He moved closer to her, his gaze changing. It was still cold, but there was a blankness to it, as if he were seeing her differently...as an object, maybe? Or not quite real. It felt like he were homing in on her pulse, drawing some kind of twisted pleasure from watching it speed up as he invaded what little personal space she had left.
The feeling in the car changed. He wants to kill me, she realized. And she wasn't sure she wanted to stop him. Remy was dead. She couldn't stop the surge of despair that swept through her. She loved him and she never had the chance to tell him.
“I'd be better off dead.” She didn't realize she'd said it aloud until she heard the words go into the cold, dead space that still separated her from him. His hands went around her throat, as his weight pressed her back against the seat.
His lips against her ear, his tongue probed the inside once, then again, before he whispered, “Would you, Dorothy? Would you really be better off dead?”
He eased back just enough so he could look into her eyes and then he slowly, almost lovingly, began to cut off her air.
SEVENTEEN
* * * *
Remy didn't see the streaker burst from the bushes until he passed in front of him, so he didn't know why the crowd was laughing at first. Like everyone else, he watched the guy and his gear jog his way into the arms of a couple of cops, and then turned to look at Dorothy, wanting to share the joke with her. He only had time to register her absence before he felt the whistle of a bullet passing his head. He wouldn't have recognized it, or reacted as quickly, if he hadn't been shot at so recently.
“Shots fired!” he hollered, before dropping to his belly on the platform. All around him, people scattered or dove for the ground. The cops let go of the streaker and returned fire. Screams mingled with shots. Then an eerie silence settled over the scene.
Remy lifted his head and looked around. If it hadn't been so serious, it would have been funny the way heads eased up and wide eyes scanned the area. All around him, as more people got up, the roar of outrage began to build. People started running around and he could hear sirens in the distance. Thankfully everyone seemed to be all right. Adrenaline subsiding, he got to his feet and peered at the podium. A line of bullet holes made a neat line from top to bottom.
His knees almost gave way again. Just because he'd asked for it, didn't mean he had to enjoy being a target. He steadied himself on the podium and then remembered Dorothy. Had she gone to the john and missed the action?
He eased through the frantic politicos on the stand to where Dorothy had been sitting and then looked around. He couldn't see her anywhere. He touched the shoulder of the woman who'd been sitting next to him.
“Have you seen Dorothy?”
She looked shocked and bewildered. “I thought she was right there. I know I saw her when the streaker came out.”
She was just gone. He couldn't process it. She was there. It had been only seconds between the streaker and the shooting. The streaker. Could he have been a distraction? But for what? The obvious answer was the shooting, but if the streaker hadn't come out and distracted him, he'd be dead. He'd turned to look at Dorothy and the shooter missed him.
He looked at her chair again, as if it might have the answer, and noticed her purse sitting under the chair. He picked it up. A woman didn't walk off and leave her purse, at least no woman he'd ever met. He saw a piece of paper on the ground that had been hidden by the purse. With a growing feeling of foreboding, he picked it up and unfolded it. He had to read it twice before he could process it. Making sense of it wasn't possible. It was streaked with tears. He felt a chill as big as a freaking glacier slid down his back.
He grabbed a cop walking by. “Who's in charge?”
The cop opened his mouth to maybe argue, but something on Remy's face must have stopped him.
“Come with me,” he said.
As he followed the cop, his thoughts turned into rats in a maze, chasing here and there, without getting anywhere. Who would force her to leave like that and why? What did they hope to accomplish? He tried to think, but panic was rising on a flood of some other realization. Something he wasn't ready to deal with yet.
Dorothy.
He was winded with it. His heart felt...gone. His heart? What did his heart have to do with this? It wasn't involved, was it? Okay, he liked her, but that was all.
He looked at the note again. It threatened him. She left to save him? And whoever it was had shot at him anyway. She was in the clutches of someone very ruthless and determined. But for what purpose? He should know, but he couldn't think. All he could see was Dorothy, alone and afraid with some faceless killer. If anything happened to her...what? What would he do?
