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“My nose is broken. But I appreciate the paranoia. The first day I met you, we went out to lunch at Tempus Fugit on 34thStreet, and you had Hennessy on the rocks. Despite the fact that you were drinking overpriced French girly shit for pussies in a failed effort to impress me with your worldliness, I still hired you. Now fucking talk to me before I find you and carve out your voice box with a butter knife.”
That must have been convincing enough, because he talks fast. Earlier today, the local police received a tip telling them that I owned the house in Maine, and that I was holding Tamara Bennett there. I was already on law enforcement’s radar because of Tamara, and because someone—probably my brother—had told them that I was responsible for the disappearance of Baxter Warburton.
Of course, when the police arrived, my house had been blown to toothpick-sized splinters. They haven’t been able to pin the ownership of the house on me. Given how carefully I covered my tracks when I bought it, using a string of shell companies, I’m confident they never will. Algernon defended me indignantly to the police, pointing out that due to my years as a corporate raider, I’m a man with a lot of enemies—the kind who’d be happy to mess with me by making false claims.
When he’s done talking, I get him up to speed, giving him as much information as I think is necessary.
I tell him about my twin brother’s escape from a mental institution in California sometime this year, and that he’s the person who embezzled the money from my company and sabotaged my recent business deals. He was also behind the mysterious phone calls to the NYPD, the ones accusing me of taking Tamara. I tell him that Tamara Bennet was, in fact, staying with me all along, but Charlemagne kidnapped her this morning. I don’t offer any explanation for why she was with me and why I kept that information from the police, and he doesn’t ask. I pay him not to ask questions that can’t be answered.
“You’ll have to be on the lookout for him trying to impersonate me,” I tell him. “My nose is broken, so that will be one way to tell, but given what a psycho fuck he is, he might break his own nose if he thinks it will help him fool people.” I tell him I’ll get back to him and hang up.
Next I call my security chief Garrett, on his encrypted line. After I give him the passcode, I give him my location so he can send my helicopter to pick me up. I go through the story again, filling him in on exactly what happened, with some editing and obfuscations that gloss over the worst of the felonies I’ve committed.
Then I settle back down to wait for the helicopter. Every passing minute chews into my sanity, and Tamara starts screaming in my ears again, begging and pleading, and I think the frozen moisture on my cheeks might be tears.
CHAPTERTWO
TAMARA
I wake up with my brain wrapped in a million layers of cotton. My mouth is dry and my muscles are loose and liquid. Fear floods my body.Please let it be Joshua who has me. Please, please, please.
Seconds tick by as I lie waiting for the fog to clear from my head.
Drugged, kidnapped, no idea where I am...this feels familiar. Too familiar.
I go through the same routine I did when I woke up in Joshua’s basement for the first time. I lie there with my eyes closed and my heart pounding, taking mental inventory of my surroundings.
I’m on what feels like a firm mattress. The left side of my head throbs gently from where Joshua punched me…today? Yesterday? I don’t feel any chains on my body. The air is cool and smells faintly of apple-scented air freshener. I don’t hear anything at all. No traffic noises, no voices.
Then I hear footsteps thudding toward me, and I go stiff with fear. Somehow, even without opening my eyes, I can sense it’s not Joshua who has me.
I feel something pinch my nipple, and I let out a shriek and sit bolt upright. Charlemagne—or Micah as he calls himself now—is looming over me with a nasty gleam in his eye. He gives my nipple another twist and then lets go.
“I could have let you stay there and pretend you’re sleeping all day long, but frankly you were starting to bore me,” he says.
I look around, my vision still blurry. The bed I’m on has a heavy metal frame. I sit up and swing my legs over the side, and dizziness swoops down on me. I almost fall off the bed, but I claw at the headboard for support. Whatever he’s drugged me with is still fogging my brain and sapping my muscles of strength.
“Take deep breaths. Don’t stand up yet. Blah blah blah.” Micah’s sarcasm taunts me as he settles down in a chair parked right next to the bed.
I clench my trembling hands into fists and look down at myself. I’m naked. I don’t feel any aches inside me, though. I don’t think I’ve been raped.
Yet.
Slowly, I look around the room, and my stomach turns to water. It’s a large room with pale blue walls and no decorations. It’s brightly lit. There are no windows.
Everywhere my eyes land reveals fresh horrors.
The door is the door of a cage; it’s made of bars.
At the end of the room is a video camera on a tripod, facing an ob-gyn chair. There’s a tray table next to it, with instruments that I can’t quite see from where I’m sitting. There’s a bench next to the chair with straps dangling from it.
When I glance to my right, a jolt of panic and sorrow lances through me. There’s another bed, and Heather’s curled up in a ball, her ankle chained to the bed frame. The bed is bolted to the floor. She’s wearing only a white T-shirt and has no underwear on. She’s in good physical shape with no visible marks on her, but her eyes tell a story of nightmares. She’s watching us with a dull, stunned look on her face.
She’s here because of me.
There’s another tray table on wheels sitting between her bed and mine. I think I recognize a cattle prod. Pinchers. Knives.
Sheer terror curdles inside my belly. Micah is far more frightening than Joshua.
