Chapter 13
Georgia
Out of the four horses in the stables, this one, Ranger, seems the friendliest. The gelding chomps and swallows the last piece of the apple.
“We can walk through the grounds at the back of the house, if you like?” Lazlo says, being extraordinarily nice. “It’s less impressive than the manor to the north but it’ll give you some exercise. Ranger will survive not being patted.”
“What colour is he? I don’t know much about horses.”
“Chestnut.”
I draw my hand down his long nose to the soft end part where his nostrils are, loving the feel of his hair on my skin.
The horse snuffles at my palm, as if another piece of apple might be hiding there.
“Okay. Let’s do that.” Ranger shakes his head and snorts.
His mane goes flying and I laugh. “I think he doesn’t like that idea. ”
“This way.” Lazlo gestures at the exit leading into an adjacent rose garden.
“This was a coach house once, you said?” The archway we walk though is flanked by more than stables and above is a second story.
“Yes. Converted into a plain old stable, last century.”
“Huh.”
This tour has been outstandingly normal.
Him, having an apple ready so I can feed the horses.
To these boots that seem pristine and make me wonder how many pairs and sizes they have stored away.
Clothes in my size. I can fantasize I’m a family friend being shown around the property.
That is, if not for the second man with the same earpiece as Lazlo, wandering about our rear and a few yards back.
I’m sure he is armed and I know Lazlo is too, for I’ve spied the gun in his shoulder holster.
That’s probably illegal here, if on public property. On private land? Maybe not.
Hands behind his back, he saunters beside me, saying little unless I start a conversation.
We weave past the old rose bushes and under a tall, arched iron gateway. To the east the blue sky is loaded with heavy gray clouds. “Do we need an umbrella?”
He shrugs. “We can walk in the rain if it happens.”
A dirt pathway with large trees overhead takes a curve to the right then goes up slight slope, and a low brick building comes into view. I point at it. “What’s this?”
“Sir Benjamin comes here to shoot but that’s also a guest lodge.”
I turn to ask him another question and find he’s staring at my ass. And he realizes I’ve caught him doing so.
Something coming in on his earpiece distracts him and gives him an excuse to turn away. Unless he’s pretending. He wouldn’t, would he?
“Yes?” He presses the badge on his jacket. “No, he can’t— Have you told him we aren’t allowing anyone in today, not even him? You have. No, we can’t. Oh. Okay. Okay. Thanks, Oliver.”
He turns back to me, then beckons to the man shadowing us. “Max, Mr. Hull is approaching on horseback. He’s been told Sir Benjamin isn’t accepting any visitors today and unfortunately Oliver chose not to shoot him.”
“Yes, sir.” Max grins. “I suppose we can’t either?”
“Regrettably, no. Just back me up and keep him away from our small female guest here.” He nods at me. “You’re not to talk to this man, Georgia. Do not get anywhere near him. Understand?”
“Sure.” I had thought they’d increased security but does this mean they haven’t much chance of stopping anyone? Now that I’ve seen a small part of this place, an army might not be enough to cover this estate. “Is he dangerous?”
“He’s just a nosy neighbor.”
A man on a white horse appears around the corner of the shooting lodge and trots down the path toward us. Lazlo shifts to the front and extends his arm to herd me behind him. I can barely see past him but I lean out.
“Stay back there and don’t talk.”
The horse slows as they approach and clops to a halt as he draws on the reins. The rider is overweight, with his belly flowing over his belt, in white jodhpurs and a navy jacket, and with what must be a riding helmet on his head. He dabs at his forehead and leans over the horse’s neck.
“Lazlo! I hear you don’t want interlopers! Am I one of those?”
“Not at all, sir, but Sir Ben has requested no visitors today, so I will have to ask you to turn around.”
“Really?” His eyebrows raise to where fine red-blond hair covers his forehead, and he sniffs. He leans out further and spots me.
“Yes.”
“Hello to you, miss. You look like a visitor. Liking the place?” He eyes our surroundings. “Ben can be rather boring, when he’s not in the news over some government thing. No insult intended. Politics is a funny business.”
