The Unrepentant, page 23
“Do me a favor.” To Frank, Mace sounds weary. “Kill me. But let her go. She won’t do anything. She won’t tell anyone a thing. You’ll never see her again.”
“What do you think, Charlotte?”
“You let me go and I’ll come back here and gut you, you fat fucking piece of shit.”
“Looks like we don’t have a deal.” Barnes’s tone is calm. “Not that I’d have made one. Here’s what going to happen. I’m going to give this girl what she deserves and you’re going to watch me do it. Then I’m going to do the same thing to you.
“Just kidding. I ain’t a faggot.
“But I am going to shoot you in the forehead after.”
Silence.
“Shit,” Barnes says. “No rubbers.”
Frank hears footsteps approach the door. He moves away, presses himself against the wall. The door opens, and Barnes walks out. He passes Frank without seeing him, heads up the basement stairs.
Frank walks into the room. Charlotte is whispering something to Mace. She stops talking the moment she sees his shadow.
“Who’s that?” Mace asks.
The flashlight from Frank’s phone turns on.
“You killed Will,” Frank tells Charlotte.
“She didn’t!” Mace’s voice is urgent. “Barnes did. It wasn’t her.”
Frank and Charlotte stare at each other.
“Did he?” Frank asks.
“You won’t believe me. What’s the point?”
“I do believe it. Barnes is an animal.” Frank pauses. “If I let you go, will you run off, never come back?”
“Yes,” Mace answers, quickly. “Please, untie us.”
Charlotte is quiet.
“How about it?”
“Yes.”
“No, you won’t. You’ll try to kill everyone here.”
Charlotte doesn’t reply.
Footsteps upstairs.
Frank walks over to the bed. He reaches for the handcuff on Charlotte’s wrist and puts the key in the lock.
The cuffs pop open. Charlotte turns toward Mace, starts tugging at the knots binding his arms to the chair.
Frank turns off the flashlight and walks out of the room.
Chapter Ninety-Four
Charlotte frees Mace’s left arm, but she can’t loosen the knots over his right wrist. They’re both breathing hard, anxious, waiting for the door to the basement to open and Barnes to descend back down those stairs. Mace reaches over with his free hand, tugs at the knot, pulls his hand out. He stands.
“There’s no way out down here, right?”
“No.” It’s dark, but he can see the outline of Charlotte’s body in front of him. “We have to go up.”
“Listen.” Mace winces as he accidentally touches his broken fingers. The pain is there but distanced by adrenaline. “The door’s right in front of the stairs. We push open the basement door, run through the front, get the hell out of here. There are other houses nearby. If they chase us, we make a commotion. Nothing they can do to us when we’re…”
“Yeah, I don’t like that plan.” Charlotte turns and walks out of the room.
“What, what do you mean? What are you doing?”
Charlotte doesn’t answer, just keeps walking.
“Why do this?” Mace hurries after her, whispering harshly. He grabs her arm with his good hand. “Why risk your life? You can be free!”
“No, I can’t. And you don’t have to stay with me. Besides, I’m not sure how much you’ll help.”
That stings. “I’m not leaving you here.”
“I know,” Charlotte answers. They climb the stairs, walking as softly as possible. They stop at the top.
A line of light shines under the door.
Charlotte leans close to Mace’s ear.
“I don’t want you to risk your life,” she whispers. “It’s important to me that you…”
The door swings open.
Barnes stands in the doorway, wearing a T-shirt and boxers. He’s holding a flashlight in one hand, a dangling condom in the other.
“What are—”
That’s all Barnes gets out before Mace rushes up the two stairs, inadvertently knocking Charlotte into the wall.
Barnes is a big man. Stands over six feet, weighs well over two hundred pounds. But there’s something about being in your underwear that leaves you ill-equipped to defend yourself.
Barnes isn’t ready for Mace’s shoulder to slam into his gut. He stumbles backward into the living room, falls to the ground.
But he has enough presence of mind to grab Mace and take him with him.
Even though Charlotte’s face smacked into the wall when Mace rushes past her, she’s only a little stunned. She enters the hallway, looks for Mace and Barnes. Doesn’t see them.
But Charlotte does see, sitting shiny on the stairs leading to the second floor, the screwdriver.
She’s about to take it when someone calls her name.
Jake is standing at the other end of the hallway, near the kitchen.
“How’d you get out of the basement?”
Charlotte grabs the tool.
“We don’t have to do this,” she says. “You can leave. One of us doesn’t have to die.”
Jake’s expression changes.
“Really?” he asks, hopefully. “Cool. This isn’t what I signed up for. I’m not into killing people. So, okay, I’m going home.”
“Oh.” Charlotte’s taken aback. “I didn’t expect that.”
“Yeah, this sucks. And I need to go get my boy.”
Jake reaches behind himself, pulls out a gun.
Charlotte turns numb.
He holds it out to her, handle-first.
“You’ll need this to save your friend.”
Charlotte exhales, takes the gun.
She watches Jake leave, disappearing into the kitchen, heading out the back-sliding door.
And then hears Mace scream.
