Page 44 of Deposed

“No,” cried Mr. Carbuncle. “You’ve got to believe me. I only went with the girls who visited my lodge and wanted something over and above. It was never for things like unlocking doors or replacing lost keys”

“Then what did you do for them?”

The chill in the man’s voice made me think he might be more dangerous than Mr. Carbuncle. When his elbow rose as though to pull something out of his inside pocket, I drew in a sharp breath through my nostrils. What if he had a gun? I fixed my gaze on the can of diet coke lying on its side on the dust sheet. While there was still hope of using me for a ransom, he wouldn’t shoot me… yet.

“M-Mr. Carbuncle let Charlotte into my room to search it,” I blurted. “I caught them on camera. And there was the time she put something in my shampoo, the time she put dye on my clothes, and the time they both arranged for a crowd of students to attack me.”

The janitor backhanded me across the face. My head jerked back and hit the wall, and pain ricocheted through my skull. With a nervous, high-pitched giggle, he said, “She’ll say anything to make trouble.”

“I’m. Not. Lying.”

“Shut up!” He booted me in the stomach. Pain lanced through my belly, but it was still less excruciating than the time Charlotte kicked me in the diaphragm. “Or your stepfather will need to pay another million when I make a tape of you choking down my cock.”

“Stop,” snapped the man. “She’ll be unrecognizable with these bruises. Get out and take a cigarette break.”

My eyes squeezed shut, and a boulder of regret dropped into my stomach. I’d overplayed my hand, and now the man was more concerned about the ransom money than about Charlotte’s virtue.

Mr. Carbuncle stalked out of the room, opened a door and then slammed it shut. It sounded like an external door, but I couldn’t be sure.

The man turned around, holding a huge SLR camera in front of his face. One hand held the curved grip underneath the shutter, while the other cupped an oversized lens, obscuring the entirety of his features.

A pained breath whistled out of my lungs. He wanted these photos as high-resolution as possible to capture every detail of my bruises. With photos of my injuries getting worse each day, and the inclusion of a few with Mr. Carbuncle, the man looked to shame Rudolph into paying my ransom.

After the last photo, he turned around and stepped through the open doorway. “I’ll be leaving for an hour. Maybe longer. For your own safety, don’t say anything while I’m gone to rile Carbuncle.”

Terror warbled in the back of my throat. He had his day one photo. Now Mr. Carbuncle would be free to hurt me however he pleased!

“Don’t leave,” I whispered. “He’ll kill me for telling you what he did with Charlotte.”

“He won’t let you die.” The man walked into the darkened hallway. A door creaked open, then a moment later, it clicked shut.

A wave of determination tightened my muscles, and I sucked in a deep breath. If I didn’t find a way to leave before Mr. Carbuncle returned from his cigarette break, I probably wouldn’t want to live after he’d finished with me.

Sitting with both feet firmly on the ground, I pushed my back into the wall, and used my thighs to propel myself up. The pressure exacerbated the pain around my shoulders, my lumbar, and the back of my head, but I clenched my teeth and forced myself to keep going. Sweat beaded on my brow, and my pulse echoed in my ears, but I ignored everything to push myself to standing.

I hobbled across the room, through the doorway, and into the darkened hall, hoping that the man had left the front door unlocked. It was one of those stainless steel smart door locks with a digital display. I gripped its handle with my bound hands and pulled down.

It was stuck and probably needed an app to unlock it.

A cry of frustration flew from between my lips, and I rushed back to the room. If the apartment wasn’t too high off the ground, I would have to jump.

As soon as I crossed the threshold of the room, my gaze locked onto a tall, dark figure standing outside the window. He held his smartphone like a torch, its flash illuminating the empty space.

Chapter 15

I froze at the doorway, my heart in my throat, and stared at the dark figure at the window. He was too tall to be Tom, the Saturday Correspondent’s tech guy, and wasn’t wearing the uniform of a police officer. Whoever he was, he had to be better than an enraged and oversexed Mr. Carbuncle. The man made a shooing motion with his hand, which I interpreted to mean he didn’t want me to come any closer.

With a nod, I remained at the doorway. My gaze darted to the front door, which remained closed… for now. How long did it take to smoke a cigarette? Two minutes? Five?

The dark figure tucked his smartphone away, plunging himself in semi-darkness. Then he drew his arm all the way back and punched the glass with his gloved fist. Shards flew into the room and clinked over the parquet floor and onto the electric heater beneath the sill. I clapped my hand over my mouth and gasped. Had he hurt himself? And what the hell was he standing on, a ladder? We had to be several stories high, as there were no views of street lights from beyond the window.

The dark figure hooked his arm through the gap he had created in the broken glass and fiddled with the window lock. After a moment, his arm sagged.

“Emilia,” said a familiar, smoky voice. “See if you can open it from your end.”

My hands dropped from my face. “B-Blake?”

“Hurry!”