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The storm suited Alex as he painted mountains with clouds stealing in among the towering peaks. The thunder brought nature in to him in a visceral way as he worked on the gloom in the forest beneath towering clouds.
Near midnight the doorbell rang.
14.
ALEX FROZE FOR A MOMENT, brush in hand, as the echo of the bell slowly died out. His first thought was to wonder if it was possible that it could be Jax.
He quickly discounted the notion. It was foolish to think it was her. But then he realized that if by any chance it was her it would be even more foolish to keep her standing out in the rain.
He stuck the brush in the jar of water on the table to the side of his easel and wiped his hands on a towel while rolling back his chair. As he stood a reflection caught his eye. He glanced briefly in the mirror across the room to rake back his disorderly hair. He didn’t take the time to do any more to clean up, fearing that if it was Jax she might leave before he got to the door.
The only lights on in the house were the ones in his studio. As he ran down the dark hall, his way was lit sufficiently by the flickering flashes of lightning, so he didn’t pause to fumble for switches and instead rounded the turn into the dark living room without slowing. Thunder following each crackling bolt of lightning rumbled through the structure of the house. The rain outside rattled against the windows. In the living room the flashes of lightning coming in the tall window threw a glaring slash of light across the hardwood floor.
Alex stopped before the door. His heart didn’t. Hope kept it racing.
When he took a quick look through the peephole he saw what he hadn’t at all expected.
Bethany stood near the porch light, just in under the overhang and out of the rain. She was alone.
Standing in the dark living room, Alex’s heart sank. It wasn’t Jax after all. He let out a heavy sigh.
He hadn’t talked to Bethany in weeks. After Jax had warned him that a different kind of human was tracking him through his phone, he’d smashed it and thrown it in a dumpster at a convenience store. At the time it had made sense.
He bought a generic phone from a rack inside the store. It had a different telephone number, of course, so he left the new number with his new gallery and a couple of other places that might need to get ahold of him, like Lancaster, Buckman, Fenton. The simple phone was enough to serve his needs. Not one for long phone conversations, he hadn’t yet even had to buy more minutes.
In the case of Bethany, having a new number had been an advantage; she couldn’t call him or send him text messages. He had thought that if she couldn’t contact him she would soon forget about him and move on with her life. Apparently, he had been wrong about that.
He could see through the peephole that she was wearing a slinky silver dress cut rather low. The dress was designed to make clear what lay beneath. In Bethany’s case that was near perfection. She was a gorgeous woman, but that was all and it just wasn’t enough for Alex. There was no substance to support the looks. There was nothing about her that inspired Alex to desire her. She seemed to be a living example of the saying that looks weren’t everything.
The only lights on in the house were those in his back studio. The rest of the place was dark. The thought occurred to him that he could simply not answer the door and pretend he wasn’t home.
But that would be cowardly, and worse, dishonest.
Since he really didn’t want to start up another conversation with her—or worse, get in an argument—he decided he would state his feelings briefly, but clearly. Tell her the truth but keep it short and to the point.
Alex pulled open the door to face her.
As soon as he did, before he could open his mouth to say a word, Bethany lifted her arm, pointed a gun at his chest, and pulled the trigger.
15.
BEFORE ALEX WAS ABLE TO DODGE more than a few inches to the side, the gun went off.
At the same time that he heard the bang, it felt like a bolt of lightning slammed into him. Instant, overwhelming pain drove out a scream.
Every muscle in his body abruptly went rigid. It was all so sudden that he couldn’t make sense of what was happening. He knew he’d been hit, but he couldn’t tell where. Paralyzed by a shock of enormous force clamping down on him, his body wouldn’t respond to his wishes.
Alex toppled backward. Try as he might, he couldn’t even lift an arm to break his fall. Somehow, it didn’t seem to matter.
As he fell back he saw twin coils of fine wire unspool from the gun.
It wasn’t a regular gun, he realized, but a Taser. As he shuddered under the grip of the pain, it seemed that it might as well have been a regular gun. He was surprised that, despite the agony that made his body unresponsive, his mind worked.
Bethany stepped into the room to stand over him.
Alex could hear himself screaming in unendurable agony, but he could do nothing other than endure it.
He’d had time to move only inches before she’d pulled the trigger. One of the steel darts had stuck in his left pectoral muscle. At the same time the other dart, going lower by design in order to spread the electrical charge through the largest muscle mass, had firmly lodged in his lower abdomen. All his muscles had cramped iron stiff with all-consuming pain. It felt like a mountain was crushing him.
Regular stun guns caused pain. Because he had no control of his body, he knew that it wasn’t one of those older models, but one of the newer Shaped Pulse generators. The way they interrupted muscle control in addition to causing pain was enough to take down an angry bull. He could hear the snapping, clicking sound of the electrical discharges.
There was nothing he wanted more than for the torment to stop.
After a five-second eternity, it finally did.
When the voltage abruptly cut off, the pain also vanished. When it did, Alex lay on his back, panting, trying to recover not just from the physical ordeal but the sudden shock of it. Mere moments ago he had been absorbed in painting the quiet beauty of a forest scene. Now he was flat on his back, disoriented, trying to catch his breath, and scared out of his wits.
He knew that a Taser could deliver countless hits. He moved his arms a little just to make sure he could, but not enough to look threatening. At that point, he didn’t know what Bethany was capable of. He saw that she still had her finger on the trigger. With the darts already stuck in him, she had but to pull the trigger to deliver another charge. Until he decided what to do, he thought it best to do nothing and let her think he wasn’t going to put up a fight.
Glaring flashes of lightning illuminated her figure standing over him. When the bright flashes flickered out and the rumble of thunder died away, only the faint light of the streetlamp off through the rain beyond the open door softly lit the curving edge of her figure.
“Hello, Alex,” she said in a silky voice.
Alex thought that she looked remarkably calm. She looked like she had complete control and knew it.
“Bethany, what do you think . . .”
Two big men stepped out of the dark night and through the open doorway into his living room. A few cracks of lightning backlit wisps of vapor, like mist rising into the humid night air off the heat of their hulking forms.
Alex didn’t recognize the men, but they certainly looked like a nightmare come out of such a night. He noticed that, despite the rain, none of the three was wet.
“Now, Alex,” Bethany said, “if you know what’s good for you, you’ll be a good boy and not cause me any trouble—you’ve already caused me enough. If you’re good, I think you will find this far more pleasurable than you ever imagined.” She flashed him a self-satisfied smile. “And I bet you have imagined it often enough.”
Alex couldn’t make sense of what she was talking about. He wondered if a Taser could scramble a person’s mind. He didn’t think so. Everything else seemed ordered and logical. Up was up, down was down. He recognized her. It was only what she said that didn’t fit into any context.
Bethan
y glanced briefly at the men. “Get him into a bedroom.”
Alex couldn’t imagine what in the world Bethany and the two men intended to do with him. But whatever they intended, he had no illusions that it was going to be anything other than bad. He wondered if Bethany, in her anger over his rejection of her, had hired a couple of thugs to beat him senseless.
He wondered if it could be something worse than a beating. He wondered if she intended for them to murder him.
