Ripped (12 page)

I’d been dismissed, hadn’t I? Shit, when we’d been together in the kitchen, I’d felt as if there was a bond being formed between us. Now, it was completely severed. He was closed down to me. Completely gone.

It hurt.

This was why I shouldn’t have had sex with him. I had this stupid tendency to fall for guys that I went to bed with. I didn’t mean to, but it happened a lot. It was the reason that there weren’t very many drunken hookups in my past. I always wanted them to turn into something more, and when they didn’t, I was devastated.

Well, fuck him.

Fuck all of it. The best thing to do now was simply to find Starling, make sure she was safe, and then get the hell away from Cade or Ripper or whoever the hell he was.

I didn’t need this. No matter how good the sex was.

* * *

Cade

Fuck all of it.

I was an idiot. I knew that I was, and I couldn’t believe that I’d forgotten to put on a condom like that.

And I hated hearing her babble on like that, her voice getting more and more tentative, because she had been so strong thus far. Even when she submitted to me in the kitchen, she did it consciously. I remembered how she had willfully refused to apologize sincerely, wanting me to punish her, and my cock stirred again.

I looked down at my crotch.

“Down boy,” I whispered. I had things I needed to think about. The most important one being how I was going to find Ice. We were running out of time. I assumed two days meant that today was the first day, and then tomorrow was the second day.

But what if Ice was going to be an ass and interpret it as yesterday being day one and today being day two.

If I found him, and Starling was already dead, then Shell was going to hate me forever.

I thought of the way she’d turned away from me minutes before. Maybe she already hated me. I wouldn’t blame her.

Honestly, I couldn’t figure out why she was letting me do anything with her at all.

I threw myself down on the couch.

Maybe there was something wrong with her.

Maybe she was screwed up in the head, too, just like I was. Maybe she liked dangerous guys. Maybe that got her off. Maybe I wasn’t the first hit man she’d banged. Maybe she was a regular groupie, ready to spread her legs for anyone who had a gun.

It didn’t seem like it, though.

Honestly, her sexual history sounded kind of sad. The way she had described sex with the gay guy sounded pathetic, and she had hinted that she thought it was normal, which meant that she’d been having sex with straight guys that was really crappy too.

Not that I liked thinking about her having sex with other men, I realized. I was already starting to feel possessive of her. Maybe it was because of the way she’d obeyed me, or the way she’d responded to me. Or maybe it was because the things out of her mouth had driven me out of my mind. She’d told me that she was different with me, that
I
made her the sexy little minx that she was, and that made me feel—

Of course, it might all be calculated. Maybe she was making it up, even the bit about the birth control. Maybe she was playing me. Maybe, for her it was some kind of game.

But why would she do that?

Why would she play a game with me? Did she think I was too slow to catch on to that, because I was onto her and—

Slow.

Someone else had said that word to me recently…

Oh, right. Ice’s note.
Too slow.

Suddenly, I wished that I hadn’t crumpled that shit up. What if there was something in that note, some kind of clue? I wouldn’t put it past Ice, to be honest. He was the manipulative one, the one who liked to fuck with people’s heads. He wouldn’t be able to resist making it obvious…

Oh, shit.

I knew where he was.

CHAPTER TEN

Shell

I was sitting in the passenger seat of Cade’s car, running my fingers through my wet, tangled hair as Cade careened around the corner, barely getting through the intersection before the light changed. “Hey,” I said, grabbing the handhold on the ceiling. “Can you slow down?”

“Thought you’d be eager to find your sister.” He stared straight ahead, and the car was still hurtling down the road.

“I am,” I said. “That’s why I left without even combing my hair. But you’re going to get us pulled over, and that’s going to make it take even longer.”

He glanced at me, and then back at the road. The car slowed a bit. Not all the way down to the level of the speed limit, but at least not warp speed anymore.

“So, how do you know that’s where he is again?” I said.

“It was in the note. He said, ‘Too slow.’ So, that could only mean this place. He left me a little clue, and I figured it out.”

“But I don’t get it,” I said.

“Of course you don’t.”

“It’s an inside thing? Something only the two of you understand?”

“Slow,” he said. “Mental hospital. It’s obvious.”

“Um, it’s not.”

“A mental hospital,” he said. “One that’s been closed down for nearly twenty years, so it’s old enough that they used to do lobotomies there. They keep trying to tear it down, but every time the project gets underway, whoever is funding it backs out.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard about the place,” I said. “But I still don’t see what it has to do with being slow.”

He glanced at me again, like I was an idiot.

“What?” I said.

“
Lobotomies
.”

“So?”

“People who have lobotomies are slow. Too slow. Like the note.”

I raked my hands through my hair. “I think you’re just making connections that aren’t even there.”

He laughed. “You would think that. Because you’ve never done this before.”

“And you spend all of your time chasing psychopaths around trying to save girls?”

“Point,” he admitted. “But you’ve just got to trust me. It’s a clue. That’s what it means. And we’re on our way to the place where we’ll find Starling.”

“But I saw a story about that on the news,” I said. “They were filming the place, talking about how kids like to break in there during Halloween and how it’s haunted and all of that. Which I don’t believe, incidentally. But still, it’s huge. We could search the place for days and not find them.”

“No, I know where she’ll be,” he said.

“How could you know that?”

“Because I know him, and he and I have talked about mental hospitals before.”

“Well, that’s why you know he’s there, then. Because of that conversation, not because of the clue in the note.”

