Binding Choice: A Romantic Thriller Page 12

  He looked up, made eye contact. “A secluded cabin you all manage, a seasonal rental. A cabin very similar to this one.”

  There was only one person this Amanda could have gotten Monroe’s and my names from. She and Jules were working together.

  Shit! I thought as I stared at Erica. She was close to used up anyway, but I hadn’t planned on ending things just yet.

  But maybe it was for the best, considering the other bastard... My stomach twisted. How had I let anyone gain leverage over me? I ground my teeth.

  Faking a big smile, I said, “Thanks for telling me, bro. I’ll take care of it.”

  The smile became genuine as a brilliant idea occurred to me. And while I’m at it, I think I’ll take care of you too, Mr. Monroe.

  “I may need your help with some of the logistics,” I said out loud.

  “No problem.” Monroe stubbed out the cigar on the plate in front of him. “That’s what frat brothers are for.”

  <<>>

  Jules

  After a couple of hours of researching everything we could find on any fraternity brothers currently living within two hundred miles, Amanda and I had nine names on a short list of those who had ties with Drew, past or present or both. If they didn’t pan out as leads, we’d go further afield.

  My stomach cramped at the thought. How long would Ricki survive? How long would her mind stay intact? I shook my head and forced my attention back to the task at hand. I was checking the land records again.

  Unfortunately, none of those on the short list seemed to own any properties that would be conducive to keeping someone captive. No houses in secluded places nor office or apartment buildings, where soundproofing between units was commonplace.

  Of course a private home would work if they kept her gagged. My throat tightened and fists clenched at that thought.

  Amanda had also researched unsolved disappearances of adults in the area in the last five years. There were forty-nine, not a huge number for a large metropolitan area.

  But when she’d narrowed the parameters, she’d ended up with only five women under thirty-five who’d disappeared from Baltimore or the surrounding counties and had never been found. Two of the women, attractive and in their mid-twenties, had moved here from out of state only a few months before they disappeared. One had a brother in California whom she hadn’t spoken to in several years, the other no family at all. Missing person reports had been filed by a landlady and a coworker respectively.

  Time to dig deeper into our short list of frat brothers. I moved my cursor across the screen of the fraternity website, toward the x in the corner to close the site.

  Something registered on the edge of my brain. I moved the cursor around in circles.

  There it was again. The cursor briefly turned into a little pointing hand over a word in the general description of the fraternity. That word was a link.

  It wouldn’t have seemed so strange except the word was a conjunction—a simple and, joining two phrases in a sentence describing the lofty goals of “service to the community” and “loyalty to one’s brothers.”

  I clicked on the link. A new window opened. On it were four words and a box for a password.

  I sat up straighter in my chair.

  The four words were Welcome to The Network.

  <<>>

  Erica

  Drew was acting weird. Weirder than usual, that is.

  After Monroe had left, he’d untied me and laid me out on the bed. I knew I should use the opportunity to try to get away from him, but I was exhausted.

  The leather cuffs with the soft linings came out instead of the metal cop-issue handcuffs.

  He chained one wrist and the opposite ankle to the bedstead. Then he took out a jar of some kind of cream and smeared it on the welts from the cuffs and ropes.

  The whole time he was muttering under his breath. From what I could catch, he was pissed because his research hadn’t been sufficient.

  When he had slathered the stuff on most of my body—it did feel good—he switched the hand and foot that were cuffed to the bed and applied cream to the other wrist and ankle. Then he cuffed me, loosely spread-eagled, on the bed.

  He glared down at me. “You’d only moved here two months ago. You weren’t supposed to have any friends, no connections to anybody but that ditzy Brandi at work and Jules.”

  Two months? I’d moved to town mid-December, determined to make a fresh start. I’d lived in the area now for almost four months.

  The implications of what he was saying hit me. He’d checked me out after the Valentine’s party, found out that I had few ties. My insides twisted.

  “I can’t put you with the others,” Drew muttered, still scowling at me.

  Others?

  That word made my already pounding heart ricochet inside my chest.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Amanda

  God bless Google. I was digging out every bit of info I could find on our nine short-listed frat brothers.

  Jules had a found a cyber back door into the fraternity’s website and he was now trying to crack the password.

  “Wahoo,” he exclaimed from across Erica’s kitchen table.

  I jumped a little in my chair.

  “I’m in.” He grinned at me over the top of his computer.

  “Great.” I gave him an encouraging smile and went back to my background checks.

  A few seconds later, he muttered, “You’re such an ass.”

  “Who?’

  “This guy who was the president of our chapter. Now he works for the national fraternity as membership coordinator.”

  I needed to stretch anyway so I got up and walked around behind Jules. Leaning down a little, I read over his shoulder. The guy sounded pretty pompous. The gist of the paragraphs I skimmed was that this thing called The Network was a special perk for those who had “shown themselves to be particularly loyal to the brotherhood.” I didn’t see a name anywhere on the page. The missive was signed Your Leader, JD.

  “How do you know who it is?”

  “I recognize the flowery speech. The guy always acted like he was running for Congress.”

  Jules clicked on a link at the bottom of the page. A blank page with a password box came up. He grunted as his fingers flew across the keyboard.

