“Why?” Ruiz interrupts.
“He’s crazy. Paranoid. He’s always blamed me for anything that went wrong.” I’m certainly not going to tell Ruiz the truth. “From what I understand, he’s concocted some idea that I was conspiring with Dr. William Barnard, the CEO of the Blackthorne Institute, to keep him locked up there.” Nobody will ever find proof; all my payments were from shell companies to an offshore account that can’t be traced to Dr. Barnard. “Since then, he’s been staying in New York City at least part of the time, impersonating me and sabotaging my company.”
“This sounds like something from one of my wife’s shitty soap operas.” He pauses, mutters something that sounds like, “Sorry, Valentina,” and crosses himself. Actually crosses himself. This is a man of faith. A man who still believes in a higher power, and not only that, one who stands for ultimate good.
For the first time in my life, a faint wisp of envy drifts through me. What would it be like to have that kind of comfort? Would it lend me strength? Would I feel less isolated? But the practical reality is, I’ll never know. I don’t believe in good and evil. My world is a cruel Darwinian jungle of survival of the fittest, of predators devouring prey.
I pull up yet another video for him, this one of my brother pacing around his enormous padded room. I paid for him to be imprisoned in comfort. He had books, he had movies, he had a closed-circuit computer. Apparently he didn’t appreciate those special touches.
“That’s him. His name is Charlemagne, but I’m sure he’ll be going under something else now. As you can see, he looks exactly like me.”
Ruiz stares at the screen. “Why was he in the mental institution?”
“He had a public mental breakdown and stabbed a stranger to death at a coffee shop. Used a ballpoint pen. Broke a police officer’s jaw, shattered another one’s eye socket. He was taken into custody and placed under a psychiatric hold.”
Charlemagne’s breakdown was a hundred percent my doing. He was living in California at the time, under an assumed name of course. Only a week had passed since he’d killed the last of the social workers who’d left us to be tortured as children. The social workers had been in Oregon, where we grew up. It was still all over the news.
But I knew there were other people he could find to blame. Police who had come out to the cabin and just made a cursory inspection. Their bosses. Their bosses’ bosses.
Would he ever stop killing? I knew I couldn’t control my urge to kill, so why would he?
The problem with him was that he was reckless with his kills. Killing people who had ties to our family was just plain stupid. He risked capture, and possible exposure of our tangled family history.
So I paid a lot of money to have someone from my security team spike his espresso with a hallucinogenic one morning at the Has Bean café, and chaos and death ensued.
I’d already pre-arranged for Dr. Barnard to accept him into the Blackthorne Institute, and thanks to a combination of my generous payments and my threats to Dr. Barnard, my brother was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia with homicidal ideation. Who knows, the diagnosis might even have been accurate.
Charlemagne was a John Doe when he was arrested. Still is. He refused to reveal his real name. Our past is the kind that’s better left buried.
“That sounds like a man who’s got no control over his actions.” Ruiz looks at me suspiciously. “Crazy, not evil.”
I’d admire his cleverness if I had the time to waste, but I don’t, so I speak quickly. “In all honesty, I set him up to be committed, but it had to be done for the safety of the public. He… We share certain inclinations. I have channeled mine in a more useful direction—taking out the trash, so to speak—while he just killed people for fun.”
His brow is still creased with skepticism. “So you’re asking me to believe that you’re an ethical serial killer and your brother is Ted Bundy reincarnated.”
“Sergeant Ruiz, I never said I was any kind of serial killer, did I? It looks like you’re drawing your own conclusions.” I shake my head chidingly. “I called you in because you seem disillusioned with the system, and I thought you might be willing to work outside it to help save a girl who’s the same age your daughter was when she died.” That’s me, playing dirty pool. “I was able to review your records, and I see that you’ve been accused of use of excessive force against rapists and child molesters. On multiple occasions, you’ve been suspected of planting drugs in order to arrest dealers when you couldn’t find any evidence on them. Your career is hanging by a thread.”
He clears his throat defensively. “If I ever did any of that shit, and I’m not saying I did, it was to scumbag shit-heels who had it coming.”
“So there we are.” I flash him a winning smile. I’ve got a list of smile types stored away in my mental filing cabinet. This one is my “closing the deal” smile, minus any hint of menace, as opposed to my “you’re about to die now” smile, or my “do what I want or I’ll fucking cut you” smile. “Two peas in a pod. You’ve broken the law on many occasions, in the service of the greater good. I might have gone a little further than you, although I’m not saying I did. But I am saying that you have no moral high ground here.”
“You still haven’t explained to me why you didn’t come right out and say that Tamara was, as you put it, ‘staying with you’.” He makes actual air quotes.
“Well, if you’re the one who finds her, you can ask her anything you want.” I’m clearly brushing aside the question. And I know she might tell him everything, which means I risk going to prison for the rest of my life. But she’s worth the risk. And too much time has passed already, and I haven’t been able to find a thing. As good as I am at hacking, as good as Garret is, Ruiz will have more resources than I do—if he’s willing to bend…no, break the law to help a damsel in distress.
“What about that security guard who disappeared?”
