the air for me. “What do you want from me, man?”
“I was sent by Culling to kill you,” I lied. “Your little crew is getting far too powerful, and he wants to take you down. Unfortunately, Culling has too many connections for me to take on by myself.” I crouched in front of him, and my nose crinkled at the stench of piss emanating from his body. “See, I don’t want to kill you, Julius. I think, deep down, you want to be good, don’t you?”
“Yeah. I don’t … I want out. I don’t want to do this shit anymore.”
“Okay. Here’s what we can do. We need to get the FBI on our side. Culling’s too powerful to take down alone. They need to know what’s going down. So, I’m going to send a message to a contact I have. I think he can help, but he needs some evidence. Otherwise, I’m afraid I’ll have to leave you here to die. Because I just can’t bring myself to kill you. You understand?”
“Yeah, yeah.” He shifted in his chair. He must’ve been delirious from lack of food and water if he bought that bullshit. “I’ll do it.”
“Good. I’m going to start the camera, and I want you to tell me everything. Your name, your crew, and how Culling is involved.”
His lip quivered, head nodding frantically. “You’ll set me free?”
“Of course. I’ll have what I need against Culling. And, I promise, I’ll set you free.”
I flipped on the phone’s camera and pressed record, careful not to say a word. After a ten second pause, Julius began talking. In the ten minutes that followed, he confessed to the abductions, the drug deals, The Culling sweeps, and Culling’s own personal stake in the operation. All the missing pieces I couldn’t have garnered, not even on the deep net, came spilling out of his mouth.
Until, at last, he finished.
“Thank you, Julius.” I stuffed the small phone into a plastic bag, then into my pocket, and removed his blindfold, allowing him the opportunity to adjust to the light.
“Who … who are you? You look familiar.” His eyes squinted as he studied my face, until they widened, damn near popping out of his head. “You’re … I know you.” Surprise quickly turned to sobs. “I know you,” he said on a wail. “Please don’t kill me, man. Please.” He rocked as much as he could against the ropes. “This place. The voices. The ghosts. I’m fucking going crazy up in here!”
“Do you know how old my son was when you shot him in the back, Julius?” I hammered my fist into his face before he could answer, knocking a tooth free that splashed into the water. “Five. Five years old.”
After slicing into the man’s ear, my head is wrenched back, and a fist pounds into my cheek, until all I can do is drop to the floor, half conscious. The room spins out of control, and smack in the middle is red.
My son’s red pajamas.
He backs himself away from the room filled with a view that will ruin him for the rest of his life. “Daddy?” He cries, and all I want to do is scoop him up. Tell him it’ll be okay, hold him to make sure some small part of him hasn’t been destroyed by what he’s seen, but the blackness is filtering in quickly.
I crawl toward him. “Jay?” I reach out for him with a trembling hand.
Black boots block my view. “Hey … little man. I’ll give you five seconds to run. Five. Four.”
My screams reverberate inside my skull as the seconds tick quickly.
My son is silenced with a bullet.
“I’m … sorry.” Julius’s words carried a lisp and snapped me from memories. “We … we was told to …”
I hit him again, kicking his head to the side once more, and he spat blood. “His birthday was in two days. He’d been telling me all week how excited he was. How he couldn’t wait to blow out six birthday candles on his cake.” I choked back the tears at the memory, allowing the pain and fury to give me the crazed rush of adrenaline I craved. “But that never happened.”
“Please don’t kill me, man. Please.”
I tugged the knife from my hip with one hand and gripped his jaw, reaching in with the other to take hold of his tongue. He bit down onto my finger, and I drilled another punch to his face, knocking out a front tooth. Against the screaming and kicking, I sliced his tongue clean from his mouth.
Choking fits and gurgles had my lip crimping.
“Not so much the sweet talker now, are you, Julius?” I waved his severed tongue in the air and tossed it into the water. Cramming the barrel of my gun into his mouth, I chewed on my lip for a moment, waiting for his bawling to die down. “Hey … little man. I’ll give you five seconds to run. Five.”
