A Dangerous Dance (30 page)

There was an awful inevitability to the flat, emotionless voice. It was the only cool thing in the trunk. The words were horrifying, but the tone was so reasonable, the words tangled in her head as the heat sapped her strength.

“But if you choose to accept your fate, you can self-determine to be my partner, instead of my slave.” He was quiet for a moment, before he said, “You can speak. I'll hear you.”

“If I die back here from heat exhaustion, you'll never know what I would have chosen,” Dorothy managed to gasp out.

He actually chuckled. “We're almost home. In fact, here's the turn now.”

Home
. If only it were true. She felt the motion of the turn, though her ability to protect herself from it had degraded seriously. Fortunately the period of pain was brief.

“We're driving down the lane now. I wish you could see it. I think you'd like it. It's a much more impressive residence than Oz.”

Dorothy wasn't sure she could stay conscious. The air she inhaled was thick with heat and thin on air and it felt as if she lay in a pool of water, as even more of the life-giving stuff flowed off her. Her clothes were stuck to her body and her hair felt matted to her head.

When the car lurched to a stop, she fought to hold on to the thin thread of awareness she had left. The lid finally opened. Even the hot afternoon air felt cool as it rushed into the trunk. Darius grabbed her legs and undid the handcuffs around her ankles, then helped her out of the trunk.

When her weight went on her legs, she almost fell. He looped an arm around her waist, but she pushed him away. Amazingly, he let her. She leaned against the car for a moment, fighting to bring her body back under her control.

“It's cooler inside. And there's water,” he said, his voice that same, tempting calm one that had assailed her inside the trunk.

She managed to stay upright and follow him inside the wide, double doors.

“There's no staff, of course. That will come later, when we've worked things out.”

Just inside the entry was a wide mirror, nearly two stories high. In it, she saw a scarecrow of a woman, with matted, stringy, wet hair and filthy clothes clinging to her body. The transition from hot to cold was a painful one. The cold air slammed into her head and pain throbbed behind both eyes. It was hard to believe that this was the same person who'd looked in her mirror in Oz this morning and wondered if Remy would be pleased with how she looked.

Stockholm syndrome. She knew what that was. Hostages begin to identify with their captors, who alternately abuse them and then are kind to them. This was a kind period, but the abuse was waiting for her on the other side of it. She could have no illusions. He'd told her what he was going to do.

He handed her a bottle of water with the cap loosened. It was a good thing. She probably couldn't have opened it herself. She took the bottle, almost too weak to lift it to her mouth. She wanted to gulp it down, but she forced herself to sip it slowly. He needed to know she was still in control of herself.

He couldn't be reading a lot of emotion from her right now. She was too exhausted to feel anything. In an odd, ironic way, that gave her an edge, too. She braced herself for the next round as she sipped the life-restoring water. When the bottle was empty, she lowered it and looked at him. There was no chance he'd give her another.

“I need to use the bathroom.”

“Of course.” He indicated the stairs with a short wave of his hand.

Dorothy looked up. They seemed to go on forever. Didn't he have anything closer? One step at a time, just take it one step at a time. She managed the first one. The second wasn't as bad. When she got to the stairs, it got hard again. She had to lift one foot up, and then lift the other, before attempting the next.

“Do you want me to carry you up?” Darius asked behind her.

She ignored him. There was only the next step. And the next. After a small eternity, the steps ended. She was on a landing facing a row of closed doors. Now Darius stepped ahead of her and pushed one open, indicating she should enter.

Still waiting for the next blow to fall, she stepped through into a room that was almost lovely. It was too sterile, too store display, to be warm or welcoming, but it was better than the trunk of a car.

“The bathroom is through there.”

It was a relief to be free of him, even briefly, to not feel him watching her. There was no lock on the door, but she was in too much distress to worry about it. She relieved herself, then washed her hands and face in the sink. It wasn't easy with the cuffs still on, but she managed it. She set the towel down, and combed through her hair with her hands. It helped a little. She couldn't bring herself to move.

