Authors: Joyce Lamb

Tags: #Fiction, #Suspense, #Romance, #Paranormal

True Colors (40 page)

BOOK: True Colors

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The first zap makes me hard. I ignore the ache of the boner and focus on the twitching dickhead while I reload the gun. I don’t want to fuck him. Not like that, anyway. I just want to make him pay. I can’t
wait
to make him pay.

The crackle of the stun gun as I depress the trigger, the business end pressed to the dickhead’s throat, joins the buzz in my head until I can’t distinguish between the two. This feels good. This feels
so
good. Finally.
Finally
.

I start to laugh. I sound hysterical. I
am
hysterical. And I love it.

The power.

The satisfaction.

Take that, you fucking son of a bitch, motherfucking cocksucker.

“Butch, Jesus, you’ve made your point.”

Chad’s in the doorway behind me, disgust in his voice.

The smell of ketchup and burned meat assaults me. The dickhead was going to feed us burned burgers. But then I glance down at his face, his throat. It’s not the food that’s burned.

Gagging, I scramble back off the dead fucker, the stun gun falling from my hand.

“Let’s go,” Chad says.

I look up. Blood has spattered his face like paint flicked onto a canvas. He looks crazier than I feel. But he also looks as determined as I feel. We’re out of here.

My knees shake as I rise. I’m finally leaving this fucking hellhole. And all I want to do is throw up. The dickhead is dead. The fucking dickhead is
dead
. Ding-dong and all that.

I start to laugh, my breath hiccupping in my chest. Chad has to slap the shit out of me to snap me out of it.

“Hold it together, bro,” he growls. “We’re not done yet.” He looks me over and then down at himself. “We should change first.”

Good idea. Too much blood and people are going to stare.

As we change, adrenaline jacks up my excitement. I haven’t been outside in . . . something like ten, maybe eleven, years. I can’t wait to feel fresh air on my face. I hope it rains soon, because I really want to smell the rain.

I try to picture Mom’s face when she opens the front door and I’m there on the porch, her little lost boy. Of course, I have no idea where my mother lives.

And I realize I really don’t care anymore. Fuck her.

It occurs to me that if I don’t go home, back to my stupid, careless parents who never tried to find me, what do I do?

“Hey, Chad.”

He’s tucking in his shirt when he glances up. “Yeah?”

“Where do we go from here?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. Get a job. Get a life.”

“Where are we going to live?”

His next shrug is irritated. “I don’t know. Jesus, Butch, you wanted out. I helped get you out. What the fuck you want from me?”

“We’re brothers, though, right? That means we stick together?”

“Sure, it does. We’ll always be brothers.”

“Good.” I’ve always wanted a couple of brothers.

I get up the stairs first, remembering too late to be careful of booby traps. But the dickhead must have disabled them when he came downstairs, or maybe he stopped setting them when I stopped trying to escape, because I make it out of the basement without a hitch. And then I’m running, sprinting, tearing through the house, not looking, not caring. It takes me a few tries to find the front door, ending up in a closet instead, then a bathroom. Right behind me, Chad laughs his ass off. What a dick. But I’m laughing, too, and so is Brian. Freedom . . . rocks.

Finally, I find the door and fling it open.

The light blinds me. The cold is a shock. Oh, yeah, it’s winter.

Then I’m on my knees in the snow, and it’s freezing and wet and fucking bizarre, and I love it. I love it. Laughing, surprised at the clouds of steam coming out of my mouth, I scoop up some snow and pack it into a loose ball, just like I’ve seen on TV. I throw it at Brian, catching him smack in the face. He looks like he’s going to cry, but then Chad nails me in the back of the neck with a huge snowball, so hard I pitch face-first into a foot of the coldest, wettest, most awesome stuff I could ever imagine.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

A
lex didn’t open her eyes this time when she resurfaced, afraid Butch waited. She kept her head down and tried to think around the pain in her temples. She was still tied to the chair, immobilized and helpless, ready for the next head trip into the whackjob’s tormented past.

Oh, God, she couldn’t take anymore. Couldn’t . . . just couldn’t. His memories . . . they were her memories now. In less than a week, she’d experienced the highlights—lowlights?—of what he’d endured over many years. How much more before she broke? How much more before her mind snapped and she became as warped as Butch?

Maybe she was already broken and just didn’t know it.

Her father used to tell her, “Sugar and spice and everything nice, that’s what my little girls are made of.” Not anymore. His littlest girl was made of anger and violence and a horrifying need to beat something bloody with her bare hands.

“Alex.”

That sounded like Logan, but she didn’t dare move. Where was Butch? Waiting, no doubt, waiting to touch her, to drive her back into the depths of hell.

“Alex, baby, he’s not here. We’re alone.”

She blinked her eyes open, raised her head. Battery-powered lanterns lit the living room now, and even that dim light stabbed into her head until she squinted.

Logan, still secured to a chair, sat about eight feet away, peering intently at her. “Alex, Jesus, thank God. Are you okay?”

She swallowed against her dry throat, moistened her lips and started to nod only to stop and clamp her eyes closed at the sick whirl. The side of her face ached where Butch had struck her, bestowing a hot, throbbing bruise that wouldn’t fade in less than an hour. In some ways, she preferred the more lasting kind of physical pain. At least that was real. And, oh, God, was that twisted?

“Talk to me, baby. Are you okay?”

She nodded, eyes still closed, swallowing against a surge of nausea.

“I’m going to rip that fucker’s lungs out,” Logan muttered.

