Slow Agony (10 page)

My hands were shaking. Bullets burst out of the box, skittering all over the floor.

“Open up, you little bitch!” screamed Greasy Hair.

I didn’t bother to pick them up. I just took more out of the box. I started to load the gun.

He slammed into the door again. It groaned under the force of it. “Or I’ll huff...”

Goddammit, why couldn’t I hold my hands steady? I was dropping bullets everywhere.

“And I’ll puff...” The door splintered.

No. Please, just let me get this damned gun loaded before he breaks that door down.

The door crashed open.

Greasy Hair was grinning as he tackled me.

I shrieked, hitting him in the face with the gun. The useless, unloaded fucking gun. Oh my God, what the hell was going to happen?

Greasy Hair trapped my wrists with one hand, holding them above my head. We were both lying on the floor, him on top, stretched over my body.

He licked his lips.

I shut my eyes.

“What a pretty, pretty little pig you are,” he said. He was close. I could feel the tickle of his facial hair against my skin.

Please
, I thought.
Please.
But what exactly I was begging for, I wasn’t sure.

Greasy Hair was crazy.

That much was obvious.

“Very pretty,” he said, stroking my cheek with one hand. “But I’m not allowed to play with you, yet. Marcel says we have to wait. Wait until the time is right.”

Which told me that Greasy Hair did indeed work for Marcel.

And shot me full of the worst fear I’d ever experienced.

Play
with me? What did that mean?

He had a bottle of some kind of liquid. He put it on a cloth and covered my face with it. I struggled, afraid of what he was doing to me.

But I couldn’t get free of it.

And eventually, I fell asleep.

I woke up to the sound of a door opening. I struggled to open my eyes. I felt groggy and heavy.

I was sprawled on the steps. I tried to move and realized that my hands were tied above my head, lashing me to the railing. I tried to speak and realized that I’d been gagged. There was something plastic and round, like a ball, stuffed into my mouth. It was taped in place.

Griffin and the twins were coming into the house.

I made a muffled noise, trying to get their attention, but they didn’t hear me.

That was when I noticed that my shirt had been cut open and that it hung in tatters. I was still wearing a bra, thank goodness, but there was blood on my stomach.

“We need beer,” Silas was saying. He headed towards the kitchen.

“Definitely,” said Sloane.

I hesitated for a moment. Did I want them to see me like this, half naked and tied up?

What, was I crazy? How else was I going to get untied?

I thrashed, making as much noise as I could.

Griffin raised his glance in my direction. When he saw me, all the blood drained out of his face.

Then he was scrambling up the stairs to me, kneeling over me, and peeling at the tape that held my gag in place. He was trying to be careful, but it still hurt. I wished he’d rip it off and get it over with.

But he worked slow. “You’re okay, doll. You’re fine.” He kept repeating that over and over again, until he got the gag free.

I spit it out, coughing.

He put a hand on my cheek. “Jesus. I should never have left you.”

I didn’t have anything to say.

Griffin got to work on the rope that bound my arms. “I’m sorry, doll. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” I managed.

My hands were free. I massaged them.

“This is why it all happened. He sent me away to get to you.” Griffin started to pull my shirt closed, but then he saw the blood on my stomach.

Now that I could move, I sat up and looked down at it. I’d been cut with the knife. Because of the serum, I’d healed already, but the dried blood was still left behind. The cuts formed words.
Wolfman says hi
.

Griffin froze for a second. Then he yanked me to my feet and tugged me up the rest of the steps and into Sloane’s bathroom.

He began washing the message off my stomach. “What did he do to you? What did he do?”

“I... don’t know. I don’t think anything. He said that he wasn’t allowed to play with me until the time was right.” I shivered thinking about it.

He grimaced. “Not allowed?”

“He’s working for Marcel,” I said. “But now that Marcel’s dead—”

“He’s not. He didn’t show up today.” He finished scrubbing my stomach. He pulled at the tatters of my shirt, but they didn’t really cover me.

“Didn’t show up? But why not? He killed Naomi to make sure I gave you the message to be there.”

Griffin took off his own shirt and handed to me. “Put that on.”

I shrugged out of my ruined shirt and put Griffin’s on. I realized that my hands were shaking.

