Dragon: A Bad Boy Romance (10 page)

I open my eyes again and this time everything is dark. My brain is still foggy, but the pain in my arms is nagging at me, chasing away the haze, forcing me into reality. With a wrench, I finally come to.
Where am I?

It's pitch black. I'm sitting on a hard floor, leaning against a wall, my arms above my head. I try to bring them down, but there's something wrapped tightly around my wrists, holding them there. Rope, I think.
God, they hurt!
I move them around as much as I can, trying to get the blood flowing back through them. I draw one leg up under me and try to stand, but the movement is forcing my arms too far back behind me, and I can't get any higher than an awkward half-crouch.

Defeated, I slide back down into a sitting position, the pins and needles stabbing up and down. I clench my fists, hold, and relax, as if I'm trying to get a vein up for bloods at the doctor's office. It seems to help a little, but not much.
How long have I been here?
I can't judge the passing of time at all, but the dull ache in my bladder tells me it must have been quite a while. I can't remember much. I was in the parking lot at Dragon's place. There was a sting, like a bee, and a gloved hand over my mouth. After that, everything is jumbled and disjointed. I remember falling on my knees, but on to hard parked dirt, not the asphalt of the parking lot. I remember a voice, booming and yelling, but there's no image to go with the sound. I remember a room, filled with rabid dogs and hundreds and thousands of tiny, biting insects – but that part must have been a dream. Nevertheless, the memory of it heightens my fear.

I still can't see anything. I have not adjusted to the total, absolute darkness. I can only tell if my eyes are open or closed by blinking hard and holding them open. There could be
anything
in that darkness. The false memory of the insects is gripping me, and I can almost hear them, clicking towards me on many feet. I try to stay calm, focusing on talking deep breaths. In, and out. In, and out. There's no
perspective.
I could be in a huge, cavernous cellar – or I could be in a broom closet. I fan my legs out slowly, trying to touch something, anything, to get a sense of what surrounds me. I can feel that the floor is rough stone, with bits of grit and debris, but I don't touch an object or a wall.

The sound of my sneakers scraping along the floor is loud in the silence, but there's no echo. I strain my ears, trying to hear anything at all. There's something, but it's faint. And then I place it – the irregular plink of dripping water. As soon as the image flashes into my mind, I realize that I am thirsty, desperately so. My throat is dry and parched, my lips cracked. I lick my lips, and my tongue feels big and clumsy.

I stop breathing as a new panic hits me.
Am I alone?
My captor, or captors, could be in this place with me, and I wouldn't know. They could be feet away – inches away. There could be a knife at my throat, a gun at my head right now, and I won't know until the cold steel makes contact with my skin. Although that's not the worst thing that could happen to me. I don't know who's taken me, but the list of suspects is short. The guy who's been writing the letters. All the horrible, vile acts that he described come back to me, and I choke down a moan of fear.
No. No sound.
If he is in here, or if there's a camera rigged up or something, I'm not going to give him the satisfaction of hearing my terror.

He could have already touched me, done things to me, while I was unconscious, but somehow I don't think that's happened. I'm still fully dressed, and there's no pain down there when I shift my position.

I wait. Nothing happens, and nothing happens, and nothing happens. My thoughts become more and more jumbled, but I don't realize that I have fallen asleep until I wake up with a jerk that sends fresh waves of pain down my rigid arms and deep into my shoulders.

Something has woken me – footsteps, coming straight towards me, fast. I pull my knees up to my chest, trying to shrink into the wall, unable to get away. Hard hands grab my face, and I struggle, thrashing about, whipping my head back and forth, trying to shake the hands off. But it's impossible. Suddenly, everything is hot and I can't breathe. There's a bag over my head, the rough fabric scraping my face.

I cry out in pain as my arms are yanked down into my lap. My wrists are still tied together, but the movement is too much for the trembling muscles. There's a scraping on the floor, two scrapings, and then the footsteps retreat. I hear the slamming of a door – a big, heavy door. I am alone again.