Chapter Ninety-Five
Down the hall, Mace’s fight with Barnes isn’t going well.
Barnes rolled him over, sat on his chest, and is raining punches on Mace’s face. The punches are solid; Mace feels like he’s being pelted with stones. He tries to fight back and can’t. All he can do is lift his arms, cover his head.
The blows stop.
Mace is surprised. He looks up just in time to see Barnes’s forearm driving down toward his throat.
Mace squirms out of the way and Barnes’s forearm slams into the floor. He slips out from under the big man, quickly straddles his back, wraps an arm around his neck.
And squeezes, his hands clasped together as tightly as a sinner hanging onto heaven’s gates.
Barnes slaps the floor, his feet kicking wildly. Mace keeps up the pressure, feels Barnes slowly give, weaken.
“It’s over,” Mace tells him. “You lost. It’s over.”
Like the snap of a scorpion’s tail, Barnes reaches back with one hand, scrabbling. His fingers find Mace’s face.
His thumb buries itself in Mace’s right eye.
Everything leaves Mace.
He no longer feels Barnes underneath him, doesn’t feel pain from his mangled fingers, doesn’t feel the short breath panic from his fight. Doesn’t wonder about Charlotte in the other room.
Mace is nothing but a flash of pain as Barnes’s thumb wrestles its way deeper inside his eye socket.
Somehow he’s standing. Time is distant now. Hours could have passed.
His back touches the wall, palms pressed to his face.
Now his knees are on the floor.
His damaged eye is sealed closed, as if it will never open.
With his other eye, he blearily sees Barnes’s boot rushing toward his face.
Chapter Ninety-Six
Barnes staggers out of the living room. He looks at Charlotte.
She lifts the gun and fires.
The bullet sails past him. Barnes throws open the basement door and runs down the stairs.
Charlotte tries to fire again, but the gun clicks. Empty.
Well, Jake, she thinks, thanks anyway.
She rushes down the hall and stops at the doorway to the basement. There’s no sound from below. Charlotte touches the wall as she walks down, the empty weapon in her other hand. She stops near the bottom of the stairway.
Turns on the light switch.
The room is flooded with light and, for the first time, Charlotte sees the outer area. A couch is pressed against the corner, a television set mounted to the wall, a small rectangular table in another corner—the furniture’s been pushed out of the center, but the room has all the makings of a den. She’s stunned that she was held next to this family-styled room, held and tortured and raped.
She also sees Barnes crouched against the wall, holding a lamp, waiting to surprise her.
Charlotte points the empty gun at him. He lowers the lamp.
“Forgot about the lights,” Barnes says.
She descends the last three steps. “Back away.”
Barnes doesn’t move. He stays standing against the wall, only a few feet from her.
“Pretty sure you’re out of bullets.”
Charlotte doesn’t change expression. “One way to find out.”
They stare at each other.
“Guess so.” Barnes take a step toward her.
It’s a quick step and takes her by surprise. Charlotte retreats, bumps the stairs, but still doesn’t pull the trigger.
Barnes smiles. “You’d have shot me.”
“Change of heart?”
Barnes lunges at her.
Charlotte turns to run up the stairs. He grabs her shirt and yanks her back down.
She spins and slams the gun against the side of his head. Barnes backhands her.
It reminds her of when he first hit her in Tucson, the shock echoing through her body. Charlotte doesn’t even realize she’s airborne until she lands hard on the carpet. She struggles to her knees, shakes her head, and sees Barnes’s boots in front of her.
He pulls her up.
“Going to bury you next to your friend upstairs. After I have some fun.”
Barnes throws her back into the room where she’d been held captive. She stumbles against the bed and turns. Barnes is reaching toward her.
And then she hears Mace.
Mace is shouting and running through the large room in the basement. His face is a mask of blood, the shout full of pain and rage. He sounds like a wild animal.
He runs right into the door frame.
Mace falls back and sits on the floor, stunned.
Barnes laughs and turns back toward Charlotte.
She snaps the handcuff chained to the wall over his outstretched wrist.
“The fuck?” Barnes looks down incredulously.
Charlotte slides off the bed, but Barnes grabs her with his free hand, clawing for her throat. Charlotte smashes the empty gun into his head.
She does it over and over until the hand over her throat drops.
Chapter Ninety-Seven
Barnes wakes up.
His head is killing him. It takes him a moment to remember what happened.
Then he does.
He tries to stand, almost pulls his arms out of their sockets.
Barnes cries out in pain. Looks at the wall. Sees each of his wrists handcuffed.
Barnes tugs at the chains. He can almost see the hook shaking a little. Or he imagines it’s shaking. Hard to tell in the dark, feels like his mind’s playing tricks on him.
He works the chain rhythmically, tugging it hard for twenty to thirty seconds, resting, then yanking as hard as he can, trying to dislodge the hook from stone. Every time it feels a little looser, but it’s been…Barnes has no idea how long it’s been since Charlotte left. An hour? A couple of hours?
He shouts. No response.
He’s not worried. Someone will come for him. All he has to do is stay alive until then.