“What do you mean you don’t know what he did?”

“He knocked me out,” I said. “There was this rag with liquid on it. He put it on my face.”

Griffin turned away from me, rubbing his head. “He wouldn’t have done anything if you were passed out. He likes it when people scream.”

I felt sick. “You know who he was?”

“Yeah,” said Griffin.

“Someone else from prison?”

“One of Marcel’s henchmen. At least he used to be.” He punched the wall. “I don’t understand. Why are they doing this to me? I never meant anything to them.”

He’d dented the drywall. “Griffin, maybe you shouldn’t...”

He turned back to me. “I won’t let anything happen to you. I’m not letting you out of my sight again.”

I bit my lip. “I’m fine.” I was, I guess. Well, I was terrified and disgusted, but I hadn’t been hurt.

There was a soft knock on the open bathroom door. “Hey,” said Sloane in a soft voice. She was holding two open mason jars of homebrew. “What happened?”

Griffin shook his head. “I don’t really know. But it’s not good.”

“He was watching us,” said Griffin. “He had to be.” We were in the kitchen, around the kitchen table.

“I guess we didn’t lose him in Cumberland like we thought,” said Sloane.

Silas was pacing on the other side of the kitchen island. “So, he set up this whole thing for us to go and meet him so that he could have one of his goons come in and rough up Leigh?”

“I think so,” said Griffin.

“Why?” said Silas. “What does he want?”

“I don’t know,” said Griffin.

“Do they have something against you, Griffin?” asked Sloane. “Did you do something?”

“No,” said Griffin. “All I ever did was whatever the fuck they wanted. I was a fucking kid.” He looked into his glass. It was empty of beer, and it had been for a while.

“You want something else to drink?” said Sloane. “I think we’ve got some Sierra Nevada in the fridge. Can you check, Silas?”

Silas opened the refrigerator. “Whatever they wanted? But you were in prison with them, right?”

I cringed. They were digging.

“What did you do for them?” said Sloane. “What is there to do in jail?”

Griffin got up from the table.

I had to say something. “Maybe we should try to figure out—”

“They raped me, okay?” said Griffin. He sat back down. He took a deep breath. “Okay.” He let it out. “That was, um, not as hard to say out loud as I thought.”

Sloane had been taking a drink of her beer. She choked on it.

Silas didn’t move from the refrigerator.

“Marcel liked to collect things,” said Griffin, staring down at the table. “And he had certain people who were... well, hell, we were slaves. I mean, he owned us. And we did whatever he wanted. And if we tried to resist, we were beaten to a bloody pulp.”

No one said anything.

“So,” said Griffin, “it doesn’t make sense. Sure, Marcel liked to mess with my head and to torture me anyway he could, but I wasn’t special, you know. He did that to whoever he could do that to. I was one of many. I don’t know why they would single me out.”

Silas closed the refrigerator door, holding four bottles of beer. “Dude, I’m—”

“Don’t,” said Griffin. He snatched a beer away from Silas.

Silas set the rest of the beer on the table. “That’s what he’s doing. He’s messing with your head. You’re right.”

Sloane’s face twisted in sympathy. “Griffin, that’s the most horrible thing I ever heard.”

Griffin opened his beer. He guzzled it. “You don’t...” He shook his head. “Let’s not do that, okay? I... can’t handle that.”

Sloane opened her mouth to say something.

Silas sat down, opening a beer for himself. “So, he’s a crazy psychopath who likes to control things. He enjoys inflicting pain, both physical and emotional.”

“Yeah,” said Griffin.

“Maybe it doesn’t matter why he’s doing it, then,” said Silas. “Because I guess he’s just going to be really unpredictable, isn’t he?”

Everyone was quiet.

“Well, one thing isn’t good,” said Sloane.

“What’s that?” said Silas.

“He knows where we live.”

Griffin shook my shoulder. “Wake up.”

My eyes snapped open. I’d been sleeping in the front seat of the third car we’d stolen that evening. We’d been on a meandering drive, doing our best to plot a tangled and convoluted course so that Marcel couldn’t follow us.

I sat up in the car and looked out the window. We were in the parking lot of a Holiday Inn. “Are we still in West Virginia?”

