Love me to death

them. They didn’t want to turn on him, a version of the Stockholm syndrome. Unfortunately, all the names of his victims are redacted. Without an extremely compelling argument and court order, we can’t talk to them.”

“Would talking to them help?” Sean asked. “All this was a decade ago, right?”

“It might help,” Hans said. “But no guarantees, and the privacy of rape victims- especially minors-will win out ninety-nine percent of the time.”

“So what now?” Sean said, exasperated. “We sit around and wait? I need to do something.”

“Good.” Noah shoved a disk at him. “You’re supposed to be a computer genius. That’s all the property records in the tri-state area. Let’s see what you can find. I’m going to track down the mother. She might know where he is.”

Sean took the disk to his office. Dillon followed him upstairs, his face pale but his expression determined. “I’m sorry, Dillon,” Sean said, shoving the disk into his computer. “I should never have left her at the church.”

“We all thought Mallory was behind the roses and Cody’s murder,” Dillon said. “We’re going to find her. Kate and I found her once; we’ll find her again.”

Sean held onto that hope as he wrote a program to parse the data Noah had given him.

The female sleeps.

I injected her with an antidote to counteract the more serious effects of the sedative. The female had experienced shortness of breath during the final minutes of the drive, and that worried me. Now she seems to be resting normally, perhaps sleeping deeper than she should because of the sedative.

The broken one watches from her corner with wide eyes as I cut the duct tape from the female’s ankles and wrists. I handcuff one wrist to a bar of the cage. It is best, I have learned over the years, to restrain them at the beginning. It contributes to the system of rewards and punishment.

Females are weak and malleable. It doesn’t take long for them to break and become compliant. Keeping their food to a minimum and restricting movement helps. But sometimes, on the first night, the combination of drugs and injuries results in death. I wonder if this female will survive until morning?

I hope so. I will not be pleased if she dies before I have a chance to teach her. And everything I’ve done up until this moment will have been a waste of time.

She sleeps. The broken one still watches. I say to her, “Do not speak to her.”

I leave them, confident that my orders will be obeyed, and walk upstairs to prepare a late meal.

I frown and consider the time. It is well past my dinner hour, another example of how Lucy Kincaid interfered in my life. My schedule, crucial to keeping focus and executing my plans, is once again destroyed because of that woman. I will eat ninety minutes after I prefer, which means I will go to bed later than I like.

That female does not care that my time is valuable! From the beginning, when I realized she was not who she said she was, when I learned that she planned to put me back in prison, I committed untold hours to learning who she was, where she lived, and planning the best way to take her.

I watched her for weeks. Followed her. She did not recognize me. I sat across from her on the Metro train only two days ago, and she did not recognize me. I watched her argue with the cop I killed, and she did not know me. I changed my appearance enough to blend into my surroundings, like a chameleon, but still I thought she might have recognized me.

I will miss our games: following her, and she looking around, worried, looking right at me but not knowing me. The times I came close enough to stab her in the back, but resisted. The time I almost pushed her in front of the Metro train.

But instant death would not have been gratifying. I now have the time to teach her properly, to break her completely. I have looked forward to these days.

Though Hell on earth, prison had its silver lining: I learned patience.

I am still looking for the wench who spoke against me, lied against me-her teacher! — in court. I should have killed more than her dog. I wish I had killed her.

And I will kill her. I have a plan to find and kill everyone who spoke against me, starting with Lucy Kincaid.

The first step was finding the perfect woman to break. My newly broken female is the one. I will rebuild her, and she will kill the woman who set me up.

Then, I will be ready to discipline the others who betrayed me. One by one.

THIRTY-NINE

Far away, water dripped in a slow, steady beat. The cold had seeped through to Lucy’s bones, numbing her. The ground was hard, but not wood or cement. The rotten, graveyard stench of dirt, dank and moldy, filled her nose and her throat. Other than the water, which was closer than she first thought, she heard nothing. No traffic, no voices, nothing.

Lucy didn’t harbor any illusions that she was home or safe.

For a panic-filled moment, she feared she was dead or worse-buried alive. She breathed through her mouth, tasted dirt, and her body involuntarily jerked. But the space felt too airy, too open to be buried; and she was in too much pain to be dead.

She opened her eyes, but saw nothing in the deep blackness that filled the space. She didn’t know how big the area, no idea of the time, whether it was day or night, or how long she’d been unconscious.

As her eyes focused, she realized it wasn’t completely dark. Several feet away, out of her reach, was a small space heater emitting a faint glow. It did little to heat the room, but the glow gave off enough light to see the outlines of her confinement, darker and sharper than the shadows that surrounded her. What she could see, coupled with the damp stench, told her she was in a basement or root cellar.

Lucy had no idea where she was; she only remembered how sick she’d been at the church. April was taking her to the bathroom. She’d wanted to throw up … and she remembered nothing more.

Her head pounded, and her tongue was so parched that the dripping water made her more thirsty. Her body was sore, as if she’d been lying in the same position for hours. She tried to sit up, to at least crawl to the tiny heater, but her left hand was pinched on something. She pulled, heard metal clink against metal.

She felt her wrist with her free hand and realized she was handcuffed. She reached out and touched bars. She tried to shake them, but they were sturdy. Her stomach dry heaved as the truth hit her-she was in a cage.

She focused on what happened at the church, but it was as if her memory had been gutted.

Her head felt like a lead ball and her muscles were heavy. With great effort, she scooted into a sitting position and leaned against the bars, then sat abruptly forward, feeling a sharp sting against her back. She now felt the tenderness and bruising all over her body. Gently, she leaned back again and put her head on her knees, hoping the nausea would pass. The feelings she remembered having were akin to what she knew of the effects of many date-rape drugs: the disconnect, the lack of muscle control, the memory loss, and the headache. She touched her body, relieved when she realized she was still in the same clothes she’d had on when she walked into the church. She had no physical sensation that she’d been sexually assaulted. Though she was still terrified, her racing heart slowed, the pounding between her ears subsiding.

When the nausea passed, she focused on her situation. She’d been kidnapped and put into a cage. Where? By whom?

Panic exploded, flooding her bloodstream with adrenaline, her physical restraint swiftly stealing her breath as memories flooded her mind. All the memories she’d hidden, the memories she’d buried so deep she thought they were gone, returned as if Adam Scott had just kidnapped her, and today was her last day. The day he planned to kill her.

“No,” she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut. She would not be a victim again. She would not allow anyone to hurt her, to abuse her, to take anything from her. She was not a victim, she was Lucy Kincaid, and she would fight back with everything she had or die. “Think, Lucy. Think.” She pulled at the handcuff. It