His scream brought a smile to my face.
“Four. Three. Two.” I pulled back the hammer. “Are you ready to be set free?”
Blackness filtered in.
* * *
Peeling off the black leather gloves coated in sticky blood, I tossed them to the floor and nabbed a pair of tongs from inside a plastic bag. I had Alec to thank for all the sterile technique. He’d taught me all the ways that police processed evidence in the lab, how even the tiniest fibers could be analyzed. I’d had no idea an entire genetic code could be found at the root of a single human hair. Fascinating.
Alec was something of a Jack of all trades. While I probably would’ve been inclined to throw caution to the wind, sending the recording to DeMarcus Corley without a single thought for the possibility that they could identify me, Alec insisted on taking great care in eliminating the possibility.
Keeping to his demands, I set the envelope on a plastic square I’d laid on the front seat of my car and addressed the package to the only cop who’d earned my trust so far.
Perhaps he’d find some use out of Julius’s confession.
20
Nick
With a plate of food in one hand, I entered Aubree’s room, finding her sprawled on her stomach, reading. “Still working on that book?”
She rolled to her side and propped her head on her palm, looking like some fucking Flintstones pinup with her torn, ragged dress, and a sudden rush of heat shot through my body. “It’s the only one I have, so I’m taking my time with it.”
She went back to her reading, undeterred, when I set the plate down.
I tossed her a T-shirt and a pair of my sweats, almost hating to make her change, but goddamn it, I didn’t need to think about her that way whenever she decided to wash her panties. I had bigger shit going down. Besides, she was the enemy for chrissakes—an argument that seemed to be losing steam with each passing day.
It wasn’t until I’d already gotten halfway to the door that I heard her shift on the bed, and something soft hit the back of my head.
I spun around and found my clothes in a heap on the floor.
“Thanks. But I’m not wearing your clothes.” With a stubborn tilt of her chin, she perched on the edge of the bed, arms crossed.
“You’d prefer to walk around in a torn
dress and no panties, that it?”
Her brows lifted. “Yeah. I would.”
Damn her, and damn my traitorous dick for lurching at that. “Well, too bad. I’m not asking you to wear the clothes. I’m telling you.”
“And I’m telling you that I refuse to wear your clothes. I’m not letting you stake some claim on me.”
I exhaled a breath, shaking my head. “You don’t want to test me right now, Aubree.”
From behind, Blue perked up and whined.
“Go fuck yourself, Nick.”
I swiped at my nose, brushing off the urge to paddle her ass for such insolence. “I forgot. If it’s not fancy and bought with innocent human lives, it’s not good enough for you, right?” It wasn’t my style to say something totally stupid, off the top of my head, but shit happened.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” She pushed up and crossed her arms tighter. “I haven’t bought anything with human lives! And if all of this is about my husband, I’ve no idea how he wronged you, but I had nothing to do—”
Lurching forward, I wrapped my fingers around her throat and slammed her against the wall. My teeth ground so hard they could’ve cracked, while her pulse hammered beneath my palm. A vision of Danielle popped into my head, and I snapped.
Alec had suspected that Michael received a cut of the trafficking, and may have even had a more direct role, but proving it seemed to be the crux of his suspicions, and he lacked the concrete evidence to expose him. I couldn’t help but imagine Aubree and Michael admiring their fine clothes, while innocent girls like Danielle paid the price— and Aubree’s haughty fucking attitude only grated on my spine.
Like I’d caught some kind of hellcat by the tail, she thrashed and pushed, scratching, fighting against me. Her body tensed, and I blocked the anticipated kick to my nuts with a lifted leg.
Wild. Feral.
With my right hand, I pinned her flailing fist, then released her throat and seized the other. She stilled, flat against the wall, with my body pressed into hers.