Chapter One
Infatuation had never led to anything positive in my life. So when I toppled over a stranger on my way out of the Lexington Ave—59th train station, I should have known nothing good would come from that fluttering feeling looking into his eyes gave me.
James strapped me into his little black convertible like some life-sized doll he wanted to take for a picnic. Waves of burning, cramping pain rolled up and down my body like being flattened out by a rolling pin. The mix nauseated me.
Never before had James frightened me, he’d merely annoyed me or made me uncomfortable. In fact, he excelled at turning me into that awkward and shy self I tried to shed my whole life. But now, all that fear transformed into such a red and hot fireball in my gut that I roared at him when he took the driver’s seat.
“Tell me—” I said. The pain hit me hard enough to take my breath.The seatbelt jolted across me as my body threw itself forward without my consent. I wanted to scream but was quieted by a whimper. Finally, the tension and pain receded enough for me to speak. “What’s your sick fascination with drugging and kidnapping women?”
In the dark, a small glimpse of his smile shone: red and then green as the traffic light changed. “More of a job than a sick fascination.”
“Oh, please.” How could he be so calm? How many times had he done this? James didn’t look a day over twenty-five—how practiced could someone be with murder at his age? Pain muddled my thinking and clawed at my nerves. “Does your girlfriend know what a psychopath you are?”
The blackest eyes I’d ever seen turned their focus on me. I had barely enough strength to pull my knees to my chest and huddle against the door.
“Of course she knows, Ria. But does she know about you? I’m afraid my answer is no, she doesn’t. She will, once I’m through. It wouldn’t do either of us well should she find out before I’ve completed my task.”
Oh God. He really planned to kill me. Fighting the pain took all of my strength, leaving me no energy to fight him. I couldn’t just give up, but really, death already crawled across my threshold. How could I have let this man into my home? Led him to Ari?
Burning traveled down my arms and legs, accompanied by sharp pains—like acupuncture gone wrong. I whimpered again before a painful howl broke through my lungs and threw me back into the seatbelt as though we’d been rear ended by a full-sized truck.
He didn’t drive for much longer, and my mind reeled with the thought of death, continually circling around to carefully take inventory of my heartbeat.
We stopped in front of an almost collapsed garage behind a house with boarded up windows and doors—the perfect murder house. James unstrapped me and carried me through the back where boards had once closed up any entrance to the house. Now, jagged holes and bent nails gave the limp boards a hanged look along, framing the broken doorway with implied threat. Slanted wooden siding made the house appear as if might collapse upon our entrance.
The fight I had left in me wouldn’t cooperate: it lay bundled in my middle, trapped under the weight of death. My body lay limply in his arms.
The darkness kept me from seeing what sounded like the kitchen with the way his shoes squeaked, and I waited for him to slam some part of me into a wall of cabinet. But James seemed to know the layout.
Within seconds my body lie in a mound of something soft with the occasional sharp ridge like a pricker. He disappeared, returned, and covered me with a comforter. Why try to keep me warm if he was just going to kill me? My body shook from such a severe cold that I burned as if I he’d already thrown me into the stew pot.
James disappeared again, and shots rang down the block followed by curses and screams. He sure knew what part of the City to bring me to so that if I decided to scream or yell for help, no one would come and try to save me. But I’d still need strength that I didn’t possess at the moment.
Wavering on the line of unconsciousness and consciousness, I received brief touches and murmurs but not much else. Why not carve me up like a sicko? Not that I wanted to be carved up, but if I were going to kill someone, I’d have to enjoy it. Isn’t that how crazy fuckers think?
I lay there in that foggy darkness for a long while, waiting for something to change. In a rush, my heart jacked itself around, pumping harder and harder in an adrenaline induced frenzy until it seized and skipped beats and quit.
And I died.
