Caught: Punished by Her Boss (15 page)

When she figured she had enough to work with, Jessie kicked off the heels and raced over to the camcorder, turning it off. Removing it from the tripod, she gave her tormentor one last look. He was still unconscious, but for how long? She started for the stairs that led to the garage, but quickly decided she would take the house stairs to see if she could find the keys to Eric’s car.

She hurtled up the stairs to the first floor, her heartbeats tumbling over one another as if racing for a finish line. At the top of the stairs was a hallway, with the kitchen to the left, and the living room to the right. She ran into the kitchen, scanning the counters and walls for any sign of Eric’s car keys.

Yanking open the drawers, she finally found what she was looking for. In the drawer near the door that led to the garage, she found not only a set of car keys, but Eric’s wallet as well. Grabbing the keys and the wallet, she started through the door that led to the garage.

She paused a moment, her eyes lighting on Eric’s land line telephone. A smile came to her lips as she imagined the policemen showing up, banging at the door, breaking it down, storming the place and finally discovering the naked, cuffed man in the basement. She grabbed the handset and pushed in the numbers.

“9-1-1, what is your emergency?”

Saying nothing, she set the receiver down on the counter and went into the garage, slamming the kitchen door behind her. She ran around the car toward the driver’s side and was about to climb in when she noticed the stack of cardboard boxes piled against the wall. Opening the car door, she threw the keys, wallet and camcorder on the seat and turned to scan the boxes.

Her eye was drawn to the one on top, its cardboard flaps open. In it lay a brown leather photo album with an outline of the state of Texas stenciled on the cover. Jessie’s heart lurched into her throat as she recognized it.

It was
her
photo album, with pictures of her mother and her brother, the only ones she had left in the world. She ran to the box and grabbed the album, hugging it to her as if it were a long lost child, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Looking again into the box, she found her large purse tucked in a jumble of her clothing. Half laughing and half crying, she dragged the box to the car, opened the back door and heaved it inside.

With an anxious glance at the basement door, she knew she didn’t dare stay another second. The police might already be on their way. Climbing quickly into the driver’s seat, she shoved the camcorder and wallet over onto the passenger seat, turned the key in the ignition and felt the car rumble to life. She pushed the button on the garage door remote that was attached to the visor and the door opened to the outside world.

Jessie’s hands were shaking as she put the car in reverse and pressed the gas. A part of her was still expecting Eric to leap out of the basement door at any second and drag her back into his prison. She knew if that happened, he would see to it she never escaped again.

She backed down the driveway and eased the car onto the road. Taking a last look at Eric’s house, she pushed the button on the remote and as she watched the garage door close, she shot the finger at the
pendejo
she’d left in the dungeon. Then, with a whoop of pure joy, she turned her focus to the road ahead, gunned the engine and roared away in a screech of burning rubber.

She made her way to I-10 West, following the signs for US 87 North. She would drive the two hundred or so miles to San Antonio, and then ditch Eric’s car when she got there. After that, she would head west. She would make a new life for herself.

She drove with the windows open, the warm, fresh air blowing her hair and filling her nostrils with the scent of freedom. She felt reborn—truly alive for the first time since she’d been a child.

About fifty miles into the trip, she pulled into a rest area and parked. She unbuckled her seat belt and twisted around to see what else was in the box. She grabbed her bag first. Everything was still inside, including her cell phone, though when she turned it on, the battery was dead. Her wallet was there, though the cash was missing. This reminded her that she had Eric’s wallet. Reaching for it, she opened the billfold and extracted the cash. She thumbed the bills, counting one hundred forty-four dollars. Hardly a fortune, but enough to get by for a day or two. She still had her credit cards, and Eric’s too, now that she thought about it, though she realized it probably wasn’t a good idea to use them anywhere that might enable him to track her down.

Dropping his wallet on the seat again, she transferred the cash to her purse and stuffed the small camcorder inside as well. Turning her attention back to the box, she found a pair of jeans, some socks, a T-shirt and best of all, her beloved red cowboy boots. Hunching down in the seat, she put the T-shirt over the leotard, and pulled on the jeans, socks and boots.

Feeling much better, she got back on the freeway, eager to put more distance between herself and Houston. As she drove, she played the music loud, letting her mind empty. Each time she passed a state trooper on the road, her heart gave a fearful lurch, but apparently Eric hadn't yet discovered that his car had been stolen.

When she arrived in San Antonio, Jessie stopped at a taco shack and ordered some fresh, authentic Mexican food, spicy and flavorful. She asked the woman behind the counter in Spanish where the bus station was.

Parking in the large lot at the Greyhound bus station, she left Eric’s wallet on the driver’s seat and locked the car. She decided to leave the remaining contents of the box in the back seat, taking only her bag and her beloved photo album. She would buy everything new once she got settled wherever she was going.

As she entered the station, she threw the car keys in the large trash can by the door. She would let his car be recovered, but she wouldn’t make it too easy for him, she thought with a satisfied smile.

As she stared up at the screen, trying to decide where she would go to start her new life, Carlos’ words came back to her from all those years ago.

