Shut Up and Kiss Me (28 page)

He’d thought about shouting, yelling at the top of his lungs hoping someone—anyone—would hear him, but the sound of voices, low and not far off in the distance, kept him quiet. Luke and his sidekick were still nearby, and making a scene would only serve in speeding up whatever fate he had in mind for the two of them.

To make matters worse, for the last ten minutes Mila had been begging him to speak to her, but he couldn’t; he didn’t know what to say. Her name wasn’t even Mila, and she was married? To a sociopath no less, and one who’d kidnapped them both, tied them up and now what…? Would they be tortured? Killed outright? Tortured
and
killed?

There was nothing to say to her. He didn’t even know her. He didn’t know a damn thing about her. It had all been a lie, one hell of a lie, and dangerous one at that. He should have let her run, that day in the rain. He should have let her…

Jesus. She’d been trying to spare him. She’d known, hadn’t she? And she’d tried to spare him.

“
You were running from him,” he said, turning to face her for the first time. “When I caught you getting into that cab, you were running from him.”

Mila’s tear-streaked face lifted, the moonlight streaming in through the broken windows highlighting the shadows on her face and the whites of her eyes. “Yes,” she whispered.

Piece by piece, Will began to put the puzzle together. “You’ve been running from him for a while now. Hiding from him.”

Her head bobbed, a soft sob escaping her throat. “Yes,” she breathed.

Closing his eyes, he let out a frustrated and exhausted sigh. “You stayed because of me.”

She didn’t answer him, and when he opened his eyes he found hers squeezed shut, more tears slipping free from beneath her lashes and sliding down her cheeks.

“
Mil…” Trailing off and sighing angrily, he shook his head. “Anna? Open your eyes. Talk to me. Help me figure this out. We need to get out of here before he comes back.”

“
It doesn’t matter,” she whispered, her eyes still shut. “He’s going to kill us… Oh God, he’s going to kill us.”

Gooseflesh pebbled up and down Will’s arms, every hair on his body standing to attention. Everyone read about things like this—kidnapping, torture, and murder—but no one ever expected it to happen to them. In fact, it was utterly surreal—being here, knowing he was in mortal danger and yet unable to figure a way out of it.

“
He’s going to kill me,” Will muttered. After all, he’d seen Luke’s face, knew his name. There wasn’t any scenario he could dream up that somehow left him alive when all was said and done.

Mila began crying harder then, and in earnest now, and that was all the response he needed. He was going to die…she was going to die, if he didn’t do something about it. And sitting here tied to a chair squirming and shouting couldn’t really be considered doing something.

Again he attempted twisting one of his hands free, and again it only resulted in a fresh wave of pain as the skin on his hand continued to tear beneath the pressure of the ties. Cursing, he gave up and instead craned his neck as far as he could, surveying the darkened room and looking for something, anything that might help him get free.

Yet there was nothing. The room had been mostly cleared. All that remained were their chairs and a pile of garbage. It was up to him and his wits alone—and possibly Mila, if he could manage to motivate her to do something other than cry.

“
Mila,” he whispered, suddenly worried that Luke or his friend might be listening. “Mila?”

And then when she’d yet to respond, he forwent subtlety and simply shouted, “Anna.”

Slowly, she glanced up from her lap, blinking repeatedly as she tried to clear her eyes of tears.

“
I need you to do something for me, okay? I need you to try and turn your chair around so our backs are facing one another.”

Mila’s eyes narrowed with confusion.

“
Like this,” he said and, using his body momentum, he was able to turn the chair a fraction of an inch. He continued turning it, wincing when the chair would thump loudly beneath the force of his movements, until his back was facing Mila. Looking over his shoulder, he nodded at her.

“
As close to me as you can get.”

It took Mila twice as long, her lower body weight and mass considerably less than his, and lacking in momentum. Every time she squeaked in pain or her chair grated loudly against the dense rug he cringed, expecting Luke to come storming in, grinning and guns blazing.

“
Okay,” she whispered, breathless from exertion. The tips of her fingers wiggled, grazing his. “Now what?”

He swallowed hard. Now was the hard part. And if it didn’t work…

“
Break my thumbs,” he whispered back, his stomach dipping as he finally said the words aloud. He’d broken bones before: his right ankle when he was a child climbing trees, and his left arm while windsurfing in St. Bart’s after a rogue wave had taken him straight into a grouping of jagged rocks. Both were accidental incidents, the shock of them causing his adrenaline to somewhat lessen the pain.

This wasn’t going to be anything like that. This he knew was coming. This was going to be hell.

“
What?” Mila hissed, sounding shocked and afraid. “No, Will, no.”

“
Yes,” he growled back, his own apprehension and fear leaving him with no tolerance for hers. “I need my hands free if we’re going to have a chance.”

To further prove his point, he scooted his chair back another inch, causing their fingers to collide. Interlocking their hands, he squeezed her fingers between his in an effort to comfort her.

“
Mila, please. Just take one thumb at a time and bend it backwards.”

Though there was nowhere for her to go, Will felt her attempt to pull her fingers free from his. “No,” she sobbed softly. “No, I can’t…”

“
You can,” he insisted. “You have to.”

“
No…”

Cursing, he tried to sit up straighter, the ties binding his ankles to the chair not allowing him much movement. “Mila,” he spat, “do it now, before he comes back.”

“
No, I—”

“
Now, Mila, now.”