His thoughts circled around something. He could see it, laying there in his mind, waiting for him to turn it over. But if he did, his life would change forever. He didn't know how or why he knew it, but it was true. He had to do it, though. He owed her that. She'd left for him, so what, he turned coward now? He couldn't do that. She deserved better than that, better than him.
He...loved her? Was that it? Was it possible? Would he recognize love if he felt it? He rubbed his chest. It felt as if his heart had been ripped out by the roots. There was only hollow where...love had been. And peace, peace like he hadn't known in years.
He rubbed his face. He hadn't been play acting. How could he have pretended when she was so real, so dear? She'd tried to save his life. She thought he was dead. She would have heard the shots. He felt gut-kicked. He almost staggered with it. He had to find her. He had to tell her the truth. She needed to know he was alive and that he loved her. He owed her that. Surely someone had seen something?
To hell with his feud with Titus. He needed him and any resources he could pull together. At least he'd be motivated to find her. He pulled out his phone and started dialing his number. He didn't know how much time they had, but his gut told him it wasn't much.
* * * *
Dorothy clawed at the hands cutting off her air. The world started to go dark when the pressure eased, though his hands still circled her throat. Darius leaned close to her again and whispered in her ear, “You thought you loved Mistral enough to die with him and now you know that's not true. That's your first step toward the kind of clarity you're going to need to survive.”
The darkness receded, leaving her in the painful, and perilous, present. Each breath was agonizing, necessary, and yet awful to take with him close enough to feel each one. She felt his pleasure at her struggle against unconsciousness. At the moment, it was the only thing she feared more than Darius. At least with tongue and wit, she might be able to keep him at bay.
“Clarity?” The word came out as a sad croak of a sound.
“The clarity of expedience. It's the only kind that really matters.”
There was a flaw in there, she struggled toward it and produced, “I'm not expedient.”
He looked pleased. He drew back, giving her much needed space.
“True, you are expendable. But even the most expedient of lives needs some...pleasure.” Again his gaze raked her body with that odd, clinical thoroughness. He seemed unable to produce even the warmth of passion.
“You won't get away with this. Someone may have seen me leave. And your driver walked me to this car.” As soon as she mentioned him, she knew it was a mistake, though she had a feeling he'd already considered the problem.
“True, but he won't be able to tell anyone.” From a bag, he produced two sets of handcuffs.
Dorothy pressed harder against the door, instinctively putting her hands behind her back and pulling her feet in. Darius arched his brows, as if surprised.
“Do you really think you can fight me on this?” He waited a moment. “Do we need another breathing lesson? Once you're unconscious, you know I can do whatever I want to you.”
Her body contracted with horror at the thought.
“What if I promise I won't touch you, except as needed for assistance, until we get where we're going?”
“Would that be like the promise you wouldn't harm Remy if I got in this car?”
His expression hardened. “You don't have a choice in this. I was trying to give you the illusion of one. Fine, we'll dispense with that. Your hands. Now.” He waited for a count of ten, and added, “You won't like it if I have to punish you, Dorothy. You won't like what I'll do.”
As slowly as she could, she extended her hands, feeling the cold steel encircle them, and then snap shut. Her defeat felt final, when her feet were secured. He pulled out some duct tape.
“Useful stuff this,” he said, studying her face, then measuring a length and cutting it off with a knife produced from the bag.
“Who will hear me in here?” Dorothy said. Words would be her only weapon against him now. She needed to be able to talk.
“It won't be for long, though maybe you won't want me to take it off when the time comes. It is rather painful.”
There was nowhere for her to retreat, no way to fight him off. She twisted her head away from him, but when he put his arm across her already sore throat, she had to stop. She couldn't survive too many more assaults on her throat. She was a bit hazy on specifics, but she did know that if throat parts got crushed, she was finished. Darius pressed the tape in place, studied the effect of it, and then smoothed her hair back from her eyes.