  I went back to my seat and my own tasks.

  A few minutes later, he said, “And I’m in on this layer.”

  “That was fast.”

  “They’re security is a bit of a joke. Hey, come look at this.”

  I rounded the table again and leaned over his shoulder.

  The page had a black background with two columns of white text. The left column was headed with the word Classifieds and the other with Spotters.

  The left column read like the personal ads in a sex magazine—YWF, BDSM, San Fran; YAAF, nympho, St. Louis; 2YF, As or W, 3-way, Boston, and so on. Each entry was followed by two letters. Initials? A few read YBF which I assumed meant young bisexual female. These were usually followed by the 3-way notation. There were very few without the letter Y for young, and none looking for an M. Guess the frat boys weren’t willing to admit to any gay attractions.

  Feeling a little nauseous, I moved my gaze to the Spotters column. It was a series of entries, all starting with initials, then a city and the word contact with more initials—KF, San Fran, contact DL.

  Jules scrolled down the page. Then he stopped and gestured at the screen. “Here’s Drew’s ad.”

  I looked where he pointed. YF, any r, no connections, Baltimore, HX.

  “HX? That’s not Drew,” I said, my brain struggling to digest the implications of “no connections.”

  “The initials are in code. But it’s not all that hard to break if you know who their fearless leader is. His initials on here are JD—real name is Frederick Zale. Count back four letters from J and you have F. Four letters from D is one letter into the end of the alphabet, Z.”

  “Why use a code if you’re not going to make
it hard to break?” I asked.

  “Because it’s all a big game to them. They probably figure the hidden link and the double password is enough to keep them safe.”

  “Are you sure about this Zale dude being the leader?”

  Jules sat back a little in his chair and sighed. “Pretty sure. The wording of that intro sure sounds like him, and he was a hardcore sexist pig in college, so I can see him setting up this kind of thing.”

  I stepped to beside his shoulder, looked down the long list of entries in each column. “This is more than just your chapter though. There’s too many of them.”

  He nodded. “This looks like they’ve gone national, although I’m sure entry into this ‘Network,’” he made air quotes, “is by referral only.”

  “So Drew didn’t care what race he got, only that she was young.”

  “And attractive. I’m sure that criteria is a given for all of these.” Jules turned slightly and gazed up at me. “And he wanted there to be no one close to her who would go looking for her.”

  “He didn’t know about me,” I said.

  Jules nodded again. “And when I took an interest in her, he saw that as a challenge. For some reason, he’s always viewed us as competitors.”

  Because you’re everything he’s not, I thought but didn’t say. Instead, I asked, “Is the whole fraternity like this?”

  He tensed a little, then shook his head. “No, there’s a lot of good guys in there too.”

  He ran a finger down the Spotters column, tapping the mouse occasionally to move the screen down. His finger stopped. “There, in December.”

  I leaned sideways to take a look. HX, Baltimore, contact HN.

  “Who’s HN?”

  “HN is really DR.” Jules clicked on a different tab in his browser. “Here’s the membership list from the main website.” He scrolled down. “There are a whole bunch of last names starting with R, and quite a few with D as a first initial.”

  I leaned a little closer, squinting at the laptop screen. “So why didn’t DR or HN or whoever the hell he is designate a city on his listing?”

  “Maybe only one of these DR guys is in the Network. Let’s see if any of them are in Baltimore.”

  Each name on the membership list turned out to be a link to that brother’s profile, complete with picture and contact information.

  Jules clicked through a half dozen of them. No Baltimoreans.

  He clicked again and I stared at the screen. My hand flew to my mouth. “Oh my God!”

  <<>>

  Erica

  Jules held me tenderly in his arms. I kissed him. His arms tightened around me as he deepened the kiss.

  Wait! I haven’t shaved my legs in days.

  I almost laughed out loud. The idiotic things we think of in dreams.

  I’m dreaming?

  Cold seeped into my body and suddenly I was shivering violently. My eyes opened to darkness.

  Drew had left me naked on the bed, again using the leather cuffs with their soft lining to make sure I stayed there. His new concern about leaving marks on my skin scared the shit out of me.

  My teeth chattered. The fire must have died down in the fireplace. A small amount of ambient light came from the front room, shining softly through the doorway.

  Shuffling noises from that room. Maybe Drew hadn’t left after all.

  The light grew stronger, flickered some. He must be building up the fire again. The bedroom slowly shifted from cold to cool. Still I shivered, with dread as much as the chill air.

  What was he up to?

  He came into the bedroom. I tried to brace myself for whatever sick game he’d devised this time, but my spirit was almost as broken as my body.

  He unchained me from the bed, the cuffs still around my wrists and ankles. Dragging me to my feet, he looked me over front and back. “You’ll do.”

  <<>>

  Jules

  I lay on Ricki’s couch and stared at the dark ceiling of her living room. Amanda was asleep upstairs in the bedroom.

  We now knew who was involved in kidnapping Ricki, but we were no closer to figuring out where she was. Amanda had suggested we get some rest.

  But sleep was alluding me.