“You know I can come in and bring you out,” he said through the door.

In the mirror, she saw herself straighten her shoulders, one vertebra at a time.
You wanted to know who you were, Dorothy,
she thought,
now you get to find out
. She turned and opened the door. He was waiting right outside.

“You're feeling better.” It wasn't a question, so she didn't bother to answer it.

She was dying to sit down. Her legs trembled with the effort of supporting her weight. She noticed a tray of sandwiches covered with plastic and more water on a table by the window. He noticed the direction she looked.

“You can sit down and eat it right now, if...” he stopped, one brow arched.

“You told me I had twenty-four hours.” It was easy to keep her voice flat now. She didn't have the energy for inflection.

“You do, but you can choose not to wait.” He put his hands in the pockets of his slacks, studying her in that impersonal way that would have unnerved her had she been less hammered.

“If I had a real choice, I'd go home,” she said.

“None of us have real choices. We just think we do.” He turned and walked toward the bed, stopped and looked at her. “This is the bed where your mother and I made love. If you get in it right now, if you choose to submit, you can eat after, drink all the water you're craving, shower and then sleep undisturbed for as long as you want.”

“Or?” she knew there was an “or.”

“Or you can spend the night in less comfortable accommodations. Trust me when I say, you won't like them.”

She did.

“It's the expedient thing to do. If Mistral were still alive, he'd understand. He'd probably even forgive. It's not as if your romance wasn't expedient for both of you. Or did you think he really loved you?”

Dorothy looked at him. “No, I never thought he really loved me. But he would never do this. He would never, ever be what you are.”

“And what is that?” He looked mildly amused.

“A dirty old man, who wants something he hasn't earned the right to have.”

That stung, she could tell.

“My mother came to you willingly, for whatever insane reason she may have had, that I'm sure she regrets now. What really sticks in your craw is that she left and never came back. So I'm guessing it wasn't that good for her. Not incentive for me to crawl in that bed and give it a whirl, now is it?”

For just a moment, something flickered in his eyes. She'd hit home with something she said and it gave her a surge of strength and resolution that she desperately needed.

“I'll take that as a no, then,” he said, his voice still even, but not as perfectly as before. “You have more stairs to climb.”

He directed her out the door, down the hall and up another flight of stairs, and then another. She went passively, because she didn't want him touching her.

“We're here,” he said, stopping at a door at the end of a narrow, somewhat shabby hall. “This is the attic.” He unlocked the door and a wave of heat poured out onto them. “I'm afraid the air conditioning doesn't extend to up here.”

It was late afternoon. Outside, as they passed windows, she'd noticed the shadows lengthening and the light turning gold. It meant the heat had had all day to build up under the rafters. But that wasn't the worst he had in mind.

He steered her toward a long, narrow box, held closed with a padlock. He took out a key and undid the lock, letting the side down to reveal an oddly lumpy floor surface.

“This is where you'll be spending your time until you make your decision. There is an air supply, but as I mentioned, no cooling. You can communicate with me, if at any time you wish to come to a new agreement. There is also surveillance inside, in case you had any thoughts of trying to get out.”

He stood there looking at her with his dead gaze. Already she could feel the sweat starting again, minimally fueled by the bottle of water. As she stared into the narrow opening, it seemed to grow smaller and tighter and hotter.

He's trying to break you, she told herself. He knows if you sleep with him, he knows if you give in, that you can never go back to who you were. He knows you'll have lost your soul. He's clever, but you're strong. You can do this. You can take anything he can throw at you. Even death.

She stepped toward the dark square, and started to stoop down, when he stopped her with a touch. She froze. What now?

“Two things.” He studied her for a moment. “I believe you have recently come into some information about your father's death?”

Dorothy didn't have to pretend to be surprised. “What?”

His gaze narrowed. “You're an excellent actress, but you see, I know the truth.”

“And what truth would that be?”

