Chapter Nineteen

Revelations

I’d struggled.

He must’ve hit me with something that knocked me out for a time, because when I woke up I was no longer in my bedroom. My arms ached, pins and needles shooting through my fingers due to a lack of circulation.

I thought that was odd, until I realized why the blood wasn’t flowing to those limbs: my hands had been bound together with a thick, coarse rope, and strung up above my head. The rest of my body dangled in the air, with my tiptoes barely grazing the ground and taking a meager fraction of my weight off my wrists.

There was duct tape across my mouth, blocking my airway and my screams for help. Wherever I was, it was completely quiet. I didn’t move for several minutes, hoping that I was alone, and taking stock of my bodily inventory.

I was still wearing my jeans and my dark green sweater from earlier, but my shoes had been removed; my bare toes scraped against the rough, cool cement floor. I could no longer feel the weight of my cell phone in my back pocket. My hair fell like a curtain in front of my face, blocking my view of the room around me. Unable to use my hands to push it out of my eyes, I tilted my head up toward the ceiling and tossed it in either direction until the hair draped back over my shoulders.

“Good, you’re awake.” He’d been here all along, standing on the far side of the room watching me slowly reenter consciousness. His voice may have held the dispassionate courtesy one might use when discussing opposing political views over tea, but his underlying hostility was visible beneath the mask of composure he wore.

Ernest “Ernie” Skinner, in the flesh.

His face had more lines now and his muddy brown hair had some grey strands mixed through it, but the eyes were the same. Dark, fathomless pits of brown-black, they stared back at me, tauntingly victorious. The one difference was that now they weren’t glazed with the aftereffects of too much cocaine – they were completely lucid and full of cool triumph.

I stared at him warily, unresponsive. My mind was reeling as I tried to piece together where I was, and how I was going to get out of here. The alternative, that I wasn’t going to escape, was too terrifying to even consider.

The walls were dull gunmetal gray, and looked to be made of concrete or some other thick material. There was no furniture, with the exception of a set of metal folding chairs and a matching rusted table. Chains hung from steel rafter beams in the ceiling; I had no doubt that my hands were tied to the one running directly above my head. One bare light bulb swung from a wire, illuminating the dark room in a dim yellowish hue.

If I had to guess, I’d say I was in a basement somewhere.

“It’s good to finally see you, Brooklyn. Face to face, that is,” he laughed, a harsh unnatural sound coming from his lips. “Now that you’ve seen my little gallery, we both know I’ve been seeing you for quite a long time.”

He’d been standing about ten feet away from me, but now he began to circle closer with his arms clasped behind his back. I tugged at my wrists, trying to maneuver away from him, but the ropes binding my arms had been tied so tightly I couldn’t swing more than a few inches.

“You know, Brooklyn, you don’t look very comfortable.” He smiled. “I would cut you down, but something tells me you’d be less receptive to our little chat if I did.”

He stopped directly in front of me, an unruffled smile pasted on his lips as he reached up a hand to tenderly stroke the side my face. I tried to jerk my head away from his touch, but his hand clamped around my jaw with a bruising grip, stilling me. His sudden show of violence was at complete odds with his calm demeanor.

Now that he was closer to me, I could see he had a gaping cut on his forehead, just above his right eye. It was scabbed over, as if it had been healing for about a month, and I knew immediately that it had been put there by my stiletto heel that night in the alleyway.

With one hand still wrapped around my jawbone, he brought his other up to savagely rip the duct tape from my mouth. I yelped as the adhesive tore at my lips, splitting the bottom one open and sending a trickle of blood leaking down my chin. As I gasped for air, I watched his pupils dilate in excitement – he definitely enjoyed the sight of me hurt.

His thumb brushed at the wound, smearing the blood all over my chin and lips before he released me and took a step back. He looked down at the bright streaks of red staining his fingers and smiled softly.

I whimpered in fear.

As soon as he backed off, I began screaming for help, praying that someone above ground would hear me and send for help. His smile remained in place as my cries grew desperate, my frantic voice hoarse with use. He was serene – unhurried and unconcerned, as if he had all the time in the world to toy with me. That in itself told me numerous things: either he was crazy enough not to fear discovery by neighbors and passerby, or we were in a spot so isolated, so far removed from civilization, that no one could hear me for miles.

“Go ahead, Brooklyn,” he said. “Scream all you want. There’s no one around to hear you.”

A chill raced down my spine as my suspicions were confirmed.

I was alone. Help wasn’t coming.

“Lexi.” My voice sounded weak; clearing my throat, I tried again. “Lexi will notice if I don’t come home,” I said, trying to reason with him. “If you let me go, I promise I won’t tell anyone about this. It’ll be our secret.”

