Survival Games (9 page)

Jessica sobbed,
covering her face with her hands and the memory of the second dream flashed in
her mind again. She knew he would eventually make her eat her words, like he
had before.

When the tears
dried up, she headed into the bathroom, splashing her face with water. She
reached for a towel, voicing the mantra that began in her head. “I need to
survive.”

Movement out of
the corner of her eye tripled her heart rate and she glanced at the empty
doorway.
Oh God, what if it’s him again. What if he decided to make good on
his threat
. The thought produced a delicious trembling fear and she waited,
but nothing stirred and she looked back at the mirror.

Eric stood in a
room she didn’t recognize, smiling at her.

“Don’t give up,
Mom. I’ll show you what to do with the key when he isn’t watching.” Then his
reflection faded away.

She watched and
the realization of where he had been slowly dawned on her. He was in school, in
the school restroom looking at her in the mirror. A small sound escaped her and
she touched the mirror. She wasn’t imagining seeing him, she would have never
placed him there, and he could see her and touch her and the key, he had really
given that to her.

She stared in the
mirror and tilted her head to the side. The night before was a blur – a flurry
of jumbled memories, sporadic at best and she couldn’t help feel that something
significant happened after he drugged her, but the labyrinth of her
subconscious was shut tight. Studying her reflection, his words echoed
ominously in her ear.

Whom would you
beg to save?

Her kids flashed
through her mind first and then her eyes closed as the only other name that
came to mind escaped her lips, but he had died in a horrible house fire with
his wife.

Mike paced in his
room watching the screen as the video played. Jessica dancing and singing in
her room and obviously high as a kite. The fact that Ty was standing there
watching struck both fury and terror in Mike’s heart. Mike stopped moving when
Jessica messed up Ty’s hair and stood back smiling at him.

The tape suddenly fast-forwarded
through the next part showing Ty crawling next to her on the mattress, holding
her through the night, and leaving before she woke. Mike watched with his mouth
hanging open as the most terrifying thought since he was brought to this hellhole
passed through his mind:
He’s in love with her.

Mike sat down hard
on the floor, the morning scene unfolding on the wide screen before him and confirming
his greatest fears. The monster that ruined his life was in love with the woman
of his dreams, and she kissed him back. His heart plummeted into his stomach
and he closed his eyes, slowly shaking his head.
She couldn’t, could she?

* *
* *

Ty smiled with
satisfaction at the devastation etched in Mike’s face. “Yep, she certainly
kissed me back, lapse of judgment or not.”

He switched the
monitor in Mike’s room off. Leaving him to replay it over and over in his mind,
the sheer joy of torturing the son of a bitch who prompted him to bring Jessica
here was bitter sweet. It was time to do his job and he collected the discs of
Jessica and wandered into the observation room overlooking her cell. He paused,
staring at her jogging on the treadmill of her own free will.

“Humph,” he
grunted and inserted the discs in order in the editing suite, along with a
blank disc and pulled the software up online. Before he began the task of
editing the scenes together, he slid a CD into the player and opened the feed
to her room.

Unwell
filled
her room and she jumped.

Ty smiled. He went
through each of the tapes, 13 in all that interested him. He strung the scenes
together in total with all the different camera angles onto one disc to work
from and then he switched the feed into Jessica’s room and began piecing each
scene meticulously together with intertwining camera angles of last night’s
events.

* *
* *

The music
continued in the background and Jessica watched, reliving the experience of him
being so close, the way he looked at her and the frightening way her face
displayed her desires, even though her mouth denied them. The video kept
stopping, rewinding, and replaying with different views as he edited. Each
scene was crafted together with expert speed and creative genius.

Jessica turned the
treadmill off and the picture froze.

Bedroom Eyes
walked in the room.

“Run,” he said and
reached over the front of the treadmill, snapping the handcuffs around her
wrists. She didn’t fight. She was looking from the screen to his face and back.
He turned on the treadmill and left the room.

