We drive a big chunk of the night to get me back home to Georgia, but I don’t think it will matter. I’ve been gone too long. As soon as I set foot onto the estate, I’ll be tossed down into The Chamber.
Which means I’ll have to act quickly.
“Stop here,” I tell Daniel when we’re only a mile from the mansion.
He pulls over. “Now what?”
“You need to remove the license plate from your car and find something to cover your face. There are cameras everywhere, and if I want to get the information you guys need, it has to look like someone is sending a message to Timothy by using me.”
He steps out of his car to do as I’ve asked, and I follow him. “There’s something else,” I say.
“What?” he asks warily.
“You need to hit me.” I pause when his eyes open wide with shock. “Hard and more than once.”
“You have got to be shitting me.” He jerks back as if I’ve belted him one.
“If you don’t, they will kill me on sight, and all of this will be for nothing, Daniel.” My words come out panicky. “By now, Timothy knows I’ve gone missing. They’ll have found my abandoned car and think I was taken. You have to make it look like it was for information.” I leave off the part where they’ll torture me to find out what I might have given up.
“Shit,” he groans, running a hand down his face.
I pull out the key to the cellar that no one realizes I know about and hand it to him. “There’s a cellar directly below my window. North side of the house, second floor. When that pink scarf appears, come in through there and follow the servant’s stairs on the left to the top and take the door on the right. It will lead you into the closet in my room. Grab the nesting dolls off my vanity in the corner by the window. There’s only one so you won’t miss it. Now, hit me.”
He’s torn; I see it in his eyes. Whoever raised him, they did right by him.
“I can’t hit a girl,” he says.
“Daniel, if you don’t, a shipment of little girls will be sold to the highest bidder by the end of the week. They will be raped and beaten. Forced to do things they shouldn’t even know exist. Now, fucking hit me!” I scream.
I see his decision just as his fist comes up to my face. The blow is so hard my head whips around. My cheek pounds with pain.
Stretching my jaw, I turn back to him. “Harder, Daniel.” He doesn’t hesitate, and this time, I hit the ground and hear my jaw pop from the blow.
I glare at him, unable to speak. I look from his leg to my gut and back again before meeting his confused gaze. Not about what I want him to do, but because he’s doing it, period.
The first blow to my gut hurts, but not enough to leave the bruises I need to appear quickly.
He does it again. And again. Each kick landing the way it needs, causing me to gasp until I hold out both hands for him to stop.
He drops to his knees beside me, and I can hear his sobbing, the pain etched on his face. And that hurts me far worse than any of the bruises I’d forced him to batter my body with.
Touching his cheek, I tell him with my eyes that it’s okay. That it had to be done, and he seems to understand as he picks me up off the ground. Placing me in the front seat of his car, gently.
Scribbling with my hand, I silently ask for a pen and paper. He rifles through the glove compartment and hands me a napkin and pen. I quickly write down that when he’s close to the gates, I’ll jump out like I was tossed out, and he has to speed off as quickly as possible. No looking back.
Cradling my head in his hands, he speaks, softly. “I’ll call Luther as soon as you’re out. He’ll come for you.” I shake my head, but he insists. “He will come, Ariel. You just need to hang on. You need to stay strong.” I only nod because I know he won’t go unless I do.
Luther
Not too far into my jaunt to Louisiana, I turn back around. I can’t fucking leave her to that fate. She is mine for fuck’s sake. I pulled her off that cliff. She owes me her life, not her scumbag family.
My phone ringing in the console of my car pulls me from my thoughts as I answer without looking at the caller ID.
“What?” I snap hitting the Bluetooth button on the steering wheel.
“You need to get to Georgia.” Daniel’s voice comes through the line.
“What the fuck happened?” I growl. They couldn’t have possibly made a move already.
“I just dropped her off there.” His voice is full of remorse.
“What the fuck did you just say to me?” I don’t even try to contain the snarl.
“We left not long after you. She’s there, Luther, and you need to come now. She’s going to hold out for as long as she can.” His voice is steady, and I’m impressed. “Thing is, Luther…” He hesitates. “She made me hit her.”
“You little, fucking weasel! You’re dead!” I scream, beyond any rational thought.
He continues like I didn’t just declare his death. “King will be here any minute now. They weren’t far behind us.” The line goes quiet. “I didn’t fucking want to, Luther. You have to believe that.”
Looking at the GPS on the dashboard, I see I’m not that far from their location, and tell him, “I’ll be there in less than two hours. Wait for me. And Daniel, if she’s dead when I get there, there is no hole you can hide from me. Her life is in your hands right now.”
Hanging up, I know I have to think things through logically. I need to think like the killer I am and not the lover I want to be. I can’t think of her as mine; she needs to be a mission again.
Calling King, he picks up halfway through the first ring. “Daniel called you,” he says, not even questioning it.
“You didn’t even wait.”
“I knew if we did, you’d be back and snap her up faster than I could use her.” It was true.
“She could be dead.”
“Daniel worked her over just well enough. They’ll think we tortured her, and she never spoke.” I can tell he’s thinking of Lilith from the bite in his tone and what happened to her.
“I’ll be there soon. If she’s dead, King, you and I, we’re done.”
I hang up, once again with another threat. This one less empty than the last but it needed to be said, nonetheless.
“Hang the fuck on, Ariel,” I growl into the empty car, picking up my speed so I can get there sooner.