Rock Star: The Deal (Book 3 of a Bad Boy Romance) (10 page)

“I think they thought we were fools, Duke.”

“I think so. But what I would like to know is how did you get out of those chains?”

I squeezed the key in my hand. My eyes lifted only momentarily to the boy on the stairs, but it was enough for Duke to catch.

“Boy. I’m going to give you a good whipping once I get this sorted out.”

“Now Duke. Calm down now. You know he’s a little retarded. He didn’t know what he was doing.”

Duke made a move towards the kid, but Chase stepped in. Duke hit him over the head with the back of his rife. Chase fell back. I saw blood trickle down from his scalp. The boy had rushed off upstairs.

“Get them downstairs. Now.”

As she went to take Chase, Duke pushed her away. “No. The girl. Put her back in the shelter.”

“Please. I don’t want to go down there again.”

He didn’t respond. He just pushed Chase toward the door while keeping the gun on him. The door closed behind them.

“He won’t hurt him, will he?”

“Oh no, you get going. Duke won’t touch him. He knows how much he means to me.”

She flashed a yellow toothy grin, and then pushed me towards the back door while keeping the handgun pressed into my back. The walk back to that underground prison was worse than arriving. The thought of being locked back in there was awful. She forced me to pull back the oil barrels. After pulling the wood away I looked down.

“Go on. Git down there.”

“Please.”

“Move it or I’ll kick you down there.”

I got on my ass and scooted into the hole. I climbed down the ladder and heard her cover it up. Then from up there she shouted down, “Don’t think you will be coming up the vent again. I’m covering that too.” I heard her heave into place what I could only imagine was one of the oil barrels. It means there would be even less air. I slumped down on the couch and screamed.

M
y captors were taking
no chances. An hour later Duke returned. I could see the rage in his face.

“I have a good mind to teach you a lesson.”

“Duke. Remember what she said.”

“Who is she?” I asked.

He grabbed my face and squeezed it tight. “Never you mind.”

He licked up the side of my face as it was an ice cream. I had never felt anything so revolting in my life. He placed me in a chair, tied my hands behind my back with ropes. I felt them cut into my skin.

“Can’t be having you getting out again. You might have thought that little stunt was clever, but you just bought Edwin twenty lashings of my belt.”

I spat at him. “You fucking animal.”

He laughed, wiping the spit into his mouth and tasting it. “Keep it up,” he said.

The ropes burned against my skin. I don’t know if he had doused them in some kind of chemical but it didn’t feel comfortable. I sat stiff in the chair, my wrists were bound together behind me and my ankles were tied securely to the legs of the chair.

“That should do it. Try getting out of that.”

They both looked at me as though it was some weird game. Then to make it even worse they started making out. It was hard enough being stuck below ground and tied to a seat but to endure their face sucking... I could have thrown up what little I had in my stomach.

You’ll get out of here, I told myself. Maybe it was just me being optimistic but I had to hold onto the faintest glimmer of hope. If I didn’t I would break. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.

Now what could I do? How was I going to escape? I didn’t waste a single second. My mind kept spinning around with ideas. The problem was, there wasn’t much to go on. They had sealed off the vent from above. I had argued that I needed to breathe. He assured me that enough air could get underneath. Yeah, he wasn’t the one who was stuck in here. Easy for him to say.

When they left, I scanned the room for anything that I hadn’t seen so far. Anything that might help me. He had tied me up good, but I could move the chair. Maybe I could slam it against the floor and it would break. I’d seen them do that on movies. Knowing my luck though I would slam it and it would stay intact and I would be squirming on my back like a tortoise upside down.

Ten, maybe thirty minutes had passed when I heard a locking mechanism. At first it was quiet. Like metal grinding. Then from out of the darkness, Edwin appeared.

“How do you get in?”

Edwin looked around nervously.

“There is an emergency exit on this,” he said it as if everyone would know.

“Well, of course there is, why didn’t I think of that?” I had no clue. It made sense though. Most underground shelters would need a second exit in the event one of them got blocked. I knew I should have taken that preppers course that Spike was going on about. Two years ago, Spike had got into a phase where he was obsessed with everything to do with surviving an apocalypse. A paranoid friend of his had shown him a prepper video. Preppers were folks who were preparing for doomsday. You know, a nuclear bomb, a pandemic or an alien invasion. The crazy stuff. Most of them just stockpiled food, learned to shoot guns and bought a bug-out bag. But the real die-hard preppers went to crazy extremes. They had entire bomb shelters created. That’s what I was in. Some even created entire compounds.

