CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

Kate became dimly aware of light. Nothing made sense. A shadow passed over her. Her mind felt as if it were immersed in a deep, thick darkness. She made an effort to force herself to think. It didn’t produce much of anything, other than that she recognized the taste of blood in her mouth.

Someone slapped her. It was hard enough to nearly knock her over. The shock of pain startled her. Her immediate reaction was to yell at them to stop it, but no yell would come out.

The sting of the slap started to sharpen her senses back into focus a little. She realized that she was sitting, but for some reason she couldn’t move her arms. Her shoulders hurt.

Her first thought was that she was paralyzed. She tried and was relieved to at least be able to move her fingers. But her arms remained trapped behind her. She couldn’t move them even a little.

A second slap came out of nowhere. The force of it was hard enough to knock her and the chair over. Her head banged the floor, instantly giving her a headache.

Someone leaned down and tipped the chair, with her attached to it, back up and planted it on the floor with a hard thump.

“Wakey wakey. Sweet dream time is over.”

She had heard that gravelly voice before, but couldn’t remember where.

Kate squinted against the harsh light. Wherever she was, it was mostly dark all around her. The only light in the place was the one shining on her.

Smelly hands reached in and squeezed her cheeks. “Smile for the camera.”

The man squeezing her cheeks shook her face. “Come on. Smile. It’s showtime.”

He had a stocking mask over his head, with holes cut out for the eyes and his mouth. He leaned down and put his face close in front of hers. “Feel free to scream for the camera. After all, you’re the star, and the star always screams.”

Kate was momentarily confused as to whether or not she was awake or asleep in some kind of bizarre dream.

And then he twisted her left nipple until she did scream, an involuntary, helpless cry of pain that felt like it was shrieking up from her soul. The more she screamed, the more he twisted.

The shock of pain brought her wide awake and brought tears to the scream. The sharp agony of it radiated through her entire chest as he kept at it until she was sure he intended to rip it off her breast.

The man finally let go and stepped away from her. Kate shivered, panting under the agony of lingering pain, wanting nothing so much as to be able to put a comforting hand over it.

As her wits came back into focus, she realized that she was in trouble, but she was having a hard time making sense of how she came to be in the dark room.

There was a camera on a tripod not far off in front of her. The red light was blinking. She was being recorded.

Beyond the camera was a dark metal table with a collection of items on it, but she couldn’t tell what any of them were. She looked around and could see little more than a few glimpses of dark walls. There was a closed metal door she could just see over her left shoulder.

“Who are you?” she asked. Her voice sounded strange, hoarse and dry. “Where am I?”

The man turned back. He grinned. His two middle teeth on the bottom were missing. The rest were a dark yellow. He looked like nothing so much as a homeless derelict.

Something told her he was something else entirely.

“I’m Victor,” he said in a cheerful tone, as if happy to make her acquaintance.

Kate vaguely remembered someone saying that name in their hotel room. She couldn’t understand why she wasn’t in the hotel. She could only remember being there.

“Where’s Jack? I need to see him. What have you done with him?”

“Me? Nothing. He is for someone else. You are for me.”

Kate spit blood to the side. It still didn’t seem real. With the way her mind was swimming it felt like some kind of drug-induced hallucination.

“What are you talking about?”

He cocked his head as if she were dense. “Jack Raines is meant for someone else. You, Miss Bishop, are here to entertain me and my audience.”

A wave of dread washed through her when he gestured at the camera.

“Where’s Jack!” Kate screamed at him.

He looked amused. “The founder of our little website has taken him somewhere for a private conversation.”

Website. She realized who Victor was. He was the one who provided date-rape drugs for Sid. It all came rushing in. He was the one who had tortured and killed Rita.

“What are they doing with him?”

She knew it was foolish to ask the question, but she couldn’t help herself, as if it would somehow slow events from their headlong rush.

“Probably pulling his intestines out a foot at a time,” Victor said with a wicked grin, “wrapping them around a stick.” He shrugged again and cocked his head. “Maybe something else just as fun. That’s not up to me. You are the one up to me. You belong to me, now.”

“Why are you doing this to us?”

He shook a finger at her face. “Jack Raines is a dangerous man. You’re nobody. You’re only here to entertain me and my fans. But Jack Raines has outlived his usefulness.”

“What usefulness?” she asked as Victor started toward the camera.

He turned back and smiled. “He thinks he’s so smart. But he has been finding those like you for us without even knowing it.” He cocked his head to the side. “He finds them, just like he found you and your brother, and those before. He finds them, we snatch them.”

Kate suddenly understood. It all came into sharp resolution as all the connections registered.

Now that she was more awake, she tried again to move, but she was helplessly restrained. Kate remembered AJ’s stories of killers and what they had done to their captives. She remembered AJ lying there on the floor with duct tape wrapped around her head, blinding her. Kate’s frantic sense of panic at being so helpless, at what was to come, began to build.