Jessica’s jaw
dropped slightly as she watched the scene with the three of them after the
drugs clouded her mind. Chaos ensued and she stared at the screen, seeing
exactly what her drugged mind wiped out. She watched the split screen with him
in it, his barely contained smugness transitioning to frightening rage when she
outed Frank. His eyes in particular, darkened a shade, becoming deadly daggers
aimed at his brother.

Her intuition that
he was a dangerous man compounded when he crossed the room in a split second
and caught Frank in mid-air. Jessica shivered as she watched him beat his own
brother. She apparently had passed some test of his and the video switched from
that room back into hers as he brought her back in.

Jessica watched
him say, “I’m sorry about Frank,” on screen and the way he held her and kissed
her hair as she cried caught her by surprise. She didn’t remember that, she
didn’t remember any of it. She watched him leave the room and a few seconds
later music was piped in. The tape suddenly rewound to a full view of her
walking out of the bathroom in the red dress and running her hands through her
hair and then it faded again. The fade up was her in her room swaying to the
music. Jessica realized he edited out any record of him displaying kindness and
looked at the mirror.

Jessica’s brow
creased, she didn’t remember any of this and she watched, studying him,
studying the way he casually leaned against the wall, studying the sexy smile
on his lips. Her dancing image took no notice of him at first, continuing her
oblivious twirling pirouettes and singing at the top of her lungs to the music
filling the room.

Jessica started to
cry when he smiled, God help her, when he smiled like that it thrilled her.

The irony of the
song struck her as her feet pounded on the treadmill. “Calling All Angels”, the
words echoing from the screen, she saw herself dance over and comment on his
smile, ask him to lean over, mess up his hair and dance away. The screen went
blank after he said, “Girl, you got moves.”

“No!” Jessica
yelled at her reflection, tears sliding down her cheeks and more than her
running regiment keeping her breathless.

The video came on
again at the point she began to fall, the two scenes seamlessly edited
together. Bedroom Eyes caught her easily and lay her on the bed gently, the
scene faded. The tape then fast-forwarded through the night. She saw him come in,
lie next to her, and wrap his arms around her before the screen went black
again.

Jessica turned her
gaze to the mirror, swallowing the lump in her throat. She knew she would need
all the angels in heaven to help her, because he was in love with her and that
made him much more dangerous than he already was.

The full irony of
the song hit her like a blow to the stomach and she wondered if he even caught
the significance of the choice. “God almighty,” Jessica whispered and looked at
her reflection, the dream she remembered was still dancing around in her
memory. She closed her eyes and the ring he held up for her in the snow-covered
yard sparkled in her memory.
I can’t.
She thought and her eyes opened.

The scene rewound
from the fade of her on the bed to the fade up of him walking in the room with
the tray of fruit and sitting next to her. The morning seduction unfolded
before her eyes and she watched him onscreen. When the scene faded, she had no
more doubts and tears poured down her cheeks, blurring her vision.

* *
* *

He watched her
running and switched off the feed. Only the music stream flowed into her room
now. He could hear her sobbing and finished tying up the end of the video,
fading to black.

He sat in the room
watching her through the glass. He had been doing this for a while and she was
still running. He slowly got up and headed to her room.

They looked at
each other without a word and tears streaked from her bloodshot eyes. He
approached the treadmill tentatively, turned it off and freed her hands. He
took a step back as she got off on wobbly legs.

“What do you want
me to say?”

“That you want
me,” he said very softly.
That you feel the same things I do.

Jessica hung her
head and she sank to the floor, a sob escaping while she shook her head. “I
can’t,” she whispered her voice barely audible. “I can’t,” she repeated.

“Why?” his voice
laced with bitterness.

She looked up at
him. “Because, you’re a monster.”

Ty stepped back as
if he’d been hit with a powerful blow. He backed out of the room, slamming the
door behind him. He sank to his knees in the hall struggling to catch his
breath, the weight of what she said crashed down on him. He closed his eyes and
leaned against the door. With a shaky hand, he slowly wiped his face.

“What the hell am
I doing?” he asked the empty hall.