As the feeling in my arms return, I use my hands to pull the bag off my head, taking deep breaths as the fresher air reaches me. Now that I'm not tied to the wall, I can stand. I do so slowly, my legs weak and unsteady, scraping my back up the wall as I lean on it for balance. Once standing, I stretch my arms out in front of me, and take small, hesitant footsteps forward. My foot kicks against something on the floor, and the clang makes me jump. I poke it sightlessly – whatever it is, it's something small.

Twelve steps takes me to the other side of the room. The wall is cold, rough stone, and the picture I have in my mind is of an underground cellar. I follow the wall around, anti-clockwise. It sounded like the door was off to the right, and I don't quite dare approach it until I have a better sense of where I am.

The room is fairly small, and it seems to be more or less empty. It only takes a couple of minutes for me to inch around the perimeter, passing the metal hook embedded into the stone where I woke up, all the way round to the door. I was right – it's a heavy, metal thing. I can feel rivets, but no handle. It only opens from the outside. Then, something brushes against my face, scaring the hell out of me.
Bats!
That's my first, irrational thought, but as the thing sways back and forth, I can hear clinking. It's a long, thin chain, hanging from the ceiling. I pull it.

The bulb isn't bright, but after who knows how long in the dark, I flinch away, screwing my eyes up against the brightness. Instinctively, I move away from the door, but nobody comes running, alerted by the light. I open my eyes a few degrees at a time, first my right, then my left, until I am able to get my first real look at my prison.

I was right – it
is
a cellar. There are no windows, no way in or out apart from the reinforced steel door. The ancient, dirty bulb hangs down in the center of the space. There's nothing in here apart from a couple of things on the floor – a bottle of water, and a bucket, turned on its side from when I bumped into it.

I fall on the water. I'm so thirsty I could cry. Even though it's warm, it tastes like the sweetest nectar there is, and it's all I can do to stop myself draining the bottle right there. But I don't know if or when I'll get any more, so I need to make it last. I force myself to just take a little, just enough to quench the worst of the burning thirst. Then I put the cap back on. I can't stop looking at it, though, so in the end I put it in the canvas bag so that I can't see it any more.

That leaves the bucket. I know what it's for. I don't want to use it – I
really
don't – but my need is getting more urgent by the minute. I drag it into the far corner of the cellar before I awkwardly unbutton my jeans, feeling absurdly vulnerable as I use it. Crazy, because I'm not any
more
vulnerable than I already was. Nobody knows where I am.

Belatedly, with a sudden stab of hope, I pat down my pockets, hoping for my cell phone. Of course, it's not there. I don't even keep it in my pocket, I keep it in my purse, which is nowhere in sight.

With nothing else to do, I sit back down on the floor again, and try not to think about the water. I wonder if I should turn the light back off, but my fear of the impenetrable blackness is greater than my fear of whatever my captor will think about the light being on.

Hours pass. I know this, because I'm wearing my watch. It's literally the only thing to watch, so I sit there, staring at it, watching the second hand sweep and the minutes and hours tick by. I have another drink of water, just a small one.

I'm starting to wonder what would happen if my captor never comes back. It might not even be deliberate, either. Supposing he drops down dead of a heart attack, or gets run down crossing the street? My mind is racing with all the things that could happen to him, and I'm choking on the irony that I want him to stay safe so that he can come and let me out.
Then
he can die. Then he can have all the car accidents and heart attacks in the world.

My crazy train of thought means that, when I hear the sound of the door being cranked open, there's a tiny golden thread of relief buried in the mess of terror that grips me. I get to my feet.
This is it.

He steps into the room, blinking at the light. It must be dark outside the cellar, too. He looks at me, his face as familiar as my own. For one wild moment, I think he's here to rescue me. Then I see the way his fists are clenched. He's not here to rescue me, not at all.

“You,” I say.