“No.” He shook his head. “The conversation, it was a long time ago, and it was actually about how he’d like to kill someone in a hospital, so that he could take advantage of the stuff that’s in the hospital for the purposes of torturing people.”

My whole body went cold. It was as if I’d forgotten all about the reason Cade and I were together in the first place. Starling was in danger. Real danger. And I was too worried about getting laid and whether or not the guy liked me back to even worry about her.

God, that was so like me.

Not the preoccupation with sex part. That was kind of new. But the fact that I was thinking of myself instead of Starling? The fact that she was being hurt and I wasn’t even worried about her? Yeah, that was the kind of sister I typically was.

I sucked.

I dragged a hand over my face. “He’s going to torture her?”

He gripped the steering wheel. “He, uh, likes torturing people. He gets off on it. He likes pain.”

“But you don’t, right?” Suddenly, that was important to me.

His grip on the steering wheel tightened.

I thought about him spanking me earlier. That hadn’t really hurt, but maybe it was just part of his sick, twisted—

“Look, Shell, you should know… I’m not a good guy.”

Fuck. I sat back in my seat. “You like torturing people too?”

“No. Not…” His jaw twitched. “I don’t do it. It’s bad for business. You want to succeed knocking people off, then you learn to do it quick and clean, and torturing someone first is neither.”

“But do you like it?” My voice was tiny.

He didn’t say anything.

I grabbed the handhold again, and I squeezed it hard. I had sex with him. I let him hurt me. “Is that why you spanked me? If you had your way, would you hurt me worse? Really hurt me?”

“No.” He shot a glance at me. “Why would you think that?”

“Well—”

“No, I guess I can see why you would think that.” He sighed. “I like control. I like being in control of someone else. I like… but it’s not about enjoying pain for me. I’m not a sadist. I’m just…” His voice dropped several octaves, so that it was barely audible. “I do like killing. I’m good at it, and I like it, and I’m not a good guy. And you… you should probably stay away from me.”

I blinked. He liked killing? Liked it.

I knew that he killed people. I also knew he had a code. But I guessed that if you needed a code, it was probably because you were tempted to do things outside of the code. Like, I didn’t need a code at all. I would never kill someone. Not anyone, ever.

Well.

Maybe I would kill Frazier Smith. If I had the chance. Maybe I would. Something told me that guy was contributing nothing useful to the world.

“Anyway,” continued Cade in a subdued voice, “we were talking about torture. It was kind of this thing where we were sharing our fantasies about the perfect kill.”

Oh, God. He fantasized about killing people. Oh. My. God.

“And,” he kept going, “he was talking about doing things in a hospital. But then he started talking about a mental hospital, about shock therapy and lobotomies and—”

I made a mewling noise, cringing and thinking of Starling.

“Sorry,” said Cade. “Maybe that was too much information.”

“No, I need to know,” I said. “When I find her, whatever he’s done to her—”

“She’ll be fine,” said Cade. “Ice promised us he wouldn’t hurt her.”

“You said we couldn’t trust him.”

“It was just last night,” said Cade. “We’ll get there before he can do anything.”

I pressed my forehead into the window. “What was yours?”

“Mine?”

“Your fantasy? Your perfect kill?” My voice came out dripping with disgust.

But he didn’t respond.

* * *

Shell

I didn’t want to split up inside the mental hospital, because it was creepy as hell in there. It was nearly noon, but inside, there was no electricity, and the doors were shut tight on either sides of the hallways, so that the only light filtered through dirty windows at the ends. The light was gloomy and ghostly. Gray. And it barely penetrated.

The place was dark and silent and strangely barren.

Sure, there was the odd gurney in the hallway, complete with unbuckled restraints that hung open at the corners.

But for a place that was frequented by teenagers, it was surprisingly clear of the stuff we’d seen in the other building. No beer bottles, cigarette butts, graffiti. It was as if this place hadn’t been touched for twenty years.

And I didn’t believe in ghosts or anything like that. I didn’t fall for that stupid stuff where people go into places with voltmeters and infared cameras and claim that spirits are communicating with them. Whatever. That’s bullshit.

But…

Well, I couldn’t account for the fact that the minute we stepped into that place, I felt like we weren’t alone. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s that uncanny itch at the back of your neck that tells you to turn around and check to see if something is watching.

A holdover from the days when we lived in the wild, when we were wary of predators or something. A piece of my lizard brain lighting up, screaming at me that this place wasn’t safe.

So, I really didn’t want to split up.

Honestly, even though Cade had just told me that he enjoyed killing people and that he was a bad person, I wanted to clutch his arm and huddle close to him, because I was afraid.

But he was adamant. “This is the best way. I’m going to go and make some noise, and I’ll attract his attention. That means he’ll leave Starling alone. You need to get to where she is so that you can get her out of here. It’ll be safer for you if you don’t see him anyway.”

“But… but…” I tried to think of a good reason.

“You’re not scared, are you?”

I looked around at the tall, metal doors looming above me in the gray light. “No,” I said in a small voice.

“Good. Because trust me, Ice is the only thing to be scared of in this place. He’s the boogeyman.”

Great. Thanks for that. Because now I wasn’t only going to be worried about ghosts and whatever strange otherworldly presence I seemed to be sensing, I was also going to be worried that Ice was lurking somewhere around the next corner, holding a long, thin sharp tool once used for lobotomies, which would already be dripping with my sister’s blood and brain matter—