True Colors (20 page)

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Authors: Joyce Lamb

Tags: #Fiction, #Suspense, #Romance, #Paranormal

BOOK: True Colors
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CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
A
lex opened burning eyes and blinked several times. Even the dim light of the battery-powered lanterns stabbed at her temples. God, her head hurt, pressure and pain vying for dominance inside her skull.
“Welcome back.”
She forced her thousand-pound head up to see her captor sitting on the floor to the right of her chair. He had his knees up and his forearms braced on top of them, his back against the concrete wall of the storage unit. A normal guy with a ready, albeit too wide, smile and a teasing glint in grayish blue eyes.
“Where did you go?” he asked.
She blinked again, starting to shake her head to clear it, then thinking better of the motion as the pain gripping the top of her skull throbbed. Nausea churned in her stomach, and she swallowed convulsively.
“Water?”
At the polite offer, she focused on him, then on the clear Evian bottle he held out toward her. That was when she realized her hands were no longer tied. She straightened in the chair, gripping its arms as her fight-or-flight response kicked into high gear.
“Don’t.” He spoke softly, as though he’d just given her an affectionate “hello.”
“There’s nowhere to go,” he said. “It’s well after closing time. So there’s no one out there to help you even if you managed to overpower me, find the key, get the door open and get out.”
He nodded toward the padlock looped and locked through a gap in the door’s track. The door would open only a few inches with the lock blocking its path, not enough for her to get through.
“Water?” He jiggled the bottle, making the water slosh inside.
Alex reached for it and uncapped it. She hesitated before drinking, wondering about drugs. Her gaze darted to the syringe sticking out of the toolbox, and she figured he had other means to deliver drugs, means that a guy like him would probably enjoy more than simply slipping her a Mickey.
The cool water slid down her raw throat and hit her empty stomach. For a moment, she thought it was going to come right back up. Mr. Creepy Kidnapper wouldn’t like that one bit. Thankfully, it stayed put, so she took another swallow.
Her captor watched silently, a small, pleased smile curving his mouth. “Better?”
She nodded. “Where are we?” she asked, not expecting an answer but hoping.
He leaned forward to fish around in his back pocket, then scowled. “Paperwork’s in the car. Sorry. It’s a new place, though. Nice and fresh and clean. Secluded. Near the river. Caloosahatchee, is it? I like the name of that. It’s Indian.” His eyes crinkled as he grinned. “But, of course, you know that. You live here.”
He cocked his head as if expecting an answer, but she had no idea what to say. Something like: “Yeah, I’ve lived here my entire life. I’m going to die here, too, right? Right? Sliced into tiny little pieces small enough to feed the fish in the river.”
Finally, he sighed. “I gave you a straight answer. Now, it’s your turn.”
She shifted, every move sending a dizzying swirl through her senses. The pain, a squeezing, stabbing throb in both temples, clenched its way down both sides of her neck. Intermittent light flashed at the edges of her vision, like sparks thrown off a dying sparkler. Was this the flash fatigue Charlie had mentioned?
He pushed to his feet, shrugging out of his long-sleeved shirt. She could read the rock-band writing on his shirt now. Nine Inch Nails. Not what she expected. This unassuming, soft-spoken guy seemed more like the Barry Manilow type.
He moved toward her, and she tensed, pressing back against the chair, terrified he would touch her again. She didn’t know what frightened her more: staying right here with this madman or going back into his past and experiencing firsthand what turned him into a madman.
He didn’t touch her this time as he walked behind her chair and circled around it in a thoughtful, pacing loop. “Where do you go?”
She squinted her eyes to try to think better. It didn’t help. “Go?”
He paused in front of her, one hand absently stroking his chin. “Are you meditating? Going to a happy place? What?”
She groped for something to say, anything to keep from angering him. “I . . . I’m scared. You’re scaring me.”
“But you go somewhere. In your head. I can see it in your eyes. You’re not here with me.” He studied her face for a moment before resuming the circle around her chair in slow, measured steps. “And when you come back . . . it’s very strange, Alex. Like nothing I’ve ever seen. Last time, you passed out. It took a good five minutes for you to come around. So I’ll ask you again. Where did you go?”
She swallowed hard against nausea. The sparks in her vision were getting more rapid, more like lightning, more like the explosions of light in her trek into Charlie’s experience at the hands of a psychopath. A distant roar in her ears sounded like a tornado on the horizon, spinning ever closer.
“My happy place,” she said, trying to sound strong. “I go to my happy place.”
“I don’t think I believe you. Why would you scream coming out of your happy place?”
“Because I’m scared. I want to stay there.” She closed her eyes. She couldn’t focus, couldn’t think. “Could you please stop circling me? You’re making me dizzy.”
He stopped before her and leaned forward, bracing one hand on an arm of the chair. “Tell me about your happy place. What is it like there?”
She breathed through her nose. Any second now, she was going to be sick again, and considering how angry he got last time, she couldn’t imagine his reaction if she spewed in his face.
“Alex,” he said, soothingly. “I’m just trying to understand.”
He reached out to brush hair off her forehead, and she grabbed his wrist to stop him, to stop contact. But she’d miscalculated. His wrist was bare. So, skin-against-skin and thinking, oh, shit, she spiraled away.
The dickhead’s going to be ticked when he gets here and I haven’t figured out this goddamn algebra. Why do I have to do this anyway? It’s not going to help me with real life. I don’t even have a real life. I’m like Holden Caulfield and his stupid I-don’t-know-what-the-hell-I’m-doing-here shtick.
