HOSTAGE (To Love A Killer)
Read HOSTAGE (To Love A Killer) Online
Authors: Lexie Ray
HOSTAGE
To Love a Killer, Book 2
L E X I E R A Y
Published by: Rascal Hearts
All Rights Reserved
. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
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Cover Art: Rosy England Fisher
Chapter One
For all the times those hands had caressed her, squeezed her flesh, sending hot waves of desire flowing through her body, giving her hope, a sense of peace and safe haven, Hunter had never expected him to touch her like this.
He was rough. His grip was tight, pinching her upper arms. He felt like a wall behind her, overpowering her. There was no hint of kindness in the way Ash was handling her, no sign of compassion. If this was the man who had said he was falling in love with her, Hunter didn’t believe it. The man who loved her was gone.
As Ash held her back, limiting any prayer of escape she might have had, Hunter was forced to look at her father, the man she had fled from in the middle of the night only five years ago, the man who had promised her if she ever got away he would find her, kill her, or worse. Her father had finally come after her to make good on his promise. Hunter couldn’t believe that her boyfriend, Ash, had helped him do just that. This whole time Ash had played her, was playing her still in this very moment, as he held her back, keeping her captive. She couldn’t believe the man she thought she loved was betraying hers.
A surge of rage flared through Hunter, causing her limbs to tremble. It was overwhelming.
Her eyes darted from one corner of the apartment to the next, stealing glances, while remaining focused on her father. Hunter saw that the girls were huddled on the floor, cowering, terrified. They were the runaways who had escaped the farmhouse in the past year just like Hunter had. They had been inspired by Hunter. She had paved the way. But now they were probably wishing they had never found her here in New York. They were probably wishing they never came here to her apartment to sleep and feel hope that together they could be free. They were probably wishing they still lived on the streets and under bridges. If they were, then they wouldn’t have been captured by the men. They wouldn’t be sitting in a scared huddle on the floor, facing another round of imprisonment. Life on the streets of Brooklyn was nothing compared to the horrors of the farmhouse. Was that why none of the girls could look at her now? Because she had failed them?
Her gaze landed on a large bloodstain at the center of the hard wood floor. The way the knots in the wood had absorbed the dark blood hue, saturating deep into the grain, turned her stomach. The man whose blood had spilled there used to be Hunter’s friend. Yes, he was among the men from New Hampshire who had come to take her, but he hadn’t always been evil. That’s what the farmhouse did to people. It turned children into monsters by the time they turned eighteen. It had turned Thomas into a monster. Ash had shot him and then somehow disposed of Thomas’ body, dragging him from her apartment, leaving nothing behind except for the dark stain.
A raw, bitter odor stung Hunter’s senses. It was harsh and sharp. It was the smell of blood, rich with iron. She was starting to recognize that smell, the scent of death, the imprint of murder, when it hung in the air.
At the far wall, Travis laid dead on the floor. Travis had been another man her father had sent to retrieve her. But Travis’ rotting body wasn’t the only source of the rank odor.
In the bathroom lay Molly, one of the runaway girls. She was dead. Hunter didn’t have to see her to know that Molly’s body lay crumpled in the bathtub. She had bled to death, no doubt with a bullet hole in her chest.
Hunter had heard the gunshot earlier when she and Ash had been on the fire escape outside waiting, watching, hoping, and praying that all the girls in her apartment were alright. The second she had heard the shot, Hunter knew someone had died. It had been Molly.
Unable to pry herself from Ash’s grip, Hunter was determined not to let another girl die. But she didn’t know how to stop these men. She was sure they would kill the girls off, one by one, in the bathroom. Hunter realized she could be next.
Her father stood before her, towering over Hunter. His body was a wall, broad and intimidating. His face was in shadows. Hunter wriggled her shoulders, as if to demand that Ash loosen his grip on her, but Ash held her even tighter in response, insisting that she face her father, her own flesh and blood who had destroyed her entire life.
Her father didn’t deserve to look at her, as far as Hunter was concerned. She couldn’t stand that he had been given the opportunity to stare down at her. She hated the way his eyes felt on her, as he studied her expression, searching for evidence that she was terrified. He seemed to enjoy looking at her, not saying a word. He wanted the tension to mount. He wanted Hunter to panic, filled with fever-pitched thoughts, her heart racing over what was in store for her. He would let her imagination kill her before he did. Fear was a deadly weapon.
His name was Lorne Mann, but the girls referred to him as Grizzly, a title which best captured his tremendous body and lack of compassion. He was an animal, capable of ripping a person limb from limb without so much as a blink of remorse. Surviving life at the farmhouse had meant obeying the men at all costs no matter how close to death it might bring you. If a girl didn’t, the men would send her off to Grizzly. And she wouldn’t come back. Ever.
The last time Hunter had seen her father, it had been because she had broken the fourth rule, never go to the lake. Hunter had been sick all day. She had wanted air, needed it. She had attended dinner, but couldn’t eat. She hadn’t been able to stop throwing up. She had been nineteen at the time, and was getting too old for the farm. She had known what that meant; her days were numbered. If they stopped having a use for a girl, they would take her out, permanently. Hunter had gone to the lake to gain a moment’s peace, but what she saw there had brought a world of hell upon her.
