Memory: Book Two (Scars 2) (13 page)

I
woke up later when it was dark outside. My head hurt and my eyes were swollen;
the pillow beneath me was still wet with tears and I wondered if I had cried in
my sleep as well. I wiped my face as I sat up. Everything was still. Antony
mustn’t have come back yet. I didn’t bother to turn on the lights as I
descended the stairs, but I stopped mid-step when I heard a noise. It was a
gurgling type sound and an ounce of fear went through me. Cautiously, I
continued down, my footsteps silent. I turned the corner into the kitchen,
which was still in darkness, and saw a dark shape on the floor. Holding my
breath, I flicked on the light.

The
large shape of Antony’s man assaulted my eyes and senses. He lay on the floor,
a mess of blood pooling around him as he held his throat, but that didn’t stop
the blood. His eyes were wide as he stared at me, and all I could do was to
stare back in horror at him.

Then
I gave myself a mental slap and leaped over the blood to get a towel from the
kitchen to press against his neck. Grimacing, I knelt down beside him to try
and stem the blood, but it was hopeless. I watched, hands red with his blood,
as he died right in front of me. He was still staring at me, but this time his
eyes were lifeless and empty. I sucked in a breath and struggled to get to my
feet, on autopilot knowing that I had to call someone. I grasped the phone, but
that slipped away from me under my bloody grip. It clattered to the floor and I
couldn’t bring myself to pick it up again, I was too numb with shock.

In
the back of my mind, I knew that I had to get out of there. But my limbs didn’t
seem to work, nothing worked, not even my brain. It was all I could do to
breathe as I stood and stared at that dead man on the kitchen floor.

Vomit
rose up in me and I gave a cough that seemed to jolt me back to reality. My
feet started to work and I made an unsteady step backwards, ready to run. But I
hit something hard behind me and that had me spinning in fright. A blonde young
man stared down at me, showing bright white teeth as his mouth spread in a
smile. Something about him seeped through the fog in my brain. It was the
feelings at first, the renewed dread, and then the memory returned, bright with
all its horror.

“Ryan?”
I croaked.

His
smile was sickeningly sweet. “How are you, princess?”

I
backed away from him, sliding in blood until my feet met the dead body and I
fell backwards over it, hitting the floor hard and landing my hands in the dark
red that stained everything. I swallowed down a scream, sliding back in panic
to get as far away from the body, and Ryan, as I could.

But
it was in vain. He carefully stepped around the blood to stand over me, and all
I could do was to hold my hands up with my blood covered palms out as a sort of
weak defense. He shook his head and gave a sort of tsk tsk sound as he looked
mildly amused at my terror.

“It’s
all right, Paige. If you’re a good girl and do as you’re told, it won’t be
necessary to hurt you again.” His tone was soft and soothing as his face
cracked into a broad smile again. “And I must apologize for my actions the last
time we met. I had no intention to hurt you that way but sometimes the rage in
me takes over …and, well, I promise to do my best not to injure you again.” He
crossed his heart mockingly as I stared up at him. His other hand held a gun.
“Please get up, Paige. You’re going to take a shower.”

His
voice was so gentle and polite that I felt that I was in an alternate reality;
one where a dead man didn’t lie near my feet in a pool of blood. What was my
choice here? There was none. Unsteadily, I began to get to my feet as I
attempted to control the shaking in my body. 

“I’d
help you, but,” he held up a clean hand, “I’d rather not get dirty if you don’t
mind.”

I
stared at that hand, why was it clean when he had just butchered this man? Did
blood wash off that easily? Or was someone else here?”

“I
don’t need your help,” I said quietly, finally steady on my feet.

He
just gave a small nod and motioned with his clean hand. “I believe that there
is a bathroom this way.”

I
took a step, not letting my eyes leave his.

“Please
hurry, we don’t have all day,” he said politely.

