Binding Choice: A Romantic Thriller Read online

  “Did you call in sick for her at her office?”

  His eyes went a bit wide. “No. Why?”

  “It was a male voice, guy said he was her father.”

  “Well, I guess that’s where she went, to see her old man.”

  “He says he hasn’t heard from her since Christmas. And he just had a new baby. You’d think she would’ve called to congratulate him.”

  Drew shrugged. “I got the impression they weren’t on the best of terms.”

  That stung almost as bad as the thought that Ricki had been sleeping with this guy. She’d told him about her family.

  “So who was the guy who called her work?” I said.

  “I don’t know, man.” He slapped me on the shoulder. “But she’s been playing us against each other, so who knows what other guy, or guys, she has on the string.”

  My fists clenched. I ground my teeth.

  He gave me an innocent smile. “Not that I think she’s a slut or anything. I mean in this day and age, a girl gets to play around as much as us guys. Good for the goose, good for the gander, and all that.”

  I reined in my anger. “Hey, I wanted to ask you about something else. You’re in real estate, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m thinking of investing in some commercial property. Could you show me some stuff?” I didn’t really know where I was going with this, but I wanted an excuse to keep him engaged, and maybe find out more about his real estate holdings.

  He glanced at his watch, shaking his head slightly. “Not this week, I’m afraid. My schedule is jammed solid.” He fished a card out of his jacket pocket, handed it to me. “Call the office and set something up for next week. Meantime, when I get a chance, I’ll check the listings. What’s your price range?”

  I ad-libbed. “I could go as high as a million, twenty percent down.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem.” He slapped me on the shoulder again, then beeped open his car and got in.

  He held his hand to the side of his face, thumb and pinkie finger sticking out in a call-me gesture, before driving away.

  Despite my rage, I had to admire the man’s audacity, and his acting ability. He’d almost convinced me that Ricki was safe and sound, off somewhere “straightening out her head.”

  Almost.

  <<>>

  Amanda

  I’d considered calling Nick but decided a face-to-face confrontation would be more effective.

  At eleven, I examined my image in the ladies’ room mirror at work. I’d pulled a dark scarf and an old sweater out of my bottom dresser drawer this morning, despite the fact that the weather forecast said it would be in the high seventies today. My bright red hair was now covered with the scarf and the sweater hung on me, hiding my still voluptuous curves. I’d lost 40 pounds since the last time I’d seen Erica’s ex, and in this get-up, I looked like a street person, at least at first glance.

  I grinned at myself in the mirror.

  I left my office at eleven-fifteen and walked the six blocks to the building that housed the engineering firm where Nick Reynolds worked. Lurking near the double glass doors, I spotted him in the lobby a little after twelve.

  His three-piece gray suit was impeccably tailored. Not a hair was out of place on his dark blond head.

  And he was not alone.

  The doors opened and I stepped in front of them on the sidewalk. He and the blonde on his arm jerked to a stop, their eyes wide. She was lovely enough to be a model, in a fitted forest green suit and matching stiletto heels.

  I shoved the scarf back and put my hands on my hips, pushing aside the drooping sweater. “Hi, Nick,” I said in a hard voice. “I need to talk to you, alone.”

  Under different circumstances, the array of emotions playing across his face would have been amusing.

  Finally he settled on mildly benign interest. “Sure. Would you excuse us for a minute, darling?” He disentangled his arm from the blonde’s grasp and shooed me a few yards away.

  “What?” His tone was now far from benign.

  I’d decided on the direct approach, to try to shock him into a reaction. “Erica’s gone missing. You know anything about that?”

  He cocked his head to one side. “Missing how?”

  “As in, no one has seen or heard from her in days.” I heard the impatience in my voice and tried to rein it in.

  He shrugged. “I have no clue what she’s been up to. I haven’t heard from her in months.” He gestured toward the blonde, who was making no effort to rein in her impatience. She tapped the toe of her strappy Jimmy Choo. They represented a week’s worth of my salary, and I made decent money. “As you can see,” Nick said with a plastic smile, “I’ve moved on.”

