by Riley Ashby
My jaw dropped. I had no idea Mom had any life insurance at all, much less such a comprehensive policy. How long had she been paying on it? It didn’t matter. What did matter was that I had to do as she asked, or Archer and I would both be in danger. “I’ll —”
“I can give you half a million.” We jerked our heads over to Archer, leaning forward as far as his bonds would allow him. Josie scoffed.
“Why would I want that if I can get even more from her?”
“Archer, no,” I begged, but everyone in the room ignored me. Alicia left me and walked over to stand next to Marcus, nearly blocking my view of Archer.
“It’ll take days, weeks, to get that payout and have her get that sum of money transferred. You’ll have to pay taxes on it once she gives it to you. I can give you half a million tonight. You get it in your account, and we leave here separately, never see each other again. No payback for what was done here tonight; no further contact.”
Alicia frowned at him. “You’re lying. How do you have that kind of money?”
“I stole it.”
“Then why the hell are you giving it to us?” Marcus held out a Taser and clicked it on a few times, but Archer didn’t flinch.
“I want to get us out of here. You give me a computer and let me transfer the money to you right now. Then we’ll be gone.”
“Why the hell do you want to help her?” Alicia gestured at me. “She’s completely useless. She couldn’t even kill herself the right way, for God’s sake.”
I flinched, and Archer’s eyes flicked to me before going back to my sister. “You might find it impossible to care for someone weaker than you, but I don’t. Your sister is a good person. She deserved far better than you in her life.”
Marcus didn’t hesitate, winding up and socking Archer across the face before he even finished speaking. Archer’s head swung to the side, strings of saliva and blood pouring from his mouth as Marcus shoved the Taser into his shoulder again.
“STOP IT!” I screamed and tried to crawl toward them, but my feet were tied tight to the grate. I kicked at it, but it wouldn’t move. Finally, the clicking from the Taser stopped, and Archer’s body went still except for the rapid rise and fall of his chest as he tried to catch his breath. There were burn marks on his shirt; he’d have new scars on top of his tattoo.
“You don’t need to do that,” I begged. “I’ll give you the money, Alicia. Just let us go. I don’t care about anything else.”
“Alicia, let’s talk.” Marcus grabbed my sister and pulled her to the side of the room. They whispered hurriedly, both gesturing toward us wildly and looking like they wanted to hit each other as much as they wanted to hit us. When had my sister become this person? I supposed it was the natural progression of her character. She’d had me for eighteen years to practice on; once I removed myself from the equation, she would have had to move on to torturing someone else. Marcus seemed just as bloodthirsty as she did and far too happy to use that Taser.
I twisted on my stomach so I was as close to Archer as I could get, but I was still too far away to even touch the toe of his boot. He pulled his head up, every movement looking like it caused him pain, but when he looked at me, I still saw that same determined man who had brought me back from the edge more times than I could count. He wasn’t planning on letting me down anytime soon. We just had to hold on a little longer.
Alicia and Marcus came back over. “We’ll do the transfer. You’ll transfer the money tonight, and once it shows up in our accounts, you can go. But”—he pointed at me with the Taser—“we still want $250,000 from you. You’ll have one week to get it to us. If you don’t send it, we’ll be back.”
I nodded emphatically. “Whatever you want. Please don’t hurt us anymore.”
Marcus grinned wickedly. “You mean like this?”
I couldn’t even protest before he socked Archer right in the stomach, causing him to double over as much as his bonds would let him.
Anger flared in my stomach as I screamed again. We were giving them everything they wanted, and they were still treating us like this. But of course, that was how it went. That was how it was with my sister and how it had been with the men. You could bend over backward to meet their every demand, but it was never enough.
That was how I learned to be weak. By giving them what they wanted and hoping they would get bored with me eventually. When they left me alone, I could slink off to lick my wounds, but that wasn’t going to happen this time.
I had to pretend to be afraid. But the moment I saw my opportunity …
I would strike back.
It felt like ages until they left us alone, but the truth was I had no sense of time. There were no windows—I assumed we were in a basement. They put tape over the clock on the laptop they brought me so I could transfer the money. That combined with the ringing in my head and repeated Taser shocks everytime they thought I was stalling had me more disoriented than I would ever admit out loud. These two had no training, no formal instruction on how to extort information, but they were almost crude and vicious enough to make up for it.
They refused to release my hands even to let me type. I had to walk them through every website, every back door, every username and password. But eventually, the money was transferred. I assured them it would show up in their account after business hours started, but they were going to hold us until then. There was no way around it.
The one indulgence they did allow us was they left Josie in the room with me when they decided we were done for the night. They bound her hands, but looser than before, and left us on the cold floor. The lights were off; I couldn’t see her at all.
We were quiet for several minutes once they left until I couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Are you hurt?”
“Am I hurt? Jesus, Archer, I just watched Marcus use you as a punching bag for the last hour and a half. Are you still bleeding? Do you have all your teeth?”