“Oh, Brooklyn,” he said, shaking his head in a show of disappointment. “I wish you hadn’t lied to me. There’s a price for lies, you know.”

“I’m not lying,” I whispered.

Abruptly, his arm flew out from behind his back and he backhanded me across the face. The force of the blow rocked my whole body backward, it’s motion only stopped by the rope tether binding my hands. Stars swam in front of my eyes and tears leaked down my face as pain ricocheted from my smarting cheekbone to my ravaged wrists and back again. My wrist bones had nearly snapped under the strain of the hit; the skin felt raw beneath the ropes, chafed, bloodied, and stinging painfully.

“There’s a price for lies,” he repeated flatly, returning his hands to their clasped position. “Now, where were we? Ah, yes. I was just about to discuss our plans for the afternoon. You didn’t have anything scheduled, did you?” He chuckled.

I didn’t respond.

“I assume you didn’t, given the fact that Lexi is off with her boyfriend for the weekend and you’ve put an end to your own dalliance with Finn.” He sneered Finn’s name with contempt, the most emotion I’d yet to see from him; even when he’d struck me across the face, he’d seemed only clinically interested, his impassive nature untouchable.

He spoke with perfect annunciation and diction, his grammar perfect and his tone practiced, as if he’d rehearsed these words countless times. He probably has, I realized. He’s been planning this for years.

“I must say, Brooklyn, it made me very happy when you broke off that relationship.”

Well, he might’ve thought he knew everything about me, but at least he didn’t know Finn and I were back together.

Wait…Finn!

I’d been so preoccupied, what with being abducted and strung up by a psychopath, that I’d completely forgotten he was coming over at eight. Hope flared to life in my chest. I had no idea what time it was now, though I suspected it was midafternoon; eight was likely still hours away, but if I could just hold on till then…

Why hadn’t I agreed to let him come over right away? I lamented internally, hating myself for telling him to wait. By the time he got to my apartment, saw the photos, realized that I’d been taken, and called the police, it may well be too late for me.

Plus, there was the fact that I didn’t even know where I was.

The hope dwindled to embers, then died out.

By this point I’d realized that he hadn’t simply been watching me or spying on me; he’d been listening, learning, picking up every scrap of information he could find. He’d probably bugged my apartment with listening devices and cameras – it would certainly explain where he’d gotten the photos of me in the shower and my bedroom.

What I didn’t understand was why. So I asked him.

“Why?” he echoed, as if the question was incomprehensible to him. I could see, beneath that veneer of calm, that I’d thrown him off balance. I didn’t understand; it should have been the simplest question in the world for a normal person to answer.

That’s when I realized: I wasn’t dealing with a normal person.

I was dealing with a sociopath.

This wasn’t a revenge mission, driven by passion or vengeance or nearly two decades of anger. It was a cool, calculated meting out of justice; his way of evening the score. And he would eliminate me as easily as a king taking a rook off the chessboard – with meticulous concentration and well-planned moves he’d thought out far in advance.

My sense of hopelessness grew as I realized what that meant.

He likely hadn’t been sloppy when he’d put this plan together, insuring that nothing was easily tied back to him. Emotions didn’t drive him, and therefore couldn’t be used to manipulate him into making mistakes. And he would have no qualms when it came time to kill me.

“Can you believe I only served twelve years before they let me out? I see from your face that you can’t.” He laughed. “You’ve gotta love that trusty old California legal system. Good behavior gets you a long way with the guards. And when I went before that parole board with tears in my eyes and told them all about how I’d found the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and he’d guided me from the dark path of substance abuse and violence, out into the light? Well, I must say, just about every damned one of them got misty-eyed.”

I stared ahead impassively, trying to show no reaction to his words.

“I should’ve gotten a damn Oscar for that performance,” he said, smiling at the memory. “Instead, I got paroled and sent back out into the world, a changed man. That’s what they want to believe, you know – that prison fixes us, takes out all the bad tendencies and swaps ‘em for goodness and a healthy respect for authority. It’s what they have to believe, otherwise they wouldn’t sleep at night – but it’s not the truth.”

I swallowed nervously, watching as he approached me once more.

“The truth is, sweet Brooklyn, that all time in the slammer does is offer you plenty of time to think,” he whispered, his breath hot on my face. “Can you guess who I thought about?”

I began to tremble.

“That’s right,” he said softly, tracing one finger down my cheek, across my collarbone, and into the cleavage revealed by the v-neck of my sweater. He stopped midway down my chest, his finger skimming slowly back and forth across the swell of my breasts. “I thought about you.”

