Reece
I’m sore all over and I think I have some kidney damage if this carries on. He’s upgraded from the cattle prod to a taser, still not the power of US police issue, thank God, and he uses it on my lower back, around where my kidneys are. This bastard is one sick fuck. To be honest, I’m surprised he’s not done anything sexual to me.
I know he’s probably straight, but he’s got a real control complex, that much is clear, and I think it would give him a strange kick to humiliate me in that way. So far, he’s limited himself to cattle prodding my balls. Thank fuck he hasn’t used the taser down there yet, or I’ll not be fathering any kids in the future.
“How did you find us?” I ask, confused as to how the hell he discovered where we were.
“I’m a very persistent man, Reece. I followed you to Wales, but you threw a good bait and switch at the hotel. I thought about it long and hard. Would you go back to Scotland? Yorkshire? Stay in Wales? I know Kate has a house on the coast, and I also know you come here a lot because you aren’t the only one who can hack into people’s lives.” He grins at me and it is maniacal. “I guessed you’d stayed here. Why drive all the way here to go back to Scotland. Makes little sense. So, I started to ask around. I went to village after village, all on the coast. See, if I were you, and a military type, I’d want to be in a position where I could monitor who came and went, a small coastal village is perfect. Some of them only have ten or so houses. One road in and out. Am I right?”
I want to kill him.
“Anyway, at first I didn’t know who you were, but you made a fatal error when you paid for the hotel yourself and gave your real name.” He laughs, “Oh, I know in your mind you thought I would see you’d signed in if I got into their records, which I did, and see you’d stayed for ten days, but I knew you wouldn’t do that. The next morning when I’d figured it all out, after getting into the hotels computerized shit…I guessed you’d left. And your fatal error was in letting me, get to know you.”
He sighs, long and low. “Of course, I didn’t know then you and she were lovers.” He spits the word out as if it’s poison. “I merely thought you her hired muscle, but it did give me an idea of how your mind would work, and where you might go. Then, all I had to do was schlep around the villages looking for you. Of course, it might have taken me weeks longer, but I fell lucky and after a few long days I hit pay dirt.”
He shakes his head at me. All fake sorrow.
“I suppose I can see what she finds attractive in you but you were too stupid to keep her safe.”
I focus on what he’s saying. I’ve been moving around, jiggling the handcuffs surreptitiously and my luck is in. They aren’t British police standard cuffs. Those are solid in the middle, these are metal, but they have the chain link in the middle. I think I might be able to break them if he leaves me alone for a while. So far, he’s only gone out of the room for a minute or two. Toilet break, I figure.
He babbles on about a load of shit as I keep one part of my mind listening, in case I’m required to respond, as the other works out the permutations. My best bet is to get the cuffs off if I can, and then undo my legs, before taping them loosely back up, and keeping my hands together, so he thinks I’m still bound. Then, when he gets near, I can lash out and take him down.
Trouble is, he could use the taser on me, and that will incapacitate me, but if he isn’t holding it, if he comes at me with the cattle prod, that will be my chance.
Maybe I should try to rile him, and get him in the mood to prod my balls again, but only if he goes out of the room first, so I can try to get free. My head is still splitting, but the pain has receded to a bearable level. I’m praying I don’t have a big hole in my head with half my brains spilling out, because if I start moving around, fighting, I could wind up dead.
“Women, they’re all the same. They say they are feminists and want a nice guy, but deep down they all want a caveman, like you. It means the nice guys, like me, always finish last.”
I want to laugh at him. He thinks he’s a nice guy? A man who rapes and murders women. I know plenty of nice guys. Ordinary guys who aren’t tough or big, who have lovely wives. The reason this guy can’t get a partner is because he’s odious. But I keep my thoughts to myself. I’m wondering if I should drop his real name into the conversation to unnerve him, but it could play out either way, so for now, I keep it to myself.
He’s now rabbiting on about how the world is so unfair.
“Even other men judge me. Boring, ordinary, nothing spectacular. If you don’t play rugby, or football, or any of those things, then you’re not one of the club. It’s disgusting how our society puts people in boxes.”
