Darkest Before Dawn (9 page)

I
’ve tried
like hell to find Lila. But I have no idea who any of these men are, or how they find Earl to get to the girls. Last night Earl was so fucked up he passed out at the kitchen table and pissed his pants. I took the opportunity to go sneak through his room again. It has to be the twentieth time I’ve done it, but to no avail. There is nothing in that room aside from cigarette butts, beer cans, pornos, and clothes.

I grab two bottles of water from the fridge and turn to head back up to my room just as Bubba comes waddling into the kitchen, Rufus at his heels. “That girl should be ’bout ready, huh?” he asks. “What’s it usually take, a month or some shit like that?”

“Yes, but she’s stubborn.”

“Yeah.” He yanks the pantry door open and begins rustling through the bags of food. “She seemed a bit feisty when we got her. Figured she’d be a pain in the ass. Guess you gotta do it right though, huh?”

“Something like that.” I eye him suspiciously. He’s not one to strike up conversation often.

“Hell, might not ever break.” He shuts the pantry door and opens one of the Oatmeal Creme Pies he took from the box, tossing it to the floor for Bear to wolf down. “But I betcha there’s a mighty high number of men that’d pay a pretty penny for one like her, at least I reckon, you know?”

He sits down at the table, dumping his snack out into his chubby hand.

“Hey, Bub.” I take a seat across from him. “Where do these guys come from anyway?”

“Uh, the main guy’s got a site running. Kinda like one of those mail-order bride things.”

I struggle to keep my jaw from tensing. A fucking website to sell these girls? “Really?”

“Yep, well, I mean not exactly like it. I guess it’s more of a site for the guys, you know.”

“Huh…” I know not to say much. Bubba may not talk much, but when he starts it’s like word vomit that just pours from his lips.

He crams half of the Oatmeal Creme Pie into his mouth. “Yeah.” He smacks around his food. “So these guys, there’s this website they can join. Post what they like, you know, hair color and eye color, personalities, and all that shit. Then that’s where the main guy gets the information to have Joseph go and get ’em, used to be Travis, but then when he went off and got killed, they figured maybe they should have a separate person to take ’em and then you to train the girls. I guess your position’s a little more valued and all since you got to have that skill to fuck ’em up in the head.”

My stomach knots. Fucking someone up like that is not exactly what I would consider a skill, but then again, in this line of work, I guess it is.

“Who runs the site?” I ask, and Bubba doesn’t even give me a second glance.

“Tom. He handles all that businessy-type shit. Used to be a lawyer or something fancy like that, but he had this wife”—he licks the crumbs off his round fingers—“he was cheating on her and she found out, took him to the cleaners then he got hooked on some bad shit and lost his job, and down the pisser went all his money.” He waggles his eyebrows. “Worked out good for us, I guess, cause now we all got good paying jobs.” He chuckles before pushing back from the table. “Me and Earl’s gonna go down to the pool hall with Judy, wanna come?”

“You know I don’t like people, Bub.”

“Yeah, well…” He totters out of the kitchen, belching.

Tom. Fucking Tom is the one behind most of this shit? I’ve only met him twice, but he never struck me as the type to be a ring leader. He’s a balding, middle-aged fuck. Missing half his teeth—due to meth—and he seems squirrely as shit. Can’t make eye contact for more than three seconds.

I have no idea where in the hell he lives or what his last name is, but this is better than having no idea who in the hell I need to be going after. All I have to do is buy my time, play my cards right, and eventually, I’m sure me and fucking Tom will come to an understanding. Smiling, I climb the stairs, digging the key out of my pocket before I stop in front of my room. The latch pops and the door swings open, and there she is, just where I left her, sitting in the chair in the corner of my room, awkwardly holding a book.

“Here’s some water,” I say as I set a bottle on the little table next to her chair.

She nods, her eyes trained on the page she’s eagerly reading over.

I shrug and flop back on the bed before grabbing the moleskin journal from the nightstand. Opening to the dog-eared page, I glance over at Ava.

She’s been here for twenty days. And every day is the same: I fight with myself because I have forgotten what I should be doing. At times, I believe I am dragging this out because I like her company, because by her being here I’m not alone.

She goes to turn the page and loses her place. Bound wrists don’t allow her much freedom, and I find it almost cute the way she struggles, flipping from the bottom and swearing when too many of the pages fly by. She tosses her head back, rolling her eyes as she drops the book to her lap. “Just fuck it,” she says with a groan.

I cock a brow. “Such a filthy mouth for such a pretty girl.” I smile and she glares at me like she wants to choke me. Standing, I laugh. “How about I just untie you then?”

Her gaze narrows accusingly on me.

