Chapter 33
Devon”s Jeep was parked at the bottom of Kathleen and Phil’s private driveway. The one place Morris Security didn’t put any cameras. At least that I know of because as we walk down the short paved driveway, I don’t see any. Cole stops me when I go to open the passenger side door.
“You’ll understand if I don’t trust you having use of your hands while I drive, right?” He smiles as he pulls a long white zip tie from his back pocket.
I laugh, eyeing my handy work across his jaw and cheek. Slowly, I put my hands out to him with a smirk. “You’re really afraid of a five foot nothing girl, huh?”
Cole says nothing as he binds my wrists together with the plastic strip, tightening it until the locking piece pinches my skin. When he’s finished, he grips my jaw with one hand, squeezing my cheeks so hard my eyes begin to water. “You’re kinda cute when you’re afraid, you know that?” The scent of redwood and cedar fill my nostrils. Cole leans in as though he’s going to kiss me and whispers in my ear. “I’m going to make you beg me to kill you. Just like I did to your twins whore sister.” My body vibrates with rage from his sinister confession. Acting on instinct, I slam my head into Cole’s face. His teeth scrape over my forehead, and warm droplets of blood sprinkle my face from the bloody lip I gave him. “You bitch,” he yells. His hand goes back and cracks across my face with force, sending my entire body sideways. “I was going to be nice and leave this off.” Cole pulls a dingy looking off white sack from the passenger side seat and pulls it over my head. “But if you won’t play nice, neither will I.” With that, he shoves me head first into the vehicle and slams the door.
The acrid smell of wet concrete mixed with the salty air of the bay is the first thing I notice when Cole yanks me out of the Jeep. He leaves the sack over my head and drags me by my bound hands for a while before he stops. The sound of metal scraping metal lets me know a door is being opened and I’m shoved across a threshold. The light filtering through the fabric over my eyes shifts when the door clangs shut behind me.
“Go,” Cole growls shoving at my shoulder again. I take a step forward and stumble, nearly missing the step down. Cole’s laughter echoes along the walls. “It would have been hilarious to watch you fall, but I do need you able to use your hands before I kill you.”
Cole’s arm brushes mine as he walks past me and grabs hold of my wrists. We can’t be at what remains of the night club because the smells in the air are wrong. Even as we descend the flight of stairs I can smell the brininess of the bay. The place where he crashed the van the other night was somewhere in San Jose, and not even close to the water. How many different villain lairs does this guy have? After walking down what feels like a hundred steps, Cole stops and pulls the sack off my head.
“I can’t wait for you to see what’s behind door number one,” he laughs. The glow of the dim lights give his pale skin a yellow pallor.
“What if I want what’s behind door number two?” I glare at him in defiance.
He smiles at me, reaching for the door handle. “There is no other door for you, Ginger.”
Cole pushes the door open and right away I’m hit with the coopery tang of blood in the air. It takes all my strength for me to keep my mouth shut and my expression neutral as I look at the horrors in front of me. Adrian sits, tied to a chair in front of a table. The same white shirt he wore yesterday, now rust colored and dirty. Dried blood crusts his jaw, his neck and the sides of his arms, bruises blooming on his exposed skin. My grandfather’s lawyer, Calvin, sits next to him in the same situation. Tied to a chair, bloody and bruised.
“Adrian,” I cry. I move to go to the two of them but Cole grabs me by the collar of my shirt.
“That’s not even the best part.” It’s almost as if Cole timed everything to get the most reactions out of me, because his words are emphasized by the rattling of chains behind me. I whirl around and almost lose the contents of my stomach when I see Tate and Liam hanging from the ceiling. Their hands bound with what looks like electrical cords and thick chains looping between their wrists leading up to the hooks suspending them in the air. Their clothes have been removed and I can see the full extent of the damage to their bodies.
Liam is bruised from head to toe, the largest one runs down his right side covering half his abdomen. His face is as swollen as it was in the picture Cole showed me, his hair is matted to his forehead with blood. Tate is in no better shape with a stab wound to match the stitched one on the other side. His body is equally battered, but as I look at him in horror, I feel a small bit of relief when his chest moves up and down slightly. He’s still alive.
“You sick fuck!” I seethe, turning to face Cole. “Why the fuck did you do this to them?”
He stalks over to me. His coal colored eyes boring holes into my soul. “They’ve complicated things. Made my life more difficult by keeping you from me.”
“You have me now, let them all go.” I take a step closing the distance between me and Cole. My eyes pleading, I look at him hoping for a shred of compassion to exist somewhere in his body.