He sat with his
head leaning against the door, arms resting on his bent knees.
She’s wrong. I’m
not a monster.
But he knew well enough that she hit the nail on the head. He
looked around, knowing he’d live up to that label by the time this was all
over.

Mike lay on the
mattress and as Ty predicted, the images looped in his mind in a sick cycle,
replaying again and again whether he wanted it to or not.

He closed his
eyes, escaping into the past, to the first time he saw her, roughly seven years
before. He had been assigned a project that was out of his realm of expertise
so he called the players into a meeting to get up to speed. Jessica was one of
the major knowledge foundations and when she walked in the room, she set him on
fire. He remembered the disappointment when he looked at her left hand.
Damn
,
she was wearing a wedding band.

Jessica was smart.
She also was an amazing flirt and she knew how to use her assets to her
advantage. She even had rendered him speechless once, which was not an easy
thing to do.

He had scheduled
an offsite for the group and she called him to ask if everyone could wear jeans
and be comfortable. He had said he didn’t care and her response was “As long as
we wear something, right?” He smiled at the memory. She insisted it was an
innocent slip; she was just trying to be cute. He could still hear her laughter
when he replied, “I don’t know how to respond to that.”

He would kill to
hear her laugh like that again. Mike’s eyes flew opened. He had killed for her.
He ran his hand over his face, shoving that thought aside and slipped back into
the past.

The offsite
increased his appetite for her; just seeing her operate a room full of people
was awe-inspiring. She had an interesting combination of freedom and
intelligence that was sexy as hell. He would have given anything to take her up
to one of the rooms in the hotel and do to her what Ty had done.

Soon after the
offsite, a heat wave hit New England and Mike smiled, recalling the day he
found out she felt the same. She had sent an email asking if he wanted to go
for a walk but it was too hot out for his tastes. He had declined, telling her
so.

Her email back
sent a shock through him.

Some like it
hot
. She had written.

He looked at the
computer screen weighing how to respond. He took a chance and sent back:
Are
you talking about the weather ???

The next words
that flashed on the screen made his jaw drop.

Perhaps. Are
you familiar with chemistry?

On impulse, he
asked if she felt it too.

Yes. Scares the
hell out of me and yet…

Yet?

And yet...

You want to?

When the word
Yes
flashed on the screen, he flew over to her desk. “We need to talk.”

She swung her
chair around and smiled, reducing him to a mass of overactive hormones. He just
wanted to take her in his arms, but instead, they went for a coffee in the
cafeteria.

When they sat down
with their drinks, she told him she didn’t know quite what to do with the
situation, she loved her husband, but there was undeniable chemistry. Being
that close to her drove him crazy. He wanted her so bad he ached.

Mike opened his
eyes and looked at the blank monitor. He stood up in frustration and screamed. “You
son of a bitch!” He paced the room again and threw a punch at the wall. The
pain vibrated up his arm and he punched again, scraping the skin off his
knuckles. “If I EVER get my hands on you, I will tear you apart!”

Jessica lay with
her eyes closed thinking about the images he let her see. Heaven help her,
every fiber of her being wanted him. That low husky voice of his along with his
seductive hands and velvety lips got to her. His smile could melt armor and he
could be downright sexy when he wasn’t trying. She was sure now, that he was in
love with her, and that terrified her to the core.

Jessica wasn’t
sure if the first deluge of videos he showed her was a blessing or a curse. If
she hadn’t seen them, she never would have known what a monster he really was. She
was sure she wouldn’t have been able to resist without the knowledge they got
off on humiliating, raping, torturing and killing.

Even though he
only appeared in the hot videos, he edited everything. He saw everything and
did nothing to stop it. That made him a monster.

No matter how much
she physically wanted him, she would never say what he wanted because that was
giving up her power and once that happened, it was all over.

The complete irony
of her song choice made her smile. She sang softly.

“In a world
that what we want is what we want until it’s ours…”

She had one hope,
one bet and if she played her cards right she’d get out of this mess alive.