BELL

My head was dying. I had a million needles jabbing into my temples, and my eyes wouldn’t open. I was trying, working every tiny muscle behind those lids, and nothing happened. I attempted to roll over, to bring my tongue back inside my mouth, but I couldn’t do that either.

I’m paralyzed. The thought was blindingly apparent, and panic flared. Only, I couldn’t move. I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t do anything to react, and that was even more maddening.

But I could feel. I could feel how dry my throat was, my tongue heavy. I could feel a glob of saliva, saliva I desperately needed, running along my open lips and dripping to the floor. I could feel the painful bite of the metal cuffs, cuffs that were stretching my arms out, my shoulders aching from the strain. I checked in with my lower half and found my legs splayed out, my butt on the floor.

I don’t think paralyzed people can feel pain. It’s both a blessing and a curse. Maybe I wasn’t paralyzed. But, then again, paralysis would cause me to be immune to whatever hell was before me. Instead, I might feel it all. And I had an inkling this blonde bitch had all sorts of crazy shit planned for me.

Speaking of which … I focused on the sounds in the room. Someone was in here with me. I could hear footsteps. Confident ones. Moving right to left. Something crackled, plastic wrapping removed off an unknown item. Dario. Was he here also? Had she had more people in the house, waiting? Did they take him?

An item was moved, the long squeak of friction sounding against the floor. I struggled to open my eyes. One of them moved a smidgen, enough to give me a hazy look at white concrete. I couldn’t see her, but my senses seemed to be returning. I strained again to open my eyes and was rewarded with a wedge of light, a cloudy figure nearby. The Realtor. She was bent over something, her long blonde hair draped close to the floor.

She came closer and stopped before me. I tried to lift my head but it didn’t move. From this angle, I could see one ripped knee on a pair of faded jeans. I thought back, of her welcoming us into the house, the conservative skirt and blazer. She’d changed. I wondered when she did that. I wondered how long I’d been drooling all over the place and hanging here like a broken marionette puppet.

Her foot lifted and I saw the black combat boot it wore. My eye opened a little bit more and I managed a blink. She pushed her boot into my chest and the treads of the shoe bit painfully into my breasts. I wheezed out a pained cry.

Ah. So, I could talk. My tongue twitched, and I managed to pull it into my mouth, swallowing a painful gulp that did nothing to ease my thirst. Why was I so thirsty? How long had it been? An hour? A day? I had no concept of time.

“Water.” My voice didn’t sound like me. It sounded old and feeble. My tongue felt sandpapery and this must be how a cat feels, all of the time.

She laughed and I tried to figure out what she was laughing about. Had I said something? I couldn’t remember.

She pulled back her boot from my chest and my eyelids finally worked, dragging apart.

DARIO

Uniforms swarmed the mini-mansion, LVPD in white letters that seemed to scream at him from every vest. Dario stood in the grand living room and made the call, his fifth in the last hour. Finally, this time, the man picked up.

“I can’t keep holding your hand with updates. We’re working on this. You have to be patient. This guy—”

“She took Bell. Kidnapped her.”

There was a beat of silence, then the federal agent spoke. “Bell Hartley? Who took her?”

“A blonde. Tall. We had an appointment to look at a house. She tied up the realtor and posed as her. I stepped out of the house to talk to you, and that’s when she took her.”

“Is there blood?”

Dario knew what the man was really asking. After all, Gwen’s killer hadn’t been concerned with kidnapping. Death had been the focus there. So why, this time, was it different? The woman would have had plenty of time to shoot Bell and take off. But she didn’t. She took Bell with her. Why?

He shook his head. “There wasn’t any blood. A shoe—Bell’s sandal—was left behind. And her purse was tossed in the tub with the Realtor. Nothing else. There’s a highway that runs adjacent to this house. It looks like she took her there and had a car waiting.”

“This doesn’t make sense. Do you think she was hired? That she’s the one who hit Gwen?” Agent King asked.

Dario pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to remember something, anything, about the woman who had let them into the house. But any woman had paled next to Bell, and his eyes had swept over her without looking, her greeting barely acknowledged, her chatter about the house, the bedrooms, the lot—all ignored.

She had been blonde. Fairly tall. A thin muscular build. That was all he could remember about her. A sketch artist would be arriving any minute to work with him on a drawing, and he was coming up blank with regards to her face. Had he shook her hand? Looked her in the eye? Introduced himself?

“Dario? You there?”