There in the lake, floating in perfect stillness, Hunter had found the barrels. There had been so many barrels submerged in the water at the lake’s edge. Hunter had discovered them immediately when she broke through a wall of cattails that separated the field from the lake. She had been compelled to go there, drawn to the lake. It had been a great feeling, but she didn’t know why it had come over her. The feeling had propelled her on, enchanting her forward until the water was as high as her waist, not that she noticed. It had been then that Hunter opened one of the barrels. She had needed to see what was inside. What she had found made her blood run cold, the body of one of the girls. That was the moment Hunter understood where the girls went after they left the farmhouse. It was also the exact moment Hunter had been caught by one of the men. He had screamed at her, cursing her for being there, then dragged her off to her father’s house to be punished. Her father’s house had come to be known as the “shadow house”. It was the place for which all the rules had been created, rules that were designed to insure a girl never had to be taken there, as long as she followed them.
What had happened to Hunter there that night, what her father had done to her, was so evil, so excruciatingly painful that her spirit could not survive. To this day, Hunter could feel the emptiness, the void, the dark abyss that had replaced her innocence ever since. For the most part, she tried not to remember, blocking it from her memory, but she could still sense it, lurking in the dark underbelly of her subconscious. The hollow feeling never left her.
Suddenly an image flashed through Hunter’s mind. It was memory, not more than a remnant, she had forgotten, of the shadow house. Confusion swirled through her mind, clouding her understanding and comprehension of what she was remembering. In her mind’s eye Hunter saw blood, the straw, shadows. She remembered the house, its architecture, its smell, how it was so far in the woods no one would hear her screams.
Then in an instant all of it, every image, every memory, vanished from her mind.
Her eyes focused, anchoring her to the present, immediately filling her vision with her father, as he stood over her. She studied his cruel expression, the familiarity of his menacing smile.
“Tie her up,” he said, instructing Ash. The edge in his tone sliced through Hunter, jolting her. She was desperate to back away, but couldn’t. “The van will be here soon.”
Ash yanked Hunter, forcing her to cross the room and then lowered her to the floor with the rest of the girls. He braced her down, digging his knee into her lap, with no concern for her comfort, as he extracted thick plastic ties from his jeans pocket. Hunter glared at him coldly, doing everything in her power to stab him with her hateful gaze, hoping to stir up his humanity, or at the very least make him feel guilty, but Ash seemed beyond affect. He simply began to tie her wrists together behind her back with the plastic.
She had only known Ash a week, less than that perhaps. Their time together had been a whirlwind of mystery. Unraveling the secrets and lies, attempting to grasp whether he was a friend or enemy, had taken every ounce of energy and instinct that Hunter had. Ash had convinced her he was on her side, despite the fact that her father had hired him to come after her with instructions to return her to the shadow house, and Hunter had believed him. She had believed Ash had switched sides, abandoned his contract with her father, and was only interested in protecting her.
What a fool she had been. How naive was it for her to have trusted him? But she loved him.
Even in this moment, when she knew she should simply write him off as another villain she hoped to destroy, Hunter kept wondering if he loved her. Had he ever loved her? Why was he doing this now? Why had he betrayed her?
That’s when the tears began to well up in her eyes, blurring her vision. Her nose started running, but she refused to sniffle. She refused to reveal to these men that she was breaking down. She refused to let them see that they had broken her.
She could feel Ash’s warm fingers, long and firm, brushing against her wrists as he secured the plastic ties. His touch was almost like a caress, tender but subtle, brushing against her. The fact that she still craved Ash’s touch was making this all the more painful. The tears finally rolled down her cheeks as despair filled her heart.
Ash rose to his feet and stepped away from Hunter. She could feel him looking down at her. She sensed those steel blue eyes of his, studying her from above. And that’s when she realized the plastic around her right wrist wasn’t tied off properly. Her wrist felt loose, swimming inside the tie. If she wanted to, she could slip her hand through.
Without thinking her gaze darted up to Ash, meeting his, and they stared at each other. Her brow furrowed as she considered the possibilities. Was Ash really on her father’s side? Had he abandoned her, leaving her to certain death? Or was this just another elaborate illusion? Was he about to help her escape?
Ash’s expression revealed little until his eyes widened ever so slightly. Ash was trying to connect with her by allowing the light behind his eyes, the essence of his spirit, to reveal something to her. But she didn’t know what. The rest of his face, however, remained stone cold, unwavering, without so much as a hint of mercy.
If he had intended to tie her wrists in such a way that she
could
get free, if tying her wrist loosely hadn’t been a simple accident, then Hunter thought she would see a plan forming behind those eyes. She thought his gaze would contain an air of conspiracy, something she could cling to and use in order to overtake Grizzly. She continued to hold his gaze, but still got virtually nothing. What was he waiting for? Or was he merely tormenting her with hope?