Anyway, Spike had tried to wrangle me and Sophie into going with him to some course. He eventually got over that stage when they wanted him to start donating some of his earnings to their group of preppers. It was all in the name of saving the planet. More like paying for their flashy cars.

“Where is it?” I asked him.

“It’s hidden behind a closet.”

“How very Narnia.”

He chuckled.

“You know Duke is going to whip you.”

“He’ll have to catch me first. I would love to take that belt to him. Make him take twenty lashings.”

“Does he do it often?”

Edwin turned around and lifted up his shirt. His back was like a dry-bed lake. Covered in welts and scars. My mouth dropped open.

“You need to tell someone. The police.”

He shook his head. “I can’t. He will kill my mother.”

“He’ll kill you if you don’t say anything. Is that going to help your mother?”

His chin dropped. To think that there were hundreds of Edwins out there in the world. Kids growing up in homes and suffering in silence behind closed doors. It angered me. I wanted to see Duke pay. This was less about me, and more about Edwin now. This only fueled my resolve to get out of here.

In Edwin’s hand was a plate and sandwich. The kid had been nothing but nice since I’d been here. If anyone deserved to escape, it was him.

“I got you peanut butter this time.”

“Do you know if Chase is OK?”

“I haven’t heard them hitting him if that’s what you are asking.”

Edwin took the sandwich from the plate. Then he came closer to me and placed it near my lips. I took a bite and he caught the crumbs in his hand.

“We don’t want him knowing.”

It was delicious, much better than the ham which had tasted off. “Thanks, Edwin.”

“Tell me about you.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Are you seeing Chase?”

I laughed a little. The irony of the situation was getting to me. “Guess you have been reading the tabloids?”

“I did see a couple in the store the other day.”

“It’s a long story.”

He gave me another bite of the sandwich. I could tell he was all ears. I spent the next twenty minutes telling him about how I had met Chase. That I was just a girl from a small town. I had never imagined I would get out of there. Yet now, I would have killed to be back in that town.

“I’m sorry this has happened.”

“How long has Duke been with your mother?”

“She met him five years ago at some bar. They hit it off and he moved in within a couple of days.”

“When did the beatings start?”

“Within a week of him moving in.”

“What’s the deal with him?”

“He drinks a lot. He doesn’t hold down a job. My mother works, or I should say worked at the local grocery store in town, until she got fired for taking off too much time. It was his fault. He didn’t like being the only one not working. I think he was jealous of the fact that my mother was able to hold a job.”

“What have you done for money since then?”

“He sells drugs. That keeps food on the plates. But he has had so many run-ins with the law. I swear he is going to get my mother put in jail.”

“Have you never thought of telling someone about all of this?”

“Many times. Just I know my mother would go down and then I would be tossed from home to home. I don’t want that. As bad as the situation is, at least I know where I stand. I know that I can get food and have a roof over my head.”

I felt sorry for the kid. To grow up in a family where most of the money went to drugs. To have a family that was strung out most of the time. It was troubling. He deserved better than that. It was strange that even when his mother was acting like a royal bitch, he only saw the good in her.

“And your mother?”

“She has been a fanatic of Chase for years.”

“Do you think you can loosen these ropes? You don’t need to untie them. I don’t want to get you into any further trouble. But they are killing my wrists and ankles.”

He put the plate down and came close to take a look. That’s when he rubbed my arm. I felt his hand go over it.

“Edwin?”

“Sorry, you just have really smooth skin.”

He snapped out of his strange obsession with my skin and loosened the binds.

“How’s that?”

“Much better. Thank you.”

Being able to move my wrists around felt a little better. The thought had passed through my mind of taking advantage of the situation. I could get him to untie me and use him to get out. The mother wouldn’t want any harm to come to her child, but Duke? I didn’t think he would care what happened to the kid. It’s not that I wanted to hurt the kid. He had been through enough himself. But the reality was we were being held and who knew if we were going to die.