  We’d also briefly discussed if it was time to hand over what we had to the police. I knew that was technically the right thing to do. But would they focus more on finding the Network’s ringleaders and shutting it down? How much manpower would they devote to actually finding Ricki?

  We’d ended up tabling that decision until we were fresher in the morning.

  I tried again to clear my mind and relax my body. But the thought of what Ricki might be enduring refused to budge from my brain. Bile rose in the back of my throat.

  I pushed myself up into the corner of the sofa, raising my head a little. The burning acid subsided some, but my stomach was churning and my chest hurt.

  There was no way I would get to sleep in my current state...

  .

  Ricki came out of the bedroom. “What are you doing here?” she asked in a casual voice.

  “Waiting for you.” My own voice sounded groggy.

  She came over and lay down on top of me, her body molding itself to mine. She kissed me.

  I held her tight and sobbed against her mouth. “Thank God, you’re alright. I’ve missed you so.”

  My hands wandered to her waist, pulled loose her blouse from her jeans and started fumbling with buttons.

  She broke the kiss. “No, I don’t have time.”

  I looked up at her, confused.

  “I have to go to the real estate office. I’m meeting Drew’s stepfather. He’s showing me some cabins that might work for, you know...” She trailed off and tried to push up off of me.

  I held her forearms and kept her from rising. “Don’t you mean Drew’s father?”

  She tilted her head to one side. “No, I’m pretty sure he said his stepfather.”

  She pulled against my grasp. Her face suddenly morphed into a mask of terror. “Let go, let go!” she screamed.

  I sat up abruptly to put her on her feet.

  Gasping, I looked around the dark living room. I waved my arms in front of me, encountering only air. A sob escaped my throat. It had been a dream.

  Ricki wasn’t back. She wasn’t safe. The urge to curl into a fetal position and bawl like a baby was close to overwhelming.

  Then a thought caused my body to freeze. My subconscious mind had produced a clue, in the guise of that dream.

  Drew didn’t have a stepfather. But I knew someone who did.

  <<>>

  Erica

  Drew had removed the ankle cuffs and hauled me out into the front room.

  I stared at the transformation. Most of the floor and furniture were covered by plastic tarps. In the center of the tarps was a white king-sized sheet, spread out flat. Red rose petals were sprinkled on it.

  I knew I was going to be raped again, but that wasn’t what made my knees go weak and my heart try to escape from my chest.

  I was pretty sure the tarps were to protect the floor and furniture from telltale blood spatter.

  I was about to die.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Jules

  I sat at Ricki’s kitchen table, my laptop screen in front of me, an odd mix of elation and dread making my stomach queasy.

  I was right. The bar association’s registry had led me to the stepfather’s name—James Pickerling. I remembered my frat brother derisively calling him “Pickles.”

  The old man had died a year ago.

  The land records for the surrounding counties told me the rest. Pickles had owned a wooded twenty-acre property eighty miles outside of the city, in the hills of western Maryland. The records indicated a nine-hundred square-foot structure on the property. And that property and structure were now listed in the name of his widow, Mildred Pickerling.

  Phillip Monroe’s mother.

  I jumped up and ran upstairs. I pounded on the bedroom door. “A
manda!”

  My gut said there was no time to waste.

  <<>>

  Erica

  Previously I’d paid little notice to the row of four brass hooks over the fireplace, anchored into the mortar between irregular chunks of fieldstone high above a narrow wooden mantel. Some antique iron pots and a bed-warming pan had hung there. Now the pots and pan were gone.

  Drew looped the chains attached to my wrist cuffs over the two center hooks. His eyes glinted and he smirked at me as he pulled on the chains until my feet were barely touching the floor. Then he secured the chains on the other two hooks. The mantel pushed painfully against my hyper-extended elbows.

  “Be good.” He disappeared into the bedroom.

  I’d been freezing before, but now my naked back and butt were barely a foot from the crackling fire. Carefully, I inched forward on the balls of my feet, trying to move my body away from the scorching heat and my arms away from the pressure of the mantel.

  More shuffling noises in the bedroom. Eventually Drew came out, carrying a large bundle of cloth—white sheets, the yellow towels from the bathroom, and the blue of the jeans and pink of the top that I’d worn the night we arrived here.

  How long ago was that now? I almost cried when I realized I had no idea what day it was.

  He went out the door of the cabin, leaving it open. Cool air wafted over me, bringing some relief from the heat of the fire.

  I watched through the doorway. He and his burden cast weird shadows in the harsh glare of the floodlights. He dumped the bundle of linens and clothes into the trunk of his car.

  My throat closed and my heart pounded. He was cleaning up the crime scene.

  He came inside, closed the door, went back into the bedroom. A few seconds later, the whining rumble of the vacuum cleaner.

  I went back to trying not to think about the heat blistering my back and the horrors to come. Jules’s sweet face came to mind. I focused on that internal image, willing myself to float out of my body.

  It didn’t work this time.

  It dawned on me that if Jules ever found out what had happened to me, it would stir up his grief and guilt about his sister all over again. Would he feel so responsible that he’d hurt himself?

  The pain in my chest was unbearable... and had nothing to do with my own plight.