“I came in after a late Friday class. It was winter, dark. And he was waiting inside.” Feeling her entire body shake, she held on to Gabriel in an effort to find solid ground. “He waited for me to lock the door behind myself before he came at me.” Her memories of the ensuing minutes were fuzzy at best.
“I came to, gagged and tied to a chair in the kitchen.” Nausea threatened as it had then, her aching head and bruised face the least of her concerns. “He’d brought ropes, and he was wearing gloves and overalls with a hood. So they wouldn’t find forensic evidence.” Charlotte had known then that she was in the presence of a total psychopath.
“At first he just talked to me, told me everything he intended to do.” The mental torture had been excruciating. “In the hours that followed, he’d occasionally come around to the back of the chair, pull back my head with a grip in my hair, and run a knife across my throat just enough to make me bleed.”
Sometimes she still woke to the feel of phantom blood dripping down her neck, ice-cold metal across her throat. “Then he’d leave for a few minutes, walk around the town house and come back to show me things he’d found in my bedroom, things he was going to keep for souvenirs.” Her panties, a ring, a picture of her parents. “Every so often, he’d hit me again.”
Gabriel was rigid beside her, but he didn’t interrupt. He just held her safe, and she knew he’d allow no one and nothing to get to her.
“At some point during that first night,” Charlotte said, drawing her strength from his, “he wrenched back my head again and hacked off chunks of my hair.” Terrified for her life, Charlotte hadn’t cared about the petty act. Ironic then that it was one that haunted her.
“Eventually, he decided he wanted to sleep and went into my bedroom to do it. I thought I could tip the chair over while he was gone, make enough noise that one of my neighbors might hear. After he left the kitchen, I waited a long time, then started trying to rock the chair so it would go over. And he was there. He’d waited all that time just so he could reappear and watch the hope drain out of my face.”
She’d never forget the way he’d laughed at her surprise. “Later, he hog-tied me and put me in the bedroom closet. He giggled the entire time.” Her physical injuries had been agonizing by that point, but worse had been the knowledge that no one would come for her.
No one knew she was all alone in the dark with a psychopath.
“The next morning, he grabbed the back of my neck and dragged me into the kitchen.” Fingers locked tight in Gabriel’s shirt, she detailed exactly what had happened in the kitchen, the horrible things Richard had said, the injuries he’d caused.
“The entire time he was taunting and abusing me,” she added when she could speak again. “I told myself I couldn’t give in, couldn’t die. I had to survive so I could testify, put Richard behind bars.”
She’d still had hope then, hadn’t known how much worse it would get.
GABRIEL COULDN’T THINK, COULD barely see, his vision a haze of red. He wanted to find the bastard who’d terrorized Charlotte and crush every bone in his pathetic body, pound his face to mush and stomp on his head until his brains leaked out his ears. Then he wanted to bring Richard back to life and hurt him all over again.
Jesus, Charlotte was so small. She’d have been no match for a full-grown male. Richard’s blows had to have broken things in her, and the ugliness of the mental torture… He didn’t know if he could stand to hear any more, but he would. Because if she’d survived it, he could damn well hear it, damn well hold her safe.
He would always hold her safe.
“After his breakfast,” she said, and she was crying now, though she didn’t seem to realize it, “he hurt me again.” She cradled her left arm unconsciously against her chest, and he knew the bastard had either sprained or broken it. “But he made sure it wasn’t enough to push me into a blackout.”
Gabriel forced himself to breathe, the red haze having morphed into pure, cold rage.
“Then he put me in the closet again.” Charlotte’s breath was a rasp, her body shaking. “He tied something over my nose so I could barely breathe, had to focus absolutely to get air into my lungs. I found out afterward that he left the house then, went to have coffee with friends. Setting up an alibi.”
Gabriel clenched his right hand, the hand Charlotte couldn’t see, around the tree branch next to him so tightly that the wood groaned. “The fucking psychopath.”
“Yes, he was, but he didn’t know everything. While he was out, the home phone began to ring and ring and ring. I knew it was Molly checking up on me.”