Uncovering You 10: The Finale Page 6

  The camera is taken away. I’m lifted upright.

  “Yes,” the first man says. He pinches my cheek. “See? That wasn’t so very bad.” He looks at his companions. “Clean her.”

  I scream and thrash as my clothes are ripped off.

  The struggle is immense. Enormous. It’s mayhem. Absolute calamity.

  I bite and kick and even head-butt one of the men in the face. I feel a satisfying crack when my forehead connects with his nose. But that is the only victory I achieve.

  It feels like it lasts ages, but it takes the three of them less than a minute to strip me bare. Their hands are rough. Their treatment of me callous. One of them grabs me by the roots of my hair and twists hard. I scream from the pain. They catch both my arms and pin them behind me. I am paraded out of the room, through the door that I’ve only seen them use.

  On the other side, blinding lights greet me. I blink through them, and see:

  Everything is white. So white, like the inside of a laboratory or a silicon production facility. This room is double the size of my prison, but completely bare. There are no furnishings. Nothing on the floor. Nothing on the walls. A single white table stands in the middle of the room. There are straps hanging from the sides.

  My eyes widen in terror as I realize what is happening. “No,” I say. “No, no, no, no, no!”

  “Shut her up!” the leader barks. A strip of duct tape is quickly sealed over my mouth. In my panic, I struggle to breathe.

  I’m brought to the table and thrown on top. I try to fight, to escape, but my arms and legs are forced down. The straps catch my forearms and my wrists. I feel the same unyielding fabric clasp my ankles.

  And then I’m let go. The tape is ripped from my mouth. The men step away.

  I lie there, panting, gasping, completely nude, my mind dreaming up the worst possible scenarios about what they’ll do to me.

  But…nothing comes. The bright floodlight overhead is pointed directly at my face. It feels like being in a dentist’s chair…in some crude, faraway, horrible country.

  My thrashing comes to a stop. Whatever remaining strength I have seeps away. In its place, I feel only emptiness. Nothing.

  I feel numb.

  I turn my head to the side, expecting to see my captors. But the room is empty. I look to the other side. Same thing.

  Now apprehension takes hold of me. Now pure terror cuts in.

  A door opens. I lift my head. A single man walks inside.

  He’s…not one of the others. He has the same ski mask covering the top half of his face, but he’s wearing a suit. A pale, beige Armani suit.

  Something about it sparks a distant memory. An association.

  Familiarity.

  Whatever it is, it’s too far away to reach.

  The man has his hands in his pockets. In his mouth—a wad of gum.

  He chews obnoxiously. Loudly. He makes a circle around me, his slow, plodding chewing driving me crazy.

  He stops at one side. Reaches down and puts his hands on the edge of the table. Drums his fingers against the surface, looks me in the eyes.

  And then, he extends one hand and touches my lip.

  I recoil.

  “T-t-tut,” he says, shaking his head. His finger dabs up a bit of my blood. He brings it to his lips and tastes it.

  And then blows a big pink bubble that bursts with a loud Pop.

  “Do you know me?” he asks.

  There is something about his voice. It is instantly familiar. But I’m too scared to remember. I couldn’t for the life of me say whose it is.

  I close my eyes. Shudder. Shake my head, no.

  “A shame,” he tells me. “For I remember you very, very well, Lilly Ryder.”

  He rips his mask off. And my eyes nearly bulge out of my head when I see who it is.

  Esteban.

  Esteban, the man I met when Stonehart first called me his girlfriend. Esteban, the man Jeremy annexed and deposed. Esteban, the man whose position was promised to me within his Israeli tech firm.

  The worst kind of terror fills me. Jeremy Stonehart spoke about having enemies. I had no idea it could cut so close to the bone.

  Esteban giggles. It’s a strange sound, coming from a man. A man in position of absolute power over me, as I am strapped in and naked on the operating table before him.

  A sick insanity is reflected in his eyes. “Aha,” he says. “It seems you do remember me, after all.”

  “How—how could you…? Why? Why me? What do you want?”

