Chapter Nine
Another night and he was on his knees again. Another night in the room he hated. He couldn’t hear the ocean from here.
“And how is Shaw treating you, boy?”
Lee winced as Vornis gripped his jaw tightly and twisted his head to face him. “Please,” he murmured. “Oh, please.”
Vornis gave an exasperated sigh.
Lee lowered his eyes quickly, his heart racing. He’d miscalculated. It was too early for begging. He wondered how many more broken fingers that mistake would earn him. He tasted bile, and his stomach clenched. Every nerve in his body screamed at him to fight or to run, but experience was a better teacher than adrenaline. He struggled not to move.
“I asked how Shaw is treating you, boy,” Vornis said. His eyes were dark, almost black. Like a shark’s. “Tell me what happens when he takes you into the shower.”
Lee tried to swallow. “I give him blowjobs, sir.” His voice cracked.
Vornis raised his eyebrows and released Lee’s jaw. “How very adolescent. Is that all?”
Every instinct in Lee warned him to lie. He owed it to Shaw to lie, but it wasn’t all about gratitude. It was about self-preservation as well. Because whatever game Shaw was playing, he’d made Lee play along, and Vornis would punish him for that.
Shaw trusts you. Don’t fuck it up.
“He, um, he pulls my head back under the water, and I can’t breathe.” Lee fixed his eyes on the floor, hoping that was enough. He prayed he hadn’t given Vornis any new ideas. A shudder ran through him.
“Ha!” Vornis sounded pleased. “I told you Shaw has potential.”
Lee closed his eyes briefly.
Hanson laughed from somewhere behind him.
Lee hated sessions like these. He preferred it when he was drugged. He’d hoped they’d drug him tonight—the cabinet where the syringes were kept was open, but so far neither of the men had made a move toward it. He always panicked when he was lucid, but sometimes that was just what Vornis wanted.
Sometimes he wanted the drug-fucked Lee, dazed and compliant, but sometimes he wanted to see real fear. When he was drugged, Lee whimpered from the pain but didn’t understand its cause. When he was lucid, he screamed and begged when he saw it coming, his eyes rolling in his head and every muscle straining, and that made Vornis laugh.
He’d been drugged last night and the night before. That meant tonight they wanted his every reaction.
Oh God. He needed something. He couldn’t do this. Not again.
“Please,” he gasped, his fear breaking him like it always did in this room. He shuffled forward on his knees, his cuffed hands making it difficult. He bent toward Vornis like a supplicant. “Please.”
Vornis reached down and stroked Lee’s hair with his blunt fingers.
Lee responded to the gentle touch gratefully. He pushed his face against Vornis’s trouser leg. Like a fucking dog. He hated himself, but he was too desperate not to beg.
Vornis’s voice was soft and beguiling. “That’s a good boy. Show me how well behaved you are.”
Lee shivered.
He hated this. He hated to see himself as Vornis must have: on his knees, begging, nuzzling the man’s trouser leg. He wished he could say he didn’t recognize himself, but who was he kidding? Every time he entered this room, they turned him into a fucking slave. Yes, sir. No, sir. Anything you want, sir.
He’d played games like this once. Just games. Cuffs and blindfolds and pretending to be master or slave without laughing too hard. Tim, his boyfriend from college, had been more into it than him. He’d ended up getting into leather and discipline and the whole deal. It had been a little too weird for Lee. Playing was fine, but he could never do it with a straight face. He couldn’t beg a man and make it sound real. He couldn’t have imagined it would be one day.
“Please, sir, please don’t hurt me!”
It turned out the only thing holding him back had been his consent. Take that away and he was a fucking natural. On his knees, bending toward Vornis and begging with every fiber of his being for mercy he knew he wouldn’t get. And later, of course, he’d beg for pain as well. Just because Vornis wanted to hear him do it and had the ability to make it happen.
He choked back a sob.
Oh God, oh God.
He skated close to the edge of mindless panic.
No.
Fishing for gar and green sunfish at Round Lake.
Counting the cracks in the sidewalk on the way home from school.
The Vikings pennant on his bedroom wall.
Hold on to that. Hold on to what you were. What you are. You’re not nothing. And when this is done, Shaw will look after you.
Shaw looked him in the eye, and Lee had never seen anything like disgust there, and that was something else to hold on to. Vornis could try to make him forget the man he’d been, but Shaw wouldn’t let that happen.
Hope was so fragile and easily crushed, but Lee took as much as he could. He had tried to show Shaw what that hope meant to him, using the only currency he had left, but Shaw always rebuffed him. He wanted Shaw. He wanted to remember what it was like to have a choice, but that was one choice Shaw wouldn’t let him make. Lee wished he would, because Shaw would look him in the eye if they fucked, and it wouldn’t hurt. Lee wanted that. He needed it. It wasn’t just about lust. Shit, nothing much was these days, but he couldn’t deny the spark he felt when Shaw touched him. It was about remembering who he had been and maybe reclaiming just a fraction of it. Just enough to hold on to at times like these, because he was so afraid these were the only times he had left.
Lee drew a shaking breath.
