Prisoner (Criminals & Captives #1)(18)

“Or what?”

I let my voice go cold. “You really want to find out? You think you know me?” She looks over at me, and I let her see all the hell inside me. “You don’t know anything about me. Nothing.”

She speeds up, eyes fixed on the road.

“Easy,” I say as the cops come over the hill from the other way—a whole line of them. I have a buddy waiting to meet us at a place just over the county line.

Stone. Tough motherf*cker and loyal to the end. He’s been looking out for me since we were kids in that basement, and we’d do anything for each other.

Flashing red lights fill the rearview mirror, and my heart pounds. So far so good. More than good, because after all this time chained up and monitored and kept away from her, never able to touch her, she’s under my complete control, mine to do what I want with. It’s as dizzying as the sky overhead, wild and white with clouds.

“We’re just out for a nice afternoon ride, you and me.”

Her jaw is set hard. Yeah, she’s good and pissed. And scared.

I glance ahead at the fields rolling on. The wide-openness is hard to get used to after two years of being confined. God, walking out of the joint today through the parking lot with all that sky above me was so overwhelming I could barely act normal, and then there were all the cars I had to pass by, all the places people could jump out from. I knew people weren’t hiding behind cars, ready to jump out, but in prison you learn to avoid that kind of thing. Second sense. And then I spotted Abby, and everything evened out.

Abby became my anchor. She steadied me, somehow.

So I took her. There’s something about driving away, something sweet about freedom with a pretty girl in the seat beside you. Even if that pretty girl hates you. Even if the guys in your crew would all tell you to kill her. Maybe I should.

“See, here’s something for you to ponder,” I say to her as the fields flash by. “You’re smart, so you need to be thinking what you are to me right now. Do you know what you are to me, Ms. Winslow?”

Fear lights the fine, sharp features of her face. Her thoughts have gone dirty. Like I might rape her. The rims of her big, brown, frightened eyes are smudged with makeup. It’s a good look for her. I wonder if Ms. Winslow understands that to the outside observer, fear and arousal look like very much the same thing.

Just a little something I picked up back in the days of basements and rats—that it’s best not to show any fear when guys older and stronger than you are thinking about having a little fun, because when really sick motherf*ckers see any kind of life there—fear, anger, happiness, anything—they want to f*ck or beat it out of you. Then again, when you act dead, they want to get you lively, and that’s never good, either.

Tidbits that didn’t go into the vignette.

The rat’s name wasn’t Manuel, of course. The rat had no name, and he never came back, either. I told myself he found a better gig, and I really did believe it. I still believe he got away. But if I’m real honest, I know I need to believe it. I need to believe at least one of us came out of there okay, and it sure as hell wasn’t me or Stone or any of us.

I spent a lot of time imagining the rat romping around outside in the grass.

Especially when they’d do the films, because they’d make you feel good in a way you didn’t want to feel, but I’d be thinking about that stupid rat running around outside chasing moths in the grass.

And there’s Ms. Winslow with that quiet, prim look of hers and those brown eyes understanding something crucial about my time in that basement. It was nice for a while to have somebody else know. Sure, Stone and those guys knew the hard stuff, but I’d never told anybody about the sappy stuff and the way I’d imagine that rat running around outside like some cartoon character. I wonder sometimes what it would be like to tell all of it. How it was to hate somebody’s touch until you crave it. How it was that night when my crew and I killed them all. But it’s better for her if she thinks it’s made-up.

I look over at her driving, concentrating so hard, like she does with everything. She’s a perfectionist, my Ms. Winslow. She probably slaved over every little comma in that stupid journal.

It’s then I think about touching her. Maybe just her neck or her cheek. I wonder if she’d jump. Or if she’d cry. Or hell, maybe she’d eat it up. There’s one thing I do know: she’d feel it. Really feel it, because it would be different and new and all wrong, just like me going across that parking lot, feeling that huge, crazy-ass sky blazing above me. Out of my cage.

Her lips are pressed together, eyes firmly on the road, but not just for safety. She’s also avoiding me, like I’m not here with a loaded gun pointed at her ribs.

How would her neck feel against my cheek? Does she smell like honeysuckle everywhere? What would her tits feel like in my palms underneath that kitten-fur sweater? She tries to obscure them with clothes, but you can tell they’re nice. I’m thinking B-cup, maybe C, depending on what kind of bra she wears, a topic I’ve mused on pretty extensively, let’s just say.

Yeah, I really, really want to touch her. It doesn’t hurt that she’s so hot, with those smudged-up eyes and pale skin and the way her pulse beats in her neck. I imagine her under me, skin to skin. How smooth she’d feel.

I run my thumb up the back of the Glock. A nice piece. Smooth and warm from the body of a guard who’s currently out cold. Two long years without a woman’s touch. I’d be mad with lust for any woman. I tell myself it’s not about this woman with her books and glasses and prim hairdo, trying so hard to drive naturally even though she’s shaking.