I start to agree with him, but my throat is so dry I begin to cough and then dry heave.
He frowns at me. “I suppose you want a drink?”
I nod at him, grateful, because I do, but I also want him gone so I can try to get the cuffs off.
“I’ll make a cup of tea.”
And he’s gone. His footsteps retreating.
A cup of tea? A fucking cup of tea! As if we’re friends having a nice afternoon chat. This guy is off the wall levels of insane. I feel so sorry for the women he held. Imagine what he put them through before he made them cups of tea, as if they were all being civilized together.
I strain and hear him go up some stairs. Fucking yes. This is my chance.
The cuffs may be new, which means they’ll still have oil on them, which will make them harder to break, so I rub them over and over again on the rough floor. It cuts and burns my hands and wrists, but I don’t care.
Once I’ve roughed the steel up, I hoist myself to a sitting position. My legs are out to the side, bound and useless, but my arms are now straight in front of me, and I can see around the concrete post, if I strain to do so, to my hands.
Perfect.
I start moving the cuffs back and forth. I am aiming to get one of the links against the bolt where they fasten onto the cuff, because with enough torque I can break one of them if I get them in the right position. It’s tricky. And after six failed attempts, I’m sweating. Once, the links do line up, but with both cuffs, and I can’t get enough torque to break both. I’ll end up breaking my wrists instead.
Footsteps sound above me. It’s hard to focus now as my eyes are filling with sweat. Fuck, Reece, you can do this. Focus, fuckface, focus.
Heart pounding, and breath coming hard and fast, I manipulate the cuffs once more, twice the links slip away from the joints I am aiming for, but the third time one of the links jams against the cuff on my wrist. I freeze. Test it carefully and grin. I’ve got it.
With a massive wrench of my wrists, pain slices through me, metal grinds, and I have to swallow down a victory whoop as the cuff on my right hand breaks. My hands are now free.
The fall of footsteps on the stairs means I don’t have time to do my legs. I lay back down. Hands placed as if still cuffed…and I wait.
The clink of bone china hitting the ground has me looking at Ian. He’s using bone china cups. This dude is so fucking whacked, no way would he go down for all the shit he’s done. He’d end up in some maximum-security psych facility. Not if I get my way. I’m going to kill the fucker.
“I only made myself a cup.” He’s watching me warily. “You, I got some water. I can pour it down your throat without getting too near.”
“S’okay,” I slur as if drunk. “Feel sick.”
“Oh, does your head hurt?” He’s watching me like someone might a lab rat. No concern, but interest in his beady eyes.
“Yeah.” I let my eyes drift shut for a moment. Then snap them open again and give a little shake of my head. The wince isn’t acting. It does fucking kill.
“I wonder if you are getting a concussion?” He muses, almost to himself.
My eyes drift shut again and I once more snap them open and then give a groan and swallow thickly. I bend over and do some deep breathing as if about to be sick.
Then I stop because I think I’m gonna actually be sick, and that isn’t part of my plan.
Ian starts to say some bullshit about how he likes to have tea and cakes with the women he brings down here and I let my eyes drift shut again, then my head slumps forward and I fall to the side, letting my head hit the ground and ignoring the new burst of pain. I keep my face slack, relaxed.
“Shit,” he grumbles. “He better not die on me. I’m not done yet.”
He sits and drinks his tea, and I don’t move. I breathe deeply, regularly. I want the fucker to come over and look at me, but maybe he won’t and this whole little charade will be for nothing.
I wait for the longest time, but he sits there drinking his bastard tea, and muttering to himself. After he finishes his tea, he takes it out of the room and up the stairs, and I think fuck it. Why wait for him to come to me? Once more I sit up and try to get my legs undone.
I can’t though. The shit used on them is so thick and sticky, and I can’t get where it starts. I bring my legs up to my face and start to use my teeth on the bindings nearest my knees. It hurts and my teeth kill as I tear and tear at the thick black tape. Eventually though there’s a rip and I succeed in making a tear in it. I get my fingers in there and pull the rest of it off. I throw it to one side and I can hear him moving around again, water running. I still need to get the stuff off my ankles though.
