Like Gravity(99)
I swallowed nervously, watching as he approached me once more.
“The truth is, sweet Brooklyn, that all time in the slammer does is offer you plenty of time to think,” he whispered, his breath hot on my face. “Can you guess who I thought about?”
I began to tremble.
“That’s right,” he said softly, tracing one finger down my cheek, across my collarbone, and into the cleavage revealed by the v-neck of my sweater. He stopped midway down my chest, his finger skimming slowly back and forth across the swell of my breasts. “I thought about you.”
***
He disappeared for a while, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
Arms aching, I hung with my back bowed against the strain and tried to imagine I was anywhere else in the world. Closing my eyes, I mentally erased the concrete walls around me, and pictured a different night – the night I was supposed to have.
Finn would arrive, stepping through the door and into my arms. He’d hold me, kiss me, and everything would be all right in my world again.
I think about an hour passed. It must have been close to dinnertime by now – around six or seven most likely – because my stomach had begun to rumble with hunger.
When Skinner returned, emerging from a stairwell located somewhere behind me, he was holding the green dress in one hand. A large, wickedly sharp kitchen knife was clasped in the other. He approached me and a helpless, involuntary mewling noise burst from the back of my throat. I’d begun to tremble as soon as he’d appeared.
“Now, now, Brooklyn,” he said, making a tsk sound. “I’m not going to hurt you before dinner. That wouldn’t be very polite.”
As if social niceties are a factor when you’ve got a girl hanging from your basement ceiling. He really is crazy.
“We’re going to be together for a long time, my dear. All that nasty business can certainly wait until after we’ve eaten.”
My mind raced as I wondered what constituted a “long time” in his warped brain. Minutes? Hours? Days? Years? I could barely survive the mental strain of three hours with the man – if he made me his plaything, keeping me here for weeks on end…
Well, let’s just say, I think I’d sooner choose the quick end with the sharp knife.
True to his word, he used it now only to cut me down. The bonds around my wrists remained fastened tight, but at least they were no longer forced up above my head. As soon as he severed the rope holding me up, my legs gave out and I crumpled to the hard ground like a rag doll.
My arms felt as if they were on fire as feeling came rushing back, like physical flames were licking up my arms along with the returning blood filling my vessels. I knew this was the moment – you know in all the movies, how the heroine finally gets her chance to run away, to save herself, to fight back?
I felt that moment slip away as I lay on the cement, incapacitated and utterly unable to fight for anything except the shaky breaths I struggled to drag into my lungs.
“Come now, dear, you don’t look at all excited for dinner.” His voice was quietly amused. He stood over me, enjoying the sight of me defeated. Twice, I tried to push myself up from the ground; each time, my arms gave out beneath me and I fell back to the cement floor.
He let me struggle for five minutes or so, before reaching down a hand and roughly yanking me upright. Looping an arm around my back, he dragged me over to the metal chairs in the corner of the room and threw me down onto one. When he released me I nearly slipped back to the floor, but managed to steady myself with my bound hands at the last minute.
He sat down in the other metal chair, watching me as I tried to rally the little strength I had left in my body. My breathing eventually slowed and my limbs began to regain most of their feeling. I was wiggling my fingers and toes, testing out the sensation in them, when he abruptly stood and pulled me to my feet.
“Come.”
We walked – thankfully, I didn’t need his help this time – through the basement and up a set of wooden stairs tucked against the far wall. Emerging into a dimly lit kitchen, I was shocked to discover that I knew exactly where I was.
The layout was a little different, but all of the appliances, woodwork, and furniture were the same. Hell, the walls were even painted in that unmistakable jaundiced yellow.
This was the first floor apartment of the old Victorian.
We were directly under my apartment – I’d bet my life on it. Had he been living here all year, so close to me all this time? The thought made me shiver.
He led me through the kitchen and into the living room. This was clearly his lair: the walls were covered not just in photos of me, but also in newspaper clippings. The headlines were varied, spanning years and occasions, but all centered around one thing: Me.
Local Woman Killed in Car-Jacking, Daughter Lives to Tell the Tale Seven Year Old Gives Condemning Testimony in Court Car-Jacking Killer Sentenced to 25 Years in San Quentin Captain Brooklyn Turner Leads Varsity Field Hockey Team to Victory UVA Freshman Brooklyn Turner Makes Dean’s List He hadn’t just been following me for months – he’d been watching me for years. I forced myself to stop looking, but my eyes soon locked onto something even more disturbing. There were at least six computer monitors set up along the wall, with each screen divided to show several camera angles. They were live feeds, streaming video from inside my apartment upstairs.
Every room had been bugged.