Damn, the man has a steel trap memory. That whole shambling, disheveled exterior…it’s an act. Like the TV detective Colombo. Acts like a half-wit so everyone underestimates him, gathers the clues, and then pounces.
“The security guard tried to rape Tamara. He’s…gone. I could show you that video too.”
“Do it.”
“Seriously?” I throw my hands up in frustration. “What part of ‘a woman is being tortured by a fucking serial killer right now’ are you not getting?”
He doesn’t budge. “I’m risking what’s left of my career here, and I’m considering working with someone who’s all but admitted he’s at best a vigilante murderer, and at worst…God only knows. So yeah, you’re going to show me the fucking video.”
I was hoping we could dispense with all this moral posturing. Who is he to act all self-righteous when he’s broken the law as often as I have?
But Saint Ruiz has to feel right about this, or he won’t help me.
I open up another file on the USB and show him the video of the guard trying to rape Tamara. “See?” I say impatiently, turning the video off.
He still looks skeptical, but he shrugs. “Tell me everything you can about your brother and Tamara.”
I give him my version of events from yesterday—my brother hacked into my security system, Tamara and I made a run for it, and my brother blew up the house.
I hacked into traffic cameras and traced him as far as a parking garage in downtown Boston. Unfortunately, I lost track of him. He must have switched cars there. A man on my security team found the abandoned van, and I have no idea where he went from there. It was rush hour when he entered the parking garage, and there were dozens of cars streaming in and out.
“I might be able to get access to the garage’s records and their security tapes,” Ruiz says, frowning in thought. “He wouldn’t have hung out in that garage for too long. We can start with all the cars that left the garage within, say, two to three hours after the van entered. Run their plates, process of elimination, figure out which vehicle he was driving. What else can you tell me? What
did he do after he busted out? Where was he staying?”
“I know that he spent a considerable amount of time in New York, because I’ve determined that he actually went to my office several times, and he came to my apartment here as well. He was the one who was sending information to the police about me. I haven’t been able to find out where he was staying. Also, unfortunately, he embezzled an enormous sum of money from me, so he’s got a lot of funds.” I’m thinking out loud. “Okay. He was sending the police information about me, messing with me, giving you just enough to question me but not enough to arrest me. Can you trace the source of those messages?”
He shakes his head decisively. “No, we tried.” No surprise there.
“What did he tell you about me?”
He scowls, thinking about it before he tells me. “He told us that you were behind the disappearance of the security guard, and Baxter Warburton. And Tamara. And Heather. And he said that you were behind the disappearance of a bunch of other women, but he didn’t name them.”
“Doesn’t that strike you as suspicious?” I say with exasperation. “He told you some half-truths and then a major lie. He didn’t name the other women because there were no other women.”
“Maybe.”
Ruiz stands up.
“Now what?” I ask.
“I’ll start with the parking garage video. And if you get any information that might help me, you’ll give it to me immediately.” Distrust still simmers in his voice. “And I probably won’t do the same for you unless I need to ask you questions. It’s not a two-way street. I don’t know enough about you, and I don’t like you. I’m doing this for her, not you. Give me a number to reach you at.”
I jot down a number and hand it to him, and dismiss him from my mind as he leaves. My only thought, my only focus, is Tamara.
Chapter Four
Tamara
I lie awake all night. Strapped down hand and foot to the bed, I yearn for sleep that never comes. My piercings throb and chafe. Heather is asleep. I can tell by the sound of her heavy, even breaths, and I don’t try to wake her up or talk to her. After what Micah did to her yesterday, she just curled up and pulled her blanket over her head. She’s withdrawn into her own little world of misery.
I’m guilt-racked that she’s here too, another victim of Micah’s madness, but I remind myself that if I’m going to have any chance of helping her, I’ve got to look after myself first.
What is the morning going to bring?
Getting pierced was painful, and getting kissed and fondled by him was revolting, but I know that the worst is yet to come. I’m sure he’s starting slowly and building his way up. Every day will be worse and worse until…
No. I can’t think about it.
Instead, I think about Joshua.
I tried to escape him—violently—the second I had the opportunity to. And I don’t regret that.
But when I saw his twin brother and thought he’d killed Joshua, for that split second, I was sick with grief. It makes no sense, but it was undeniable. I’ve developed strong feelings for Joshua. I don’t know if I’d call it love or obsession or Stockholm syndrome, but the thought of a world without Joshua fills me with panic and sorrow.
It took that moment of devastation to make me wonder if it would actually be possible to forge some kind of relationship with Joshua…if I survive Micah.
If I were free…would I stay with Joshua?
I know it’s insane for me even to think about wanting to be with him.
Joshua imprisoned me. He tortured me. He had every intention of keeping me locked up in his house for the rest of my life or, at the absolute most, letting me take walks with him outside in the woods. My heart ached every day with the knowledge that I’d never have friends, never have a career, never get to make another person smile, never see anything outside his house again. He would have trapped me in amber, suspending me in time.
