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CHAPTER ONE
Does there come a point in every marriage when a woman realizes she might have to kill her husband? As in, if he drops another black sock on the stairs, I’m gonna leave a pillow over his face while he sleeps. You’re kidding but it’s still the tip of an iceberg.
For me, it hit me like a hammer after I’d been handcuffed to a king-sized bed for three days. Naked as a jaybird. He’d set up security cameras in each corner of that bedroom, that fed into his doomsday-bunker headquarters down the hall.
Josh kicked open the door of the bedroom he’d locked me up in. I flinched, a bead of sweat running down my forehead.
“Hey, baby,” he said cheerfully, carrying in yet another bologna sandwich. He stopped at the end of the bed, eyes running over my hunched form as I sat with my arms wrapped around my knees, the long handcuff chain dangling from one wrist. “Mm, you look hot. What you gonna give me for this food?”
Here’s the thing. When a rich person loses his mind, all hell breaks loose. Joshua MacCullen, the man I’d married three years ago, had money up every hoo-ha of his oil-slicked family tree. Good fortune rained down on him like manna from heaven. I knew all about his money because I’d been the only one managing it for the last year. Despite looking like an empty-headed blonde with overpriced boobs, I get the sugar sorted with a spreadsheet.
When Josh started staying up all night with his online “friends,” buying up guns, and ranting nonsense every time I sat down with him, I spent more time out of the house. We’d always stayed in our own lanes.
“Honey,” I said, shrilly. I took a shuddery breath. “We’ve had a lot of sex, and I know you’ve been having a good time, but this is a hot mess express.” My chin trembled—we’d been over this so many times. “Take this handcuff off me now. It’s time for us to move on.”
Josh dropped the paper plate on the end of the bed and a can of soda next to it. He was shirtless in the hot June weather, wearing cargo shorts and a loaded gun holster. Cold-blooded. His flat blue eyes stared at me, snake-like.
The meat of the matter was, I’d leave him. And he’d married me without a prenup. I’d been nineteen at the time and about to go back to college after dating him for the summer. He’d taken us to Vegas, to say goodbye, and ended up proposing when we were both horsed, blasted, and tanked. Oh, his daddy had been a flaming ball of righteous rage. My parents had been stunned. Me and Josh, we took off into the sunset, my college plans put on hold.
His pecs flexed on his furry chest. He’d been working out and there was definition on his middle-height frame. His hair patch had fallen off a couple months ago after he’d stopped leaving the house. His bald head shone above the monk ring of hair he had left. I’d thought for the first year of our marriage that he had twelve years on me. He was eighteen years older, now tipping right on into his fortieth year and indulging in a completely unnecessary midlife crisis.
“Can’t let you leave, kitten.”
“Hon, come on. You know old Mccurty will take good care of you. That lawyer could free the devil himself. Let’s back on out of all this trouble. Those people you met online are domestic terrorists—they’re gonna end up in jail. It’s expensive to fight those charges and they’ll clean you out like you wouldn’t believe. Turn it all off. Burn that computer. Please, honey. Go walk the holy places—you always talked about doing that.”
His eyes shifted away from mine. I held my breath.
He shook his head and stood up straighter. “Hang in there, baby. It won’t be long now. Things are happening and we’ll be moving on the capital soon.” He rubbed his hands together briskly. An alert dinged on his phone. He pulled it out of the holster around his waist, which also had a loaded handgun, and glanced at the screen. “I’ll be back real soon.”
“No.” The catch in my voice turned into a sob. He ignored me, striding through the door and out into the hallway. “Please. I’ll make the divorce easy. It won’t matter what I want with your lawyers…”
He was gone. I pressed my face against my knees, trying to think through the throbbing in my head as I cried for about the twentieth time since being imprisoned. I’m a patriotic girl, like my whole family. Competing in pageants since I was four years old, I’d given countless speeches about how proud I was and what it all meant. I wanted normal. I’m a practical person, down to my hot-pink manicured toes. And I’m cold-blooded too.
My husband had sunken into a hate-filled vortex of crazy. “Means to an end, baby,” he’d said to me when I’d finally made a comment. “There’s always a price for power.”
Texas had elected a liberal for governor and about half of the population was losing their minds. Josh was planning to shut down the state government and have his followers kill acouple of politicians. He’d found me in his bunker of doom three days ago, figuring out what the hell he was up to, and that’s when the shizzle hit the fan.
We lived on a big ranch outside of Austin, Texas, perched up on a hill over Lake Travis, miles away from any other soul and surrounded by forest. He’d picked it out. The sprawling mansion could pass for an old army fort made of stacked tree trunks—just wood every damn place you looked. A few months ago, he’d canceled our landscaping service, and limited the housekeeper to one day a week. She wasn’t due for another two days.
People would miss me, my parents most of all. They lived down in Austin and we spent at least one day a week at the country club. I called my mother nearly every day to chat. I stayed busy and I’d had a full week planned with volunteer work and judging at a pageant event. There’d been lunch dates with girlfriends I’d totally stood up. I huffed, my fist clenching. What the hell was I going to say to everybody?
I ate my dry white bread and slab of bologna sandwich and drank from the can. I hated diet soda. Grimacing, I used the five-gallon bucket next to the bed. When I crouched down to set the toilet paper on the floor, I leaned forward and unplugged the bedside lamp. Resisting the urge to look over my shoulder, I pushed the urine bucket toward the open window.
My handcuff had a six foot chain between the two cuffs, one of them locked around my right wrist and the other attached to the wood headboard. I stood up next to the bed and stretched.
The strangest thing was I still cared about him, although it was more like the memory of it, folded up and put in a book. He’d been so cheerful and upbeat for the first two years of our marriage, an easy man to live with. Hadn’t cheated on me either, I don’t think. He was attentive andsweet in public. He’d been jealous and strange at times in private, but we worked that all out in the bedroom—or so I’d thought. He liked to tie me up and play out his dirty little fantasies. Mild spanking, weird sex toys he’d found, and me ready and willing to spread my legs, bend over, let him tease me endlessly until I was begging for it. What can I say? It worked for us.
Then, about a year ago, my older brother had been visiting my parents and I’d gone out for a night on the town with friends. Josh hadn’t felt like going to the bar. Some frisky girlfriends of mine came along, and my brother’s best friend, who had grown up next door—Hank Bridger.
I’d always had a crush on Hank. We got drunk together and ended up slow dancing, holding each other close. That, of course, was when Josh found me.
Listen, I refuse to accept any blame for his mental crackup that followed. Sure, I can see that it didn’t help things, but I was busting my booty doing everything I could think of to keep the man sane. I took over the finances. Covered for him with family and friends. Kept the ship afloat while he made creepy recordings of himself dressed up like the grim reaper that he shared through YouTube.
I hadn’t been stretching long when he stalked back into the bedroom, wearing his fur headdress with long sharp black horns on both sides above his ears. He stuck his chest out, flexing his arms.
“You will call me shaman now,” he said.
Flicking my long blonde hair to one side, I crawled onto the bed. He grunted, watching me. I leaned back on my elbows, letting my legs part.
