“No,” Benny said from behind them as he holstered his gun. “No, you won’t. I’ll see to that.”
Luke and Dani exchanged upside-down smiles. Of course Benny would keep them apart. Only an idiot would let them be together now.
“Goodnight!” Katie called in a sing-song voice. “Pleasant dreams, assholes!”
They were screwed. Royally, utterly screwed. No one was getting out of here alive. Not anymore. The one person everyone had thought was a victim had turned out to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
They were freakin’ screwed. How had they not seen this coming?
Dani started with sit-ups. It hurt like hell, as she’d taken a good shot to her ribcage on the left, but it was all surface tissue damage; there was nothing bleeding or bruised under the skin as far as she could tell. The skin, however, was beginning to flower in vivid blues and greens, and the bruise itself was large.
Probably just as well she wasn’t getting married in a bikini. But she wasn’t going to let herself stiffen up either. If she needed to work with bruises and a small cut or two, so be it; she was still going to be ready if she needed to suddenly kick someone’s ass. The fact that they’d left her tied was irrelevant. Ankles tied. Wrists tied together. The sit-ups seemed to be working, with only a small struggle to get into position to do them.
In the meantime, she started a list in the back of her mind. All the potential people whose asses were going to be aligning with her foot.
Benny topped that list. Katie came a close second. But, on the other hand, the way she and Benny were snuggled in the girl may have already suffered enough. The idea of kissing a man older than Dani’s father, out of shape, and worst of all, Benny, turned Dani’s stomach and made her glad that she hadn’t eaten for a while.
Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen... The pain of the swelling bruise interfered with her sit-ups to the point where she began to wonder if she was doing more damage than good. She paused a moment, twisting, and trying to assess. Keep going or stop? She bit her lip and considered the situation.
Not that it mattered either way. She wasn’t exercising because she wanted to be in shape. Nor was she prepping for some great fight. She was working out because she was pissed, and had no other way to get it out of her system. She was burning rage, not calories.
Sixteen, seventeen... with a groan she rolled over on the floor, curled up in a fetal position. It hurt to be wrapped up like that, it hurt a lot, but it was worse to try and stretch out again, so she dealt with the lesser pain and pressed her cheek to the soft carpet and ran through her list, coming to the next name almost reluctantly. David.
She stared at the weave of the carpet as her mind tried to wrap around what she’d heard. Even now she had no idea what to think.
What the hell? David on a... leash?
It was a horrible image, one she could have done without. She closed her eyes and counted to ten in Italian. Then in French. By the time she got to Mandarin she was almost calm. Which, of course, was when the door opened, and Katie walked in, waltzing into the room like the queen of the house. The rather imperious wave in the general direction of the guards was a nice touch. They didn’t seem to appreciate it, though, and departed sullenly, muttering under their breath.
Being left bound made a whole lot more sense suddenly. Exhausted to the point where struggling to sit up wasn’t even an option anymore, Dani groaned into the carpet without moving. “Tell me you’re just here to pick up your things.”
“It’s girl-talk time,” Katie announced and perched on the daybed, her ankles crossed and her hands in her lap. It looked like a housewife from the ‘50s having tea with a trussed-up wild woman. “I just thought we should chat,” Katie said, “girl to girl.”
“So you can lie to my face some more?” Dani closed her eyes, purposely closing her eyes so she didn’t have to look at Katie. It was that smile. That supremely unpleasant smile. She’d seen similar smiles on terrorists.
“I did have you fooled, didn’t I?”
Dani sighed and rolled over; she opened her eyes to stare up at the ceiling. Katie obviously wasn’t going to leave anytime soon. “I thought you were a victim. I thought you were going to say David... took advantage of you. You were only fourteen...”
“I’ve known you and David my whole life,” Katie said, her tone so chipper that Dani had to look after all. Sure enough, she was still smiling, though there was a desperate and even strained quality to it that she hadn’t noticed before. “I always admired you—I wanted so much to be like you. I decided to be tough and strong like you were. David liked that about me. I think that’s why he liked me—because I reminded him of you. I was his protector for most of school; when the other kids bullied him for being such a wimp I beat them up, just like you would have.”
“Lovely,” Dani said, and folded her hands behind her head.
“Only, of course, David wanted more. He wanted to be taken care of, to be led. He wanted me to make all the decisions.” Katie shrugged and leaned over. “One day, I found a pile of old comic books someone had thrown out. They were comics set in ancient Rome.” Katie laughed. “One of them went on and on about Romans taking prisoners from lands they conquered and making them slaves.”
Katie paused for so long, Dani assumed she was finished. She took a breath to speak, but Katie jumped back in like she’d never paused.
“There was one picture in there...” Her voice took on a far-off quality. “I just... I can still see it. It was a picture of a warrior, a captured one. He was stripped to a loin cloth, I suppose they couldn’t actually do naked because it was a comic book, but the way it was done you could tell, you know? He wore a collar and chains. I showed it to David.” Katie laughed. “I should have showed it to him while he was sitting down, I suppose. I saw him get hard, in his pants. He stared at it so long and got so hard, I gave him the picture. Then I asked him if he wanted to try it. Turned out, your little brother is quite the little subby-boy—”
“Katie, stop. I don’t need to know this. I don’t want to know. You’re sitting here blaming the wrong person. All this... it was my father’s fault. Not David’s. Not mine. And certainly not Luke’s.”
“Oh, no. No. No. You don’t understand at all.” Katie wagged her finger at Dani, the way you would scold a puppy for peeing on the floor. “See, when we went to tennis camp, I was bragging on David. He had a great body and he was anxious to please me. I was so proud of him. I snuck him out one night and paraded him through our cabin. On a leash. Naked.”
“Katie!”
“Oh, don’t be shocked. I was fourteen, he was sixteen. He wanted it. Dani, he loved it. To this day, I have never seen someone so turned on like that.”