He snuffed out my dream of going to college and becoming a lawyer. That was all I wanted from the day I started high school. I wanted to save little girls like me from the hell of child abuse and neglect. I was a poor girl from a grubby little city in Nebraska, with no connections and no prospects, but I’d hauled myself up out of the gutter. I’d worked two jobs while I was in high school and worn clothes from the Goodwill fifty-cent bin so I could afford to move to New York. I’d been so proud of myself when I got that college acceptance letter. And that meant nothing to him. Nothing.
I begged and begged him to let me go free. I begged him to kill me rather than force me to live as his prisoner, and he coldly and heartlessly refused.
But I have to admit, he changed over the months I was staying with him. He changed because of me. He didn’t even want to, but something about me really did touch him inside, and he became a better person. He actually made compromises. He was more than proud, he was arrogant, but when I needed to rage at him and curse at him after I woke up from my brainwashed stupor, he permitted it. He let me get it all out of my system.
And he promised things would be different between us. He tried to make things work. He coaxed me with bribes, giving that enormous donation to the battered women’s shelter just for the privilege of a conversation with me. He bent as far as a man like him was capable of bending.
For me.
And I can’t lie to myself and say I hated every minute of being with him. I didn’t.
I loved the sex. It was out-of-your-mind, explosive, weep-with-ecstasy sex, every time. He was utterly devoted to my pleasure. He wasn’t satisfied until I was panting and gasping from orgasm after orgasm.
Before I met him, I always yearned for a man who’d dominate me. Not to that level, of course, but Joshua forced me past my limits and taught me new things about myself and what I really wanted.
And it wasn’t just the amazing sex. It was being special to a man like him. It was our conversations, where he opened his whole world up to me—the heartbreak of his childhood, the Godlike power he wields today.
It was the way he made me forgive myself for what I did to my stepfather. It was the way he helped me see that what my mother did to herself wasn’t my fault.
What would it be like if I were with Joshua again, but free?
He’d never set me free.
But I could never be with another man after him. The thought curdles my stomach.
I struggle to push these thoughts from my head. I’ve got to concentrate on survival. There’s no point in using up mental energy worrying about a future I may not live to see.
A vicious voice slices into me. “Rise and shine, you little whores. It’s another morning in hell.”
I start and stifle a shriek. I was drifting off into some dreamland of exhaustion, and I didn’t even hear Micah come in.
He walks over to me, his face blank of expression, and lets me up so I can use the toilet positioned at the far end of the room. There’s no privacy, just a toilet sitting out in the open. There’s a sink and a cart with towels on it next to the sink. I hunch over, trying to hide.
Micah stands there, impassive. I’m woozy from lack of sleep. My piercings are still sore and tender. And I know there will be another torture session today.
I can survive this. Joshua will find us, or I will take Micah out myself, or both. I repeat it to myself to keep myself from breaking down and panicking.
He hands me a bowl of scrambled eggs and chains my ankle to the bed, leaving my hands free so I can eat.
Then he repeats the process with Heather. I watch her. There’s no fight in her. She’s shrunken in on herself and she shuffles to the toilet and back without looking at me. She sits down on her bed and gulps down her food and hands Micah back the bowl and the spoon without a word. This is a familiar, terrible routine for her.
I wonder how much longer she’ll be able to hang in there. She’s so dazed and lifeless, anything could send her toppling over the edge into madness. And if Micah does succeed in killing me, what will he do to her then?
Micah flashes me a malicious smile. “I’ll be back in a bit. I’ve got to fetch something I’ll be using on you this morning. I won’t make you wait too long, though, Joshua misses you. He’ll need his daily video. Won’t this be fun?”
I wait until he leaves before I return my attention to her. “Have you been here this whole time?” I ask her.
She twists around and looks at me with hollow eyes. “I’m sorry,” she says to me.
“What? Why would you be sorry?”
She sucks in a breath and lets out a slow sigh, and the seconds drag by so long I don’t think she’s going to answer me. When she speaks, her voice is cracked and husky.
“The last day I saw you, I snapped at you. And I never got a chance to explain myself. I have bipolar disorder. I don’t tell a lot of people, but sometimes I just get these flashes of rage.”
That makes a lot of sense. Part of what made Heather so fun was that she was so giddy, so whacky, always on a high. That’s not uncommon with people who are bipolar. The problem is that for all the highs, there are going to be lows too.
“It’s nothing,” I tell her. “We’ve other things to worry about.”
“Yeah, we do. I don’t expect we’ll make it out of here. We had some fun times, though, didn’t we?” She manages a sad smile.
“We did. We really did.”
She seems to revive a little as she talks. “Remember when we went to that drag club and the drag queens let us sing with them on stage?”
“Because you lied and said it was your birthday! We were terrible.” I manage a smile at the memory.
“Yeah, we were.” She smiles back. “Thanks for being my friend. I can be hard to deal with sometimes. I’d say that I’m glad to see you again, but given the circumstances…”
“Yeah.”
We both fall silent for a while.
I know there are cameras watching us and listening to us, so there’s no point asking her about anything that would help us escape.
My eyes are fluttering closed with exhaustion when the door flies open and Micah marches in. He looks completely different than he did a little while ago. His face is animated and his eyes spark with malice.
The Trials of Tamara Page 4