  I pulled out a business card, on which I’d written my cell number as well. “Call me if you hear from her, or anything about her.”

  I knew it was a futile gesture.

  His smile widened. “Of course.” He pivoted and sauntered over to the blonde.

  I stood in front of his building for a few minutes, digesting the whole interchange. I hadn’t seen the telltale signs of fear, or even cunning, that would have identified him as Erica’s kidnapper.

  But there was something off. He’d been a little too smooth, a little too unconcerned. Was he really that cold-hearted?

  I snorted. A passerby gave me an odd look.

  This was the man who couldn’t get why Erica needed to take care of her ill mother. He’d wanted her to put her mom in a nursing home.

  I shuddered. Why had I expected him to care?

  <<>>

  Erica

  A feather-light kiss on my forehead. My body tingled in anticipation.

  The lips moved down my jaw to my neck, soft but hot, burning a path to that ultra-sensitive spot where shoulder meets neck. They lingered there for a bit.

  I resisted the urge to writhe, sensing the fragility of the moment.

  Please don’t let him disappear.

  The lips moved on, circled my breast, caressed the nipple, latched on and sucked gently.

  Despite myself, I arched my back and moaned softly, somehow knowing that would break the spell.

  I woke to the feel of soft kisses fluttering all over my body, truly as light as feathers.

  I opened my eyes.

  Drew stood over me, sprinkling half wilted red rose petals across my torso and belly, down my legs and back up again.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, willing the dream to come back, to be reality. Praying reality was a nightmare that I could wake up from.

  But it wasn’t.

  A slow smile spread across Drew’s face. And then he was unbuckling the leather straps around my wrists.

  “First things first. I brought Chinese and the microwave is on the fritz. So we eat now, before the food gets cold.” He dragged me naked out into the main room and handcuffed my ankles to the chair again. Only this time he cranked the loop around the legs down tight, scarring the wood.

  “Tonight if you try to run, you’ll have to drag the chair with you.”

  He dished food onto my plate, then laughed at me when I couldn’t possibly use chopsticks with my hands cuffed together.

  Finally he got up and brought me a fork.

  I gobbled the food, my stomach rumbling.

  It’s Tuesday night, It’s Tuesday night, I repeated in my head. I’m not sure why it was so important to me that I not lose track of time.

  When my plate was empty, I tried to pick up one of the cardboard cartons, but I couldn’t hold it and scoop the food out at the same time. I fumbled the box and dropped the whole lot onto my plate, making a mess.

  He chuckled. “I could punish you for that,” he came down hard on the word punish, “but I’m in a good mood tonight.” He leaned over, picked up the carton and scooped the spilled fried rice up onto my plate with a serving spoon. Then he added more sweet and sour chicken to my plate. “Aren’t you going to ask why I’m in such a good mood?”

  “Why?” I mumbl
ed around a mouthful of food.

  “I ran into Jules today. He’s worried about you.”

  I almost choked on a chunk of chicken. My heart swelled in my chest, then started beating erratically, as if it were trying to escape.

  I struggled to keep my facial expression neutral, while thoughts raced helter-skelter through my brain. Was Jules trying to find me? Why had I been such a fool to trust Drew? Was he doing this to get back at Jules?

  Why? What could sweet Jules have possibly done to deserve Drew’s disdain?

  Then I got it. He hadn’t done anything. His very existence annoyed Drew, because Jules was everything he was not. Sweet, kind, confident.

  I jolted a little, then shoved more food into my mouth to keep my face from giving away the insight I’d just had. Underneath all of Drew’s evil bravado, he was insecure. Secure people didn’t have to bring down others in order to make themselves feel big.

  Drew was sitting back, watching me eat. There was no wine tonight. I wasn’t sure what to make of that.

  “I have a proposition for you to consider, Erica.”

