Chapter 24
Juniper
The hardness beneath my shoulder and various aches winch me slowly out of a bleak cold darkness. I’m…where am I?
I’m lying on a concrete floor in a cold room, with a blanket under me, gunk in my eyes, and a pillow by my head. Blinking past the initial fuzziness in my vision, I spy Mr. Loxland snoozing on the other side of this square room. He’s only wearing shorts, and a blanket partially covers his legs.
I sit up, pushing off the floor, feeling a bruise on my head throb and a cuff slide around my wrist. A chain leads from the cuff to a ring anchored to the wall, a yard away. Both hands have cuffs but only my right is chained.
There are no windows, one door, and more metal rings are attached higher on the walls.
Facts trundle in.
We’ve been kidnapped by the men I was searching for…I think?
Tomás betrayed us, maybe so he could stay alive, and fuck me, do I blame him? Who wouldn’t do that? Lying to myself there. I hate what he did. I do blame him. He meant to kill Mr. Loxland.
They gave us a drug by injection and another bruise on my left ass cheek activates and tells me it was there that the needle sank in.
We were on a boat, but this is not a boat. The walls aren’t swaying, or not much. I touch my head bruise. It’s the drug and the head pain. Then my stomach grumbles angrily from lack of food.
Grimacing, I prop my hand on the floor.
Where the fuck are we? How do we get out of here?
And are we going to die?
I’m sure there are other questions but—
Of course, where are the two men from the beach? Shawn also betrayed us, except he was never on our side, and I was the one who convinced everyone he was going to help us, that he was a good man. Guilt is here, waiting to drown me, but I shove it down.
And there was the other one, Zasha Moroscuba. Morosova? The Russian one.
My head throbs even harder.
“Maybe I should stop thinking for a while?” I mutter to myself. I brush the curtain of hair from my face and the chain attached to my wrist cuff rattles.
“Or not. Keep thinking.” Loxland groans and straightens against the wall, locks eyes with me, smiles. “You good?”
“I’m damn good. When do I get a shovel to finish off these dudes?” I say it brightly, attempting to give us courage.
He snorts and buries his face in his hand. His broad smile shows though.
“Got you smiling.”
“You are insane, but I like you.” He drops his hand, swallows, looks terribly glum before he adds, “This might be the last chance I get to say this, and my gut is telling me I’m a fool, but I love your attitude.
I love how you use a shovel.” His smile reappears, wavers.
“And I think I might be close to falling in love with you?”
That’s the most stupidly indecisive statement ever, and I’m yoyoing between thinking he’s being silly to cheer me up, and the opposite.
The opposite. “Ummm.” My heart bounces into a thud-thuddity-thud.
He’s stilled and is looking more serious than I’ve ever seen him, even more than when he was doing mean things to my ass. This room is as quiet as a dead church mouse.
“Well…” What do I say to that? I hiccup and find I’m having to sniff back tears. I don’t think I know how to feel love, when I’m trapped here, waiting for the villains to come get us and maybe do what they did to Riley. No matter how brave I make myself be, the fear comes sneaking back.
“Don’t”—he waves his hands before him as if to create a barrier or deny what he said—“you don’t have to say it too.”
“Dayum, Mr. Loxland. Even close to and maybe? That’s something, considering where we are.
” I heave in a breath and stare at the steel cuff on my wrist, at how he’s also chained to the wall.
This sucks that I cannot decide if I am in love.
“Give me some time. I have some killing to do first. I can say I’m in lust?
” I glance up, hopefully. I did wonder this before, felt something happening, a bond with both men.
Only one man is missing, never to return.
“Right here, right now, it’s too much to think about. ”
“I’m okay with that half-assed answer. I’ll just spank it out of you when we get free.”
Funny how that’s lifted my mood.
We exchange weak smiles for a while, until the room, and the whole kidnapping thing, starts to crowd in again. “Thank you. That’s a good answer. So. Can I call you Aaron now?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Noted.” I grin.
I lift my cuffed hand and pull the blanket over my mostly naked body. They’ve left my bikini on, and I suddenly have a thought. Do I feel anything odd below? Any hurts or intimate aches? No. They haven’t raped me while I was asleep.
I’m not sure if that’s good or bad as I’m sure they intend to, and I’m sure they mean to make it hurt.
How do we get out of here?
As if summoned, the door begins to open and those two men step in, first is Zasha holding a pistol, a Glock, I think.
He’s the toadlike man with the hairy muscular body, wearing tracksuit pants and T-shirt.
Next is Shawn the dickhead guard with the Irish fake niceness, in shorts, shirt, and bare feet.