  He raises his brows. “Isn’t it obvious?” he asks. “I want that which was stolen from me. You, Lilly Ryder…” he traces a finger along the side of my stomach, circling a particular spot,”…will be my key to retrieving it.”

  He brings two fingers to his lips, kisses the tips, and seals my mouth with that same touch.

  “Until we meet again,” he promises, and walks out of the room.

  Chapter Thirteen

  My mind is running at a thousand miles per minute. I can’t even speak fast enough to voice my thoughts.

  Not like there’s anyone who could hear me here.

  Esteban is behind this? Behind my kidnapping, my imprisonment? Esteban, the man whom Jeremy had dismissed as too weak, too soft?

  Shit. I’m so scared. So utterly terrified. Jeremy took Dextran away from Esteban by force. It was a hostile takeover. He wanted their facilities, their technology. He used it to launch Stonehart Industries’ new phone.

  The battery. In the collar. That was technology developed at Dextran too. Wasn’t it? It’s why Jeremy wanted them so badly. Maybe, because of my affinity with that, he wanted to make me CEO.

  I didn’t even think that part was real, back then. I still remember the meek man who stormed out the room after Jeremy’s announcement of the takeover.

  Now, that same meek man is holding me here.

  Jeremy’s connected. Jeremy’s at fault. He pushed Esteban over the edge. Pushed him past the brink of sanity. Esteban was fragile, and Jeremy shattered him completely. He made him desperate, and desperate men do desperate things.

  Oh my God. The precariousness of my situation reveals itself to me in its complete misery. Esteban has brought me here. He’s not completely lucid. In fact, he’s probably completely insane, possessed by an inconceivable zeal to see justice done.

  Justice in whose eyes?

  How is it that I can possibly get out of this alive? It’s not blackmail. It’s not a ransom. The very first thing that the leader of Esteban’s band told me was that they were after information. He made me repeat it to him today.

  Information…about Jeremy? No. About Stonehart Industries. Esteban does not simply want to trade me and get the rights to his company back. It cannot be as simple as that. What I suspect—and this terrifies me most—is that he wants me to give him information that he can use to do to Stonehart Industries what Jeremy did to Dextran.

  The problem is: I don’t have any.

  Despair wells up in me, and I succumb to it fully.

  There’s no fighting. No resistance. Nothing that I can do.

  The writing is on the wall. I can see the situation I’m in. I’m afraid— I’m terrified— that there truly will be no getting out.

  The main door opens and shuts. My three original captors come in. They move about me without a word, undoing the straps, lifting me up.

  I don’t try to fight, or escape. I’ve given in to reality.

  And reality is: There’s no getting out.

  “Seems like the boss had a good talk with her, eh?” the biggest of the three laughs. He pokes at my gut with a crude finger. I grunt, and then sag down.

  “Women are the same,” the nameless leader says. “They all think they’re strong. In the end, it’s just a façade.” He gestures in an obscene way. “Go on. Clean her up.”

  I’m shoved forward. I force my legs to move. The men don’t have to goad me to make me go.

  I’m led down a hall, into another room. This one’s sm
all, but clean. There’s a bed with a foam mattress. A single pillow. A thin sheet to use as a blanket.

  Through another entrance, I see a running shower. There is no curtain or tub—just a spout hanging from the middle of the ceiling.

  I’m pushed toward it. I stumble and nearly fall, catching myself on the doorframe at the last possible moment.

  “Go,” the leader says. ‘Wash yourself. You are filthy. If you don’t do it…” He glances at his companions, “…these two will gladly help.”

  I stare at him, hatred pulsing in my eyes. But I comply. I walk into the bathroom and pick up the tiny bar of soap from the floor. I bring a hand out to test the water. It’s freezing cold.

  I look for the tap and don’t find one. The men laugh at my hesitation.

  “It’s not getting any warmer, sweetheart. I’ll give you five seconds to decide if you can do it yourself. Ready? Five, four…”

  Without thought, I plunge in.

