Chapter 23
Aaron
This was my choice. I set it up so they’d say yes. Even Tomás can be swayed with mind games. I hope I am right.
The breeze coming in off the ocean is warm, but I stay beside Juniper with her hand in mine until a small dinghy motors quietly toward the beach only a little farther along. We walk along until close to where it’s coming in.
“Should we get Tomás to come down here to meet him too?” she asks as the dinghy crests the last few waves and rides in to ground on the sand.
“No. I want him up there as backup.” The beach is narrow at this spot, so he’s far enough away to be able to hide but close enough to come in at a run, if he needs to.
This Shawn is a big man, which is expected considering his job, and having a somewhat surprise backup hiding in the tree line is wise. I hope. Having Tomás here, with us, would also be wise. Until now we weren’t sure where this man would arrive—by road or from the sea.
He trudges up the beach toward us, dressed in the usual shorts and T-shirt you see on most men at the beach who aren’t swimming. Plus, that jacket, which might suit an Irishman in Ireland. All his clothing is black. Night-time colors. Hiding kind of colors.
Is he armed? I cannot be sure. I have a small knife, wrapped and pocketed, and I’m likely to stab myself with it if I move fast.
“I’m Aaron Loxland.” I introduce myself, though I’m sure he will recall me.
“Hi there. It’s a grand warm night.” He wipes his face with his forearm. “Hello, girl. Glad you could both make it. Your other partner isn’t here?”
I shake my head. “What did you want to tell us, Shawn? Are we in danger, tomorrow, at this cosplay ball? If we are, can you say why?”
I stop myself from asking if Karsten is involved. I need his impartial opinion. Whatever he knows, he knows.
“You understand I could lose my job for this. You canna tell anyone it was me. Now just hold on there. I’ll get it from the wee dinghy, the proof. Wait.” He holds up a finger, jogs back to the dinghy and picks up a backpack then returns to us, rummaging in there for something.
The glint of something metal in the moonlight makes me stiffen. Juniper gasps. Her hand clenches on mine.
Tomás
A bow would be the least I’d like. A gun is best. Something with range.
This knife from the cutlery block in the hotel?
Good for close-quarters work, and here I am crouched in the shadows.
This Shawn has been talking to them, and now he returns from the boat with a backpack.
Anything could be in there, or under his jacket.
I half-rise from my crouch and in that second, I sense someone near—a smell, a faint change in shadows, but no noise I can discern until—
“Be still. No moving less you wish a hole in your skull.”
I freeze. It’s Zasha. This fucker must have training. Special forces in Russia? Spetsnaz? Or I’ve lost my touch.
A sideways glimpse tells me he holds a silenced pistol. The sound might carry even so, but one muffled shot won’t bring anyone running. And I prefer my head not perforated.
“Hello, Zasha,” I murmur, angling my head another inch.
“Shhh. No talking. We wait. You sit down more.”
Slowly, I lower myself. Somewhere in the trees a possum chatters and some leaves crunch faintly under Zasha’s feet.
This is bad. If Zasha knows we were coming here, what are the odds Shawn is in trouble?
Or…
There. My heart sinks in time with my stomach lurching.
He’s pulled a gun on them and is directing Juniper to handcuff Aaron.
This is looking worse every second, and my options and results are shrinking down to making a lunge and chancing getting shot.
Or I risk them getting shot while I’m fighting Zasha. Or I wait and pray.
“Here. Put these on one wrist. Then lie on your back and put your hands behind you.” A pair of handcuffs lands next to my knee.
I could use these as a weapon. I hear him take a step backward.
“Now.”
I hesitate then pick up the cuffs and do as he asks. The muzzle is somewhere behind my head, maybe a meter away, as he instructs me to close the second cuff about my wrist.
The ratchet of the mechanism as I do so is a small dose of doom.
I fucking hope this isn’t going to be an execution.
He drags me to my feet and pushes me forward, halting us where the trees and the grass peter out to meet the expanse of sand.
“Shawn, darling.” Zasha chuckles as the other three come up the beach and stop a few yards away. Aaron and Juniper are shoved to their knees and a gun is put to Aaron’s head.
Bad? This looks disastrous. I hunch my shoulders, rolling them, half-wondering if I can do that trick and hop over my cuffed hands so they’re frontwards. I can’t. I know this. I’d faceplant in the sand.
“No heat signatures?” Shawn asks.
“No one else here. We are good.” Then Zasha turns to me. “Here we get tricky. We don’t want to keep you. Behave and you go free. Karsten says you are good man and do great work for him. Trustworthy enough, hey?”
I shrug. Damn, what is this?
“So, you do as we say and you can go.” He pulls a second smaller pistol from a waist holster, checks it. “One round only. You shoot Mr. Loxland, and then we tie you up and leave you for someone to find you. Mr. Karsten will do it if we tell him to. Da?”
It only takes me a second to realize this is my only way out. “Da.”
“Good.” He places the gun on a cloth he lays on the beach, then goes behind me while Shawn keeps his weapon trained on the others.
I still have little chance of killing or disabling both before they kill me.
I have to do this. I shrug, give Aaron a final smile. “Sorry.”
He sends me a mean glare, which is only fair.