That’s when I heard the wood being shifted above. Edwin looked scared, he grabbed the plate and ran into the next room. To think there had been a door there all along.

“I’ll be back later.”

A minute or two later, I saw Duke’s legs. He came down and had some food. Though instead of a nice sandwich, it was an unpeeled carrot.

“You bitches always need to keep the weight off. I thought this might be good.”

“Stick it up your ass,” I said.

“If you’re not careful, I will stick it up yours.” He grinned, flashing his brown teeth. As he got closer to me and pressed the carrot to my lips I smelled his breath. It was a mixture of cigarettes and what I could only imagine was what a rat’s ass smelled like. It was rancid.

“Open up.”

I pursed my lips closed. Frustrated, he tossed the carrot across the room.

“Not a vegetarian? I should have known you were a meat eater.”

He started unbuckling his belt. There was nothing I could do. I was tied up. Before he lowered his underpants, she came down the ladder. I had never been so relieved to see her. I hated her. But in that moment I could have kissed her. Hearing her coming, he buckled up his belt.

He winked. “Later.”

Later? If he came anywhere near me with that, I was going to bite it off. Sick individual needed to be castrated.

“Duke, you better not be harming that girl!”

“What do you want?” He looked frustrated as if someone had stolen a Christmas present from him.

“She’s on the phone. She wants to speak to you.”

He snatched the phone from her and stormed back up the ladder. She remained, casting a glanced over me.

“I don’t know what he sees in you.”

I shook my head.

“By he, you mean Chase?”

“Who else? Duke doesn’t like you.”

Had she arrived a few seconds earlier, she might have thought differently. She paced back and forth around the room, studying me. Not being able to move, I felt as if I was being interrogated by police.

“You know you could do better than be with him.”

“What the hell does it matter to you?” she replied.

“Nothing. But to your son it does.”

She narrowed her eyes.

“You know there are shelters for battered women?”

“I’m not a victim.”

“Staying here and doing nothing. You are.”

She walked over and grabbed me by the chin.

“Duke loves me. I know you don’t understand that. We are going to be rich. A month from now, we will be sitting on some beach in Mexico sipping on exotic drinks.”

I shook my head.

“What? You think you are better than us? All those fancy clothes and money you have?”

“I don’t have money.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Look into it. I have just started as a singer. I run a coffee shop, you silly woman.”

She slapped me. “You’ll get what’s coming to you. Believe me.”

She turned to leave. I felt a slight trickle of blood come from my lip. Scowling as she left, she disappeared up the ladder, but not before she switched off the light.

“Bitch.”

She laughed.

* * *

D
own inside the basement
, I was struggling to get my hands loose. Duke had made the mistake of not tying my legs. I was strapped into a seat. I figured if I could just hop over to where the workbench was, I could rub the ropes against the vise. Maybe free myself. I couldn’t sit here any longer and wonder what he was doing to Meghan. He had been down to speak with me about thirty minutes ago. After securing me, he was telling me about all the things he was going to do to Meghan. I could see he was getting off on it.

I then watched him sit on the step and shoot up some heroin. His face contorted and he rolled over onto the floor. Ten minutes later he got and looked pumped. What a way to fuck up your life, I thought. These people couldn’t see the bigger picture. They didn’t know how close the FBI was to finding them. Then again, was the FBI clued into where they were? I couldn’t wait around to find out. I stood up. He’d tied rope just around my knees and the top part of the chair. I hopped a few steps, then a few more. Then I collapsed. I spent the next five minutes trying to get my body upright. I was sweating. My face was covered in dust and dirt. I wondered if they had killed anyone in this basement. The ground was stained red in areas. If they hadn’t killed a person, they must have torn apart an animal.

When I finally made it over to the workbench, I leaned forward and pressed my wrists back against the corner of the vise. Its metal was sharp at the very edge. Once I had it in place I moved back and forth. Maybe five minutes passed. Perhaps ten? I heard the door unlock upstairs. My heart started pounding. I pulled my wrists away and hopped back into place. I was breathing hard. I willed my breathing to slow down. I didn’t want to give them any indication that I had been up to anything.

Coming down the steps was the kid. He stood to one side for a brief moment. Looked at me. Then he came closer. He took a cloth off the workbench and wiped it on my forehead.