Held & Pushed (2 book bundle) (30 page)

To me, both stories smelled of Ron. I knew he was
still out there, still kidnapping and killing women. I had no doubts that these
two women were dead. Or at the very least, they were tied up in a dark basement
wishing they were.

The day I’d escaped from Ron’s house, I ran to the
nearest of his neighbors and called the police. By the time they arrived, he
was gone. I’d expected them to launch a manhunt, put out an APB, set up
roadblocks, and not stop scouring the area until they’d found him. I’d held
nothing back when telling them what had gone on inside that house, and I thought
that would’ve been enough to set the wheels of justice in motion, to drive the
police to not stop until he was behind bars.

Yet none of that happened.

They searched the house, but little else. The
recovered fingerprints didn’t return a match in their database. The only Ron
Redwine
in the St. Louis area was an elderly man living in
a nursing home, and clearly he was not the man they were looking for.

Even though I called every day to see what
progress had been made in the case, it wasn’t long until it was moved to the
back burner. A serial arsonist had the city on edge and all their resources
went toward finding him.

When Ron mailed me a copy of
Held
, the book he’d written while keeping me hostage in his house,
I read it. When I was finished, I took it to the police station thinking maybe
there was some sort of clue in it that could help them catch him. But when none
of the officers recognized me or remembered anything about the case, I knew I
was in it alone.

I was devastated. More than ever, I felt abandoned.
If the police didn’t care enough about my case to put forth an effort to find
my kidnapper, then what did that mean? It meant it was all for nothing.
Everything I’d gone through, everything I’d seen and survived was all for
nothing. I might as well have died in that house alongside Stephanie, Melinda,
Crystal, and all the other women Ron had murdered. My survival didn’t help
anything. In fact, it made everything worse. I’d lost all I held dear and Ron
was still walking around a free man, continuing to perform his horrible deeds
without fear of being caught.

I may as well be dead. I was serving no purpose
being alive. At least if I was dead, the pain would end.

Rubbing my hands over my face, I pushed those
thoughts as far from my mind as I possibly could. Thinking things like that was
exactly what had led me to Alpine Grove, and I had no plans of going back
there.

Perusing the newspaper, I saw nothing of
particular interest to me. It was the same old news, but that was a good thing.
No missing women were reported, and no bodies had been found.

At least not today.

I tossed the newspaper onto the nightstand and
stretched out on the bed, staring at the smoke-stained ceiling. For a moment,
the ceiling changed, becoming floor joists and a bare bulb hanging in the
center of the room. The smell of damp concrete filled my nostrils. My body
shuddered as a chill passed through me, a chill caused by the cold air against
my naked skin.

Then, as soon as it came, the vision was gone and
the ceiling was once again the cheap Styrofoam tiles of the motel covered in
years of nicotine stains and dust. I was fully clothed, and the smell of the
basement was gone, replaced by the musty scent of the room.

Squeezing my eyes closed in an attempt to shut out
the memories, I rolled onto my side and wished it all away.

As soon as I began to think about how differently
my life would’ve been if only I hadn’t left the house that fateful Tuesday, I
tried to think of something else. There was nothing to be gained from going
over the what-ifs for the billionth time. It would only make me crazy.

For more than an hour, I fought my thoughts, my
memories, until finally I couldn’t take it any longer. When the suicidal
thoughts began to creep in on me, I jumped up, grabbed my purse and keys, and I
left the motel room.

Half an hour later, I returned.

After locking the door, wedging the chair
underneath the knob, and checking the bathroom, I plopped onto the bed, turned
on the television, pulled the newly purchased item from the brown paper bag,
and twisted off the cap. With the cool glass bottle pressed tightly against my
lips, I tilted my head back and drank, trying my damndest to guzzle away my
agony.

5

H
er
name was Bethany, and she was beautiful. In another place, another time,
perhaps the two would’ve made a great couple. Ron could easily envision the two
dancing at their wedding, her looking radiant in a white gown, him dapper in a
tuxedo while their guests looked on with smiles on their faces.

