Page 6 of Captive Heart

Eyes watering, she felt around again and found what she thought was an antique style quilt. It was thick and smelled disgusting, but she shook that out, too.

She stripped the tarpaulin from around her and arranged it as well as she could, in the dark, over the small mattress. Beggars might not be able to be choosers, but better the devil you knew…well, in some cases anyway. Throwing the blanket haphazardly over the top, she sank into its lumpy, squeaky, smelly cradle.

She kicked off the wellies and rearranged the scarf around her head, knowing that's where she'd lose the most heat. Then she pulled one long end down her spine and back up her front. It was a stupid thing, but covering that place between her legs made her feel slightly more human. Giving her back a tiny shred of dignity, despite the fact that she'd already pulled the acrid smelling quilt over the top of herself and burrowed down the best she could.

It was a long time before she got warm. The ancient, makeshift bed was uncomfortable, noisy whenever she moved, and stank of mildew and what was probably stale urine, but she didn't notice any of it.

The minute she closed her eyes, she fell into a deep sleep that was, in reality, probably close to semi unconsciousness, and she stayed that way well into the next day.

2

Micah Flynn shook his head as he pondered the neat pile of cardboard boxes next to a green tarpaulin. He could have sworn he’d picked them up just yesterday and placed them into the relevant recycling bins.

Then again, they got through a lot of boxes, given the constant stream of deliveries to the club.

But the tarp? Damn it, he definitely remembered dealing with that, because he had taken a while to decide exactly which refuse collection it belonged in.

Picking it all up once again, he sighed at the sight of a badly chipped whisky tumbler which had also not been placed in the designated recycle container and frowned at its precise placement under a section of drainpipe where it was collecting water, almost as if it had been put there on purpose. But that really was ridiculous.

When he heard a scuffling noise to his left, Micah looked in the direction of the sound, expecting to see a stray cat or another small animal, but nothing was there. As he turned away, he thought he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, but when he looked back again, there was nothing but the rustling of a bush.

Had anyone been there?

He stood quietly, hands on narrow hips, his curling blond hair lifting in the chilly winter breeze, sending a shiver down his neck. But nothing was out of place, and everything seemed quiet once again.

It must be his mind playing tricks on him. He was overly tired these days and hadn't been sleeping well lately.

It was the time of year, he knew. It was the same every year.

No matter that he’d moved to a different city—hell, a different coast, even—the weeks running up to the anniversary of Sara's death still haunted him.

He rubbed his hands over his face and decided to head off to the gym. Maybe he could exhaust himself into sleeping.

Turning away, he didn't see the slight figure peering out from the shadowy recesses of the small wood on the edge of the industrial area where the club was located, nor the eyes that followed him as he headed for his car and sped away.

The following day, Micah looked down at that same glass once again.

He knew he'd forgotten to move it, but how could it possibly be empty? It had been raining all night and the glass had most definitely been full yesterday. It stood in exactly the same place, so how could it now be different?

And why did he have that prickly sensation at the back of his neck, as if someone was watching him?

Something deeper in the recesses of the double-wide stock doorway caught his eye. He peered from where he was, and squinting his eyes against the gloom, he realised that it was the very same tarpaulin that he had binned the past two days running.

Micah pursed his full lips but made no move to do anything other than to offload the recycling he'd come out to this small, private courtyard to deal with.

There was definitely something going on and he intended to find out what it was… but without drawing any attention to the fact that he was on to it.

Back inside, Micah headed upstairs to a small storeroom on the upper floor.

Hell, storeroom was a stretch of the imagination! Right now, it was more of a kinky junk room, full of stuff that had been dumped there during the conversion of the kink club Perversions into its current upscale incarnation of Club Risqué, the premier and very exclusive East Coast BDSM club Micah managed.

After pushing things to the sides, he finally managed to clear a wide enough walk space to access the small window. The only window on this side, which looked out over the enclosed back courtyard that housed the now defunct stock goods entrance and the industrial sized recycling skips of what had previously been an industrial warehouse.

The twelve-foot square area had been fenced off from the adjoining parking lot to house and hide their unsightly waste management facilities from the wealthy clientele who frequented the club. It did make it kind of isolated, though, since they were the last building on a small industrial estate, enjoying a large, private plot, blocked off behind six-foot-high fences which backed up against an area of woodland right on the outskirts of the city.

The area wasn't locked up or anything, since it only held refuse and it could be easily accessed from the woods. The doorway into the club had been bricked up on the inside, so there was no opportunity for anyone to break in. All that remained was the four-foot wide by eight-foot-deep recessed space, which had originally been intended to keep any unloaded incoming goods protected from the elements.

When the club had been renovated, a more convenient goods entrance directly into the bar area had been designed. Right next to it was the new private elevator for the upstairs BDSM club, which was used to manoeuvre the bulky kink apparatus, but it was also used by patrons who valued anonymity and didn't want to parade themselves through the downstairs nightclub and bar.

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