Chapter 33
THIRTY-THREE
LINDY
As she started to come around, she could hear a drip, drip, dripping sound coming from somewhere above her.
Hands tied behind her back; her face pressed against a cold hard wall…
where was she? After prising her sticky eyes open, all she could see was pitch-darkness.
Shivering, she went to call out but that was near impossible with the tape over her mouth.
Her blood pulsed through her body and her breaths quickened, making it so much harder to hear what was going on around her.
There was another drip. Was it a drip? She shivered violently.
It was so cold. She tried to kick out but her ankles were bound by something smooth but tight that was digging into her skin.
What happened? She had a memory blank. Her head hurt.
Not just hurt, but pounded. Someone had hit her that hard, they’d rendered her unconscious.
As her mind darted to thoughts of Kain, she knew that whoever took her had killed Kain.
But… she didn’t owe anyone any money. Was this all about money?
All she had was questions. If it was about money, it could be easily solved, she’d sell her mother’s house and pay whatever debt Kain had run up.
It was starting to come back. She’d been in the living room and she’d heard noises coming from the back garden but when she checked, there was nobody there.
The call… she was on a call to Pia, begging her to come over.
It had been the wine talking. She had been so embarrassingly drunk and sad.
Who wouldn’t be sad after losing their mother, then finding out their brother had been murdered, despite how horrible he’d been?
That’s it – she asked Pia to come over and then she’d heard the noise again.
On reaching the back door, she spotted that a bit of the window had been broken but the door was still closed.
Her heart had started hammering the moment she saw that the keys in the back door were still slightly swaying.
Earlier that day, someone had been in her house. Come to think of it, she had thought that her bag had been moved from one kitchen chair to the other.
Despite being in complete darkness, she felt the room spinning but this situation was sobering her up, fast. She kicked out at nothing, then she made a nasally noise behind the tape.
She wasn’t closed in. The room sounded and felt big, echoey even.
She began to half-rock in an attempt to keep warmer, then she flinched as something crawled across her face.
She wanted to scream and yell. The thought of an eight-legged-freak on her face was too much.
All she could do was make that useless nasally sound, over and over again.
She wanted to shout, what do you want? Let me go.
You can have money. Whatever you want. Just let me go.
She knew she’d give the psycho imprisoning her anything in exchange for her freedom.
A shuffling sound panicked her. He was there, close enough for her to hear him move through the sound of blood in her ears and her muffled screams. Was he enjoying watching her squirm?
Maybe he was wearing night-vision goggles.
She’d seen The Silence of the Lambs and thinking of that film in this moment was making everything worse.
She had no way of hitting, kicking, screaming or even moving properly.
She was a slave to his wants, needs and desires and she knew that murder was his endgame. She was going to end up like Kain.
She thought of Pia. Had she seen the state of the kitchen?
She hoped she’d reported it. She hoped so.
Blood – she had a flashback to her own blood being cast across the wall as her attacker hit her.
She was about to investigate the door and look through the window to see if anyone was in the garden but the pink teddy bear on the table had distracted her.
She had turned her back for a second. She scrunched her brows as she tried to remember.
It had to be a man. She didn’t see him; her back was turned.
He had swiped her from behind and she’d just caught that glint of blue metal, like a pole, as she fell.
Before she could catch sight of him, the lights went off and she saw a glint of green in the darkness.
That’s why she thought of night-vision goggles.
He must have been hiding in that cleaning cupboard while she was drinking alone in the living room.
Her heartbeat thrummed. She thought she’d heard a creak coming from that cupboard earlier that day before Justine came over but she’d given herself a talking to for being ridiculous.
Another image came back to her; she was swinging over a shoulder with a blindfold on and something was forced into her mouth while her attacker held it closed.
Had she been thrown into the boot of a car?
A pill. She’d been drugged but it wasn’t anything too strong because she was awake now.
It had all happened insanely fast. Maybe it was a light muscle relaxant.
The shuffling got closer. She did all she could to keep her nausea under control and it wasn’t helping that all she could taste was stale red wine at the back of her tongue. Was he going to rape her before he killed her? Would her body remain forever trapped in this dark hell, never to be found?
The shuffling stopped came to a halt next to her and she felt something brush against her thigh.