“I want you to come inside me,” she breathes, and I’m so fucking turned on that I dig my nails into her arms and blow right there.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CASSIE
When I wake up, it’s pitch-black outside. I float on the blissful ignorance that accompanies waking up for the briefest of moments; then, reality slams into me like a sledgehammer.
Damon.
Home.
Fuck!
I scramble to my knees on Leo’s bed, knocking into him as I try to find my clothes. Jesus Christ, I can’t see a damn thing. I don’t even know where the light is in here.
Leo rouses as I feel around the bed, locating my bra and T-shirt, my scarf, throwing them all on as fast as I can.
“What’s wrong?” Leo asks, his voice thick with sleep.
“I can’t find my pants,” I mutter, sliding off the bed and feeling around on the floor. Leo sits up, flicking on a flashlight and offering it to me. I take it, for a second jolted back to the morning when he found Karen Brainard in the well.
“Thanks,” I say, finally grabbing my jeans. I can’t find my panties. I guess Leo can have them as a souvenir.
“You’re going?” Leo asks as I hand him the flashlight.
“Yeah.” He can’t hear the way my heart’s about to explode from anxiety. “What’s the time?”
He rustles around in the bed, probably looking for his phone. A moment later, he answers me. “It’s six-twenty-three.”
Fuck. “In the morning?”
“At night.”
“Oh, thank Christ.” We were only asleep for a couple hours. I was scheduled to work a double today — my shift normally wouldn’t finish until six-thirty. I’ve got seven minutes to get up to the house before Damon gets to the diner expecting to pick me up after work, and realizes I’m not there.
I grab my bag, loaded with stolen memorabilia from Lone Pine, thankful that my eyes have adjusted to the dark.
“Cassie,” Leo says, but I don’t turn around.
“I have to go,” I say quickly, locating the door and opening it. I gasp as cold air slams into me. I pull the door shut and start power-walking toward the road, and beyond, to my house. My eyesight isn’t terrible but it’s not perfect, either; I think the driveway is still empty, but in this darkness, it’s impossible to know for sure. I think of the way Damon casually lined Leo’s place up in the crosshairs of his riflescope more than once, and cringe inwardly as I imagine him shooting me as I fumble my way home.
“Cassie!” Leo’s voice rings out behind me, more insistent this time. “Wait!” I stop in my tracks, turning toward the noise. Oh my God, Leo, you’re going to get me killed.
I break into a run away from Leo. I don’t think he’ll follow me home. I don’t think he’s that stupid. My bag is falling from my shoulder, heavy with secret grave-robbed gifts, the freezing night air burning in my lungs. I make it to the road and stop, catching my breath, almost screaming as I hear footsteps behind me.
“Cassie,” Leo says, stopping beside me. “What are you doing?”
I push him, hard. “You’re going to get me into deep shit, Leo! You need to go back down there and stop fucking following me.”
Leo stumbles back when I push him, but he’s a giant, and it’s not as if I’d ever be able to push him over.
“What kind of shit?” Leo probes, tugging on my scarf, exposing the bruises at my throat. “He gonna do this again? You don’t have to go back there—”
“Oh my God,” I hiss, yanking on my scarf and putting it back over my neck. “You have no fucking idea what you’re talking about. Leave me alone. I mean it.”
“If he’s hurting you, Cassie, we can call the police—”
“Leo!” I push him again, acutely aware of how exposed we are on the shoulder of the road. “He is the police! Don’t you understand? He could send you back to prison.”
Leo’s eyes are full of anger, full of unshed tears. “I can’t let you go up there if he’s going to hurt you,” he says, his words taking on a hard edge.
Fucking fuck. Fuck! I glance over my shoulder, making sure there are no headlights driving in our direction.
“He’s not going to hurt me,” I say. “But if he sees us together, he’s going to hurt you.”
The first part is a lie; he’s definitely going to hurt me at some point.
“I can take him,” Leo says, his gaze hard as he stares up at my house.
“Can you take a bullet?” I challenge him. “Can you take being arrested? Can you take going back to prison?”
Leo’s shoulders sag.
