Page 27 of Ricochet

Those eyes, as beautiful as they were, held a terrifying emptiness—a complete lack of empathy as he stared back with an evil glint, silently warning me that I’d said something stupid. “I’m not afraid of your husband.”

I should’ve been scared. Why wasn’t I scared?

Maybe I just couldn’t feel fear anymore. Perhaps I’d stared into the depths of the devil’s eyes for too many years. I knew the sting of a whip, the burn of a blade, and the uncertainty that I’d live beyond the next hour. I lived in a constant state of defense, and had taken enough punches in the dark that my body’s reflexes were always wired, tense.

The guy wore an air of calm over the sizzling power that rolled off him in waves. His handsome features didn’t match the faces of serial killers running through my head. Bundy. Gacy.

Don’t be stupid, Aubree.

In my defense, his black hood and dark, enigmatic personality were reminiscent of Achilleus X—the man, or woman, I’d fantasized about for months.

The beauty I’d extrapolated from the stranger’s face both confounded and pissed me off, that I’d notice it in the thick of a nightmare, like Red admiring the Big Bad Wolf’s lovely teeth. The man staring back at me was a stranger in the literal sense—the kind mothers warned their children to stay away from at an early age. The kind that swiped young women and turned them into terrifying statistics found on crime television shows and forensic classes. He was also what the weird chicks probably fantasized about in their twisted rape fantasies, with his dark hoodie and deep voice—a far cry from the chubby, middle-aged guys with bad comb-overs and messed up teeth, who always played the perverted kidnapper in movies. Though, maybe he stole me for a chubby middle-aged guy with a bad comb-over, and he just happened to be the pretty precursor, meant to keep me calm, before I really lost my shit.

Still, I couldn’t look away from those eyes, as much as every cell in my body screamed retreat! I’d seen them before. Behind a mask. “You … you were at the …” Realization hit me with a double dose of fuck me and a sudden case of indigestion. “I have to use the bathroom. Or would you prefer I go right here?”

He silently stared at me, his left eye twitching. I could only guess he might be fantasizing what it’d feel like to strangle me. As if confirming my thoughts, he smoothed his hands over his black leather gloves as though making sure they were nice and tight so they wouldn’t bunch while his palms throttled my neck.

Something pulled at my body—an odd sensation that I wanted to push down and smother with good sense, but I couldn’t. I hated what his unwavering stare had drudged from some primitive, animalistic part of my brain, and I was ashamed to admit that, for a kidnapper, he was gorgeous—a gorgeous bastard who’d tied me to a bed all night, while he skipped off to what I imagined was some kidnapper bar somewhere, getting drunk and bragging to all his kidnapper buddies.

I cleared my throat and shifted on the bed, my fingers turning to sausages while I waited.

After an eternity, he leaned forward and started unshackling my ankles. My toes curled at the cold leather of his gloves against my skin.

“Any chance you could start with my hands? It’s that … gravity thing, you know?”

The narrowing of his eyes alongside the slight twist of his lip said shut the fuck up, I’m not here to make you comfortable, but he went to work on my right hand, anyway. Even with his GQ face and pretty eyes, the guy radiated fiery waves of hostility like a swarm of sharks beneath a placid surface.

A line of tension ran down my spine as I watched while his black-leathered fingers unfastened the cuffs, anxious for the damage, the stomach-twisting sensation of dead weight. At once, my wrist was free, and my arm dropped.

Pins and needles, pins and needles. Ah, shit.

I shook out my wrist, pumping, pumping, pumping my fingers. Like trying to control a dead body. If the movies depicted their gaits right, the walking dead should’ve been less concerned with scouring for brains and more focused on getting the goddamn tingles to stop in that leg always dragging behind them and slowing them down. My hand pulsed with a heartbeat again by the time he loosened the other binds, and I was battling tingles in both, feeling like the green monster from Yo Gabba Gabba.

“Perhaps next time you might consider a more ergonomically correct kidnapping by installing retractable chains in the wall, instead of tethering to the bedpost.” My comment was met by an unamused stare. “Just a suggestion.” With a lingering thickness to my limbs, I flapped my arms one more time and rose up on the opposite side of the bed to where he stood.

He was huge, maybe six four or five, and if those muscles and ridges behind his shirt were any indication, he was probably pretty ripped, too. A fighter, if I had to guess. My best chance for escape would likely be outsmarting him.

“I don’t know what you’re scheming, lady. But if you think you can get past me, you’re about two seconds from getting slapped down by reality.” He had the accent of a man who’d grown up in Detroit. Hard to pick up on the night before, but clear as day, the more I listened to him talk—his clipping of hard consonants and slurring words. He probably needed money, which meant money might be a negotiating factor.

As if he could read my mind, he nabbed my purse from the nightstand, rifled through it contents, tossed it on the bed, and held up the chip I’d swiped from Michael’s office. Perhaps he’d been paid to retrieve it. “I’ll be keeping this.” He stuffed it in his pocket, and crossed his arms like a bully on the playground after stealing lunch money.

Nice going, Aubree. Probably could’ve used it as a bargaining chip. Note to self: stuff important shit down the bra, not inside the purse. I didn’t even know what was on it, but considering Michael and his Pentagon-secured office, any object holding information was probably important.

The stranger lifted a gloved hand, ushering me toward what I was certain was something else, entirely. My head snapped between him and the door. “I … isn’t that a closet?”

“Was.”

My heart sank at the revelation, and with reluctant steps, I inched toward the door I’d been convinced had to be a closet. What the hell kind of bedroom didn’t have a closet, after all?

I opened the door to find one of the do-it-yourself variety bathrooms, complete with a plywood floor and a pedestal sink. No mirror. The rack that extended to the back of the small room stood empty and useless. No window. No vent. And no possible chance for escape. I’d been certain the only place I’d be relieving myself would be out of my prison room, with a front door in my sights and freedom at my back.

“You look disappointed.” The close proximity of his voice tightened my muscles.

“Do you plan to accompany me into the bathroom, or something?”

“Do your business. And hurry up.”

I stepped inside, closing the door behind me, and, perhaps for the first time since I arrived there, reality began to penetrate my tightly woven cloak of denial. It wasn’t a joke. I could very well die in the enclosing shithole with a psychotic Bob Vila wannabe and his mysterious black gloves that were clearly meant to hide fingerprints.