Page 8 of Captive

Huh. That’s weird, isn’t it?

And then I see the two guys nearby. One of them leans against the wall in front of the bed, while the other paces the length of the room, and just like that, everything my aching brain is trying to hide from me comes full-focus, and I remember exactly where I was before I woke up here.

I was in the closet at Brock Hard’s house. I was going to kill him, and then, by some teeny, tiny chance, I wasn’t alone. D.D.K. isn’t a single man. He’s two men, and as I let my gaze flick between both men, I come to the horrific realization that the two men are actually not bad on the eyes.

Their faces, I mean, since they’re not wearing their vintage hockey masks anymore. They’re hot.

The guy pacing abruptly stops when he sees me sitting, and he freezes as his blue eyes widen. Masked man number two, based on the fact that he’s a few inches taller than the guy leaning against the wall. His hair is short and blond, and now that there is no mask hiding his face, I can see the fact that his nose is a bit crooked, like it’s been broken in the past and didn’t heal quite right. A clean-shaven face, a square jaw; everything that makes a drop-dead gorgeous hunk of a man with all the muscles a girl could dream of.

And the guy leaning against the wall like he’s cool shit? He’s muscled, too. His hair, on the other hand, is a dark, charcoal gray color, cut short on the sides and left longer on top. His gaze is pitch black, and he only takes it off me when he pulls out a phone and types something on the screen. His left eye has a scar through it, from an inch or so above his eyebrow to his upper cheek. Masked man number one.

I look around the room. It seems like an ordinary bedroom, but just because it looks like something doesn’t mean that’s what it is. “Um,” I say, breaking the silence of the room, “where am I? Eh, no, I don’t care about that. What are you going to do to me?”

Even as I say it, I feel kind of stupid. If they were going to kill me, obviously they would have killed me earlier. Or maybe they brought me here to kill me, so I wouldn’t mess up their crime scene. D.D.K.’s victims are always found later, when the rancid, decaying smell alerts neighbors or the authorities that something nasty went on there.

As far as I know, D.D.K. doesn’t kill women, but maybe there’s a first time for everything.

They don’t say a word, but they do exchange glances. While they’re busy having an imaginary conversation between the two of them, I look toward the door, wondering if I could make a run for it. I was never one for running, and even if I do some cool gymnastics to get off the bed, I’d still have to run past guy number one to make it to that door.

He’d catch me. He’d catch me and probably just get pissed.

Crap. I’m stuck. I’m stuck here with my hands tied… even if, you know, my hands aren’t tied. There’s nothing I can do except wait for the inevitable to happen.

A few seconds later, a third man strolls into the room, and I sit a little straighter as I level a question at him: “Who the hell are you?”

This third man is tall, too, but he’s different than the others. While the others are muscled and all-around intimidating, this guy is leaner, thinner. He wears a button-up black shirt neatly tucked into dark slacks. Beneath his semi-wavy, short black hair, thin-rimmed glasses sit on his nose, shielding parts of his warm, amber eyes. Clean-shaven, with angular, bony features. I’d put him near the age of the other two, somewhere in his late twenties or early thirties.

All of them are nice to look at, not that that means anything. It doesn’t. Good-looking guys can turn on a dime and kill you just as fast as anyone else. If anything, they’re typically worse because they can charm the rest of the world into believing whatever lies they say.

“Who are you?” I ask. “Are you part of this whole D.D.K. thing, too? How many of you are there? I have to say, kudos to you guys. I had no idea the Downtown Dismemberer was more than one person. A team. Not something you expect when you’re thinking about a serial killer.”

The new man looks between the other two before landing his amber gaze on me. “You know who we are.”

“Well, it was an educated guess,” I say with a shrug. “I don’t know of anyone else who dismembers people quite like that. You guys have a routine down. Mad respect. Say, you’re not feeling extra merciful right now, are you? Because, it’s actually kind of funny, I don’t feel like dying today.”

The third man approaches the bed. He leaves a good three or so feet between his body and the mattress, where I currently sit. “What’s your name?” he asks, totally ignoring everything I said.

Should I give them a fake name? It isn’t like I have my I.D. on me or even my phone. For reasons that should be obvious, I left all that stuff back at my place, just in case. Technically, it was just in case the police got me somehow, not in case a group of serial killers kidnapped me, but I guess the same notion applies.

As I think that, however, I also wonder what the point would be in a fake name. If they’re going to kill me, they’re going to kill me regardless of what name I give them. Might as well just tell them the truth.

“Abby,” I say.

“Abby,” the third guy says with a nod. “Why were you in Brock’s house?”

“I’d ask your friends what they were doing in there, but I saw enough, so does it really matter what I was doing there?”

The man sighs, pulls off his glasses, and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Let me phrase it a different way.” He puts his glasses back on and holds my stare with an intensity I cannot look away from. “Did Brock hurt you?”

Out of everything he could’ve asked me, that was the last thing I’m expecting, and I sit there for a while, letting it sink in. Did Brock hurt me? That’s not something a random person asks someone else without having evidence that said man had done things similar in the past. These guys know about Brock’s proclivities, and they’re assuming I was one of his victims.

I should say yes. I mean, maybe that would paint me to look a certain way in their eyes and they wouldn’t kill me. But, on the flipside, I can’t claim victimization. No man has ever laid a hand on me like that.

The things I do, I don’t do them for myself. I do them for the memory of someone else, someone who should still be here.

“Not exactly,” I say after a while.

“Not exactly,” the third man echoes me. “Then why were you there?”