Run to Ground(123)
“Help!” someone called in a hoarse voice. The hair rose on the back of her neck. “Please help us!”
The words were so unexpected, so out of place in the glamorous mansion, that it took a moment for the plea to register. Her heart rate sped up. “Who’s there?” Forcing her feet forward, she descended a few steps. The door started to close and, remembering the automatic lock, she wedged her clutch purse against the jamb before releasing the door.
Her shoes sounded too loud on the steps. “Who’s there? Are you hurt?”
“Down here!” The voice was rough and scratchy, the urgent tone enough to make her stomach clench. How had she gone from fairy tale to horror movie in just a few hallways? Her gaze darted toward the door, and she briefly considered running up the stairs and escaping, but she told herself firmly that she was being ridiculous. This was Martin Jovanovic’s fancy-pants mansion, not a haunted house. She clomped down the remainder of the stairs with forced confidence. She was the girlfriend—well, almost-girlfriend—of the perfect man. She’d been invited to a California dream home. She belonged here, damn it. There wasn’t any reason for her to feel intimidated.
Then she saw the blood.
Oddly, the first thing Kaylee felt was exasperation. Now Penny would get to say “I told you so,” because her friend had been right…again. The mansion, the boyfriend, the food…everything had been too perfect, so it was time for reality to kick Kaylee in the face once again. Her gaze followed the dark-red trail across the floor until it reached the source of the blood…so much blood. Then her brain shut off as horror swamped her, rushing over her in a black wave as her lungs sucked in a huge breath, automatically preparing for a scream.
“Help,” a man—although he was barely recognizable as human—gasped, startling Kaylee into swallowing her shriek and turning it into a harsh croak instead. “Please.”
There were three of them, tied to chairs and facing one another in a rough triangle. Her gaze darted from one battered, blood-soaked form to the next, unable to comprehend what she was seeing. “I was just looking for a bathroom,” she whispered.
A wheezing choke—was it a laugh?—came from the man whose face was so swollen that it was hard to pick out his features. A slitted, glittering eye peered at her from the wreckage. Her lungs flattened and refused to take in any air as Kaylee stared at his battered visage. Someone had done that to him, had tied him up and tortured him…someone who could be coming back at any moment. “Good thing for us. A hand?” He tilted his head toward the table that sat in the center of the small room. When she stayed frozen, he added, “If you could grab something sharp and cut us loose, we’d appreciate it.”
His words were oddly polite, but they held an underlying plea that jerked Kaylee into motion. It was hard to think, to understand what was happening or what she needed to do, and she seized on his gently worded request. Cut them free, she mentally repeated. Cut them free.
Sucking in a much-needed breath, she rushed toward the table, her heels clattering against the concrete. Her body felt foreign and awkward, and her movements were jerky, as if she were a marionette with someone else controlling her strings. She stumbled to a halt next to the small folding table, and a small, near-hysterical portion of her brain noted how the cheap metal stand didn’t go with the rest of Martin’s decor. No wonder he hid it in the basement.
Stop. Don’t freak out. Just breathe.
She forced herself to focus on the task at hand. As her brain registered what the items on the table were, what horrific things the knives and pliers and hammer and—oh shit—the ice pick had been used to do, she couldn’t stop from returning her gaze to the first man’s ravaged face. He tried to smile at her, but the result was macabre.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” he said, but tension lay beneath his soothing tone. “Anything with a sharp edge will work. Let’s get out of here, huh?”
His last sentence echoed in her mind, reminding her that the people who’d done this could walk in at any time. With a hunted glance at the stairs, she grabbed a small but wicked-looking knife from the table, forcing her brain to ignore how sticky the floor was beneath her shoes, or the purpose of the other tools lined up neatly, ready to be used again in an instant. She kept herself focused as she started cutting the zip ties securing the first man to his chair.
“You’re an angel,” he said as the knife sliced through the binding around his wrist. The zip tie popped open, revealing a bloody groove where it had been. Her gaze fixed on his wrist, on that evidence that he’d struggled against his bonds. She was unable to look away from the gory sight until he cleared his throat.