He’ll be back down here soon and once he sees the tape gone from by my knees, any element of surprise will be over. Shit. I need to move fast.
I scrabble around on the floor, trying to find something sharp. Anything. Finally, I find something in the farthest point I can reach to my right. It’s cool and flimsy but has a sharp edge. As I haul it up with now shaking fingers, I see it’s an old-fashioned ring pull from a can. The sort they used to use back before all the sharp edges were removed from them for health and safety reasons. I want to cry out my joy at the gorgeous piece of thrown away rubbish in my hand, but I don’t. Instead, I get to work.
Sawing at the tape around my feet, it takes me less than a minute to break some of it off, and allow me to get my fingers in there and rip the rest away.
Free!
Holy shit, I can breathe again. My mind focuses, as if being tied up somehow dulled my responses. Then I grin. I grin fucking huge, because I am finally free from the tapes and the cuffs and Ian is still upstairs messing around. The fucking idiot.
Silently, I cross the floor ignoring my nakedness, ignoring the pain in my feet as I stand on pebbles, and grit, and sharp bits of rubbish. I reach the door and listen carefully for a moment. There’s no noise immediately outside it, and Ian is still doing something upstairs that involves water. He’s singing too, an off-key rendition of ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’, which is creepy as fuck.
I pause for a moment before opening the door, sending up a prayer that the hinges aren’t rusty and creaky. It swings back without a sound and I follow up with another prayer of thanks. Then I am in a long, dark hallway. Definitely a basement—there’s a few other rooms off to one side, and then there’s a set of concrete stairs leading up to where I can hear Ian murdering the classics more clearly. He’s moved on to Sinatra now.
There’s a clatter of pots, and then more water, and a click. I think he’s put the kettle on. I pause and sure enough there’s soon the hissing sound of water heating up. I use the cover of the noise to continue my ascent. At the top of the stairs, I pause and take in the scene. It looks like a warehouse. Boxes everywhere, and in one corner a small kitchen area, with a shabby table, small fridge, and a sink. Ian is at the sink messing about with a dainty china teapot that matches the cup and saucer. There’s also a matching cake stand on the side and I wonder if he fed those women cakes too before he killed them?
On silent feet, I creep toward him, but some sixth sense must have alerted him to my presence because as I near him he screams, grabs the kettle and flings it toward me. I dodge to one side but boiling water hits my right leg.
I cry out at the burning pain, but I can’t take my attention from Ian who is now scrabbling furiously through a drawer. He pulls his hand out with a knife in it, and comes at me, jabbing forwards.
It’s easy to avoid his thrust, and I spin, grab his wrist, and twist hard. He lets go of the knife with an angry scream and kicks my shin with his heavy boots. I don’t leg to of his wrist but twist it further, and then I aim three fast blows to his ribcage.
He goes over like a rag doll. Now, I let go of his wrist and pull him up by his hair. His face is puce, and he’s trying to get a breath in. I decide to hinder rather than help and punch him again in his stomach. He goes down, and I’ve not fully let go of his hair, and some of it comes out in my hand.
I glance over at the sink. At that teapot, and the cup he used, and the one next to it. I stare at the matching saucers, and the fucking cake stand, and I see red. He’d have brought Kate here if he hadn’t found out we’d been together. Tortured her, sexually abused her, and in-between fed her tea and cakes.
With a grunt, I lay into him, kicking and kicking at his face and body. My bare feet probably aren’t doing too much harm, so I pull him up and punch him in the face, twice. His jaw makes a satisfyingly sickening crunch on the second hit.
“Reece!” I pause.
What the fuck?
“Reece?”
Liam. I’d recognize his dulcet tones anywhere. They are outside the door at the end of the warehouse.
“In here,” I call back, but I don’t let go of Ian, or Duncan as he’s truly called.
I also don’t go to let them in, because then they’ll stop me and I want him dead.