“There were three conspirators. Bubba Joe Henry, myself, and...you.”

Dorothy didn't have time to process anything but the part about her. She'd suspected it anyway. “Me? Why would I have wanted Magus dead?”

“He abandoned you as a child, then used you for his politics purposes. No one had a better reason than you, my dear. I need to know where the evidence is. Does your mother have it?”

Dorothy shook her head. “You can believe what you want. You will, no matter what I say.”

She bent to climb in the box.

“I said there were two matters.”

“Right. I was never that good with math.”

His lips thinned. “Your dress.”

“What about it?” Dorothy drew away from him, her cuffed hands drawn up to her chest. The movement chafed the already reddened skin and her sweat burned into the sore areas.

“Take it off.”

Her throat dried out. “Why?”

“Because I told you to. I won't make you take anything else off...yet. But if you don't take it off now, I'll cut your clothes off. It's your choice.”

“Your choices suck.”

His expression didn't change. He did reach behind and pull a knife out of the back of his slacks.

She reached up and unbuttoned the front of her dress. “I can't get it off with my hands tied.”

He studied the problem, then slid the blade of the knife up the sleeve, the steel wonderfully, awfully cold against her skin, and sliced the dress. He repeated it on the other sleeve and the dress fell into a soggy pile at her feet. All she had on now was a bra and panties. She covered her breasts with her hands, but kept her chin up. He could only demean her as much as she let him.

“Seen enough?” she asked him. When he nodded, she bent and crawled inside the box.

That's when she realized what a complete and utter psychopath he was. The floor was hard and lumpy, making it impossible for her to be comfortable in any position. The box was too low for her to sit up, forcing her down to the floor. The material he'd used was also abrasive to her exposed skin. And her sweating aggravated the abrasion and the pain as salt went into her scrapes.

And when he lifted the door back in place, the darkness inside was absolute. She couldn't even see her hands in front of her face. Sensory deprivation. Sleep deprivation. Dehydration. And the camera-peeping-Tom aspect.

He'd brought out the big guns.

All she had in her arsenal was a healthy dose of stubborn from both her parents. And the knowledge she had to make until noon tomorrow. Then she'd be dead. Because there was no way in hell she was ever giving in to that horror of a man.

Unless...what if he didn't intend to kill her?

She managed to not whimper out loud, but she did curl into as much of a fetal position as the box would allow. Almost against her will, she found herself drifting into the blessed peace of sleep. But before sleep could completely claim her, bright lights flashed on, stabbing deep into her eyes.

“I'm afraid I can't let you sleep yet, Dorothy. Let's talk some more about clarity and expediency. Because I think you've realized I can't let you choose death. I let your mother go, but I won't let you go. You'll never be able to leave. You can fight me for a while, but some day you're going to crawl out of the box and into that bed. You're going to share it with me when I want. How I want. Until I don't want you any more. And then, only then, will you die.”

He paused, as if to give her a chance to comment. When she couldn't, he went on, “Your only chance is to submit by choice. You need to embrace what's expedient and make me need you. Keep me wanting you. It's your only hope.”

“Go to hell,” she said.

The light shut off again. Darkness closed in around her, outside and in. Even though she couldn't afford to lose the moisture, silent tears joined the stream of sweat pouring down her face.

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EIGHTEEN

* * * *

Titus got there so fast, Remy knew he hadn't left like he was supposed to, but it didn't matter right now. Nothing mattered but finding Dorothy. Whoever had written that note had been cruel and malignant, and he hadn't kept his word. He had tried to kill Remy anyway. There was something going on, some hidden agenda he couldn't see, but could sense.

When he'd filled Titus in on what had happened, he went to work. He needed to get a hold of Kate, he realized. She needed to know. Titus had her cell phone number, thank goodness.

He filled her in, heard her inhale sharply. “You don't know who it might be, do you?” Remy asked, when she didn't say anything.

“No, of course not,” she said.

So why don't I believe her, Remy wondered. “If you know something, Kate...”