Guilty as Sin (24 page)

The thought was like a drop of gasoline added to the rapidly dwindling flame of hope that he would eventually set her free.

“Hello, sweetheart.” His voice called softly through the darkness as he closed the door behind him. The gentle, almost tender tone made her stomach flip with nausea. She heard him shuffling in the darkness, smelled sulfur as he struck a match and lit the candle that sat in the middle of the little table across from the bed.

“Aren’t you going to greet me?” Though his tone was still soft, cajoling, now there was an edge to it.

Her lips, swollen and sore from yesterday’s beating, pressed mutinously together.

“Tricia,” he said, a warning. “You know what will happen if you don’t treat me with courtesy and respect.”

She wanted to be tough, like Katniss from
The Hunger Games
, and not give in so easily to this sick creep. But fear that he might beat her again, or worse, compelled her to obey. “Hello, sir,” she choked through a throat burned raw from her own screams.

“I brought you another special treat,” he said, and placed a grocery bag on the table along with a cardboard drink holder with three drink cups nestled inside.

I don’t want anything to do with you or any of your treats, freak, she thought, but didn’t dare say the words out loud.

She swallowed hard, watching in silence as he removed the cups from their cardboard holder. “I brought you a milk shake from Ike’s,” he said. His smile gleamed at her from
the shadows and did nothing to reassure her. “I wasn’t sure what flavor, so I got one of each.”

Oh, God, the thought of a strawberry milk shake, cold and sweet on her tongue, made her mouth water and her empty stomach clench. He hadn’t fed her in what must have been a couple of days, not since she’d spit the sandwich in his face and gotten the crap beaten out of her.

“I don’t like milk shakes,” she said, hating the way her voice quavered. She wanted to show him she was strong, defiant, that she would never give in. Instead, she sounded exactly how she felt: tired, weak, and very, very scared.

“Now, now, don’t lie.” The edge was back, and she didn’t miss the way his fingers curled into a fist on the table. “I saw you there just last week with your sister and your father. I heard you tell them it was the best milk shake you’d ever had.”

Bile choked her at the thought of this person—no, he wasn’t a person, because human beings didn’t steal people away, hide them in dark rooms, and punch them repeatedly in the face when they didn’t get their way—this awful creep stalking her, watching her, listening to her conversations, and, oh God, being so close to her family.

“I would have brought you another sandwich,” he said mildly, “but I figured your jaw was still pretty sore.”

Though she couldn’t see his eyes, she could feel his stare on her, flat, menacing, so cold it sent a shudder through her.

She realized then what she’d probably known all along. Though her favorite books and movies featured kick-ass heroines who would die before they showed any sign of weakness to their captors, Tricia was
not
a badass.

She could read all she wanted about girls who were trained to protect vampires or play all the war games she wanted on her computer. But when push came to shove, even the self-defense
classes her father had insisted she and Brooke take hadn’t been any use. She hadn’t been able to stop him from grabbing her. She’d fought her hardest, but he’d easily overpowered her.

Though the thought made her empty stomach roil, she realized that if she wanted a chance in hell to survive, she was going to have to be nice to him. “It is sore,” she said, rubbing her jaw with her free hand. “Thank you for being so considerate.”

She could see the lines of his shoulders soften. “You’re welcome, sweetheart. Which flavor? Strawberry, vanilla, or chocolate?”

“Strawberry,” she choked out. Followed by “please,” when she saw his shadow stiffen. “Please may I have the strawberry one,” she added quickly for good measure.

“One strawberry milk shake, coming right up,” he said with a weird, childish giggle that made her skin crawl.

He crossed to the bed and handed it to her. She took it in her free hand.

He settled on the edge of the mattress, his head turned away from her as he lifted another of the cups. “Strawberry is my favorite too,” he said, as though confiding some wonderful secret. “But I’ll settle for chocolate today if it makes you happy.”

The nausea roiling in her stomach at his proximity was no match for the hunger that had all but gnawed at her. Her hand shook as she closed her lips over the straw, her eyes closing involuntarily as the sweet, creamy flavor hit her tongue, thick and cold, chasing away the stifling heat of her prison. She sucked it down as fast as she could, ignoring the pain of brain freeze as she savored the delicious cold drink. For a moment, she could pretend that she was magically transported back to Ike’s, squabbling with Brooke about
whether they should get a pint of vanilla or chocolate to take home.

Like none of this had ever happened.

“All I want is to make you happy,” he said softly, and like that Tricia came thudding back to reality. She opened her eyes and saw not the gleaming black-and-white tiles and highly polished wood tables of Ike’s but the dark, dirty shadows of her prison.

Stuck here with a man ready to turn on her at any moment.

“You know that, don’t you?”

She nodded hesitantly, and the milk shake started to curdle in her stomach. She put it aside.

She forced herself not to flinch as he reached a hand to her face.

Willed herself to sit utterly still, not let any sign of her revulsion show as he traced his fingers over the cheekbone that still throbbed from his blows. “I didn’t like having to hurt you. You know that, right? I never want to have to hurt you again.”

Tricia nodded again, not sure what he expected her to say.

“When I touch you, I only want you to feel pleasure.” His hand moved from her cheek to her hair, stroking down its length in a caress that was eerily tender.

Loverlike.

The milk shake churned in her stomach. Cramps seized her and her mouth filled with saliva as the little she drank threatened to come spewing back up. She forced herself to keep it down, afraid of what he might do if she threw up all over him.

Though another beating would be more welcome than what he had in mind.

