Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 98819 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 494(@200wpm)___ 395(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98819 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 494(@200wpm)___ 395(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
“We’re just going to ask him questions,” I remind the white-blond assassin.
Victor pauses the dancing of his hands over the torturer’s tools. “Just talk?”
“I promised my wife I wouldn’t kill him.”
“Pain doesn’t have to equal death.” Victor raises a bone saw.
“She won’t like it.”
“She’ll never know.” But he replaces the saw. “The things we do for love.”
“Happy wife, happy life.”
“So I have found,” he agrees.
I didn’t realize Victor was married, but now that he’s let the information slip, I wonder if the dark-haired woman I saw him dancing with at our engagement ball was his wife. Hamish will know.
Ted groans and stirs.
“Shall we?” Victor holds up a black skull mask.
“I have my own.” I turn the faceplate of my helmet opaque as Ted rouses. He winces and mumbles something.
He opens his eyes, squinting in the gloom. “What. . . where am I?”
I step into his line of vision, and he comes awake quickly, recoiling and thrashing in his restraints. “Who are you? What’s going on?”
“Your worst nightmare,” I snarl, the helmet speaker distorting my voice. “You’re going to tell me everything you know about the Bondage Killer.”
“Oh gods,” Ted whimpers. “What is this place?”
Victor moves to stand beside me. The skull mask covers his face, but I can hear the glee in his voice as he says, “Welcome to the Abyss.”
16
Inara
* * *
Something soft strokes my face. I sit up, and feathers fall from my body. I move and wince when something crunches underfoot. Feathers and fragile wings. Don’t think about it. I stagger forward into a small, dark room. The walls bow inward, covered with pictures of victims. One photo floats down and lands in front of me. It’s the picture of my family, with every face crossed out. Including mine.
Somewhere, I hear Burgess muttering, “Another body. . .”
“No,” I gasp, shuddering awake.
“I’ve got you.” It’s Rex. I’m in his arms, still wearing my dress. I must have fallen asleep in the chair. I’m still half in the dream, feeling the broken feathers over my skin.
I rub my eyes, but it feels like there are grains of sand digging into my eyeballs. I blink, but it doesn’t help.
Air wafts over my face. We’re still in the cave, and he’s carrying me to the elevator.
“What happened? What did you find?”
“I’ll tell you in the morning.”
He’s taken off his helmet, but he’s still in his body armor. I look him over. No blood, but the black surface might just hide it well.
“No, tell me now.”
He doesn’t answer.
“Sir,” Hamish calls.
“Later,” Rex answers and keeps walking. I hear and feel the whir of the elevator.
I must fall asleep again in the elevator because the next thing I know, I’m in bed in Rex’s bedroom. I’m naked except for my panties, and the shower’s running nearby.
When Rex walks out, he’s in nothing but a towel. I search him for bruises but see none.
I scoot over to make room for him on the bed but put a hand on his shoulder before he can sink back into the bed. “Tell me. I won’t be able to sleep until you do.”
Rex’s shoulders slump, and I know he wants to spare me from whatever he’s about to say. “He started talking as soon as we secured him. But he didn’t have much to say. He swears he’s also a victim.”
“What?” I try to reconcile that with the moment tonight when Ted approached me. His eager energy.
“The Bondage Killer sent him things with explicit instructions to deliver them to you. The first was the photo you found at your desk at work, which came to his work mailbox at the paper. The letter he had tonight was slid under his apartment door. He felt threatened, so he did BK’s bidding and sought you out.”
My brain is fuzzy, so it takes me some time to sort through this. “So he’s innocent.”
Rex’s lip curls. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
“But he’s a victim, like me.”
“He seems to think so. He spent the rest of the time begging us to protect him from the serial killer.”
The disdain in Rex’s voice makes my stomach twist.
“Did you kill him?” I’m afraid of the answer but I ask anyway. Rex hasn’t hidden his murderous side from me, and I won’t shrink away from it.
“I wanted to. He has no business breathing the same air as the decent people of New Rome.” He takes a strand of my hair into his fist and clenches it like he wants to absorb it into his palm. I wait for the painful tug on my scalp, but it never comes.
“But no, I didn’t kill him.”
My breath eases out of me.
“I have people watching him and his place to see if the Bondage Killer contacts him. But he’s still breathing. We let him go.”
“We?” I remember the bikers in the alley. It makes me uneasy that Rex is allied with a criminal gang.