True Colors (39 page)
“You don’t have to be afraid, Butchie. I’m here. I’m going to help you, so you do it right.”
He moves around the table until he’s behind me. He smells like sweat and cigarettes, and I almost gag. But I hold still anyway—stun gun fear—and try not to tense as he reaches around me and grasps my hand that holds the knife. Both of his hands are pudgy and damp. Disgusting.
“You don’t have to rush,” he says in his low, teaching voice. “You have all the time you need. In order to do things right, you have to go slow. Okay?”
I nod and swallow, careful to avoid the woman’s eyes. She’s jerking against her restraints, and the skin of her wrists and ankles is raw. Any second now blood will be flowing where the bonds hold her.
“Where would you like to start?” he asks.
Like she’s a steak, cooked medium rare and topped with sautéed mushrooms, pink juices ready to flow at the first stab of the knife.
“How about here?” He angles the tip of the knife over the inside of her right breast, not breaking the skin, just skating the blade over that pale slope.
She sucks in a breath, and the hairs on my arms stand up.
“Yes,” he breathes behind me. “That was nice, wasn’t it? That soft sigh. Because she knows you have the power. You are in charge of her body. You can play it like an instrument. With your fingers. With your tongue. With your . . .”
He takes my hand and draws it down and back between us, presses it against the front of his pants, and holy God—
I jerk away from him. My hand burns, my face just as hot. I twist away from him and around, the knife thrust before me. “No!”
He walks around to the other side of the table, a grin on his face that I want to cut off, a grin that shouldn’t be there considering the last time he handed me a knife. My arm still aches from where he broke it. A small price for the big satisfaction of making him bleed for a change.
“Relax, Butchie. I’m not into boys. This is what I’m into.” He trails a hand over the woman’s breast, his fingers leisurely toying with her nipple. “If you don’t do something with your present, open her, for instance, I might be tempted to claim her for myself.”
She whimpers, and I feel sick. And too warm. My hand, the one that touched him . . . there . . . tingles.
I hold my breath and watch. He lingers over the woman’s body, his hands touching her . . . in places I’ve seen only in the pages of my anatomy book. I can’t see those places now . . . but I am curious. Especially when her whimpers grow more desperate, and blood starts to slick her wrists.
“You want to touch?” he asks. “She’s soft and warm.” He grins. “She wants you, Butchie.”
I close my eyes tight and concentrate, but that doesn’t stop what happens to my crotch. Blood is engorging my penis, making it hard and erect, preparing it for the penetration of sexual intercourse. That’s what I’ve learned from my anatomy books.
It’s not the first time my body has done this, and I know what happens if I touch it and manipulate it and work it. It’s feels pretty fucking good. But this is the first time I’ve gotten an erection in the presence of him.
And her.
His grin widens. “Ahh, there’s my good little Butchie. I was beginning to worry about you.”
I swallow hard, adjusting my grip on the knife. I could so easily plunge it right into his throat. I would, too, if I knew I could escape this time, if I knew where he put the booby traps. His fucking traps have stopped me every time. Stair steps that give way under my weight. A whole fuckload of ten-pound weights that drop from the ceiling when I open the door at the top of the stairs. It’s like the bastard knows what I’m thinking, knows when I’m going to try to get the fuck out.
Jesus H. Christ, I hate that pasty son of a bitch.
“You want to fuck her now, don’t you, Butchie? You want to fuck her until she screams.”
I kind of do. My dick is starting to throb, starting to insist. It’s like the more pissed off I get, the harder I get.
“I’ll make a deal with you, Butchie. If you cut her, I’ll let you fuck her.”
My heart thuds, and I can feel it down there.
“As many times as you want. All day if you want. All you have to do is cut her.”
I swallow hard, wet my lips. All I have to do is . . .
I raise the knife.
“Pick a good place,” he says, soft and reverent. “The first cut, first blood, is always the best, so you have to make it good.”
I set the tip of the blade just an inch above her belly button. Oh, man, I can’t wait to get inside her. Can’t wait for that first thrust. I’ve had nothing until now. Nothing but pain and captivity. No pleasure. No fucking
sunlight
. All I have are scars. And the memories of my own screams.
sunlight
. All I have are scars. And the memories of my own screams.
“Breathe, Butchie. Nice and easy.”
The blade is against her skin. Her clean, white skin. So pretty and soft. The scent of lilies and . . . Mommy. Who let me get taken. Who never rescued me.
The blade slides in easier than I expected, and blood wells as her body convulses so hard it reminds me of what happens to me, and how good I feel, when I come in my hand.
And then I’m coming for real, spurting inside my pants . . .
Alex slammed back into herself with a choked cry. Her stomach heaved, and she bent forward, coughing and gagging, her head heavy and dizzy. She had nothing in her stomach to come up, but she stayed bent over her knees and tried to breathe while she waited for the spins to abate.
Hot tears stung her eyes, and she closed them tight. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God.
That was the moment that threw the switch inside a teen boy’s head. He’d resisted as long as he could, too afraid to try to escape, too terrorized to defend himself. And that was the defining moment, when pain and blood and a blade became the main ingredients necessary for the only pleasure he’d ever known.
“Your happy place?”
She raised her head, weary to the bone as a dull throb began its staccato beat in her temples.
Butch McGee leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, posture expectant.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said, her voice hoarse and weak. Dizzy. She was so damn dizzy. And her head hurt, like someone had taken a power drill to the inside of her skull. She had to make this—him—stop. “He made you who you are. It wasn’t your fault.”
