The storm suited Alex as he painted mountains with clouds stealing in among the towering peaks. The thunder brought nature in to him in a visceral way as he worked on the gloom in the forest beneath towering clouds.
Near midnight the doorbell rang.
14.
ALEX FROZE FOR A MOMENT, brush in hand, as the echo of the bell slowly died out. His first thought was to wonder if it was possible that it could be Jax.
He quickly discounted the notion. It was foolish to think it was her. But then he realized that if by any chance it was her it would be even more foolish to keep her standing out in the rain.
He stuck the brush in the jar of water on the table to the side of his easel and wiped his hands on a towel while rolling back his chair. As he stood a reflection caught his eye. He glanced briefly in the mirror across the room to rake back his disorderly hair. He didn’t take the time to do any more to clean up, fearing that if it was Jax she might leave before he got to the door.
The only lights on in the house were the ones in his studio. As he ran down the dark hall, his way was lit sufficiently by the flickering flashes of lightning, so he didn’t pause to fumble for switches and instead rounded the turn into the dark living room without slowing. Thunder following each crackling bolt of lightning rumbled through the structure of the house. The rain outside rattled against the windows. In the living room the flashes of lightning coming in the tall window threw a glaring slash of light across the hardwood floor.
Alex stopped before the door. His heart didn’t. Hope kept it racing.
When he took a quick look through the peephole he saw what he hadn’t at all expected.
Bethany stood near the porch light, just in under the overhang and out of the rain. She was alone.
Standing in the dark living room, Alex’s heart sank. It wasn’t Jax after all. He let out a heavy sigh.
He hadn’t talked to Bethany in weeks. After Jax had warned him that a different kind of human was tracking him through his phone, he’d smashed it and thrown it in a dumpster at a convenience store. At the time it had made sense.
He bought a generic phone from a rack inside the store. It had a different telephone number, of course, so he left the new number with his new gallery and a couple of other places that might need to get ahold of him, like Lancaster, Buckman, Fenton. The simple phone was enough to serve his needs. Not one for long phone conversations, he hadn’t yet even had to buy more minutes.
In the case of Bethany, having a new number had been an advantage; she couldn’t call him or send him text messages. He had thought that if she couldn’t contact him she would soon forget about him and move on with her life. Apparently, he had been wrong about that.
He could see through the peephole that she was wearing a slinky silver dress cut rather low. The dress was designed to make clear what lay beneath. In Bethany’s case that was near perfection. She was a gorgeous woman, but that was all and it just wasn’t enough for Alex. There was no substance to support the looks. There was nothing about her that inspired Alex to desire her. She seemed to be a living example of the saying that looks weren’t everything.
The only lights on in the house were those in his back studio. The rest of the place was dark. The thought occurred to him that he could simply not answer the door and pretend he wasn’t home.
But that would be cowardly, and worse, dishonest.
Since he really didn’t want to start up another conversation with her—or worse, get in an argument—he decided he would state his feelings briefly, but clearly. Tell her the truth but keep it short and to the point.
Alex pulled open the door to face her.
As soon as he did, before he could open his mouth to say a word, Bethany lifted her arm, pointed a gun at his chest, and pulled the trigger.
15.
BEFORE ALEX WAS ABLE TO DODGE more than a few inches to the side, the gun went off.
At the same time that he heard the bang, it felt like a bolt of lightning slammed into him. Instant, overwhelming pain drove out a scream.
Every muscle in his body abruptly went rigid. It was all so sudden that he couldn’t make sense of what was happening. He knew he’d been hit, but he couldn’t tell where. Paralyzed by a shock of enormous force clamping down on him, his body wouldn’t respond to his wishes.
Alex toppled backward. Try as he might, he couldn’t even lift an arm to break his fall. Somehow, it didn’t seem to matter.
As he fell back he saw twin coils of fine wire unspool from the gun.
It wasn’t a regular gun, he realized, but a Taser. As he shuddered under the grip of the pain, it seemed that it might as well have been a regular gun. He was surprised that, despite the agony that made his body unresponsive, his mind worked.
Bethany stepped into the room to stand over him.
Alex could hear himself screaming in unendurable agony, but he could do nothing other than endure it.
He’d had time to move only inches before she’d pulled the trigger. One of the steel darts had stuck in his left pectoral muscle. At the same time the other dart, going lower by design in order to spread the electrical charge through the largest muscle mass, had firmly lodged in his lower abdomen. All his muscles had cramped iron stiff with all-consuming pain. It felt like a mountain was crushing him.
Regular stun guns caused pain. Because he had no control of his body, he knew that it wasn’t one of those older models, but one of the newer Shaped Pulse generators. The way they interrupted muscle control in addition to causing pain was enough to take down an angry bull. He could hear the snapping, clicking sound of the electrical discharges.
There was nothing he wanted more than for the torment to stop.
After a five-second eternity, it finally did.
When the voltage abruptly cut off, the pain also vanished. When it did, Alex lay on his back, panting, trying to recover not just from the physical ordeal but the sudden shock of it. Mere moments ago he had been absorbed in painting the quiet beauty of a forest scene. Now he was flat on his back, disoriented, trying to catch his breath, and scared out of his wits.