I ran my tongue around the inside of my mouth, feeling the sealed-over cuts that smarted at my touch but didn’t erupt into blood again. “No dental implants needed.”
“Good. Do you think you can walk?”
I scoffed. “Of course. But we have to get out of here first. I need some time to think.”
“Just relax.”
I tried to take her advice, breathing deeply and taking some time to really test the strength of my bonds and the chair I was tied to. It was metal; no chance of breaking it apart. And the zip ties they used were the thick kind, not something I could easily break through even if I was at full strength. I pictured the layout of the room in my mind, tried to remember what was placed around the room. Any kind of tool that I could shuffle over to?
Josie made a small cry of triumph. “One down,” she muttered to herself, and I heard more shuffling from her direction. I had been so focused inwardly that I hadn’t even heard her moving.
“What are you doing?”
“Shh.”
A minute later, her hands landed around my ankles, feeling, then traveled up my legs to my knees, my thighs, then my chest and finally my face.
“God, you feel like a pound of hamburger,” she muttered, touching me gently.
“How the hell did you manage to get free?”
“I still have that credit card,” she said proudly. “I used it to pop the catch on the zip ties. Do you think it’s safe to turn on the lights? It would be a lot easier if I could see.”
I shook my head, then remembered she couldn’t see me. “I don’t think so. They could have a camera down here.”
“Okay. Hold tight.”
There was some fumbling and griping about how thick my wrists were, but eventually she sprung the hold on my right hand. I sighed in relief as I flexed my fingers as the blood began rushing through my swollen fingers once more. A minute later, my other wrist was free, and my feet followed in short order.
“Okay, let’s go—”
I grabbed her as she tried to walk away and pulled her back, m
y lips missing hers in the darkness and landing on her cheek instead, but she pulled herself around to face me and kissed me gently against my split lip, licking the blood from my skin before she pulled away.
“You’re not weak,” I whispered. “I’m sorry I said that. You’re the strongest person I know.”
Her hands traced across my face, taking note of the cuts and raised bruises with tender fingertips. “I was weak for a long time. It’s what she expected from me. It was the right thing to say. It got us free.”
I kissed her again, gently this time, before pulling away. “No more pre-escape fucking. We’re getting out of here.”
She giggled, sounding a little hysterical but reining herself back in after a moment. “Whatever you say.”
I shushed her as I listened with my ear against the door for several minutes, then cracked it open a hair. There was some sort of pressure on the handle, and I slid it back closed.
“They’ve wired it somehow.”
She sighed. “I know what she did.” She stood up and fumbled around at the top of the door. “There’s a little alarm up here. It would have gone off if we opened the door. We need to get it off the door. She used to do this to me all the time, so she’d know if I snuck out of my room at night. She said Mom told her to do it, but I think she just wanted to know where I was.”
Thankfully, the thing was only attached with some of what I assumed was the blue sticky stuff teachers use to hang maps on walls. With the alarm off the door, I opened it the rest of the way, double-checking for no more booby traps before proceeding out into the hallway.
I went up the stairs ahead of her, then came back down to guide her up. There was light outside; it was finally morning.
“Where the hell are you, Castel?” I muttered to myself. I didn’t see my cell phone sitting out in plain sight, but I needed a way to contact someone. We wouldn’t get far on foot if Alicia and Marcus had some other sort of detection system set up.
“Get back down the stairs,” I whispered. “If you hear them coming, get back in that room.”
She shook her head. “I’m not leaving you.”
I huffed in frustration. “You won’t obey me at the most critical moment when both our lives are in danger?”
“Not if it means leaving you alone.” Her fingers gripped my forearms, and I was surprised by her strength. I thought about how much she must have worked to get her fingers dexterous enough to work that credit card and free us from the zip ties. She’d been working hard, even without me watching her every move.
I placed my hand over hers and squeezed gently. “Get behind the couch and stay quiet.” She nodded and did as I said.
I moved as quietly as I could through the downstairs, checking drawers and bags until I found my phone and the computer they’d had me use to transfer the money. I emptied everything out of a backpack and put the laptop inside, then returned to Josie with my phone in my hand. I had only two missed calls from Castel and was glad he’d had the sense to quit calling when I didn’t pick up.
In the kitchen, I saw how they’d caught us. There were motion sensing cameras all over the property. I’d managed to miss them somehow when I approached, but the two of us tripped several as we had tried to make our first escape. I flipped them all off before beckoning Josie forward and out the door.
We stole out of the house into the early morning light, ducking among the trees and behind a boulder several dozen yards from the house before I returned Castel’s call.
“Where the hell are you?” I growled into the phone. “You should have been here hours ago.”
“Someone called in a bomb threat to the airport; I can only imagine who. Where are you? I’m about a mile away from the house.”
“I’ll ping your phone. We’re coming to you.”
“You have got to be kidding.”
“I’m not. You need to agree to stay in the car, or I’m going to handcuff you to the door.” Archer frowned. “Not that I’m not thinking of doing that anyway.”
“You can’t chain me up. What if I need to run?”