He just laughs and pulls a pocket knife from his back pocket. “If you can cut them down, they can go free.” He places the closed knife in my hands.
“Cut the zip tie so I can,” I say. How the hell am I supposed to do anything with my hands tied?
“No can do. If you really want both of them to live, you need to figure it out yourself.” Cole smirks and I don’t miss the amusement in his tone. This is a fucking game to him. But Liam is alive too!
I rush over to the two men dangling from the ceiling. I lost Devon, I cannot lose Liam and Tate too. I fumble with the pocket knife between my small hands, trying to pry it open with my teeth. Liam moans in pain, the first sign of life from him since I walked into the room. I look up and watch, with fat tears rolling down my cheeks, as he tries to lift his head. The skin under the cables is red and raw looking. I don’t know how long they’ve been hanging like this, but I know it’s been a while.
“It’s okay,” I whisper. “I’m going to find a way to get you guys down.”
“No,” Tate coughs beside Liam. I turn to look at him, the top of the knife blade between my teeth as I hold the wooden handle and pull. It finally flicks open, but I don’t feel any relief. “Rhyann, get out of here.” Tate”s voice is hoarse, his words come out slowly with each ragged breath he takes.
“Shut up,” Cole’s fist connects with Tate”s side, the side with his stitches— blood stained with a few busted open.
“He’s not,”—cough— “gonna let us”—cough— “go.” Tate sputters.
“I told you if you can get them down, they can go,” Cole says, now standing beside me, watching me struggle to cut the zip tie around my own wrists. I ignore him and put all my focus on trying to free myself until the knife drops and skids across the floor in my haste. “You’re fucking pathetic,” Cole laughs. He steps over to the knife and kicks it all the way across the room. “And these morons actually think you can run a multi-million dollar company?”
His laugh echoes through the room. A red haze falls over my eyes and I charge at him, not thinking, not caring about the consequences. Tate’s right. Cole has no intention of letting any of us go. Even under that small shred of hope I have, I know that if he walks out of this room, it’ll be after the rest of us are dead. Cole’s leg goes up so fast I don’t see it happen until it connects with my chest, knocking the wind out of me. My back slams into Liam’s legs and he lets out a moan. I stumble forward, trying to steady myself.
“Liam,” I gasp. “I’m so sorry, I’m gonna get you guys down.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Cole says mockingly.
“Please,” I beg, standing in front of the two men I love protectively. “Let them go.”
Cole shrugs, “Since you asked so politely.” He walks over to Tate and pulls another knife from somewhere on his clothing— how many knives does this freak have— and cuts the table around Tate”s wrist. Tate lets out a pained howl as his body hits the hard concrete floor. I stifle my gasp, in the urgency to get them help, I didn’t think about how I’d get their bodies down without causing them more pain. Cole walks over and does the same with Liam. His body crumples to the floor behind me. I bend down to check on him since he hasn’t made a sound and almost immediately, I’m yanked up by my hair. I let out a scream, my bound hands flying up and clawing at Cole’s hand as he drags me by my hair to the table where Adrian and Calvin sit, almost forgotten. “The rest of the guests should be here any minute now, then we will have our little party.” Cole pulls out a chair. “Now sit down. I did as you asked, they’re free to go whenever they like.”
I do as I’m told, gawking at him. “You said you’d let them go,” I cry.
“And I did. Are they still hanging? No. They aren’t. If they want to leave, they are more than welcome to stand up and walk out of this room.” He walks around the table and slaps Calvin across the face. “It’s rude to sleep when you have a guest over.” Cole laughs. “Didn’t your mother teach you good manners?”
Calvin coughs, crimson tinted spittle coats his lips as his eyes slowly open. “Rhyann,” he whispers, giving me a sad look. “I’m sorry.”
Cole walks over to Adrian. With a fist full of what used to be hair almost as dark as his own, Cole yanks Adrian’s head back. “Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey,” Cole laughs. Adrian groans and opens his eyes.
“Adrian?” I reach my hands across the table to him. He blinks twice and then looks at me sadly with the same gray eyes as his son.
“Rhyann,” Adrian chokes out. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Good” Adrian tries to smile. “Where’s Tate? The twins?”
“Enough.” Cole shoves Adrian’s head forward. “There will be time for reunions in a moment. I believe the rest of our guests have arrived.”
The four of us wait silently, Adrian watching me, refusing to look past me, at the nightmare against the far wall as though he already knows the answers to his questions. My heart breaks for him. Fuck! My heart is breaking for me, for my guys. For the fact that if Liam lives through this, he lost his brother, Tate won’t just lose me, he lost Dev too.