“Go home, don’t go home,” I snap. “Whatever. But for the love of God, don’t fucking follow me across this road or it will be the last time we ever see each other. You get me?”
He gives a short nod, walking back a couple of steps. I check the road for any cars and run across the road, along my driveway, up the front steps, and onto my porch.
I left the door unlocked on purpose this morning, part of my plan. I don’t even have a key to my own goddamn house, Damon’s control over my every move is so precise. I can’t come and go as I please if I don’t have access to the place, a deliberate move on his part.
The door handle turns in my palm, I crack open the door, and I’m safe. The house is pitch-black and silent, thankyouthankyouthankyou. I step across the threshold and close the door behind me, sagging against it as the adrenalin in my veins continues to throb.
I made it.
A lamp snaps on in the living room, the noise is deafening in the silence, the light impossibly bright. I jump so violently I drop my bag, and its contents scatter across the floorboards like little traitors exposing me.
“Well,” Ray smirks, a shotgun resting across his knees as he sits at one end of the sofa. “Would you look what the fuckin’ cat dragged in.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CASSIE
Ray sizes me up like I’m a piece of steak he’s about to cut into. His eyes drift from my face, down my torso, all the way to my feet and back again, and when he’s done I feel like he’s painted an oil slick from my head to my toes.
“Ray,” I say listlessly.
“Ca-ssan-dra,” he mocks, the grin on his face a mile wide. He stands, the shotgun casually slung over one shoulder as he approaches me. I put my hand on the doorknob and twist, pulling it open an inch, but Ray is faster. He’s in front of me, using his free hand to slam the door shut again, leaving it there so I’m caged in by his thick arm.
I swallow thickly. Fuck.
Ray wrinkles his nose up, the grin still cemented to his face. “You. Stink. Like. Sex.”
My stomach drops. I want to throw up. The room spins around me as I look past the man who buried Jennifer’s body, the man who held a gun to my head after I’d rolled her into the ground, the man who I’ve feared since the moment he shook my sixteen-year-old hand in his clammy palm and squeezed it a beat too long.
I’m so terrified, I can’t even speak.
Smirking, Ray takes his hand away and pulls a cell phone from his jeans. He dials and holds it to his ear, pulling a face as he studies mine. He’s entertained by my fear. He’s… what’s the word? He’s triumphant. He thinks he’s won, but I don’t even know what game we’re playing. I hear a voice on the other end of the phone, and really, who else would it be?
“Brother, you’d best get home,” Ray says to Damon. “I found your girl. I think she’s got some things she’d like to tell you about who’s been sticking their dick inside her.”
Damon says something that distracts Ray. I see it in the way his eyes glaze over, the way he turns away from me ever so slightly. I’m trapped against the door, but if I can just get past him, I’ll be able to run for the kitchen.
Ray ends the call. Damn.
There are sharp things in the kitchen. Knives.
Fuck. Whichever way this ends, there’s going to be blood.
I bring my knee up as hard as I can, hitting Ray in the groin. He’s g
ot an erection. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. All that excitement from trapping me in my own home without Damon to call him off. Ray doubles over, groaning. “You fucking cunt!” he roars, dropping the phone. He reaches out to grab me, but I twist out of his grip, elbowing him in the side as hard as I can.
I run to the kitchen, my arm throbbing, my brain screaming. Knife! Knife?
Knife. I find the sharpest blade in the block, the one I accidentally cut myself with when Chris visited, and brandish it in front of me. Ray charges at me, the shotgun still in his hand, aimed at the floor.
If I can just get the gun away from him.
If I can just get the gun.
If I can just.
Fuck.
“Give me that,” Ray says, holding out his hand like I’m a petulant child who grabbed a second helping of chocolate ice cream after dinner. I feign surrender, letting my wrist go limp as I hand the knife to Ray. He chuckles, his wide palm in striking distance.
I don’t hand him the knife. I slash the knife as hard as I can across his palm. Fuck you, you psycho. As if I’d hand you the only weapon I have.