Reluctantly,
I turned and started to walk slowly down the hall to the bathroom. My feet
tracked red footprints behind me and an odd thought entered my mind that Aaron
would be pissed about the mess. Ryan turned the shower on for me. “Go on.”

There
was no point protesting, plus as the blood dried on me as a pungent and sticky
mess, it would be harder to run later.
If
there was a later. I removed
the clothes slowly, letting them fall from my fingertips with regret at the
loss of their useless coverage. I remembered when I had begged Aaron not to
make me strip; I would not beg again.

Averting
my eyes from Ryan, I stepped under the spray of the shower. I had no wish to
see what was in his eyes, whether it be lust, hatred, or sadistic amusement. If
I saw his eyes, it would send my brain spinning with possibilities of what
could occur next and that would be a mere waste of energy. A slight numbness
came over me as I soaped at the blood. Fear was a useless emotion. It had done
nothing for me up until this point and I wouldn’t let it rule me again.

Time
after time, I lathered the soap and watched it turn pink before being washed
away down the drain. When finally it ran clear, I turned the water off. Ryan
held out a towel which I took and wrapped around my naked form before I dared
to look at him again.

“Let’s
get you dressed.” His lips flickered up slightly as he motioned toward the
door.  I led the way, with him close behind as I walked up the stairs and into
the bedroom. I chose my own clothes, opting for tough jeans and a long sleeved
t-shirt to provide as much protection as possible. If he killed me, I didn’t
want to be naked. I did not want my body to be found as some faceless young woman,
her entire life whittled down to a naked body, a victim and vulnerable…that had
been my life for far too long. He remained silent as I dressed, waiting
patiently even as I ran a comb through my hair. Finally, I set it down on a
side table and waited.

“Shall
we? Ladies first.” He moved aside so I could go through the door, wary of his
psycho personality. Aaron may have been a psychopath, but at least he was
consistent. As I got to the bottom of the stairs and turned into the kitchen at
Ryan’s urging, I came to an abrupt stop.

The
doctor who had been treating me stood staring down at the dead body, his face
twisted in anguish. I opened my mouth to warn him but Ryan spoke first.

“You’re
still here? I thought you’d be long gone.”

The
doctor lifted his eyes to him, they were bloodshot but I wasn’t sure if that
was from drugs or tears. “I need my money first,” the man rasped out. It was
then that I saw his hands; they were pink, like he had tried to wash off blood
but had not quite succeeded.

“Of
course. It’s on the counter, in the bag.”

The
doctor turned and reached for a black canvas bag that lay there. His shaking
hands opened it, and then closed it again, apparently satisfied. He still
looked anguished, and only then did I realize that his dark clothes were wet
with blood. He avoided my eyes, keeping his gaze solely on Ryan who stood
beside me.

“I
wasn’t supposed to get my hands dirty,” the doctor muttered. “You said nothing
about this. You just said that I needed to prepare the syringes, you said
nothing about actually killing anyone.”

Ryan
lifted a shoulder. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve paid you. Aaron will probably
torture you regardless if he catches up with you. It’s all the same outcome,”
he said in a matter-of-fact tone.

The
doctor shifted his wide, panicked eyes to me. “He made me,” he said
desperately. “You tell him that this guy blackmailed me. I didn’t have a
choice
.”
He took a step forward. “This wasn’t my fault, the betrayal, tell him that this
wasn’t my fau—”

He
dropped as Ryan shot a bullet straight through his forehead. I sucked in a
panicked breath and dug my nails into the palms of my hands, my head ringing
from the sound of the shot as I kept trying to keep my eyes away from the now
still body, but my gaze kept being drawn to it.

“Junkies,”
Ryan said. “You can’t trust them. They always blame someone else for their
misfortune.” The cheeriness of his tone made me want to puke, and when he took
my arm in his grasp I felt like his touch burned.

“Why
did you do that?” I croaked out.