With a cold fury I’ve never experienced before, I look at his ordinary, almost friendly face, and I plough my fist into it.
There’s the sound of wood splintering and glass shattering and still I keep on hitting him. Holding him up by his hair and punching him with my other hand on his body and face.
He’s making a strange gurgling sound now, and blood splatters my cheek as he coughs.
“Fuck’s sake, Reece!” There’s an alarmed tone to Luka’s voice I’ve not heard before. Not even in the depths of war.
“Let him go.” It’s an order. A command, and as it comes from Liam, and I’m programmed to obey his orders in the heat of battle, I do.
Ian sinks to the ground like the sack of shit he is, still gurgling and coughing.
“Christ, your leg.” Liam is taking it all in. “We need to call the paramedics…and the cops. Can’t keep this from them, your prints are everywhere, and if you don’t get medical treatment you might die.” His eyes are cool, calculating. Ever the one ready to sort shit out and make it right.
I look at Ian. I doubt he can make this right. This fucker must die. I need him dead. Even from prison he could be a danger. He’s the sort of obsessive freak that will stop at nothing to get to a woman he fixates on.
“I need to end him,” I tell Liam. My voice is oddly flat. I look down at Ian, Duncan, what the fuck ever, and his bloodied, already swelling face, gives me nothing but satisfaction.
A rage I never knew lived inside me before roars to life. It’s rage at this freak, but also at those men who raped and tortured a guy who knew nothing. Took away his soul by the most horrific ways and did so in front of me for days on end. Rage at a world that is so fucked it spits out these damaged, sick souls to wreak havoc in it. Rage at my own impotence then, and now.
Now, though, right here, in this shabby place, I own the ability to do something. To make things better the only way I know how. By removing the human stain that is Ian/Duncan/whatever from this Earth.
I start to kick him, hard, his head snapping back, and Liam curses.
Then hands are on me, pulling me back, but I’m struggling, fighting against my own brothers. “Let me go,” I scream at them. “Fucking let me go.”
“Reece?”
One word. Said softly, and I stop. Kate’s stood there, right in front of me, staring at me as if she doesn’t know me.
I look down at myself and see I’m dirty, bloodied, naked.
“I told you to stay in the fucking car,” Liam bites out at Mags who is right next to Kate.
“Shit, Reece, your leg.” Kate is staring at my thigh, and I follow her gaze to see it’s red and already looks like it will blister.
“Here,” Maggie gestures for me to follow her. “Come stand by the sink.”
I do as she says, all the urge to kill gone now Kate is here staring at me with terrified, concerned eyes.
Maggie starts to fill a glass with chilly water and pours it over my leg. I hiss at the contact, but she repeats the process over and over.
“You’re going to need a hospital.” Luka looks at my leg with narrowed eyes.
“Do you think you can find me some clothes?” I ask.
“Your boxers are here but it will hurt like hell pulling them over the burn.” Liam holds up my silk boxers and I thank the Lord I wear them and not tighty-whiteys. They’ll hurt, but not too bad, and I need to be covered. I have no fucking dignity right now.
“Give.” I hold my hand out.
Liam passes them to me and I pull them on, being careful to hold them away from the burn as I pull them up my thigh.
“I need to call an ambulance,” Luka says looking at my leg.
“And the police.” I sigh.
I will probably be questioned, maybe arrested, because I doubt they’ll see the level of damage I did to this sick fuck as self-defense.
I sigh and nod, resigned to my fate but pissed as hell that Duncan, or whatever the fuck he’s called, will get to live.
Kate comes to stand by me. She has a towel in her hands. “I think it’s clean. Smells freshly laundered. Should we dampen it and put it on his leg?” she asks Mags.
Luka is making a call, and I’m feeling tired as hell all of a sudden. I need to sit down, and I push myself off from the sink and stumble to the chairs by the tatty table. My adrenalin has dissipated, and my head is splitting.
I sit down and put my head in my hands. I can’t even look at Kate. She must think I’m a monster, and it kills me to realize how much I care.