“Somewhere in Tennessee,” he said. “We’re heading west. If he’s attacked you, he might be heading for my family next.”

Griffin’s family lived in San Antonio, Texas. We’d visited them last Christmas after he used some of the Op Wraith resources to find them. His family had been paid off and kept safe by Op Wraith as an insurance policy to keep him in line as an assassin. The only catch was that he wasn’t allowed to know where they were. It had taken months of searching to find them.

I rubbed my eyes. “You think that’s a good idea? What if he doesn’t know anything about them, and we’re leading him to them?”

He sighed. “I know. That’s what Silas said.” He got out of the car.

I twisted behind me. The backseat was empty. I opened my door. “Where are Silas and Sloane, anyway?”

“Checking in,” said Griffin.

We met them in the lobby.

Sloane handed over keys. “Silas and I have a room on the opposite side of the hotel, so if you need us, you need to call our phones.”

“We should pick up new phones tomorrow,” said Griffin.

“But I just got this phone,” I said.

“Life on the run,” said Sloane, handing me a key.

“Wait,” I said. “Griffin and I are in a room together?”

She winked at me.

Griffin took the key from me. “I told you I wasn’t letting you out of my sight, didn’t I? It’s got two beds. Don’t worry.”

We headed to the elevator.

“I’m driving tomorrow,” said Silas. “I can’t stand being stuck in the backseat like that.”

“Whatever,” said Griffin. “We could use two cars, you know?”

“Steal extra cars, waste extra gas?” said Sloane. “What’s wrong with you guys?”

I came out of the hotel bathroom with a towel wrapped around my hair. The thought of Greasy Hair or Wolfman or whoever he was putting his hands all over me made me feel dirty. The shower had been necessary if I wanted to sleep.

I had pajamas on—a long t-shirt over a pair of shorts.

Griffin was sprawled out on one of the beds. He’d stripped down to his boxers, like it wasn’t even a big deal for me to have to look at him when he was nearly naked. He was flipping through channels on the TV, but he looked up at me when I walked out. “You’re okay, right?”

I nodded. “I’m fine.”

“You’d tell me.”

“Of course.”

He turned back to the TV, flipped through a few more channels, and then snapped it off. “Seeing you like that made me feel...” He got off the bed.

“What? What did it make you feel?”

He closed the distance between us quickly. Then he was standing over me, gazing searchingly into my eyes. “I don’t want anything to happen to you. It would make me crazy if you were hurt.”

Goddamn it. He was right next to me, and his chest was bare, and he was beautiful, and I wanted to touch him.

“I didn’t think it would affect me so strongly.”

“I’m okay,” I said. “I’m not hurt.”

“I know.” He reached up and caressed my cheek with the back of his hand. “I know.”

And then he was kissing me. His lips seared into mine. His arms wrapped around me, crushing me into his chest.

And I lifted my hands tentatively, to run my fingers over his glorious bare skin, feeling his rigid muscles in his shoulders, dancing over all of his smoothness. I sighed against his mouth. I loved to touch him.

He propelled me backwards, and we collided with the bed. We went down on it, him on top of me. The towel came undone on my head. Griffin ripped it away and threw it on the floor.

“I would never forgive myself if something happened to you,” he said, trailing kisses down my neck.

I gasped, placing my palms on his chest and dragging my hands downward over him. He was so solid and firm. I wanted his bare skin against mine. I wanted to press into him everywhere.

Griffin was pushing my shirt up. I was braless, and he exposed my breasts in two seconds.

He groaned, lowering his mouth to me, kissing and suckling.

I writhed under his touch.

“I want you,” he growled.

“Yes.”

He ripped off my shorts, ripped off his boxers, settled between my thighs, his mouth on mine again—furious, frenzied.

I moaned, wrapping my legs around him.

He fumbled between my legs for a second.

And then he was pushing into me, invading me, filling me up.

I sucked in breath. There really hadn’t been a lot of foreplay there, and I wasn’t quite ready for him. I winced.

If he noticed, it didn’t stop him. He made long, deep strokes, his head buried in my shoulder.

God. Had he always been that... big? I felt like he used to fit better. He was stretching me open, and he was almost too much. Ow. Maybe it was only that I hadn’t had sex in months. Had I ever gone this long without having sex?