Three
Winslet
One thousand dollars and fifty-two cents’ worth of supplies, which had taken me two hours to pick out, were now loaded into the back of my VW Bug. I made my way to the cart return, feeling accomplished.
Sam’s Club’s pizza pretzels had been on my mind since I’d told Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome about them. I had a good mind to go shopping with some more of my birthday money at Sam’s Club. I could get bulk supplies of Clorox wipes, hand sanitizer, and tissues, which I’d always run out of last year. They also had a great collection of children’s books. I had sixteen kids in my classroom, and it would be a nice back-to-school treat to have a book waiting on each of their desks as a gift. All the while, I could have a pizza pretzel for lunch.
When I reached the driver’s door, I was lost in thought about what all I could use for my classroom when I felt something move in close behind me. Startled, I tried to spin around, but an arm wrapped around my waist like a band of steel, and a hand shoved a cloth into my face, holding it there so I was forced to inhale through the fabric. I tried to scream and break free, but there was no use. Whoever had me was too strong.
“Easy.”
The familiar voice caused me to freeze. He turned me around and shoved me into the back of a black SUV, hiding my struggle from the parking lot. Shock snatched away my fear, but only briefly.
Oz. The godlike man I had helped inside.
I blinked, staring straight ahead, trying to understand what was happening. Beautiful men did not need to abduct women to get their attention. Asking them out would be successful. Well, except for me—at least, I liked to think so. Regardless, I doubted this was an abduction of attraction. This was something else.
Oh God. He was a serial killer. That was it. A psychopath. I had entertained a psycho, and he was going to take me and cut me into tiny pieces.
The darkness started to ease over me as my nostrils burned. I couldn’t fight it. What was happening…
I was lying on something cold and hard. My eyes felt heavy as I tried to open them. Shifting my body, I felt several aches, and the rough touch of concrete rubbed over the back of my legs. Fighting hard, I pried open my eyes, and the sharp pain in my head caused me to wince.
Was I hungover? I hadn’t felt like this since my sophomore year of college. I rarely drank alcohol.
The exposed wooden beams over my head were all I could make out in the darkness. This was not my apartment. It wasn’t Perry’s either. I opened my mouth to call for him, confused as to where I was, hoping my brother was with me, but it was a hoarse whisper. My mouth was so dry that I couldn’t swallow. Wheezing, I sat up, struggling to breathe deep.
My eyes closed again tightly to fight off the pain. I inhaled deeply through my nose, then scrunched it up from the scent. It smelled like mildew and earth. Something soured as well.
I had to get out of here. Figure out where I was.
Placing my hands on the hard concrete slab, I tried to push up and failed at my first attempt. My legs felt weak and shaky.
Panic began to seep in, and I scrambled to remember what I had done. Had I gone somewhere with Alec? Another frat party? Had I been drugged? No…no. I wasn’t in college. There was no more Alec in my life. I was a…I was a teacher. I taught second grade.
I opened my eyes slowly again. The throb was still beating on my skull like a drum. Squinting, I surveyed my surroundings.
Concrete floor I had already established. Walls were also concrete. The ceiling was wood. There were no windows. There were no lights. I saw nothing close to me. No furniture or other life-form.
Why wasn’t there saliva in my mouth? I had never wanted water this bad in my life. I had seen something about this. Dry mouth, headache, confusion. I should know what this was. I felt like it was right on the tip of my tongue, which was currently stuck to my teeth.
Footsteps echoed from somewhere in the darkness, and fear had me scrambling backward on my butt, using my legs to push me. If I trusted that I could stand without falling flat on my face, I’d get up and run. I wasn’t alone, but this felt bad. Something very wrong was going on.
A light appeared, glowing around a figure as it drew closer. I held my breath, waiting.
Please be Perry. Please, please, please.
I would even take Alec right now. Just someone who wasn’t going to kill me.
The sound of a key clanging against metal startled me.
When the lantern light was feet away, I could see a man. A tall man with slate-gray eyes, black hair, the face of a god.
I sucked in a breath, staring up at him. The man from Hobby Lobby. The one who had needed directions to the paint supplies. The voice I had heard in my ear before…
“What did you do to me?” I asked frantically. My own voice sounded unfamiliar. Hoarse and weak.
He tilted his head to the side, as if to study me, before pulling out a metal chair that I hadn’t been able to see in the shadows. When he sat down, he placed a brown paper bag he had been carrying in his other hand on the floor beside him. Still, he said nothing.
Serial killer. He’d put something over my mouth and nose that made me pass out. What was that called? I’d seen it before in movies. Chloroform or something like that.
He’d taken me from the parking lot to do what? Kill me in his basement?