“Whatever you’re going to do, figure it out. Every minute you two stand here arguing is another minute they have to wake up, realize you’re gone, and come looking for us.” Castel sounded only half as irritated as I felt.
“Why do you have to go back anyway? Let’s go.” I gestured toward the car. I didn’t understand why Archer was so intent on going back to the cabin and taking down Marcus and my sister. I wanted to leave and send the real police after them. “Vail’s going to be pissed if you get injured, Castel. We need to go home and let the actual authorities take care of this.”
That was the wrong thing to say. Both Castel and Archer stood up a little straighter.
“We’re ten times better equipped to take out these people, Josie. We can’t give them the opportunity to slip away. They’ll come after you again.”
“And I’m not going to let these people wander around when I know they’re out there snatching women. These two need to be taken down today, by us.”
Archer grabbed my left hand and pressed something cold and hard into it. I started when I looked down and saw the gun, my chosen method of suicide, once again resting in my palm.
“I can’t use this,” I choked out.
“You won’t have to,” Archer said. “But they don’t know you’re not strong enough to pull the trigger.”
I almost laughed. He thought it was a matter of muscle strength—that my hands wouldn’t cooperate to pull the trigger or I couldn’t handle the recoil—but it was far more than that. I never wanted to see one of these things again, much less hold one in my hand.
“This will be enough to keep anyone away from you if they slip by us, which they won’t. We’re going to take them out and bring them back trussed up like rodeo calves to face punishment for their crimes. And in order for us to do that, you have to stay here. Where you’re safe.”
He released the gun, forcing me to grip it or risk dropping it. His hands traveled to my face, not holding me gently but gripping me at the base of my neck so I had no choice but to look at him. “We will be back. This will take ten minutes, tops. You can stay still for that long, can’t you?”
I willed my tears not to fall, not in front of Castel. “This isn’t a joke, Archer. I don’t want you going back there.”
He pulled me around the side of the car, out of sight of Castel. I expected more admonition, but he pushed me up against the car and kissed me gently. “I won’t be far. I’m going to make sure these two can never bother either of us again. Then we’ll go back.”
And you’ll leave forever, and I’ll be alone again. I bit my lip. I couldn’t let myself spiral down that hole right now. “Fine.”
I turned away, but he pulled my chin back so he could kiss me again. “Ten minutes. Then we’re gone.”
I suppressed a sigh and nodded.
“Good girl. Now get in the car and lock the doors.”
I did as I was told without looking at Castel, and they took off without another word.
I stretched out across the rear seats, closing my eyes and counting methodically. Two minutes, six minutes, ten, and they weren’t back. I couldn’t hear anything from outside the car. I sat up slowly, creeping toward the window closest to the house and peering out into the morning light.
A rock came sailing out of nowhere and slammed against the window right in front of my face. It didn’t so much as chip the glass, but I yelped and jerked back as my sister came hurtling out of the trees and slapped her hands against the door.
“Get the fuck out here, Josie!” The door muffled her words, but I could hear the fury in her voice. I shook my head and scrambled to the far end of the car, but she continued pounding against the side. “You owe me some fucking money, and I’m not letting you go until we get it!”
“You have Archer’s money. Let me go!” I didn’t care that I was begging. That voice sent me right back to my childhood; the difficult teenage years made that
much more difficult due to her meddling. I reached for my phone to call Archer, desperate to have him come correct this, before I remembered that I still didn’t have it back. I had no way of contacting him. He said he’d be back in ten minutes, and he lied. He wasn’t here.
What was going on? Surely, he and Castel couldn’t both be tied up with Marcus.
Alicia was pounding on the car window with her fists. “Come here, Josie. I’m not finished with you.”
I was safe in the car. There was no reason for me to leave. Castel and Archer would come back sooner or later. But I was eight years old again, trembling on the couch while Alicia stormed around the house, throwing the contents of my backpack in the air while she looked for something she assumed I must have stolen from her.
I unlocked the door behind me and slid out of the door backward.
She came around the side of the car to stand less than five feet away from me, looking ready to tear me apart. Her hair was a mess, and she had a cut across one cheek.
“What happened?” I tried and failed to keep the tremble out of my voice.
“Your stupid fucking boyfriend and his buddy dragged us out of bed. I don’t know what Marcus is doing to keep the two of them busy, but since they decided not to fight fair, then I assume I only have a minute with you. Where are the keys? We’re leaving, and you’re not coming back until I have that money from you.”
I shook my head. “This is crazy, Alicia. I would have given it to you, I swear. You didn’t need to do this to us. We could have recovered.”
“I’m not arguing with you anymore. Where are the keys?”
She stepped forward, but I held up the gun. She stopped short, then laughed.
“Am I supposed to believe you’ll shoot me with that? You wouldn’t do that to your own sister.”
I brought my right hand up to steady my left, trying to ignore the tingling running down the right side of my head. “You’re not going to hurt me anymore. Leave me, let us leave, and I’ll try to convince him not to go after you.”
“Nice try,” she sneered and lunged.