Chapter 15
Turner led Ellie through the dark stadium hallway, her hands tied behind her back with a painfully tight wire that dug into her skin.
She tried to keep the wire from going deeper into her skin, but the way he was pulling on her arm made it impossible to keep any slack in the line. “You’re hurting me, Turner.”
“You hurt me more than you could know, Ellie.” He yanked on her arm harder than before.
Their footsteps echoed in the cavernous concrete structure, the smell of dank, humid air seeming to permeate every crevice.
She wondered where he was taking her, but she didn’t dare ask.
She’d tried pretending to be on his side when they first got out of the car.
She’d told him she was in love with him and desperate to become his wife, but he simply laughed at her attempts to deceive him and tugged the wire more tightly around her wrists.
She needed to be taught a lesson, he said, though it was a lesson she now fully expected to end in death.
He talked as they walked, telling her about his experiences with Godak, the women he’d abducted and the things those women had gone through before their macabre deaths.
Each had been raped by Turner and tortured by Godak before being strangled in the basement of Godak’s home some days or even weeks later.
Ellie couldn’t stand to think Ursula had been alive for weeks enduring that fate at the hands of those madmen, and all because Ellie had been unable to work. It was a cruel twist of fate, a moment’s decision to stay with a sick child, that had spared one woman’s life and taken another’s.
There will be no sparing my life this time.
She should have been terrified, and she was afraid, but more than anything, she was filled with regret at what might have been.
Mac had only just come back into her life.
She would never get the chance to know him again, never have the opportunity to love him and watch him be a part of their children’s lives.
She hoped they would find their way without her.
She hoped Lewis would be less thick-headed and let Mac into his life.
They were two peas in a pod, her men, just as she herself had been so very much like Shonda.
Callie would be okay, so full of love and always open to receiving more of it.
She thanked the universe for having each of her children in her life.
Turner stopped at an opening in the wall, a doorway of some kind.
“Come on,” he urged. “This is where we’re spending the night.
” He all but pushed her into a cold, damp room, the concrete floor covered in thin industrial carpet.
“The honeymoon suite, if you will.” He chuckled as Ellie’s stomach roiled.
“I never would have married you,” she said quietly, testing the waters to see how he’d react. She didn’t expect the force of the blow as he struck her face, or the fierce strength of his hands as they gripped her upper arms.
“You will do as I say.”
She lifted her chin. “I will not.” This time, she was unsurprised by the blow.
Her head hung down, her chin nearly touching her chest. How nice it would be to leave it there, to end this face-off and be free of this experience.
She longed for death, if it meant she could escape, and she wondered if this was how her dear cousin had felt at the hands of this man.
How did I not see it? How could I have ever believed Turner to be a good man?
She’d always thought of herself as being a good judge of character, which struck her as wildly funny now. She grinned, working to keep the laughter from bubbling up. She was hysterical, and she knew it.
God, take me now.
Please.
Take me now and let me rest in peace.
“Lift your head,” he insisted.
She did as she was told, finding him standing far too close to her, his mouth mere inches from hers. He put his hands on her hips and she tried to wiggle away from his touch, but he pushed her back against the wall and pinned her body with his hips and evidence of his arousal. She spit in his face.
Anger hardened his features as he wiped his cheek with the back of his arm, then took her head roughly in his hands, holding her still, and kissed her.
“Get off of me!” she yelled against his mouth. He squeezed her head more tightly and wrestled her for control. She drew her knee up hard into his crotch and he yelped in pain, doubling over.
This time, he punched her hard in the side of the head, the blow making the already dark room fade to black as Ellie slumped to the floor, unconscious.