B00CCYP714 EBOK (2 page)

Peering up, she was unable to see where the handcuffs binding her wrist were chained above her head. She was stretched out, pulled up so the balls of her feet were the only things keeping her from dangling helplessly. She felt the smooth concrete with her toes.

“The floor is slanted slightly. I think I may be in the center of the room.”

She pulled against the restraints, allowing her toes to explore more of the surface beneath her. She followed the slant down for a few inches, before discovering a round metal grate embedded in the floor. She scampered away from the drain as fast as her toes could carry her, stifling the scream trying to escape her throat. Her body began to tremble uncontrollably, as it had when she first awoke and found she was hanging naked from her wrists in this inky black space. Bladen had seen enough horror movies to know what that drain probably meant. She was sure it was where her abductor was going to wash her blood away when he was done with her.

She chastised herself for letting the fear overwhelm her. “Get a hold of yourself, Bladen. Remember what that profiler said. ‘Stay focused. Stay engaged. Do not give up.’”

There had been a series of unsolved rapes in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area known as the Triangle and surrounding counties during the past few years. In addition to the rapes, an article Bladen read last Friday noted women began vanishing three years ago. The first cases were prostitutes, but in the last eighteen months, coeds, young professionals, and housewives had joined the list. It did not escape Bladen’s attention that the public outcry increased with the elevation of the victims’ social standing. The new media attention sparked a proactive community response. Women’s safety symposiums were popping up all over the Triangle. At the urging of her father, Bladen attended one held at her small college, where she would graduate in May. While sitting in the audience Monday night, she never imagined that milestone would be in question by Tuesday evening. Surviving to Wednesday seemed even less likely.

Former FBI agent and behavioral analyst Rainey Bell, the last speaker on the panel and the most impressive, spelled it out plainly.

“There is no right or wrong way to escape from a rapist once the attack has begun. No one knows how he or she will react under that much stress, until it’s been experienced. Fear can paralyze even the strongest of us. If you don’t freeze, fighting like hell can make the situation worse, depending on the type of attacker you are dealing with,” Bell said. “Knowledge is power, and knowledge is what we’ve tried to give you tonight. Beyond all the precautionary measures discussed, the various types of rapists and how best to respond to them, I have only one piece of advice. If you are attacked, stay focused, stay engaged. Listen to your instincts. The will to live is embedded in your DNA. Find your strength in that and do what you must to survive.”

The tall, chestnut-haired Bell paused and stepped from behind the podium. Her tone softened as her piercing green eyes swept the audience. “No amount of training or education can make you immune to sexual assault.” She lifted her shirt from her waist, revealing a white scar leading up from her navel, disappearing at the base of her sports bra. “I was a trained, armed FBI agent actively in pursuit of a serial murderer, when I was abducted by the man I sought. It can happen to anyone.”

She pulled her shirt down and walked closer to the edge of the stage. “Look down the row you are sitting on. Go on—look at the women seated next to you. Statistics advise that at least one woman on each of these rows will be raped. The underreporting of sexual assaults suggests there will be more.”

Bell took the time to let that sink in. “Be vigilant, but if you are attacked, please remember these words. Although the odds were very much against it, I am one of only two people to have survived being abducted by my assailant.”

The pretty blond panelist from the women’s shelter stood up. “I am the other,” she said.

Rainey Bell reassured the room. “There is always hope. Do not give up.”

Bladen already followed most of the precautions the panel suggested. Her father had drilled them into her head.

“Park in heavily traveled areas, no dark places, not next to any vans,” he’d make her repeat. “Be aware of your surroundings. Listen to your instincts. If it feels wrong, it usually is.”

She always remembered and followed his instructions. Yet, here she was, chained in a small room without having seen the man that abducted her.

Her last memory was of preparing to leave for an evening class, running late, and rushing her parents off the phone, promising to call back after class to talk about her graduation trip. She awoke alone in the dark, chained to the ceiling of a madman’s lair.

After the initial shock and horror, Bladen fought to gain control as each wave of terror seized her. For every moment of calm she could muster, there were many more where the reality of her circumstances sent her into convulsions of quaking panic.

