The Lonely Mile(38)
But it was a start.
Carli took a deep breath and tried again, then examined her right wrist, the one trapped inside the handcuff. It throbbed in time with her heartbeat and already had begun turning the greenish-purple color of the sky just before a thunderstorm. The wrist looked sore because it was, but that pain was nothing compared to what she knew she could expect from the twisted lover-boy upstairs. She eased her right hand back through the space between the iron bars and continued scraping the inside of the handcuff up and down against the cement. Scree…scree…scree. The noise was minimal, so she knew there was no possible way the crazy man could hear it unless he was standing right next to her, but the thought of him catching her was terrifying.
Carli had no idea how he might react if he found her attempting to escape, but she knew it wouldn’t be pleasant. All the more reason why she had to try. Scree…scree…scree, rubbing the cuffs against the wall, wincing in pain after every stroke, as the couple of inches of play in the cuffs was used up and the bracelet pulled tightly against the worsening bone bruise.
Across the basement, the sunlight fighting its way through the dirty glass of a single casement window began to dim. It would be night soon. It was late May, only a month away from the longest day of the year, and Carli figured the time must be a little after eight thirty if darkness was approaching. Martin had left the lights off when he went upstairs and now it was getting dark outside and in.
What would happen when the sun went down? The basement was dank and creepy, undoubtedly filled with spiders and who knew what other insects. The prospect of lying here, chained to this disgusting bed in the pitch-dark basement of this lunatic’s house in the middle of the night frightened Carli almost as much as the idea of being a victim of the I-90 Killer.
Scree…scree…scree.
She pulled her hand through the bars to give her aching wrist a break, and she examined the handcuff closely. Right there! Was that a little more damage to the steel bracelet, or was it just her imagination?
She leaned back against the iron headboard on the thin pillow the man had provided and closed her eyes, willing herself to listen and concentrate. The house was old and the floorboards creaked, and for a long time after they ate, she had heard him walking around on the first floor. It sounded like maybe he had been pacing.
Quite a while ago, though, the noises had stopped, and Carli assumed he had gone away. Maybe he had a job, maybe he was off looking for other girls to kidnap—who knew?—but she was pretty sure he wasn’t up there at the moment.
She yanked her hand in frustration as tears welled up in her eyes and the cuffs rattled against the thick iron bar of the headboard, pulling painfully against Carli’s wrist and further deepening the ugly bruise. Where was Dad? She felt the heavy weight of hopelessness descending upon her, and a gut-wrenching sob escaped her lips. Despite the intense fear and near-constant, jittery adrenaline buzz, Carli began to feel drowsy as her body finally gave in, reacting to the hours of unrelenting stress.
Almost instantly and without realizing it, Carli Ferguson drifted off to sleep, transported to a world of jangling and terrifying dreams; of men with guns, and giant spiders, and horrors yet to be experienced.
CHAPTER 34
A SINGLE BULB MOUNTED on one of the beams crisscrossing the basement’s ceiling flashed on, and Carli jerked awake in the middle of a nightmare. In her dream, she was being devoured by a gigantic scabrous spider and awoke confused, shaking, and afraid. Her bed felt hard and lumpy and her pillow smelled of old drool and the anguish of countless victims. It was the pillow that reminded her where she was and what was happening, that insubstantial but very real sense of terror passed from one unseen victim to the next.
Now she shook her head, trying to loosen the cobwebs, as the creak and crunch of boots on the stairs signaled her captor’s return. He descended slowly, leisurely, as if determined to enjoy every second of the terror he inspired in her.
As the man approached her bed slowly, Carli saw a lustful look on his face, a look of anticipation with maybe just a touch of nervousness mixed in, and she knew. She had intentionally avoided thinking about this scenario but she knew. She was about to be raped.
“It’s time for us to get to know each other a little better, my angel.”
His smile was horrifying, and Carli shuddered.
As he unbuckled his belt, he continued, “It will probably hurt the first time, but if you don’t struggle or fight me, it won’t be so bad. You’ve got a lot to learn in a short time about pleasing men, and I just know I’m going to enjoy instructing you.”
It was inevitable. This was why he had kidnapped her. The romantic fantasy he painted of the two of them together, fate and destiny and all that crap he had spouted while holding her in the car at gunpoint and then cuffing her to the bed, it was all just a smokescreen to keep her calm. Or maybe he really believed his line of crap. He certainly seemed nutty enough to think it was normal for a grown man clearly in his mid-thirties to be paired up with a seventeen-year-old high school girl.
She knew she had to think but she couldn’t think because here he was, approaching the bed like some nervous groom on some sick, twisted wedding night. Panic filled her head, and her heart threatened to explode and oh god here he was and he was loosening his belt, getting ready to slide his jeans down and—
And she smiled at him.
He stopped and stared, thunderstruck, clearly unprepared for this reaction from her.