Page 13 of Ripple Effect, Vol. 2
For a moment, I feel dizzy and I can’t tell if it’s from lying down too long or what he’s just said, but I shake my head. “My what?”
“The microchip beneath your skin. I cut it out of you.”
“How … I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care if you do or don’t. The important thing is, it’s gone.” He packs up the extra gauze and tape into a Ziploc baggie that he tosses onto the mattress beside me.
“Let me see it,” I argue, staring up at him, trying to discern if he’s crazy or I’m dreaming this.
“I’m not interested in having whoever is keeping track of you come knocking on my door. It’s gone.”
“You cut into my skin? How did you know it was there?”
“The bump. I felt it when I secured you to the bed.”
“There was no bump there.” I hold my thumb over the gauze he’s taped, trying to remember if perhaps I had felt one and forgotten. “I think I’d have felt it. I’d at least remember a goddamn microchip getting inserted.”
“You’d have felt it if you knew to feel for it. It’s about the size of a grain of rice. My guess is it was inserted with a syringe. You may not even recall.”
Who would’ve inserted it? Randy? Perhaps that’s how he knew where to find me all the time. He knew if I was lying about staying after school, and whether or not I’d come straight home after.
“You did this while I was … ” Sickness churns in my stomach at the thought of him performing surgery on me while I was out.
“Yes.”
“You didn’t … put something in me. Did you?”
“Needle and thread. That’s it.”
Instinct tells me to make a run for the staircase, but I know better. Even if I got away. Even if I ended up back on the streets, free to go anywhere I wanted, I’d still have nothing without Charlie.
He grabs hold of my elbow, presumably to help me up, but I bat away his hand and stand myself with an air of indignation. The second I’m upright, dizziness smacks me upside the head, spinning my world off axis, and I fall back down. Days of lying on a mattress with nothing but a chicken leg’s worth of meat in my stomach has claimed my strength and I concentrate on the wobbling staircase ahead of me. When my periphery finally stills, I push to stand and swat at the hand he offers me.
“I never said I’d make it easy for you,” I snap at him, and fingers pinch the back of my neck as if I’m nothing but a small kitten.
“And I never said I’d play nice. Let’s get you cleaned up.” Fingers loosening their grip, he glides past me like a freight train passing in the night. It’s then that I notice how big he is. Monstrous. And if I had to guess, so is his dick.
What have you done, Dylan?
I chant the same mantra that’s kept me focused, if not foolish, negotiating dangerous pacts with men who could crush me and get away with it.
Sex is power.
He takes the lead up the staircase, and I follow behind, counting the steps as I go, as if they’re a countdown to my inevitable decimation. “I won’t tie you up, so long as you follow my rules. You’ll have free range of the house, for the most part, the exceptions being my office and the bedroom at the end of the hall.”
“Is that where you keep all the dead bodies?”
“It’s where I’ll keep yours if you venture inside, smartass.” His brow is cocked when he glances over his shoulder. “You’re not to leave this house for any reason or you’ll be out on your ass without a dime. We clear?”
“Crystal.” A tickle of weakness claims my leg muscles, my foot slipping beneath me, and I grip tight to the railing to keep from falling. The chicken held me over, but lying strapped to a bed, suffering tremors and little sleep, has taken a toll on my strength. For a girl who could walk ten miles scavenging for food, I’m already winded.
We reach the top of the stairs, where the front door I’d snuck in days before stands just ahead of me. Our footsteps come to a halt, and I look up to see him staring down at me.
His head jerks toward the entrance, and if I’m not mistaken, he’s offering freedom. “This is your last chance, Dylan.”
There’s nothing for me out there. I have a better chance walking away with twenty grand. Only two months.
“I’ll stay.”