“Can—can I go to the bathroom please?” she asked in a
small, shaky voice. “It’s been awhile and I really need to.” It wasn’t a lie. Though he’d limited her water, Tricia’s bladder felt like it was about to burst. He’d provided a plastic bin as a bedpan, but the few times Tricia had tried to use it, awkward and one-handed, she’d ended up peeing mostly on the bed and the floor.

His hand froze on her shoulder and he was quiet several seconds. No doubt contemplating if her need was real or a ploy to get away from his unwelcome touch.

“Please,” she said, infusing her plea with a desperation she didn’t have to fake.

“You were so mad the other day when you had to change the sheets,” she said, a shudder going through her at the way he’d berated her when he’d walked in and been hit by the unmistakable odor.

“You’re like an animal, wallowing in your filth and stink,” he’d said. With her face throbbing and head pounding from the recently delivered beating, it hadn’t been hard to bite back a sniping comment that if he’d uncuff her, she might make it to the small bathroom more than once a day.

He nodded and she felt a tremor of relief as he twisted his body and fumbled in his pocket. Forced herself not to scramble when his weight pressed into her as he leaned over to unlock the cuff from the metal bed frame.

Once free, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and scrambled to her feet, only to have her limbs turn to water underneath her.

Her head swam, her vision dipping and diving about the room, her head suddenly fuzzy as she struggled to remember what she was doing, why she was in the dark with a shadowy figure holding her upper arm in an iron-hard grip.

He’s drugging me, she thought in a brief moment of clarity as she shuffled across the room at his urging. Something
powerful and fast acting, if she was able to feel it so quickly after consuming less than half of her milk shake.

She wavered a little as he pushed the door open to what looked like a small closet, her vision tunneling as she tried to process what was going on.

Right, the bathroom, she remembered, becoming acutely aware of her body’s urgent need.

“Go ahead.” The voice came out of a void, echoing and bouncing around her head like when she had gas at the dentist’s office. He gave her a little shove and pushed her into the small room.

She started to reach for the waistband of her shorts then stopped, the drug not enough to wipe away all shreds of basic modesty and outright revulsion at the thought of taking her pants down in front of this creep.

“Privacy” was all she could get out of lips that felt rubbery and not of her body.

As he had done the last time, he shook his head. “We have to build trust, my love. Until then I have to keep an eye on you.”

Hot, embarrassed tears ran down her cheeks as she pulled down her pants and sat on the toilet. He turned his head slightly away. The heat of anger and embarrassment cut through the fog of the drug enough for her to take advantage of the fact that he wasn’t watching her closely.

Before, she’d been too terrified, her eyes unused to the dark, to pay any attention to this part of her prison. Now her eyes scanned the shadows eagerly, looking for any means of escape, anything that could be used as a weapon.

The drugs took hold again, swirly gray fog deadening the brief surge of adrenaline. She tried to keep it at bay, her brain struggling to catalog every detail.

“Finish up,” he said harshly.

She flushed the toilet and pulled her shorts and underpants up with clumsy fingers, then let him lead her back to the bed.

She offered her left hand without protest and didn’t even flinch at the metallic
snick
of the cuff closing over her wrist.

When she lay back against her pillow, she didn’t turn her face away from him when he pulled a chair up to the side of the bed, as though the way he sat there and just stared at her didn’t freak her out. The drug tried to pull her under, a leaden gray wave. She tried to fight, one coherent corner of her brain imagining what he could do to her vulnerable, unconscious body.

Panic at the thought made her heart flutter even as she felt like she was floating out of her body. As the last threads of consciousness slipped away, she locked on the one thing that gave her even a shred of hope.

In the bathroom, right next to the vanity, a crack in the floor showed straight through to the dirt outside. If she could get through that floor, she could get to freedom.

All she had to do was convince him to trust her.

K
ate spread the case file in front of her on the table, but after two paragraphs, the words blurred in front of her eyes. She stood up, went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water, then went to the living room and switched on the TV, her thumb twitching as she scanned through all five hundred channels in record time and found nothing to hold her interest for more than a few seconds.

Up again, to pace to the window, staring out at the darkness of the lake, the mountains like black, craggy shadows against the night dark sky.

Back to the table, to try to read the police report on Stephanie Adler. The coincidence with the skin cream nagged at her, but there was nothing in the report to show that it was anything more. She read through all of the files again to see if she’d missed something the first several times and found nothing. Twenty minutes later, back on her feet to start another restless cycle.

It had been like this for hours, from the moment she’d returned home. Over Tommy’s protests, Kate had insisted he drop her at volunteer headquarters once they got back to town.

She hadn’t given her drowned-rat appearance much thought until she ran into the small group of reporters hardy
enough to brave the elements huddled under the awning outside.

Still, somehow appearing in the press looking like a drowned cat wearing clothes that threatened to fall off her seemed a better option than having Tommy accompany her back to her place. Alone.

Because even if he apparently had no problem shutting himself off and pretending nothing had happened, Kate had a bad feeling that if he walked her to her door, she would grab him by the collar, drag him inside, and not let him go until he damn well finished what he’d started.

The bad weather had forced them to call off the search parties, and the phone lines were covered through the night. Kate had given in to CJ’s urging to go home and get some rest after her stressful afternoon.

And he didn’t know the half of it, she thought as she made another foray to the kitchen. Or maybe he did, she thought, remembering the sidelong look he’d given Tommy when he’d met them at the volunteer headquarters.

This time, instead of water, she reached for a bottle of wine, desperate to get rid of the itchy, uneasy feeling that had taken over her body. Like everything was pulled tight, her skin two sizes too small for her body. Maybe a glass of cabernet would help her mellow out.