Opening the bag with one hand, he kept his eyes on me. He reached in and pulled out a bottle of water. It wasn’t a big bottle. One of the small ones my second graders often had in their lunch boxes. He held it up for me to see, then tossed it my way.
Desperate for something to drink, I grabbed it and twisted off the top, then downed it with little thought to what might be in it. I didn’t care. It was cold. Tasted like clean water. I continued until every drop was gone.
When I looked back at him, he made a tsking sound and shook his head, as if I had made a mistake.
Oh God. Had he drugged it? Was I going to black out again? Would he rape me? Cut me up? Hang me on a cross and torture me? Shove things in my mouth and down my throat until I choked to death?
I wished I hadn’t watched all those crime shows now. I understood the saying ignorance is bliss at this moment.
He reached into the bag again, pulled out something wrapped in foil, and began to open it. The familiar paper holder that Sam’s Club served their hot dogs in appeared, along with the yummy goodness I had told him about when we spoke in Hobby Lobby.
I watched as he held it up and took a bite. The fact that I thought his jaw and neck flexing was sexy wasn’t lost on me. He might be a psycho, but he was a gorgeous one. With really hot neck muscles. My mouth watered, and I wasn’t sure if it was because I wanted that hot dog or the man eating it.
When he swallowed, he shrugged. “Not bad.”
Not bad? It was freaking delicious. And I hadn’t eaten in…well, I wasn’t sure what time it was. Where was my phone? I reached around for my purse, and of course, it wasn’t there.
“What did you do with my purse?” I asked him, sounding more like myself now that my mouth wasn’t one big cotton ball.
“Upstairs. You keep a lot of shit in it for such a small space. Why do you have so many two-dollar bills in your wallet? And what is with the seven different lip balms?”
He had gone through my purse. Why was that so shocking? He’d also abducted me. He could have seen me naked for all I knew. My arms wrapped protectively around my body as if I were naked right now. I didn’t like the vulnerability this situation had me in. Even if my captor was the most stunning man alive. He was mentally unstable.
“Kids like two-dollar bills. I’m trying to get sixteen for my class this year as a surprise for the day we start working on counting currency,” I explained. “And I like lip balm…and I never know what mood I will be in from day to day. One day, I might want the lavender vanilla, and the next, perhaps I will be in a Creamsicle kinda mood.”
While I answered his questions, he continued eating the hot dog. Not savoring it the way I loved to do. He was just eating it all sexy, caveman-like.
“Why am I here?” I asked him, trying not to show how freaking terrified I was.
The one thing I had learned on all those crime shows was not to let them see you scared. Keep your head on straight. Remain calm. I could think of a way out of here. I needed clues as to where I was.
He polished off the last of his snack and wadded the wrapping up in a ball, then tossed it to the ground, letting it roll over toward me. I wanted to grab it and lick whatever condiments were left, but I wasn’t about to let him see me stoop that low.
“Because your brother stole from me and my family. So, we stole from him,” he replied with a tilt of his head in my direction before reaching into the bag and pulling out a large bottle of water.
He smirked at me as I watched him open it and take a long pull. More throat action that transfixed me momentarily before I comprehended what he had just said.
“Perry?” I asked incredulously. “My brother, Perry?”
He had the wrong person. I wanted to sigh in relief. Perry didn’t steal. He was the most honest, trustworthy person I knew.
“Yep,” he drawled, his tongue flicking the metal bar pierced through it against the inside of his mouth. He pulled out another foil-wrapped item from the bag. This one was too large to be a hot dog. “Perry Gerard. Your only family member. Younger brother. CEO of Gerard Software and Apps. Also mastermind artist behind the best counterfeit US currency in circulation.”
A laugh bubbled out of me as I stared at him. He opened the item in his hand, and a pizza pretzel appeared. He raised his eyebrows at me.
“You think that’s funny?” he asked, his tone a deadly warning.
I didn’t care. He was so wrong. Perry did not have anything to do with counterfeit money. He feared getting a parking ticket. He paid more taxes to the IRS than necessary. The man was a saint.
“I think you have him confused with someone else. Perry is”—I shrugged—“well, a nerd. A law-abiding, talented, computer-knowledgeable Einstein. He is so scared of doing something wrong that he goes out of his way to do the right thing. In a very annoying way sometimes. Like my birthday. He couldn’t take me on a trip he had planned to take me on, although I hadn’t asked to go. It had all been his grand idea. Anyway, he deposited the money into my account, then went silent on me. He changed his phone number. When he sees I have spent the stupid money, he will call me, give me his new number, and ask if I am free for lunch.” I let out a soft laugh and held up my hands, palms up, and shrugged. “Salt-of-the-earth kinda good.”