She closed her eyes, searching again for the memory of light, and repeated what had become her mantra, “Stay focused. Stay engaged.”

“Former Special Agent Rainey Bell is quite enchanting, isn’t she?” A deep voice said out of the silence.

Bladen gasped. Her eyes flew open. He was there. He had been there the entire time, watching her. She jerked away from the sound of movement, the handcuffs biting into her already bloody wrists.

Finding her voice, she screamed into the inky blackness, “Stay away from me!”

Her frantic kicks were futile. Still she swung on the chains, striking out until she had no breath remaining, her desperate trapped-animal screams fading to whimpers. Exhausted from the struggle, she hung limply from her wrists and began to lose hope.

She felt the breeze on her neck as he passed behind her, whispering, “Wasn’t that magnificent when she showed her scar?”

Bladen jerked forward with another burst of primal survival instinct, but escape was impossible.

His breath licked at her face. “I bet she screamed when he dug that scalpel into her chest, don’t you?”

Energy spent and no way to break free, Bladen closed her eyes against the breath-stealing panic, willing her mind to engage. Who was this guy? She didn’t need his name. She only wanted to know what kind of sick freak he was. Her brain supplied the desired information, as it began to play a memory of an earlier portion of Rainey Bell’s presentation on the types of rapists.

“Should you become the target of an Anger Excitation offender—the most criminally sophisticated of the rapists we’ve discussed—escape or resistance is generally out of the question. You must be clever in your defiance. You will have to match wits with him, but above all, you must attempt to avoid his rage. Injuries will increase in severity with his intensified anger. This sadist’s goal is to achieve gratification from the fear and torture of the victim. These abductions can range from hours to days, and in rare cases—weeks, months, or even years. Surviving the torture for a time is a good thing, believe it or not. The longer it takes him to tire of you, the more opportunities you have to take advantage of his mistakes and get away. These offenders are lethal. The end result is almost always murder. You must do what you can to escape. Do not give in. Do not give up.”

If Bladen had any doubt about what kind of offender held her captive, the crack of a whip behind her took care of that. As he worked himself into lather, her captor used it to punctuate his sentences. Bladen shrank from the sound, losing hope with each thunderclap of leather.

“That guy was a hack.” Crack! “He had Rainey Bell in his grasp twice and he ends up with a hole where his chest used to be, courtesy of that little bitch Katie Meyers. Did you see her at the conference, the blond pretty one? She’s the other cunt he let escape. Did you know she and Agent Bell are raising triplets and claim to be married? I have my parental rights dictated by some feminist bitch in a black robe, and those dykes are lickin’ pussy with three kids under the same roof. That’s fucked up. That judge is on my list, too.” Crack!

Bladen needed to slow the escalation of his temper and distance herself from the object of his rage, Rainey Bell. The words gushed from her in a trembling whisper, “I don’t know Agent Bell. I only saw her at the symposium. I didn’t know the blonde was with her. I’m not even a feminist.”

He was too invested in his rant to hear her. His monologue grew louder and more agitated, the whip cracks more frequent as he circled her.

“They flaunt those kids like poster children for the lesbian movement. It makes me sick.” Crack! “And Agent Sexy is supposed to be some great profiler. She let that guy abduct her. How good can she be?” Crack! “Then she’s supposed to be protecting little Miss Meyers, but instead, she almost got them both killed because she didn’t see him coming, again.” Crack! “She let Dalton Chambers nearly kill her from death row. Behavioral analyst, my ass.” Crack! “She couldn’t profile my dog.” Crack! “I’m right under her nose and she doesn’t even see me, even questions my existence.”

Caa-rack! The whip wrapped around Bladen’s calves, trapping her legs together. She howled as the sonic boom rendering tail snapped to a stinging stop. She jerked and kicked in an attempt to shake it loose, but it was futile. He snatched the whip, pulling her feet out from under her, and snapped restraints around her ankles, before clipping them to an unseen fulcrum in the floor. His moves were precise and efficient. Bladen knew she was not his first victim nor would she be his last, unless she somehow made it out of here alive. Agent Bell had been correct. Escape was highly unlikely, but it was Bladen’s only hope.