  I was surprised that he used my real name instead of taunting me with Jules’s nickname.

  Realizing he expected a reply, I mumbled, “What’s that?” I shoved more food into my mouth, even though my stomach was full to the point of being painful. But I knew this was all the sustenance I would get for twenty-four hours.

  “I will let you go free inside the cabin during the day, if you agree to marry me.”

  My head jerked up, mouth hanging open, rice spilling out.

  He laughed. “Do you know how awful you look?”

  I bit back the ask me if I care retort that popped into my head. Of course, I look awful, you bastard.

  I chewed and swallowed, buying myself some recovery time. “Marry you?” I went for a neutral tone, but it came out sounding a little strangled.

  “Yes.” He leaned forward. “See, then you can’t testify against me.” He grabbed a hunk of my hair, twisted it around his fingers, pulled, not gently but not really hard either. “You can tell people all the things I’ve done to you, and I’ll just tell them that you’re crazy. Poor long-suffering Drew, what he puts up with. Tsk, tsk.”

  He let go of my hair and leaned back in his chair again. “Give it some thought.”

  He was the crazy one. A wife couldn’t be forced to testify against her husband, but I was pretty sure she could if she wanted to. Battered wives did it all the time.

  Surely he was smart enough to realize that. What game was he playing now?

  “Finish your food. We’ve got things to do.”

  He left the room.

  I gobbled down the last of the chicken and rice, trying to brace myself for whatever was to come.

  When he led me back into the bedroom, shuffling with my ankles cuffed together, he didn’t chain me to the bed again. Double wooden doors were now standing open, exposing what I’d assumed was a closet.

  It was empty, except for chains bolted to the back wall in four places.

  My heart pounding, I tried to figure out what this meant. Tried to decide if I should fight him, even though the odds were extremely good that I would lose and just piss him off.

  I didn’t have long to debate. He thrust me up against the wall and snapped cuffs around my wrists. My arms were stretched out on either side, slightly above my head. He unhooked one ankle from the other.

  Anger surged, but I resisted the temptation to kick him in the face. I was chained to a wall, so how could I successfully fight him?

  Teeth clenched, I vowed that I would. At some point, he would let his guard down and I would get away. And hopefully do him some damage in the process.

  He cuffed my ankles to the wall at floor level, spread apart, making it a bit tricky to keep my balance.

  I watched as he stripped the bed down to the plastic cover that had kept my urine from soaking into the mattress. “I’m getting tired of a smelly bed,” he said conversationally. “So I figured it was time to use the closet.”

  He made up the bed with fresh linens. Then he came over and stood right in front of me, eye to eye.

  “You know what killed people who were crucified in ancient Rome?” he said in a low, hard voice. “It was the weight of their organs hanging down, with nothing to support them, hour after hour. It takes about three or four days. Be nice to me and I’ll let you lie down occasionally.”

  I tried to pull away from his touch and lost my balance. The cuffs bit into my wrists.

  He slapped me. “I said be nice.”

  Nausea roiled in my too-full stomach. I struggled not to vomit.

  By the time he was through, my head was hanging down, my cheeks burning with shame. Not as much from what he’d done, but from what he’d made me do, laughing at me the whole time. God help me, my body had responded even as my mind recoiled in disgust.

  Before he left, he placed a metal bucket between my feet. “Pee in that,” he said, his voice cold.

  The pain in my wrists and shoulders finally broke through my shame and brought back some of the anger. I shifted my feet, lifted my weight off of my arms.

  I had to stay awake. I spent the night alternating between crazy plans for escape and fantasies of what I would do to Drew, should I ever have him chained to a wall.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Jules

  I’d spent Tuesday and part of this morning checking out rental houses and lurking in office buildings owned or managed by Thompson Realty. I poked around in basements, hung out near janitors’ closets, and pretended to be a potential tenant to get into empty offices.

  No sign of Ricki anywhere.