“I mean it, I’ll trust you,
but
if you break my trust…” I shake my head as I reach for her hands. “It will not bode well for you, my dear.”

“I wouldn’t.” She sounds desperate, her voice on the verge of a sob. “I promise. I just want to be able to turn the pages.”

“All right then.” I untie the knotted cord and step away, turning my back on her—waiting to see how she will react. I settle back on the bed, lean against the headboard, and pick my notebook back up.

“Thank you,” she says as she grabs her book from the floor and opens it.

“Welcome.”

And here we sit, reading—her in the chair, me on the bed, like she has chosen to be here. And in a way, by her not attempting to run—she has. I skim over the entry in the notebook dated July 2016, subject 130:

Day 8 in captivity: A week of isolation and minimal food. I had my first encounter with her today. This one’s peculiar. Jumps anytime I come within three feet of her. Cries if I narrow my gaze on her. She never responds to anything I ask her. Earl said he thinks she may be mute because she’s not uttered a word.

Day 10: I didn’t visit her yesterday. Today when I went in, she didn’t move. For a moment, I feared she may be dead because she lay so still, then I heard her sniff. She was crying. I told her how sorry I was for her to be here. Nothing. I told her I wouldn’t hurt her. Nothing. I brought a basin of water in with a washcloth and soap and told her to bathe herself off. She didn’t budge. I left.

Day 11: I sat with her for two hours and never said a word. I studied her, watched her watching me. It’s obvious she’s been abused. There are scars all over her arms and legs, her face. Right before I left I told her she was beautiful and she wept. Sometimes I think this entire ordeal may be a blessing to these women because the one thing I’ve found is that most of them are in dire need of love, no matter the form, because they’ve never had the slightest glimpse of it.

“What are you reading?” Ava’s soft voice draws my attention away from the words on that page.

“Studies.” That is what it is, I’m not lying. I’ve kept notes on each girl I’ve trained. As morbid and sick as it sounds, I can’t help but find it fascinating.

Her brow wrinkles in confusion. “As in school?”

“Something like that. I enjoy learning.” I slowly close the notebook and set it on the nightstand.

“You’re in school—” I can see the confusing mounting on her face.

“I got a degree in psychology,” I say, smiling.

“Huh…”

“Did you think I was just some uneducated criminal?”

“I…uh, I mean, it’s just…” She clears her throat. “What made you want to study that?”

A smirk pulls at my lips. “You want the truth?”

She nods, flipping her long hair behind her shoulders. I debate on whether to tell her or not, because as simple as it is, I’ve never told anyone before. But something makes me want to tell her, just to see how she reacts. “It’s a terrible feeling when you’re terrified of your own mind, Ava. I wanted to understand why I was so fucked up.”

“Everybody’s fucked up,” she mumbles. I can almost hear disdain in her tone.

Almost.

“Ah, yes, but the level of fuckedupness—”

“That’s not a word.”

“Not a clinical word, no.” I laugh.

“So, I guess your level of
fuckedupness
surpasses most normal people’s?”

There’s a faint smile across her lips when I lock my eyes with hers, and without pause, I confess exactly how fucked up I am. “I killed for the first time when I was sixteen, and I liked it. I loved it. I dreamt about it over and over because I wanted to do it again.”

That smile vanishes and those supple lips of hers part. God, if I can’t help but think about slipping my fucking cock between them, and almost immediately after imagining wrapping her hair around my wrist while she’s on her knees, shame washes over me.

“Shocked?” I ask.

“I shouldn’t be…” Her eyes shift to her lap and she begins to pick at her nails. So cute. She’s so fucking innocent, so much something I want.

“Only the bad people though, remember that. I only want to kill very bad men.”

She nods, but she won’t look at me now.

“We all have our secrets, don’t we?”

“I guess so.”

“So”—I sit up and scoot to the edge of the bed, clasping my hands together and leaning over my knees—“you know my secret, what’s yours, Ava?”

I watch her swallow. She shrugs.

“I want to know something about you.” I stand and cross the room, kneeling beside her. There’s an overwhelming urge to touch her, so I do. I gently brush my fingertips over her warm cheek, trailing them down her jaw. My pulse picks up as my touch sweeps over her throat and collarbone. Grabbing her chin, I tilt her head back and force her to look at me. “Tell me something about you no one else knows.” I hold her gaze. There is something so familiar in that stare, and for a moment, I wonder if I’m losing touch with reality. “You said everyone is fucked up, which means you think you’re fucked up and I want to know why.”

“There’s a darkness inside that won’t let me go,” she whispers. “And it scares me.”

“A darkness?” I move closer to her, my hand still clutching her chin. My lips are mere centimeters from hers, and I have to close my eyes because the temptation is
too
real. Her breath hitches and to keep my mouth from slamming over hers I drag my thumb across her plump bottom lip, fighting a groan at how perfect it feels. “Why are you afraid of the dark, my dear… Don’t you know that’s the only place we can dream?”

