Beyond Ransom (The Ransom Series) (3 page)

The moment of connection that passes
between us quickly dissipates.  He folds up the knife and turns around to walk
away from me.  He returns the knife to the other man, who’s smiling widely as
he tucks it away in his back pocket.

“Much better,” he says proudly.  He has
the phone out again, snapping another picture of me, now in my bloodied and
beaten state.

I don’t try to hide the desperation in
my eyes.  I let the fear show openly on my face.  My moment of resilience and
strength is over.  All that’s left is a broken, fearful, stupid girl.

The man smiles at me.  “Time to make a
phone call.  Shall we give Mom and Dad a hello?”  His face becomes stern. 
“You’ll keep your mouth shut unless I tell you to speak.  Do you understand?”

I nod slightly.  Fresh tears threaten
to spill out of my eyes at the thought of my parents.  They’re about to
experience their worst nightmare, the incident my dad has been trying to
prevent happening to me since the day I was born.

I sit here, helpless, as he connects the
call over speakerphone.  My heart feels like it’s going to beat right out of my
chest with each ring of the phone.  Do they even know I’m missing yet?

“Hello?” my dad’s tremulous voice
echoes into the room.  I know the sound of worry in his tone.  He’s completely
aware that something bad happened to me.

“Ah
,
Robert,
it has been too long,” my attacker greets him.

A few seconds of silence fill the room.

“Mark, you fucking son of a bitch.”

Mark.  As in Mark Castili?  Dad never talks
to me about work, but there was no way for him to prevent me hearing about his
most highly publicized case: a powerful criminal mastermind he took down when I
was still in middle school.  I thought he was safely tucked away in jail,
though.

“Good to talk to you again, too,
Robert.  I have
someone
here who you may be interested
in speaking with.”

“Morgan?” he calls to me, his voice
cracking slightly.

I look up at Mark who nods at me.

“I’m here, Dad,” I say quietly.  It’s
too much.  I can’t help the tears escaping from my eyes.

“God, it’s so good to hear your voice. 
Are you okay?  Did he hurt you?”

“She’s fine, Robert,” Mark interjects.

“I want to see her,” Dad demands.  “I
need to see that she’s okay before we take this conversation any further.”

“I had a feeling you might say that.” 
Mark pokes around on his phone for a moment.  “There.  You should have a
picture.”

Silence fills the room again as we all
anxiously await my dad’s response.

He sighs heavily over the phone. 
“Thank God.”  He has clearly been sent the wrong picture.  Fucking Mark and his
fucking before and after pictures.

“Let’s discuss my terms,” Mark says,
getting right on with it.  “I want six million dollars cash provided in large
duffel bags.  One million for each year you kept me in jail seems reasonable,
right
,
old friend?”

Ransom.  My heart sinks.  I’ve been
taken for money.  I’m being offered in trade for an amount that I already know
my parents don’t have and won’t ever have between their bank accounts and
assets at any one time.

Hope is quickly fading away from me.  All
thoughts of being found or rescued are swallowed up by thoughts of my painful
destruction by these men.  They’ll use me until I’m spent, then they’ll dispose
of me, all because they didn’t get paid.

“Six million.  You really think I have
that kind of cash?”

I can hear the hopelessness in my dad’s
voice.  It seeps into me, withering my heart into nothing and chipping away at
my resolve.

I’m never going to get out of here.

“I’m sure you can work your magic,”
Mark says confidently.  “The good news for you is that I’m a patient man.  I’m
not giving you a twenty-four-hour or even a week deadline.  You take as long as
you need to pull the money together, but I’ll be keeping your beautiful
daughter in the meantime.”

“Let’s be reasonable here,” my dad
pleads.  “You and I both know I don’t have six million dollars.”

Mark laughs slightly.  “You’re a smart
man.  You’ll figure it out.  In the meantime, don’t bother trying to trace this
call or find us.  I’ve taken the necessary precautions to ensure that
my
calls are untraceable and
our location remains hidden.”  Mark
looks at me.  I hate being under his gaze.  “Morgan,
love
, you can say goodbye to your poor old dad now.”

I stare at him for a moment and
consider my options.  Dad is there on the other end of the line with what I’m
sure is an army’s worth of police officers and detectives.  It’s my opportunity
to help them, to give them the limited information I have on my surroundings
that might help lead them to my location.

I make a split-second decision.  I can only
hope it’s the right one.

“Enclosed cement room.  Exposed light
bulbs.  Dozen men.”

I’m barely able to get the last word
out before Mark’s hand is over my mouth and he’s on top of me
,
tipping my chair over
and
sending us
careening backward against the floor.  When the back of my head hits the hard
cement
,
I temporarily black out.

My vision comes back to see Mark’s
angry eyes looking directly
at
me.  My head tilts
back and forth
lazily
.  I feel my mind pulling me toward unconsciousness.  Mark removes
his hand from me and stands up.