“Me,” he agrees.

Chapter Nine - Dragon

I can't process what Freeman is saying. I haul him up onto his feet, and drag him bodily into my apartment, kicking his car door closed as I pass. He's stopped sobbing now, and instead he's passive, letting me pull him along. I sit him down.

“Now,” I say. “From the top. Tell me what happened.”

My patient exterior is a lie. I'd heard enough out in the lot.
They've taken her.
It's clear that Tony thinks she's been grabbed by some enemy – maybe the letter writer, maybe someone else. But I know what's been going on over there, the last few days, and it's possible that she's took off somewhere, to get away from him. Or from me. After all, I did reject her just yesterday. Before I jump to any conclusions, I need to hear the full story.

I debate getting Tony a beer, to calm his nerves, but one look at his face tells me that it's going to take a lot more than that. I pour out two glasses of whiskey and hand him one, resisting the childish urge to point out that the last time I saw him, he booted me in the head, and yet I am being hospitable. It's not for his sake that I'm acting nice, it's for Honey's.

He takes a long, slow drink, and a little of his usual, collected manner returns to him. I can see that all the other stuff is still there, though, just under the surface. He takes a deep breath.

“She said yesterday morning that she was coming here, to... to check on you.” He has the grace to look slightly ashamed.

“She did,” I say. “She left about sundown.”

His eyes narrow as he calculates how long she was here, but he doesn't comment on it.

“Then I don't think she came home. I didn't- we'd had a disagreement about a couple of things, and I didn't want to seem like I was checking up on her. I just thought she was in her room, pissed with me. But then I got a picture, on my cell, a couple of hours ago.” He shows me.

It's Honey, slumped in the trunk of a car. She looks like she's simply fallen asleep, but I know better. There are no marks or bruises on her face. Drugged. My blood is turning to ice water in my veins. Part of me, the deeper, primal part, wants to lash out with rage and fury, to tear down anything and anyone in my path. It's the part of me that unloaded on Carl, the part that I fight to keep in check every day. The part of me that I get from my father.
I won't give in to it,
I tell myself.
I have to think clearly.

“This is a text message?” I ask.

“Email,” he says. “Some throwaway internet account.”

“Anything else?”

“A second email. But no more since.”

He shows me the second email. It's another photo, this time a picture of a handwritten letter. It's the same as the letters that were being sent, the sick twisted ones. The intent is clear – this guy wants Tony to know he's the one behind all the other shit. But the wording of the letter, clearly visible, is different.

Pay up, you gangster piece of shit. 2 million in cash gets you what's left of your precious daughter after I get what's mine.

“That's it?” I ask.

“Isn't that enough?” he roars.

“No. There'll be more to come,” I say, ignoring his rage.
Stay calm, stay calm, stay calm.
“A drop off, or something. If he wants money, he needs to tell you how to get it to him.”

“Oh. Yeah.” He clears his throat. “Listen, son. I know we had a disagreement, the other day. Tempers got out of hand. But I could really use your help with this.”

Unbelievably, he slides his pudgy hand into his jacket pocket, and pulls out a thick wad of cash. He holds it out to me.

“Fuck you,” I say, swiping at his outstretched hand with my fist. The money flies everywhere. “Fuck you, and fuck your money. You think you know everything, don't you? You think you can buy anyone. You think that all you have to do is open your fucking wallet, and everyone jumps, because you're Tony fucking Freeman. You think you see everything happens.”

I am right up in his face, yelling.

“You see
nothing.
You know
nothing.
And right now, you're going to tell me every last fucking detail that you can think of that might help me get her back, or god help me, I will kill you right here and now!”

I push him away and pace the room, trying to rein my temper back in. He sits back down, dazed.

“I don't know much,” he begins, hesitantly. “I've had some guys looking into the letters, but they've not turned up much. They stopped looking, in the end. The letters stopped. I figured it was just some pervert, getting his rocks off.”