  The sensation is horrible. All the breath is taken out of me. I gasp, keenly aware of those male eyes on my body. Keenly aware of how little time I have left before they decide to take matters into their own hands.

  I force icy limbs to move. Scrub, lather, rinse. Scrub, lather, rinse. I do it again and again, over and over, wishing and praying that this nightmare will come to a close while knowing deep down, that it never will.

  I drop the soap more often than I can count. Every time, my fumble evokes a chorus of laughter.

  I make myself numb to it. I make myself immune. If there’s one thing Jeremy taught me, in all the time I spent in the dark, it’s how to disassociate. How to remove my thoughts and feelings from the physical things that are being done to me.

  At least, I think sourly, I can be grateful for that.

  When I’m done—when I step out of the cold stream, praying that they consider me clean enough not to shove me back in—I sway and lean against one sterile, tiled wall.

  A towel is thrown to me. I fumble the catch. It falls into a puddle and quickly soaks up the water.

  I hurry to pick it up, only to be laughed at again.

  Something is said in a foreign tongue. I blink, dazed, my thoughts cumbersome and slow, and look up to see two of the men step out.

  I am left alone with their leader.

  He walks back and closes the door. I wrap the towel protectively around my breasts.

  It’s a flimsy defense.

  The man walks across the room and sits on the bed. He looks at me.

  Silence. Silence, except for the water still falling from the shower.

  He pats the spot beside him. “Come here,” he tells me. “Sit.”

  My back stiffens. I can tell when a man’s behavior changes—when his base desires take hold.

  I step away.

  He looks at me. Waits.

  The silence stretches.

  Finally, he lets out a heavy breath. “I see you,” he says. “Would you like to see me?”

  I shake my head no, cold and trembling. I don’t want to see anything that would make him less likely to release me in the future. No matter how remote that chance is.

  “A shame,” he tells me. “Because I am ready to show you.”

  He reaches up and peels away the mask, keeping his head lowered.

  A shaggy mask of curls obscures his face. He runs a hand through his hair, brushes it back, and looks at me.

  I gasp. A terrible burn scar mars the right side of his face. The skin is all shiny and warped, like the surface of a melted candle.

  His upper lip is gone. I hadn’t noticed the deformity before, in the dark room, when he had raised his mask to spit to the side.

  A deep gnash cuts across his nose, nearly splitting it in two. Only his eyes are untouched by the damage that has been done to his face.

  He watches my reaction. He sees the revulsion as it takes hold of me. There’s no stopping it.

  He points a finger to his face. “A woman did this to me,” he says. “A young thing. One who looked a little like you.”

  Without warning, he surges up and attacks me. One hand wraps around my throat. He pushes my body back into the cold, hard tiles.

  “You are not her,” he hisses, licking the side of my jaw with his tongue. “But I never got to…punish her…for what she did to me.”

  He forces me around, shoves my face into the wall. He kicks apart my legs and slaps my ass, hard. He grabs my breasts, his breathing ragged, rasping, full of rage and violence.

  “This is how I’m going to do it,” he growls, and shoves his cock into me.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Nothing Stonehart had ever done to me could compare to what I experienced next. This man made Jeremy seem like an angel by comparison.

  Afterward, when I’m left trembling, weak, broken, and forgotten on the floor, he spits in my face and promises that he will do it again.

  I crawl to the bed, dragging my limbs through the puddles of water, through my blood. Somehow, I find enough strength to climb up. I pull the tiny sheet over my shoulders, curl up into a ball, and sob myself to sleep.

  The next time the door opens, I don’t move. Let them think I’m dead. I feel dead, anyway.

  The sheet is flung off me and something soft, white, is thrown over my body.

  “Dress,” a ragged voice commands.

  I open my eyes, shaking, trembling, and utterly deflated. Twelve days I’ve been prisoner, already, and Jeremy hasn’t come.

  I’m starting to think he never will.

  I clutch the soft fabric to my chest. I look at it. It’s a robe.

  “Put it on.” The leader—the rapist—tells me. “Quickly. Hurry, hurry.”

