Housebroken (36 page)

After a minute or two, she knew. It was crying.

Lucy sat on the bed, hiding behind a long decorative pillow. Her legs were tucked beneath her, still bound with the plastic ties. Blake wished he could explain himself to her, tell her not to worry—at least about his intentions—but he knew he wouldn’t have a chance. He was going to have to sell this performance. Considering how last-minute his preparations were, there was a good chance they wouldn’t go according to plan.

Nothing ever did in this house.

“Please don’t do this,” Lucy said. “Please?”

Blake unscrewed the lid to his bottle of cologne, standing at the opposite side of the bed. “I have to protect my family,” he said.

He dabbed a dot of the cologne onto one finger, then, walking to the end of the bed, tipped the bottle against the side of the wooden bedpost, letting an ample amount of the liquid run down. Moving to the bedpost nearer Lucy, he did the same. He capped the bottle and set it on the half wall separating the loft from the rest of the room. Joje watched without a word.

Rather than explain himself, Blake continued operating in silence. A small panel of dials was against the wall by his nightstand. He lowered one, lights dimming. Lucy was hyperventilating on the bed.

From the top drawer of his nightstand, he tore a condom from the pack and tossed it toward her. She recoiled as if it were a snake.

Smoke and mirrors
, Blake thought, hoping her reaction had caught Joje’s attention as he pulled out the last item from the drawer.

“It’s . . . been a long time for me,” he said. “I’m not sure what you’re expecting but . . . you’re likely to be disappointed.”

“Then it won’t be any different from the rest of our time together,” Joje said.

Adam returned to the room, vintage port in hand, the absinthe tucked under one arm. “I couldn’t find the box of cigars.”

“Guess we’ll do without them,” Blake said.

Uncertainty gripped him. He was moving pieces on the board without considering his opponent’s play, a dangerous position to be in. And his own strategy—if he could call it that—was more reminiscent of a game of shadows, the projected pieces appearing larger than they actually were.

Smoke and mirrors
.

Adam brought him the bottles, transferring them to him with care.

“He’s not who you think he is,” Blake said.

“None of us are.” Adam held out the upturned wine glasses held between his fingers by their thin stems.

Blake set them atop his nightstand. Time for the show to begin.

“Corkscrew?” Blake asked.

“Couldn’t find it,” Adam said. Of course he couldn’t; the corkscrew meant for Drew’s or Joje’s throat was buried in the sand beneath an ocean. Why had Blake ever taken it from Jenna? “I think there’s one on my Scout army knife,” Adam added.

“Go on,” Joje said from the lower landing. “While you’re there, bring back the video recorder?”

As Adam left, Joje continued, “Just think how this will all be over soon, Bwakey. We’ll be gone, and you’ll move right back into the regular swing of things—consulting with clients, ignoring your wife, forgetting about your son. You know, all the things you’ve missed since we arrived. I wowee you won’t remember us for long. The way you move on so quickly, with Rachel and . . . Evaline. How long before you forget we were even here?”

“I’ll never forget you were here.”

“No, I imagine you won’t. Now turn around. Look at that gorgeous thing just waiting for you to seduce her. To take her. All in the name of protecting your family. Such a noble cause.”

Lucy stared back at Blake with utter dread, her radiant face marred by swollen eyes and her calloused expression. It was as if she were still questioning her own sanity, because this couldn’t be real, couldn’t be happening. Only Blake saw the spark in her eyes, possibly as she recognized the horror in his own. It was real. And God help them, it was happening.

“If this performance isn’t everything I hoped it would be, we make another call to Dwew,” Joje said.

“I understand,” Blake said.

Adam returned and, at Joje’s suggestion, uncorked both bottles. For some reason Joje wasn’t willing to trust Blake with the knife. Blake wafted his hand over the top of the port, taking in the smell of the wine. It had a sweet scent to it, almost overbearing. It had always been Jenna’s favorite, not his. Blake knew, however, when it came to wines, port had the highest alcohol content—this one even higher than most. The absinthe was just in case the port failed.

Blake tipped a small amount of the absinthe into a wine glass. He knocked it back, gagging as the heat poured down his throat. He had forgotten how strong that was. And how awful.