No. Shaw won’t let you die here.
“Good boy,” Vornis said in that soothing tone Lee didn’t want to trust. He stroked his head.
Lee stared at the floor and at Vornis’s shoes. God, he hated this room. He hated it because it always broke him, and he hated it so much that he started to look for his salvation anywhere, even in Vornis. Please, sir, please.
“We ought to bring Shaw here and let him play,” Vornis said.
Lee shuddered. No, not that.
Hanson laughed again.
Lee had seen the security feeds from the bungalow. And it looked so real. Vornis had liked it a lot, and Lee realized it wasn’t just about him. It was about Shaw as well. Vornis wanted Shaw, and Lee wondered if Shaw knew it. Maybe he did. He seemed clever. But if Vornis brought Shaw to this room, it wouldn’t be a charade anymore.
They can’t bring Shaw here. Shaw is my sanctuary. I don’t want him to see what this room makes me.
Shaw knew because Lee had told him, but knowing wasn’t the same as seeing. What if he looked at Lee differently afterward? Shaw had lied for him. Shaw had tried to preserve what little dignity Lee had left. Shaw saw the man he was before, or at least the memory of him. Lee couldn’t have Shaw here, because Shaw was his hope.
You have to pick a side in this room, and he couldn’t pick me.
Lee felt Hanson unfasten the cuffs. They fell free with a rattle, but he kept his hands behind his back until he was told different.
How many sand dollars today? Twelve today. Twelve was a good number. One of them had been almost green. That was from algae, maybe. He’d liked the color of it. He’d held it up to the sunlight, and it had appeared as translucent as stained glass. So many colors on the island.
Lee closed his eyes and tried to regulate his breathing.
He hated the way the anticipation alone made him tremble. And every time it happened, he told his body not to react. He told himself it was pointless. He told himself to be insensible, but it never really worked. Every time he thought he must have used up his last reserves of fear, he surprised himself. Fear, like pain, turned out to be a bottomless pit.
Lee heard Hanson’s footsteps behind him.
Lee didn’t have to open his eyes to see the room. Every detail of it was burned onto his retinas and had been since the first time they’d brought him here. The walls were hung with instruments of torture, and there wasn’t a single one Vornis hadn’t used on him. Pain was such a strange thing, made up of a thousand different variations of rhythm and pitch, and Vornis knew how to play an entire symphony on his body.
Don’t think about it. Just breathe.
Somewhere on the other side of the world, it is spring. Somewhere, fresh blades of grass are breaking through the cold crust of the earth and the streams are running full as the last of the snow melts. Somewhere on the other side of the world, your room is waiting for you. Somewhere on the other side of the world, your parents buried an empty box.
No. Think of something else.
He was breathing so quickly his lungs ached, and he still couldn’t get enough air.
Fishing for gar and green sunfish at Round Lake.
Counting the cracks in the sidewalk on the way home from school.
The Vikings pennant on his bedroom wall.
It wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t be enough.
He heard movement behind him, and Hanson pulled him to his feet. Then he was being pushed toward the frame in the corner.
“Oh please, please no.” He struggled for breath. “Please!”
Later, when he thought back, he realized he’d started screaming even before they tied him down.
* * * *
A knock on the door.
“Honey?”
It took him a moment to realize where he was. Then he saw the sunlight slanting through the gap in his curtains and falling across his desk. He’d left his computer on from last night, and the screen saver was swirling across the screen. God, he’d had a nightmare or something, and his tears had soaked his pillow. The taste of it was still sour in his throat. His heart was beating fast.
“Honey? You’ll be late for school.”
He mumbled something into his pillow and closed his eyes again.
He could hear sparrows trilling outside, and the sound of Mr. Keller’s old truck grinding through the gears as he headed off to work. Seven sharp, every morning. Mr. Keller was more reliable than an alarm clock.
His door squeaked open. “Lee, honey, get out of bed!”
He heard his mother’s footsteps recede down the hall. She’d be going downstairs now, to start breakfast. Very soon the aroma of sausages and pancakes would fill the house.
Tears stung his eyes.
Now what the hell was that about? Just the hangover from some stupid nightmare. He had to get up and get ready for school. Was it the SAT practice today, or was it the game? It was something important. Why couldn’t he remember? He struggled to think.
Don’t.
His bed was warm. It would be nice to stay in it all day, caught in this pleasant drowsiness, but he had to get up and get moving. He had that important thing.
Don’t!
His breath caught in his throat.
No, he was okay here. This was the safest place in the world.
That was a weird thing to think.
He sighed and stretched, and couldn’t move his arms. Why couldn’t he move his arms? He had to get out of bed, get in the shower, get dressed, and go downstairs for breakfast. There were things he had to do today, places he had to be. But he couldn’t move his arms.
Fear chilled him. “Mom? Mom, I can’t get up. Please come back, Mom. I think I need help.”
He shifted, but he was tangled in the sheets or something. He couldn’t pull free.
“Mom?”
Realization caught him in a sickening rush.
