Nothing More Beautiful (50 page)

On the way there, my hackles stood on edge;
I had a bad premonition of bumping into her. My nerves only settled
halfway through the workout. I looked at my watch and saw that it
was 8:23, and I cursed the number, heading back to my car. The
apprehensive feeling returned in the parking garage. With the key
turning the car lock, I felt a thick cord suddenly wrap around my
neck.

I struggled to get free, thrashing my elbows
back, hitting whoever trapped me. My efforts were in vain. My lungs
burned as I fought for air. Black spots appeared in my vision
before the darkness swallowed me whole.

WHEN I WOKE NEXT,
my lungs
filled with a burst of air, and my world returned suddenly,
shockingly. Crammed, and surrounded by black, I couldn’t make out
anything until my eyes adjusted. That took a while. I figured out
where I was long before I could see: I heard the hum of an engine,
and felt the abrupt bumps that sent me up and down. With my hands
and legs bound, tape over my mouth, and no room to maneuver, I was
trapped in a car trunk.

A nightmare any way you looked at it.

I had once seen an episode of “Psych” where
the main character was kidnapped in the same situation and kicked
out the taillight to get his bearings. When I tried, my foot nearly
broke, so either that was a lie, or it was bolted in its socket
better than the standard vehicle.

For every actual minute that passed, I swore
it was a year, the endless journey suffocating my confidence. The
longer it took, the more I told myself everything wasn’t going to
work out okay.

Either from the lack of oxygen, or from
hysteria, I nodded off after a while, my head swimming and
delirious. My forehead smacked the back of the trunk when the car
rolled to its final stop. The trunk opened all of a sudden to a
black night and dim porch lights.

“Wakey-wakey, sleepy head,” a soft voice
said. It was familiar—too familiar. A pair of hands grabbed at my
arms and legs, and I wiggled to get free as Emma’s face popped into
view. “Already awake, I see. I thought I heard you kicking around
back there. I bolted everything in extra secure for you. I did my
research on ways people escape from abductions. I think we covered
all our bases.”

“WE?” I screamed into the tape.

I heard what sounded like a screen door
opening. Another figure stepped behind the trunk, a silhouette of a
lanky man. The jean jacket confirmed my worst nightmare. “She
giving you any trouble?” Luke asked. His throaty voice shot jolts
of terror down my spine.

“Her? Are you kidding? What about yours?”
She latched onto just my arms, while he gripped my legs, both
hauling me out of the confining trunk.
They had someone else? Oh
God, they have Vince too! They’re going to kill us both.

“I’ve got the other one downstairs,” he
said. “She fought me, so I had to beat her up some. She got the
message real quick.”
She? Who else were they planning on
torturing tonight? Who would they kidnap besides Vince?

The air smelled like salt—like the ocean. I
could hear the crashing of the surf not far away. All the clues
pointed to Emma’s beach house that she’d once offered for the Hood
to Coast race. So we were in Cannon Beach. What little good that
information did me, my limbs bound and useless.

As they carried me inside, Luke kicked the
prop out of the screen door and it slammed shut. “The neighbors are
gone. There was a family renting the other one yesterday, but
they’re gone. We’re alone for tonight.”

“Tonight is all we need,” she said sweetly,
a joyous smile spread across her face. They lugged me through an
ancient house. The walls and carpet even smelled old. The entire
trip I couldn’t believe what was happening.
Luke and Emma? How
did they even know each other?
It was too unreal to wrap my
mind around.

I struggled against them as much as I could,
earning a slap to my back from Luke. “Don’t take too much of the
fight out of her, love,” Emma urged. “Tonight won’t be much fun if
she’s broken.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he agreed. A
large unfinished living room lay at the bottom of the stairs. I saw
a bathroom as they dragged me into a musty bedroom, where loud
whimpering drowned out the silence.

“You can scream and cry all you want. No
one’s going to hear you through these walls. I’ve had them
soundproofed,” Emma said to the woman in the corner. She was tied
to a chair, now tipped over in an effort to escape.

The two sat me down, and Luke brought the
other captive upright, revealing her face. “Alma!” I shouted into
the tape. They bound me to an old wooden chair that looked on the
verge of disintegrating, angling me so that I faced her. Luke
hadn’t lied when he said he had beat her up. She had a
bluish-purple eye, and bruises marked her body along her arms.

