by Lane Hart
The heavy door slams closed. The echo rebounds down the dark corridor, following me as I ascend the stairs, like the voices that never leave. A damn bullet in the head might just be the answer.
Chapter Eight
Below
Makenna Davies
My neck stings from where Easton tore my necklace away. I rub the irritated skin, the pain as fresh as the missing feel of the cool silver that’s been pressed there for the past year.
Hudson gave me the necklace when I made detective.
He gave me the gift that day…and then we made love that night.
We knew the rules. We knew the rules about mixing personal relationships with a working one. It wasn’t just frowned upon to sleep with your partner—it was a disgrace. But we also knew, the very first week we were paired together, that there was no denying our attraction for each other.
You can’t help who you fall in love with.
Hudson said this to me the first time we kissed. Our bulky uniforms awkward to get around as our lips crashed, bodies colliding against each other and the lockers. We laughed during that kiss, a mix of need and elation making my head dizzy.
He trained me. Ten years my senior, I feared I was one of those pathetic women who gravitated toward her boss, attracted to his power and confidence. But it wasn’t like that. He was gentle when I needed him to be, and tough when the job demanded more.
We kept a balance between our relationship and the job. The job came first. We both understood that. And that’s why we worked when all our other romantic endeavors died a quick death.
He was my first love. He was my first everything.
And then he was gone.
I stare vacantly at the pile of folders in the middle of the cellar.
I don’t want to touch them.
My obsessive search led me here. That’s the only answer I need. The monster is real, and I found him.
I lie down, my face pressed to the cold slab. I failed. Those files can’t help me. Even if I had aimed my gun at the right man…even if I had pulled the trigger…none of it will bring Hudson back.
That hollow knowledge makes it easier to accept my fate.
The reality is grim. I’m going to be killed by the same beast that took Hudson’s life.
Why?
The curious voice inside me questions this. I try to shut it down, but the thought is infectious. A virus contaminating my conscious thought. Like every case I’ve ever worked.
That’s what got Hudson killed.
I’m what got him killed.
I squeeze my eyes shut against the painful thought. But the evidence is damning.
In my neurotic quest to find Hudson’s killer, I developed a loose theory for why he was murdered. And I dug in my heels stubbornly. I chewed on that one faint thread until the flavor was lost. The slightest, thinnest clue was the center of my wrecked world. But still I held on.
Myer Keystone Enterprise.
The case of the missing girl—the case that started my fixation and got my partner killed.
I exhale a shaky breath as I look up at the rafters. My gaze follows the beams to the seam where the wall meets the gray ceiling. I hear the thump. The muffled sound reverberates through the walls.
I’m so exhausted, I want to give up, but I can’t fail him again. I will my body to move. Against the aching weakness, I drag my feet, the chain scraping the slab. I grip the spike and breathe, clutching it to my chest, before I roll toward the cellar door.
Fatigued, I first trace my fingers over the cellar door, mapping the rough texture reverently. Attempting to find a crack. Any opening where I can wedge the damn tip of the spike.
This door is my beacon amid the darkness. It’s all I have in the way of hope.
Yet the seams are so perfect, creating one solid mass. I sniff back my annoyance, and try to wedge the tip beneath the door. I bear down on the spike until my palm burns.
With tears rimming my eyes, I fight back defeat. There’s something here. I can sense it on the other side. I try again to wedge the spike beneath the door, but it’s sealed air-tight. I curse and slam the point against the door, the loud clang tears through my sore head.
I beat it against the door in a fit of anger. I don’t stop until the stinging pain in my hands forces me to drop the spike.
It bounces against the concrete floor.
I slump along the door, breaths searing my chest, a tightness in my hands that now throbs with every accelerated heartbeat. One last act of defiance, I kick the stupid railroad spike. Who the hell has one of those anyway?
Psychopaths who murder innocent people in a ravine and lock women in their prefab cellars, that’s who.
I look at the inanimate spike lying on the slab.
The tiniest particles scraped free where it landed. Easton built this underground hell for a reason.
My heart thunders inside my chest, rocking me into motion.
I’m not physically strong enough to drive it through the slab…but I can scrape back layers. I can dig. I can discover what he buried underneath this hell.
As I try to grasp the spike, fiery pain spreads over my palm. I scramble toward my discarded bag and dump the clothes. I pick out a small T-shirt and wrap my hand once, then I angle the point along the slab like I’m filing it down, like I’m sharpening a knife.
That mental image sends a chill skittering across my skin with a flash of memory. Easton kneeling over Hudson, knife to his throat.
The hunting knife he wears on his person. That he brings into this cellar.
I start scraping the floor.
I’m trapped in the stage between dreaming and awake. Where I know if I can just open my eyes, I’ll wake up. My body feels like it’s in motion, being moved. I panic and try to shake myself out of the dream, but exhaustion and fatigue hold me under.
A shooting pain to my head rouses me fully, and when I sit up and gasp, I see the door opening. My foot blocks its path, and I scramble back as it groans wider and Easton enters.
My body still carries the weight of the dream, a cold awareness rushing over me as consciousness invades, and I realize where I am. I blink up at Easton. He’s watching me intently.