“How are you both? Good? Our luxury hotel room is good?” Zasha gestures broadly with his free hand. “Now this is when we show you what will happen over the next week. We get to fuck with your girl, Mister Aaron, but…so do you! Ha!”
Shawn makes a finger gun and aims at Mr. Loxland. “You’re a lucky boy. Do this properly, and we let you go, unharmed, but filmed, so we have a way to keep you in line in future. Understand?”
Mr. Loxland grunts, glowers at them both. “Why are you bothering us?”
“Bothering? Haha! He is comedian.” Zasha laughs. “You forget what you did? We bugged your room while you go to swimming pool. Shawn runs back, bursts in, pretends he stops me hurting little Miss Juniper. So, we know what you know.”
Shawn pretends to count on his fingers. “The murdering of Nathan with a shovel? A fookin’ shovel?
Your sneaky hacking for travel information?
And there’s the scarred cock and the final pièce de résistanc-y is you got that name Fionn, from your sexy dead friend.
” He nods at me, approaches, and puts his foot on my thigh then walks his toes up to rest between my legs.
Slowly, I shake my head and pretend to ignore what his toes are doing. “So what? If you let us go, what do we have against you? Nothing. You can report me to the cops for murder. Mr. Loxland did nothing to you. You should release him.”
They both laugh at that, and I’ve apparently attracted too much attention, because Zasha comes closer.
“She doesn’t know who you are, Shawn. After all their investigating the name means nothing to her.”
The two of them look down on me, and I slide along the wall, with my back creeping sideways as far as I can go. “Tell me whatever the fuck you mean then.”
Maybe I should be being timid, to protect myself from retaliation, but I doubt they care.
Shawn squats in front of me, leers, pats my head. “My name, smartass, is Fionn Shaughnessy, but everyone likes to call me Shawn. And this…” He unzips his fly, rummages, and pulls out his semi-hard cock. “See.”
Crap. I already know what he means, what I will see. A scar disfigures his cock just like in the video. He’s not a fraternity member, so that would be why he never showed up in searches.
“You would’ve figured it out eventually. We decided to grab you and have some fun with you, before we leave the country. The question is, will you be coming with us, girl? Or will you be six feet under?”
Zasha chuckles. “That depends on you, Mr. Loxland. Da? Behave, and we will take her out of here alive. You like her?”
Mr. Loxland gives away nothing, just sits there breathing through his teeth, and I’m gritting mine at the unwelcome caresses I’m being subjected to.
“I think you do like her.” Zasha leaves me to go closer to Loxland, while Shawn keeps fondling me. My face. My breasts. He drifts his hand downward while he smirks and studies how I flinch at his touch.
“I know you do, and you will prove it by fucking her for us, while we film you, and the other girl, and maybe we get you to do some slicing and dicing with a little sharp knife, just to show what a ruthless man you are? Then you go away, merrily?”
The other girl? Someone else is here. I’m frowning, distraught at her predicament even though I’ve not seen her, while Shawn crawls his hand everywhere. I feel her torment as if I’ve already witnessed it because of my memories of what happened to Riley.
She has been alone here and suffering, while I have the company of Mr. Loxland and my own fucked-up annoyance at being made a victim by these two fucking assholes. I’d bite off their dicks right now if I could do it unpunished.
I’ve been stupid though—this must be my fault. Tears threaten to spill—part anger, part me being frightened. It’s a natural weakness.
I think Mr. Loxland blames himself too.
I stop myself from swearing or struggling at Shawn’s caresses.
He would like that, and I cannot win. Or not now.
I can’t win today. I prop myself up by telling myself I will get my vengeance.
At the slightest opportunity, I will end them both.
I will. I will. The more I say it, the more likely it will manifest.
“Cuff her properly, Shawn, hands at the front. Then you can hold the gun while I get Mr. Loxland to give me his hands at his back. Then we go to the fun room. Did you two know we named this the Evil House? It’s a great place in the middle of the mountains and no one knows we are here.
No one at all. We’ve got you for as long as we want to keep messing with you. ”
“Mess being a good word for you, hey?” Then Shawn sticks his fingers inside me and watches me wince before he flips me onto my stomach and cuffs my wrists together.
The casual amusement he shows while he assaulting me is daunting. The casual evil they both show.
These men aren’t just serial rapists, I think they’re serial killers.
That notion is punched home when we’re led into their fun room where the other woman is hanging from the ceiling by ropes tied about her breasts, hands, and neck. Blood trickles down her back while she spins slowly. It drips onto the bare concrete floor.