“
No,” she cried, even as she awkwardly wrapped her shaking hand around his index finger. “I can’t, Will. How do you know this will even work?”

“
I’ll explain another time,” he gritted out, his jaw locked in frustration. “Now break my fucking thumb before he comes back!”

She affixed her grip on his thumb in such a way that he began to worry she wouldn’t actually be able to break it, but as she started to bend the digit and pain began to tug at his joint, he squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the rest of the pain to come.

“
No…” she mumbled, suddenly loosening her grip. “No, I—”

“
Mila.
Break it
.”

Will’s breath left him in a rush of air, his body tensing as the tiny bones connecting his thumb to his hand broke under the pressure Mila applied. His eyes started to water, his mouth filled with bile, and it took every last ounce of self-control he had not to shout out in pain.

“
I’m sorry,” Mila sobbed, “God, I’m so—”

“
The next one,” he rasped. “Break the next one, and quickly.”

I felt dizzy. Dread
and anxiety were twisting in my gut, making me sick. I couldn’t do this, I just couldn’t. He’d found me—and with Will, no less—and now not only was I going to die, I was going to get Will killed as well. I should have run. I should never have listened to Will when he begged me to stay. When he’d told me he loved me.

“
Mila, I need you to do this, and do it quickly before I lose my nerve. Please.” Will’s voice was shaky, but even so he sounded determined and full of resolve.

I could feel my heart thumping heavily in my chest, the panic rising with every passing second. Will’s broken thumb was still in my grip, and as I let go of it, softly sobbing, I began fumbling for his other hand.

“
I’m so sorry, Will. I never meant for any of this.” I cried harder, my tears turning quickly to hysteria.

“
We’ll be okay, we’ll get out of this.” He spoke through gritted teeth, sounding pained.

“
We won’t. You don’t know what he can do, you didn’t see…” I whimpered, barely keeping control of my senses as the image of the man from the warehouse, tied to the chair, flooded my mind. It was an image I had tried to rid myself of, the sound of cracking bones, blood and screams of pain. But no matter how far I had run, or how much I had tried to forget, I had never been able to escape any of those things. And now here I was, tied to a chair next to the man I loved, both of us waiting to be killed by my twisted husband.

“
I really do love you, Will,” I mumbled tearfully. “I never meant for this to happen.”

“
I love you, too,” he said, and swallowed thickly, the pain he was feeling now even more evident in his voice. “And we’re going to get out of this, so stop talking like he’s already won and break my damn thumb!”

Despite my tears, I nodded stiffly, and tried my best to ignore the feeling in my gut: that Will was wrong and Luke had already won. Gritting my teeth, taking a moment to steady my nerves, I gripped his thumb and then, with all my might, pulled backwards on it. Will grunted in pain, this time quieter than the first. I release him immediately, feeling sick and shivering as the sensation of his tiny bones breaking continued to plague my thoughts. Then, I couldn’t contain my emotions another second longer, and as tears slid hotly down my cheeks, I started sobbing openly.

Will’s hands swung around to his front, and at first I had to look away from the sight of them. His normally strong and capable hands were now damaged and broken, both of his thumbs swollen and red, his one wrist bleeding profusely from where the tie had dug in, cutting open his skin. I watched him examine them, hissing out in pain when he attempted moving his fingers. He tried again, this time managing some movement, though his face blanched a stark shade of white.

“
Will?” I whimpered.

Heavy footsteps cut me off, the sound entering through the shattered window and echoing inside the room. Cursing, Will reached around on the floor for the plastic tie that had been holding his hands in place, and then he thrust his hands back behind him. Several more tense moment passed as he attempted to move his chair away from mine and back to its original place.

I squeezed my eyes closed, terror coursing through me. Our time was up.

I could still hear Luke’s voice, deadly and icy cold. And after the way he had looked at me in the car, and the way he had pressed his mouth against mine, his kiss full of anger, full of vengeance, I knew that there was no possible way I was making it out of this room alive.

The door to the room swung wide open, and Luke and Davis appeared—Davis, who laughably was once a close family friend that I’d once found funny and even adorable. They entered slowly, casting large and imposing shadows over us as they strolled forward, their footsteps deliberate and ominous.

Stopping in front me, Luke smiled down at me, smiling as if this were a perfectly normal day. Trembling, I looked up and into his eyes, brown eyes that had now turned toward Will, brown eyes I’d fallen in love with so many years ago.

Luke hadn’t changed at all, and I wasn’t even sure why I’d expected him to, but I had. Perhaps it was because my own perception of him had changed so much. The lanky boy with the long hair I’d met in high school had long since grown into a broad-shouldered man with short, scraggly hair. But after I’d run from him, that image of him had had warped into something much more vile and sinister, a much darker version.

Now here he was, standing before me unchanged, still resembling the same man I’d married. Except for his eyes. They were still the same eyes, and yet so very different from what I remembered. Where once love used to shine forth, now only a cold ruthlessness remained—a ruthlessness that I’d seen only once before, ruthlessness that was now directed at Will.

I had to say something, I had to do something. I couldn’t let him kill Will. I didn’t care what happened to me, but I loved Will, and he was innocent in all of this. He didn’t deserve the wrath of Luke because I had been a coward and run. Because I hadn’t been able to leave Will behind when I had realized how close Luke was getting. I was selfish, and it would be both of our downfalls.

“
I’ll come home with you, Luke,” I stammered, my tears coming faster. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”