He presses his large hand to the door and forces it closed.
He holds a plate in one hand as he leans a corkboard against the wall. I stare at it, trying to discern the pages tacked to the front.
He carries the plate toward me and sets a water bottle near my feet. “Here.”
The willful, resentful woman within me wants to kick the bottle. Watch it explode in his face. But I’m fading fast. To survive—if I want to survive—I need sustenance to live.
I reach for the water, my hand shaking and forearms aflame. I twist the cap with a wince and put the water to my mouth, vicious need greedily guzzling.
“Slow,” he says. “You’ll make yourself sick again.”
I gulp the water with my eyes trained on his face, insolent. The white scars are more visible in the dim light. He’s not hiding them anymore. When my stomach pangs from the fullness, I cough and pull the bottle away.
“Eat something,” he says. It’s an order.
I cap the water and set it aside. “I’m not hungry.”
He studies me a moment, then his gaze drifts to the place where I left the spike. It’s wrapped with my bloodstained shirt. I was able to scratch a nice-sized groove in his concrete slab.
Anger ignites his beautiful demon features as he glances between the damage and my mutilated hands. They’re a blistered mess. And they hurt like hell.
He makes a move toward me, and I flinch.
A moment of pause, and he goes for the spike instead. He grabs it and heads toward the door. I thrust myself to my feet just as he reaches into his jacket. I watch him take out a key ring—but I can’t see around him. His large back blocks my view, and I mentally curse.
The door slams into place, the bang an empty echo against my ears.
I swallow my cry and launch my
self at the door. I search the front, bloodied palms seeking the keyhole. Where is it? Come on. I cover every inch where I can reach, and before I’m able to search any higher, I hear his footsteps coming back.
The door opens, and this time I stand my ground. I don’t back away.
“You like that door?”
His question throws me off balance, and I realize with a start that I haven’t done a particular thing in hours. Suddenly, my bladder is heavy, and I know if he attacks, I’ll wet myself.
Out of everything that’s happened, everything he’s done to me…this is the most degrading; to be made to relieve myself in a corner like an animal.
He makes a move toward me, and rage lashes my insides. I slam my hands against his chest, the pain blooming on my palms unbearable. But I keep hitting, leaving behind bloody handprints on his shirt.
“I’m not a fucking animal—” I seethe. “I have to use the fucking bathroom!”
His hands circle my wrists, and there’s no fight left in me. He stares down at me, those blue eyes the coldest thing in this cellar. “You’re not,” he says, then with a quickness, he hoists me over his shoulder. “Animals don’t mutilate themselves. You’re something worse.”
I don’t fight it. I let him carry me through the cellar door. He could be taking me straight to my death. But if he is, it might be the only way I find Hudson.
Chapter Nine
Stone Cold
Luke Easton
I cart Makenna past the warren of unfinished wall partitions and beams. Her tiny frame feels even lighter without her struggle. She’s only been down here for less than two days, but she’s losing her mind. Which makes me wonder if she didn’t lose it long before this point.
I chuckle to myself, the deep sound bouncing through the rows of concrete mixers and inlaid shelves.
“This is what you find funny?” Her small voice barely reaches my ears. “Murdering an innocent woman in your…” She trails off. “What is this?”
“A work in progress,” is all I say.
I’ve been adding on to the cellar for years. I keep going. As much as it takes. New walls. New floor. New rafters. The chamber stretches through the hillside, twice as long as the house above ground.
Maybe I’m responsible for her cracked brain. I am the one who ended her partner, her lover. I’m sure that’s why she’s no longer a detective. Why she’s been searching for me. To make me pay for my sin.
I ascend the spiral staircase and, once I pop the hatch, I take Makenna into the house.
I’m probably making an irreversible mistake. I should’ve just put a bucket in the corner. That was the plan, wasn’t it? Desensitize myself—see how long her torture takes. Harden myself enough so I can lock a woman down there for good.
It shouldn’t be this difficult. She touched that piece of filth. She worked beside him. Fucked him. Her skin is soiled by his rotten flesh. I keep this thought on my mind as I hike her toward the bathroom.
I could almost feel guilty for having broken her. I know what that’s like. I’ve suffered the same kind of torment—and if I only looked at her from that angle, I could easily see her as a victim. See us as the same. Kindred.
But we’re not.
She wore my dead sister’s necklace around her neck while she had all the evidence right in front of her…and she refused to see the truth. That’s a choice.
I throw open the shower curtain and twist the lever. Water rains down from the showerhead. I heave her off my shoulder, cradle her in my arms for a moment until the water gets going, then I plop her in the tub.
She sputters as water drenches her face. Her eyes snap open, and she wipes at the smears of dirt as she tries to clear water from her eyes. “What—?”
“You stink.” I lower myself down, closer. “Just like an animal.”
She raises a hand to slap me, but as she becomes fully cognizant, aware of her injured hands, stops mid-swing. Her gaze catches the blood she left behind on my shirt. Fact is, she doesn’t smell. But if I keep her down there with blistered hands, she’ll get an infection. She’ll get feverish and sick.
I don’t need that headache.
