“Yes, you are.”
Lena woke up, then wished she stayed passed out. Lightheaded, she managed to raise herself onto her elbows to stare in terror at the room she had never seen before.
Seeing her husband lying on the dirt floor, she started crawling toward him. As she moved, her head began to clear, and it became easier to move. Managing to sit up by her husband’s side, she started shaking him.
“Wake up!” she screamed, becoming more terrified the longer Aaron took to wake. “Wake up!”
Lena laid her head on his chest, trying to hear for a heartbeat and sobbing out when she felt him moving under her ear. Rising, she shook him harder, crying louder when Aaron opened his eyes.
“Get up!” she screeched. “You’ve got to get us out of here.”
Helping him sit up, she crawled behind him at the sound of a door opening across the room.
The man cruelly watching them seemed familiar, yet Lena couldn’t remember where she had seen him before.
“Right on time. Moon said he could get you to take a drink. I shouldn’t have doubted him; he always gets the whores to do whatever he wants.”
Lena looked at her husband, seeing the same puzzled frown on him that she had on her face.
“Do something,” she whispered, petrified, scrunching behind Aaron as much as she could to hide from the cruel eyes boring holes through them.
“There’s nothing he can do.”
Peeking over Aaron’s shoulder, she saw a gun pointed at them.
“You should have listened to Slate’s advice and laid low. Fortunately for me, I knew sooner or later a few of his sick rats would want to come out and see what they could scavenge.”
“If you know Slate, then you know we have money. We can pay any amount you want to release us and help us get away from the man who took us,” Aaron bargained.
Cruel laughter filled the room. “You’re asking for my help? That’s fucking hilarious.”
“There’s nothing funny about this. Is this a joke?” Her husband managed to get to his feet.
Left exposed, Lena got to her feet to hide behind him again.
“No joke. And there’s no amount of money in the world that would entice me to help you. You want out of here, you’re going to have to dig yourself out.”
“Oh God! I remember who he is ….” Lena grabbed her husband’s waist to pull him back to her, waiting for the sound of a bullet to go off.
Aaron turned around to look at her. “Who?”
A tsking sound drew his eyes back to the door.
“I’m disappointed you have forgotten me so easily,” the man mocked. “I remember everything about you, Brad. You, too, Cami. How could I ever forget the performance you gave for me? I’m so disappointed.”
As he tsked them again, Aaron looked horror-stricken. He turned his head to see his wife nodding hers in acknowledgment.
“You’ll never know how nice it’s been renewing our friendship, but I don’t have all night to keep you company.”
“Don’t leave …,” Pleadingly, she started begging. “It was Aaron’s idea. I had to go along with it, or he threatened to give me to Slate. I swear—”
“You lying bitch!” Her husband jerked away from her. “It was all your idea! This mess is all your fault, too!”
A shrill whistle had them both looking at the fearsome man who was watching them.
Amber eyes were the only part of the man that she remembered from the night she and Aaron tricked him into believing they had been kidnapped and were at Slate’s mercy. He had tried to help them and, in return, they had spent the rest of the night raping and torturing him until he hadn’t even been able to scream.
“He’s going to kill us.” Going to the wall, she hunkered down into a tight ball, praying it would be quick.
“Aw … No, I’m not.”
Lena started shaking, too scared to believe him.
Aaron did.
“How much do you want? You have to go or take me to an ATM—”
“I’ve already had my laugh for the day, so I’m going to make this short and sweet. You want to live? You’re going to have to earn that right.
“I dug two holes. One will have a key to the door; the other will have a gun. The gun will have one bullet. If you find the key first, you can open the door and will be free to go. If you find the gun … then it becomes a little tricky. Only one person is leaving this room alive. I’ll leave it to you to decide which one. I don’t give a fuck who does. No, wait, I take that back. I’m rooting for you, Brad. From my experience, she’s a real bitch. Good luck!” Scornfully, he went out the metal door, locking it behind him.
Aaron ran to the door and started pulling on the handle. When that didn’t work, he started shouting to get out, banging his fists on the unyielding metal.
“What are we going to do?”
Lena was already frantically digging, scooping up handfuls of dirt while her husband whined at her, as if she could magically wave a magic wand and get them the fuck out of here.
Clawing through the dirt she saw Aaron drop to his hands and knees to start digging. If he found the gun first, she was as good as dead. The coward knew she wouldn’t hesitate to snuff him out to save her own life.
Killing her husband wouldn’t even faze her, she didn’t have a conscience on the other murders she had committed.
The stupid suckers she’d killed who responded to their ads got what they deserved. The only reason she hadn’t killed Aaron was his usefulness at helping her steal what they could load into their cars while their victims lay dead.
Madly scrambling to another mound of dirt that seemed higher than the rest, she started digging, her hands already tiring; she had to reach the gun first. The key would be useless without the gun ….
She had to find the gun, Lena told herself over and over as she dug. She had to find the gun … before he did.
Reaper gunned the motor of the truck on the empty interstate, satisfied he would make it back to Treepoint before the time he was scheduled to drop the truck off with Rider. The plan the evening before had come off without a hitch, or would have if he made it back before Silas or Ginny awoke and realized he was missing. He had been showering as Silas and Ginny were readying the firepit to cook the steaks for dinner. Getting out of the shower, he returned Viper’s call.
“I received a reply to one of the ads you posted.”
“Which one?” Reaper stood on the bath mat, dripping wet, making no effort to reach for a towel.
“Make Me,” Viper replied sardonically.
“They send pictures?”
“Sending. Hammer believes it’s one of the couples you had interactions with.”
Interactions isn’t what I would call their raping and torture of me, he thought to himself as he moved the phone from his ear.
The picture was low quality, but he recognized the couple instantly as he hadn’t been drugged when they had first come down to the basement. That was what happened when their faces and what they had done to him had been burned into his mind.
“Reaper? Do you recognize them?”
He put the phone back to his ear. “I recognize them. Slate called them Brad and Cami.”