“Morgan?  What happened?”  My dad’s
voice vaguely registers with me.

A few moments of silence follows before
Mark speaks again.  “You wanted to see your daughter?  Want to see what her big
fucking mouth and disobedience got her?  Check your phone, asshole.”

Tears fall down each side of my face,
intermixing with the blood that started to dry from my forehead.  I just want
this all to be over.

“Oh my God,” Dad says, his voice barely
audible before exploding out of the phone.  “I’m going to kill you.  I’m going
to fucking kill you!”

Mark laughs almost maniacally.  “We’ll
talk again soon, friend.”

I hear the phone fall down on the table. 
The call is over.  My dad is gone.  The tiny amount of relief I felt at hearing
his voice, even with its fear and pain, falls away from me.

“Someone get the bitch cleaned up and
out of my sight.”

I’m fighting to keep my eyes open as my
brain processes Mark’s words.

“I got it,” fills my ears from
somewhere in the room.  Leo’s voice?

My suspicion is confirmed as the
dark-haired man appears above me.  I’m vaguely aware of him lifting the back of
the chair up and untying my restrained hands and feet.

He scoops me up in his arms in an
effortless movement.  I look up at him and his sad eyes one more time before I
let my eyes close and don’t try to reopen them.

Beginning

My eyes shoot open to find fluorescent
light beaming down on me.  I’m not tied to a chair, but my body is draped
across someone’s lap.  In a strange way, waking up
like
this
is just as terrifying. 
Before I can even orient myself with my surroundings, I find the owner of the
lap beneath me.

Leo.

In his downward glance at me, stray
strands of his dark hair have worked their way to the front of his face,
dangling down between us.  His features are shadowed, the contours of his face hiding
from the brightness of the light above us.

Instinctively I try to move away from
him, to scramble off his lap and put as much distance between us as I can, but
my body is weak and his hold of me is strong.  Within seconds I give up,
allowing him to continue to hold me there.

I can’t look in his eyes, though.  I
don’t want to experience that moment of connection with him again that we
seemed to share before.  I just want to curl up inside and shut it all out.  It
may be the only way for me to survive this ordeal.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Leo says
calmly.

His voice is soft, almost caring.  I’m
not stupid, though.  I won’t let myself believe for a moment that this man
could possibly give a damn about me given where I am and what he just allowed
to happen to me, not to mention what he himself did to me.

I feel movement behind my head and
realize there’s something cold back there.  Leo has an ice pack of some sort
pressed against
me
.  My senses must be slowly awakening,
because it’s only now that I’m aware of the pounding pain reverberating
throughout my skull.

My eyes squint closed as my face twists
into a grimace.  I’m trying to will the pain away, but it only seems to
increase.  My hands move to my face, my fingers running slowly down my skin
from forehead to chin on e
ach
side of my nose. 
There’s a gauze bandage taped to my swollen forehead and butterfly bandages on
the cut on my check.  My skin is otherwise clean and smooth.

He cleaned my face and treated my
wounds.  He’s got an ice pack
on
my head.  He’s not
trying to hurt me.

Everything I feel inside tells me to
trust him, but can I?  I have no fucking clue.

His hand find
s both of
mine and slowly pull
s
them down to my
lap.  “You just need to relax,” he insists.

My eyes finally open to find him
staring down at me.  That connection I was afraid of unavoidably hits me again
as we look into each other’s eyes.  My brain is screaming at me to look away
,
but I can’t.  I don’t want to.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”
I ask, almost exasperated by the intensity of his continued gaze upon me.

Leo smiles down at my face.  “You’re
good to look at.”

What the hell do I make of that
statement?  My eyes widen as I look down the rest of my body.  I become very
aware that I was just unconscious in the lap of this man for an unknown amount
of time.  He could have done anything
to
me while I
was out.

He must recognize the look of concern
on my face.  “Don’t worry.  I didn’t touch you other than fixing up your face.”

I don’t know whether I should believe
him, but I have to
,
because I can’t even fathom any
other case right now.  I try to take Leo’s advice and relax, letting out all
the tension in my chest and limbs.

“There you go.  Good girl,” he
compliments.

I should be creeped out by this, but
strangely I’m not.  I should try to get away, but I don’t.  I should keep my
damn
mouth shut, but I can’t help my curiosity.  “Why are you
helping me?”

Whatever hint of a smile that was left on
Leo’s face disappears.  He seems a bit lost in thought.  “Mark wants you
alive.  I’m just helping keep you that way.  Also, you’re good to look at.”

A smile tugs at my lips, but feelings
of guilt and shame immediately wash over me.  I shouldn’t be smiling in this
situation.  I shouldn’t be happy or socializing or feeling normal.  I’m a
prisoner in the hands of
the
enemy.  I’ve just been
beaten and knocked unconscious, and I’m letting myself smile.  What the fuck is
wrong with me?