It was so easy to get lost in the fantasy of a
life with such a gorgeous specimen.

The fantasy would never become reality however.

Soon, the drugs would wear off and Bethany would
wake to find Ron standing beside the metal table. The screaming would begin,
erasing the peaceful daydream of the two living happily ever after.

The longer he stared at her naked body, the sadder
he became. He realized that her breasts were indeed perfect, but they were too
perfect. They were too large and round, the nipples too small. Her hips—while gracefully
curved—were too wide. Though her legs were toned to perfection, they were too
long. Her lips were too full. Her cheekbones were too high. Her chin was too
sharp. Her hair was too dark. Everything about her was wrong. Sure, it was all
beautiful. Men all over the world lusted after and longed for a woman that
looked like this. But it was all wrong.

She looked nothing like Nicole.

“Who are you?”

Bethany was awake. Though he’d expected her
immediate reaction to be screams, she was calm, and oddly so.

Looking down into her dark brown eyes, Ron smiled.

“I’m the man you’ve spent your life praying to
never meet.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’ll see soon enough.”

Ron unbuttoned the cuffs of his white button-down
shirt and began to roll up his sleeves. “So tell me, Bethany. What made you
approach me in the supermarket this morning?”

Shyly, she answered, “I thought you were cute.”

“Did you?”

She nodded.

She was sexy lying on the table, wrists and ankles
strapped down firmly with the leather restraints, head held to the table by a
similar strap that was wrapped around her throat. The cold steel of the table
made her nipples hard, which made Ron hard too.

“I’m flattered. Were you surprised when I invited
you to come back to my place?”

Still unsure of what was happening, she slowly
nodded again. Her mind was still cloudy, fighting through the foggy effect of
the drug in order to make sense of it all. The confusion was written on her
face.

Ron chuckled. “I bet you were even more surprised
when you woke up just now. You should never, ever go home with a stranger.
Didn’t your mother teach you that?”

“My mother died when I was little.” There was
a sadness
in her voice that might’ve softened someone else.
It didn’t soften Ron.

“Well then your father should’ve taught you that.”

“My father was too busy touching me.” The sadness
in her voice was replaced with bitterness.

Ron’s eyebrows rose with his interest. “Oh? Is
that so?”

“Yeah.
He was an asshole
too.”

“Too?
Are you saying you
think I’m an asshole?”

She fell silent and glared at him.

He shrugged. “Well, maybe I am. But what kind of
woman are you to come home with a complete stranger in the middle of the day? I
mean for crying out loud, Bethany. You only just met me.” He bent at the waist,
leaned closer to her face, and whispered, “For all you know, I could be a
psychopath.” He smiled broadly, flashing his perfect, white teeth.

“Please let me go.”

Ron straightened up and finished rolling his
sleeves.

“Sorry. I can’t do that.”

“Why not?
You haven’t
done anything. You could just let me go and I’d never say a word to anyone
about any of this.”

“True. Or, and this is the option I much prefer, I
could keep you here, do whatever I like with you—
to
you—and you’ll still never say a word to anyone about any of
this. Now doesn’t that seem like the more fun way to go about it?”

“Please. I have a family.”

“Really?
Is that what you
were thinking when you approached me at the supermarket today? Is that what you
were thinking when I asked if you wanted to come back to my place? You certainly
couldn’t seem to say yes fast enough. It sure didn’t seem to me that you were
thinking of your family then.”

“So you’ve never done anything stupid in your
life?” She began to cry as she realized what a horrible mistake she’d made.

“Oh yes. I’ve done something stupid. I once
allowed a woman to escape from my house. Once,” he held up his index finger and
stressed the word so she’d understand just how slim her chances of getting free
really were. “And I learned from it. It won’t happen again.”

“Please.”

“Let me save you some trouble, Bethany. All the
begging in the world won’t stop what’s about to happen to you. It won’t even
slow it down. Believe me when I say I’ve heard it all before. Offers to give me
anything I want if I’ll only stop.
Promises of never alerting
the authorities.
Even offers of sexual gratification if I’ll only undo
those restraints. But you know something? This is what I want. You’ll never
alert the authorities when I’m done with you. And as for sexual gratification,
well, I’m going to get that anyway. So there’s nothing you can say that’ll stop
this. There’s no offer you can make.”

