Chapter 28 – Jennie
My wrists and ankles are hurting me, feeling like they’re rubbed raw. My mouth is dry like a desert, and my throat feels raw. It hurts to swallow. I can barely move. There’s a sleeping mask on my face, and I can’t see anything. It’s pitch black.
I turn my head to the side, and suddenly I can see a thin strip of light. I move my aching head from side to side, knocking the mask askew, until I can see enough to determine where I am.
Log walls. A stone hearth. A woodstove. A cabin!
A sofa and two chairs face the fireplace. There’s a small kitchen in one corner of the room, and I’m lying on a large four-poster bed, my limbs secured to the posts with ropes. There’s a large head of a buck hanging like a trophy over the fireplace mantel.
I know this place. I’ve been here before. But my mind is spinning, and I can’t think.
My left wrist is rubbed raw where the rope is tied too tight. There’s dried blood on my wrist and on the rope. The same is true for my other wrist.
I take stock of the fact my clothes are still on—blue jeans and my pink Jennie’s Diner T-shirt. I’ve still got my white socks on. The only things missing are my sneakers. At least I can be grateful I’m still dressed.
Suddenly, the wooden door swings inward, and a man walks inside carrying an armload of split wood. “Oh, good,” he says. “You’re awake.”
David.
“Where am I?”
“You don’t remember this place? We spent some nights out here, babe. Surely you remember that bed.” He smirks like it’s an inside joke.
I think back to when we were married. His family has an old hunting cabin out in the woods, at least a good twenty-minute hike from the house.
“David, what have you done?” I’m horrified that he’d do something this crazy. “Kidnapping—is—a felony. You’re going—to jail—for a long time.” My throat feels like it’s filled with glass shards.
He drops his armload of wood beside an iron rack, squats down, and starts adding the logs neatly to the existing stack. “I did what I had to do, Jennie-bean.”
“Don’t—call me—that.”
“Come on, Jennie. What did you expect me to do? You wouldn’t talk to me. You wouldn’t listen. Then you went and got that asinine restraining order. It was the cop’s idea, wasn’t it? That smug bastard! Did you really think a restraining order could keep us apart?”
“Yes. That’s what they’re intended for.”
He calmly finishes adding the new wood to the rack. Then he stands, brushes his hands off on his blue jeans, and then walks toward me.
I try to move away when he sits on the side of the bed, but the ropes don’t have much give.
He reaches out, moving slowly, and lays his hand on my belly. “Don’t be afraid of me, baby. You know I’d never hurt you.”
“What do you call this?” I ask, my voice rising. “You drugged me, kidnapped me, and dragged me out here to the middle of nowhere. How is this not hurting me?”
He brushes my hair back. “How else could I get your undivided attention?”
“Certainly not this way!” I struggle against the ropes out of sheer frustration, but I only hurt myself in the process. My wrists are burning now from fresh abrasions.
“If you don’t stop hurting yourself, I’ll have to knock you out again for your own good. Is that what you want?”
Immediately, I stop. “No! Please, don’t.” I’ll have zero chance of getting free if I’m unconscious.
He nods. “Good. If you behave, I won’t have to.”
I try another tactic. “Why did you bring me here?”
“To convince you to marry me again. Why else? We never should have gotten divorced in the first place. That was my fault for signing those damn papers. But we’re going to fix this. We’re getting married.”
“Why do you want to marry me again?”
“It’s the only way to claim what’s mine. Everything you have should belong to me,” he says matter-of-factly. “This is about fairness. You were my wife, and what’s yours should be mine—your inheritance from your grandpa, the house, the diner. All of it.”
“I already explained to you—Grandpa died after we got a divorce, so you’re not entitled to that. And the house and diner legally belong to my grandmother.”
“Yeah, but you’ll inherit all that when she passes, which probably won’t be long from now given the state of her health.
” He shoots to his feet and starts pacing beside the bed.
“What you don’t understand, Jennie, is that you owe me.
Ever since the divorce, my life has gone to pot, and it’s all your fault.
My parents disowned me because of your stupid allegations in the divorce. I never abused you, and you know it.”
“I’d say my bruises and broken bones proved otherwise.”
“Those were all your fault, and you know it.” He scowls at me.
“After you humiliated me with your lies and accusations, I moved to Vegas for a fresh start, and what money I had left at the time, I lost. All of it. Not just in the casinos, but betting on everything from sports to car races to horses. I owe people money, Jennie. Powerful people who are going to hurt me if I don’t repay them.