He knew that a Taser could deliver countless hits. He moved his arms a little just to make sure he could, but not enough to look threatening. At that point, he didn’t know what Bethany was capable of. He saw that she still had her finger on the trigger. With the darts already stuck in him, she had but to pull the trigger to deliver another charge. Until he decided what to do, he thought it best to do nothing and let her think he wasn’t going to put up a fight.
Glaring flashes of lightning illuminated her figure standing over him. When the bright flashes flickered out and the rumble of thunder died away, only the faint light of the streetlamp off through the rain beyond the open door softly lit the curving edge of her figure.
“Hello, Alex,” she said in a silky voice.
Alex thought that she looked remarkably calm. She looked like she had complete control and knew it.
“Bethany, what do you think . . .”
Two big men stepped out of the dark night and through the open doorway into his living room. A few cracks of lightning backlit wisps of vapor, like mist rising into the humid night air off the heat of their hulking forms.
Alex didn’t recognize the men, but they certainly looked like a nightmare come out of such a night. He noticed that, despite the rain, none of the three was wet.
“Now, Alex,” Bethany said, “if you know what’s good for you, you’ll be a good boy and not cause me any trouble—you’ve already caused me enough. If you’re good, I think you will find this far more pleasurable than you ever imagined.” She flashed him a self-satisfied smile. “And I bet you have imagined it often enough.”
Alex couldn’t make sense of what she was talking about. He wondered if a Taser could scramble a person’s mind. He didn’t think so. Everything else seemed ordered and logical. Up was up, down was down. He recognized her. It was only what she said that didn’t fit into any context.
Bethan
y glanced briefly at the men. “Get him into a bedroom.”
Alex couldn’t imagine what in the world Bethany and the two men intended to do with him. But whatever they intended, he had no illusions that it was going to be anything other than bad. He wondered if Bethany, in her anger over his rejection of her, had hired a couple of thugs to beat him senseless.
He wondered if it could be something worse than a beating. He wondered if she intended for them to murder him.
Such a vendetta carried to the point of violence would be absurd, but people did absurd things all the time.
Ben had taught him that you had to consider any attacker as having deadly intent, because once you were dead it was too late to wish you had defended yourself. Alex knew that if he was to survive he was going to have to use his head. He knew that he couldn’t afford to wait and hope for an opening.
He was going to have to make his own opening before things got any worse. He could not afford to be restrained.
The men stooped over him at a steep angle to lift him up. Alex feigned limp, groggy compliance. When Bethany glanced briefly toward the back bedroom, he acted.
In a sudden and violent burst of motion Alex whipped an arm around one man’s head and used their off-balance weight to pull them both the rest of the way over. In the same instant that he clamped his forearm around the man’s neck he grabbed his own wrist to lock his arms tight together and flexed his fist back, bulging the muscle in his forearm against the side of the man’s neck, making the muscle hard in order to help shock the carotid artery.
He knew, though, that he wouldn’t have the several seconds needed to bring the move to a lethal conclusion, so instead, as they plunged backward toward the floor, he planted his foot to break his fall. As the three of them came crashing down Alex added all his muscle to the man’s falling weight, bringing the man’s head down over his knee as if it were an anvil.
The man’s neck snapped over with a loud pop. His muscular bulk immediately went limp, sprawling atop Alex’s legs as they both hit the floor. The second man rolled and sprang to his feet.
Bethany spun back and pulled the trigger.
Alex instantly went rigid again as the voltage from the Taser hit him. He screamed under the agony of overpowering pain as his muscles shuddered uncontrollably. The man’s dead weight lay sprawled over his legs, but even without the weight it would have been impossible for Alex to move his arms or legs the way he wanted, impossible to do anything. Despite monumental effort, his muscles would not respond. The electrical charge was in control of his body.
Bethany stepped close. He expected her to launch into an enraged lecture at the least. Instead, she appeared calm, as if she were accustomed to administering agony.
When the timed voltage from the gun abruptly halted, Alex sagged with a moaning sigh of relief.
Bethany gestured to the man with her. He understood and lifted the dead weight of the other man to get him off the coils of wire. Once clear, he let go of the man, allowing him to slump to the side. It wasn’t hard to tell that the man was dead. From the corner of his eye, Alex watched, gauging the distance to the one still alive.
Alex had thought that the steel darts would pull out in the brief but violent battle. He was wrong. They were stuck fast.
When the dead man had been moved out of the way and safely off the wires, Bethany squatted down beside Alex. Her blond hair, lit by lightning, slipped forward over her shoulders.
“If you want to cause me trouble, Alex, I can keep pulling this trigger all night long. Is that what you’d like?”
Focused on trying to find even a fraction-of-a-second opening in which to act, he wasn’t paying close attention to what she’d said. Fast as he could, he reached up to snatch the wire connected to the barb stuck in the left side of his chest in order to yank it out.
He wasn’t even close to quick enough before she pulled the trigger.