Ray growls, his face beet red. “Ffffuuuuck!” he rages, spittle landing on my cheek. I step back, but not fast enough. Ray is biggerstrongerfaster than me, and his bloodied hand closes around my knife-wielding wrist so hard, I feel like the bone might snap. I gasp in a breath, fighting his vise-like grip as my wrist screams in agony. The pain is sharp, it’s warm, it’s coated in the blood that pours from Ray’s deep laceration all down my arm.
“You fucking cut me?!” he rages.
The knife clatters to the floor and he lets go of my twisted wrist. I turn to run as he lifts the butt of the shotgun above my head. There’s a sharp crack at the back of my skull, and a syrupy warmth that begins to ooze into my hair. It’s almost a relief, the way the world blurs and fizzes. I sink down to my hands and knees, like I’m praying to this murderous God above me. My vision tunnels as I begin to crawl, black haze eating at the edges of my sight. Ray kicks me in the ribs, hard enough that I land on my back. He steps over me, the leather of his boots warm through my jeans as he holds me in place, and he’s all I can see in the pinpricks of my sight. Ray. He’s not smiling anymore. What will he do to me?
“So that’s where you’ve been,” Ray marvels, holding a matchbox car up and spinning the wheels with his fingertip. “On a field trip. Looks like you got yourself some souvenirs.” I stare at the little car, swallowed up in his big hand. The crude letters scratched into its underside are too far away for me to read, but I already know what they spell. DANIEL.
WHEN I OPEN MY EYES, the pain in my head is so sharp I vomit a little. But I’m on my back, nowhere for the bile to go. I swallow it back down. It burns.
I’m cold. My arms are stretched above me, bound together and aching, and when I try to move them nothing happens. I tug again, harder. Fuck. I’m tied to the table, but worse than that, there’s a length of rope or something equally strong running underneath the table, reaching from my wrists to each of my ankles. When I pull my wrists, the rope around my ankles tightens. If I try to kick my feet away from the table legs, it only drags the rope tighter around my wrists.
I tug at the ropes, twisting this way and that, but it’s useless. Every tug makes the rope a little tighter. I am bound, trussed up like a roast turkey ready to be carved for Thanksgiving. Above the refrigerator, Damon’s collection of bobble-head toys and collectibles mock me with their unnaturally large eyes, their plastic grins, their ridiculous irony.
Ray appears at the edge of my vision. I turn my head just as he sits down on a dining chair and scoots toward me.
“You got me good,” he murmurs, staring down at his palm. “You’re a fucking bitch, you know that?” He laughs, but then his laughter turns to rage. He reaches his hand over and presses his bleeding palm to my mouth. Before I can clamp my lips together, warm blood breaches my mouth. It tastes like I just licked an ashtray full of pennies and dirt. I retch, trying to twist my head away as Ray digs his fingernails into my cheeks.
“You taste that?” he growls, standing as his chair falls away behind him with a crash. “You crazy bitch. That’s on you. That’s on you.”
He shifts his grip, pinching my nostrils together and covering my mouth at the same time. I gasp against his hand, vacuum-sealed to my face, searching for air where there is none.
“You want me to take my hand away?” he asks, his dark eyes crazed, the pupils stretched wide open. It’s as if I’m looking into hell when I look into those pupils, vast and empty and midnight-black.
I nod furiously, pleading with my eyes. Please let me breathe. He applies more pressure with his hand, digs his fingernails deeper. It’s like having a fucking bear trying to claw my face off. He waits patiently as I struggle against his grip, as my whole body starts to shake uncontrollably, desperate and hungry for just a sip of oxygen. The room starts to spin, the edges turn dark. If I black out again, I don’t know if I’ll wake up. Maybe I’ll just be dead. Maybe this is it.
I don’t want this to be it. Not here. Not now. Not with Ray.
My lungs start to pulsate in my chest. I must look like a fish out of water when they spread out their gills as they drown in air.
“If I take my hand away, you’re gonna behave. Okay?”
I nod some more. He takes his hand away and I turn my head from him, gasping in a breath. All I can taste is blood. All I can feel is the lactic acid screaming in my locked-up arms, the dead weight of my legs slung over the edge of the table, the burn in my lungs where air was gone for too long.