***

He disappeared for a while, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

Arms aching, I hung with my back bowed against the strain and tried to imagine I was anywhere else in the world. Closing my eyes, I mentally erased the concrete walls around me, and pictured a different night – the night I was supposed to have.

Finn would arrive, stepping through the door and into my arms. He’d hold me, kiss me, and everything would be all right in my world again.

I think about an hour passed. It must have been close to dinnertime by now – around six or seven most likely – because my stomach had begun to rumble with hunger.

When Skinner returned, emerging from a stairwell located somewhere behind me, he was holding the green dress in one hand. A large, wickedly sharp kitchen knife was clasped in the other. He approached me and a helpless, involuntary mewling noise burst from the back of my throat. I’d begun to tremble as soon as he’d appeared.

“Now, now, Brooklyn,” he said, making a tsk sound. “I’m not going to hurt you before dinner. That wouldn’t be very polite.”

As if social niceties are a factor when you’ve got a girl hanging from your basement ceiling. He really is crazy.

“We’re going to be together for a long time, my dear. All that nasty business can certainly wait until after we’ve eaten.”

My mind raced as I wondered what constituted a “long time” in his warped brain. Minutes? Hours? Days? Years? I could barely survive the mental strain of three hours with the man – if he made me his plaything, keeping me here for weeks on end…

Well, let’s just say, I think I’d sooner choose the quick end with the sharp knife.

True to his word, he used it now only to cut me down. The bonds around my wrists remained fastened tight, but at least they were no longer forced up above my head. As soon as he severed the rope holding me up, my legs gave out and I crumpled to the hard ground like a rag doll.

My arms felt as if they were on fire as feeling came rushing back, like physical flames were licking up my arms along with the returning blood filling my vessels. I knew this was the moment – you know in all the movies, how the heroine finally gets her chance to run away, to save herself, to fight back?

I felt that moment slip away as I lay on the cement, incapacitated and utterly unable to fight for anything except the shaky breaths I struggled to drag into my lungs.

“Come now, dear, you don’t look at all excited for dinner.” His voice was quietly amused. He stood over me, enjoying the sight of me defeated. Twice, I tried to push myself up from the ground; each time, my arms gave out beneath me and I fell back to the cement floor.

He let me struggle for five minutes or so, before reaching down a hand and roughly yanking me upright. Looping an arm around my back, he dragged me over to the metal chairs in the corner of the room and threw me down onto one. When he released me I nearly slipped back to the floor, but managed to steady myself with my bound hands at the last minute.

He sat down in the other metal chair, watching me as I tried to rally the little strength I had left in my body. My breathing eventually slowed and my limbs began to regain most of their feeling. I was wiggling my fingers and toes, testing out the sensation in them, when he abruptly stood and pulled me to my feet.

“Come.”

We walked – thankfully, I didn’t need his help this time – through the basement and up a set of wooden stairs tucked against the far wall. Emerging into a dimly lit kitchen, I was shocked to discover that I knew exactly where I was.

The layout was a little different, but all of the appliances, woodwork, and furniture were the same. Hell, the walls were even painted in that unmistakable jaundiced yellow.

This was the first floor apartment of the old Victorian.

We were directly under my apartment – I’d bet my life on it. Had he been living here all year, so close to me all this time? The thought made me shiver.

He led me through the kitchen and into the living room. This was clearly his lair: the walls were covered not just in photos of me, but also in newspaper clippings. The headlines were varied, spanning years and occasions, but all centered around one thing: Me.

Local Woman Killed in Car-Jacking, Daughter Lives to Tell the Tale

Seven Year Old Gives Condemning Testimony in Court

Car-Jacking Killer Sentenced to 25 Years in San Quentin

Captain Brooklyn Turner Leads Varsity Field Hockey Team to Victory

UVA Freshman Brooklyn Turner Makes Dean’s List

He hadn’t just been following me for months – he’d been watching me for years. I forced myself to stop looking, but my eyes soon locked onto something even more disturbing. There were at least six computer monitors set up along the wall, with each screen divided to show several camera angles. They were live feeds, streaming video from inside my apartment upstairs.

Every room had been bugged.

I tried to ignore the monitor on the far left, which was dedicated to my bedroom. Or, more specifically, to my bed. There was a camera trained on every side, capturing every angle. When I thought about all the times Finn and I had been together there, all the things Skinner had witnessed, I had to choke back the vomit that was working its way up my throat. He’d violated a space I’d thought was sacred, completely private, and I had the unbearable desire to shower – as if I could scrape myself clean of the feeling of his eyes on my skin.

I felt dirty, vulnerable.