Oh no, oh no. It’s not real. It’s not fucking real. This never happened. You were never stuck. You got out of bed, and you got ready for school, and you had your breakfast, and you did it over and over again for years. And you went to college, and you met Tim, and it didn’t last, but it ended okay, and you graduated, and you moved to Denver and you joined the DEA, and your boss suggested you for an assignment with the Miami office, and you went in a chopper, and you landed in Colombia, and you hadn’t even learned those guys’ names properly before Vornis killed them. How the fuck could you ever forget any of that?
Lee moaned. Mom?
You’re not there. Open your eyes and see.
No. No. Keep them closed.
A low laugh close to his ear brought him around. Hanson.
Lee’s eyes snapped open. He was bound over the frame, his arms and legs splayed. He could see blood on the floor. Couldn’t feel it yet, though. His body was numb, or the pain had been so intense that his mind had cut itself off from it. Cut itself off and run straight back home.
“He’s crying for his mommy.” Hanson laughed. He caught Lee’s hair and twisted his head around. He bent down and put his face close to Lee’s. “Are you back, bitch?”
Lee nodded through his tears.
How many sand dollars?
Twelve.
Which was your favorite?
The green one. Never saw one that color before.
Find another one tomorrow.
“That’s my brave little man,” Vornis said. Lee could hear the amusement in his voice. “Tilt your head and have a drink.”
Lee opened his mouth and Hanson tilted a plastic bottle of water toward him. Most of the water spilled out onto the floor, but Lee managed a few shallow gulps. “Thank you, sir.”
He let his stinging eyes close again.
How much longer?
There was a tiny rock pool in the shallows at the bottom of the path that led up the hill. He’d seen it before. When Shaw went for a jog tomorrow, maybe Lee would be strong enough to go with him or at least trail along behind him. And maybe he could inspect that rock pool then. There might be hundreds of sand dollars in there.
Lee always walked with his eyes down, and the island revealed all its secrets to him. Sand dollars, tiny holes inhabited by translucent crabs, glittering shells built like spiral towers, and sand that turned from brilliant white to warm caramel when the ocean caressed it.
Lee wasn’t allowed to swim, but he could wade. He’d seen starfish lying in the shallows. He’d never seen a real starfish before in his life, and now he’d seen hundreds. Some of them were small and sand-colored, and he was afraid of hurting them if he stood on them, but some were larger than his hand and deep orange. The water was so clear that Lee could see them laid out like strings of lanterns all the way from the shallows to where the waves broke on the reef. The large starfish were too far out for Lee to touch, but he wondered if they felt as velvety as they looked.
Which was stupid. They were probably poisonous. What the hell did a guy from Minnesota know about reef creatures? Almost everything from the reef was either poisonous or venomous, wasn’t it? Shaw had scars on his thigh from some unpronounceable jellyfish. The reef was beautiful and dangerous.
Shaw had scars, but he still swam in the ocean. Lee didn’t know if that was brave or stupid.
Shaw looks you in the eye.
His breathing slowly calmed.
How many sand dollars today?
Twelve.
“Tell me what you want, boy.” Vornis laid his hand on Lee’s trembling shoulder.
In the beginning, Lee remembered, he’d recoiled from Vornis’s touch. Now he didn’t bother.
He kept his eyes closed, not knowing how to respond. “Please, sir.”
“Please what, boy?”
Lee felt a part of his mind retreat. “Anything, sir.”
Vornis dug his fingers in, and suddenly that sensation joined in with others; all the pain he’d held off until now ripped back through him. His body was on fire, and he was glad, so fucking glad, that he couldn’t see the welts on his back. Some of them had bled, maybe all of them, but Lee couldn’t differentiate between them. Everything hurt. That was the clever thing about the whip: even those parts of him untouched by its tails screamed in agony. Every muscle hurt from trying to hold himself together, from trying to distribute the pain into something manageable.
A cry tore out of his raw throat, and Vornis and Hanson laughed.
How many sand dollars?
Twelve.
He bucked against the restraints uselessly.
“Please, sir!”
“Please what, boy?”
Lee tensed as another wave of pain crested over him. “Please give me the needle, sir! It hurts so much!”
Vornis’s breath was warm against his ear. “I’m not sure if you deserve the needle tonight.”
Lee bit his lip and shook his head. Hot tears escaped him.
“Maybe you can show me how much you want it,” Vornis said. “Maybe you can change my mind.”
“Yes, sir,” Lee agreed desperately. “Please!”
He hated the sound of Vornis’s laugh almost as much as he hated himself.
He thought he might have blacked out when Hanson pulled him off the frame, because he couldn’t remember it happening. One minute he was strapped there, and the next minute he was on his knees trying to keep his balance while the stench of his own blood threatened to overwhelm him. He burned. He fucking burned.
He looked up at Vornis through his tears, and the man smiled back down at him.
“Go on, then. Show me.”
Lee wet his lips with his tongue and bent his protesting body toward Vornis.
Another night and he was on his knees again. It didn’t matter. He only had to hold himself together until it was over. He only had to hold on to hope.
Shaw will look after you when this is done, and tomorrow you’re gonna find another green sand dollar.