He tried to refocus on the conversation. Do you think she was hired? That she’s the one who hit Gwen? He shook his head. “I don’t know. Who the fuck would want to hurt her now that Hawk was dead? I don’t know—” He shook his head. “I don’t know what is happening.”

It didn’t make sense. Hawk’s goons were all hired muscle. There was no devotion among his crew, no personal interests in his successes, other than the promise of a paycheck. With his death, the money stopped. Any jobs in progress would have died with the vanishing of their reward.

The knowledge of that had caused Dario to become lax. He’d thought that when he was with her, she was protected. He’d lined up bodyguards to cover her the rest of the time. Instead, he should have gone into full security mode. A team following them. A trackable device on her person. Their destinations secured in advance. A level of protection that rivaled the Secret Service.

The agent’s voice dropped into an apologetic tone. “We’re tied up with this warehouse search. I don’t have assets to reassign to look for your girlfriend.”

Dario fought the urge to reach out and punch the nearest wall. “These are connected. For all we know, she’s taking Bell to the warehouse now. This is your hottest lead, and it’s fresh.”

So fresh he could still smell Bell’s perfume. So fresh that the sound of the ATV seemed to hum in his ear. Why had he taken the call? Why had he shut the door? Why had he left her alone and thought she’d be safe?

Because it was a woman. A sexist move that had cost him everything. He saw a woman and dismissed her as a threat. He dismissed her, and the moment his back had turned, she had struck.

“Chances are, she’s not taking Bell to the warehouse. Chances are that she’s taking her somewhere remote. Come on, Dario. You know this.”

The softening of his voice did nothing to cushion the vision he created. Somewhere remote where she would be hurt. Somewhere she’d scream, and no one would hear. Someone that she’d be scared and he wouldn’t be there to save, comfort, and protect her.

The thought was a knife to Dario’s gut.

BELL

I was close to vomiting. I willed my stomach to calm, the pitch and coil of it to lessen, and watched the darkness, catching the moment the shadows shifted and the woman re-entered the cell. Still no sign of Dario, no mention of him. I wanted to know, but I was afraid to ask.

“Who are you?” I rasped out the question, my throat still dry, my repeated requests for water ignored. I had wanted a friendly tone, but it came out wrong. Hard. Accusatory. Then again, any chance of a friendship between us had dried up around the time she Tased me.

She ignored my question, moving to the far end of the cell, and I noticed the other door. Through the open entrance and across the hall. Another cell. Like this one. I struggled to bring my feet underneath me, fighting against the cuffs until I managed to get my soles flat, my body rising… I got a glimpse of another dark head, a girl, and then my ankles caved, my legs too rubbery. I fell forward, the cuffs yanking me back right before my head hit the concrete floor.

“Careful.” The woman carried a metal folding chair, and set it up in front of me.

“Who’s that?” I lifted my chin and tried my best to use it to point to the opposite cell, my sluggish mind putting together some of the pieces. Remembering what Dario had told me. This had been the first stop on Robert Hawk’s prisoner’s journey. A warehouse with captured women. But Hawk was dead.

“Ignore her.” She sat in the chair and flipped on a penlight, bringing it up to my face. The light was blinding, and I winced, closing my eyes to it.

“It hurts, doesn’t it? The light?” She brought it closer to me. “I was right here once. Just like you. Only, unlike you, I didn’t deserve it.”

I wet my lips. Tried to swallow. Listened to her and hoped that a lecture was all that she had planned.

“We were so close,” she whispered. “All you had to do was die, and everything was going to be okay.”

Her words were so soft that I almost missed them, the light coming too close to my pupil. I pinched my eyes shut in defense.

“Do you know what you did wrong, Bell?”

Yeah, I knew what I did wrong. Trusted this crazy bitch to show me a bathroom without incapacitating me. That was the first thing that came to mind. But other than that, there was only one thing I could think of, at least in terms of landing me in Robert Hawk’s warehouse. Dario.

I wet my lips. “Dario.”

She turned off the light and I blinked rapidly, trying to see past the dots in my vision, trying to get a good look at her face.

“You disrespected my family.”

She bent over and reached in the canvas bag that sat by the foot of the chair.

“You made me look like a failure in front of my father.”

When she straightened, she held an item that made my nausea swell.

“He died before seeing my mistake righted.”

She rose to her feet and flipped the knife over in her hand,

“Which means, pretty little, sweet little, slutty little Bell…” She leaned forward until her hair brushed my neck, her mouth close to my ear. “You’re going to have to pay for all that. Pay for it, and punish Dario… All. At. Once.”