“He
served his purpose. Who knew the good doctor could be so handy with a knife? He
should have been a surgeon.” He began to pull me toward the door. Was Aaron’s
man still keeping watch over the house? A small amount of hope flared in me.

But
it died swiftly when I caught sight of the car through the gates. There was no
one inside it.

“This
way,” Ryan sang, opening the passenger door to the red station wagon that sat
in the driveway. He pushed on my head, forcing me in, even though I put up no
resistance. As the door shut behind me, I felt even more trapped. What was I
doing? Why wasn’t I fighting? Why was I just sitting here?

His
hand was still on his gun as he settled in the driver’s seat. He twisted the
key in the ignition and the car roared to life. “Get comfortable, we have a
long drive ahead of us.”

“Where
are we going?” I huddled close to the passenger window, as far away from that
gun as I could get.

“It’s
a surprise. It’s actually a place where I spent a lot of my childhood. Aaron
knows it well,” he said casually as he carefully backed out onto the road like
we were going on some pleasant Sunday drive.

“Aaron?
How does he know it?” I asked faintly.

“Oh,
me and Aaron go way back.” He let out a low whistle. “I don’t think that he’d
recognize me now though. He was about three or four years older than me back
then, and I was just some weedy kid that got in the way of him screwing my
sister.”

“Sister?”
I repeated dumbly.

“Yeah.
Meredith was about sixteen and he was only twelve, but he looked a lot older
and he was such a good looking kid that the girls didn’t care that he was
younger.” His face screwed up slightly. “It didn’t work out so well for any of
us though.”

“What
do you mean?”

He
stared straight at the road with seriousness, before he took an audible breath
and relaxed into a smile. “Nothing.”

I
stayed quiet, swallowing the urge to ask more questions. Aaron had obviously
seen me with him. From a distance at least, he mustn’t have recognized Ryan.
The desire to know more overruled common sense and I ventured another question.

“So,
did you grow up on a farm like Aaron did?” He was taking us out of the city and
a fresh sense of panic started to rise in me, although I managed to keep my
voice even.

He
kept his eyes on the road, and his hand still held the gun. “Not a farm, more
of a lifestyle property. We were self-sufficient. We had enough food stores,
fuel and weapons to last long after the Devil brought his wrath upon us.”

“Devil?”
I couldn’t stop myself. “You don’t really believe in that, do you?”

He
flicked his eyes to me quickly. “Don’t you? Are you telling me that you have
never come across true evil? That you have never come across men who do his
work? Wreaking death and pain on all who cross their path?”

I
was stunned into silence. It would have been simple to brand him as crazy, but
his reasoning made sense. I made a mental list of the men who had done me harm,
names that I tried never to think of, except for Aaron… always Aaron.

“So
who’s your Devil?” I asked when I could speak again.

He
slid his gaze over to me. “You know.”

I
didn’t like his tone. It was like we shared a secret, something in common, and
I didn’t like that one single bit.

“So
what did he do?” I snapped out. “Or was it just that he fucked your sister?”
Instantly I regretted the nastiness in my tone, flinching in anticipation of
his anger.

But
he surprised me by doing nothing. He slowly took his gaze from the road and
looked at me briefly with a small smile on his face, before returning his
concentration to driving. “No, Paige. I am not annoyed because he was having
sex with my sister. She was obviously a willing participant. It’s what he did
later.” He spoke calmly and rationally and it gave me the courage to enquire
further.

“Which
was?”

He
shook his head. “We’ve got a long drive a head of us. You should get some
sleep,” he told me. We were out of the city now and exposed to a tranquil ocean
view that had me yearning for Aaron’s house and the security that I had
sometimes felt there. This ocean that we were flying past was deceptively calm
but from a distance there were storm clouds preparing to let loose a torrent of
driving rain.

“Here.”
The gun was on his lap now and with his free hand he held a syringe. I didn’t
know where that had come from. “This will help you sleep.”