Ron walked around the metal table where Bethany
lay, pulling against the restraints. He turned his back to her and slowly ran
his eyes across the vast array of tools, some old, others new, trying to decide
which he should use first.

“My advice?
Just lie
there and enjoy it. It shouldn’t be difficult to enjoy the sex. I’m really
quite good. And as for the pain, I think it’s best if you focus on it. Some
women try to ignore it. They try to fight it and pretend it isn’t happening.
But I think that just makes it worse. You can’t trick your mind into thinking
you aren’t in pain. So you might as well focus on it and think about it. Really
feel
it. Sometimes, there’s pleasure
to be had in pain.”

He settled on a pair of locking pliers. He picked
them up, felt the weight in his hand, the cool metal clutched in his palm.

Behind him, Bethany whimpered, “Please don’t hurt
me.”

Ron smiled.

Slowly, he began to circle her, walking around the
table, pliers in one hand, the fingers of the other lightly tracing the hills
and valleys of her naked body, a body now covered with gooseflesh.

Normally, he had a plan. He brought women to his
home with a purpose. Once the purpose was served, he discarded of them. The
truth in Bethany’s case was that he didn’t have a plan. He’d only yesterday
discarded the last woman, Candy, and hadn’t intended to bring another here so
soon. However, the sight of Bethany’s twinkling eyes and charming smile had stirred
something deep within him, something he’d been too busy to notice.

He was lonely. Having spent his life as a loner,
he’d been surprised at how much he’d enjoyed Nicole’s company. Every card game,
every conversation, every exchange between them had given him the warmth that
came with human interaction. He hadn’t known he’d been lonely. He hadn’t known
that he wanted someone to talk to, someone with whom to share his thoughts and
ideas. But he’d genuinely enjoyed it, and now was surprised to find that he
missed it. He missed the companionship of having a woman in the house. Not just
a victim (for lack of a better word), but a woman with whom he could do things
like play cards, eat dinner, discuss his plans. He hadn’t realized just how
lonely he was until he saw Nicole on the news. Now it was all he could think
about.

Bethany could be the one. She could be Nicole’s
replacement, though it would take some getting used to the idea of having
someone other than Nicole around. Again, this woman was beautiful but she was
no Nicole.

Cocking his head from side to side, Ron looked at
her bare breasts, large mounds that rose proudly from her chest with nipples
that popped out like turkey timers. His eyes slowly trailed from there, down
her belly, to her navel. The belly button ring would have to go. Perhaps he
could forget it was ever there, marring an otherwise flawless navel.

His gaze left the silver object—brightly shining
against her tanned flesh—and continued on, stopping between her legs. Her feet
were held firmly by restraints at each corner of the table, which meant that
her legs were spread open. Not wide, not spread-eagle, but wide enough that
from his position at the end of the table, he could see everything she had. And
everything she didn’t have.

“Do you shave or wax?”

“What?” She lifted her head from the table as far
as the strap around her throat would allow and looked down her body at Ron,
peering at him between her breasts with wide eyes.

“I see you have no hair down there. I was just
curious as to whether you shave it or wax it.”

“Wax.”

Ron nodded, trying to imagine the feeling of
having hot wax poured onto his genitals and then ripped off, pulling the hairs
out by their roots. It didn’t seem a pleasant thing to do, but the results sure
looked nice. The site of her, bare and hairless, excited him.

With his erection struggling against the cotton
fabric of his underwear, Ron decided that Bethany would do nicely.
Physically, at least.
There was still the matter of whether
or not she was someone whom he could tolerate being around for extended periods
of time. Would he be able to sit across the table from her and eat his meals?
Would he be able to have stimulating conversations with her? Would she make him
laugh as Nicole had? After all, it was Nicole’s personality that had first
attracted him to her once he had her in his home. Her quick wit was why he’d
kept her around, why he fell in love with her.