“Who?”
“The man who taught you how to cut a woman.”
He straightened away from the wall, one fist clenching at his side. “What are you talking about?”
“You want to know about my happy place, don’t you? Fine, I’ll tell you.” Stalling was all she had. Come on, Logan, come on. “When you touch me, I flash on the horrible things that happened to you in the past.”
Butch stared at her in almost comical disbelief. “Come again?”
“It’s a psychic ability called empathy.”
Butch tilted his head. “And people think
I’m
crazy.”
I’m
crazy.”
“I can prove it.” Anything to keep him facing her and talking, leaving Logan uncovered. When he regained consciousness, maybe he could do something. “He . . . he burned you with cigarettes. He kept you prisoner in the basement of his house.”
Butch’s eyes narrowed to suspicious slits. “The FBI must have done a psych profile on me.”
“No, no. I haven’t talked to the FBI about you at all. I was going to, but . . . but you killed Sally Blake, and they had to deal with that crime scene before they got to me.” She searched for something more to say, to keep his attention focused on her. “You have them stumped, you know. They don’t think they’ll ever catch you. You’re too smart for them.”
His tight lips curved slightly. “I am.”
“But if you take revenge on Logan and kill him, a police officer, that will make them even more determined to find you and make you pay.”
“But they won’t find me. They haven’t in twenty years.”
“Because you’ve been so smart. And now you’re risking getting caught for some twisted idea of revenge for something Logan doesn’t even remember doing.”
“He remembers. Believe me.”
“But he doesn’t know who you are.”
“He will.”
“You’re going to lose yourself because of this. You know you are.”
“Lose myself? I
found
myself a long time ago.”
found
myself a long time ago.”
“But you’re not Butch McGee. You’re Tyler Ambrose.”
His jaw hardened, muscles contracting at both temples. “Shut up.”
“That horrible man kidnapped you, Tyler Ambrose, at the mall. He offered you candy, and you . . . you thought it was okay to accept it because he helped your mom shovel snow once. Remember that? Remember? And you felt so stupid about it, because he kidnapped you and tortured you. He . . . he made you his apprentice. And . . . and Brian—”
“How can you possibly know about Brian?” he cut in, his tone soft, deadly.
“I told you. Every time you touch me, I take a trip into your head, your worst memories, your defining moments. I become . . . you.” She remembered the slide of the knife through soft flesh, the resulting surge of pleasure, and shuddered. How would she ever be able to separate his memories from her own?
Butch approached her, arms still crossed, brow creased with curiosity. He stopped a few feet away, close enough for her to smell his sweat. “Just now, in my head, what did you see?”
She couldn’t believe he already bought it. Yes, it was the truth, but she’d expected him to assume she was bluffing. “The first time he made you . . . you didn’t want to, but he made you do it. He made you cut . . .” She had to fight off the gag reflex.
“You’re wrong.” His voice was rough as gravel. “I wanted to. I always wanted to. That’s why it’s so good.”
“But you kept thinking about how you didn’t want to do it. You wanted to stab him with the knife instead, but you were afraid.”
“I was never afraid!” He backhanded her.
We’re going to do it when he brings dinner. Any minute.
“Are you sure, Butchie? Are you sure we can do it?” Brian looks unsure and more than a little scared.
“Get over it, Brian,” Chad says, punching him too hard in the arm. “We’ll be fine. Butch and I will take good care of you.”
“Will we find my mom?” Brian doesn’t complain about the punch. He’s used to it by now. “I really want to go home to my mom.”
The eternal optimist. As if any of us can go home after what the dickhead’s made us do. Well, maybe Brian. Maybe it’s not too late for him. He’s not old enough to . . . play with the big boys, to kill and enjoy it, though he’s definitely got issues, that’s for damn sure. He arrived as a sick little fuck. Probably why the dickhead nabbed him to begin with.
Me and Chad, though, we’re officially screwed. We’ve opened a few too many presents.
I’m glad I’m not alone there. Chad makes things easier. He liked it here, at first. He said it’s better than living on the streets, hustling for cash. Offering a blow job for twenty bucks to the dickhead was the best thing he ever did. He got a warm bed and three squares a day.
Then he got bored. Didn’t take long. A couple of weeks maybe. He doesn’t enjoy the presents as much as I do.
I tense as I hear the dickhead’s footsteps on the stairs. “He’s coming.”
Chad gives me a nod and steps into position so that when the door opens, he’ll be behind it. Brian and I sit on the bed, the way we’re supposed to, our hands where the dickhead can see them.
The key clicks in the lock. The hair on the back of my neck shoots straight up. This is it, this is it, this is it.
The door swings open, Chad hidden behind it.
The dickhead takes one step into our prison cell before he locks eyes with me and stops. “Where’s Chad?”
Chad shoves the door closed so hard that it knocks the dickhead back on his ass, the tray of hamburgers and French fries splatting him in the chest. As the food falls to the floor, the smell of ketchup bursts into the air while Chad and I pounce on him as one. We punch and pummel and screech like little girls. I hit him, right in the face, and blood sprays upward, warm and wet and awesome.
And then I remember, and I yell, “Stop! Wait! Wait!”
It takes forever for Chad to hear me. He finally stops, and then he and Brian are staring at me like I’m the nutjob. The dickhead moans on the floor and makes a gurgling sound. I kneel beside him, my heart pounding with excitement, and work the stun gun out of the holster on his hip.
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