Get out, Jessie. Go to a big city as far away as you can get.

Back then she’d been running blind—running from a dead end life and an abusive father. She’d never confronted her father for what he had done to their mother. She’d never forced him to acknowledge the damage he’d done to them all. Now she was running from another abusive man, only this time she wasn’t going to let the bastard off so easy. She would be able to get some very compromising stills from the sixty second video of Eric, the sub boy, and she knew just what to do with them.

Eric Chapman would pay for what he’d done.

Jessie Ramos, a.k.a. Princess Lola, would make sure of it.

Epilogue

Eric didn’t recognize the address on the incoming email but the subject header sure grabbed his attention.
Greetings from Princess Lola.
His heart switched into overdrive as he opened the email, not daring to delete it.

What he saw made him slam the lid of his laptop closed. It was a photo of himself lying naked, cuffed and blindfolded in his own dungeon. Behind him stood a masked Dominatrix with a whip in her hand, her high-heeled foot on his groin. There was a second picture, this one of her squatting over his face, her cunt bared as if she were about to take a piss on him.

“That fucking little bitch,” he muttered, fury making his chest tighten painfully. Glancing left and right, as if someone might be lurking in his office, he cautiously opened the laptop again.

His mind leaped back to that horrible day two weeks before when he came to on the floor of his basement, with two uniformed cops, one male and one female, crouched beside him, staring into his face. He’d been disoriented and confused at first, and had found himself asking, “Where’s J.?”

“Who’s Jay, sir? Someone called 9-1-1 from this address but we found no one upstairs. Can you tell us why you’re lying here naked in regulation cuffs on your basement floor?” The male cop had asked. Both cops looked disapprovingly around the room, shaking their heads. “What the hell is this down here anyway?”

Luckily, Eric’s brain had decided to switch back on at that moment, along with a terrible throbbing pain in his foot. He knew there was no way he could tell them what really happened, even once he could put all the pieces together himself. So instead he focused on something the cops could understand.

“My foot. I’m hurt!” he exclaimed.

The female cop shifted her focus to his foot, examining the wound. It was no longer bleeding, but it hurt like hell. “What happened here, sir?” she had asked in the same accusatory voice her partner had used.

“What’s this?” Pulling a plastic bag from his pocket, the male cop had gingerly picked up the bloody scissors. He had turned an accusing stare on Eric, as if
he
were the criminal in all this. “Who is this Jay you referred to? Did he do this to you?” He waved his hand around the basement. “Were the two of you, uh, engaged in some kind of weird homoerotic sado-masochistic rituals?”

“What the—no! There is no Jay.” Eric had tried to think fast. If he accused Jessie Ramos of anything, it would open a huge can of worms. But obviously
someone
had done this to him. He couldn’t very well pretend he’d stabbed himself in the foot and then cuffed himself and thrown away the key. He decided to go with what the cops clearly already believed—a kinky gay sex game gone awry.

“That is,” he had amended, “I mean, yes, I did have a—a friend here. Things must have gotten out of hand. I—I don’t really remember…” Eric’s face had felt hot and he knew he was blushing, something he hadn't done since he was a teenager. He held up his cuffed wrists, blustering in his embarrassment. “Look, can you get these damn things off me? I need to get my foot seen to.”

“You’ve clearly been assaulted, sir,” the lady cop had said, pointing to Eric’s wounded foot, while the man used his own handcuff key to get the cuffs off Eric’s wrists. “Do you want to press charges?”

Seeing the scissors helped Eric put together what must have happened. Somehow the little bitch had gotten hold of the barber scissors and used them to stab him! He remembered
that
part—the shock, and the blinding pain in his foot, but he didn’t remember anything after that.

The cops were staring at him, clearly waiting for an answer. “No, no, I don’t want to press charges. It was just—it was a game my lover and I were playing,” he lied, hating himself but unable to think of any other way out. “It was an accident. He must have panicked and ran. It’s okay. I’m really sorry about all of this, officers.”

Now, staring at the compromising photo of himself, he realized he hadn't heard the last of Jessie Ramos. She was up to something, that was for sure. They’d recovered his stolen car and wallet just a few days ago at a bus station in San Antonio and he had figured she was long gone.

Badly shaken by the ordeal with the cops, he had dismantled the dungeon and stashed her gear in boxes while he decided what to do with it. During those five days he had held her captive he’d been like a madman, obsessed with his slave girl to the exclusion of all else. It was as if he’d been under a kind of mad spell, letting his most base and evil impulses run wild. While he still thought about it constantly, the whole thing was like a bizarre, surreal dream. Had he really done those things to her?

The pictures before him reminded him that what had happened had been no dream. And Jessie Ramos hadn't just conveniently faded away. She wanted something from him. There was a second email from the same address, and with a heavy heart, Eric opened it.

It read:

“Per our agreement! What the fuck?” Perplexed and furious, Eric continued to read.

Eric stared, speechless, at the email for several long minutes. She had been clever, couching it in terms of a purchase agreement, however ludicrous the conditions, rather than an out-and-out extortion bid that might be used against her.