He eventually pulled me away, a smug smile on his face. He’d wanted me to see this – to understand just how deeply he was embedded in my life. To know that he’d seen everything, heard everything.

“Aren’t you going to ask how I did it?” he said, his tone anticipatory.

This is what he gets off on, I realized. He’s an egomaniac. He wants – he needs – to impress me. To frighten me. To think he’s the master puppeteer, pulling my strings and controlling every facet of my life.

That’s his weakness, I thought. Pride.

“No,” I said, making my voice uninterested just to goad him.

He fumed silently for a minute, then continued as if I hadn’t spoken.

“Isn’t it amazing what the Internet can do nowadays? You’ll never guess how easy it was to find your little Facebook page and to track down your apartment address through the university directory. Everything I needed to know about you was right there at the tips of my fingers – not to mention how easy it was for me to order all this helpful electronic equipment. Free, two-day shipping for these babies,” he laughed, gesturing toward his elaborate setup of computer monitors. “No background checks or identification required.”

I stared at the wall, trying to block out his words.

“There are YouTube tutorials for everything; there’s even a how-to guide for bugging someone’s house with cameras, right there online for anyone to watch.” He laughed maniacally, nearly giddy with his own success.

Marching me into the adjacent dining room. The table had been set for two, and I would have laughed if I’d had the stomach for it: a crisp white tablecloth glowed under the warm, ambient light of several tall taper candles. Red cloth napkins, folded into graceful triangles, sat atop gold-filigree plates. Fresh roses – red, this time – were arranged in a gorgeous crystal vase. Several warming platters sat in the center of the table, covered by silver lids.

He’d created the perfect romantic atmosphere for a dinner date for two.

Rather than leading me to my chair at the table, he pushed me toward the small settee in the corner of the room. When I landed on the plush cushions, he threw the green dress onto my lap.

“Change for dinner,” he ordered, setting his knife on the table. He didn’t need to wield like a mad man – its presence alone was an implied threat, and enough to keep me complacent.

I looked down at my bound hands. “I can’t.”

He slapped me across the face so hard my head snapped back. At least he’d hit the other cheek this time; I’ll have matching bruises, I thought, rather dazedly. Blinking away the dark spots dancing in front of my eyes, I looked up at him.

“You’ll do whatever I say without question, bitch,” he said, his voice strained. The thought that I’d disobey was nearly enough to unhinge him.

“Of course,” I agreed, trying to infuse my voice with humility. “I just wondered if you would be kind enough—” I forced out the words. “—to untie my hands first.”

His face was stony, contemplative.

“Just for a minute,” I added hastily. “So I can put on the dress. It’s beautiful.”

The last thing I wanted to do was strip bare in front of him and put on some dress he’d bought for me, like we were playing some sick, twisted game of house. But with my hands bound, I didn’t stand a chance at escaping.

If I can get my hands on that knife…

I tried not to think that far in advance. I was taking this one careful step at a time, feeling out his weaknesses and playing it smart.

“You like the dress?” he asked, skeptically.

“I love it,” I agreed immediately. “Thank you for getting it for me.”

He nodded. “I’ll take off the ropes while you change. But I will stay in the room the entire time, and if you do anything foolish there will be consequences.”

I could pretty easily guess what he meant by ‘consequences,’ watching as he picked up the knife and advanced toward me. He quickly cut my bonds, allowing the rope to fall to the floor beneath the settee, and retreated back across the room. Sitting down on of the chairs at the table, he kept the knife in his hand and his eyes on me.

Trembling, I cast my eyes down to the floor and peeled my sweater up over my head. I stood and shimmied out of my jeans, watching as they hit the floor. I resisted every urge I had to cover myself from his eyes, to put a stop to this depraved and degrading strip tease, knowing he would be angry if I did.

With shaking hands, I pulled the dress fabric over my head and settled it around my body. Smoothing down the skirt with my palms, I did up the side zipper and surreptitiously hiked up the neckline to cover as much cleavage as possible.

When I was done, I looked up and met his dark eyes across the room.

He looked both aroused and empowered by my immodest show, his gaze following my every movement.

“Sit,” he said, gesturing toward the chair to his left. “You can eat without your hands tied, for now.”

A small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

I sat and watched as he spooned a helping of chicken and potatoes onto both of our plates. It smelled good, but the thought of eating anything turned my stomach – anything I consumed would likely just come right back up again.

“Eat,” he ordered, lifting a forkful of potatoes to his mouth.

I reached for my glass of water.

We both stilled, my hand frozen midway through its reach and his fork poised in the air, when the indisputable sound of a motorcycle engine roared down the street and came to a stop outside the house.

Our gazes locked and I could tell we were both thinking the same thing.

Finn was here.

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 589