“Emma's hair was longer. We'll have to let it grow out. I liked it long.” He looked past her, as the car turned the corner, steadying her, and then letting her go. The road was a rough one and she had to brace herself as best she could while he turned away from her. When he turned back, he was holding a light blanket. “We just need to cover up, you know. We don't want Fred to get suspicious. I told him this was a romantic place for us. If he sees you like that, well...”
He tucked the blanket around her briskly and without intimacy, which was a relief, but only a small one. Her growing certainty of what was about to happen made it impossible for relief to linger.
Fred braked and then turned off the motor. Darius moved to the other seat and slid the panel back that separated the two compartments. Fred started to turn, perhaps in expectation of receiving instructions from his employer, but quick as a flash, Darius had his hands around Fred's throat, squeezing and squeezing.
Dorothy couldn't see that much, though she did hear the thrashing of his feet as he tried to free himself from that iron grip. And she could hear the gurgling sounds he made as his life slipped away. When all was silent, Darius sat back and looked at her.
“Problem solved.” He stripped off the gloves she hadn't noticed him putting on and tossed them aside. He reached over and ripped the tape off her mouth, bringing tears of pain to her eyes.
“Men aren't as...satisfying to kill as women. I didn't know that, of course.” He looked at her for a moment. “Not until Suzanne.”
With the car's air conditioning off, the car was starting to heat up from the hot afternoon sun beating down on it. Under the blanket the effect was faster. Dorothy could feel sweat seeping out of all her pores. Of course, the sheer terror wasn't helping either.
“You killed Suzanne Henry? Why?”
His brows went up. “She made me want her. I don't like that. I choose how I feel and when I feel.”
“But I don't get to choose. It's not expedient.”
For a moment, she wondered if she'd reached him. Perhaps where were some small threads of sanity left inside his head?
“Now you're being petty. And disingenuous. You have a simple and clear choice. Submit or die.”
He turned and opened his door, then the driver's door and pulled Fred out of the driver's seat. He fell face down on the ground. Darius reached down and heaved him once, then again, until his body tumbled into a small depression. Darius brushed his clothes down and came around to her side.
Any relief she might have felt at being alone in the back of the car while he drove, was quickly dispersed.
“Get out.”
“Why?” Dorothy didn't move.
Darius pulled the blanket off, grabbed her arm and pulled. If she hadn't brought her feet out, she'd have fallen on her face. He pulled her around to the rear of the car and opened the trunk.
“Get in.”
“There?” He didn't answer. “People suffocate in trunks of cars.”
“You won't in this one.”
“Why?” She held up her cuffed hands. “Hello?”
“You're intelligent and desperate. I don't think it would be smart of me to leave you alone back there. And,” he moved forward, sweeping her off her feet and dumping her in the trunk, “it's your second lesson in clarity.”
Before she could attempt a response or another question, he slammed the lid down, shutting her in the heated darkness. She heard his footsteps heading back around to the driver's side and after a short interval the car's engine fired. When the car jerked forward, she realized that she was about to experience a new level of suffering.
The interior was capacious, but it was also indented and that indention wasn't as long as she was. It had been designed for suitcases, not people. After some wiggling around, not easy with the cuffs hindering movement, she managed to get her body mostly curled into the space. But each bump on the road vibrated the length of her body. It was a relief when they reached the main road.
Of course, that brought a new set of problems. Out on the highway, there was no protection from the sun. The temperature rose rapidly and soon she was soaked in sweat. It ran in rivulets down her face, back, arms and legs. She had to close her eyes to keep the stinging stuff out.
And then Darius upped the stakes another notch, when she heard his voice come out of a speaker near her head.
“It's not very comfortable, I know, but very necessary. Have you heard of Stockholm Syndrome? This is just a small taste of the mental and physical conditioning you're going to experience. Now you can stop it at any moment, by submitting to the inevitable. There's no dishonor in choosing to submit, you know. It's the expedient thing to do. Anyone would understand. And wouldn't you rather submit of your own free will instead of being broken and unable to stop yourself? After a month, you'll rob a bank for me if I ask you. Or perform in pornographic movies, or even have sex with anyone I order you to. You'll even kill for me. Your power of self determination will be completely gone if I have to break you.”