I could tell him so damn much, run to him and yell, help I’m a prisoner.
What would happen? I doubt they’d be able to cover up killing their rich neighbor. The possibilities stream through my mind.
I say nothing.
“Family friend, Mr. Hull. Would you prefer it if Sir Benjamin texts you the instruction? Though he won’t be happy at being interrupted.”
“No. No. I shall reverse course. I must say you and Ben have a good eye for the girls. No introduction even?”
Lazlo stays mute.
“Nice to meet you, miss. Take care and don’t take any nonsense from Lazlo.
” His gaze hardens for a fleeting second as he seems to study my top half, then he reverts to the over-the-top smile he wore—the change was so transient, I wonder if I imagined it.
“Might want to dab some makeup on your neck.” He winks at me before hauling on the reins then trotting back the way he came.
Lazlo sighs. “We should return to the house.”
The house. The very precise wording jolts me back to the Evil House. A splinter of fear nails my chest. Am I ever going to get rid of that association? It could make searching for houses on rental sites a pita. I shake my head and find Lazlo watching me.
“You okay?”
“Yes. Just a memory.”
“Hmmm. I get those too.”
Time to change subjects. “I don’t suppose there’s a chance I could do some shooting up there?”
His laugh is more of a bellow. “You’re joking?”
Was I? “Not really. I’ve been wishing I knew how to defend myself better.” I already know rifles but I’m out of practice, and from the direction my life is heading, this could be wise.
“Understandable. Though considering your situation I’d be daft to put a gun in your hands.”
I shrug. “Kinda. Sorta. Not exactly.” My mouth keeps running. “Why not? I’m small. You’re big and manly. No?”
“There are shotguns up there. You want a shotgun in your hands?” He cocks his head. “Me big, you small?” He scoffs then takes my arm and starts us walking uphill toward the lodge. “Why didn’t you tell Mr. Hull you are being held prisoner?”
Ahhh. That. My vengeance manifests like a clown-faced killer with a chainsaw.
I look him firmly in the eye. “Because I need to be here, right now. Because I want to kill the man or men, or woman even, that ordered my torture. I don’t…
” My voice cracks but I gather myself. “I don’t know why or who and it will destroy me for the rest of my fucking life if I do nothing.
” There. I said it. “I have to do this.”
He’s stopped and peers down at me as if seeing me for the first time. “Wow.” His mouth made that a big, exaggerated word. “Again, I am sorry that happened. And I get you.” He restarts the walk and I walk beside him. “You can touch a gun.”
“So I’m no longer the slut who got on a boat and did something stupid?” That’s out before I can stop myself. It did fucking irk me.
“Ooo. Touchy.”
“No answer? Men are stupid sluts too sometimes.”
A choked noise from our follower, Max, makes me remember he is there and can hear us.
“This is true.” The ground crunches underfoot where brown leaves have coated the trail.
“We all make mistakes in life.” My pulse beating in my temples and the leaves crunching are the only sounds I hear for a while, as if this means more to him than just my story.
“And so forgiveness and marching onward, doing the right things, that means more.”
“You get to rewrite your own story. I agree,” I cannot resist adding, “Just let mine be bloodthirsty.”
Which is how I end up with one hand handcuffed to a railing, and the other on a shotgun, outside on the verandah of this old stone cottage. I was hoping for a chance to really handle the gun.
The walls behind us are overgrown with ivy. The doors are white framed with multiple-paneled glass that’s likely two hundred years old, and inside is a gloriously comfortable living room with a fireplace and leather lounges.
“It feels so wrong to hold a shotgun and be thinking of killing a human,” I say softly as he loads a single cartridge and closes the weapon.
“Safety is on. Keep thinking like that. Guns make a mess of us. You don’t ever want it to feel wonderful. It might be justice. It might be necessary and the only way to stop something evil, but it shouldn’t feel good. You know?”
Then he takes it off me after carefully uncurling my hand.