  Amanda had called me last night. She’d talked to Ricki’s ex and didn’t think he was responsible for her going missing. “But I can’t be sure,” she’d said. “He’s a slick one. I don’t know how much he’s hiding behind that smooth facade of his.”

  She would be flying into BWI airport at midday.

  I went back to Ricki’s townhouse at ten to meet the window repairman. While he replaced the glass in the kitchen door, I sat down at the table and called Erica’s work number.

  “Hey Brandi, it’s Jules. Is Erica in today?” I held my breath, even though I had little hope that the answer would be yes.

  “No, she must still be sick.”

  I blew out air. “Did she call in?”

  “Not yet.” Brandi’s tone was breezy.

  “Did she call in yesterday?”

  “No, her dad did again. She still can’t talk, he said.”

  I resisted the urge to point out that Ricki’s father was oblivious to her whereabouts or well-being. “Um, do you happen to know where Drew is?”

  A stretch of silence. “Nope, haven’t talked to him in a couple of weeks.” Now the breeziness was forced.

  “I thought you two were dating.”

  “We... yeah, kind of, but I got tired of him.”

  Far more likely that he got tired of her. In a moment of crystal clarity, I got it that Drew had used Brandi to get to Ricki.

  “Does Drew have any special places he likes to go, you know, to get away from it all?”

  “Huh? Not that I know of.”

  “Okay, thanks,” I said. “Give me a call, will ya, if you hear from either Erica or Drew.”

  “Drew?”

  Shit! I had no logical reason to offer her for tracking down Drew. “Yeah,” I said lamely.

  “Okay,” she said.

  God bless Brandi, she was a simple soul. “Thanks. I owe you a drink.”

  A brief pause. “Well, I will definitely take you up on that.” Her voice was flirtatious now.

  I disconnected with a sigh. Then I got up and retrieved Ricki’s phone from the counter. Returning to the table, I checked her outgoing calls, hoping there was a number there that might lead to something.

  I stopped scrolling when I saw the last call she’d made to Drew. It was several days before the last time I’d seen her.

 
My cheeks burned and my chest hurt at the confirmation that she had already broken off with him before my date with her. And I had crassly refused to listen to her. If only I’d given her the benefit of doubt then.

  The repairman interrupted my ruminations, informing me he was done. I paid him, then followed him out the door, locking it behind us.

  <<>>

  Erica

  That damn whiny dog! Somebody please shut him up.

  Shadowy people in dark clothing moved around me. I waded through the crowd, searching for the annoying dog.

  Then my mother was in front of me, keening, her face crumpled, her hands cuffed together. She pointed to the plate of food on her lap. “I can’t eat like this. Erica, you’ve got to get me out of here. You’ve got to get out of here.” She let out a fresh wail of grief.

  I jerked awake, a wrenching pain in my shoulders, disoriented to find myself chained to a wall in the dark.

  Reality slammed into my solar plexus, taking my breath away. I straightened my numb legs, trying to get the weight off my shoulders and arms.

  Somewhere during the night I’d drifted off, my body hanging from the cuffs around my wrists. I’d lost all sensation in my hands, and my forearms, like my legs, were numb from lack of circulation.

  Panic surged through me. I didn’t know what day it was.

  I tried to take a deep breath. The tightness in my chest resisted the effort.

  It was either Wednesday or Thursday. I wasn’t sure which.

  A thin line of light shone through the crack between the doors in the closet. It was daytime. But how long had I been here, held captive in this cabin?

  I tried to focus. The more important question was how to get out of here.

  Futility jammed my brain. I was sleep-deprived, dehydrated, and famished.

  I realized that I’d been harboring a false belief, on a semiconscious level—a vain hope that Drew would eventually tire of this game and let me go.

  But I knew he wouldn’t. He had to keep escalating the bondage games... No, I had to stop thinking of them as games. This was real.

  He had to keep escalating, like an addict, needing bigger and bigger doses. To keep it exciting. And eventually he would kill me, either accidentally or intentionally, when he became bored with me.