“Start from the side of the bed on the right,” Joje said, instructing Adam with the camera.

“You want me to go up there?” Adam asked.

“We need close angles. I want you weaving in and out, hovering just above them.”

Adam moved back to the upper landing, coming around to the opposite side of his father, Lucy and the bed between them.

Blake turned his back to Joje as he filled one wine glass from the bottle of port. The other he filled with absinthe. The fumes of almost pure alcohol carried up, clearing his sinuses as if he had swallowed a chunk of wasabi.

“Lucy,” he said, proffering the port. She did not reach for it. He sat on the bed, scooting himself toward her. She lashed out, tossing the pillow at him and causing the glass to dump.

“Don’t touch me!” she spat, distancing herself from the slosh of red liquid bleeding into the bedspread.

Thank you, Lucy
,
Blake thought.

“You’re going to let her do that to you, Bwake? This is how you conquer?” Joje shouted.

Blake looked directly into the digital camcorder his son had pointed at him. “My name is Blake Crochet. I live at Sixteen Vanilla Banks, Malibu, California. My family has been kidnapped by two madmen who have forced us to commit acts against our will and better judgment. To any whom I’ve hurt, I’m so sorry. To my family,” he paused, looking up at Adam. “Sorry isn’t enough. It shouldn’t have taken this for me to realize my life is nothing without you. In this life or the next, I hope you can forgive me. And to my kidnappers—I hope you rot in hell!”

The object Blake had pulled from his drawer had been kept low, hidden from Joje’s view. Blake’s thumb felt raw, too close to the blue flame spitting from the end of the lighter at his side. The pillow Lucy had thrown at him was just beginning to catch, yellow flames replicating along its tethered fringes.

Please let this work
, he thought as blackened fringe curled up, flames sinking into the pillow and not rising again. There was no burst, no fireball, and though he had been tussling with the burner since the start of his speech to the camera, the bedspread as well had yet to take to the flame.

“Point the camera away from your father,” Joje said, voice already drawing nearer. “It seems he’s looking for a final lesson.”

Come on, come on, come on!

The first pillow he had lit had already gone out. A second’s fabric shriveled beneath the flame but failed to expand.

Lucy’s hands suddenly cupped his own, her large brown eyes boring into his. “I’ve got this. Stop him.”

Without a word Blake transferred the lighter to her, its blue flame continuing at a steady pulse. He tried running the numbers in his head; maybe he had dumped too much of the wine out, the soaking of the sheets and bedspread preventing the flame from spreading. He could go for the absinthe but not without it blowing in Lucy’s face—he had heard of a man who tried to drink what the Czechs called a flaming pistol, a burning sugar cube dropped into a glass of absinthe that set the alcohol on fire, only this man’s lips had burned away, the inside of his cheeks hollowed out to the point you could see through his skin it was so transparent. If he threw that second glass at the lighter, Lucy would go up with it.

He turned to face his adversary, realizing once again he had miscalculated, hadn’t fully considered the course his actions would run. As desperately as he needed a miracle, he was in no position to petition divine intervention. He may not be the murderer Joje was making him out to be, but how many skeletons, skin and gristle still clinging to bone, resided in his closet? The countless people he had stepped on, livelihoods he had destroyed, businesses he had crushed in the wake of his own ascent. Was success even possible without climbing on the shoulders of those around you? With cleated hooves stepping on faces and bodies, forcing them into the mud so your shoes would stay sharp and shined and you could stand another inch taller?

A day in a box, a week with a monster, and Blake was no longer the man he once had been. His own blue flame had been set against his body, his soul, setting ablaze the cardboard beliefs he had thought were golden. His only option at this point was to hope that the flame inside would leap farther and faster than the one behind him.

Drew showed no more emotion than a Cabbage Patch doll, retreating from Jenna after her declaration of paralysis. He pulled aside a hanging curtain meant to surround her bed. Leaning against the wall was a fold-up wheelchair.

“You’re not going to scream. You’re not going to cry for help. Because if you do, I will plunge this into the back of your neck.”

He held up a small scalpel, its quarter-inch triangular blade as deadly as the sword he had kept with him earlier. “Then you really will be paralyzed.”