“And it’s where all the nightmares live,” she says as tears seep from her lash line, her lips beginning to tremble.

I back away from her, uncertain of what to think. I’m intrigued because oh, how looks may be deceiving. She is innocence on the outside, but so it seems, the angel I thought had not one crack may be broken on the inside, already crumbling from past destruction. And the thing that scares me with this revelation is that I realize why I am drawn to her—have been drawn to her. She
is
tainted, by what I am not certain, but only people who are fucked up can understand what that darkness is, and I want to know what has cast that shadow over her brilliant soul. Fear creeps through me like a slow fog hanging over a lake. The one thing I do believe is that it takes another dark soul to understand a broken person, and I now know this is dangerous territory I’m wandering through. Two broken people together—that will either end in something so unreal and raw that all those fractured pieces of the two of us will fuse together or we will only break each other further until nothing is left.

And when the broken break, nothing in hell can compare to that catastrophe.

I
’m tired of reading
. I’m done with pacing. And all there is are these four fucking walls and that goddamn door. That locked barricade. So I sit, twiddling my thumbs. Over and over.

The lock clicks—and like Pavlov’s dog—I almost salivate. I’m conditioned to find excitement in that noise now because I know Max will be strutting through in a mere second. And he does. He’s in a fitted gray T-shirt and jeans, a slight five o’clock shadow. And I swoon—I shouldn’t—but things like that, like this, like him standing at the edge of the mattress, staring down at me with his intensely dark gaze, you can’t help it.

He smiles and I feel my cheeks blush. I’m like a thirteen-year-old with a crush on a teacher and I hate it.

“Got you something today,” he says as he holds out a leather journal to me. I take the book from him. Dark gray moleskin, so I know it’s wasn’t exactly cheap. “I figured as much as you like to read, you know, maybe you like to write or something.”

And I swoon again.

He sits on the edge of the mattress, his hand resting over my foot. “Do you?” he asks.

“Do I what?” I run my hand over the leather, exhilarated by the feel of something new.

“Do you like to write?”

“I mean, I used to write poetry all the time…”

He lies down on the bed, his fingers now trailing over my calf. “Really? What kind?”

“Macabre. You know, dark stuff.”

“Huh, figures. Darkness inside of you comment and all.” He laughs a little. “How old were you when you started?”

“Fifth grade.”

“That’s quite young.”

“Yeah, well.” I swallow. “Sometimes you just have to get things out, you know?”

“I do. Oh, I know, Ava. I do.”

And there is silence. A tense silence where we both realize we have more in common than we’d like to admit. If I’m honest, though, that is something I’ve known because you aren’t drawn to a random stranger like this if there isn’t something so deep and fucked up and warped that you share. That darkness—it’s like a beacon, a silent, colorless beacon that sucks like people together.

“Do you write?” I ask.

One of his brows arch and a one-sided smirk kicks the corner of his mouth up. “Of course. It’s therapy.”

“Exactly.”

“So, we understand each other then?” He laughs and places his hand on my leg before standing and walking to the door. “I’ll see about getting you a different room if you like? An actual room with a bed and dresser.”

And all I can say is: “Thank you” because I am stuck here. Forever, I’m afraid, but I don’t necessarily know that I mind any longer.

The lock clicks and I open the journal to the first blank page. There are no words. Not a stray mark. I stare at it, and the funny thing is, for the first time since I’ve been here, there is a sense of freedom. I can write whatever I want. I can lose myself in a world I dream up. I can keep myself from going completely mad, simply by escaping into what should be reality. Perhaps this is how de Cervantes felt when he was imprisoned, maybe a revelation similar to this is what drove him to write the first lines of
Don Quixote
. Taking the pen, I don’t even think. I just write:

When I talk to myself, I fear I may be going mad, but when I write to myself—there is the hope that these silent words will eventually reach someone. I’m Ava Donovan: captive, hostage
—
and that is how I will be remembered because to the outside world, I no longer exist. I only exist in here. With him, and sometimes, when he looks at me like he could love me in way no one else could, I’m okay with that. Maybe I am mad, or maybe I’ve just found the place I belong.

I stop writing. Chill bumps spread over my arms when I read back over what I’ve written. Writing is an art, and true art comes from inspiration, which makes me wonder what kind of fucked-up lives some of my favorite authors have led. Surely there are pieces of them in each horrid tale. Maybe it is their subconscious writing—are people even the authors? It more likely is the hurt and anger and fear, I want to believe it is the emotions that bleed words onto paper.

Because surely I’m not this far gone.

Surely I don’t love him…