Forcing her eyes open, she focused on his face, his beautiful face, his blue, blue eyes, and felt the nausea ebb. “What about you? Okay?”

He smiled at her, really smiled. “Happy as hell to see your chocolate browns. You’ve been out for a while.”

She shifted on the chair, retested the strength of her bonds. Still secure, though not so tight that her hands had gone numb. Butch had many years of experience using ropes and other restraints on women.

“Alex.”

She blinked at Logan, realized he’d been talking to her. Worry put deep creases in his forehead, but she had no idea how to reassure him, or even if she could.

“We’re in one of those ritzy neighborhoods near the Gulf,” he said, probably repeating himself, considering the way his eyes locked on hers, intently searching. “A vacant house. Big one. Lots of sprawling land on the side I could see before it got dark. I imagine the house is surrounded on all sides like that.”

“Secluded.” She had to force herself to talk, to focus, her brain constantly sidetracked by the memory—Butch’s memory—of the first slide of a blade into flesh. And the thump of fists against blood-streaked skin and hard bone. The twitches and jolts of a stun gun pressed repeatedly against skin and muscle. The titillating scents of blood and sweat and fear and the intense sexual thrill that went with them.

“No one to hear if we yell for help.” Logan jutted his chin toward a collection of knives laid out on the carpet along the glass wall, large to small. “He wasn’t here when I woke, but he’ll be back.”

She rotated her wrists against the ropes, wincing as the rough texture abraded her skin. Maybe blood would act as a lubricant, and she could slip free.

“Noah will have called the police,” Logan said. “Everyone is looking for us.”

She didn’t respond, eyes closed against the burn as she turned both wrists, back and forth, back and forth, her brain stalled on Logan’s previous statement: He’ll be back.

Alex vowed to kill the bastard then. For all those women. For Dieter. For what he planned to do to Logan.

She knew how it felt to kill. Knew what happened when fury blinded you to right and wrong, when you handed control over to rage. It felt good to pummel your hatred into the soft tissue of a helpless human being. The warm, wet, salty spray of blood on your face could feel just as refreshing, just as enjoyable, as water droplets thrown from Gulf waves.

She imagined Butch’s blood flying as she took one of his knives and slashed at him with it. The image in her head . . . it should have repulsed her. It didn’t. She didn’t care anymore that he’d been abused as a child. He’d made a choice when his tormentor had handed him a weapon. He’d chosen to plunge that knife into a helpless woman rather than end his own captivity. He’d made a choice to kill. A choice to torture.

“Alex?”

She blinked at Logan, found him watching her carefully, scrutinizing.

“What happened while I was out?” he asked slowly.

She shook her head against the emotion overtaking her. “He killed Dieter.”

“What? Jesus!” He yanked anew at his bonds. “Son of a bitch. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Dieter never did anything to him. He was a good dog. The best.”

“Yes, he was. He was damn lucky you took him in.”

“Not so lucky now.” Her voice fractured on the words, and a tear dripped down her cheek.

Logan peered at her, helplessness clear in his eyes. “Alex, honey, I need you to hang on. Don’t give up.”

“I’m not giving up,” she said, cold now, determined. “I’m imagining what it will be like to kill the bastard.”

Logan’s brows arched sharply. “Are you . . . okay?”

She didn’t know how to respond. No, she wasn’t okay. She’d used a knife. Her fists. She’d stunned and reloaded, stunned again. And it felt good. It felt . . . incredible.

Logan’s jaw clenched hard. “I scrambled your system when I touched you, didn’t I? I was trying to get you to run, and all I did was fuck you up. God, I’m such an idiot.”

Always with the guilt. He had no idea how easy it was to let it go and embrace the dark side. So, so easy.

“What did you see?” he asked.

She closed her eyes, swallowed hard. The rope biting into her flesh stung, made her head swim and her stomach churn, but her bonds slipped more easily now. A warm, wet trickle down one palm gave her hope. And that almost made her laugh. Of all the things to offer hope.

“Alex. Please, talk to me. Tell me what you saw.”

She met Logan’s eyes. He had such blue eyes, and she remembered how it felt to sink into them, to drown. She remembered the warm clutch of emotion deep in her chest, reached for it now to ground her, searched for her anchor. But there was nothing. Just cold . . . blank . . . nothing.

“Alex?”

“His first . . . kill.”

“Fuck.” Logan jerked at his bonds, nearly snarling with frustration. “Son of a
bitch
.”

“I feel . . . it’s like I did it.
I
did it.”

“You didn’t. You know you didn’t.”

“But I experienced it. I
felt
it. I felt what he felt, and it . . . it was
me
holding the knife.”

“Alex, honey, it wasn’t you. It could never be you.”

Arguing wouldn’t change anything. And he would never understand. Never grasp how powerfully she experienced the things that happened to Butch, happened to
her
.
Changed
her.

“I love you.”

How forcefully he said it startled her almost as much as the words. She met his eyes, captured by their intensity, and couldn’t look away.

“Don’t think about him, Alex. Don’t let what’s in that asshole’s fucked-up head take you down. Think about us. Think about what we’ve got, who we are together. We’re good together. We’re
great
. We have years ahead of us, Alex. Years and years. We’re going to walk away from this. Together.”

But one of us won’t be the same, she thought. One of us will be changed forever. And not for the—

“Tell me what else you saw.”

She shook her head. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. Tell me, Alex. Tell me and let me carry it. I’ll carry it and you can forget it.”

BOOK: True Colors

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