  He says something in his foreign tongue. Snickers surround me.

  I sit up slowly, dazed, numb, already broken. Stonehart, I could withstand. At least there, I had a purpose. There, he had a purpose.

  Right now? This is all meaningless cruelty, with no escape, no solace for me. It’s not just one man, It’s three.

  Four, counting Esteban.

  Mechanically, I put my arms through the sleeves. I stand and wrap the robe around my body, then stare, blankly, at the three of them.

  Big Man comes forward and throws something at my feet. I look down. It’s a newspaper.

  “You are being searched for,” he says, thickly, nudging it with his foot. “Look.”

  I bend over, pick up the newspaper up and unfold it.

  It’s the San Jose Mercury News. On the front page, taking up the entirety of the sheet, is my picture. A bold headline at the top:

  MISSING WOMAN.

  Below it:

  $10 Million reward for information of whereabouts.

  A miniscule seed of hope comes to life inside me. Jeremy’s offering ten million dollars as a reward!

  “Too bad,” the Big Man says, “that nobody will ever claim the prize.”

  The three of them laugh at me.

  Their leader steps forward. “Ten million dollars for her pussy,” he jeers. He touches my chin. I’m too exhausted to jerk away.

  He shakes his head. “Some men are insane. I sampled it last night. It’s worth no more than the pussy of my bitch dog!”

  More laughter. Callous. Loud. Crude.

  “I want to see this,” Big Man says. He lifts up the bottoms of my robe.

  I’m too spent to defend myself.

  “Ten million dollars! The man must think there are diamonds hidden there, eh?”

  Laughter. Mocking, cruel, hard laughter.

  The leader snaps a command in his mother tongue. Big Man grins at me and steps back. “Time to put on a show,” he says.

  I’m taken by both arms and led out of the room back through the hall, and into the stark, white sterility of the operating room.

  In place of the table I was strapped to last is a single high stool. Also white, also sterile. The camera and the tripod are in front of it.

  I’m shoved down. I blink, not knowing what to do, what to think.

>   I am entirely at the mercy of these men.

  Esteban enters the room. He looks at me and smiles. His eyes still have that insane glint.

  “Hold her,” he says simply.

  I jerk as my arms are twisted painfully behind my back. Esteban turns the camera on.

  The flashing red light stares me straight in the face.

  Esteban comes beside me. He walks a circle around me, tapping his lips in thought.

  My breathing is loud and desperate. It is the only thing that breaks the cold silence.

  All of a sudden, without warning, Esteban jumps at me. He presses his cheek to mine and addresses the camera with a hysterical intensity.

  “Hello, Mr. Stonehart,” he says. “Do you see who I have here?” He turns to me and grins. “It is your precious Lilly. Is it not? At least, that is who I think she still is. All of California knows her face, knows her name, thanks to your advertisements.” He holds the newspaper to the lens. “But,” he sighs very deeply. “Only I know where she is.”

  He breaks off, picks the camera up, and starts walking around the room. He aims it at his face and continues to talk.

  “You might wonder how you can get her back. You might wonder what it will take for you to claim her. Keep thinking. In time—if she’s good—you will have the chance. But for now, Mr. Stonehart, I advise you: Consider your sins.”

  Esteban starts to giggle. The sound transforms into maniac tittering.

  He puts the camera back on the tripod pointing it at me. He comes to my side and strokes my hair. “Such a fragile thing. Such a precious thing. Such an…” He grabs my roots and pulls tight.”…unexpectedly valuable thing.”

  He holds up the newspaper again and consults the front page. He looks at the picture, then at me, and then back at the camera.

  He taps his lips. “Yes,” he says, “this woman…is definitely one and the same. And ten million dollars?” He whistles. “That is quite the sum for her safe return. It’s enough,” He begins to sound thoughtful now. “Enough, perhaps, to even tempt one of my men.”

  A buzzing sound starts up behind me. I try to jerk back to see what it is.

  Immoveable arms lock me in place, confining my movements.