Jenna swallowed hard. She wished she could have had that water.

Drew unfolded the chair, wheeling it toward her.

“What did they do to me while I was out?”

“Surgery,” Drew said.

“They used anesthesia, didn’t they?”

“How should I know?”

“
You
. You told them to do it, didn’t you,” Jenna said. “I have a reaction with anesthesia. My nervous system shuts down. I couldn’t even get an epidural when I was delivering!”

Drew tilted his head at an angle, watching her.
Observing
her. “How long does it last?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t had it since I was a kid. They put me under for a root canal. I ended up in the hospital for two weeks.”

“You don’t know why you had surgery, do you?”

“I don’t even know where I am,” she said.

Drew grabbed ahold of the blankets at the end of the bed, drawing them back in one full swoop. Jenna’s nightgown, the blue hospital dress her ass would be hanging out from, stopped halfway down her thighs. Below, her left leg extended, skin still a horrific sight, but it was her right that caused her breath to catch, her heart to skip a beat.

Her foot and calf were no longer there.

Bile rose in her throat, searing her esophagus both on its way up and going back down. Her knee, swollen to the size of Drew’s thigh, was wrapped protectively, a cone funneling down to the part of the bed with no indentation from where her foot or leg should have been. A clear thick tube slunk out of the wrapping, brown and red chunks visible every few inches along its curve.

Her eyes were welling to the point she couldn’t see. “You had them do this to me? This!”

“I saved your life,” Drew answered.

“You’ve taken everything from me! Everything I ever cared about. I don’t even know who I am anymore.” Her breaths came in ragged spurts. “Why . . . why couldn’t you have just killed us?”

“George has his reasons. You were mine.”

“I swear to God I’ll kill you,” she said. “I will rip your throat out with my teeth if I have to, but I am going to kill you!”

“Plan B it is. Strangle you till your unconscious and then wheel you out.”

At least if Drew took her now, there was a good chance she would die. Infection, dehydration, without the proper care at this stage, it wouldn’t take long.

Though a few days will be like an eternity with him
, she thought.

“I have to make sure,” he said.

“Of what?”

He didn’t answer. Instead he plunged the scalpel into her left thigh. Though the blade was short, there was no doubt with the force of his impact he had severed more than skin and arteries—this had gone straight through muscle to the bone.

His eyes never left hers, watching for the smallest sign of pain, the slightest tremble. He pushed the handle of the blade left and right, digging in farther. She stared back unflinching, refusing to give him the satisfaction.

“Imagine that. You were telling the truth,” Drew said.

He let go of the handle, leaving the blade sticking from her leg like a junkie in the throes of a soaring high, unaware of the still-protruding needle. A trickle of blood rolled down her thigh, spreading on the white sheets of the bed.

“We’re gonna change,” he said. “Less questions that way.”

He came around behind her, tearing at the gown and dragging it over her body. Her arms slumped back to the bed, lifeless, the gown snagging on her hair until finally breaking free. She now sat on the bed naked from the waist up, the panties they had dressed her in as thick and attractive as an adult diaper. One arm lay in her lap turned upward, the other resting at her side.

“I could get used to that view,” Drew said. He glanced at the door leading out of the room, probably wondering how much time he could get away with before someone came barging in.

“I’m cold,” she said.

“I thought you couldn’t feel anything.”

“My head, it feels like . . . glaciers colliding.”

Drew came around, staring down at her chest with a twisted smile. “I’ll have to find a way to get more anesthesia if it keeps you from fighting back.”

Her shirt was on the seat of the wheelchair next to him. He grabbed it, leaning over her from the side and lifting one arm, his bare flesh pressing against hers. He tilted her head forward to bring it through the outstretched shirt.

Now
, she thought.

Her left hand reached down, clasping at the handle protruding from her leg. She ripped it out with one quick pull, reminding herself she loved pain. Turning the blade, she thrust it into Drew’s stomach. He lurched backward, one arm slapping her across the face so hard she was almost stunned. Unfortunately for him, his arm was entangled in Jenna’s shirt. She tried scratching at his face with her other hand, but his arm slipped free of the shirt just in time. Instead she pulled the blade back out and swung it upward, putting everything she had into her lunge.