What the hell? I blinked. “What?”
“Your throat is probably sore from Caesar’s attentions. Tea or broth might be better than solid food.”
“I’ll have tea with some whiskey.”
He shook his head. “Sorry. It’s not on the menu. Alcohol could make you more volatile, and it’s not good for you anyway.”
“Lots of things aren’t good for me…like being locked in a cell, the lack of sunlight, being molested, but you don’t seem to care about any of those things.”
He scoffed. “You haven’t been molested. Far from it.”
Heat poured into my face as memories of the night in the bar with him flashed through my mind, taunting me with my stupidity. I turned to the side hoping he wouldn’t notice.
“Are you blushing?”
“Hardly.” I rolled my eyes. “Thanks to your buddy, Caesar, I don’t feel well.”
“If you say so,” he replied. “Have a good night.” He opened the door.
“What about the tea or the broth?” I reminded him, my voice panicked. Even though I didn’t like him, I didn’t want to be alone. I’d go crazy staring at the walls for hours without anything to do.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
He slammed the door behind him without glancing back.
“Dammit,” I screamed, and the vibration raked like fire over my sore throat. I threw my pillow at the door. Tears flooded my eyes, clouding my vision. I was sick of crying and being sad. Fate had screwed with my life, and I didn’t know if anything would feel right or safe again.
Chapter Ten
Life rolled on and without a window or a clock, I didn’t even know how many days had passed. A week was my best guess, but then again, I stopped counting after three days of confinement.
A man who never talked or made eye contact brought me three meals and escorted me on three bathroom breaks every day. When I asked him questions, he stared right through me. I even tried communicating in my rusty Spanish. My attempt didn’t make a difference. Apparently, someone—most likely Ryker—told him not to talk to me. He delivered some books a couple days ago. They weren’t something I’d normally read, but it was better than staring at the walls.
I craved conversation and contact. Yesterday, I started singing songs at the top of my lungs—dumb songs designed to annoy everyone in hearing distance. First, I belted out cornball nursery rhymes like the “Wheels on the Bus” and the “Ants Go Marching.” I liked these two songs because they allowed me to invent new verses to the tune. When I found myself talking about the drunks on the bus, I figured I should move on.
Move on I did…with Eric Carmen’s “All by Myself” and Katy Perry’s “Roar.” Both songs appealed to me given my situation. One spoke to my loneliness, and the other became a theme song about breaking out my prison. I didn’t know all the lyrics, but I improvised where necessary. As a bonus, I liked the idea of subjecting Ryker to my ramblings, because I had a feeling they would annoy the shit out of him.
“Get dressed,” Ryker demanded one morning after I finished eating my breakfast.
I scanned my outfit. I had on the same dress I wore yesterday, not that my clothing selections were important. I didn’t have anyone to impress. “I am dressed.”
With narrowed eyes and a furrowed brow, he scanned the length of my body. “You wore that dress yesterday.”
“How would you know?” I didn’t look up from my book.
“Cameras.”
Time froze as my mind swam in circles. “Cameras?” Somehow I found my voice, but it was small, barely above a whisper.
“Yes, cameras.” He tilted his head to the side, a faint smile playing at the corners of his lush lips. “You know what those are, right?”
I wanted to say something cutting, but anger and shock prevented me from forming the words. While I was locked in a cave-like room, Ryker apparently scrutinized my movements as though I were a rat in a lab experiment. How long before Hattie lost her mind? “You’re a sick bastard.”
“I’ve heard that before. Let’s go.”
“Where are we going?”
“We’re making a proof of life video, or in this case, a proof of life live video conference.”
“That’s dumb,” I declared standing up.
“How do you figure?”
“I’m sure there’s a way to trace the call and then they’ll come for me. What are you using? Skype?”
He chuckled. “It’s not Skype, just something similar with many layers of encryption.”
“That doesn’t mean they can’t circumvent it.”
“They could, but it will take at least seven minutes to break the encryption technology if they’re good. Longer if they don’t know what they’re doing, and the exchange won’t last long anyway.” He held out his hand to me.
“So it’s a live stream.” Ignoring his hand, I brushed by him. I probably had about thirty seconds of saying whatever I wanted before they stopped me or turned off the video stream. I intended to make good use of the time even if Ryker and his minions punished me later. Given my solitary confinement in a windowless room, I didn’t have much information to provide, but I refused to read from some worthless script where I begged my dad to comply with my captors’ terms.
“You think you’ll be able to give them useful information,” he said. A ghost-like laugh escaped his mouth as he wrapped his hand around my neck, guiding me out the door.
Screw him. He was always one step ahead of me, but that knowledge only fueled the fire raging inside of me to find a way to circumvent him. “Maybe,” I replied.
He guided me through the shadowed hallways of the house that served as my prison for the past week. When we reached the front door, he pulled a rope from the pocket of his black pants and dangled it in front of my face. “Do I need this or will you be a good girl?”
My body begged with me to resist everything he wanted and try to escape, but with him trailing beside me, I wouldn’t get far. In the end, he’d catch me, and he’d make my life much worse than it already was. If I did this chat, maybe it would improve my dad’s chances of finding me or securing my release in the near future. I held out my hands to him. “Do whatever you want. With or without the restraints, I can’t go far.”
“You’re right. I’ll find you.” He stuffed the rope back in his pocket and opened the door. “Now walk.”
The minute I stepped outside the front door, my eyes screamed from the sudden onslaught of bright light. I’d spent over a week in a dark, cavernous room, and my eyes didn’t appreciate the sudden change. Ryker’s hand circled the back of my neck again.
“We’re going to the villa to do the little video chat.”