“Can I sit up, please?” I ask, unsure
of whether such
a question
is required.  I feel like
I’m in a place where any choice I make is not going to be my own.  These people
practically own me.

Leo nods and supports my back with the
hand holding the ice pack.  I rise to sitting
and
scoot off his lap to sit next to him on the tiny cot.  I feel instant relief in
moving off him, though I’m still not sure whether I believe that he didn’t take
advantage of me at all in my unconscious state.

I quickly scan the room around me.  It
doesn’t take long for me to figure out what this place is.  It’s an actual
prison cell.  Cement walls surround us outlining the square space that can’t be
more than
fifteen
feet across.  There’s a single metal
door to the room on the wall opposite from us with a small barred window at the
top of it.  I imagine similar cells line the walls outside that door.  This
must be some kind of abandoned prison.

Any
residual
hope
I had for escape leaves me.  My hands begin to tremble.  My breathing
quickens.  My heart rate increases to a racing speed.

This is only the beginning.

My body jumps as Leo’s arm winds around
my
waist
.  I try to scoot away from him, but he only
pulls me in tighter.  I still don’t know what to make of his actions, and I’m
not strong enough to overpower his muscles.

When my body stops fighting him, he
releases me only to let his hand connect with my back, running his fingers up
and down my spine.  How someone with such muscular arms can have such a gentle
and soothing touch is beyond me.

Something must be wrong with me,
because I’m letting this stranger touch me like this
when
I know I should be kicking and screaming instead.  His intentions
don’t seem malicious, though.  His touch is comforting, and that’s what I need
right now.

A long moment of silence passes between
us as he continues to calm the soaring panic that rose within me just minutes
before.  The pounding in my head begins to lessen to a dull, subdued pain.

When Leo withdraws his hand from me, I
immediately miss his touch.  He leans his elbows forward onto his knees and
clasps
his hands together.

“He’s going to expect me to be rough
with you,” he says almost reluctantly.  “I’ll do what I can to mitigate what
he’s going to do to you, but I won’t be able to stop him completely.  If he
orders me to do something, I’ll have to comply.”

I nod, accepting my fate.  I know I
should be grateful for what Leo’s already done for me and for what he just
offered to do for me, but the truth remains I’m still in as shitty of a
position as I was before Leo’s promise.  He may be able to slow the rate at
which Mark breaks me down, but he won’t be able to stop him completely.

“Thank you,” I say with a sigh.  It’s
all
I can offer, the only thing I can do.  I have nothing else to
give.

Leo smiles briefly before leaning down
to grab something from the floor.  My eyes light up when I realize it’s a
plastic water bottle filled with the clear liquid that my dehydrated body
desperately needs.

A small laugh escapes him as he hands
me the bottle.  “You should drink some of this.”  I take the bottle from his
hand and unsteadily unscrew the top before downing a third of the bottle in
just a few gulps.  “It’s all I can really give you at this point without
arousing suspicion.  If
Mark
wants you to eat and
drink, he’ll send something for you.”

I could
n’t
care less about food at this moment.  All that matters to me in the entire
world is finishing off this bottle of water.

When the last few drops of liquid leave
the bottle and land on my tongue, I screw the top back on and hand the empty bottle
to Leo.  “Thanks.  God, I needed that.”

“It’ll help you recover.  You need
rest, too.  You should sleep.”  Leo
tucks the bottle under his arm and
grabs the ice pack.  He
stands up
and
moves to the door in front of us, opening it and about to step
outside.

“Wait!” I yell after him.  He pauses, cautiously
awaiting what I’m going to say.  “Why are you really helping me?”

I seem to have caught Leo off-guard
with my question.  He grabs the edge of the thick door with his free hand and
looks at his feet.  The unwavering a
ura of confidence
around
him with his broad chest and shoulders and tattooed arms seems to lift.  In
these few moments he seems down to my level, almost vulnerable.

He sighs deeply before looking back up
at me.  “I know you have no reason to believe a word I’m saying, but I was in your
shoes once.  I know what you’re going through, and I’d never want to go back
there.  I’d never wish that upon anyone, not even my worst enemy.”

It’s way more honesty and emotion than
I was expecting to get out of him when I asked the question, and it only makes
me more curious about him and his intentions.  I want him to stay.  I want to
talk more with him, but I know our time is up.  What I don’t know is what our
status will be the next time we meet.

“Get some rest,” he suggests again. 
“You’re going to need it.”

He disappears into the hallway and
closes the door behind him.  The lock clicks in place.

I lie down and turn the other
direction, opting to face the wall instead of the locked door and the rest of
the cell and prison where I’m being kept against my will.  My heart begins to
race with the panic that’s rising up inside me again as the reality of my
situation truly sinks in.

The fear and adrenaline coursing
through my veins makes me doubt I’ll ever fall asleep, but exhaustion proves to
be the stronger influence on my body.  It’s not long before I’m taken into the
darkness of unconsciousness.