I’m racking my brain, trying to remember the YouTube videos I watched the other night about how to escape a kidnapping. It was only a matter of time when I would have to save myself, so I went where everyone in this decade goes when they want to learn something on the fly, YouTube. The guy doing the video demonstrated how to get out of different restraints from duct tape, to rope, and even zip ties. If only I could—
The screeching of metal breaks my train of thought as the door behind me opens. “What took you so long?” Cole looks past me at the new arrivals.
“This piece of shit actually expected me to help him move the other piece of shit.” The sound of a familiar feminine voice has me grinding my teeth as I turn around. Aubree stands in the doorway, her arms folded over her chest. Instead of the usual sun dress and ballet flats, she’s wearing some tacky ass floral leggings, a baby blue halter tank and sneakers, her blonde curls are pulled back into a high ponytail leaving the blue and green bruises from when I busted her nose yesterday in plain view. I smile at my handiwork.
“How’s the nose, Aubree?” I ask, attempting to hide my surprise at her involvement.
“Ugh, why isn’t she gagged?” Aubree stomps her foot like a child.
“Petulance isn’t a good look on you,” I smirk. “But neither are those leggings.”
She stomps over to me, fisting my hair and yanking my head back. That’s the second time in an hour someone has pulled my hair and not in the good way. “You’re not going to be smirking like that when I own everything that’s yours and you’re rotting in prison, bitch.” She spits in my face. Unable to control myself, I laugh hysterically to hide the angry tears that threaten to fall and I watch as Aubree walks over to Tate and kicks him in the gut. “Being rid of you was always the best part of the plan,” she says and walks over to Cole, wrapping her arms around his waist.
There’s the sound of breathless grunting followed by rhythmic thumping coming from outside the room and a second later, the back of a gangly looking man in a sweat stained white t-shirt drags something—no someone— through the door.
“Dev,” I cry, pushing up from the chair and running to him. His head moves slowly from side to side. Duct tape covers his mouth and binds his hands and feet. but he’s alive. Oh god, he’s alive. I let the hot tears fall when he looks at me with those icy blue eyes.
“Put him with the rest of the whores trash,” Aubree says. I look up at the person dragging Devon over to where his brother and Tate are laying on the ground. The smell of sweat and poor hygiene is so strong it leaves an invisible trail in his wake. I cover my mouth with my arm as I gag from the stench.
“Rhyann, meet Earl.” Cole gestures to the man who just brought Devon in. “Oh wait, you already have.” He laughs as I try to figure out his meaning. It hits me almost instantly, the smell the size of the guy. Holy shit! I look from Earl to Cole and Aubree and back with wide eyes, realization on my face. “You’re putting it together now, aren’t you?”
“You were the one who tried to kidnap me the first time?” I ask Earl. He doesn’t reply, he just turns and stares at Cole.
“Where’s my crank? We had an agreement. I want what’s mine and I’m out of here.” Earl growls. I get a good look at his face. The scabs from picking at his skin cover what his mangy, unkempt beard doesn’t and the few teeth that haven’t rotted away from years of drug use are stained a yellowish brown.
“I told you when the job is done, you’ll get your payment and the job isn’t done until all loose ends are dealt with.” Cole tells him.
“She’s prettier when she’s sleeping,” Earl says, smiling down at me with his meth corroded smile. “Maybe I’ll take her out into the hall and play with her while I wait for my payment.” Dev makes a muffled sound like he’s trying to yell from behind the duct tape over his mouth as I try not to puke all over the floor. Earl leans down, his hand reaching out for me as I lift my leg kicking him in his balls. The man doubles over and I scramble to where Devon sits with Tate and Liam”s unconscious bodies. “Fucking cunt.” Earl doubles over in pain, cupping his groin with both his hands.
“What are you doing?” Aubree asks. I ignore her and rip the duct tape from Devon”s face, taking the small bit of scruff that was there with it.
“Dev, oh my god. I thought you were dead.” I cry.
“Did they hurt you?” he asks.
“No, not physically, but—” I look at the other two people lying next to us.
Devon looks at his brother and lover and takes in the damage done to their bodies. “I’ll fucking kill you,” he says to Earl, or Cole or all three of them. I turn and glare at Cole as he watches with a sick smile on his face, his arms wrapped around Tate”s former fiance.
“Yeah, I don’t think you’re in the position to make threats right now.” Cole says with a laugh. “Now, let’s get down to business, shall we?” He gestures to the table and chair where Adrian and Calvin sit and watch silently. “Rhyann, we have paperwork to go over.”