“I fucking told my brother you’d be a problem,” he says, grabbing a roll of paper towels and wrapping a thick makeshift bandage around his hand. “I fucking told him. You think he’d listen?” He’s muttering to himself, and to me, and if he doesn’t kill me I don’t know who’ll be more surprised out of the two of us.
“Where’s the fucking PBR?” he demands, disappearing from view again. I hear the refrigerator door open and slam shut. Seriously? I’m hog-tied to a table and he wants a fucking beer?
I hear him stomp out to the garage. The moment he leaves the kitchen a strangled sob floats out of me, unbidden and unexpected. I blink back tears, biting the insides of my cheeks. Crying is ammunition to people like Ray. Every tear shed is like handing him a nail for your coffin.
I wonder if I will get a coffin, or if I’ll be rolled into the dirt beside Jennifer.
I wonder if he’ll kill me first, or bury me alive.
So many details to ponder.
And he’s back. He slams a six-pack of Pabst bottles on the table beside my head, making me jump. He gazes down at me as he tears a bottle from the pack and opens it, a predator sizing up his prey as he takes a slug of beer. He sets the bottle down, the condensation from the glass soaking through his makeshift bandage and turning the kitchen paper red. “Fucking useless,” he mutters, unwinding the wet red paper towel from his palm and tossing it aside.
“Now,” Ray says, scratching the stubble on his chin. “What are we going to do with you?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CASSIE
What are we going to do with you.
His grin tells me. He’s already decided what he’s going to do with me. He’s just waiting to see if I catch up.
“What happened to you to make you like this?” I whisper.
Ray stops for a moment, his grin shrinking. He pulls the same matchbox car out of his shirt pocket and tosses it at me. It lands on my chest, and if I crane my neck I can see all of the tiny bits of rust on its metal frame.
“What happened to me? What happened to me.” He takes a pair of paramedic shears from his jeans pocket and steps into the space in front of me, pressing his thumb and forefinger into my thigh until I yelp. I know they’re paramedic shears — metal scissors with the very end kicked out on an angle, to run along clothed skin without stabbing into somebody by accident — because I watched them cut my mother’s clothes from he
r in the hospital after her accident.
I crane my neck harder, watching as he reduces my jeans to ribbons of denim in seconds. “What are you doing?” I whimper.
“It’s not what I’m doing that you need to worry about, darlin’,” he says, finishing his handiwork. “It’s what I’m about to do.”
He chuckles.
I hyperventilate.
The air is cold, I am naked from the waist down, and he is right — It’s what he’s about to do that has me shaking. My whole body, trembling on the table like I’m having a seizure, the little matchbox car on my chest bouncing every time I drag in a shallow breath. Ray, having cut every strip of clothing from my body from the waist down, takes his beer and sips it casually, grinning as he glances down at me. As if we’re at a bar, on a date, and he isn’t about to rape and murder me.
I’m cold, and I’m half-naked, and this cannot be happening. I buck like a wild animal when Ray’s fingers find their way to my thighs and push them wider like it’s nothing, like I’m a piece of paper he’s tearing in half. I scream so loud, I’d put Jennifer’s death wails to shame.
“Don’t!” I scream. Fuck. I scream as loud as I can, blood-curdling and shrill, and even though I told Leo to never come near this house again, I hope he didn’t listen. “Please. Please. Don’t.”
I didn’t want to beg but I beg now. Please don’t. It doesn’t matter, though.
Amused Ray is suddenly furious, raging Ray. He smacks me across the face, hard enough that I see stars. Before I can lift my head again, he’s shoving a wadded-up bunch of denim into my mouth, a crude off-cut from what used to be my jeans. I gag, trying to dislodge the material with my tongue, but it won’t budge, conforming to the shape of my mouth and making me retch.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he says angrily. “You think lover boy down there is gonna save you? Huh? You think my brother’s gonna bust through that door and stop me?” He drains the last of his beer and leans over me, spitting the liquid right into my face. I try to draw back but there’s nowhere to go, and all I manage to do is smack the back of my head against the table. Beer, warm from Ray’s mouth, dribbles into my eyes and nose and down the sides of my face, into my ears.