They simultaneously ripped off the tape
covering our mouths. I wasn’t sure which of us screamed louder, as
we pierced each other’s ears like a knife stabbing flesh, and the
pain rung on after the screams faded.

“Go ahead and scream, sweetie,” Luke
laughed. He slapped Alma hard across the face. She bit back any
response besides a mild whine. “No?” He waved the back of his hand
at her face and stopped before he sent her reeling. She flinched.
Emma and Luke both laughed. “How disappointing, Alma. I thought you
had more in you. I thought you were one of those strong,
I-don’t-need-a-man types. Oh, wait, you
do
need a man, but
he rejected you over and over and over, just like you rejected
me.”

“Why?” I blurted.

Luke knelt between us, staring at me with
the craziest look I’d ever seen in real life. He made Crazy Eyes
from “Orange is the New Black” look sane. Taking out a switchblade
from his pocket, he flicked it open. “You think Vince is so goddamn
perfect, don’t you?” His harsh laugh was starting to nauseate me.
“Don’t you? Well, he’s not. Oh no, Mr. Perfect is really Mr.
I’ll-fuck-you-over-the-first-chance-I-get. He charms you one
moment, then swindles you the next. He took everything from me. I
mean, we were partners for fuck’s sake, and he took all my money,
my future—even my girl.”

“I was never your girl, Luke,” Alma
hissed.

“The fuck you weren’t,” he growled back. He
tapped her knee with the flat of the blade. “How does that cold
steel feel on your soft skin, sweetie? Hmm? Does it make you
remember how it really was?”

“You’re delusional. You’re sick, you know
that? Fucking sick,” she responded, her voice scathing.

He rotated the knife so that the cutting
edge lay against her skin, peeling into her knee. Alma winced and
screamed, trying to kick him, but the ropes held her in check.
Blood ran down her leg to the floor. “Sick? I’ll tell you what’s
sick, sweetie—it was sick watching you swoon over Vince when I was
right there in front of you. A great guy, just as smart, just as
good-looking as that prick, and yet you tell me it will never
happen? Really? REALLY? I mean, come on.” He stood up and paced
behind her.

“I loved you, Alma.” He licked his lips.
“Loved you like no man ever has. But you missed out. Now I’ve got a
new chick.” He grabbed Emma’s ass and squeezed.

“That’s right,” she said, putting her tongue
down his throat. “And I have to say, having fucked both of them,
Vince was nothing with that limp cock of his.” Standing before us,
she seemed so normal, except for the strange glint in her eye that
foretold my death.

My mind was racing, my heart pounding out of
control, and the worst of it all, I had no idea what to do. Even
after swallowing the panic that threatened to crush me, still no
course of action struck me. My only idea, and it seemed silly
enough, was to keep them talking instead of whatever else they
planned for us.

“That’s all well and good,” I said, “but
that wasn’t the ‘why’ I meant. I meant, why do you always wear that
same silly jacket? Don’t you have any other clothes?”

“Oh, I like this one,” Luke said to Emma.
“She’s got some wit.” He straightened out the dirty jacket. “It’s
lucky, and look what my luck has brought me tonight.” He smiled at
me, eyeing my breasts.

“How is it that you’re together?” I asked,
stalling. “And why’d you kidnap us? What could you possibly gain
from this?”

“Funny enough, our paths crossed while
stalking Vince,” Emma said, “and what can I say? True love is true
love. Isn’t that right, Luke?”

He squeezed her ass in response, and then
slapped it, and she stumbled forward a step. “As for you two, you
were the next best choices for revenge after I failed to kill Vince
at the wedding. He became too well guarded. He had men crawling all
over the place, babysitting him when he went to the grocery store,
holding his hand at restaurants.”

“But you two,” Emma picked up where Luke
left off. “You two were easier targets. Ms. Sweetie here”—she
tapped Alma on the shoulder, who instantly shrugged off the
touch—“had her men, sure, but only a handful compared to Vince’s
army.” Vince had upped his security, that was sure enough, but her
exaggeration went into the arena of hyperbole. “And you, my sweet
cupcake, well, you’re a nobody, and snatching a nobody is easier
than taking candy from a baby.”