“What paperwork?” I ask not budging from the floor beside Devon.
“Shut up and do as you’re told,” Aubree tells me.
“What paperwork?” I ask Cole again. Earl regains his composure and turns around and grabs me by my bound wrists.
“Have a seat, and you’ll find out.” Cole says in a deadpan tone and nods to Earl. The dirty tweeker yanks me up on my feet.
“Hey!” Devon pushes up, reaching out with his arms, but his hands are tied— literally— and he’s as helpless as I am.
“Shut the fuck up,” Earl snarls as he kicks Devon in the side before pushing me back to the table with Adrian and Calvin. He shoves me into the chair so hard it skids away from the table an inch. I rest my hands in my lap as Earl pushes the chair closer to the table snarling something about needing his shit under his breath. Dude smells like shit already. What more does he need?
“Aubree love,” Cole smiles at the stupid bitch. “Would you please handle Earl’s payment?”
“Me? Why do I have to do it?” she asks, looking at Earl in disgust.
Cole kisses the top of her head. “Baby, I told you you’d have to get your pretty little hands dirty, didn’t I?”
“Yes, but—” Aubree huffs. “Fine.” She holds out her hand. Cole hands her the same knife he used to cut Tate and Liam free. It’s a large hunting knife with a serrated edge near the hilt and a sharp point at the tip. Earl’s too busy undressing me with his eyes to notice the exchange, but a sick feeling settles in the pit of my stomach when Cole walks away without handing Aubree anything else.
“Your hair is so pretty.” Earl lifts a strand of my hair and leans down, sniffing it. “It smells so good. I think I might take some of it home with me later.” I throw up a little in my mouth. I look at Adrian who is watching Earl behind me. The venom of a protective father reflected in them.
“Rhyann,” Adrian gasps and his gray eyes go wide. I turn around just as Earl stiffens, his hand freezing in my hair. Aubree stands next to him, a vicious smile on her face as she stabs him not once, but three times in the ribs.
“What the—” Earl chokes on the blood that slowly forms at the corners of his nasty mouth. I look on in horror as his dirty white shirt slowly turns a deep crimson. Aubree pulls the knife from Earl’s side one last time and drops it to the floor before walking back to where Cole stands. She smiles up at him as though she’s seeking praise for killing a man. Cole kisses her lips and smiles back, whispering something to her. They are one fucked up couple.
The discarded knife sits forgotten in a pool of blood between me and Earl’s crumpled body. If I can only reach it with my foot, I think to myself. I bend my knee,my leg going under the chair, the toe of my boot pushing through the sludge of Earl’s insides. I keep my eyes locked on the twisted couple as they talk privately, lost in their own sick satisfaction over Aubree’s kill. My legs are barely long enough to reach the blade, but it’s too far for me to pull it closer. I let out a frustrated sigh and give up when I catch movement out of the corner of my eye.
I chance a quick glance in Devon”s direction and he’s silently taking advantage of our captors’ distraction and has scooted a little bit closer to the center of the room. I return my gaze to the couple right as the chorus from some Taylor Swift song breaks the silence.
Aubree pulls her phone from a hidden pocket in her wretched looking leggings. “Oh. Daddy’s calling,” Aubree’s bubbly tone is just as out of place as the T Swift song coming from her phone. I roll my eyes, not the least bit surprised that she’s a die hard Swifty, the psychotic ones always are. “I’ll be right back,” she tells Cole before she kisses the unbruised side of his face and hurries out of the room.
“Shall we begin?” Cole asks. He pulls a leather briefcase from some place I can’t see and sits it on the table. “As you’ve all realized by now, I was behind the initial kidnapping.” Cole smiles with pride. “Unfortunately, it didn’t go as planned and neither did the second.” His expression changes as he looks down at me, rubbing the dark bruise on his face.
“But why?” Adrian asks. “And why bring us here? Why bring Aubree into this?”
Cole laughs. “Bring Aubree into this?” Cole waves his hands in front of him. “The whole thing was her idea.” My jaw drops and I don’t hide my surprise. “I know, no one ever sees past the beauty to see the genius that she is.”
“But I still don’t understand why?” Adrian says. I watch as he holds Cole’s attention. In my periphery, I see Devon slowly scooting closer to us. Keep talking Adrian, I think to myself. Keep him distracted.
Cole pulls out the chair at the end of the table and sits. A sinister smile on his face. “Don’t you recognize me, Dad?”