“I’m tempted to let you shoot but you know I can’t let you fire it.”
“I guess.” But he hasn’t released my hand, and I look up at him and for the first time I really see his eyes where they lurk beneath those shaggy eyebrows.
They’re a hazel brown and is that kindness I see in them, or something more?
A frisson shimmies in as he lets me go, his fingers slipping away over my wrist, slowly, as if reluctant to leave my skin.
Then he turns, pulls the safety on the shotgun, raises the weapon to his shoulder, aims, and fires at the target he set up earlier that’s hanging from a tree. It explodes into dust.
Without looking at me, he breaks the gun open and puts it on the table, off to the side.
“Maybe one day, when you trust me?” I ask as he reaches for the hand he handcuffed. I’m not sure what the point of this was, when he was never going to let me shoot the weapon.
“Maybe. You will have to earn that trust, won’t you?”
That sounds like I’m being reprimanded. Which is odd, coming from him.
Efficient as he is at unlocking the cuff there’s a moment when he pauses with one hand firmly encompassing my wrist while the other hand takes away the cuff, and the same breathless tingling happens and it’s because his fingers are caressing me. Then…the contact breaks.
And he steps back, tucking the cuffs in his jacket pocket as if nothing happened.
The other handler is somewhere behind me, in the doorway. He’s inconsequential to this and I can’t help thinking of Rafael’s words when he left this morning. Don’t fuck that mountain.
That’s rather like saying don’t look at the elephant in the room. It makes you think about exactly that. Is it because he left me sexually frustrated?
I’m probably imagining this, that the mountain is almost flirting with me, at the tail end of a shotgun demonstration.
Lazlo
While I lock the shotgun in the gun safe, I think about what I just did.
It’s the twitch of her rear in those blue jeans that attracts my eye more than seems right. She’s younger by at least two decades.
And it’s those boots I loaned her that once belonged to Sir Ben’s last girlfriend. They fit but the heels lend a wicked sway to her gait.
Carefully, I clip the gun into the rack.
It’s the marks on her neck. And the way she shivered when I slipped off the handcuffs.
It’s also imagining that ass of hers naked as Rafael spanks it. My fault. She hasn’t done anything except look like the sexiest girl ever, with those red curls flipping across her face when she talks or pouts those red lips, tosses her head, or looks at the scenery.
And she has an obvious inclination to being kinky.
I shut the safe door, check it’s locked.
Last of all, it is what Rafael said to me on his way out this morning. He was in a hurry and looking frustrated.
He stopped in his tracks, studied me. “You’re roped into this, now, and coming to this meeting tonight. Want to help me handle the little bitch upstairs?”
“Georgia?”
“No, Santa Claus. I saw how you looked at her when I had her half-naked and bent over my knees. Think about it. One-off offer. Trial only.”
Then he kept walking.
I went outside and stood on the steps staring after the BMW, long past when it was a barely audible purr above the sounds of birds whistling and chirping.
He is not the man to offer that and not mean it.
Help handle her. Fuck. Me.
Spanking is apparently nothing to this CNC Fraternity and googling CNC was eye opening.
I thought I’d tried most things in the sexual realm. Apparently not.
“Let’s go.” I wave Georgia out the door and we set out to return to the house. The girl is quiet, so I figure it’s not just me.
Part of my attraction is because of her history, sad though it is. Getting sloshed and having sex on a boat that’s heading out into the channel mightn’t have been sensible, but I understand her better now.
Death in the family marks you.
I read the notes she made. Though I didn’t think I could still be shocked, I was. Still am.
Both her parents gone and then what happened in that house in Australia. Human trafficking isn’t new. Overseas, I saw the effects of owning people, but it was less in my face. More, something that happens to others, to foreigners.
The Porsche incident was simply icing on the cake for Georgia. Bad metaphor. Call it more blood on the water? Gorier, but no, and the right metaphor escapes me.
Tonight should be even more eye opening.
What the hell does this fraternity do at board meetings? Sacrifice virgins for the blood, to refill their pens to sign contracts?