Oz continued to eat. He was on his third bite of the pretzel pizza, and my stomach rumbled. I was so hungry, and I could smell that from here. As soon as he let me out of here, I was going to Sam’s to buy five of each!
“Perry is a criminal, and if we don’t kill him, the Feds will lock him up for many years. He’s been making counterfeit dollars. Really fucking excellent ones. The kind that those nifty little markers can’t even detect. So good that it went unnoticed by us for six months. He was able to pay his gambling debts to me, then won some back until he had run over four million of his fake bills through us and gotten clean ones back in return. And he didn’t change his number to hide from you. He’s hiding from us. From me. But”—Oz wadded up his trash again and tossed it right at me—“I think you know all that.”
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and glared at me. “You see, darlin’, it takes more than an angel face like that one you have and a sexy body with all the right curves to get into my head. I’ve fucked lots of hot pieces of ass. I’ve fucked one in the ass while a friend was taking her in the cunt. A sweet little thing like you, who teaches second graders at a Christian school, doesn’t really do it for me. You can either cut the shit and tell me where to find your brother or you will stay here.” He paused, and his gaze swung over the area, then back to me. “In this basement. Without food. One small water bottle a day.” He pointed over to a dark corner. “That five-gallon bucket over there is for you to piss and shit in until he comes out of hiding to find you. Your phone is upstairs, charging. I want him to track it. I’m waiting. Because I’m not the fucking Feds.” He stood up, taking his bottle of water with him.
His eyes looked more like hard steel now. Hateful. Unwavering. “I’m the Mafia. We only lock up bitches. Him? He’ll be tortured before he dies.”
A strangled sound came from my throat, and I struggled to stand up as he turned around to walk away, leaving the electric lantern with me.
“Wait! Don’t. He didn’t do this! I would know! I swear it! Please believe me!” I cried out as my knees almost buckled, sending me to the ground.
He didn’t look back, but he stopped. “I have all the time in the world, Winzy. And this is only the beginning of what I will do to you. When you’re ready to tell me something that isn’t a fucking lie, I will listen.”
Winzy. He’d called me Winzy. He knew my nickname. He had known it when he approached me in the scrapbook aisle.
The sound of a gate closing made me tense up, and I walked in the direction he had gone, stopping to pick up the lantern. The metal bars made me tremble once I was close enough to see them. I wasn’t just in a basement. I was in some kind of cell.
My stomach rumbled, and my mouth was dry again. I needed more water. How much longer was it until tomorrow? Would he bring it in the morning, or would I have to wait a full twenty-four hours? I had lived through being starved, but never without water.
Tears stung my eyes, and I fought them back. I didn’t need to cry. That would cause me to lose more water from my body and would only lead to dehydration quicker. I mean, I wasn’t a doctor, but that sounded right. It made sense at least.
I walked back to the chair and the bag he had left, opening it to hopefully find something inside. There was one lone napkin and the small container of marinara sauce that he was supposed to dip the pretzel in. I jerked it out and opened it, then drank it from the cup before using my finger to clean off every last bit I could get. After that, I went to the wadded-up wrappers and opened them to lick the mustard, ketchup, and cheese from them.
When there was nothing left, I placed all the garbage back in the bag and rolled the top down, then walked over to the five-gallon bucket he’d said was in the corner. Like I’d expected, there was nothing to wipe with. I placed the bag beside it, knowing I’d need it later for other things.
When you had grown up with a mother like mine, then you knew how to improvise.
Perry could track my phone. He would tell the cops. Oz might be Mafia or whatever. That was a little hard to believe though. Just because he was a bookie or doing some illegal sports gambling didn’t make him the Mafia. I had read books about the Mafia. They weren’t Southern boys with a thick drawl who wore jeans and boots like God had made them just for that purpose. They were Russian, Italian, Irish, and lived in the north. Big cities, like New York and Boston. They wore expensive suits and diamonds on their fingers. They had accents and tattoos.
Mafia, my ass.
I rolled my eyes and sank down against the wall, bringing my knees up to my chin and wrapping my arms around them.
Perry would send someone to find me. The psycho bookie would go to prison. I just had to wait. My abandoned car, left sitting in the Hobby Lobby parking lot, would be noticed. My brother would know soon that I had been abducted.
This would be fine. It was all gonna be fine.
I rested my forehead on my knees and sighed.
The only thing that had made any sense was the gambling thing. Perry had surprised me by doing that. He’d mentioned it before on accident, then laughed it off, saying it was a fun hobby and he was good at it. That if he started to lose, he would quit.
But counterfeit money? The Feds? No freaking way.