And that’s where you come in. You’re going to marry me and sell everything—the house and the diner.
All that money, plus your inheritance, will more than pay off my debts.
And then you and I will go somewhere far away, where no one knows us—Mexico maybe, or Thailand—and we’ll start over. Just the two of us. Newlyweds again.”
He returns to sit on the side of the bed, seemingly more upbeat now. I think he just managed to convince himself that his plan is sane and rational.
He cups my face and brushes his thumb over my lips. “We’re going to be happy, Jennie-bean, I promise.” And when he leans down to kiss me, I turn my face away, and his lips end up glancing off my cheek.
He pats my thigh. “You’ll come around, baby.”
I glance past him, unable to stand looking at him, and notice a stockpile of weapons on the small kitchen table. I see what looks like semi-automatic rifles, handguns, and even hand grenades. There are boxes and boxes of ammo. He’s prepared to wage war against anyone who tries to stop him.
He notices where my attention is. “Yeah, no one is coming between us again, baby. No one. Especially not that fucking cop of yours. If he comes near this cabin, he’s a dead man. I’ll blow his head right off his shoulders.”
He gets up then and sits at the table to organize his stockpile of weapons. “You hungry, baby? I’ve got some protein bars around here somewhere.”
His mood shifts are giving me whiplash.
He’s truly insane.
When Chris comes, which he will—I know it!—I need to warn him. Not only is David dangerous because of his delusions, but he’s well armed.
* * *
“Do you have any water?” I ask sometime later. I am loath to engage him in any type of conversation, but I’m desperate for some water to cool my burning throat.
“You’re in luck,” he says as he sets a metal bucket on the table. “When you were napping earlier, I walked down to the stream for water.”
Napping? I was kidnapped and drugged, and he thinks I’ve been napping?
This is classic gaslighting. If only I’d understood the term narcissism before I agreed to marry him. I could have saved myself a lot of pain and suffering.
“Thank you,” I say, forcing myself to smile at him. Showing him how I really feel won’t win me any points. “I’m really thirsty.”
“Sure, sure,” he says as he grabs a ceramic mug from one of the open shelves in the kitchen area. He dips the cup in the bucket of water and brings it to me. “Here you go, Jennie-bean.” He’s smiling as if he’s proud of himself. “Drink up.”
I tilt my head up, and he holds the cup at my mouth. The cool water feels good against my raw throat, and yet it hurts to swallow. Still, I force myself to down the entire cup. I don’t know how long this situation is going to go on, and I don’t want to get dehydrated.
“That’s my good girl,” he says after I drain the cup. “You really are thirsty. Do you want more?”
“Yes, please.” I do my best to sound grateful. One thing I remember about David is he loves being the hero.
I wonder if he’ll untie me if I say I have to pee. If I remember correctly, there’s no indoor toilet here, but there is an outhouse out back. He’d have to untie me to let me go outside to use the toilet. And if I can get outside, I might be able to make a run for it.
He returns to the table to fill the cup with more water and brings it back to the bed. As he holds it for me to drink, he says, “See how good we are together, baby? It’s just like old times. Surely you haven’t forgotten.”
I remember nothing but torment for an entire year. My stomach churns as I force myself to smile up at him. “We were good together, weren’t we?”
His entire face lights up after hearing those words. “Yes! We were.” He reaches down to cup my face and brush his thumb over my lips. “God, you’re so pretty. I’ve missed you, baby. I—”
“Actually, I am pretty hungry.” I blurt out the words, hoping to derail his thoughts. “I haven’t had anything to eat all day.” That’s not true, but he doesn’t know that.
He frowns at the interruption. “Sure, I’ll get you something.”
He goes to the kitchen and searches through a box of supplies until he locates a bar of something. On his way back, he tears open the wrapper and holds it for me as I take a bite. It’s a peanut butter granola bar.
“I can feed myself, you know, if you untie me.”
He shakes his head. “Sorry, but no, baby. Not until I’m sure I can trust you.”
“But you’re going to have to let me get up eventually. After drinking all that water, I’ll need to pee soon.”
“I already thought of that.” He nods to a back corner of the cabin, out of my line of sight. “I have a bucket you can use.”
And just like that, my hopes for a quick escape are dashed.