I pick up the bar of soap from the corner ledge and toss it at her. “Cleanse your hands.”
She’s still lying in the base of the tub, water cascading down her body. My white T-shirt is completely drenched now, displaying her breasts clearly through the thin material. The bar of soap rests on her belly. Her eyes flare; her heated gaze doesn’t stray from my face.
There’s part revulsion I see there—but more distressed calculation. Searching for what she can use against me. I should look away, but my gaze is drawn to the outline of her tits.
I’m an animal, too.
With renewed effort, she pushes forward and climbs to her feet, bringing her face level with mine. She never takes her eyes off me as she crosses her arms and grasps the hem of the soaked shirt, then drags it over her head.
My nostrils flare, breaths sawing in and out of my lungs.
A dare hitches her eyebrow. “You took me,” she says. Her voice is steady despite the tremble of her lips. She’s shaking. From the cold, the exposure. “You want me.”
My mouth flattens into a hard line and, teeth gritted, I brace my hands on the edge of the porcelain tub.
“You can have me…” She swallows hard. “All I want to know is what you did with Hudson’s body.”
I grip the edge tighter. Push my face so close to hers I can taste her fear. “I’m not that kind of monster.”
The tremble overtakes her as her eyes sheen with angry tears. She covers her breasts with her arms.
I reach into my pocket and bring out the key ring. There are only three keys, and I select the one that fits into the lock on her cuff. I kneel, placing myself in prime position for her boot to meet my head, but she remains still. So still, I look up to make sure she’s still mentally with me as I cup her calf to bring her leg forward.
I delicately place her foot on the lip of the tub and slide my palm along her wet jeans till I reach the cuff. All the wrong thoughts enter my head, and again, I know this is a dangerous position. For both of us.
One good kick to my chin, and Makenna could gain enough seconds to sprint from this room. Get outside. Be lost.
And despite my loathing, I’m not blind. Her soaked jeans are an evil temptation, making me wonder how hard I’d have to yank to peal them off her wet legs. Too many years spent depriving myself, so I would be nothing like them, to keep my focus pure—and I’m one frayed nerve away from tripping over the line.
Love, lust, hatred… They’re all connected. One just as easily substituted for the next.
Monsters take. Monsters steal. They deprive of power. She sees me as this type of fiend—but despite the desire to inflict pain, I don’t take. I don’t steal. I don’t rob an innocent of their power.
That’s the dividing line between monster and devil.
Resolve reinforced, I unlock the cuff and remove it from her ankle. Then, without meeting her deep-brown eyes, I push away from the tub. I walk backward, keeping my gaze locked on her half-naked body, until I reach the door. Where I drop the cuff and chain.
I turn and brace my hands against the frame. Rest my forehead to the cool wood. My eyes close against the sound of her undressing. The smack of her wet clothes hits the floor. The shower curtain closes.
I force the tension from my body with a strained breath.
I might not be that kind of monster—but I’m every bit man. Enticed. Tempted. Aroused. She’s beautiful and sexy and soft in all the right places. And my cock is keenly aware that she’s only three feet away from me, soaping her body.
I reach down the front of my pants and adjust the aching bastard. Then I plant my hand firmly back against the frame. I’m not moving from this spot.
All it takes is one memory of Jules in the morgue, and fantasies of pushing Makenna against the shower wall evaporate. I purge the remaining images of Makenna’s swollen mout
h and sultry breasts from my mind…because I have to.
A predator mimics the characteristics of its prey to lure them in.
I’ve been in that jungle too long. Surrounded by the cruelest predators.
If I act on my impulses, I’m in danger of becoming the men I hunt.
That thought sobers me.
The water shuts off, and I open my eyes, a measure more composed. I grab the towel from the rack. When I turn around, my heart stops.
Naked, she’s stripped of the gun harness and hard edge she shields herself with. She doesn’t look like a fiend’s partner, or a dirty cop. Or even a bad person. She’s stripped of all the dirt and filth. Bared completely. Vulnerable.
She’s all soft curves and stunning beauty. I take her in, every sexy, alluring inch, and a degree of that hard fought control slips.
Christ. There’s an animal battering against my walls, thrashing to get out, to get at her. I grip the counter and damn near tear it from the wall.
If she wasn’t scared of me before, she should be now.
I hear her sharp breath, and a mask slips over her features. She’s fighting some war within herself, I know. Because I can see the battle raging in her shimmering eyes. Is she frightened, or thrilled she’s discovered a weakness?
“Don’t move.” I step forward and extend the towel, approaching her like a frail forest creature who might spook. But the truth is, if she does anything remotely sexy—like breathe—I might pounce.
She wraps the towel around her body, tucking the corner in against her cleavage, the way women do. Such a feminine move, it steals my breath.
I’m out of practice with women. I am the horrid things she calls me. A life devoted to revenge doesn’t leave much in the way of relationships or even sex. I’m deprived and depraved. And this is my punishment.
I shift my gaze upward and focus on the vulnerability I see in her eyes. This could be a tactic. Offering me her body didn’t work; maybe she’s coming at it from a more defenseless angle. Trying to weaken the monster.