She started babbling rapidly, her tears tangling in her words. “My name is Bladen Asher. I have to be at the elementary school in the morning. I’m a student teacher this semester. It’s my first day to lead the class. I have to show up. And my parents—my parents, they are going to be worried if I don’t call.”

He moved around her, so close she could smell him.

Bladen switched to a desperate plea for reason. “I haven’t seen you. You can let me go. I don’t know anything about you, except you don’t like that Rainey Bell person.”

The whip fell away from her legs. She felt his hand run up her side, like a lover tenderly caressing his mate. She shivered against his touch, her breathing fast and shallow—terror-stricken.

“Shh,” he whispered next to her ear. “I know all about you, Bladen Claire Asher. I know where you live, the classes you take, where you work, what you eat, what time you go to bed, and that Patrick and Ginny Asher love you very much. You had just finished speaking with them, when we began our little game.”

Just when she thought she could not be more horrified, Bladen realized the depths of her captor’s iniquity. He had stalked her, planned her kidnapping, and now he held her prisoner in what she imagined was an underground bunker. She knew she should not let him see her fear, but knowing and doing were two distinctly different things when faced with a whip-wielding maniac.

“How—how do you know all that?”

He grabbed a handful of her thick brown hair, yanked her head back, and growled, “Because you’re mine.”

The lights flashed on, blinding her at first. Bladen blinked the room into focus, as he turned her so she could take it all in. Multiple medieval looking torture devices surrounded her in a small concrete-block room. Her eyes darted from the apparatuses, designed to elicit pain and degradation, to the man who would use them on her. Glowing yellow eyes glared at her from behind a black-leather mask.

Bladen gasped as he released his grip on her hair and raised the whip in the air. Her voice mere trembling whispers, she asked, “What are you going to do to me?”  

Sadistic laughter skipped through his answer. “Whatever the hell I want.”

CAA-RRRACK!

#

In another part of the Triangle, Rainey Bell was having a little long overdue Mommy-and-me time with Mommy, when her cellphone began to ring just after ten o’clock.

“Don’t answer that,” Katie said sharply, sweeping Rainey’s phone off the table.

Rainey chuckled at Katie’s desperation. “I can’t answer it, now. I think you threw it in the hamper.”

Katie kissed Rainey’s neck. “They’ll call back,” she whispered.

Triplets and a demanding schedule meant they rarely had the time or the energy for sex. The kids turned one year old on Christmas Day, just fifteen days ago. Rainey had only one problem with her children. Rain or shine, no matter how long a night it had been, the Bell-Meyers triplets rose at dawn. Rainey thought she had seen the sunrise over the lake every morning for the past twelve months. She no longer set an alarm. It wasn’t necessary. No one could sleep through those three crying during the first months, and now, no one dared sleep if any one of them were awake.

The house was a labyrinth of baby locks and little fences. Rainey never imagined that crawling babies could cover so much ground. Anything breakable was now at least three feet from the floor, but still not safe. The triplets were on the cusp of gaining more independence and had begun taking their first hesitant steps alone. None too successfully, but they were pulling up and buzzing around while holding onto the furniture. Six tiny feet running through the house was just around the corner, something Rainey looked forward to with mixed emotions. She and Katie could barely keep up with them as it was and collapsed into bed exhausted at the end of every evening—but not tonight.

Katie began the stalking the moment Rainey arrived to help with the nightly feeding and bathing. She was a woman on a mission to get laid, and Rainey was happy to indulge her. There was a lot of winking and ass grabbing in between the assembly line of baths, diapers, shoving feet into pajamas, and the removal of some of the strained peas from Rainey’s thick hair. Weather, the only girl and leader of the triplet army, thought it quite amusing to throw food and was quickly teaching her brothers, Timothy and Mack, this skill. Once the triplets were tucked into their cribs, Rainey slipped next door to the master suite with the intention of removing the rest of the kids’ dinner from her hair. When Katie caught up with her, the plan for a shower and Rainey’s clothing were done away with rather quickly—strained peas be damned.