That’s when I realize I’m tied to the chair. Wrists. Ankles. All four limbs bound tight.
Panic grips me, and I can’t fight it. I struggle, sobbing and hyperventilating, for all the good it does me. The chair’s metal, bolted to the floor, and my bindings tighten the more I pull against them. It’sclear I’m alone; no one comes to investigate the noises I make.
Hyperventilating leaves me dizzy and wrung out, my hands tingling, my vision swimming at the edges. The panic doesn’t leave so much as exhaust itself, until my breathing slows on its own.
When I calm down enough to take in my surroundings, the first thing I see is an empty, sturdy-looking table a few feet away with the rest of my clothes folded neatly in a pile, my phone and keys to Carol’s apartment resting on top, boots set side by side on the floor beneath.
Someone undressed me, tied me up, thenfolded my clothes. It’s both creepy and chilling, and I stare at them for too long, wondering what kind of mind is capable of those actions.
There’s nothing else in here, save for an imposing metal door that shouts either very cheap storage or a serial killer’s hobby room.
Fear is the chill in my bones, the nausea in the pit of my stomach, and the dread growing in my chest. I don’t know how long I’ve been awake, but it’s taken me until now to even be able to think straight.
And when I do, I can only come up with two options.
One: Alex is a twisted and sick fuck, and he’s going to turn up and conduct some seriously dark sex games.
Two: I’m in for a really shitty end to my life, via torture, maybe rape, a brief detour through dismemberment, and an unmarked gravesomewhere.
I’m hoping desperately for option one—even though I’ll never forgive him if it is—but I know two is the winner. Because Carol’s dead.
My best friend in the whole world. Among the handful of people I’ve ever truly loved, and part of an even smaller group that actually loved me back. Lying on the floor of her apartment, her blood and brains splattered over the wall behind her.
She used to leave voicemails instead of texts because she said you could hear a smile in someone's voice. The truth was, she just liked to talk. But I have twenty-three of them saved, and I never told her that.
She's been my best friend since the day we met, when I joined Dalton Reed green and barely holding it together. Carol handed me a coffee and told me Franklin was an idiot and not to take him seriously. She was right.
And now she’s gone.
Tears come, and I can’t stop them. They flow freely, running down the sides of my nose and dripping from my lip. It’s terror, it’s horror, it’s the loss of Carol. It’s the total abject helplessness of my own situation.
It’s some time until I cry myself dry, the sobs lessening to hiccups, then fading away completely. And still no one has come.
I’m hungry, but that’s nothing to my thirst. Anxiety, dread, and too much crying has left me dry, and I’m desperate for a drink. My wrists are sore where my ropes have chafed. My ankles have faredbetter, if only because there was less give to begin with. I’m barely able to move my legs. My knees are spread wide, and undressed like this, that’s just adding to my vulnerability. My back aches, the chair uncushioned, hard and unforgiving.
Why me? Why am I even here?
But no sooner have I asked those questions, than the answer is obvious. Whatever Alex is mixed up in, whatever I stumbled across with Van Wyk, Juliette and Amelia, it’s brought me to this fate.
I wish to hell I’d stayed in corporate investigations and never gone to that damn dance.
Yet that’s not entirely true. If I had, I’d never have seen the side of Alex I didn’t even know existed.
This just seems like a heavy price to pay for a lot of very good orgasms.
How long have I been awake, now? Two hours? Three? Twenty minutes? It’s impossible to tell. Aside from a comfortable ambient temperature, this room has nothing to recommend it, save for a guaranteed rat population in close proximity.
When the door finally does open, I flinch. The handle clunks down with a clang of metal, and it’s shoved wide, swinging around to slam into the wall, stirring the air with a faint breeze. The man on the other side is in shadow, his clothing black, jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. He wears no baseball cap and I can’t see his face, but I’m certain it’s him. My abductor. His build and height are the same.
Then he steps in, the light falling on his face, and I’m proved right. In one hand, he has a bucket. In theother, a block-shaped case with a carry handle. And a bundle of cloths tucked under his arm.
My breaths come short, and I watch every step he takes as he walks to the table. The bucket sloshes as he sets it on the floor, water against the rim, and it pulls at my thirst. I hardly notice as he sets the box down. The cloths are some cheap cotton rags, edges frayed, set down beside my clothes. Next, he pulls a gun from the small of his back, and that draws my eye. I can’t look away. It’s the same one he shot Carol with, made even more obvious when he slips a silencer from his pocket and screws it into place with practiced efficiency. This, he sets down on the pile of rags, where I can clearly see it.
Only then does he look at me, and his eyes are the most terrifying I’ve ever witnessed, flat and lifeless.
“Good evening, Miss Callahan,” he says, with the same well-spoken British accent he used in Carol’s apartment.
Evening.It was morning when he drugged me.