Uncuffing me, carefully, Zasha steps further away and gestures then pulls out a phone he switches on. “Get it. Do it. I film you. We keep this as evidence. Just a little insurance. Do it and you’re free. Do not and I regretfully have to kill you instead.”
They’re going to video me shooting Aaron.
I have to do this. There’s no choice. It’s kill or be killed.
Aaron
He wouldn’t, would he?
I don’t know for sure. Who knows the mind of another man or woman perfectly? No one. If I die here, I hope one of us gets away and Zasha and Shawn meet their own end in the most grisly way.
I brace myself as Tomás comes nearer, gun held down, pointing at only sand until he stops beside me and raises it, then he puts it against my head.
“I am so fucking sorry,” he says loudly. Loud enough for the video to catch it.
I wince as I hear the trigger make some infinitesimal sound I am likely imagining.
Click.
I wince again.
Click-click.
“A fucking test?” Tomás growls. “Was that all this was?”
“Of course. Silly boy,” Shawn says. “Now drop that and step backward to Zasha. You can still die.”
“Oh well.” Tomás shrugs at me as he obeys. The empty gun has landed before me. It’s a weapon that is unusable, and yet the potency of what it represents feels like a missed chance. If only my hands were free and it had bullets in the magazine.
How are we getting out of this?
“I’m so sorry I got you into this. What can we do?” Juniper whispers.
“Nothing. Yet. Stay strong. I know you are. We’ll get out of this.”
I watch as they handcuff Tomás again, and he’s lead back into the tree line by Zasha, where I’m guessing they will make it so he can’t just run away easily. If Karsten is going to be told to release him, he’s in this too.
Shawn returns to us, smiles. “Got a pretty one and you, Mr. Loxland. We’ll teach you some manners once we get to the house. Behave and you go free too.”
Whatever behaving entails, it can’t be anything nice. “Are you the men who raped Riley?”
Worth a try.
He only laughs then turns to check the tree line where Zasha is emerging alone.
How corrupt is this fraternity? “I knew some of us must be doing illegal things but this…” I mutter quietly then I sigh.
“Shit. I’m not giving in. Remember that.”
“I will.” I am afraid, though, for her. Sounds as if they plan to let me go after a while, maybe with some guarantee I won’t chase them? I can’t see how that could work because I will never leave them alone after this. Fucking never.
“Up!” Shawn gestures and levers us both up with a hand on our elbows. “Time to go find our boat.”
He spots me gazing out to sea where the horizon is a faint line of darkness and light.
“She’s out there. Don’t you worry. You’ll be snug in our hold until we land again. Done?” he asks Zasha as he saunters up beside us.
“Done. He won’t get loose. The waves are choppy. Getting them on board without them falling into the sea will be fun.”
Juniper and I are herded into the dinghy with the threat of a gun at our backs.
“Absolute fun, boyo.” Shawn sits at the front of the two of us, grinning. “I can count the times we had more fun on my toes. That girl in France. The one in South Africa. That one here…Riley, wasn’t it?”
His grin widens when Juniper mutters, “Fuckhead.”
“Ooh, that’s a new insult for me. Don’t you worry, little girl, I’ll give you some of my head soon.” He grabs his dick. “The Evil House has many ways to fuck around with things like you.”
The Evil House? I almost laugh at the absurdity of that name. Even so, these men are capable of almost anything. They might do worse than all the horror movies I’ve seen. My imagination is doing its best to cram my mind with images of people being sawn in half while they’re being fucked.
There is blood everywhere in my visions. Fear floods in, sweeping away the carefully arranged pieces of hope I was clinging to.
Yet I know…I know deep in my bones that if either of us is to survive this, it will be me. I’m rich and have friends in high places.
And I’m trying not to dwell on what Tomás did, but the knowledge waits at the back of my mind, screaming soundlessly. I thought he was my friend.
I flex my fingers, for the cuffs are pressing on my wrists.
How much do they know of what we were doing? How did they find out? This kidnapping is not a minor thing, so they must have found out, somehow.
Neither of us speaks, as they rendezvous with a motor yacht and get us on board by making us climb the rear stairs. They install us in the main cabin, get us to lie on the bed then chain one of our legs to it. The operation is so smooth, it makes me wonder how often they’ve kidnapped people.
I’m still wondering when they break out a pair of syringes and give us both an injection in the ass.
Within a minute whatever drug is in the syringe is having an effect and the ceiling is blurring. Juniper has angled her head, so she and I are looking into each other’s eyes.
“You’ll be okay,” I reassure her gently, though without any real way to be certain I can make that happen.
Her brown eyes are half shuttered and softly close as she speaks. “So will you. See you on the other side.”
My heart, my heart. I’ve never felt this ache before. What is this strange sorrow I feel looking at her ready to accept her fate when I want to rage and protect her?
“Stay strong.” Who is this man I’ve become?
I was absolutely sure I would never fall in love, but I was wrong.
In this moment, with no one else to mock me for what I used to think was weakness and madness, I know it is true.
My hobby was making money and breaking women to my will, and I was such a dick.
I’ve fallen for the girl with the mad lethal shovel.
That would make a good song title.
I smile as I remember the day I set myself on this path when I found out what she’d done.
Then the night calls in all the cards, and I flutter down into the abyss.