“Life is a game, boy,” Mr. Spencer had told Holden. “Life is a game that one plays according to the rules.”
And who makes the rules? I have no goddamn clue who does in the real world, but for me, it’s
him
. Psycho Von Bulow and his “One day you’re going to need to know what other young men know. Else, how are you going to function out there?”
Like he’s going to let me go at some point. Yeah, when he’s dead.
I don’t even know what “out there” is like anymore. Not in reality. I read the books he throws at me. Didn’t at first, but then I failed his tests and paid for it in spades. So now I watch the movies and TV shows and documentaries. But “out there” doesn’t exist. It’s all a dim memory. I remember being a clueless kid who thought an offer of candy at the mall from the guy who lived down the street couldn’t possibly be a bad thing. I mean, come on. That guy helped Mom shovel the driveway the day it snowed a shitload and Dad got stranded at work. It’s not like he was a stranger.
Groaning, I push back from the desk and get up.
Dropping to the floor, I work on some pushups. The dickhead’s getting afraid of me, getting afraid of my strength. He’s wary when he comes in now, careful to immobilize me before he gets out his toys.
Our
toys, he calls them. Like a hunting knife is a toy. Goddamn fucking fuck.
One day soon I’m going to get that fucking stun gun away from him and shove it down his fucking throat and zap him into fucking hell.
I hear him beyond my door, and my heart just about chokes me. He said he’d have a surprise for me if I solved the math problems correctly. A surprise could be good, could be bad. Best not to defy him, either way.
Swiping a hand through the sweat in my hair, I get back to my desk and read the algebra problem. Two trains are traveling toward each other along the same track but one hundred fifty miles apart. One train goes sixty miles per hour, and the other goes ninety. How long before they collide?
Fuck, that’s easy! Any bonehead could figure that one out.
At the rattle of keys at the door, I jump to my feet. The dickhead steps into my room with a wide smile. His hair is gray, and he’s so fat that his gut hangs over the waistband of his black pants. I hope he has heart disease. High cholesterol. Cancer growing in his gut. No, better: Cancer growing in his nads.
“How’s Butchie today?”
Butchie wants to rip out your intestines, you disgusting old fart. “Fine, thank you.”
“Did you finish your homework?”
“Yes.”
“Did you get the train question?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“They’ll collide in an hour. Together, the trains are going one hundred fifty miles per hour. It’d take an hour to go one hundred fifty miles, and they’re one hundred fifty miles apart.”
“Excellent. You’ve earned your surprise.”
My heart leaps a little, though I’m unsure. His idea of a surprise could be cutting off my balls and feeding them to me with some McDonald’s special sauce. The Hannibal Lecter of kidnapped boys.
“Turn around.”
I quickly obey. Hesitating could invite a zap from the stun gun, depending on his mood. He loves that fucking thing. Probably strokes it while he’s jerking himself off.
The familiar cool metal snaps around my wrists. Before I stun gun him to death, I’m going to cuff him. I’m going to light a few cigarettes and play up and down his back for a couple of hours, and then I’m going to take his knife and—
He gives my arm a pat. “Come with me.”
I follow him out of my pathetic, dank room and glance toward the stairs that lead up, up, up to escape. Heaven. Home.
I want to make a run for it, but the memory of last time stops me. He let me get to the top before he zapped me, and then I rolled down the steps, feeling each goddamn bounce. Broken ribs suck.
“Wait here,” he says.
He leaves me in the Play Room. His name, not mine. It has a couple of chairs that have restraints, a rolling stool that swivels and a wall of toys. No.
Tools
. He calls them toys. The room is soundproofed. It must be. Because no one comes running at the screams. Mine or the others’.
He returns, and my breath stops when I see what he’s got with him.
Not a bound-up present ripe for playtime, but another boy, the same age as the others. Eight or nine, the same as when I got here. I don’t even know how old I am now. He calls me a teenager, so I’m at least thirteen. Feel more like thirty.
“Look, Butchie, I brought you a new friend. This is Brian. Brian, meet Butchie.”
The kid has terror in his eyes. Absolute, pants-shitting terror. I’m familiar with that look. I’ve seen it on other kids just like him, other boys who have come and gone. Other little boys who didn’t please the dickhead, who failed some kind of perverted test. I’ve passed the test, apparently, because he keeps me. He keeps me, and he makes the others disappear.
Something snaps inside my head. I think I even hear the crack. I am not, no way, no how, not in this fucking lifetime going to let him try to break another little boy who looks just like me.
I fling myself at him, at the goddamn fucker that’s kept me here. No, not
that
. Who. The fucker
who
’s kept me here. His form of English class has paid off.
This is the fucker who’s stolen my life, who’s turned me into a freak . . . and I’m screaming and screaming and screaming . . .
Stars explode in my head, and I fall back against my bound wrists, not realizing at first that he punched me. Something warm and wet is on my face, pouring from my nose, and I taste blood, and that makes me smile. I want to taste his blood. I want to bathe in his blood. See? Twisted. The dickhead’s fault.
Baring my teeth, I snarl and struggle and launch myself at him all over again, like fucking Cujo, man, and when his fist crashes into the side of my face, it doesn’t stop me. I want his blood, I want his blood, I want his blood . . . I’m Dracula. I’m Lestat. I’m the American werewolf in London. I’m fucking Freddy Krueger, Jason and Michael Myers all rolled into one.
Someone is crying and whimpering, and I know it’s Brian, poor little lost boy Brian, crying for his Mommy and asking for more like Oliver goddamn Twist. You’re going to thank me for this, Brian. I’m going to be your ever-loving Artful Dodger here.

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