Another lightning shock of pain crashed through him. She jammed the Taser down into his thigh, adding a third electrical contact to make the charge going through him all that much stronger. Despite how desperately he tried to move, to skitter away, it proved impossible. He cried out as tears of pain rolled down his face. He wanted to draw up into the fetal position. His arms and legs flailed, but not in response to his conscious direction. In that moment, Alex thought that he would do anything to make it stop. When it finally did, his screams again trailed off to a groan.
“If you want to keep trying to pull out the wires, go ahead, but I guarantee you that I can pull the trigger faster and I can keep pulling it all night. Is that what you want? I’ve already asked you once, Alex. Do you want me to keep pulling the trigger?”
Alex immediately shook his head. He desperately didn’t want that. The ordeal already had him at the edge of exhaustion. His muscles were aching from the repeated strain. From what he knew of Taser guns sold to law enforcement, they advised that several hits were often needed to gain compliance from combative individuals.
He knew that as long as her attention was on him he wouldn’t be able to move fast enough. Her finger on the trigger would beat any move he could make.
She smiled in satisfaction as she patted his cheek. “You look good, Alex. As good as I remember. I couldn’t stop thinking of how hot you get me.”
At first he thought she couldn’t have said what he’d thought she said, but the suggestive smile she was giving him told him that he’d heard her right. Alex couldn’t imagine what crazy scheme she was up to, but he thought he’d better keep his mouth shut.
“Now, Alex, I want you to be a good boy. If you are, this will all be over soon enough.” She kissed the end of a finger and pressed the finger to his lips. “Don’t worry, I’ll make it good for you. Really, really good. You’re going to enjoy it. I promise.”
Alex couldn’t keep from asking. “What are you talking about?” She rested her forearm on her knee as she leaned closer in darkness punctuated occasionally with the harsh illumination of lightning. She arched an eyebrow. “Why, your birthday present, Alex. Don’t you remember what I promised you for your birthday? Pretty little Beth always keeps her promises.”
16.
THERE WAS A DEAD MAN lying next to him, there was another big man glaring murderously down at him, and there were two barbed steel Taser probes stuck in the flesh of his chest and abdomen. Alex couldn’t imagine anything less conducive to romance.
“Bethany, you can’t possibly be serious.”
“Oh, but I am,” she said with a wicked little grin. “Now, as I said, if you’d like I can keep pulling this trigger until you wish you were dead, even if it won’t actually kill you. Sooner or later, though, the agony will be too much and you’ll give in. Your other choice is to forgo the drama, accept what is going to happen one way or another, and just lay back and enjoy yourself.”
She arched an eyebrow again. “What’s it going to be, lover boy?”
Alex didn’t want to agree, but he was sure that he didn’t want her to pull that trigger again. When she lifted the stun gun, making a display of waggling it in front of him as she cocked her head in a questioning manner, he reluctantly nodded.
“Good boy.” She rose up. “Get him in the bedroom,” she told the man.
He reached down with a big hand, seized Alex’s arm, and hauled him to his feet. The man spun Alex around, careful not to get tangled in the wires, and shoved him in the direction of the bedroom. Bethany warned Alex to keep his hands up and well away from the wires. He didn’t try to stall or protest as they made their way down the dark hall. He was sure that any pleas would fall on deaf ears. She’d already proven that she could pull the trigger faster than he could snatch the wires.
Brief but bright lightning flashes made his two captives seem to be nothing more than a procession of garishly lit statues. Whenever the lightning died out they turned into unseen ghosts pursuing him.
As Bethany followed Alex through the bedroom doorway, lightning flickered again. Rain beat against the
two windows like a thing alive wanting in.
“Nice,” she said, glancing around in the sporadic fits of illumination. “Not what I’m used to, but nice.”
More distant flashes of lightning lit her again, but less harshly. She reached out and ran a finger along the metal bedpost as she smiled. “I especially like the iron bed.”
She gestured to the man. He shoved Alex to topple him backward onto the bed. The wicked steel barbs, still solidly lodged in the meat of his muscles and connected to the Taser by fine wires, were starting to hurt in earnest.
The man pounced on him, straddling his hips, using his weight to hold Alex down. He pulled out some beefy nylon zip ties, pressed one against Alex’s wrist, and then looped it around a stout piece of the iron headboard. He stuck the loose end through the little ratchet block and pulled it tight enough to cut painfully into the flesh. Alex had used such ties before. He knew they could be cut without a great deal of difficulty, but pulling on them to try to break them would accomplish nothing except to cut his wrists down to the bone.
The man zip-tied Alex’s other hand to the headboard, then bound both ankles together and fastened them to the footboard.
“Double them up,” Bethany said to the man as she watched Alex’s eyes, “just to be sure.”
Alex fought back rising panic as the man added more ties to both wrists and his ankles. One tie would be impossible to break; more than one was meant to reinforce the message that not only did he have no chance to get away, but that Bethany was the one who dictated his fate.
Alex imagined that Bethany intended to torture him in some fashion before killing him. He fought back gnawing dread.
He could hardly believe that he had just killed a man. He wished he could kill the other one as well. He wished he could get his hands around Bethany’s throat.
“That should do it,” the man said. “There’s no way he can break those.”