As Victor turned back toward the camera, she remembered what the sifu had said to her that day. If you are attacked, it is because they have the advantage. For you, they will always be bigger, stronger. No one is going to help you, so don’t expect any. You must do everything you can with the bad intention of hurting your enemy.

She didn’t see how she could do that. It seemed like meaningless words.

She knew, though, that if she wanted to live, if she was going to help Jack, then her only chance was to think. No one was going to come to help her.

She looked around again, trying to take everything in, trying to find something helpful. Her vision was still a bit blurred, but starting to clear. It felt like someone was pushing on her eyeballs.

She knew that her arms were tightly bound behind her. By the way her skin pulled, they were probably wrapped with duct tape. It felt like that tape must be wound around the back of the chair. When she had been drugged and limp, Victor had an easy time of restraining her just the way he wanted.

Victor suddenly returned with a pair of pliers. He put a grimy hand on her head and tilted it back.

She tried to twist her face away from him. “What are you doing? Stop it!”

“I’m going to have to take out your teeth.”

Take out her teeth? It sounded insane. Kate twisted her head from side to side.

“No! Stop it!” she yelled.

He slapped her hard and shook the pliers at her face. “I had a girl bite me once when I was in her mouth enjoying myself. That was a bad experience. So now, I always take their teeth out first.” He grinned. “Feels better for me without the teeth. You know? You’ll see how much I enjoy it.”

He came back from the table with a small metal bucket, rattling something in it. He tipped it toward her so she could see inside. It was half full of bloody and broken teeth.

It dawned on her what he was talking about.

After putting the bucket back, he grabbed her hair to hold her head still. He pushed a filthy thumb in her mouth, feeling all of her teeth as if taking inventory. The hand with the thumb in her mouth was holding the pliers. She knew that if she didn’t think, if she didn’t do something, he was going to use that pliers to rip out her teeth. The thought terrified her.

Kate bit down as hard as she could.

Victor cried out in pain. “Let go!”

When she didn’t, he pressed a knuckle of his other hand against the rear of her jawbone. The pain was blinding. She tried to keep biting down on his thumb, knowing that if she let go he would go to work on her teeth with the pliers, but the intense pressure against the back of her jaw was more than she could endure, and it finally forced her mouth open.

“You will pay for that,” he growled, comforting his thumb.

He went to the camera, checking the settings.

While he did, Kate frantically looked around for something, anything, to help her. There was nothing, and besides, she wouldn’t be able to grab it if there was. There could have been a gun in her lap and she wouldn’t be able to use it.

She realized that her left leg ached something fierce. She looked down and saw that she still had her panties on but her legs were bare. There was a tourniquet wrapped tightly around her left leg at midthigh. Below the tourniquet her skin was going purple.

Her arms were duct-taped behind her, but her legs were free. She realized why. With a sickening sense of dread, she remembered Jack describing what had happened to Rita. Kate remembered that it was Victor who had done it, and that he had videoed it for the Scavenger Hunt site.

Kate saw her jeans thrown off to the side. Her knives were in her jeans. They couldn’t do her any good.

Victor tipped the light above her to the side. “See? This is my collection of pretty ladies, like you. They all brought me great satisfaction. Like you will.”

She could just make out half a dozen bags of some kind hanging against the wall. As she squinted, she realized that they were the naked, bloody torsos of women tightly wrapped in plastic. Dismembered limbs were laid against the bodies under the tight plastic wrapping.

Victor let go of the light, letting it swing over her. “After I finish my time with you, you will join my collection. But that’s still days away. We will have plenty of time together. My fans enjoy my shows so much. I want it to last.”

At the thought of what was in store for her, she couldn’t stop her trembling.

Kate could see the red light on the camera blinking. Victor went to the table and threw the pliers down.

He picked up a handsaw.

He returned and knelt down beside her. She could see his murderous eyes through the holes cut in the stocking cap.

“Since you are going to be difficult, I’ll wait to pull your teeth until later, once you’re more cooperative and don’t thrash around as much. Your mouth will be more useful, then.”

His grin was as evil as anything she had ever seen.

Victor gripped her knee in a powerful hand. Try as she might to pull away, he held it still enough for what he wanted. He brought the handsaw up and laid the teeth down against her flesh between her knee and the tourniquet.

He looked up at her with those murderous eyes.

“Drug cartels and the like use a chainsaw for this, but I think that’s silly. That way it’s over so quickly. What fun is that? Better when it goes slow. Better for you to feel every saw cut, one cut at a time. One scream for each.”

Kate could tell by his voice how excited he was getting.

She remembered Jack telling her how Victor had sawed off Rita’s legs just above the knee as she had screamed.

Kate started crying in helpless panic.

“No. Please, no.”

He paused to look up at her. “But I have to.”

“No,” Kate wept, “you don’t have to. Please.”

“Yes, I do,” he said as he turned a grin toward the camera. “Having sex with you will be so much better once your legs are off, and I pull your teeth.”

He laid the teeth of the saw back on her leg and cocked his arm back.

Kate screamed.