Did she really just say that?
I
forced my face into a stern expression to hide my gawking. “I
learned everything from reading Dexter Morgan,” she continued.
“Take a bit of thick fishing line and sneak up on someone. That’s
how I got you.” She showed me the clear fishing line and pulled it
tight a few times, smirking. “We have a kill room and everything,
all for you. Anyway, we planned to only take Alma since you’d run
out on Vince. We knew her death would crush him, plus Luke would
finally get some satisfaction after so many years of being spit on
by the two of them.

“But when we found out about your
engagement, well, we changed our plans to include you. I wanted
Vince like Luke wanted Alma. Before I met Luke, Vince and I were
meant for each other. You could see that, couldn’t you?” She didn’t
give me time to answer. “But once you took off, he tossed me out
like a piece of trash, like I was fucking nothing to him.”

“With both of you out of the picture,” Luke
said, “he’ll be wrecked beyond recovery. It’ll be just as good, if
not better, than if we slit his own throat. He’ll probably fucking
off himself, thanks to us.”

“I think that’s enough talk, love,” Emma
said to Luke. “She thinks she’s stalling, but we have lots of time:
all night in fact. And we were going to tell you all that anyway.
After all, what’s the point of doing all this work and not letting
you in on the plan, right? Now, though, it’s time for the real fun
to begin.”

Luke picked up Alma with her still attached
to the chair. She began screaming again, trying desperately to free
her legs and kick him. “I’m going to enjoy this so much.” He kissed
her cheek and she gagged.

“We both are,” Emma added. “We’re going to
have us a
real
three-way, where the stupid bitch doesn’t run
away just because her man wants to fuck me more than her. Start
setting her up—I’ll be in in a moment.”

Luke carried Alma out of the room. Her
screams grew muffled when Emma closed the door. She picked up a
duffel bag from the floor, unzipped it, and took out a huge black
dildo. “See what I have for you.” She smacked my face with the sex
toy. I moved my head to avoid it, but there was no escaping her
taunts. She lifted up a harness out of the bag. “I’m going to fuck
you raw. Just like Vince wanted to fuck me that night. You saw it
in his eyes.”

“But he never did, did he?” I said,
compelling my voice to a deep, grim level.
Be calm. Be calm.
That’s the only way out of here,
I told myself as I stared down
Emma.

Her lip curled up, furious. “What the fuck
do you know, you stupid cunt? Just for that, I’m going to fuck you
until you bleed.” She slapped me again with the fake cock, and then
tossed the toy and harness into the bag before leaving me
alone.

With the door closed, I could only make out
faint cries coming from the bedroom across the basement.
Be
calm. Be calm
, I repeated to myself. I scanned the room for
something to cut the rope, wiggling my wrists. There was nothing
but an old metal bedframe, a dusty desk stacked with newspapers,
and a collection of dolls. Then I remembered that the rooms were
soundproofed, which meant I had the freedom to make as much noise
as I wanted.

Only one idea came to mind, and I knew it
would hurt, but I had to brave the risk, not just for my own sake,
but for Alma’s as well. I drew in a few deep breaths. Then, I
started rocking back and forth until my feet were able to touch the
concrete floor, pushing off when they connected. As I fell
backward, I tucked my head to my chest to avoid knocking myself
out. The slats that made up the back of the chair splintered from
the impact. Fragments dug sharply into my skin. I grit my teeth as
pain shot up my arms.

The chair’s seat and back fell away when I
rolled over, leaving only the pegs that bound my legs. I swung my
arms out from under my butt and over the pegs, until they were in
front of me. The cuts on my arms were minor enough, or so I hoped
as I got to my knees.

Crawling to the desk, I opened the drawer,
searching through old school supplies. I found a pair of old shears
like what my grandma had once used in her garden. Biting down on
the handle with the blades on their sides, I rubbed the thin rope
across the still-sharp cutting edge. The rope began shaving away as
sweat beaded into my eyes. My heartbeat thudded in my ear.

The shears trimmed away enough of the rope
that I could yank my hands apart in one violent action to free
them. The knots weren’t as amateur as I could have hoped for, so I
had to cut my legs free as well. With every second that passed, I
knew Alma was in that much more peril.