Barnes wishes he’d eaten a heavier meal. His stomach is growling, so loud the sound escapes him, and fills the room along with his breaths and the smells of semen and sweat.
When he gets out of here, Barnes tells himself, he’s going to twist that skinny no-titted dead-eyed cumbucket fuckfaced bitch’s head off.
He pulls the chain, waits, lets the strength return to his arm, and pulls. Cries out as he does it, as the chains chew into his wrist.
He remembers some story about a guy who got caught in a rock and cut his arm off. Barnes would eat his own shoulder if he had to, but he can’t turn his head that far.
He tries to bend his body, bring his knees to his chin, and reach over to the wall hook with his foot. His gut gets in the way. It flops down on his face, all sweaty hairy skin. Practically suffocates him.
It’s going to be embarrassing when someone finds him here, but Barnes has a story in mind. How that Mace guy led him here at gunpoint, chained him to the bed. No way he’s going to let Charlotte get the better of him, even in a memory.
Tug, rest, pull.
Tug, rest, pull.
Tug, rest, pull!
This time Barnes feels it move, he’s sure of it. He tugs the chain and it wobbles. He smiles.
Chapter Ninety-Eight
“Are you safe?” Eve asks.
Eve and Charlotte are in Eve’s apartment. It’s nicer than Charlotte expected—perfectly clean and stylish, like a page out of some furniture magazine. Eve is sitting on a white leather couch and Charlotte in an ornately-carved wooden chair with thin cushions, her elbows pressed into her knees, fists pressed against her lips. The room smells like roses.
She can’t believe Eve is asking her this question, can’t believe she’s even concerned for her welfare. “It’s been a few days. I don’t think anyone’s coming for us.”
“Good.”
“Is Mace is going to get his sight back?”
Eve shakes her head. “Not in his left eye. That’s gone.”
Charlotte looks away. “How’s he doing?”
“Not good.”
Charlotte thinks she detects something accusatory in the other woman’s tone. But she understands it, even welcomes it. “I’m sorry for what happened. I’m sorry for…”
“I don’t blame you.”
“This would never have happened if he hadn’t met me.”
“Mace made choices from the moment he met you. And he thought they were the right choices.”
Charlotte wraps her arms around herself. “I can’t visit him?”
Eve shifts. “Look, it’s not your fault. And Mace will understand that soon. But in the state, he’s in, he doesn’t understand it now. So, no, you shouldn’t visit him.”
“I wish I could.”
Eve looks closely at her.
“You feel guilty.”
Charlotte feels tears starting. “You all gave up so much for me. And you shouldn’t have.”
Eve stands, holds the crying girl.
“I said Mace made choices. We all did. And we made the right ones. He’ll understand that, I promise you. He’ll come around.”
“I like that about him,” Charlotte sniffs. “How…simple things are. I get how that sounds, but I mean it in a nice way.”
“All men are simple. Not many in a nice way.”
Charlotte pulls away. “I’ve seen a lot of terrible things. And I’ve done some. I can move past a lot of that stuff, for some reason. But not Mace.”
“Of course. You care about him.”
Charlotte’s surprised she didn’t realize it before. Or, at least, how much.
“And he cared about you,” Eve adds. “He’ll recover. You both will.”
“When I left my uncle, I didn’t have a plan. I just wanted to get away from him. Then I got to Tucson, and I was happy for a while. But I still felt like there was something else I should do. I couldn’t work at Applebee’s forever. I definitely couldn’t eat there much longer.”
Eve smiles.
“What do I do next?”
Chapter Ninety-Nine
After the taxi pulls away, Charlotte tests the front door.
It’s still unlocked.
She looks around, wraps a scarf around her nose and mouth, walks back into the house.
She knew the smell of death would be strong, but it’s worse than she expected. It’s been a week, and the house smells like she’s pushing past piles of rotted fruit.
Charlotte doesn’t bother going upstairs. She presses her hand over her scarf and heads down to the basement.
The lights are still on. Charlotte walks down the stairs, hurries across the empty room, pushes open the bedroom door.
The smell burns her eyes.
Barnes is lying there, the handcuffs still around his wrists, the chains still attached to the hooks in the wall. His body is bigger, bloated. His stomach blocks her view of his head.
It should be enough.
It’s not.
Charlotte stands next to his head, touches his neck.
Cold. No pulse.
Charlotte heads back up and out and closes the front door behind her.
She sits on the front porch and breathes greedily. Sucks in air like she’s drowning.
Her eyes are still burning, to the point of tears. She blinks fast, rubs them with her palms.
Charlotte stands, heads off the porch. She has no idea where to find a cab, but the walk will do her good.
It’s hard for her not to shake. Her legs feel unstable, like she’s stepping onto cracking glass.
She looks back at the house.
Charlotte opens the front door one last time, just enough to reach inside and lock it. She pulls it closed.
Chapter One Hundred
Three Weeks Later
Rose tries to look confident as she walks in heels higher than any she’s ever worn, in a street where everyone is staring her down. It’s cold this time of year, and her fifteen-year-old bare legs are freezing in the late night.
